Our glorious Shepherd and his gang had been staying in Marlind for a little while now, purifying the city through the water. On one of their meeting in a library, we learn that the Drake from last episode was a Seraph named Rohan and was the Seraph in charge of protecting the town, so it is safe to assume that he kind of sucks at his job. Not only that, but he also has no idea why the town was this much corrupted. The obligatory cute cat mascot says stuff about the Normins and does some funny things, because he’s the comic relief now. But all of those background infos don’t really matter because what interests us now is Alisha, since the episode bears her name. Some supplies has arrived in town and Alisha asked Sorey to help her with everything. So while she’s coordinating everything, all the characters praise her for her hard work. Then, Rose, the girl whom we haven’t seen since episode 4 or so, appears again and looks like she’s up to trouble. She acts all nice in front of Alisha and Sorey but you can’t fool me! (Especially since her real identity has been already revealed in episode 0).
Sadly no one has time to worry about Rose since a war is coming. While Alisha was in Marlind dealing with all kind of shit, the chancellor Bartlow took the advantage of the opportunity to initiate a little war with their neighbor country. Of course Alisha is not very happy to hear those news and decides she’ll go and stop the dick Chancellor. Sorey wants to accompany her but Lailah refuses, since the battlefield is a place filled with malevolence, going there would be too dangerous for Sorey who’s only starting to get use to such amount of malevolence. Lailah’s worries are confirmed when Sorey fights some Human hellion. When purifying the human, Sorey gets affected by the man’s malevolence, thing that I assume, must not be very cool. Lailah then , finally explains that purifying humans is different from purifying Seraphs, dragon or whatever you want, when the Shepherd purifies a human he has to take its malevolence. This explains why Lailah doesn’t want Sorey to follow Alisha to the battlefield.
Sorey goes to the grave of a man killed by a hellion in order to purify it and tells everyone a tale about a man and a dragon and… how losing your loved ones is sad and… I don’t really know… All I can tell is that our Sorey is feeling quite melancholic if not depressed. I would gladly offer him some Prozac, but I like this new state. It changes a bit from the usual happy Sorey, always fine with everything. I like Emo, Sorey, I want to see him struggling with his inner demons and trying to stay true to his mission as he is forced to absorb malevolence. Yeah, I want this show to get really dark, I’m not sure this will happen but if it does, I’ll be surprised and happy. Anyway, now, Sorey still wants to go to the Battlefield because, he believes it is his duty as a shepherd.
In the meantime, Alisha is being ambushed by some really mysterious assassins who want to guess what? That’s right! To kill her. Their leader in particular is really mysterious… I wonder who it is… But let not spoil everything yet, and let’s focus on the reasons why those two have to clash. Basically, the Scattered Bones (the really frighting assassin gang) where initially sent by the Chancellor Bartlow to kill Alisha since she’s opposed to the war. They accepted the mission but only because they also believed that Alisha’s policy of non aggression was going to do more harm than good. Therefore, they want to get rid of her in order to “save some lives”. So they talk about their ideals a bit but Alisha quickly surprises the leader of the scary assassin gang by offering her life. It somehow proves that she’s not lying and convinces the leader to let her live… I-I-I don’t really understand why but let’s say that’s fine, okay, it convinced the leader who is none other than… ROSE! OH WOWIE WOOWA! What a twist! Heh, I’m joking, I don’t think it was supposed to be a twist, everybody should have guessed it by now. Heck even Alisha knew…which proves Rose sucks at being an assassin since you know, their identity is supposed to remain a secret…
But Anyway! Now they are best friends for life and Rose will accompany Alisha to the battlefield, as indicated in the Opening. Speaking of the Opening ( what a subtle transition, I’m almost proud of myself) where the heck did my opening go? WHERE IS IT? I don’t want to get into the episode without my opening! Did they had to cut it because they’ve realized they only have two episodes left to wrap things up? Heh.
So why is this episode called Alisha Diphda? Heh, I don’t really know. I thought the character would undergo serious development during this episode but yet this time again, Sorey is the main focus, at least to me. It is true that Alisha had a little bit of spotlight this episode, showing how hard working and strong willed she is but to be completely honest, I care more about Sorey. It is nice to see Alisha more since she wasn’t very much present in the game but they shouldn’t forget about the rest of the cast. Especially Sorey. In my onion, they have the possibility to do nice things with this ” Malevolence will consume you” thing. So I’m wishing the anime will take this road, but I guess we’re also going to see more of Alisha and Rose as they will fight on the battlefield as a duo.
I liked the tone of this episode. The scene in the cemetery, with that woman crying, was quite depressing and Sorey’s words, although I made fun of them a bit, were quite true. Malevolence is not only in the environment, it’s also in every living being and it can be passed on. It echoes what Alisha said when leaving Rose, that she forbids revenge as it will only brings more malevolence. I guess it’s the same old thing: hatred only brings more hatred and it’s the same with violence, which could explain Alisha’s desire to go for non aggression policy.
