Uh, what the hell just happened
What a way to start an episode… There is just so little premeditation when it comes to killing characters, which is how it should be, but it keeps catching me way off guard! Monkey is too op! I wear glasses and I can guarantee you I couldn’t see that far. Valuable information though. Considering Dragon died from Rabbit’s blades and was reanimated, we have pretty much all the support we need for the ‘need to be killed by rabbit to reanimate’ theory.
I guess the legendary brothers still get their spotlight as dynamic twins but, considering Dragon is in two and Snake is headless and limbless, I don’t know if we can still call them a duo.
Tiger’s path of righteousness descent into madness
By far the most relatable backstory that’s graced us so far. Ah, glory to the curse of being in the middle ground. Smack in the center of personality types like Monkey and Boar, Tiger embodies what is often underrepresented. The ‘normal’ person. If you can really even say that about a girl who defeated 100 people in a row in hand to hand combat. How does being good at kung fu let you develop the ability to drink gasoline and blood again? I must have missed that when I took karate as a kid. Maybe that was the next belt color up when sensei made you drink gasoline. When you have the mentality of Monkey or Boar (or any extreme opinion) there’s little chance of you going anywhere but further to the extremes. But there’s comfort and stability to it. A blissful ignorance that masquerades reality, seamlessly and forcefully bending the world to their beliefs.
That’s just not the case with self-aware people, like Tiger, who can see the wrongness and flaws of the world and have to make the choice to face it or run from it. What began as Tiger’s glorious road to righteousness swiftly ended with her in a dead-end alley of despair. Apart from being relatable, I found Tiger’s backstory to be so interesting in what they chose to mention. Bridging the gap between human and beast by figuring out she could crawl while blackout drunk, having her turn off her brain to the point where she couldn’t recognize facial expressions/emotions, losing the ability to define big words, and adding in that she forgot division but could still perform multiplication where all, I thought, unique ways to add personality. If only alcoholism was that productive in real life. I’ll stick to anime.
“‘Good’ is just a slogan. The world runs on evil.” Ha, I love that line so much. Tiger, no matter what happens, you are my favorite this series in terms of character roster.
Strategery Shenanigans
I was all ready to laugh and make fun of Tiger and Ox. Two blockheads who charge first and ask question later were being forced to think up a plan to fight 2 people 4 body parts of varying functionality. And then look what happens. In less than two minutes they make and execute a plan perfectly. What the hell man? ‘Uhh, I don’t understand big words. Durrr.’ – Tiger, probably. But then she figures out not only what liquid hydrogen is but manages to steal the pack with ease and freezes the twins before anything could actually transpire. Sure, ok. Fine. If she turned off her brain for that, where does that leave me? Let’s just chalk it up to warrior instincts.
No, seriously. What the hell just happened
WAIT, WHAT?! Is this for real? What is this show?? No way is Rabbit actually dead… He did a lip bite thing right beforehand and we still haven’t seen Monkey since the whole head toss thing. Can he reanimate himself? His eyes are the same color as the reanimated zombies… I don’t even know anymore. Does he really need more powers though? Isn’t it enough to be able to control the dead? No? Ok.
I just hope Tiger comes out of this ok. I’m sure the episode titled, ‘A Tiger May Die, But Leaves Its Skin’ could mean a lot of things.
AND WHERE IS RAT?
Something interesting that’s happened over the course of this show came to me in an epiphany today. I was ready to tear apart the animation in this episode. There was a lot of (bad) 3D and there were a bunch of shots where perspectives didn’t look quite right and the art looked not too good.
Naturally, that certainly doesn’t help the shows integrity, but it really feels like the series has put action on the backburner. It takes some readjusting of expectations, but the whole ‘connecting with characters first, action second’ angle is pretty neat and definitely reduced what I originally expected in terms of action sequences. Now, that may not be a good thing, but it’s a shift regardless. Just a stray thought.
The anime staff will likely fix up the episode problems for Bluray release. Standard operating procedure for most anime productions that are short on time and budget (unless you’re Kyoani, who’ve mastered the scheduling/budget balance perfectly).
It’s times like this the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch would come in handy to both purify and snuff out naughty rabbit necromancers. Provided Tiger/Ox remembered the right number of countings per the Book of Armaments.
“One, two, five! No wait, four! Or was it nine?”
KABOOM!! ^( X__x )^
There are some who call me… Tim.
This is the second and hopefully not the last Monty Python reference in regards to this show. So many parallels between Rabbit and the killer rabbit, haha. It’s uncanny.
I know they aren’t really to blame for the whole art schtick. I’m totally cool with the 3D being subpar. This shit ain’t easy to do and I’d rather have a few flaws than delayed episodes or something! I do think the poor line work and perspective shots are inexcusable, but that’s just a personal opinion. Like I mentioned, the visual quality is really secondary at this point, so they can get away with it here and there.