Old flames, gribbly monsters, and less edge than usual.
The core of this episode involves the party getting transit across the Iron Ocean, with a stop along the way to pick up a power-up trinket for Empress. However, a bigger issue is the fact that the captain of the ship that’s taking them across the Iron Sea is, in fact, the former lover of the flirty engineer girl (Monica).
In an oddity for this show, we actually get quiet moments and character introspection. There’s still something a little exploitative about how the relationship between Monica and the Captain is handled, like you know the writers had it be a pair of cute and flirtatious girls (well, flirtatious in the present in Monica’s case and in the past in the captain’s case) because that’s supposed to be taboo attractive… but it still kind of works? At the very least, it’s more human than anything else Dawn Fall has been determined to show us, so I kind of give it a pass.
The Iron Ocean is also a nice environment. Well, it’s a horrible environment, full of giant monsters (both the Gigantes Artemis-things and some native mutant creatures) and made of toxic and corrosive liquid metal. It’s much more atmospheric and interesting than the Mad Max desert we spent our time in up until now, with come honestly creative (if still insane) designs.
The side track for the MacGuffin of the episode isn’t much – Strength and Empress do their thing, we get an incident where we have to run and shoot our way out of trouble, Empress powers up and saves the day – basic stuff. But it is good that we have those beats, because they make the episode come together in a way that belongs to this show.
I’ve said before and will probably say more times in the future that Dawn Fall here feels like it was written by an edgy teenager, for edgy teenagers. The subject matter, dialogue, and juvenile understanding of things like space elevators (in this show, threatening to connect the Earth to the Moon directly, which would not work for myriad reasons mostly related to the moon not being in geostationary orbit) highlight that, but this episode felt different, like even if it was still created by the same mind, it was at least polished with some more adult skill. It’s much appreciated in this often chaotic and edgy mess to get material with a little more subtlety and grace.
Will we get more like this next week when we’re headed into Lunatic’s turf, towards our final goal? I wouldn’t bet on it, but the show has been looking up a little since Smiley bit the dust, so at least there’s that.