AWTY 141 - Miku's Island (Children of the Whales)

It's so cool. I love how over the top it is.

Hello and welcome to our week there yet in exploration and education and anime. I'm your anime idiot, patrick dugan.

I'm an anime expert, dee hollander.

And I'm brenda mccullough. Your anime calf.

Calf.

Just a little baby.

Just a little leg.

I don't know.

I give it up entirely on connecting what this reference is.

You made it too vague.

For once, it wasn't a sitcom. What if I do?

I didn't do word association with this title.

Well, it is related to what we're.

Watching, which is we are watching a recommendation from a previous guest, jess Morris. We're watching Children of the whales, also.

Known as a calf wink baby whale. There it is. I was kind of hoping for a more unique name. You know how animal group name, like there's a parliament of owls or a murder.

Murder of pros. Oh, what's a flamingo called? Hold on. A group of flamingos is something fun.

I got to ask who decides what groups of animals are called? Because they're just it's called a flamboyance. Like, yes, ferrets group of ferrets. Also known as a business.

A business. Why ferrets?

Why not put them in suits?

They've got things to do.

Oh, just long suits.

Wonderful.

And then one of them gets, like, a fitted suit, and then all the furs puffing out the sleeves and, like, the neck, and it's like that's why we don't do fitted suits. As farrots.

You'Ve thought about this, I.

Think about animals explode a little too.

That's fair.

When the how would a dog wear pants? meme came out, brendan went wild.

I was actually just talking about this with someone. Horses, as I often talk about, actually, their hooves are their fingertips because they evolved from, like, hands. So technically, the front legs of the horse aren't legs. They're hands. That's upsetting, but changes the orientation of pants.

Hey, Brendan. It's worse. They're technically fingers.

Fingers. Each leg is a finger.

The other one's, like, sucked up into the legs at some point in the evolutionary chain.

Anyway, yeah, we can't get into this.

We can't get into horses on this episode. Not again.

For how much Brendan hates horses. We do talk about horses a lot.

You know your enemy because Brendan always brings a lot.

True.

But yeah, speaking of evolutionary mistakes, I.

Give a quick episode.

This morning I was like, okay, know what? I'm going to do the smart thing. I'm going to do a little exercise. I'm going to be fit, get buff, be nice and active. So I bought myself a kettlebell the other day, and I've been doing well with it. I've been feeling myself getting a little stronger. It's nice, nice. But got knocked down a peg as I picked it up, swung it once and went, ah, my back humbled real fast. It hates yes. So immediately swung at once, went, nope, had to put it down and yeah, I am now podcasting to you lying flat on my back on a futon straight. So, yeah, I'm streaming from a remote location 5ft away from where I normally come to you from, but it's a new world. I'm staring at the ceiling and it is strange.

It's odd.

How'S that going, freight? You notice any water damage you didn't know before?

No. I think the listers are going to be intimately familiar with the sound of the highway I live next to because I am right next to the window and not in my usual soundproof box where the other microphone lives. So audio probably not great, but okay.

We'Re doing what we can.

This is the best I can do, so get off my back.

It's her.

But yeah. So sorry, a quick note, but yeah, children of the Way, we talk about anime here and not horses and package, but yeah. So this was recommended to us a little while ago. Spend a minute. But yeah. Is this a show either of you are familiar with?

Not at all.

I've heard the title and I continuously get it mixed up with Children of the ether, which is another anime series I enjoy. So I always think of that one first, though I know of it. I know it's fairly popular, so I.

Expect yeah, this is Netflix series came out 2017. There is 112 episode season of it. Yeah, I haven't really heard anything about this. I also never tend to hear much about the Netflix shows. I tend to hear like, oh, a cool thing is announced, but I never hear anyone talking about them.

So I think that's actually weirdly. Due to the binging model, they release it all at once. Everyone binges it all at once. Talked about it a ton for that one day or like that week and then never again.

Yeah, that's fair.

There are plenty good animes on Netflix that are Netflix originals, but yeah, I agree with you. I hear people talk about it for a hot minute and then never again.

More of a flash in the pan than anything substantial except for a couple of things.

But yeah, it's a buffet that'll last you all week instead of actually eating meals for seven days.

No one really knows anything about it, so want to dive right in?

Yeah. With the whales?

Yeah, let's go swimming. Why are there clothes just avatar? I once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. The fashion choices in the show are just avatar.

Oh, I definitely got a lot of avatar vibes by episode three, so the clothes didn't get me, but that part did.

Yeah, there's a lot of avatar stuff going on, but we'll dig into it. Okay, let's see how floppy my notebook is. Okay, so this first episode is just a lot of info dumping. So I will probably do just chunks of info dumping and then go into plot. But yeah, there's a lot going on.

Info chunky.

Info chunky? That sounds grosser.

Than jerry's flavor. It's got little, like, chocolate ones and little, like, vanilla zeros.

