when its concepts were offered in a way that was sharply palpable, so enjoying the overly bashful fact that they don't really fit the present. But it can be argued that among the delay's attention to purpose despite all this time is the price of it, as it means that a number
of the revelatory twists in this episode land exceptionally strong despite the fact that the point is ready for the opposite shoe to drop. we still have to deal with some of the sad setups that are in the early stages and that come from the final episode.
The thing is, as much as Iris's worm infestation and subsequent death feel like a ruthless conclusion to the journey of weeks of viewers, I feel that the exact second itself completely succeeds. By moving away from Yuusuke's prescribed role as "sociopath" and placing the act in Tori's lap, the play presents Tori with a concern for the young and the precise bond she had with Iris, including a charge to the proceedings that the play has otherwise insisted on in these serious matters all along.
It successfully fed back into the wish that the current focused more on some of their not caring about previous members together. I was hoping for more growth for Tori? Whelp, a killer monkey paw is on offer. Once the tragic opening scene is resolved, things in this story will begin to take a much more progressive turn. Perhaps surprisingly, it is the series of songs that return from the past to the present that gets things moving. The ghost of the Dragon Serpent revealed as the mastermind behind the plot of the previous arc, is presented as a threat once again here, and Cantil from the same story returns to clarify the exact and broader implications of this component.
It's a welcome choice, as the level of the plot of the Dragon Dipper in the Jiffon arc again felt like a remarkably unnecessary overt complication. The one used here again not only provides quick access to a level that finally clarifies what the Zagroth villagers' endgame might be, but it also successfully weaves the setting into even earlier plotlines. I respect how much of the plot set up in this episode successfully entrusts audience members with moving their psychological gears with the revelations and realizations of the present. If the dragon bishops' ultimate goal is to revive a dragon, it matches the threat that Tokyo represents in the race's imagination, which Yuusuke remembers by hand.
If the group of wizards that Cantil belongs to is the one that opposes them in particular, it gives an angle of defending the world when the Heroes aren't in play and helps them as we noticed with Yuka at the end of the first season. "Saving the Village of Zagroth" then becomes a task to prevent the Dragon Bishops from getting enough magic juice to cause their dragon resurgence, finally codifying clearer win-lose circumstances for this quest. After going through a series of unfortunate events for so long, wondering where the story was going, it's extraordinarily refreshing to be taken on this psychological journey where it really does feel like everything is coming together.
It's almost as if this episode is crammed with parts that could have been more fully developed if they had been presented in more detail in previous episodes. Cantil comes in and explains the dragon bishops, the monster-feeding meteorites, and the magic bean seeds, and it's as if the writing has remembered all the elements needed to make the mechanical components of this plot work. I almost feel like explaining the next tangible step in the heroes' ultimate goal of stopping the dragon from destroying Tokyo would have been enough just by talking about the promise of an ascending endpoint to it all.
But that's an assessment of the episodes, so comparison with what came before is necessary here, so I have to admit that having all that "stuff" in this one is far preferable to fighting the pace of the arc's previous components. There are even a few fights that, aside from the familiar visual limitations of the series, make the characterizations and ideas that have been developed all the more fascinating. Torii and Iu begin to bond because he had to sting Iris, which caused him to stop a troll from devouring her. Similarly, the fact that Yuusuke in particular goes to save his companions from this fate will be commented on as a further sign that he is beginning to break out of his pattern of sulky pragmatism. This even leads to some nice continuity references; I was amused by Iu complaining about how she managed to get vocalised a second time.
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