[DreamSword]

Episode 8: b0y

The scenario that gets the ball rolling on the plot is a little contrived, but I'm willing to let it slide thanks to all the great character interaction this episode offers.

Essentially, tensions are running high after the events of the season 1 finale, resulting alot of debate between Taylor, Hayley, and Mei over what exactly to do about Boy, the situation they're in, and their own moralities and insecurities clashing with one another.

That's all fine and good. The contrived part is that, despite having the raw strength to tear Kaiju Hounds apart, Boy apparently doesn't have the strength to crush a Kaiju Tick the size of his torso.

But again, minor, because the arguments between the main trio stretch all throughout the episode, and even when they come together to help Boy by searching for a Kaiju researcher that Mei used to know, nothing is just cleanly resolved right then and there.

And ya know what? I'm all for it.

Because the thing is, not only is the conflict true to all the characters at their core, but everyone involved actually has a point in what they're saying. And that is incredibly rare in terms of the stories I've experienced!

Taylor and Hayley both have their own forms of optimism and sense of doing the right thing, just aimed in different directions. Taylor of course is focusing on his sworn mission to protect Hayley and find their parents, and he does have a point in that there's no telling when Boy could go berserk again and kill them all.

Hayley, meanwhile, still firmly believes that their parents are long gone and points out that Kaiju or not, Boy DID protect her, both against Copperhead and against Apex(the Kaiju Jaegar); She's focusing on her found family rather than her biological one, and thus can't just leave Boy for dead.

And as for Mei, she's taking the "realist" approach to the whole thing: Ditch both the idea that Boy isn't a danger and that Taylor and Hayley's' parents are somehow still out there, because the Kaiju wasteland has claimed almost the entire population as it is. In her way, she's essentially telling the siblings to go and live a safer life on their own, rather than continue to struggle for all of this extra baggage that, frankly, alot of people wouldn't even find worth it.

It all made for some really engaging character drama, which more than made up for the fact that this episode was about 80% talking. Good stuff!