After we have nice fluffy development, this episode took a much darker turn this time around. I’m guessing blood transfusions aren’t a thing in this world, but I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising. :/

After a sweet but tearful goodbye to Kikila, Golem and Somali continue their journey into the desert. They take a wagon and land themselves into the nice Winecup Town, where they soon meet Uzoi and Haitora, both bird people on their own journey into the desert. They’re both looking for a cure for Haitora’s illness, while Golem gives his reasoning for looking for humans as wanting to study them. I think this is the first time we’ve heard Golem give this reasoning, or else I’m a forgetful dummy. But we get a big discovery this episode behind closed doors.

So Haitora is actually a human himself, and Uzoi was able to tell that Somali is a human during their ice cream argument. Seeing Haitora, he seems to be in a strange spot. He’s obviously human, but he also seems to be party Harpy as he has the same feathers around his eye like Uzoi. It seems that they’re running out of time as he’s coughing up blood and in really bad shape, and Uzoi has the idea to do something with Somali, which we don’t find out until the end. But it’s at this point in the episode that I felt very nervous, just wondering what on earth Uzoi was planning. I was hoping that she would have a change of heart because there were many moments where it looked like she would, but when she said “We need you alive!”, well…

This episode was really nice because we really got to see a lot of Uzoi and Haitora compared to Golem and Somali. This show does a splendid job in building up its side characters. They all have a lot of uniqueness and personality, they’re not there just to be there. They all have their own purpose in the show and it makes me grow to love them. And while Uzoi is definitely in the wrong, I can’t really bring myself to hate her.

She admits to loving Haitora, but probably in the more romantic sense than Somali’s love for Golem. It seems like he was always there for her after her mother’s passing, so she has a very close bond to him. Honestly, it sounds like he’s the only person to ever be in her life so the bond is even stronger. Somali isn’t totally wrong when she says that they’re alike. And just like anyone else, she would do anything to save the person that she loves. It’s a really sad situation for them, especially when Somali is just a sweet and trusting child. She doesn’t sense the malice from Uzoi and just likes talking to her and helping her around with the wagon and supplies, so the betrayal at the end must be so terrifying for her. Thankfully Haitora is against this and tells Golem about himself and what Uzoi plans to do, but I sure wish he had said something sooner before things got really bad. I’m also curious what kind of condition he really has. I’m guessing that he’s slowly turning into a harpy (if that’s even possible) but his body isn’t able to sustain the transformation so it’s killing him, and Uzoi hopes that Somali’s human blood could turn him back into a human. If that’s the case, I wonder how he even turned out this way but boy am I curious.

Well, I’m scared. But hey, this episode was really cool when it came to showing us the world. First off, I’m in love with Uzoi’s design. Second, I loved watching them travel through the desert. We got to see some cool creatures such as a sand shark and a large sand rock turtle thing. It’s very cool that the desert is kind of like a sea, and I love seeing what kinds of creatures there are in the wild, as well as devices they use such as the crystal thing to find caves. Always love a good bit of worldbuilding. So this was a very solid episode, and I’m excited to see how things will transpire next time.

Berry

Unfortunately still a weeb