Overall I have mixed feelings about this episode, while the second part offered us some good development for the main plot, the first part felt, heh… a bit clumsy? And by that I mean that it felt lik
e the anime had the need to explain us some things about the drake, purifying malevolence with water and how things are shit cuz there’s war, but it was clumsy in the way it did it. They just threw all this information at us during the first ten minutes, just to get rid of it. Like for example, right after Mikleo and Sorey inform us we just got a 3 days ellipse, we see that Roland guy and wonder “who the heck is that fellow?”. The answer? “Oh it’s Rohan, the drake was actually a Seraph and we purified it last episode, we just didn’t show it on screen because we did not have the time, so now we’re telling this so that everyone understands, although it wasn’t particularly necessary since nobody cared. Oh also, humans can be possessed by malevolence, yeah… now you know. ” So yeah, it’s not the first time Tozx does that, so I guess, the anime is not very clear and a bit clumsy in the way it explains things to his watchers.
So now Sorey and Alisha are both going to the battlefield, there’s some high chances the first cour will end with some epic battle against some bad guy. Maybe against the little moe emo girl from episode 0, you know the one that appears and does nothing? I’d like to see her doing things.
I think the anime is trying to cut out old infor from the game as much as possible, like Drake, Gohan, water, etc….after all this one is majorly for the gamer, lol. This ep comes as a shock for me, not only because it completely diverges from the game but also how dark it portrayed Sorey’s expression when he purified the grave.
Alisha and Rose are being fleshed out A LOT better than in the game. This shows the theme “their individual respective thought” very accurately. Thie ep named “Alisha”, I think it’s white correct. Alisha never needs development, she already develops from ep 00, through all the horrible things. This ep shows what is this person named Alisha’s dream is, what she wants, and what extend she would go to follow her dream. Dream and passion are main theme of Zestiria, after all. We know Alisha is strong, but doen’t know how strong her determination can be. I really got a chill when watching the confrontation between her and Rose.
I’m fond of Sorey’s graveyard scene the most, and the whole new human malevolence thing. In bible, Shepherd has to take in the sin of sinners, and this is what exactly Sorey has to do. This also extend the range of “what can create malevolence”, love and grief, guilt and hatred, everything can create malevolence. The scenery changes continuously, getting darker and darker. If you notice, you can see Sorey’s eyes when he purifying the grave has lost their spark, the spark he has when he believes what he does will get him to his dream. They are not lifeless, not sad, but at loss, losing the passion he has, and the only thing remain is his mission as a Shepherd: purifying this malevolence. He probably knows purifying a dead corpse won’t help anyone feels happier, or making the grief in the girl’s heart disappear, but he still did it, as a shepherd, not as “things he wants to do”.
This makes the absence of the opening feels a lot more meaningful, because the op’s meaning is to push forward to your dream, but now what Sorey does is just what he needs to do as his mission.
This is getting too long…lol. Sorry for making you hear me rambling =_=”
Unlike you I did not get a chill during Rose and Alisha’s confrontation and when Alisha offered her life. Mainly because, although I like Alisha, I felt a bit disappointed when her move (offering her life) convinced Rose. It felt a bit too easy to be true, a bit déjà-vu If I can say it like that. I would have loved to see those two clash for their ideals a bit longer but heh, I do not hold it against the anime, they have to get things moving.
There were indeed a lot of visual effects and hints, foreshadowing Sorey’s personality change. I think, three times in this episode, Sorey leaves Mikleo’s side to walk right in front of him
without looking at his boyfriendand to do his duty as a Sherperd. Also, everytime Mikleo looks at him leaving but doesn’t do anything to make him stay. He powerlessly watches Sorey leaving as he goes out of the screen.I guess it echoes Mikleo’s doubts about Sorey having to do things on his own and starting to grow further apart from him. Especially the last time in the cemetery, where Mikleo and Edna can only see Sorey’s back as he walks to towards to accomplish his duty. And mayyybye, Mikleo represent Sorey’s youth, as he spent all his childhood with him, and Sorey’s goal to unite humans and Seraphs together like him and Mikleo are united. So leaving Mikleo’s side can mean, like you mentioned, he’s abandoning his dream to bring humans and seraph together, or at least he’s focusing more on the Shepherd’s mission.
I don’t think Sorey has lost all his “spark” yet, true he has understood the reality of the mission of the Shepherd he still believes he can save more people. To me the light in his eyes was fading but still isn’t completely gone. It was more like a heartbeat, a way to show it’s still present but is about to stop. So maybe when he’ll get to the battlefield and see the reality of war, then his spark might completely fade.
Well your theory about the OP does make sense and quite frankly I hope it is true. It’ll be also nice if they decided to change it with some darker tones like the game one. I hope it wasn’t just because they did not have time to put the Opening in this episode aha.
Also don’t worry about writing too much. It’s good to have different point of view and impressions about the same thing. Comments are here to express them so don’t be shy and write me some essays; I’ll read them. [ Also, I’m the one who should apologize, every time I try to keep my reviews short but I end up writing more than 1000 words in poor english… which is almost the length of a short essay… heh]