「ガリレオテゾロ」 (Garireo Tezoro)
“Galileo Tesoro”

Did Hazuki get sick from being in the cold last week?

Personally, after last time’s touching episode, I felt this one fell somewhat flat. I understand that there was some characterization here, or rather, intended characterization, on behalf of the assorted villains who are chasing after the Ferrari sisters, but somehow, a lot of this felt forced. First off, we have Roberto, the man working on behalf of Adni Moon and the CEO’s adopted son. Roberto is a damaged person, an orphan whose parents were killed in his youth during an incident where his entire home collapsed. Two homeless people whom Roberto’s parents previously treated with exceeding kindness robbed his mother’s corpse and refused to help the poor boy save his father. It’s supposed to be a tragic story that pulls at heartstrings and rings of selfishness and betrayal, but it just feels forced instead. It’s not that it’s not sad, or necessarily overdone, it just feels hollow emotionwise. I feel bad for Roberto, but I find the callousness of the homelessmen to be overtly heartless, and by that I mean that they’re not written to be believable. They didn’t make me feel righteously angry despite the fact that a situation like that would call for it, nor did I really think much of their cruel act outside of the superficial labeling.

In some ways, I could say the same for the air pirates. Cicinho’s followers, previously shown to be capable of shooting and hurting innocents in their pursuit of the girls, are suddenly not so bad, if only through the virtues of Cicinho himself. He seems to be a rally point for orphans who were abused, again, by the selfish and cruel, though this part of the story feels a little more realistic. We’ve seen Cicinho show compassion to the bambina when they’re hurt or in danger already, so this does clear up his character some. The followers are a bit iffier, though no where near as much as Roberto or his subsequent killing spree and the actions of his victims. I found the victims in particular to be incredibly hard to take seriously. I can understand the fear of freezing to death, but is that fear really so severe that an entire crowd of people would demand killing innocent and incapacitated patients who require life support? Perhaps if those people were monsters, and I understand that that is what we’re supposed to take away from this, but instead of driving that point home, it just feels… odd. Perhaps I’m asking too much from a one cour show, but I still feel like this could have been handled a little more smoothly than it was.

I’m still wishing we’ll get a little more on the actual tesoro soon, especially considering the fact that Roberto called Hozuki’s mysterious goldfish the treasure itself, but if that is so, have the girls been on a wild goose chase all along?

28 Comments

  1. Kairi, I know it’s sad, but there really are bad people in this world. We can believe that human are good in heart by default, but they’re also savage beasts at the same time. If they feel unsafe or feel they can get something, they may just go for it and don’t care of others, even if all those American Oh-So-Brave-Hero-Saved-Somebodies-Life-And-Died-Instead movies try to show it differently.

    brajt
    1. Also, these people in the hospital act as a group. This way they don’t feel their fault as much, they act with clear conscience, thinking “it’s not me who let these people at the upper floor die, it’s the group”. I find their behavior pretty normal in this situation. Even if it’s still bad.

      brajt
    2. Oh I know how cruel people are. I am not a full American and I have seen passerby shot in my front yard. I have known fathers who raped their daughters, known mothers who have burned their children with the blunt of a hot knife because they disobeyed, seen so many horrible things, just in my own neighborhood growing up. And it was worse for my family back in my parents’ home country. Abuse, rape, murder. I understand the cruelty of people pretty well. But people aren’t 100% cruel and messed up you know. That’s what you call a flat character, and those are just badly written characters. That is my point. They people here are painted in a black and white fallacy. They’re all cruel in about as classical a cruel fashion. It’s like watching someone kick a baby in the face. Sure stuff like that happens, but when you see something like that in a show, it’s an easy way out for the writers to just say “LOOKIE HERE, THIS PERSON SHOULD BE HATED, HE’S SO REPREHENSIBLE, HE KICKED A BABY!”

  2. This episode could have easily been the best of this show so far if only they executed it right, but it fell flat. Then Again, A-1 pictures isn’t exactly reknown for their amazing execution.

