I’m so mad. YOU CANNOT BE DOING THIS. You can’t be making me think the guy died only for him to be smiling with a thumbs up the next scene. THIS IS NOT OKAY. The emotional whiplash while also making me believe the guy wasn’t able to be saved, I feel my sadness and emotions were WASTED. While I’m glad that Gris pulled through, but GOSH, did they really have to make it seem like he died when he didn’t???? I honestly have conflicting feelings of fake out deaths in media. All of this dread and feelings of loss feels wasted and it just ends up annoying me because I feel like I was tricked for feeling that way. Not to mention while I didn’t want Gris to die, I felt like it would have made a bigger impact if it had happened. So I honestly felt the same way Rudo did after learning Gris was okay. On one hand, I’m glad Gris didn’t die because I really didn’t want Rudo to experience being helpless against someone dying right in front of me again… but they could have told us he would be fine because they had a healer in the group instead of leaving us in feigned suspense. Now I’m just left feeling annoyed.
Aside from that, this episode was WEIRD. The moment where Rudo got fat and bloated from eating all the sweets felt terribly unnecessary. It was cute how incredibly excited and happy he was about getting to eat sweets which he deemed as “rich people food.” At most they could have just given him an upset stomach after eating so much. It felt so out of place and weird to have him blow up like that and a few seconds later have him back to normal. If you took out that scene, nothing of value would have been lost and it ended so quickly. It literally didn’t need to be there. And I don’t know what was going on with the perspective, but when Rudo and Riyo were walking down the hall, the elongated looking arms looked really weird. Then the weird character with the pacifier… don’t know what was going on there. It just felt like there were too many unnecessarily weird things going on in this episode that just left me so confused.
Despite the weirdness of this episode, they still set some things up. Such as finally being introduced to the boss. Though I honestly didn’t expect him until later into the series. But it’s nice to see him and essentially accept Rudo into the Cleaners. And while we still don’t know too much about Follo, it does seem like they’re building him up to be more prominent. Especially since it was him who was actually trying to stop Rudo from leaving to question the woman who watches Spherites fall from their world. Speaking of which, could hold valuable information on how the border between the Ground and the Sphere works. Especially since everyone who crosses the border ends up dying. So it’s definitely a question hanging on how Rudo was able to pass through it and survive.
My favorite part of the episode had to be when Rudo was training to use his abilities more consistently. I like that despite not liking him very much, Zanka is still paying attention. He noticed that Rudo seems to have more of an affinity towards things that are broken or need or repair. Which ended up being the case of activating his abilities as opposed to using an unblemished knife. And while he is able to make several objects into Vital Instruments, he can’t make too many at once or else his body cannot seemingly handle it. Though it also heightens the mystery of where his gloves came from. Especially since at the ending, the boss of the Raiders also holds an item with the same symbol. I also really like the sentiment is that Rudo doesn’t destroy the Vital Instruments when he’s done, but he’s putting them to rest after they fulfilled their purpose. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it just feels poetic in a way where he doesn’t just drain the energy in the item, but it almost feels like he gives them a purpose despite being “junk.” And it connects so well to Rudo’s theme of finding value and purpose in everything even if it seems broken. To which, probably extends to people as well and I’m sure this series will delve into that a little more later in the series. It’s been touched upon, but I feel like we haven’t gone too deeply in that aspect in terms of people quite yet.
This episode was freaking weird and while I didn’t enjoy it compared to the other episodes so far, at least it feels like it’s setting up for more things to come. I just hope we start getting more answers rather than more questions.
