Anime Vice News Feed
GARGANTIA #13 - - Watch & Learn
As is always the case with anime finales, I’m finding it difficult to
keep my write-up focused on just this last episode. I’d really like to comment
on the series as a whole, but I’ll be doing a solo video on that later this week,
so I’ll scale the talk back here...
To comment on one specific thing, I will never cease to be amused
by mainstream anime’s cooties phobia. Ledo decides to fight StrIker and
potentially sacrifice himself in order to save Amy, she subsequently risks her
life by para-sailing into battle just so she can tell Ledo that he’s loved… and
they might as well have just shaken hands at the end. Certainly, there’s value in platonic
relationships, but these are basics of human nature that are
being obfuscated here.
I’m also intrigued by the ambiguous nature of Chamber’s intelligence. He might as well have been Jiminy Cricket (or
the Mecha Godfather, perhaps), signing off with these proud compliments to
Ledo about how he’s lived up to his potential and learned to think for himself.
You wonder which mech was functioning according to its original programming in
that final battle. Did Striker’s CPU start acting wonky after a crash landing,
or was it Chamber who was glitching from what the deep space galactic authority
intended for it? Questions with plenty of potential answers, of course, and I appreciate
that Urobuchi leaves us viewers free to draw our conclusions.
I do continue to enjoy how Urubuchi uses an economists’ approach
to his plotting. There was some legitimate suspense hanging over Ledo’s fate at
the end here, and it was a brilliant stroke to have Chamber take a more… benign
version of an Asimov twist, gaming his own cold, internal logic to jettison
Ledo to safety.
I only wish Urobuchi thought less like an economist when wrapping up Amy and
Ledo’s no-brainer of a courtship... but hey.
Watch this episode, “Legend of
the Verdurous Planet" here and decide for yourself, then read my comments on the
previous episode here.
About the Author
 | Tom Pinchuk’s a writer and personality with a large number of comics, videos and features like this to his credit. Visit his website - - tompinchuk.com - - and follow his Twitter: @tompinchuk |
0 comments:
Post a Comment