Golem and Somali get a little help from Praline and are given a map of the library. With it, they set out to find the head librarian to ask her about the Chronicle of Haraiso, and they get quite a story.
We meet Feodora, a young witch girl who ends up having an accident as she tries to make her way home to the witch village. The winds being too strong, she gets flown off her broom and crashes on an island of humans. Interestingly, the humans live with a golem, Haraiso, and worship him as a sort of God since he was kind enough to let them live on said island. Which is ironic given their reactions to Grotesques and literally anything different from them, which should include Haraiso, but maybe because of certain circumstances at the time they…didn’t.
We’ve gotten both sides of the story of the conflict of the humans vs the Grotesques now and honestly…I can’t even pick a side to be more sorry for, and when it comes to conflicts like this, you can’t really pick a side anyway. I felt horrible for humans as we’ve heard countless stories of creatures killing them and treating them horribly, doubly so when we got to Haitora’s backstory and we had visuals to go along with the descriptions of their horrific actions. But then we saw the brutal side of the humans this time, as the villagers quickly changed their tune when Feodora mentioned them being other species. This time we saw how awful humans were as well, and honestly it all just sucks. Haraiso calling the humans a cowardly species seems harsh, but looking at real life examples in our own history, it’s absolutely true. We’ve persecuted our own kind for thousands of years because they’re different, whether it’s race, religion, sexuality, etc. And it’s not like that’s stopped even now. Humans are always afraid of something they don’t understand, and in that fear they react with anger and violence and commit horrific acts. I don’t even need to list examples, you could guess pretty much any moment in history and you’re right.
What’s so sad is that the two-headed dog creature that was captured wasn’t even violent. When Feodora and Miya ran back to the village, it wasn’t like anything was damaged and no one was hurt or dead. The poor creature was tied up and begging for its life, but the humans stabbed it to death anyway. It was pretty evil and really disappointing.
Feodora’s story was still really interesting though. She felt responsible for “killing” the humans, but it really was just unfortunate events. Feodora suffered injuries and stayed with the humans until she recovered enough to head back home, and in that time she really got along with the entire village, and she made a friend in Miya. It was very peaceful and she was happy there, and everyone seemed to really like her. It wasn’t until Feodora used her powers as a witch to save Miya’s life that everything was ruined. The same people that loved Feodora and treated her like any other had their flips switched and glared at her with disgust and violent rage. They raised their voices, calling upon them all to kill her even though Haraiso “pardoned” her for saving Miya’s life. At first it felt so stupid that these people changed their tune so quickly, upon a little girl that treated them as nicely as they treated her. But again, looking back on our own history it’s actually not too shocking. Humans suck. We really do. But at least Miya was the only one to still see Feodora as her friend, and they both probably lived with that bond for the rest of their lives.
The head librarian tell Golem where he needs to go with Somali to find the humans, and with a smile on her face and sharing words with Somali, she passes away. It was pretty emotional, and again very dark but kinda real. The point isn’t to take sides, and there shouldn’t be fear. It’s to care and accept each other, no matter the differences. It’s something I wish everyone would understand.
I wish we had seen more of Haraiso’s point of view, but golems don’t feel emotion so I suppose he didn’t feel anything. Still, the humans are huge hypocrites. And speaking of the humans and looking at them, I feel like Somali may not be totally human? I’ve seen people point this out that Somali looks nothing like the humans we’ve seen in flashbacks, or like Haitora and his family. She has unnatural colored eyes and green streaks in her hair. Look, I don’t know if that’s true or if this is just a case of Somali being the main character and needing a cute anime girl design, but it’s a really interesting thought either way.
Next episode looks like it might be a flashback episode of Golem and Somali’s earlier days together, based on the title. I’m really looking forward to that since that’s something we’ve really been missing but doesn’t really effect the validity of their close relationship since the anime has been doing that well anyway. Love, let’s love everyone. 🙂
