I have to surmise that Gonzo’s writers were just as confused about
where BLADE & SOUL could possibly go after last episode…
We ought to codify “steam blow-off” as a term somewhere in our wiki. I’ve
seen it so many times, it’s a bonafide anime trope. Whenever an animation staff
decides to cut loose with something flighty and whimsical after they’ve just
been laboring for a long time on something very dour - - that’s them blowing
off steam. The most famous example of this was FLCL. It was a quick bit of
nonsense, created by the Gainax staff after they’d spent over a year in
EVANGELION’s depressive Apocalypse. DEAD LEAVES was another one, while KILL LA
KILL should’ve been one.
And this episode absolutely feels like a steam blow-off.
== TEASER ==It’s funny that “jumping the shark” has become our term for series
taking switchback turns in quality. In a weird coincidence, both this and JOJO’s
have marked dramatic turns with the appearance of sharks. While JOJO’s invisibly-uppercut-a-shark-out-of-the-water
stunt seems to have inaugurated even weirder weirdness in that
show, B&S’s shark-head cult signifies a turn to some outrageously atonal silliness.
At this moment, anyway. Maybe this will turn out to be a one-off.
Still… it felt like so Saturday Morning, I was half-expecting Cap’n
Crunch’s battleship to pull in off the cove.
On its own, this was a delightful diversion. All these beautiful women
getting lured in by lonely aborigines with a scam that seems even more obvious in this world of scams. However, I don’t think the show really gets away with it - -
especially not when Alka just re-appears at the end. Plenty of shonen are able to
pull off drastic tonal shifts in the long run, but it’s really too early in the
series for this. When your characters have just come off a ponderous
exploration of revenge, putting them into a comedy of errors -- and having
them somehow forget their bitter grudges -- just feels strained.
Watch “God” and
decide for yourself, then read my comments on the previous episode.
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