It's nft themed.

They wouldn't bed. And jerry's is a fine company as far as companies go.

But yeah. So we open on a funeral. On that note, we open on a funeral and we get just narration. So this is a good time to go into info dumping. So we are on the back of a whale, a stone whale in a sea of desert. Yeah. And this is sort of a pretty isolated community. There's about 500 villagers on this turtle back, and there are magic users and non magic users. The magic users are called the Marked, and they have some, like, telepathy telekinesis sort of powers, can throw stuff around, that sort of thing. But the cost of the magic is they tend to die very young. Like, the average age lifespan of a marked is like, 30.

The dream.

No.

Oh, goodness, I'd be dead by now.

Anyway. The people without the magic who end up having normal human lifespans. So once they reach the age of, like, 65, they're considered elders and they're considered, like, council members and decision makers for this island. So we got, like, two classes of people, and we're introduced to our main character, sort of the records keeper, the stenographer of the island.

The nerd.

Yeah, the nerd. This is Chokuro. He is just a sad little emojournal.

Boy.

And he just records the history here. He's, like, writing out the, like, events of this funeral, the funeral rights. They put the dead person on, like, a little coffin and just float it out into the desert sea, where it sinks into the sand and becomes sand, I guess. But there is also a superstition that if you cry at the funeral, your already short life expectancy is even shorter now. So remain stoic. No emotions. That's a big theme. Just never show emotions. They are the worst. Fair, I agree.

Well, they say that the emotions are tied to their powers, but at least the three episodes we've seen, I don't think we really see that. We don't see an emotional outburst and then a thing just gets flown off into space.

Yeah, we'll get into it. But emotional people do magic well, non emotional people also do magic. Well, so much so far. So Chokuro, he is the journaler chronicler because he has magic powers, but he fucking sucks. They call him the destroyer because he just always breaks shit. So we see him, like, try to help cut some leaves off of a tree for harvesting, but he just cuts the trunks and makes them fall on people. And he gets chased away. He goes and stops and hides out with some engineers. And they made him goggles he's a protagonist. Yeah, protagonist. Got to have an identifying feature. They're very steampunk. Pretty cool. I love them.

They're nice.

The aesthetics of the show just like, Good. But yeah. So he runs into the elders, and they're like, oh, you wrote too much about the funeral. Oh, you're always writing things. Our only writer. And he's like, yeah, there's no written record, so I want to actually tell the future generations what's happening here. And they're like, you kids in your paper. But yeah. So he brings the record to suo, who is the next mayor of the island, who is just a smiley, friendly, just keeping the peace sort of dude. Green hair, pretty feminine.

Love them.

Great. Good stuff.

I called him ponytail.

And he's like, oh, you're keeping with our ways. You write with no emotion, but it's also very deep. This is, like, super poetic, even though you're not showing emotion. That's a lot going on there.

Yeah.

We get info on the longer lifespans here. I sort of condensed at the top, so let me skip through my notes. Yeah. They repress their emotions by interlocking their own fingers. Sort of like a prayer of like, let me center myself. meditate, my dear boy.

Conceal. Don't feel like it froze.

Burst into song. Shokado looks out the window, and another island. It's coming over the horizon. Another whale. They see this whale, and the council is like, okay, we got to send out a search party, scout it out, see what resources we can collect. Also, I forgot to mention the magic is called famia. It's how they can travel on the sand naturally. Everything but the whales just sinks in. But they think about the boat real hard. That's enough to make it not sink.

I love this boat.

Yeah. Just real tiny little wind waker. skiff looking stuff is cute.

Had a lot of, like, five for me of the game raft, if anyone's seen that, where you're just on a raft and you'll hop onto an island, gather as much resources, and then hop off because they see the island and they're like, oh, we haven't seen an island in a few months. So it's happened before, but it's just like I don't know. It's like wild. They're not like, let's attach our islands, or let's cultivate it's just like, no, it's just loot and run. That's how they live.

Yeah. It's like a weird dynamic of nomadic and settled because they're villagers. They have farms and agriculture and stuff, but they're also like, yes, let's just gather resources as it passes us by, as we just keep on sailing through the desert.

It's a whale world out there.

But yeah. So Chokado, being the journaler, goes with the scout party to see what's out there, and it's an island covered in ruins. ooh, spooky. They note that in all the islands they've ever come across, they've never found people. So naturally, once they say that, they're going to find yeah. I should also say at this point, the dub is not very good. The writing is pretty just don't you know, this basic thing about this culture we've had just very, like, declaring basic facts about the world, as you know.

Dave.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so he finds, like, swords on the island, and this cute animal sidekick shows up. But sidekick to who? Chocado follows it and we find its own protagonist. We see a woman. She's just, like, passed out in a pile of swords. As I wish to be. That's the energy I wish to everyone this pride month. But yeah, so he goes up and is like, oh, never found someone, but she's dead. Oh, no, wait, she's alive. And she wakes up and looks at him and doesn't say anything. But she got red magic. That means it's aggressive.

