Somali to Mori no Kamisama – 07

With this arc concluded, the time came for Haitora and Uzoi to part ways with Somali and the golem. While the goodbye might have been a quick one, we’re reminded why it’s imperative that they can’t linger around for too long – the golem has about 300 days left to live, and if they’re unable to find humans, Somali will be in deep trouble. So they make haste as they continue to seek out humans – with Somali happily believing that the golem will stay forever, utterly oblivious of the upcoming plight.

The rumours about humans across the desert prove to be false. But the reported sightings probably conflated the witches with humans. I mean, they might have a marginally different shade of skin colour. The style reminded me of Sucy from Little Witch Academia. But how exactly are these witches closer to being monsters than humans? Anywho, the golem figures that information about humans can probably be gained from browsing the massive witch library – and it happens that there’s exactly one book which might inform him about what he wants to know. And we’re introduced to two witch sisters – the gloriously thicc Hazel and the spirited bookworm Praline. Though their personalities significantly contrasted, they were both really fun characters that brought a lot of charm to the table. Unfortunately, despite the witches using impressive magic to try and protect the book about humans, it ends up being devoured by the monstrous book-fish. And when Somali’s life is threatened, the golem sprouts fearsome mechanical wings that destroy the humongous book-fish. For how instrumental he is to the story, there’s so much we don’t know about the golem. To that end, I think it would be cool if they also managed to discover new information about golems from the witches too. But assuming Somali and the golem are on their way to see the head librarian, who was the last person to have read the book about humans, what will they learn? Guess we’ll find out soon – but given how dark this series can be, I don’t expect the information to be a happy discovery.

Finally, I wanted to draw attention to the background team, who fixed around 3200 backgrounds in the space of 3 months. In the words of team leader Vincent Thiem, ‘I sacrificed my health and time pretty pointlessly for an entire year (with hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime work just to make this series watchable)’. It sucks to hear that how much stress they’ve gone through, not to mention the low opinion they hold about their own work. But in my opinion, the background team have done an incredible job and are a big reason why this show has stood out in such a special way, compared to the other stuff airing. Hopefully, when they look back on this series in a few years, they will realise this is some seriously amazing work which they can be extremely proud of.

Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. As always, thanks for reading this post and see you next time

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