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「私、出番ないってか？」 (Watashi, Deban naitte ka?)
“So I’m Not in This One, Am I?”
As an episode with less Kumoko and more action sequences, Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?’s 21st episode doesn’t aim to impress with its animation. Even as it pushes Shun closer towards his eventual confrontation with Hugo, this episode mostly serves to set up the battlefield that would eventually claim a number of lives.
Much of the first 3/4ths of the episode focused on getting Shun getting familiarized with the warriors on his side and establishing how essential the elf barrier is to keeping Hugo out. In the process, we get some nice exposition on elves placing strong fear of people born from another world, especially since the reincarnations are beefed up beyond recognition in comparison to the others in this world.
Even worse is that it’s the more nefarious reincarnations that the elves ended up fearing the most, making it so that they have a difficult time navigating whether a reincarnation will eventually go against them or not. Because of that, there is a fascinating guesstimation as to who is going to ally with Hugo. This was mostly due to Kusama showing up as a ninja spy, barging in as he tries to take his leave. He was an amusing character since he was far goofier than most of the antagonists in this series, but only time will tell where his full allegiance ends up steering towards.
The biggest highlight of this episode was getting to see Shun’s party start to fight Hugo. Filmos and Hugo had a decent back-and-forth considering that the only way she can counter his crazy OP abilities is with her situational crazy OP abilities. But it was nice to see that nothing much has changed on Yuri’s end and that it must’ve taken little to no effort on Hugo’s end to get her to go full psycho.
It’s too bad that Filmos ended up taking her out so quickly before she learned about Fei’s abilities. Earlier in the series, it felt like a Chekov’s gun situation to have Yuri so obsessed with an ability that Fei adopted that it would’ve been humorous/poetic for Fei to reveal the ability to her before she dealt Yuri with the fatal blow. But Yuri and her fanaticism seemed to be an afterthought, and why dwell on it if it doesn’t have the same gravitas or significance as Hugo’s conquest. When you’re busy hyping everyone up for Shun crossing swords with Hugo once again, you could barely tell that Yuri was a part of this grand battle.
Personally I think in terms of writing this isn’t an intelligent series. The way some of the story beats are set up and played out are fairly generic and have that daytime kids cartoon vibe. I haven’t seen anything that really screams complex in terms of plot and some of the reveals about certain people are fairly obvious.
That said as an anime only viewer its a fun series to watch and pass the time. I would guess they shift towards Kumoko reaching her Arachne evolution and interacting with the other reincarnations either this season or at the start of the next. It seems like the next logical step.
That’s rather large claim, so who do you think Kumoko were in the classroom and who do you think she are in Shun’s time line?
You better not posted that with LN knowledge in hand.
The writing of the light novel was both complex and well thought out. They had to dumb it down for the adaptation, and the fact that some people are still only now realizing that there are two timelines in the anime shows that the dumbing down was a good idea.
I would not put Yuri out of the story yet, even if she is out of action for now…
Remember Shun’s special Hero-only skill allowing reviving dead?
As for Hugo he is same old jerk just with slightly more brute power, but he would be dead already if not for Sophia (she seems to hate memories of being bullied loner Negishi).
Sophia is not only probably more powerful than Hugo, but definitely more smart in tactical uses of her powers, and in estimating abilities of her enemies.
What intrigues me is that it seems it was the White-haired girl many suspect of ebing Kumoko evolved, that actually destroyed the vaunted Elven barrier.
Is the title of episode biggest red herring yet?
Also, Elves are confirmed being racist jerks. From attitude towards humans in general to dissing Anna the half-elf. If not for Hugo side being much worse, I would not mind Elves being brought down a little from their haughty shelf…
No Kumoko this episode? Blasphemy!
Since everyone is accounted for this episode (presumably the green haired guy is Shun and Kanata’s friend), who is Kumoko? The guy crossed out when Filimos was a baby is probably that administrator. There’s also no reason other than death to cross out the other three.
Still wondering what happened to Yuri. There was no hint that she’d die in that battle, unlike Hugo. But that’s a lot of blood.
Considering that practically all the combat capable reincarnations are taking the field, I think it would surprise no one if Kumoko herself joins in sooner rather than later. And as a Light Novel reader, I will leave it at that.
Story beats wise I think the presentation of the anime is just going to confuse a lot of people. Sure, the LN and manga has similar timing but I think it would be better to have smoothed out the transitions somewhat to make the show more accessible to the average viewer.
Take Kyouya’s introduction for example. We see him for a few frames and then he appears in the stinger. I am sure more than a few people are going “who the heck is that? Is he supposed to be important?”. It would have made more sense to either not have a stinger at all or feature another character who already had been more established.
The thing is that Shun is, in a word, boring. He is the stock shounen/light novel protagonist. In an environment where the subversion of this character archetype has become the norm rather than the rule, he really does not bring that much to the table. The fact that Yugo is so cartoonishly evil robs him of any real menace. Both Shun and Yugo are basically Saturday morning cartoon characters at this point. So much their trope that they become dreadfully uninteresting.
Because face it, people who watch this show are doing so because of Kumoko. The whole hook is the wacky idea of a spider mook being the protagonist. Said protagonist is a goofy character drawn in a cutesy way. If I wanted to watch Hero vs Maou, I would be watching some other show really.
What anime only viewers and manga only readers seem to be assuming is a typical linear story, abet one with two timelines. No spoilers, but the light novels were very layered with multiple perspectives and the perspectives not all happening at the same time, but with each addition perspective and light novel adding something more to the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
That the story sn’t all about either Shun/Hugo or about Kumoko is what makes the story much better than most isekai. Neither the world nor the greater plot are slave to the either of them, though they do play an important part.
To a large degree this subverts the “character archetype” far better than other shows that attempt it.
Absolutely disgusting work by both studios involved in this atrocity, still i watch because i very much like the story. All this shit backwards 90% CGI trash will look absolutely eyecancer-level in 10 years time, go try watching FF The Spirits Within and see how that absolutely does not hold at all, and it had millions spent on it. CGI is does not withstand the age of time, it should be illegal to use it in anything decent.
*****Withstand the test of time*****
Spelling sucks, lack of sleep sucks.
You’re right, they went too far as soon as they also heavily relied on CG for the characters that are usually 2D.