Posted by  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
「おまえ反逆？私、自虐」 (Omae Hangyaku? Watashi, Jigyaku)
“You’re Rebelling? I’m, Self-Deprecating”
Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? ramps up the tension for Shun’s story when Hugo uses his brainwashing skills to turn his closest friends and allies against him. Meanwhile, as Kumoko gets used to the human world, we discover her semi-connection to the vampire warrior Sophia.
The human side of the story gets a major facelift in this episode when Shun’s current conflict has the Church brainwashed to rally against him as Hugo engineers a plot to have Shun framed for his dad’s murder. Although the human parts of the show felt like they were going through the motions of your standard isekai story, this marks an interesting breaking-off point where it can come into its own.
The idea of the universe being manipulated into going against the destined “hero” and designating Hugo as their new corrupt “hero” tasked to slay him is a crazy, interesting development. It helps to shrink down the focus towards Shun and his fight for survival as he only has Oka, a newly resurfaced Fei, and a few confidants as his lifeline. The power of grief/love also played a role in erasing the brainwashing that controlled Katia, but whether Shun will be able to replicate this formula with Sue and the others under Hugo’s spell sounds like it’ll be the main focus of what Shun’s current goals are.
It’s more fascinating than the whole “live up to your brother’s legacy” stuff we’ve been bombarded with for the past few weeks and gives us a better glimpse of the demon world’s connection to the human one. One of these threads is Sophia, the vampire who happened to be Shouko in her past life. Kumoko crossed paths with her as an infant while trying to feed off of bandits. Sophia’s eventual notoriety as an insane vampire made her Hugo’s ace-in-the-hole, but they make it very clear that her support for him is conditional towards priming up the Demon Lord’s rise to power in the human world. It’ll also be speculation as to whether Sophia sticks with Hugo for the long run or abandon him once his usefulness runs low, especially since she doesn’t have a positive impression of Hugo’s ability to not get stomped by Shun.
As a side note, Kumoko’s fight with the bandits at the beginning of this episode is neat for how it’s the first instance where Kumoko mentions having consumed the bandits she fought in the labyrinth. It’s not a thread that’s really been touched, notably since it’d be odd for the chibi spider to happily gobble up a human. But since her main struggle is with the spider queen, it seems like the story is lowering its guard with how many coincidental details about Kumoko are dispelled over time such as her connection with future assets to the demon world and being a monster who has killed and eaten her fair share of people. Curious about how they’ll reveal her future and if she’ll eventually make an appearance in Shun’s timeline.
so basically, by saving one baby Kumoko doomed entire kingdom to civil war and eventual conquest by demons
law of unintended consequences in its full magnificent horrible glory
No mention about the episodes jank? That was a rough one.
At this point, I’ve been handling the art with kid gloves because many of the issues I have with it are still prevalent in recent episodes. Kumoko’s CGI has to do a lot of heavy lifting because some of the monster designs are rough.
The human side is even worse with how most of the frames zooms so close in on the characters, The fights looking bad is all par-of-the-course. Or rather, the fights looking bad is part of the show’s aesthetic, for better or worse, as a show that notoriously cuts corners.
So we’re just going to pretend we didn’t just see some of the worst animation to ever be released in the history of anime in this episode? I couldn’t even understand what was happening in any of the 2d action scenes because it was literally pans and zoom ins on static scenes with audio on top. This episode was clearly not finished and released anyway.
It reminded me of Cop Craft, and not in a good way.
The worst I’ve ever seen was the final episode of Wizard Barristers, in which they literally had about 10 still frames for the entire last half of the episode and the audio just kept playing like normal.
This wasn’t “that” bad, but it was still terrible. I’m sorry, I love the series thus far, and I really want to give them benefit of the doubt here for that reason, but if your animation is that unfinished, you’ve got to just delay the episode. Somebody’s got to look at how much they have left and make that call.
Studio that brought us berserk 2016, they did god awful in 3D and no better in 2D, I’ve been saying from first fight episode animation is trash, but people said it was fine. Thought maybe I was too used to good animation, glad someone else here mentioned it.
To be fair, I really haven’t had any major complaints until this episode.
Really? Wonky fighting human vs human? Fei vs earth dragon episode? Looping animation sequence from previous episode? Nothing? This is how they get away with it..
