“The Young Girl Visits a Port Town.”


「幼き少女、港町へ行く。」 (Osanaki shoujo, minatochou e iku.)

Umi!!!

In terms of the episode, it would seem that Dale and Latina make a pitstop at a port town, on their way to Dale’s place of origination. Maho Films really captured the spirit of a port town, complete with vibrancy, hustle and bustle. I love the sea. The fresh smell of the salty sea air, the endless sight of lush azure waters, and the cry of seagulls. Not to mention, the best fish and taters you can possibly get. It’s just a shame that I really struggle with boats and ferries. They give me the worst kind of motion sickness I could personally experience, which leaves me landlocked for the most part. Fortunately, you can still soak in the sights from afar. And in the case of anime, you merely soak in the sights on your screen. In this particular settlement, the decorations were excellent and seemed inspired by Agnes Kasparkova’s works, an old grandma who painted many houses in her village with beautiful blue patterns. If I haven’t made it any clearer, while it may have one or two derp frames from time to time, I’ve been really enjoying the visual offerings so far.

Demonic Exposition

While dining at a luxurious establishment (Oh Dale really spoils her), Latina notices that the performer wears a bangle similar to hers. Dale looks to converse with her outside of business hours, in the hopes of unearthing more details about Latina’s mysterious background. In the manga, the lady had no interest going into any further detail when talking with Dale, and just about stopped short of walking out when Latina interrupted by revealing herself to be a demon child. I would have preferred this take, as it highlights how the demon race is shrouded in secrecy and really keeps to themselves, unless interacting with others from their own kind. Nevertheless, we became privy to a lot of information that even Dale didn’t know about, despite being an experienced and knowledgeable adventurer.

Most fantasy pieces will give us a race, and rely on popular preconceived notions similar to what you’d get in Lord of the Rings, as opposed to really fleshing out their own races and settings. Uchimusume went the extra step, and gave the demons their own culture and peculiarities. Demons in this world have long life spans, have a tradition of fathers passing bangles down to their children, and find it hard to conceive. I appreciated these extra touches in world crafting. This episode also laid out a lot of fantastic exposition about the demon lords, and the ongoing political situation within their world which outsiders wouldn’t know. In a similar vein to how humans chosen by gods are exalted as heroes among their people, it seems that chosen demons are deigned fit to rule by their gods over the rest of their brethren. It seems that there was an internal power struggle between some of the lords, the result being that the first demon lord was killed, leaving something of a power vacuum that led to instability and strife within the region. And we can guess that Latina and Rag were probably refugees of sorts, and likely people who happened to be on the wrong side of the power struggle. For a while, the series has been hinting at it, and I’m fairly sure that Latina has the potential to become a demon lord. Perhaps she was seen as a threat by an existing demon lord, prompting her flight into the wilderness. There’s certainly a lot more than meets the eye, and I wonder if the remaining episodes will even have enough time to cover this content.

Concluding Thoughts

Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss — even if I’m not sure what to make out of Latina’s hinted romantic feelings for Dale and the sudden appearance of this furry creature, though I imagine we’ll find out what these all mean soon enough. As always, thanks for reading my post, and see you next week!

3 Comments

  1. For a seemingly lightweight show this one certainly has its more thought-provoking moments. Like when Latina is clearly sounding out the devil musician lady about the practicalities of a devil having a relationship with a human – that you will almost certainly not have children and you will see your beloved die of old age while you are still relatively young. But despite that, it looks as though Latina may have made up her mind that she will give it a try, and the shift away from a parent-child relationship seems to have begun.

    What Dale will think of this is an entirely different matter, of course, but if he’s like 99% of male protagonists he probably won’t even notice until some years down the road when (a hopefully rather more grown-up) Latina hands him the marriage contract to sign.

    Angelus
    1. I dont think Latina has any romantic ideas at this time lol,she is rly smart for her age however(maybe normal for a demon),so she understood the implication of one day seeing him die,plus she had that experience before with a parent?/guardian dying.

      Deen
  2. We now have 3 points of interest. (1) While Latina implied that there were no other children around when she was young, she didn’t actually say that. She said Her Family and adults. Could she have been trying to convey a falsehood without actually telling a lie. (2) It has become apparent that it is not that Latina doesn’t want to talk about her past. She has been told not to talk about it. You don’t start to say something and then cover your mouth if it was something you didn’t want to talk about. She is protecting someone very important to her. (3) Devil children are raised by their mothers with little input from their fathers, but Latina was with her father. You would normally expect her mother to go with her, or maybe both. Is her mother raising someone else. And added Demon Lord info. Show Spoiler ▼

    Tom

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