Oh, no.

She uses it to pick up all the swords and just like, hold Chokado hostage, just pinned to the ground. More energy I wish to everyone this Pride month, but he uses his own magic to block it. And she's so weak, that makes her pass out because she's wounded. scars on her shoulders. So he carries her back to the group. So they take her back to the mud whale and coincidentally, everything starts raining. That's nothing. It starts raining, you see a rainbow.

Happy pride.

Yeah, once again, happy pride. So they get back and she wakes up and she's like, I see I've been captured. I surrender. And they're like, oh, we're chill, so you're fine. Do you want, like, medicine or something? And they take her to the infirmary and we see one of the chocolate's young friend, sammy sees that she had, like, the name lycos written in her clothes just like sewn into her underwear or whatever. And she's like, oh, that must be your name. And she's like, no. So they get to the infirmary and they see all of the marked people who are sick and dying because of their magic. And Shokado is like, oh, yeah, you know, that's how it is. And she's like, no, not where I'm from. We don't die. And they're like, oh, weird. Really crazy.

What's that lorry?

Nice. But yeah. So the mayor shows up and is like, oh, yes. I also glossed over earlier because patrick's dumb and hurt that this character doesn't show emotions. And this is called something lost in.

My notes I wrote down somewhere. Like a pathia.

Yes, that makes sense. Something like that. Oh, yes, that comes later. I didn't get to that point. Whatever. Yeah, she's emotionless doesn't show emotion. This is since their emotions are linked to magic, very powerful. So they're like, oh, shit. Come talk to the council immediately. So Chokado meets up with suo, who's like, oh, yes, since it rained and there was a rainbow, the elders took that as a sign to release all the prisoners we keep in the center of our island.

So wild.

This has very strong ya novel energy it has that just like pure, we're going on an adventure sort of vibes. But there are especially in later episodes. Very dark points. So this is a sign to it. People who use too much emotions and use their magic and criminal ways, criminal being sort of arbitrary. And whatever the council decides, they're kept in the center of the whale, which, for whatever reason, stops people from using magic. So there's a group of recidivists who are always thrown in prison for using magic. You know how people with magic would use it? They're called moles because they live underground.

The emotion to inner whale pipeline. We got to talk about it.

Yeah.

Just all that money in big mole.

It's surprising me because they also say that 90% of the population is marked, so they have powers, and then the 10% that don't are the ones that rule them. So it's like the ruling class of elders. Their special ability is they get old. That's what makes them stronger than the telekinetics that run the island.

Yeah. I'll outlive. You idiot.

Yeah.

So as long as I keep you civil until the point where you die and I get to keep living, that's good for me. So do what I say. But yeah. So all the prisoners are released, and once they hear that there's another island that pulled up next to them, their leader oni the Dark emo One, his.

Name literally means demo, not subtle.

He's like, we're getting off this stinking rock, and decides that they're going to jump ship and get out of here. So Chocodo despies on the council meeting with the girl they found, and they ask her if she's from the mother country. And she's like, no, I asked you first. Is this philippa? But neither of them will reveal where they're actually from. But she does reveal that she's the only survivor on the island that she was found. She had to bury everyone else there. And this is where they say she's an apotheya, a human with no emotion. And they're like, that's super dangerous. So, surprise. You are a prisoner now. But this is when Oni attacks, going to steal the girl and take her back to the island and also steals Chocodo. So he has a guide who has been there before, not the girl who lived there, the guy who was there for 20 minutes. But they're like, all right, we're getting out of here. And then they start setting sale, and that's where we end episode one.

I like that Oni is, like, the leader of this gang who seemed to be kind of free spirits of like, we want to go out and explore off of this island and see other things, and they lock them up for it because they use their powers incorrectly, apparently. And then when a new person from a new island shows up, they're like, you know what? Let's release all those people that want to go to a new island. Did you not think he was going to break in and kidnap this girl from a new island and take her.

Like but the Brendan yeah, the ancient ways, whatever. There's no written history. It's just oral tradition.

It's a game of telephone. We also live in a desert, so any time it rains, we also go nuts for it. So I get that.

Fair. Yeah. Everyone is like, peace and love.

The world is unified, just water from the sky. It's all it takes to make us happy. Anyway, episode two starts off with Oni arriving at the island, and it's surprised to find out that the island that's covered in ruins, like he said, is actually covered in ruins. Surprise. And lecos. Lecos. I wrote it down phonetically, so I'd be able to say it better because.

She reminded me of the pop star hotsu name.

Hotsunami digital pop star. I'm fine with that.

Yeah, that's good for me. She says her name is not actually leeko, so yeah, we don't know her name. miku.

For all we know, it could be meku.