The fight choregraphy on the human side has always been jank yes, but it’s always been just barely tolerable. This however, is completely unacceptable.
I have to correct you on one thing: they didn’t do the 3D for Berserk 2016 either, that was also outsourced to a different studio. But even then, they would have been responsible for the QA on that. They failed on that front five years ago, and they’re failing again now.
That said, the list of animation directors is full of Korean names, not Japanese names. There’s a distinct possibility that they outsourced this episode, but again, they failed in QA.
The frame rate was kind of slow and various other animations issues, but while noticeable, it did not strongly impact by enjoyment of watching it. The character designs, etc. were on model, the storyboarding was good, the fight flowed reasonably well.
It was hardly the worst thing I’ve seen.
As a Light Novel reader I was literally laughing out loud at the thought of how anime-only viewers would react.!
A lot of people will be abandoning their old incorrect theories and adopting newer but still incorrect theories.
Yah, this ain’t your standard trope-filled isekai.
Still excellent to see this part in the anime.
I still love any bits with Kumoko and her mini breakdown rolling on the ground after seeing the cute baby vampire, it was fun to see the meltdown from both her self and then human’s prospective.
Her excitement in seeing Elves was also fun.
I just wish they would stop putting the credits over the end scenes.
Next week something about annoying puppet spiders 🙂
Except that animating/CGing all the big spider battles (Ep 13 and presumably the “puppet spiders” promised for Ep 15 eats up a lot of budget. All those legs to animate…
This was the worst episode so far, and by far, not because of story, which was fine, or audio, which was also fine, but the animation in this episode was downright terrible. It made the episode near unwatchable.
Did they run out of time, or have delays or something.? Most of the second half of the episode only had the bare basics of animation necessary to allow you to follow the scene. It was like they never got to any of the in betweens and just stuck with the key frames.
Hopefully this is fixed next week, because up until now, the animation has been great, but this week was the worst animation I’ve seen since Wizard Barristers Cecil, and it was painful to sit through.
ya this was hard to watch from an animation point of view.
Held up entirely by the source material. Its so strange. This is a pretty popular show. But also we know that shows are given a budget up front and if they mess that up there is no more money. Hopefully this was an example of overzealous money saving for later episodes to have good animation.
“But also we know that shows are given a budget up front and if they mess that up there is no more money.”
If not here, then where did they spend the money?
If they had to short an episode, then this is the episode they’d short rather than a later one…
*Laughs in Light Novel Reader*
Likely nowhere. They did the same with Cop Craft and kept making messy animation until the very end. It’s the interest in the plot that keeps the viewers, and Kumoko.
I know it’s a Korean animation studio, but this episode the motion quality was especially poor…
There is enough Light Novel background to read before this episode becomes significant dor the anime fans. It has been a while since i found any anime worth watching and it has a decent light novel storyline to carry it forward too.
Still wondering about what happened to the three Kumoko brains/minds. No real follow up on the cliff hanger last episode. Wait, it wasn’t really a cliff hanger was it?
So, out of the named school kids, only Kyouya is left. Would be fun if he isn’t Black and has the same fate as Kanata.
That said, getting totally confused on the end goal of the antagonists here. XD
Seemed to diverge from Kumoko’s, really have to watch past episodes again.
Did anyone else notice at the end that it appeared that the Demon Lord intended for Shun and the his friends to escape?
possible, from Demon queen perspective it is better for new ruler of kingdom to focus on hunting down internal opposition instead of defending against invading demons…
In terms of animation budget… they have no more animation budget.
The series is really interesting but the animation in the 2nd half of the episode was a total disaster. I guess not every show can be animated by UFOTABLE.
OK, so you’re framing Shun for killing his father: Sue shoots the king and then screams Shun did it. The guards come rushing in and blame Shun – ONLY for the real bad guy to appear at the same time and declare in front of those VERY GUARDS that it was all his work, that he wanted to frame Shun and he had planned his father to die since blabla. Yes, real smart! Sorry, I like the show, but that was just pure nonsense. Another explanation would be that the guards were all brainwashed anyways, but if that were the case, there was no need for the plan to get Shun to the office and for the sister to scream that Shun killed the king in the first place. Sorry, the animation was crap, but the story here was no better:(