My level of concern is now higher than it was after episode 1, and as we get into how this episode has fallen out, I will explain why.
Like the last episode, the events are told out of order and disjointed. Unlike last episode, where the technique seemed to be used to establish an air of mystery, this time basically every line is focused on action, so that’s a little rough. We do get some character in between it all. But less than perhaps could be desired.
One line sees Bisco’s flight from the checkpoint where he was impersonating a monk. The guard sounds the alarm, and Bisco’s cart turns out to contain a giant riding crab and an old man who acts as his mentor. They book it, damaging the checkpoint along the way, but are quickly pursued by the local security forces, which seem to consist of high-speed hippos with guns on their backs. They escape by using the explosive growth of a giant mushroom to shoot the crab and its riders over the wall, only to later be hunted down by a mercenary who uses a “Escargot Fighter”, which is a plane that appears to be merged with a giant snail. Bisco takes the plane out, but only after his mentor is badly wounded by gunshots.
This is Dorohedoro levels of madness. Which, on one side, can be amazingly fun in its wild creativity. However, strong characters and a connectable plot are needed to pull it together. Dorohedoro had that. Sabikui Bisco… I can’t quite tell you yet.
On the other line, Bisco seems to be at the clinic to demand treatment for the old man, having found out from intimidating locals that Milo (Doctor Panda) is the best there is. Milo agrees to do medicine, and even stands up to the rather intimidating Bisco when his profession is in question, insisting on helping people properly even when threatened. Soon enough, the bunny mask goons show up and start shooting up the place with no regard for Milo, which results in Bisco mushroom bombing the place to cover his trail as he gets Milo and the old man out. As they’re on the run, Bisco makes some long shots to plant a false trail and otherwise gets Milo time and place to work. Milo rewards him (in a sense) by treating his own wounds as well. It’s patchwork first aid, but it’s better than nothing as Bisco goes out to protect the area while Milo operates.
In the other lines we follow the thug mayor and Milo’s sister as they indulge in their town power struggle, with the mayor’s forces (including the mercenary who had the snail ship) trying to bring down Bisco before the guard can find him. This is implied to be for some sinister reason. The guard is annoyed to begin with but it becomes personal when a report of the clinic being destroyed by Bisco reaches the sister, who hurries off to confront the terrorist with the belief that he’s destroyed her home (true, if with an asterisk) and may have hurt or killed her brother. She catches up to him on a rooftop and proves a match for his fighting moves, with the episode ending before their conflict resolves.
A lot of the skill that seemed to be in the first episode is… diminished here. The first episode quickly created minor characters out of incidental extras, suiggesting we might get a deeply immersive world. The second episode doesn’t have time for that, and stumbles a little with its major characters. The mercenary and old man start to get voices, but Bisco is still hard to get a hold on. The first episode built up a world through hearsay and hints, showing us little windows onto something that seemed bigger, but also consistent, a rusting desert hellscape where society is preocupied by death that is all around them. This episode fails to give us any deeper hints and instead seems concerned with how much it can throw at us in terms of mad libs. That’s not to say that the mad libs don’t have their own entertainment, but when we’re learning about Bisco this episode, we learn the very basic traits that the old man is his mentor as a mushroom keeper, the old man is succumbing to rusting, and that despite Bisco’s sharp tongue he cares about the old man enough to be on a journey to find a cure. We don’t learn anything, even a scattered hint or strange window, regarding what it actually means to be a Mushroom Keeper, why they generally do what they do, or why they’re so hated and mushrooms so feared. We know normal people believe that the Keepers and their mushrooms spread the Rust, but we don’t really have any hint as to where that belief comes from or what the truth is.
I don’t need answers, but if we’re going to be going through a surreal experience, I want to experience things that stimulate the questioning, that suggest possible answers without providing truth. The Madam’s story in episode 1 was great at that, a surreal story we don’t have enough context to fully understand, told by a deeply unreliable narrator, that suggests many things. Here? More explosions.
The animation felt like it took something of a hit as well. In the first episode, the city was gorgeous in its grotesque details. Here, when we get down to action, things move in a sort of “Looney Toons” manner. Jerky, sudden, and often relatively “flat” rather than the intricate look at city life we got before. This, I’m willing to tolerate for now because it might be a deliberate style choice to go the more comic route for the action, but I’ll be watching pretty closely in case it’s a “blew all our budget on episode 1 to hook people” sort of thing instead.
In any case, I do still think this show has potential. There is enough intelligence in the writing alone to give me some hope and mild confidence that any problems the show faces can be worked out, but we’re still too early for me to say with any sort of confidence that they will be worked out.