D_Cide Traumerei: The Animation – 08

「匣の中」 (Hako no Naka)
“Inside the Box”

This episode was a little bit on the slower side, yet there was still some action, but it wasn’t as flashy as other episodes, really surmising how important Oda’s role is within the whole Knocker Ups, they did manage to finish the enemy off, but only after a lot of trial and error. And the possibility that this fight was extended so that it could fit within the whole timespan of the episode, is also a possibility. Nevertheless, this episode was mostly just Oda, Randou, and Eru sitting in a stuck elevator because the Traumerei turned Desaria cut the power and cellphone coverage. Because of reasons. And so they are stuck in the elevator.

A lot of things were discussed while they were Inside the Box, Randou opened up about his life on the island, Oda took a precarious position with him, and turns out Randou, actually was part of the Tokyo culture for a little while, and that made Oda do a 180 on how he was treating him in the first place. I think Oda sees something in Randou that he doesn’t particularly like. Randou is cool, an overly nice person who cares about others, and just a pretty cool and confident guy. The guy Oda want’s to be but is just not there yet because he tends to explode on people when they do something he doesn’t like, or things don’t go the way he desires. He’s a little bit of a child in that sense, meanwhile, Randou has the girl and is mature enough to collect his emotions when a crisis emerges. Even though Oda has Rena as well, their relationship is more like they’re both children, or something akin to brother and sister. By the way, I loved how Rena looked at Oda when he finally arrived at the scene. They captured her expression perfectly, it’s right in the middle of I know you’re lying and you’re complete trash. It’s not until Randou confirms that they were stuck in an elevator that she eases up on Oda. They were really counting on him for the fight, and since he didn’t show up it was harder on the team.

But yeah – overall this episode was more on the slower side, more exposition than fighting, I think this episode was more on the kin to make us understand how truly evil the Evil Ones are. Supposedly – what I’m catching from the lore is: This Evil Ones were once the supreme rulers of the earth, before the dinosaurs, before anything even existed, they reigned. But something happened that made them disappear and become extint. At this point, I’m sort of finding it silly the simple naming convention this show is going for with all its lore. Clearly the evil ones are inspired by Lovecraftian works. Then, why not make it even more apparent. Just call them the Old Ones. It goes straight to the point, gives the audience a much creepier sense of who these creatures are and what exactly is the thing they want. The Church’s true motive is to resurrect the Old Ones, sorry, I mean Evil Ones so that they can reign true over the earth. That’s all well and good, but I have this sense that some of the things D_Cide was trying to go for are dumbed down so that audiences that are not exactly in love with Lovecraft can get a grasp on the lore, and get their first taste of cosmic horror. However, D_Cide said, let’s throw the cosmic horror out the window. If it were to embrace it from the very start, I believe this would have a much different product. But I digress.

Next, this episode had very wonky animation, I feel like at this point we can see the burnout of the animators who are working on this, hopefully, they’re working from home. But overall there were a lot of chopped frames and a lot of cut corners. A lot zooms on characters, and if the camera doesn’t see, we don’t animate it. But they did manage to throw a saving grace by really pushing down on the exposition, and solving a lot of questions that might not be obvious to some. However I don’t think that applies to my case, and I extend that to RC readers because we watch a hell ton of anime, so let’s just say. Personally, I saw all of this from a mile away. I wasn’t really burning for these answers. But I can only speak for myself, what are you’re thoughts? I want to read them in the comments.

I’m glad however that they were able to become friends by the end of the episode since they were able to understand each other. And Oda is right, all of this information should be explained by Tris, but instead, the mascot is totally useless and decides to sit and look cute.

Nevertheless, I don’t have anything else to say about this episode, thanks for reading, and I hope you come back next week for another episode of D_Cide Traumerei: The Animation.

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