Wanna talk in detail about this week's IBO? There sure was a bunch of stuff happening in it.
Sure! I'm going to be doing something a little different with the upcoming week in review, so this is actually perfect.
The stuff between the brothers at the very beginning felt pretty weak. Not only have we not really earned that relationship, but it played out in the most boilerplate way it possibly could, and so it felt more like a device than a loss. The Human Debris work really well as a general thematic concept, and I certainly understand and totally agree with the necessity to put that idea in a specific human context we're invested in, but the Akihiro-Masahiro story was just not woven gracefully enough into the overall narrative to come off as a effective. Which is a huge shame, since that was one of the major emotional pillars of this arc of the show.
That said, I really liked basically everything else the episode did. I liked Mikazuki's relationship with battle becoming a possible issue, and I like the variety of ways this episode handled it - from Evil McBadguy spitting it in his face to Kudelia bringing him back to his blunt and brief but also warm self. I liked that Tekkadan's mission to "liberate" the human debris went totally shitty, and I liked that that conflict was put in a specific human context and even commented on from Mikazuki's very different perspective. The fact that almost no one in this world knew what a funeral was was a fantastic bit of natural worldbuilding, the kind of incidental but meaningful worldbuilding I like best.
The funeral itself was also quite nice, though obviously pretty on-the-nose - but this is Iron-Blooded Orphans, it's hearts-on-sleeves all the way down. Overall, the show continues to be the kind of "remember who should be the first against the wall" humanist war story that I like in the genre, even if things are moving kinda slowly. The cast, ideas, and story fundamentals are strong. It's just an extremely sturdy show.
The stuff between the brothers at the very beginning felt pretty weak. Not only have we not really earned that relationship, but it played out in the most boilerplate way it possibly could, and so it felt more like a device than a loss. The Human Debris work really well as a general thematic concept, and I certainly understand and totally agree with the necessity to put that idea in a specific human context we're invested in, but the Akihiro-Masahiro story was just not woven gracefully enough into the overall narrative to come off as a effective. Which is a huge shame, since that was one of the major emotional pillars of this arc of the show.
That said, I really liked basically everything else the episode did. I liked Mikazuki's relationship with battle becoming a possible issue, and I like the variety of ways this episode handled it - from Evil McBadguy spitting it in his face to Kudelia bringing him back to his blunt and brief but also warm self. I liked that Tekkadan's mission to "liberate" the human debris went totally shitty, and I liked that that conflict was put in a specific human context and even commented on from Mikazuki's very different perspective. The fact that almost no one in this world knew what a funeral was was a fantastic bit of natural worldbuilding, the kind of incidental but meaningful worldbuilding I like best.
The funeral itself was also quite nice, though obviously pretty on-the-nose - but this is Iron-Blooded Orphans, it's hearts-on-sleeves all the way down. Overall, the show continues to be the kind of "remember who should be the first against the wall" humanist war story that I like in the genre, even if things are moving kinda slowly. The cast, ideas, and story fundamentals are strong. It's just an extremely sturdy show.
Liked by:
Another Bystander
Eelz