    You’re absolutely rigt, the situations felt completely forced, and I don’t know if it’s because I was missing some information, or the show didn’t gave us any. I mean, how is it that the three groups suddenly find themselves in that same hospital? And how is it that Roberto seems to completely forget about capturing the sisters and instead just decides to go on a random killing spree? I guess he was disgusted by the people, but still, it wasn’t very clear. Roberto’s back story wasn’t anything knew either, and in fact it was something that we had seen many times in fiction. Hazuki being sick came completely out of nowhere. And of course, we all knew something was wrong with Anna, but the revelation could have been handled well. At this point I feel like they are giving us too many clues.

    The ending however surprised me. Yes, the pirates might be dead, but Cicinho might still survive. He is in a hospital after all. And if he does survive and moves on to the sister’s side, i’ll be all too happy to see him as part of the main group.

    Nacoto
  3. Did Hazuki get sick from being in the cold last week?

    your inner “medical-high school” voice just ‘love’ this show…isn’t it?:P

    anyway, although it isn’t that great episode, or even a show, what I liked this time is the continuous line from the previous ep of the dystopia.
    first, GD is killing people around almost indiscriminately.
    second, it happens all the time. the past and the present.

    they are not afraid to show death, suffering, blood, diseases, starvation or other things that demonstarting the real tough issues in this world.

    It’s supposed to be a tragic story that pulls at heartstrings and rings of selfishness and betrayal, but it just feels forced instead

    while I can see why you feel it was forced, I think that story didn’t come to pull the heart. it come in order to demonstrate that this world is way out of balance. a long time ago until this very day, namely – dystopia.

    I can understand the fear of freezing to death, but is that fear really so severe that an entire crowd of people would demand killing innocent and incapacitated patients who require life support? Perhaps if those people were monsters

    again, you missed the point IMHO.
    They are not monsters, they are actually humans who want to survive and will do whatever it takes.
    It’s their world, not ours where someone can provide assistance and/or electricity can return quickly, then okay let’s freeze a bit, it’s for the sake of patients.
    There in GD who will help them exactly? We saw the past and we see the present, if you want to survive, you will need to do so by yourself, even if it comes at the expense of others. This might sounds harsh, especially at hospital, but in this chaos in the world..that’s what happens, even in our world. what do you think happen in wars or chotic situation (after mega-disasters or when regime is in chaos and so)? people steal and will do everything to survive on the expense of others. more than that, in wars for example, some
    casualties can’t be saved in the battlefield..so we turn to treat others.
    it happens alot in any apoclypt scenario. it’s a common of feature of such books, films and so.

    well, aside the things of the world, they treat us lightly. I don’t know how the explain..it’s just the feeling. here are some examples, though most of them aren’t good enough, but OK to demonstrate what I wanna say:
    1. Roberto didn’t kill the pirates at the end?you are joking…they were such a pain all this time..now you’re letting them go?and you didn’t seem to be in hurry…grab something sharp and kill them..take their guns..come on! it was idiotic.
    it’s also true fromt the pirates side when they didn’t try to kill/wound/threaten him(or anna) or something…
    2. the sisters aren’t suspcting Anna yet?come on…I understand that Hazuki is important..but they can’t let Anna go on-board like that..even though they are still little girls, they aren’t stupid.
    3. girls please..there is no way you don’t consider the possiblity of the goldfish amulet being the Tesoro..right?

    what I mean is..in terms of adventure, plot and even characters..GD isn’t doing good job, especially since half of the series is behind us…

    thedarktower
    1. I thought Roberto would take the effort to snap their necks, or as others suggested grab more guns. dmonhiro makes a good point about his character, but I assumed Roberto had a schedule to perform, and it wasn’t worth his time.

      The girls are pretty dumb / blindsided to an outsider, but really they’re busy with concerns of their own world and motivations. I also don’t expect people to behave rationally as we would, but by their own way of thinking.

