[DreamSword]

Episode 9: The Price and the Meaning of Power

See, I know the cheap tricks this show is up to in order to try and garner sympathy.

Unfortunately for it, I did not infact forget the events of the previous episodes and I've seen this style of storytelling done way better in other shows.

See, this episode is trying really hard to make you feel bad for and side with Malek; Going into his backstory with Amanda, as well as him realizing, without any sort of big provocation, that murder is bad.

But like alot of things with Blassreiter recently, this is shattered by not only having Amanda insist that none of this situation is his fault(atleast half of it is), but instead blame herself(when there's really nothing she could've done), and then ontop of that having Malek seemingly die.

Now, while death certainly can be dramatic and yes, it can work as a form of redemption in terms of certain character arcs, when it comes to characters like Malek, all it really does is serve as a cheap way for the writers to not have to actually write Malek putting forth any sort of effort to redeem himself. It's cheap. It's shallow. It fulfills nothing.

Because here's the thing, believe it or not, I don't feel anyone is truly irredeemable. Sure, someone shouldn't be just instantly forgiven, especially if they do something completely heinous(Akane Shinjo), but I really do think that people have the ability to change. The main key being if they show the desire for self-improvement, and then actively working to achieve it in true earnestness.

The effect is cheapened in another way too; in that I highly doubt Malek is actually dead. Why? Because when Gerd and other Amalgams died, they dissolved into the air, and Malek hasn't. The show is trying to get us completely caught up in the moment and be concerned for Malek, when there are multiple reasons not to be. Heck, I felt alot worse for both Amanda and Hermann in this, because they've been shown to actually have redeeming qualities ontop of highs and lows in their lives up this point. They have layers. Not many, but they do.

That's also not to say that a story can focus on writing for and fleshing out doomed characters; Casshern Sins does this type of storytelling brilliantly, and it came out the same year that Blassreiter did, ontop of being another show headed by Kobayashi. Makes me think once the production of Blassreiter ended she felt like she could do it better, thus leading to Casshern Sins, one of my personal favorite anime. Casshern Sins achieves this by having really tight writing, great atmosphere, and having a host of compelling and likable characters. All things that Blassreiter doesn't have.

I know I'm coming across as really harsh, especially given we haven't even hit the halfway point yet, but here's something else to keep in mind: This show is only 24 episodes long. This isn't like your average Shonen or Kamen Rider season where they have 50+ episodes to work with. The shorter a runtime you have, the tighter and much more on point your writing needs to be, because there's alot less room to fix mistakes or expand upon various points of your story. And just to hammer to comparison home, Cassern Sins is also only 24 episodes long, and managed to do everything Blassreiter hasn't been doing in half the time.

Oh yeah, we also got introduced to the Big Bad this episode. He's the dude in the first screenshot. He reveals that Joseph is a hypocrite, as it's heavily implied that Joseph wants revenge on this guy. Not that that wasn't already apparent from the entire Gerd situation.

This episode wasn't out and out horrible, but it really failed to have the impact that it tried to, and it's just sad, really.