All they need now is a talking dog and they’ll go around and solve mysteries for the rest of their days. That would honestly make my life complete.
- Last week, we found out that Hambart was Ai’s father after all. He also found a way to finally fulfill his wish to die peacefully with his loved ones around him.
- Summary: Now that Hambart is unfortunately gone, Ai decided to ride along with Julie and Scar in their van. The gang then realizes that a blue haired man has snuck onto their van and is sleeping on it, and is revealed to be drugged. He eventually wakes out of his hallucinogenic state and says his name is Kiriko, and he’s a resident of the city of Ortus, which is the “Land of the Deceased”, or, a city inhabited by the dead who roam the Earth. After they take him to the city, it’s revealed that the inhabitants of the city don’t want to be buried, and have a mortal hatred for gravekeepers. Now, the team must stop in the city to get their van fixed as they have to lay low out of fear the townsfolk will find out Ai and Scar are gravekeepers. Then, we learn that Scar can get sick, which she states she didn’t know was possible. After that, Ai basically sneaks out of the hotel she’s staying at to partake in the mask festival, where she meets a mysterious red haired person who warns her to escape the city as soon as possible.
Now that’s one heck of a contradictory statement.
- My Take: Now with Hambart unfortunately biting the dust in episode 3, we’re stuck with the gang of misfits Julie, Scar, Ai, and I guess Kiriko. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Julie’s characterization was far more interesting than Hambart’s was to begin with. As for Scar; I kind of like her. She’s basically a robot who is all knowing about her surroundings. It makes me really want to hear the explanation of who these gravekeepers really are, but I have the feeling that I’ll have to wait until the end of the series to find that out. As for our new addition, Kiriko, I think he’s alright. Of course, I can’t judge his character based on one episode (where he, frankly, didn’t have much to say that wasn’t exposition), but his motives have got me curious as to what his goal is.
- Speaking of goals, I have yet to figure out the main goal of this series. Ai states a couple of times in this episode that her main goal is “to save the world”. But that raises some questions:
- How is she going to go about doing that? It’s such a broad term that it could be done any way. I know that her goal must be to make it so people die naturally, but how in the world is she going to do that?
- What makes her so equipped to do this job? I know she’s young and ambitious, but she is very inexperienced. If the writers want to make some grand explanation of what course the plot is going to take, they better do it soon. A show that’s restricted to 12 episodes needs to establish more plot than this by this point. However, I’ll be optimistic.
I love self-aware shows like this.
- It’s so weird. This show seems like a completely different series in the absence of Hambart. In a way, the pacing that we saw during his presence reminded me of a tutorial for a game. It’s like “here’s the basics of the world: people can’t die, and gravekeepers help them receive their rest. Sorry, gotta die! Good luck!” Either that stupid point, or the more poetic one I thought up at the end of this episode: it’s an allegory to going outside your own confines. Of course your life will be boring and simple if you don’t make anything happen. Ai and friends going to the countryside and eventually the city of Ortus is sort of like what happens after you go outside your comfort zone and travel a little bit. Or something like that. Bottom line, the show seems very different, but different doesn’t always equal bad.
Well, I now know what my nightmares are going to consist of for the next couple of days.
- I actually like this new direction. I like the introduction of the dead-but-not-dead folk. Because all this time, they’ve been talked about, creating this huge mystery about them. Now we finally get to meet them? That’s awesome! Let’s just hope that a central goal arises soon. If not, then I probably won’t enjoy this show as much anymore. But for now, at least, it is good enough.