      Drasca
    2. You nailed the dystopia. As it turns out, this show is not heartwarming drama, but genuine brink of apocalypse and it shows they’ve been internally consistent about it. Life is cheap, and people are rarely nice outside of being able to afford to.
      Kairi may not have liked the Roberto sub-arc, and I think that is true of everyone who expects people to be nice out of goodwill and humanity alone. They must be really hating how humanity’s fallen. I’ve seen worse in real life. But I think showing the contrast of decency with betrayal really drills in the point of what shaped Roberto and why he acts as he does. Roberto’s father saying, “I like the look in his eyes”, that’s as much of a key moment as anything, indicating an character defining moment, where after what Roberto’s experienced he’ll always be battle-hardened. The man has known both hope and despair, and survived.

      I really digged this episode for that. It had plenty of character backstory and development, fleshing out our cast a bit, while also demonstrating the dystopian world they live in.

      There are people that did not like it, but I am not one of them. Mob mentality occurred, causing the hospital folk to go nuts. Not much need occur to spark problems when there’s lack of order from the get-go… and the whole world is in winter chaos. I really like, as thedarktower points out, the fact this show does not shy away from death and suffering.

      “have the girls been on a wild goose chase all along?”
      Isn’t that the point of the chase? The story isn’t about the chase, that’s just the story device, its about getting there and the characters involved.

      Drasca
  4. Well I didn’t expect them to pull the “good people turned bad by society”. Though I should have taken the winter setting as a clue that the society they live in is just fucked up. I mean people rebelling, betraying one another, stealing from one another and just killing. It’s a common knowledge for people living here in the tropics that people living in countries with harsh winters rarely show kindness. In those places, society survives by thinking for only themselves.

    I guess GD’s society is practically the same.

    TheMoondoggie
  5. I do have some problems with this episode.

    1. The homeless men were written to be very shallow. I know people are bastards, I do. But it felt so forced here. Yes, the homeless men would probably rob them, but I still think that their reactions were very flat.

    2. Roberto is not technically wrong about wanting to reduce the size of the population so that the resources will be enough, but he’s a little nuts with the “I am the will of this world”.

    3. Why didn’t the people go to the ICU?

    4. How can they not suspect Ana even a little bit?

    Now, there are 2 things that many have a problem with, but I think make perfect sense.

    1. The pirated didn’t shoot Roberto while he was killing the people. That’s because they hated the people Roberto was killing. These were the same type of people that abused them in the past. In their place, I wouldn’t have helped either.
    2. Roberto didn’t kill the pirates. This makes some sense as well. Roberto is an off fellow. He doesn’t seem to be able to pursue more then one goal at a time. If he is after you, he will come at you with everything he has, and he will get you. But, if you’re more of a side-objective, he seems to have a very “whatever” attitude. He would have shot the pirates, but his gun was empty. He could have gotten another gun, but he would have had to look for one, and waste time on this.

    dmonhiro
      1. True, but in LE, they were being far greater DICKS about it. Here, from all we know, the company is indeed cutting power to small, poor places. But unlike in LE, they aren’t wasting it for themselves. They are selling it for profit, true, but the truth is that there really ISN’T enough energy for everyone. In LE, that bitch was wasting water by the metric ton.

        dmonhiro
  6. Anna is now 99% confirmed to be Roberto’s spy (and possibly lover). I think pirate chief already caught that on, but girls are too naive to notice (and the oldest and most experienced was sick atm)
    Also, nice to see global cooling and shrinking energy apocalypse scenario instead of flavor of the decade global warming/rising oceans! (actually this one is much scarier because even if all the ice in the world disappear, sea levels would rise just 66meters, far cry from the Gargantia or Water World, while ice age would doom most of the northern hemisphere)

    ewok40k
  7. I think this episode finished the show for me; that was some of the worst writing i have ever come across. No one shooting Robert as he goes insane simply because he is an important character is just inexcusably bad writing.

