Have you ever seen an episode of anime or any show where things start off slow, then get intense for a couple of minutes, then become slow again for the remainder of the episode? This was one of those episodes. Everything was simple except for one moment, but let’s go ahead and get into it.
Spoilers ahead! If you haven’t seen this episode, I suggest you stop here. If you haven’t watched the series, please have a look at my first impression of the show (Spoiler Free).
If I had to describe the episode, I would say it was a mixture of slice of life and psychological. The slice of life is in reference to the characters when they were chatting about their experiences in this new world so far. This episode didn’t do much for the story, but it had a lot of character interaction and facial expressions that helped progress things.
The meat of the episode was Haruhiro and the crew taking down a goblin. Things became very intense during this segment of the episode. We get to see how this world is a matter of survival and how it is affecting our characters. We see them shake, we see them fight, heck, even Ranta said it was kill or be killed at one point. The moment where the goblin is screaming for survival was one of the highlights of that segment; it shows that even creatures fight for survival and don’t want to die. Haruhiro’s actions are an example of this since he stabs the goblin in the head when he was in danger. One of the main messages I got out of this episode was that humans are creatures of survival, so we will take unexpected actions to survive that society would shun us for.
After all of that was said and done, the episode takes a surprisingly calm turn. Actually, there is not even much dialogue, it is mostly music playing and characters browsing around town; looking at their surroundings to see what is going on and not much else. I usually like moments like these in anime, where there is just music playing in the background with the characters moving and only their actions progresses things, but I felt it didn’t work too well for this episode. Although the art and music were fine, there really wasn’t much progression to this. I suppose you can think of it as a breather from the experience our characters just went through. If there was any scene that interested me, it was Yume’s expression when she was staring at Shihoru being hit on by Manato. She looked lonely and she had that expression any teenage girl has when she wants romance or is looking for love, so perhaps that will come up later. Also, finding out about Ranta and his vice was interesting; maybe he’ll use that demon for something smart instead of running and shouting, only to hit nothing. Oh, but I do applaud Ranta for having the courage to attempt to take a peak at Yume and Shihoru bathing. Hopefully getting slapped and cursed at will teach him a lesson.
I really don’t know how I feel about this episode. I mean, the episode was decent enough. There was slight progression and a cool scene, but nothing too impressive. I hope Grimgar can pick up the pace because I would hate to see this beautiful anime go nowhere and become the disappointment of the season. Hang in there Grimgar, I know you have potential, now let’s see it!
Check out the other Winter 2016 Anime season related articles!
(Screenshot Credits: Funimation)
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