Posted by OP Sequence
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OP: 「サクリファイス」 (Sakurifuaisu) by Mafumafu
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「竜の娘」 (Ryuu no Musume)
“The Dragon’s Daughter”
While inexorably bound to play second fiddle to some seriously hard hitters this season, Kemono-tachi isn’t about to fade into third tier status anytime soon, at least if this week is anything to go by. After all the uncertainty behind one plain opener and a setting more conventional than unique we got the remaining info on just where this series is going, and while as undeniably straight laced as everything last week, there’s still plenty here to leave a few favourable impressions.
As thoroughly mentioned last episode the Fairy Gone comparisons are going to dominate discussion of Kemono-tachi, and this weekly frankly underscored why. Our second main character in Nancy Schaal is about as thematically similar to the former’s own grand heroine as you can get, from the humble beginnings and choice of career path to the selection of weaponry she chooses to wield. Of course this girl does differ in some aspects—i.e. being the orphanage caretaker rather than the orphan herself, having a dragon for a daddy—but damn the similarities are a little uncanny once you get down to brass tacks. At least Kemono-tachi seems to be swimming in the deep end of the pool when it comes to personalities, because Nancy certainly has the spunk, stubbornness, and better fleshed out reasons needed to keep things structurally interesting going forward.
For all the improvements in characters though the one place Kemono-tachi may find itself running into trouble is with pacing. Regardless of the emotional logic behind Nancy’s sudden decision to accompany Hank it’s hard denying the whole chain of events moved incredibly fast. From bullet to the chest and determined intent to kill to happy-go-lucky adventure partners—the whiplash is quite noticeable, even if the equally funny wild west setting (wasn’t this supposed to be fantasy east coast North America?) for it was a perfect match. Kemono-tachi may have a simple and easily executed premise in putting down the monsters who now find themselves, whether willingly or not, running amok, but if the show blazes through it with little of the development needed for many of the events to have an impact, then it loses a lot of the strength the whole series is predicated upon. It may have been easy to feel some for Nancy’s father after all, but there’s no guarantee future Incarnate encounters will see similar depth as time goes by.
In either case however we should know the answer relatively soon because for all Kemono-tachi is about putting monsters down, there’s a couple who apparently want them to run free. It was never going to be as easy as watching our main man put his rabid comrades in their place of course, but we’ll have to wait and see how well the missing side of this coin matches up to everything we’ve seen so far.
ED Sequence
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ED: 「HHOOWWLL」by Gero x ARAKI
Preview
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might be a tad rushed, but i enjoy it… monday only have this and another so ya
Pacing-wise, the 2nd half where Nancy walks into town and finds Hank is where the manga actually starts.
The 1st half covering her past is later manga content, originally presented as flashback chapters after the manga had established Nancy and Hank’s characters.
I remember reading the first few chapters a while back, and yeah, that’s where the manga starts. They’re probably doing this chronological approach due to having only a dozen or so episodes, while Fairy Gone has twice that and can leisurely meander through flashbacks whenever it wants to.
BTW, how many times did Nancy say “otou-san” in this episode? I didn’t bother counting. 😛
Finally, after an episode and a half the real beginning of the story begins!
The manga starts, aside from a brief snippet about the monster-soldiers, with Nancy going into the bar and almost immediately starting to shoot. The tone of the manga is more like the later half of the episode rather than the previous episode and a half.
Not going to give any details, as it’d be a spoiler, but this is not a run-of-the-mill “monster of the week” series, and ends up getting far, far more interesting than said “monster of the week” type of series.
Despite my qualms about how they turned the flashbacks into an episode and a half prologue, this is probably one of the best three shows of an already strong season (Vinland Saga and Cop Craft being the other two).
Man this is everything I wanted from Fairy Gone and more. Looking forward to following it this season.