It could be meku. We got one full recap of leeko, so now we're going to miku. miku says that they don't know anything and walks off, and then we get the opening. And I was kind of surprised. It's kind of bumping. It got a good b to it. I thought it'd be a lot more melancholy. And then miku takes them to the graves that she dug, like big mass graves. And Oni calls her a magic. magica for being able to do it without feeling anything. And I was confused because I thought we already had a word for that, but I guess it's a different word.

Lots of words in this one.

Lots of words.

Yeah, just so much.

Lore just immediately chokaroo, prays for them and then goes inside the temple. Once inside, she shows them this big, weird, gross, pulsing, translucent rainbow creature that stuck to the wall like a fungus.

Yay, man.

She says, Leekos, what isn't her real name. It's this creature's name whose name is Nose. I was like, so it's not lecos. And she says it eats emotions and is the shape of a soul. Gross. And she says that the outside world that they're looking to find and explore uses Apathia emotionless people like her to fight their wars for them. puppet soldiers and I guess child soldiers love it.

Great.

And she says that this big creature eats the emotions from them, and then they become a pafia like that like her. And Oni goes up to it to give his emotions, basically being like, if this is how I get to the outside world, I'm doing it. And choke hero tries to stop him, and when he reaches and both of her hands go in and connect with the weird, pulsing, spongy thing. And as soon as they make contact, we see choker gets flooded with a bunch of memories of other people, like people he doesn't know. And he tries to hold on to his emotions and then miku pulls him away from it. So he still wants to have his emotions, but he touched the emotions bunch. And eventually the others show up on the islands as they came looking for Oni and Chocuro. They're like, we come to take you back. We're going to arrest you and all that stuff. Once they take them all back, they go back without a fight. They debriefed the elders about what happened on the island and what they saw. And Chokura seems a little less emotional. And the elders decide travel to the island is now forbidden and that Oni and Chocolate are going to get locked up in the brink in the center of the island. Meanwhile, Eyepatch is checking out this new island. Who's Eyepatch? Good question.

Don't know.

The only thing more than lore that this show has is character.

So we see. Chuck Row. Oh, I also want to mention the little animal sidekick ends up coming back to the island with them. It's like a little otter, but it's got a tail like a dolphin. And I'm theorizing that it's either a dolphin or a whale that has evolved into another sheep because only the aquatic mammals have tails that go up and down or laying horizontal, while fish have.

Tails that are like vertically.

I'm assuming whales are actually in the show at some point and this is like the descendant or it's just what.

We call the big on it Brendan.

Well, I don't think it's a literal whale. I think it's a ship that they call the Mud Whale or whatever.

Yeah, I think it's just an island. Like it's just a hunk of rock. And they call it the Mud Whale. I think this little ottery fellow is a literal whale.

It got a whale face. So I'm going to continue calling it a whale.

You know what? That's fair.

It got a big smiley mouth.

It's my friend.

It's got a lot of baleen. choker asks if the creature took oni's heart like it tried to take his. And Oni says he saw visions of an outside world where a bunch of people are at war fighting and stuff. And Chokuru wonders why miku rescued him if she has no emotions. Wait a minute. He starts piecing stuff together. That's when choku gets released because he's a good boy. And oni's a little shithead according to this island. And he's released at a good time because the hash hashibashi crickets are about to take flight. I wrote that down just because I like the words hashibashi.

Yeah.

Also immediately remember, glad you brought up the crickets. This is a literal whale because they say the crickets grow by eating the whale shit.

I missed that. There was a lot of stuff going on about the crickets. I was like, this doesn't matter.

Everything that gets introduced is like another info dump. It's like, oh, here's the thing. Here's its lore.

A lot about crickets that are in one episode.

This also feeds into the ya novel Energy, where they're like, oh, yes, the Cricket Festival is upon us. Yeah, let's take a detour.

They're jellyfish but for the sky. And yeah, so the crickets change colors as they molt their skin and take off off the island and fly to Christ nowhere because it's just a literal sea of sand.

They're going to the other island.

Okay, so Chocuro meets up with all of his friends and so he goes, wait a minute. He goes running back. And we see miku in her room by herself with another girl named nettie, who is unmarked and an assistant to the elders. So she'll probably take in their spot when she's old enough. Child Nurse you hate to see it. miku says that she needs to go back to her island and she hates having these emotions. So it seems like you got to re up, you got to recast the spell or something and choke. Hero appears outside the window. I do like that all their buildings have these, like, weird poles in them and people can just climb up on the outside easily. It seems like a security breach, but it is a neat aesthetic trucker who climbs up and he's like, I'm busting you out. It's like why? It's like, see the lights in the festival. It'd be neat, you know, not getting attached or anything.

I know you're a prisoner of war, but you got to see these firefly don't go.

