Hm, I kind of feel bad about talking a lot of shit about Joshua last week. 😐
I’m not sure how I feel about Joshua’s death and about this episode and general. This episode was mostly fighting between the two neighboring nations with both sides suffering lots of losses, and even a possible betrayal. But maybe it’s because we barely know who these characters are that I wasn’t too invested in it. I just watched the fights, which looked fine but the backgrounds bothered me. There were lots of flags raised now that I look back on the episode.
In the very beginning we see that Joshua lost both parents very young, looking up to his father for his valiant efforts protecting the royal family. After his father’s death, he moved into the royal palace and was entrusted with caring for baby Princess Yuki and always making her smile. Joshua is working hard to make his late father proud and everyone around him proud, while also doing his best to protect Yuki from the ugly truth that’s hidden right under her nose. I didn’t think too much of it as the episode went on but at the end, yeah, I realized that everything was against Joshua. He’s not a bad kid, but he annoyed me a little in the first episode probably because he took things a little too seriously. But man we were baited real bad. Joshua looked like he was going to die when he went ahead to set off the explosives in the cave, with a large shard of glass lodged in his side. But then he was saved by Yuni, so I thought, oh nevermind he good. He says he’s not the hero type to just die like that. Then he actually died.
Oh, alright.
This is where I’m conflicted. Well for one thing, I was never fully invested in Joshua from the start and I felt the show didn’t give us enough time to really care about him, so his death wasn’t very emotional for me at all. I was shocked for sure because I didn’t expect a major death so soon, but I can’t say I’m really sad. I’m more sad for Yuki as she finally learned the truth but in the worst way possible, with her best friend (and crush?) since birth dying. And that’s the thing. This is one thing I don’t like in not just anime, but media in general. Joshua’s death has served nothing more than plot device. Obviously this is going to open Yuki’s eyes, and her ignorance and innocence will be no more as now she’s really going to face the terrible truth of the war waging between the two nations and really serving her nation. But did Joshua really have to die in order for Princess Yuki to learn this truth? There were other ways she could have learned about the war but I think getting rid of Joshua was a little much. Having a major death this early is really worrying to me for the rest of the show’s writing. Usually you save the death for something bigger, later on in the show. Hmm, I don’t know. But since they’re so bold in dishing out a major death this early, I expect more casualties later.
Things don’t seem to be going well for our main characters. There was an attempted betrayal by their leader/commander?, hoping to destroy the chrars implanted into some of the theurgears. The soil in their land keeps getting worse and now they lost one of their border towns to the Empire, as well as losing some of their own. Now that Yuki knows what’s really going on, I wonder how she’s going to go about it. Sooner or later she’s going to meet up with Stella, the girl from the Empire so I guess that Yuki might get in on the action by helping command them. They’ll meet somehow.
Stella seems to be a major character, the real second main character (not Joshua). We see her side has also lost many people. It looks like Stella is going to get her proper introduction next episode so I’m looking forward to learning who she is and what kind of role she’s going to play in this show. This episode wasn’t too interesting to me and I think it has to do with my views against mecha I hate to say. I don’t watch mecha so this is different for me, but I want to check out different stuff. But these shows always tend to have lots of characters whose names I don’t remember, and terminology that’s never explained. >_> But I’m willing to give this show one more episode to see if I want to keep blogging about it. Maybe Stella’s episode will make me more invested.
