Review:
Just letting you know, I am about to name characters and major events from this episode. If you count that as spoiler than please know this was a tragic episode to watch (in the best sense of the word) and I hope you enjoy it.
For everyone still with me…
It was Aston. It had to be Aston or Takaki and it was clear early in this episode it was going to be Aston and even the manner of his death was pretty heavily foreshadowed with him cautioning Takaki and reminding him that they needed to work the way they always did. So the war is finally done because the guys from Mars finally showed up, but it was all a little bit too late to stop the tragedy we’ve been edging towards for literally weeks. Only, Aston’s death, while tragic, isn’t the real take-home tragedy of the episode. It’s just your normal plot pulling heart strings and taking out a character that they worked hard to make you like after a rough entrance. The real tragedy is what happens after when they are ‘cleaning’ up from this farce of a war. I think even the writers know that there’s no emotion attached anymore when Mikazuki shoots someone in cold blood. We’re kind of used to it. So him passing the gun to Takaki… That was cold, calculated, and utterly devastating.
Now, in the context of the show it is difficult to argue that Takaki didn’t have ‘the right’ given his friend had just been killed and the guy with his arms restrained behind him kneeling on the floor played a fair role in getting his friend killed. But Takaki, a character that we couldn’t have identified as anything other than the cheerful guy with the smart sister a few weeks ago, just calmly and coldly executed this guy. And then went home to his sister. Admittedly, given her reaction to his return, he’s probably a little bit broken but then the episode ended so we don’t even get to deal with the fall out.
Okay, there’s a much longer post that I could write about this episode but my 100 words are done and for anything else I’ll need to rewatch the episode and think about what I’d really like to focus on.
For now, Orphans continues to hit the right notes and while it isn’t a thrill a minute it is at least thought and emotion provoking.
Iron Blooded Orphans is available on AnimeLab.