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「牙を剥く優美な黒蛇」 (Kiba o Muku Yūbi na Kuro Hebi)
“A Graceful Black Adder Bears Its Fangs”
In keeping with the ACCA tradition, now that we, the audience, have mostly figured out the coup plot, Grossular spills it all without resistance to the rest of the council. I’m surprised how quickly the heads of ACCA took to the revelation that Grossular had been plotting treason, and how casually they jumped on board for the ride. I guess Shwan is just really that unpopular, huh? Still, this must be the most Grossular has ever spoken in the entire series, so if I was expecting at least one of his ACCA mates to suspect something was up. Maybe I’m just particularly twisted, but I find it hard to trust anyone being so… forthright.
Speaking of trusting people, how about Lotta? I mean, she’s supposed to be the purely innocent and uncomplicated character in ACCA, but this episode was a bit much, even for her. Some random you’ve talked to, like, once drags you into a dark alley and tells you to follow him, and that sounds like a great idea? Even with your discomfort with trains? Look, you can’t pull off the, ‘Come with me if you want to live,’ without robots from the future, and definitely not if your only reason is, ‘Er, a guy I know told me you were going to die.’. I guess Lotta is just genre savvy enough to know that everyone who likes sandwich bread in this show has to be a good person. It also helps that the uniform of emissaries of the princess is officially shady undertaker.
ACCA comments a lot about the nature of trust, and curiously enough, trust is almost always rewarded. Lotta gets to live this week because she trusts the good intentions of people trying to help her. Jean still trusts Nino. On the flip side, mistrust and paranoia is never shown as being very fruitful for anyone. In a story full of intrigue it’s curious that ACCA does not warn against trust, but rather simply reminds us that everybody has secrets. Often good intentions too, but buried underneath the secrets. For example, the chief was almost certainly lying when he said he was just meaning to ask Lotta to lunch and saved her out of pure serendipity. For one, that’s too much of a coincidence and, more importantly, Lotta was supposed to be at school, remember? Why was he even there? But he did save her. And we should accept the good intentions he has, even as they interplay with the miserable pile of secrets.
So that’s why I’m not quite ready to throw Lilium into the villain pile quite yet, even if he acts awfully like one
. Firstly, because that’s racist, and secondly, because even he may have all the best reason for his chicanery. And even though everything is suddenly much more sinister in this episode (an outright assassination attempt on a child!), I still don’t want to believe that anyone in ACCA are outright villains. I want to trust that they’re still good at heart.
“Firstly, because that’s racist”
Blame Natsume Ono.
I don’t know what to expect anymore. Does ACCA still have surprises, and good ones?
How would (for now) thinking of Lilium as a potential antagonist be racist? He seemed to have good motivations early in the series, but now we know that may have been duplicitous. This concerns his actions, not his race.
Yeah, WTF of the day, making this about race.
Dry jokes are dry? (Just a guess)
Just look at the cast.
The sole dark skin character is the mastermind behind the scenes. White hair antagonist is just a pawn for black hair. Its a classic pattern, easy to understand.
Mostly a joke, only made possible by how Lilium is basically the brown guy.
As of last year a black skinned African American was a advertising start in Japan and had a Japanese wife starting a family. People would stop him for pictures on the street. He stated yes he faced discrimination moving to Japan for a carrier but he liked the fact that Japanese hate all non Japanese equally and his skin color had nothing to do with discrimination. I have read this from many sources the Japanese are xenophobic in some ways but not racist. You can never be really be Japanese unless you are born to two Japanese parents. But you can reach great acceptance and even popularity above the level Japanese give to each other. The main character in Bleach Ichigo is half Japanese and others attempt bulling him over that status. Yet lack of full Japanese status does not prevent a character from being the star of Japanese show. William Adams a english sea captain became a samurai and Bannerman for Japanese Emperor and has places named after him, monuments and local holidays in Japan.
I never thought Lilum was totally on the level because he was always a little too up-front about being on Jean’s side and sticking it to Grossular, but even if he is bad I think he’ll be overshadowed by what the First Princess has cooking. Or he’s part of it.
More interested in why Grossular is letting himself be literally yanked around.
Nah, the First Princess is probably gonna be used by Schwann in the end, because Schwann is using her.
If anything, I’d bet Lilium is the actor with the best chance of success – the only reason things began to move the way they did was because he was the one to start everything. He seems to be aware of everything, even that the royal family is aware that the jig is up and that there’s an actual heir available who is rumored to be moving for the throne. Maybe he’s the one that has the most to win from a coup… after all, wasn’t the original plan to remove the crown and leave ACCA as the governing body? Watch out, Jean.
Lilium must be really pissed off when he discovers that Grossular had not washed his hair ever since he executed the plan. “Do as I say”, Lilium commands, so Grossular will shave his head in next episode. XD
The breakage of suspension of disbelief (the incompetence of the assassins and the reactions of Lotta) in this episode is a bit disappointing, but I quite like the fact that the conspiracy now really involves all parties. That said, Payne, Pastis and especially Spade are still pretty much extras. I hope they can speak or act more in future episodes.