But he also says you wouldn't have dug graves for everyone else if you didn't have emotions. So he's seeing that she's got emotions and he wants to show her not to hide them. And then we see all of them walking up. Also, one of the friends is dark hair in classes and is presumably an engineer. nerd ida. So they're walking up to the spot that they're going to watch the Cricket Festival. And Sammy's noticing joker again. Little body. Body with me too. And she's gotten jealous asking if he can carry her like he did three years ago with the last cricket festival. He said, no, you're getting heavy because I'm a weak nerd. So she got us all pissy. And then we see all the other villagers gathering to watch the crickets. We get a really weird, sad allegory from one character. He's like, I like helping out the other kids in the village because mine died a few years ago. Anyway, crickets fun little thing you just dropped on us. Fucking christ, man. I wasn't ready for that.

If I had to tell you clearly, we're not that close, so why is that the first thing you said to me?

Stranger.

And miku says she saw it and she was sent to the army with her family when she was seven years old. And Jokuru says he saw those memories when he touched the creature. So he kind of saw what she saw, her memories. mika says, like, it's not important. I never really care about those memories, but why do I care about them now? And starts crying so clear to the whole society. And she's part of it's not clear. I don't know why I said it's clear. It's clear her emotions are coming back and she has to deal with them now. choker says she has a heart and that they're the same. She is emotional like he is. And miku says she needs to tell him something. And she says that the moda whale is really fallen now.

Sure.

And as soon she says that, we see the whole time they're talking, the crickets are all flying off in the pattern and in the colors and stuff. And as soon as she says this, we see one of the crickets fall down. It seems to be petrified or just dead, which is ominous. And then we get a shot of eyepatch on a small boat as everyone's watching the crickets. And then next day we see Chokaru getting chewed up by toby. God, I don't know if any it's toby who's just this little asshole who just yells at Chokaro all the time. And then these two other kids who are siblings, apparently they all live together because their parents died. chick and choke Hero runs off to the field to do field work with sammy. And choke Hero says he took miku back after the cricket festival. She's like, why? It's like, because I snuck her out and she's technically a prisoner and I didn't want to get into trouble. That makes sense. Forgot this guy's name, sammy's brother sayu ponytail. ponytail. ponytail goes to talk to the elders and Nettie's there outside the door saying the elders refused to meet or talk with miku. He says, well, they probably should. She's got a lot of information. It'd probably help. And then he says the elder sent out the vigilantes to scout out the island without telling the mayor. I'm guessing Vigilantes mean ipatch. And ponytail goes to talk to miku and bypasses her guard, basically saying, like, I'm not allowed to let anyone in. He's like, well, now you are, bitch. And just walks in.

But I'm super nice about it.

And miku says she has dire news for the leader of this island. Meanwhile, the mayor is looking over choker's notes, and they all get blown away and scattered in the wind. She's like, ah, shit. We got to go get those notes. And her assistant, who's just simply hard for her, it's like, we'll get those notes later. It's like, hey, do you know how wind works? We should probably know they literally sink.

Into sand if they fall off the island.

It's island of the essence. It's a small island, and the mayor is basically just lamenting of like, the leaders. The elders are the real leaders of the island because they live old enough and know the oral history that gets passed down to them and become elders. I'm basically just a figurehead of a mayor who doesn't really have any power and that the elders are trying to hide miku away from everyone else. And this redhead guy that's sipping hard for her, he's like, you're not a puppet. And even if you're a pretty good puppet, flowers, I love you.

You're not a puppet. You're a good one. You're a muppet.

Ralph the dog, the first muppet.

He's the best one.

He's so good. And while he's romancing her, he notices. Hey, there's something shiny coming up behind that island that we got miku from. What's that, another island? And as we see the island come around, like, these two islands are just, like, rocky and, like, natural habitats and stuff. This one's just, like, pretty much a battleship. It's like a war fortress just riding around. And then we see a ship floats out from the sand by the field workers, by sammy. And Chocolate sam is like, oh, is it the sand dolphin? And it just keeps floating upwards, and it's being used by their telekinesis, and it opens up. Surprise. They're clown soldiers. Do you expect clown soldiers in this anime? They should have. And they open fire on all the field workers, and sammy dives in front of choker Road to protect him, blocking him from all the shots, killing her in the process. Meanwhile, miku says to Ponytail that they're all criminals and they are being targeted. Got you. That's episode two.

Great.

So let's hear some more stuff, talk.

About the fire nation attack.

So we open episode three with miku again, telling the ponytail man about the attack as it's going on outside. And she's like, I'm so sorry. And then the clown mask men hop down from the ship. They murder some children. There are so many kids just, like, standing around in this field. And then the soldiers are also just kind of standing around, and then they just decide to kill people when it's convenient for them, I guess.

Yeah.

Our orders are to kill people about once every five minutes.

Yeah, let some get away.

I got a quota. I'm not an overachiever.

