Now with extra Fate/Stay Night parts? Well, it’s worth a chance at least.
The focus this episode is on a new candidate, Green (also known as Gas Mask), who makes an appearance in the morning before school to burn a random schoolgirl to death before vanishing.
Later, Honoka approaches Goro to demand an explanation. He has a hard time giving one, but Honoka decides to press him for an alliance, since you don’t get to just bring somebody back from the dead and then not take responsibility. Aki, listening in, is revealed to be a candidate as well, and the three of them talk about their situation. This is where Honoka starts to give off really major Rin Tohsaka vibes: she’s powerful (according to the power tracker app, hers, Carnival, is the highest rank of the three, as much as she doubts Goro’s Fool’s Sutra is actually as weak as it appears), red, requesting alliance in a death game, and also seems to understand way more about the situation than either Goro or Aki.
Before things can be discussed too much, Berserker… I mean, Green attacks, conjuring flames throughout the school, herding the kids around and scaring them good. Honoka proves to be both the brains and the brawn for a bit, and it’s revealed that at least for green (possibly in general) fear is what allows them to drag victims into their mystical empowered otherworld.
After falling through a collapsing floor, Goro ends up facing off against Green directly, It’s brought up that his Fool’s Sutra power will always cause a negative twist of karma for him as a balance of using it, but he still needs to use it in order to subdue the gas mask (and squeak-toy-shoe) wearing foe in front of him. This is achieved by causing Green’s body to repel air temporarily, denying fire abilities and causing Green to pass out. Evidently, this isn’t maintained long enough to kill, as Green attempts a parting shot (which Aki appears to pull Goro out of the way of) and isn’t found in the aftermath. However, Honoka notes in the aftermath that a power seems to display a variable rank, changing to AAA (from C) as she watches. Thus, the episode ends.
So, for the genre, this episode did… about as much as it needed to do. We got to seem more details about how Goro’s life sucks now, learned more of the facts of this particular setting so we aren’t totally floundering, and then get a boss preview of one of the other candidates.
In terms of the Death Battle Contest archetype, Fate is even older than Mirai Nikki and possibly just as much of a touchstone, so perhaps I was remiss when I didn’t mention it last week in my write up. But then, last week’s episode felt straight out like something out of Mirai Nikki, while this week has a much stronger Fate vibe. This is largely due to the changing role of Honoka and her new attitude when neither playing sweet nor fighting to kill, but the way Green operates and how that fight goes also feels a lot more line the mystical BS of Fate (that also doesn’t even off six Servant-Master pairs in 24 episodes) than the grounded cat and mouse games of Mirai Nikki (which is not sparing with the bloodshed). With a cast of seven major characters, the number of pieces on the board is also more familiar to the older source.
So if I look at Kamierabi as something sitting between those two land marks, how is it going? Well, we don’t know how many episodes Kamierabi is going to be but there have been some unconfirmed suggestions that it’s going for 24, possibly split into two seasons, rather than being restricted to a 1-cour. This would make a lot of sense as both Unlimited Blade Works and Future Diary came out as 2-cour shows, an it seems to be the length and format that’s best for telling the scope of story that this wants to tell. If we take this assumption, the pace of learning, encountering, and dealing with enemies is probably okay. We’ve introduced a good deal, throwing the audience in fast, but finalized nothing. This could be true in twelve episodes as well, but I think you’d want to push some things out a little faster while leaving out other bits if that where the case. It’s also hopeful for the character-building aspect. How much did we really know about Yuno Gasai in the first two episodes of Mirai Nikki, or Rin Tohsaka in episodes 1 & 2 of Unlimited Blade Works (ignoring the all-Rin Ep 0)? Not all that much, we largely had to deal with these scary supernatural scenarios, and only later got enough time to really talk to people about something that wasn’t or was only tangentially the fight to the death.
It also gives more time for some crazy twists – as all the creators seem known for – to be both dropped and utilized. On the other hand, it does make me somewhat concerned about the tightness of the cast. As evidenced by the animation, this is a world where nobody but the main characters really matters. Mirai Nikki had loads and loads of friends and helpers other than just the twelve diary holders in order to carry its run. Unlimited Blade Works, in addition to all the Master-Servant pairs having more than one character, had several accessory characters like Sakura or Taiga that really filled out the cast. Here, we’re kind of promised eight characters: Seven candidates plus Lall who actually get real designs It’s not impossible to sustain that kind of cast, even when you’re going to be ultimately killing some of them, but it is more of a challenge the more episodes we get.
Which brings me to the animation watch section of the writeup. It’s not going to change that Kamierabi is a CG show, and a conspicuously CG show at that. That was a choice the creators made and you can like it or dislike it; I’m kind of okay with it because there does seem to be a direction to the style. How it uses that animation, though, is another question. We saw a lot less of the gray nobodies today. Sure, one had to die, which wasn’t a good look, but by in large we isolated our main characters and spent time with them where and when they’d look best, so the episode was a little less jarring than the last.
Speaking of jarring, though, I mentioned the squeak shoes on Green? It would be a dereliction of duty to not call attention to that. Now, I’m pretty sure from the opening and the character postcards at AX that Green’s true form is that of a kind of small science girl. But, the scene where Green torches a rando is shot from an extreme low angle (green is on the roof) and even in the fight with Goro, Green is in this bulky gas mask getup, and so cuts a fairly intimidating figure… until taking a step. The sound effect for every step Green takes is a cartoon squeak toy effect. Not “rubber boots squeaking on a tile floor” squeaking, outright a squeeze toy intended to sound comical. It really, really kills the frightful murder-aura Green otherwise has, and I could see the first steps causing a viewer to break out in laughter.
I think that’s probably intentional, and we’ll know more when we get more details about Green later (as we presumably will). I think it was a way to give Green a little more personality than a silent fiery menace in a gas mask, even if that personality is extremely weird. But by Haruhi it is silly. Credit where it’s due if a laugh was intentional.
And that’s about all for this week. Same time, same station, episode 3 is coming.