We spend most of this episode on two lines: one with Milo and Bisco held captive by a bunch of kids, while on the other Pawoo rescues a pair of old folks from a giant spider after her bike is damaged by a caltrop.
On Bisco’s side, we get some atmosphere of the town full of children as Bisco surrenders to be turned in for his bounty in exchange for some food, presumably knowing that he can escape pretty much at will. While Bisco is imprisoned he talks with some of the kids, and Milo bonds with another where he’s being kept (of course one of the girls, because Milo has a pure ladykiller presence). Between the two of them, they learn some of the characters themselves and that, in general, the town is frequently beset by giant flying blowfish that eat people, which could wipe them out the way the armaments have been decaying, and that the adults are all away serving the gangster governor as his rabbit masked goons in order to pay for medicine for the kids’ rusting.
The issue is that the kids don’t actually have Rusting. Rather, they have a condition called Shellskin that Milo can cure trivially and even teach the girl to treat any future cases of. This mostly earns Bisco’s freedom at Milo’s request, but the early arrival of the Blowfish, for which Bisco just escapes, does the rest. He ends up taking down the school of killer fish, saving the failing town and earning the respect of the kids (even the grudging respect of the ringleader, who has a similar grumpy streak to Bisco himself) and seeing them sent on their way.
Pawoo, meanwhile, rescues the old couple, talks with them about the demise of their town, and then as she prepares to leave discovers that they’re a pair of murderous psychos, restoring the amusement park they live in with corpses in the place of animatronics. She managed to not get poisoned like they thought, and thus fights them off, ultimately escaping on her repaired bike as the old couple blow up the place.
Lastly, we get one glimpse back in the city, as the thug governor discovers Jabi hiding among his special forces.
This episode is mostly the sort of wacky pit stop you get in any journey tale. I doubt we’ll see the kids again, or care that the rabbit-mask goons are their parents, or worry about the murderous old couple at any point from here. None of this is going to connect to anything and in an abstract sense you could probably just cut or skip it, except for the fact that indulging in some of these often meaningless stops is what makes a journey story feel big and long. Sure, some stops matter more than others, but even the least relevant at least helps the pacing be measured and the world engaged with and explored.
One interesting bit is the perspective on Mushroom Keepers held by normal people in this episode. Among the kids, there’s one of them who was saved by medicine provided by a traveling mushroom keeper when he was young, and thus who wants to repay the Mushroom Keepers as a whole for their kindness, which extends to being nice to Bisco. On the other hand, the old couple tell the story of their former home’s downfall, which started with a Mushroom Keeper distributing medicine and transitioned to everyone who took the medicine dying of acute internal rusting, which leads the Mushroom keeper to thank the last survivors for the enlightening experiment. Having these two sides helps us better understand where the fear comes from – because bad circumstances are naturally much more sensational – and gives some perspective on what Jabi and Bisco said earlier about not all Mushroom Keepers being ethical. It hits a lot better seeing it, rather than just being told.
All in all, the show is still going strong enough and remains enjoyable and enjoyably weird.