#rin's aggressively mixed feelings and bitchiness

[rin-the-shadow]

Need to ramble about episode 22

And when I say ramble, I do mean with little side tangents here and there. Spoilers below the cut. 

So as you might have figured out from previous posts, reblogs, and questionable parodies, I have very aggressively mixed feelings about episode 22 of Dororo, with a variety of different things bugging me about it.

One is how fast things deteriorated post-episode 19. The way things had been going up until that point, and up until Dororo’s near-drowning, it’s hard for me to buy that they would have gotten to the point they were in episode 22 that fast. I can buy the freakout at the end of episode 20 because it’s in the moment, but the area that makes it harder to swallow is the aura suddenly going completely red around the heart without so much as a warning beforehand from Biwamaru, who has, for the most part, been fairly consistent with commenting on it before.

Still, we’ve got the explanation that something is happening with the last demon, which could potentially explain it, if now that it’s not being held back by the Goddess of Mercy, it’s able to exercise a degree of influence. Sure, why not.

But aside from the way the pacing feels like it suddenly realized it had four episodes left and floored the accelerator, it also feels like the writers are trying really hard to sell this “oh no he might become a demon” plot point, but with less and less communication about it from Dororo--who, to be fair, is only eight--ten-ish, but has also had no problem point-blank saying “if you do that, you’re acting like a demon” before. I can understand him struggling to articulate, but at the same time, it also feels a little like the writers are slamming a clamp down on communication in areas that it would be kind of important.

The main issue I’m having is the sudden shift to “stab anything in my path while riding a flaming demon horse” mode. Hyakkimaru has been established with a capacity towards ruthless pragmatism before. He’s been established as reacting strongly emotionally in the moment, but he’s been able to work back from it relatively quickly once the moment’s passed. Even when he slaughters the samurai who murdered Mio and the kids in episode 6, it’s still a pretty fast turnaround once Dororo interferes, and it isn’t like any of them weren’t directly involved or like he goes hunting other samurai after the fact.

This most recent thing felt like senseless carnage extended over a majority of the episode. And frankly, it feels like it’s the writers trying to push “oh noes he’s going to become a demon, maybe he should have just sat back and happily let the demons eat him before.” Which, I will be pissed if that’s what it ends up saying. As Dark_FalconZ had stated in their post about it, it feels excessively cruel for Hyakkimaru’s character. And again, with what I spent a majority of series episodes watching of him, it feels like a really sudden swerve. 

There’s a very large part of me that hopes the following episodes have a damn good explanation for it, because at this point, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it as anything other than writers desperately feeling that they need angst and stakes and whatever.

At the same time, I also have to remind myself that at this point in Princess Tutu, which features a ballerina helping a prince restore the pieces of his fragmented heart and started off comparatively lighthearted before getting dark, the prince was a demon bird actively trying to feed people to the raven, because the raven’s blood was tainting one of his heart shards, and it wasn’t like that didn’t get better. (It also had a similarly lighthearted and silly episode 19 before everything went to crap and he started molting feathers before becoming a demon bird, so there’s that.) Like, it’s not the same show, but a part of me wants to hold on to the similar tone things in hopes that we might get some relief.

As for things I have aggressively mixed feelings on, I’d like to mention Tahomaru’s reaction when Mutsu tried to sacrifice herself. On one hand, sure, you don’t want your friend to do that, understandable. On the other, sacrificing one person for the good of the many sure doesn’t sound so great when it’s someone who actually matters to you, now, does it? And with Mutsu being a willing sacrifice as well, the situation was a little different.

Like, I don’t want them to die. I’m actually opposed to character death except when it is in some way fulfilling to their character arc, with a prime example, for me at least, actually being Tahomaru’s arc in the game Blood Will Tell, where his loyalty to his father drives him to fight Hyakkimaru initially, but then (ironically because he doesn’t have the information about the deal) backs off once he realizes he’s hunting demons, with the warning to stay out of his way. His loyalty drives him to stop his father from killing an unconscious Hyakkimaru inside a temple, recognizing that Daigo isn’t acting like himself. He comes to the conclusion that the demons influencing his father are what’s making him not himself, and resolves to help Hyakkimaru and Dororo with the hope of purging his father of their influence, ultimately throwing himself between Dororo and the disembodied demons in order to prevent their corrupting him.

And ultimately, his becoming a Fiend and being cut down in Dororo’s place is what allows Daigo to shake off the remainder of the Fiends’ influence, meaning his death accomplishes what he had set out to do. If he’d been killed off right after his own boss fight, even during the Kyubi boss fight? Not so much.

So I don’t want them to die, especially in a pointless shock death or an “oooooh, look how far Hyakki and Taho have fallen!” moment, but I do have a hard time not raising a brow a little bit that we were all “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, but only if the one isn’t someone who matters to me.” 

That said, I actually wish the whole “We can’t sacrifice one person if it’s actually someone who matters to me!” had been touched on earlier. Episode 22 is a bit too late to bring that up and actually have it go anywhere, and if it had happened sooner, it’s something that could have given the character (and the writers) opportunity to explore and see where it leads. And I’m kind of interested in seeing that. But it’s not going to happen because there’s fricking two episodes left in the series.

At the same time, I’m also aware that I’m a little prickly about the plot right now because of how things were handled in Avengers: Endgame, and Infinity War before it, and Madoka Magica: Rebellion before that, and so there is a part of me that worries this will be the same. On the other hand, I have a hard time thinking they’ll go that route, based on previous adaptations (particularly the movie and the game). Turning your protagonist into a monster on the 50th anniversary of the series strikes me as a bit in poor taste, but at the same time, I’ve read enough comics to know that writers don’t always think about that sort of thing. But I’m still hoping that it’s just me being prickly and overreacting, and that they won’t do the thing I’m dreading on their own fricking 50th anniversary.

I would like to remain...dubiously optimistic about the conclusion (and hey, maybe Jukai and Biwa carry aglaophotis somewhere), and I would like to think the writers are simply setting us up to expect worse than we’ll get. The fact that I haven’t been able to find any episode preview for 23 does raise a brow, but then that could also go either way. I would like to remain optimistic. But I also think I needed to ramble a bit in order to do so.

If you’ve somehow managed to read through to the end of this with my rambly nervy writing, then thank you for that. I have a tendency to overexplain while adding a bunch of extra metaphors/comparisons, and then overexplain those, and it gets worse when I get nervous. With these already being a bunch of relatively disorganized thoughts about the latest episode....

Again, thank you if you’ve somehow made it to the end of this with any part of it making any sense. If you’ve got your own two cents, I’d be interested to hear them.