Now that I've given up on the expectation of an overarching plot, it was much easier this week to enjoy this episode. However, that doesn't mean that the content was up to par.
The first half saw the return of Camilla, who obtains the Book of Equivalence and trades her way up from a paper clip to a teddy bear for Dalian. The story is based off of the fairy tale The Straw Millionaire, which is about a man who takes a piece of straw and eventually trades his way to marrying a millionaire's daughter. While watching Huey and Dalian follow Camilla to figure out what she's trading for was amusing, the presence of the Phantom Book seemed like it was just a plot excuse in an attempt to make it relevant to the show. The book only came into play at the very end, when Camilla trades it away at the very end. Otherwise, I wasn't really sure why the Phantom Book was necessary. Wouldn't someone be able to make trades without the book? Wasn't that how it happened in the fairy tale? In any case, it made for a weak first half.
The second half also brought back another character, this time Armand from the homunculus episode. Apparently he's not all that heartbroken over losing out on the previous love of his life since he's already engaged to another girl. Unfortunately for him, the girl is another in a long line of crazy women in this show and every time he even so much as talks to another girl, she thinks that he's cheating on her. Of course, there's also a Phantom book involved, this one infused with magic from the Greek goddess Hecate that will burn the person to death if the one holding the other half of the book thinks that they are cheating. All of this makes for a great setup, but it ends with Huey and Dalian letting Armand die so that he's freed from the engagement and then resurrect him using another Phantom Book. This show really needs to better establish its rules on death. In the previous episode, they could heal the woman once, not twice, which was why she died. This episode, they watch a man burn to death and then bring him back to life like there's no problem. There is also the question of how many people are aware of who Dalian is; both the bookshop owner and the crazy woman were well aware of the library, which makes me wonder how "secret" it really is, since the information appears to be common knowledge. This is definitely the weakest of the episodes so far, and I hope that the better episodic scriptwriting comes back in the next episode.
Images from NicoNico.com.
I thought the same thing you did: if you're exchanging stuff for stuff of equal value, what's the point of the book?? I thought at one point the book actually suggested you what to trade with, but Camilla was clearly pondering herself so it's really silly.
ReplyDeleteI hope next episode will be meaningful and excting..
@animekritik
ReplyDeleteYeah, at first I thought that the book made suggestions or at least pointed you towards someone who would be willing to trade, but the resolution made it worthless except as a bartering item. It seemed like the only point of the first half was that they needed something to fill up time until the second half, which is just bad writing.
That's a good point: all the books seem like throw away plot devices created at the creators' convenience. This one seemed especially useless. And everyone seems to know about the mystical library, don't they...?
ReplyDelete@draggle1
ReplyDeleteThe book in the first half was just silly. The power to barter? Really? And it's starting to bug me that everybody seems to know about the library, since the first episode made it seem like a big secret.