So the mayor woman, taysha taisha, she yells down to some kids. She's like, Get out of there. And then one of the masked guys pulls out a gun and shoots her. And then we see a group of kids. They spot a mask guy, and they're like, oh, let's rough him up. I bet he came from that island where the miku girl came from. So they go over there to intimidate him. But then another clown mask man comes out, and they get attacked. One of them dies, and then oni, he's still in his cell, and he's like, Let me out. There's something going on, and I want to get in on it.

I smell blood like a shark. I need some for me.

I crave violence.

People are getting killed, and I also want to do that, get killed. Yeah. End this. So we see the mayor and her boy toy. They both look dead, but it turns out she's dead. He's not. But sammy is dead too. But Chuckereau lived. And we hear inner monologue time of his writing. He calls them murderous angels. They showed up to attack clown's.

His armor, he thinks they're so cool, like sephiroth. Yeah.

He's never seen a clown before in his life. ooh. So stylistic.

Take notes.

So he carries sammy with him, and it's like a sad moment where he's carrying her, and he's like, you're not actually that heavy. I'm sorry that I said that yesterday. And then he drops her and cries over her dead body. And the elders, they kind of are in, like, a building that's, like, high above the rest of everything, and it's being attacked. And miku stops some of the clown mask guys from attacking chakra by using some of her magic. And then we see a mysterious guy from the other side, the bad side. He's got bangs. And it seems like he's, like, recording the history. I don't know. He's just sitting in an office. So miku runs out to attack some of the clown mask men. Ponytail man goes out and sees a bunch of crying children. And there's a woman who's like we haven't talked about her. She's like, part of the council of younger, unmarked people. She's got buns. She's got three buns in her hair.

Yeah. She's in the student council.

Yeah.

I genuinely don't remember this character.

Yeah, I think I kept mixing her up with the mayor. I was like, there's too many politicians in this adventure show.

Yeah. And it seems like she just like I don't know if she's a nurse or I don't know. But she tells Ponytail that tasty had died. So she is crying. And she's like the elder lady. Yeah. And she's like, the elders haven't given us any direction. I haven't heard from them. So Ponytail Man, he says it's time to protect the city and that he's going to negotiate with these people who are actively killing all of us. Yeah.

He does a line where it's like, you can't use violence against your enemies. It's like, I strongly disagree.

I see. He's a Democrat.

Hey, in this situation, bud, you might.

Want to there wasn't a discussion. It was just open genocide, like at the drop of a hat. This isn't talk worthy.

Yeah. So the group of kids from before, they're still all standing off with the masked guys. Another one tries to attack them and get stabbed. somebody's got to get stabbed. And one of them is like, the way they use thymia. It's like killers. And I was like, yeah, they're fucking killing people. They killed two of your friends in front of you, bud.

I'm starting to think they're not on our side.

Yeah. Get with the program.

Looks like someone's not getting a box of apple juice at snack time. It's like, cool, I killed your family.

So at this point, oni comes out of the shadows, and he laments about the outside world. He's like, if this is what it's like on the outside, I don't know if I'm about it anymore. And he's had it. So everyone is gathered, everyone on the island. And a girl shows up and says she's a vigilante and that the vigilantes are ready to protect everyone. But Ponytail still doesn't want to attack because you know, who wouldn't? taisha. But you know what else? She's dead.

She's dead because she didn't attack.

She's dead because she got murdered by these people.

Let's try it again. That's how science works. Keep doing the same thing, eventually you'll get different results.

Yeah. So he sees oni fighting with the mass guys up on a bridge, and he sees well, he gets blood splashed on him. So he knows that blood has been spilt on both sides now. dang it. So we watch oni kill all of them, and it's pretty violent.

I was thinking, like, because ponytails with, like, the defense force or the vigilantes were like, the guards who just have sticks, like, just long sticks on. He's out there single handed at, like, killing a platoon by himself. It's like oni's making you look like chumps. He's getting shit done.

But Ponytail is very upset by this. He doesn't want violence, so oh, my God. I'm barely through this.

Yeah, this is a dense, long episode.

Yeah. So Chocoro is still sitting with sammy's body. He's, like, holding on to it. The masked guys haven't attacked them.

Him just chill for a while.

Yeah.

Hit the quota.

They're on their way. And then some other kids come out, and the clown mask guys turn their attention to them. And then Chakaro begs them to leave the kids alone, but they're still advancing. So he uses his powers. He's had enough. And he starts fighting one of them, and they fall flat on their face. So their mask comes off. And he's got the same skin color as miku. That's what he says. That's from the show. That's what he says.

He's a vocaloid too.

