[DreamSword]

Episode 10: Puppet

I felt this one was overall fine, though its execution felt a bit weird to me.

Basically, it brings up alot of concepts that it doesn't really fully dive into, and I'm not sure if it's meant to simply be a stepping stone episode or not.

Made weirder for me because I actually rather liked many of the aspects brought up in the first half: Koga and Kaoru's' fathers being connected, Kaoru's' fondness for her old teddy bear she had as a child, and the Horror's' gimmick.

It reminded me alot of a similar plot that was done in an episode of Legend Heroes, and while I had some minor gripes with that episode, GARO here goes in an entire different direction both from LH and from what I was expecting, and I didn't really get much out of it.

See, given how the episode opens, I was suspecting that the Horror's' power of bringing people's' inner thoughts to the surface was either going to result in Koga and Kaoru fully opening up to eachother, or alternatively the episode would talk about how while there are thoughts that they keep to themselves, not everyone "wears a mask" as it were.

But it was not to be. The whole moral dilemma that the Horror brings forth is instead refuted with "humans are liars, but oh well" which I mean, valid take I guess, but it's not exactly emotionally satisfying, ya know? And that's not even getting into how Rei is suddenly brought in in a way that frames that the second half of the episode will be about him, but then it isn't. He's instead just kinda there to show off how he transforms different from Koga.

I also wonder the artistic merit of having the monster clown make Legend of Zelda noises as it fights, but it's a giant CGI monster so anything goes I guess. Heck, on that note, both this Horror and the one in previous episode aren't even established characters -- not really. Especially in comparison to almost every episode beforehand, which, granted, they aren't the main focal point, so I'm not trying to harp on it too much, but it is a bit of a letdown after GARO has shown how well it can balance character focus and development so many times before.

In the end, the episode itself is overall just fine to me. The Kaoru stuff was engaging(though I question how that publisher had Kaoru's' old teddy bear), and the plot hook about her dad being connected to Koga's' is a solid one, but the rest of the episode was just kinda whatever. Not a bad episode, but not one that's a super standout either, and I really do hope that it's more meant to serve as a building block for future developments rather than its own standalone sort of thing, which I'm sure it will be used as one, but still.

A step up from last episode at least.