Endride – Episode 18 [Prisoner]

Ladies and gentleman, it has taken three quarters of the season, but we are finally starting to get some concrete answers in Endride! Better late than never I guess.

Guidoro decides he wants to go after Ibelda, and Louise announces she’s traveling with him. But Demetrio decides that they won’t be enough, so he asks Mischa and Felix to go with the two Zoozians, and Emilio sends some soldiers too.

Pascal, Joseph and Pascal’s breadmaking friend are still searching through the vast quantities of data for more information about the declining Warp Particles. There is so much to go through that Alicia is helping them.

Guidoro, Louise and the others report back to Demetrio that they’re finding lots of withered crops and dry fields in their travels. This is because of the declining levels of Warp Particles; life appears to be literally draining from Endora. If this continues, Endora will eventually be no more. The Ignauts will try to help keep the public calm, but until a solution is found for the Warp Particles issue, there’s not much else they can do.

Emilio is worried about Shun, so he takes Shun back to the dungeon where he first appeared in Endora: a flight of stone stairs suspended over a deep cavern. Shun accuses Emilio of giving up too soon, but a frustrated Emilio shouts that if he knew what to do to solve the Warp Particles problem he’d do it. Shun steps back and falls, and when Emilio reaches out to grab him they both fall below. Emilio summons his Warp Relic and lodges it in the cavern wall, and the two young men hang from the wall until Emilio spots another set of nearby stairs. They each swing over and land on the stairs, safe for the time being.

This is a new underground area that even Emilio is not aware of. As Shun and Emilio explore this unknown space, they meet a prisoner who is somehow still alive. He is restrained with his arms and wrists shackled behind his back, so for the time being he poses no threat.

This dragonlike creature doesn’t give his name, but says that he used to serve King Alzerm until the King disowned him and had him thrown into this deep dungeon. Emilio asks this Zoozian to tell him more about King Alzerm, and this creature acquiesces.

The creature says that he used to serve King Alzerm as the leader of the Truculents. They did anything the king asked of them.  One day a man from the surface was discovered, and this man used his ideals and information about the surface to slowly turn the king into someone who was driven to control the forces of nature for himself, so he could rule both Endora and the surface world. Delzaine and the Truculent leader both tried to caution the king against what the man from the surface was saying, but it was to no avail.

One day the man brings King Alzerm, Emilio’s father, a gun from the surface. Both the Truculent leader, Frama, and Alzerm are amazed by its power, although Frama is more horrified than impressed. This results in a confrontation later in a hallway between only Frama and the surface man. The stranger’s manipulative personality comes out in full force and he fakes a serious injury in order to get Frama punished. True enough, King Alzerm has Frama thrown into the deep chasm, which is where Shun and Emilio find him.

Frama adds that the surface stranger’s plan was to combine the Warp Particles from Endora with technology from the surface to use Babel to be able to send people between the two worlds. And the reason why Warp Particles have been declining in Endora is because they had been (and are continuing to be?) sent to the surface, I’m assuming when Babel was used.

Shun and Emilio ask Frama more questions, but he’s unable to remember most of the answers. Frama does remember that the man from the surface might’ve used a tool to help him travel to Endora, but when Shun accidently reveals that he’s from the surface too, Frama’s anger goes into overdrive and he breaks free from his restraints and attacks Shun and Emilio.

Just as Frama’s attack is about to hit, the blue stone Shun touched that sent him to Endora emerges from his chest and starts emitting a blinding blue light. This light envelops both Shun and Emilio. When the light fades, they’re in another world. Or rather, Shun’s world. Somehow the blue stone sent them both to the surface!

My thoughts: I wonder how Frama survived in the deeper dungeon for so long without food or water? Just saying. xD

We never see the surface man’s face, aside from his glasses, but if you remember from the first episode Shun’s father has glasses…

So there’s my guess. Shun is able to come to Endora because his father did it himself when he was younger. He met King Alzerm and his brother Delzaine, and manipulated the king into believing that he could control nature using his will. The king became a changed man, becoming driven by a desire to gain more power and travel to the surface.

This episode also allows us to speculate as to Delzaine’s motives, which have remained hidden up to this point. If Delzaine, like Farma, had been upset in the changes in his brother after meeting the stranger from the surface, then maybe Delzaine had been trying to get to the surface so he could kill the man who’d manipulated his brother? And though the purpose of the gun hasn’t been clarified yet, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the surface stranger uses the gun to kill King Alzerm before returning to the surface.

All in all a fantastic episode. Where was this material earlier in the series??!