Dang! What an episode! The atmosphere, the music, the general audio! I don’t know what I expected, but this episode absolutely exceeded my expectations. Just the general unnerving atmosphere really set this episode up well. I wish we would have stayed in this arc for another episode if only to just get some more eerie content. But there’s still half the series left so I understand the need to keep things moving.
Despite absolutely loving the atmosphere this episode gave, I do have some disappointments that start around the time the girls were brought to their own tent. I’m really not surprised that the two of them decided to call Kozakura after being told not to use their phones. It’s not really out of character for Toriko and even if Sorao protested more it was going to happen eventually. But the frustrations, for me, start once the phone call is over. The commander comes over and tells them to stay in the tent while the soldiers get ready for another fight, but Sorao and Toriko just ignore that and sit on top of one of their vehicles anyways? I would have appreciated just some dialogue between the two to explain why they had done that. A simple “I wanna see what’s going on” from Toriko really would have satisfied me. It just seemed really weird that the moment they got to the camp their attitudes about the whole situation seemed to shift.
I won’t get too hung up on it since they did end up saving the day. I mean, those soldiers were absolutely thrilled that the monster that was gone! Greg just had to make it a problem. I mean, it was kind of inevitable that someone was going to find out about either the eye or the hand, too bad it was the guy who had absolutely no trust in them in the first place. I feel like if they all just took 5 minutes to talk to each other everything would have been solved. But look where we are now – Toriko and Sorao managed to escape the Otherside and the soldiers? Well, they’ll all probably die in there. It’s a bummer because at least the commander seemed pretty nice. It’s kind of funny, it seemed like he was practically babysitting the two the whole time. “Don’t do this” Girls do said things “Sigh, ok well definitely don’t do THIS” Girls do that.
The final chunk of the episode where they were running away from the base and to the train definitely felt a little rushed to me. It was all moving so fast that I couldn’t really figure out what was going on. I was fully expecting Greg to catch them, but then they decided to jump in front of the incoming meat train. Which is fine! But when they were actually on the train and the atmosphere reached its peak? Gah, I wish we could have sat there just a little bit longer or even figured out what was going on. Also, I just wanted to see more content about the meat train – why does it have that name? It just seemed really jarring to wake up on the beach. I just wasn’t sure if we had successfully left the Otherside. Good luck soldiers. I hope you’re able to make it home to your families, maybe we’ll cross paths again.
Like I said in the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised with this episode! It’s by no means the most stunning or brilliant episode that I’ve seen, but overall, I had a good deal of enjoyment from this episode. I hope that as we reach the second half of the season, we’ll dig into more of the unnerving things, but all I can really do is wait until next week!
