Scenes that don’t connect
Like a game, leading us to
Trippy Flashback Crypt
So, yeah… this episode is scenes. They don’t exactly weave together, much like all the “Right before the final dungeon” conversations in an RPG usually don’t. Because, in a game, you want to be able to catch up with every character and every plot thread, and also often have the choice of who you talk with so you can just get on with it if you don’t care how a particular tertiary party member feels. The scenes serve not only as a culmination of the bonds you’ve built with the cast, but are also taken at the player’s own pace. In a game, rather than in anime, you can have these overwhelmingly heavy talk segments because the expectations about pacing are different.
Here, it kind of fails because an anime viewer expects a common thread and a linear narrative. I guess all the scenes in the first parts of this episode are setting up what it will mean to go into the crypt and how that’s the very definitely final dungeon, but because they don’t connect to each other, they feel like just a heap of stuff the writers had to get out. How does the OSF stabilize the situation that spawned at the end of last episode? How do Tsumugi and Kagero get along at the end? How do the Fubuki siblings get along at the end? How do Kasane and Yuito get along at the end? How does team “I barely remember any of your names” get along at the end? They’re actually kind of fine scenes, but no work was done to make them go together in a structure in a way that felt like it had proper rising action and a shared narrative thread.
Finally, the crypt is unlocked and visited and… well, it goes into more typical final dungeon stuff. We visit a bunch of illusions of things that happened without any real rhyme or reason to them, where others spawn and attack to give some idea of action to delving into the psychological trauma that brought everyone here. That ends with Karen’s torment seeing Alice die. And die. And die. And the scene is a little different some times, but plays out just the same – he’s in time only to see her expire and scream in agony. Everyone forced to watch, supposedly, feels this pain for themselves, being brought to tears by the scene. Eventually, though, they bust out of that and emerge into something at least a little more like real space.
From there, though there’s still some of that typical otherworldly trip feel to it all, the crypt opens up, including the Sumeragi ancestor’s cryo-casket ejecting and opening to reveal, who else, Karen in Sumeragi’s mask. Dun dun dun! That would be quite the reveal if we weren’t already told about it.
By my count and based on what’s announced, Scarlet Nexus has three episodes left. For real this time. In that we need to deal with Karen, who is probably not going to want to fix his time snarl after going through it so many rounds (though perhaps that pain is what will convince him), and then theoretically we’re kind of done with what the characters consider to be the plot. We do have to deal with the obvious hook of BABE manifesting as the Crimson King as well, and might want to do something about the Others, the Moon, and the power of time travel. Given the pacing of this show, I feel confident saying we resolve Karen and the Crimson King and just sort of leave everything else as the state of the world. Which will be… acceptable as long as it’s a good final conflict, which is a dubious proposition given how Scarlet Nexus has loved being marginal so far.