I agree that the this episode did a godawful job at maintaining the suspension of disbelief. I mean, I pretty much chuckled throughout the whole escape and assassination scenes since every character (even the assassins themselves) behaved in an utterly laid-back fashion that it was hard to even consider it anything but comedy. I expect that when things escalate even more and there’s a real coup, it will be no more spectacular than Lilium asking Schwan politely to hand the throne over to him.
The assassins were not trained professionals they were just people on the First Princess staff and may have never attempted a covert action let alone killed anyone. I’m thinking the crime rate around Lotta is more like Japan’s than higher crime rate places. Yes they have security against burglars but actual street violence might be very rare. The police like Japans police are probably only armed with revolvers that cannot be carried off duty.
I had noticed the lack of a military or any serious military hardware anywhere in the story long ago. This is a country with a hundred years of peace and no signs of criminal street violence anywhere. So I find it completely believable that all sides lack skills and tend towards non violence reactions. Heck the only revolt we saw it seams no one died, sort of a social code against to much violence. Now I believe it could get very violent but will not be surprised if no significant violence occurs.
The intrigue in the story reminds me of the old John le Carré spy novels with very little violence, just lots of plotting and talking but I loved them.
I can accept that the assassins were inexperienced and they failed their jobs, but don’t you find it implausible that they were wearing their uniforms of Royal Emissary (with even coats of arms on sleeve buttons!) during kidnap?
Not really. The world that ACCA takes place in has been in relative peace for quite a while, and you can tell it has shaped the minds of everyone except for, say, Lilium (from what we’ve seen so far) or the Suitsu rebels. It’s likely the First Princess’s lackeys had never had to do wet work before, and they were probably not trained to do so – Lotta was a sitting duck even with Rail’s protection; they had several very good chances of finishing the job even before the Chief could intervene.
And that mentality also extends to the five chiefs. Three of them are just there filling a role, one of them being very open about his conservativism regarding his district (Suitsu) to the point you start thinking it’s all he cares about. Only Grossular and Lilium appear to grasp the gravity of the situation, mostly because they created it.
So in short, it all boils down to “it’s not believable compared to similar fiction, but the worldbuilding for this show makes it plausible in this show”.
Don’t think Lilium should go into the villain pile either. So far it’s not even a pile yet as I think the only one that should go there is Schwan. Of course one of the reasons is that I think Lilium’s motivations are similar to that of Pastis: Status Quo. He’s been shown to be very proactive too. It makes sense for him to act now after the situation is a little bit clearer, though I’m not sure what his brother has to do with things. His brother met up with Grosular remember. Makes you wonder who’s pulling the strings.
Hopefully we’ll find out about Spade’s motivations next week. Jean is in his district right? That leaves Pine, who seems to be chill about everything and Grosular. That is the same person every week right? If he is the princesses aide, I don’t see why he should go along with Lilium. If he’s not, then we really don’t know anything about him. I also can’t seem to ignore the fact that a lot of people in his district look almost exactly like him.
Can’t wait for next week, things will either get a lot clearer or a lot murkier.
One final thing, shouldn’t it be easier to get Maude on board? She prefers the status quo compared to ACCA being disbanded right? I really think their biggest hurdle is actually Jean.
Mauve may be more of the law and order type, and from her obsession with rooting out the coup I’m guessing that she’s not going to just hop on board.
Yeah I have a good feeling it’s harder to convince Jean more than anyone else. He doesn’t even want to be king…?
I like how much I trusted this show makes this plot twist all the more surprising. But hey, they did hint on Grossular and his past, so I shouldn’t be so hyped haha
The only confirmed villain is the First Princess right? She ordered the assassination attempt. What did Shwan have to do with that exactly? Did Magie betray him for warning that guy?
Schwann not so subtly notified the First Princess about the existence of Lotta and Jean.
In a way, he probably expected his aunt to send assassins.
Whether this constitutes as villainy is not yet clear as more should be revealed later on.
I see what you did there, sir, but enough talk…
Have at you!
*shatters wineglass*
The people in this show are even more civilized than the folks in The Legend of the Galactic Heroes. There’s a kidnapping going on and everyone’s composed and polite. That makes Acca a very relaxing show for me, so I’m willing to overlook the cheapness of the situation. Also it’s too bad this is a one-cour show cause I’d love to see more of the districts’ locales and cultures.
I’m curious what Lillium has on Grossular to be able to yank him around like that. I don’t know why I was so surprised to find that Grossular was some other dude’s pawn. I was aboard the train that he was just the overly self-ambitious type, but clearly I wasn’t giving ACCA enough credit, thinking that Grossular would be straightforward when that hardly applies to anyone else. Silly me.
After the reveal that everything we thought Grossular was doing was actually planned by Lilium, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Grossular is revealed to be Show Spoiler ▼
I cut my reply shorter than I should’ve, so I missed saying that, if it’s revealed that that’s the truth behind Grossular, it’s likely that’s the leverage Lilium has against him.
That would be interesting…but I feel like there has to be something more to it than that. The members of the council are somewhat well-known and recognizable. If Grossular is who we think he is, how come more people haven’t noticed or made comments about it? I mean, didn’t he go to Dowa for the party? People would surely recognize him there if that were the case…