It felt like I watched the first episode again. Seriously, this was like the first episode all over again but this time it focused on Free and an old friend of his joining the dark side after not seeing him for a long time. Except this time, Free wasn’t planning on finding him, he just did coincidentally.
Look, I didn’t have much good things to say about the first episode so I won’t have much good to say about this one either. This was a mess, yet again. I don’t know what the storyboardists or director is doing, but I kind of have no idea what’s going on. Like, I kind of do, but I don’t. I know the objective of this episode was Free and Mariya tracking the illegal fairy shipment or whatever since they so blatantly told us, but there’s still things that made me confused.
There was no in-between stuff from the moment when Free asked Mariya to join their organization to them doing missions together as if they know each other well and can work together no problem. What is this organization, what are their goals, what are their rules, how did Mariya get a fairy without implantation, who the hell even are these people? What do these people think of Mariya and how exactly did she join, and how was she approved? Mariya and Free meet these two snipers and act as if they’re super familiar already. There’s this weird disconnection between the characters, and the dialogue surely doesn’t help. It’s cheesy, it doesn’t make sense, and I’m sitting here checking how much time is left for the episode to end. I thought once Mariya joined this organization, whatever the hell it’s called, we would get to know her and Veronica a lot more and just about this organization and the world in general, as well as get more details on the Great War. And yes, I know the name of the organization was given to us through all that ridiculous text, but that’s just lazy given to us like the names of cities and countries we haven’t been given much of a reason to follow and care about.
The direction is really sloppy as this episode followed the same formula as the first one. Get backstory, introduce some characters, some banter, get thrown into some action, old friend reveal!, more fighting, and then the end. Again, this feels like something that would happen in the middle of the show, not right in the beginning. And again I can’t even bring myself to care about the battle between Free and Wolfran because I haven’t been given a reason to. Yes, Wolfran seems to have lost his wife and daughter, he was old friends with Free, and Free had his own traumas. Though I don’t even understand what the flashbacks for both Free and Mariya had to do with the rest of the episode. It’s just a huge disconnect in general with this show, and instead of being interested, I’m very bored.
I feel like I’m being a little harsh but it says something when I’m not the only person having lots of issues with the show. What’s worse is that they just announced that this is going to get 24 episodes. This makes my complaints even more fair, I think, where they had plenty of time to stretch out the flashbacks and backstories throughout the first half at least, as well as letting us get to know the other characters and the organization.
And because I care about basically no one in the show, I also didn’t care for the fight. The…very long fight with the loud insert song. The song didn’t feel very fitting of the fight where it got distracting, and it was really loud where it drowned out some of the dialogue and sound effects. And it was very long. The song, and the fight, had no business being that long.
I just wasn’t into this at all. I don’t remember the last time I was so negative about a show. Usually a show can be a little slow or maybe be boring, but not be such a choppy mess like this. Here, I don’t even know what they’re going to do with Fairy gone. It’s going to have 24 episodes, so what is the end point going to be? I’m not even sure what the plot of this show is right now so I can’t even imagine what else they’re going to do for another 22 episodes. I don’t think I even care enough to find out.
I’m going to be crazy and give this at least one more episode. This show has a lot of potential but it’s not using its potential at all, but maybe they can turn something around in the third episode where I could possibly give it a chance. Though the chances of that are really low.