    There was so much potential in the show and it has failed with not only bad writing but one dimensional characters.

    Mike
    1. This episode really helped make my mind up.
      With about all the fanservice of the girls being in the opening and ok mecha design having at most minute or two of screentime per episode the only thing I can expect to see if the series manages to reach the “so abysmally bad it’s awesome” point. I’m not having high hopes of that either.

      Pokute
  8. I thought that Coppelion was the biggest disappointment of the season but this week GD episode is hellbent on trying to steal the crown for itself.

    From the opening scene where Hazuki got the japanese cold out of nowhere to the closing sequence about Roberto sparing the pirates’ lives because of a lack of ammunitions the whole thing required an absurd quantity of suspension of disbelief from the viewer.

    Everyone’s stupid, everything’s dumb : the show.

    Ananas
  9. Am I one of the few that actually liked this episode?

    1) I didn’t mind too much when Hazuki got sick. Does there necessarily have to be a trigger to get sick? I know half the time I fell sick, there wasn’t really any triggers for it…

    2) Looting is so common in reality that I actually thought they did a great job regarding the homeless people. Looters don’t care about the livelihood of the dead, or of the people they are stealing from. Sure, this episode takes it to the extreme, but it is refreshing that it is not holding any punches back.

    3) During Roberto’s crazy rampage, he was holding one of Cicinho’s crew member hostage. To Cicinho and his men, the hostage probably means more to them than the people Roberto was killing, and its likely that they were holding back because of it.

    I can understand if people were put off this because of how the tone of the series has changed dramatically since the first episode, but this and the ending of last week’s episode has signalled the point where the fun adventure ends, and is now a survival against a lunatic in Roberto. I would liken Roberto’s threat as being somewhat similar to Makishima in Psycho Pass, Joker in Batman, and other major antagonists who would not hesitate to kill based on their own twisted beliefs.

    Taiakun
    1. It is not only this…

      The “Prey” dont think of running away or such. Just staying there with their Mouth open, waiting to be shoot. What would make this scene funnier, would be if they weave with their Arms and say “shoot me, shoot me!”

      Germanguy
      1. Nope, this Episode just use s Crowbar to bend the Story into their Gusto. You see it all around, the edges and flaw it has. But well, the first episodes so far was good.. but then it began with Ep 5

        and btw… in the Ancient Time (Well, when he maid these papers). a little Note point, hidden a World Map and a point.. Laser-pointer technique For the Win, in Ancient Time..

        Galileo was a Time traveler from the Future!!!….

        I just want to write down some of my points, why i left this Dark Anime behind

        Germanguy
      2. as if, they fired the old Director, and someone took his/her Place… i liked the Old one. it was focus on the Bond of the 3 Sisters

        Now we switch to the Big Bad World, there living in..

        Germanguy
    2. The first few seconds didn’t look too bad to be honest. I thought the colors of the ship looks darker only because of the blizzard effect.

      Agreed regarding the “prey” not running away. But to be fair, they couldn’t run outside due to the blizzard, and it appears that the hallway and stairs to exit the reception area is to the left of Roberto, so to run away would mean having to run past him. Running towards the back of the room like they did in the end didn’t help much either. Not too sure if you have seen drama shows like Criminal Minds, but occasionally similar events would occur.

      I don’t mind the change in direction from “bond of the sisters” to showing the reality of the world. If I really wanted the former I would marathon Minami-ke or some more light-hearted series. The first few episodes fleshed out the sisters, as they need to since these are the main characters of the series. But introductions and now over, and now they are fleshing out the world and the antagonists of the show to give a deeper narrative of the story. The world in the story would feel pretty hallow if we aren’t introduced to the realities of it. Now the stakes have been raised, and the girls know first hand the ruthlessness of Roberto.

      My only complaint so far this series is why did they let the girls’ mother survive? It seems inconsistent with the tone of the series set out over the past 3 episodes or so. Perhaps it was trying to give false hope that things can be okay?

      Taiakun

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