Yeah. So he's like, oh, they must be both from their soldiers from that place. So then miku uses her powers to stop some of the guys, and they're going to attack her. But then one of them says to stop, and he talks with her, and he's like, oh, I'm surprised you're alive. And he asks if anyone else survived. Survived? And then tells her to come back to the army. And she's like, no, I'm tired of being emotionless. I want to feel something. And they're like, you need to get back under the control of Nose. And it's then we find out that she's the younger sister of the supreme commander of this mission. Oh, jeez. So she gets upset, and she's like, he didn't even care about me anyway. He didn't come to find me if I was alive. So she runs away. She says she doesn't want to be a doll without a heart anymore. And she runs into Chakaro, and he's like, who are you exactly? Tell me now at this point, because things are getting pretty weird. And then another masked person runs out. But they're like, not emotionless. They kick the soldier that's down. And then they hug meku. And he's very pretty. He's got pink hair and yellow eyes, and he's fucking nuts. So I think he's fun. This character is the first fun moment I've had so far. I love characters like this.

Yeah, just like the sadistic sociopath. Yeah, well, full on psychopath, I would say.

Reminisce.

He's very excited that she's alive and that he gets to murder people.

Yay reminiscent of Adam from skate.

Yes.

Hey, this guy objectively a piece of shit. I love him.

I love him.

He sucks so much. So now I'm just thinking about Adam and the Pet play. Did you guys know there's Pet play? Anyway, we'll come back to that. So he sees tabby's body, and he's like, wow, we can even kill cute little girls like this. And Chakaro lunges at him, and he pins him. Well, the pink haired boy pins Chakaro, and he's like, you're crying, pussy. And he's like, I want to kill you too. And then miku stops him before he can hurt Chakaro, saying that he won't let that happen. And he wonders if then he can kill her too, if she's being disobedient. And then the big battleship docks, and there's like a voice that comes out and says, hey, come back. nisha accomplished. We've captured these two places, so you're finished.

It's literally like the Lord commander's gesture. He's got, like, a silly hat.

Oh, is that who says that? He comes out in a minute?

I think it is, anyway, but yeah.

Ponytail shows up, sees sammy's dead, and I'm pretty sure she was his sister, so that's sad. And then pink hair boy asks some soldiers what they're going to do with miku. She says she doesn't want to go. And then that's when the gesture boy comes out, and he's like, hey, I work for your brother, and you're supposed to stay here, and we're going to call you sample number four from now on. yay.

Been demoted from soldier to test subject.

Yeah. So they leave. A pink hair guy goes to see orca, who is miku's older brother, and he thinks it's pretty cruel that he's sacrificing his sister. And he's like, well, he says, I don't care about running the country. I have other missions. Okay. Hospital time. oni comes in asking for medicine, and he tells the bun lady and that one guy whose children died, that's his only character trait?

Yes. The most identifiable feature.

Yeah. He says they're going to be back in a week. This time they were trying to capture some ship, but next time they're going to be attacking the ship itself, I don't know. And he says that he killed some of the guys in the group that was attacking him. But the other two, he got them to talk. So the one guy slaps him, upset that he tortured them and did that. And the little girl with oni is like, Why are you upset with him? He got the information. And then oni is walking away, and the other guy is like, hey, hand over the captives to us. You can trust me. And oni is like, I only trust my friends. And then the next day, the next morning, there's a funeral for everyone who died. And people aren't supposed to cry, but they cry anyway. They can't help it. And I think that's fair. A lot of people died yesterday. Ponytail says that sammy was the reason. He wanted to find a way to help the marked people live longer, which is a thing I don't think we mentioned, but that's something he's been doing. He does research. So now he's like, now what? I have nothing to live for. And he gives chakra sammy's hair ribbon. And then chakra is admiring how beautiful the day is and how he wishes he could just remember this moment and nothing else. And that's episode three.

Yeah, I like how the guy says, we're above using torture. You can't torture. We got like 500 some people on our total population, and probably about 150 to 200 of them are dead now. So torture torture is available. We can torture people.

Yeah, so that's what happened in this show.

There's a lot going on here, especially in this last episode, going real gory and dark. It feels like book three or four in a young adult adventure series where they try to start making it grow up and like, Harry Potter just everyone's dying in that last book. It has that same sort of like, oh, shit, this got dark real quick sort of feeling to it. Built on top of a lot of lore. Just way too much going on.

Yeah, we kind of made chickpea already. It really especially with episode three, really felt like and then the Fire Nation attacked the air. nomads, like, yeah, that's what happened here.

Yeah, this is pretty much avatar, a group of people, find an isolated person, bring them back to the village, and immediately attacked by a metal ship with soldiers that uniforms are just clown. Fire nation soldiers. Like black metal armor with white face masks. Yeah, that's the Fire Nation literally use red magic energy to attack them. It feels like someone doing gritty avatar fan fiction.

A little bit high fantasy au.

Yes, exactly. So, yeah, I was digging it a little, setting up, like, oh, this is going to be a fun adventure series. We have to go find the other islands. Great. Cool. And then they started introducing, like, genocide. I was like, I don't know about.

Me not feeling it. So much anymore.

Genocide isn't a show tough you want to casually bring out.

Yeah.

There was just so much happening all the time that I was just like, I wish I was interested. I wish I cared.

I am interested. It's interesting to see an entire population with a set of powers and the people that rule them are the people without those powers. Like the 90% of the people that have. Like, that is interesting, but it makes sense with the age thing. But then it's also very clear. It's like the elders know the real history of this island and are keeping it a secret from everyone else because they just live longer. It's like cool. I'm guessing they are a group of people from this empire civilization that were criminals and either escaped or were exiled to this island. And it has been so long now that they've created their own civilization and society. And now the empire is coming back, being like, hey, Australia, we're going to fucking kill you. It's like, why we didn't do one. And maybe because they have the power. Well, no, everyone in the empire has those powers. So you're like, I don't know, but yeah, it just seems like yeah, another totalitarian empire trying to invade small, little peaceful nation that wasn't doing shit. Cool. It was really pretty funny. I probably will keep watching it because it is short and knowing like, if this was like a 57 episode series, it's a lot to ask, but it's the short. Like the normal length of like twelve to 13 episodes. Like, we're already quarter of the way through.

And I would say after these episodes, maybe there's less introductions of things.

Well, we killed a lot of people, so there's certainly less characters.

Yeah.

Yes. I will say there was no place to bring it up. But when corduroy is fighting the soldiers in the field, their weapons are just a pike with a ball and chain on it. Like an old timey prisoner ball and chain. That is insanely incompetent. Like, that does not work. I don't know why that exists. Nothing about this weapon makes sense. And it really just bugged me how.

It takes to swing like a halberd pole weapon, but also add like a weight that is constantly shifting and pulling it off course.

It just broke my mind of like, why did they think this would work?

Pretty a nice looking world, a fine world, building like concept. But then they kept building. They kept building. Oh, no, it's a skyscraper. It's getting over. Just too top heavy.

It feels like the spears. It's a pretty top heavy and unwieldy.

Yeah. Like with avatar, it's like, okay, magic is elements. Cool. You got that? Great. Okay, now let's continue from there. This is too much. Like, they're being drained by their magic, but they're trying to research different world just too much.

Yeah. And I don't like media that kind of drops you in the middle of it where it's like and we talked about it before, where it's like, don't you already know this? And it's like, no, I don't. It's episode one. I'm sorry.

Stop scolding me. You're giving me, like, a textbook to learn in 20 minutes.

Yeah, I've noticed the difference with this because Jiblie movies do this a lot, where it'll just throw you, like an als moving castle. They don't explain the shit. Like, there's magic fucking go with it. And there's a difference with that being just thrown into it and the world behaving naturally as it was versus being thrown into a fancy world and having your Navy fairy from Legend of zelda explaining everything. Like, hey, I know you're 35 and have already lived 35 years in this world, but let me explain the basic elements of it to you. It's like, what?

A lot of telling and not enough showing?

A lot of lecturing.

Yeah, the localization was pretty bad, so I assume it's pretty much just fully translated and not, like, adapted. But yeah, it feels extra wordy and also not delivered the best. So I'm sure that also makes it feel extra. It's already mostly exposition, but it feels like exposition because they didn't dress it up at all.

Yeah, this is interesting. This and cancel where they just fucking go running at full force with no explanation of fucking anything.

Yeah, we found our two extremes.

Yeah, we need a middle ground.

Yeah. Not the biggest fan of this one, but what do we have going on next week?

Sorry, jess. Next week. Sorry, jess. Next week. We got another big one following in the footsteps of cowboy Bee Pop. This one's been on our list forever and has been recommended to us a few times. So it's not necessarily a recommendation from a listener, but ribbon Quest listener recommended when we should watch this date to when we watch it. And I thought, hey, that's a good idea. I don't know what better time to bring this one up.

We love a date specific theme here.

It's almost too unwieldy to just cover it correctly. We're going to get yelled at regardless, so fuck it. Let's go with this date for Father's Day. We're watching neon genesis evangelion.

It's happening. I've never seen it. I'm mildly excited.

I've watched it all. I think last year I watched it all. So I will be able to escort us through the actual absolute buttfuckery that is oh, boy. It's a lot. We're doing episodes one, two and three. We're not getting too deep. Just warning any listeners.

Now, if you, the listener, have a recommendation, you can send it to our email arwibtheret@gmail.com, or you can reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram at areweebetherette on both. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Mr. Patrick dugan.

You can find me on Instagram at Honey D on Twitter at honey d eight and Honey dart. That's what they are on twitch at honeycode. And honey is spelled H-U-N-N-I-E. You can.

Find me on Twitter at abts. Brendan. It stands for almost better than science, which is a video game podcast I also do. And I was able to get my socials correct this episode.

Thank you to camille ruling for our artwork, and thank you to Louis zong for her theme song stories. You can find all of louie's music at Louisong bandcamp.com. Thank you and we hope you'll join us next week as we learn to live with anime.

See you next time.

Oh, my god. Oak Pinocchio's inside the whale. I got to see you back in.