Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Kiba – episode 3

April 22, 2006 on 11:04 pm | In Kiba | 5 Comments

“The Ones With Power”

Try as I might, I can’t bring myself to dislike Kiba. Even this episode had some interesting concepts and exciting uses of cool new skills. Overall, it was an episode that one can apply lots of adjectives to.

Although whoever is writing Zed’s dialogue needs to be shot.

Zed is taken by Roia to train with Dumus, the man who had beat him into submission in the previous episode. The most effeminate bishounen in the land, Robé, hears of Zed’s reputation and invites him to one of his ridiculous parties.
Stumbling home from the party, Zed finds that Dumus runs a hospital for people who can not be treated in town for whatever reason. The normal reason, of course, is that they’re actually members of the Jimoto empire. Then, an obvious development occurs!

Everyone is comparing Robé to Allen Schezar, but where Allen had goals, ambitions and concerns, Robé lives as a playboy of the vainest order. For extra points, however, they’re both played by Miki Shinichiro.
Robé is incredibly girlish to look at, and hugs his manservant by “accident”, but beyond that he’s an arrogant man and a grand lord of mixed messages. To be number one in the people’s heart is all he needs; none of this “official champion” rubbish.

Robé is not the true focal point of the episode; that honour goes to Dumus and his sick people. Dumus displays that he has an awesome number of shard powers, including the ability to hide underground (seen in episode two) and the ability to eavesdrop. I think that his eavesdrop is important; it was interesting to note that, while he was moral enough to heal members of the enemy ranks, Dumus didn’t trust them for a second. Naturally, his distrust was rewarded.

One of the flaws of this sort of show is that they say something stupid in the early episodes, like “only very few shard casters ever get a spirit!” and thereafter literally every shard caster in the series is beholden to a spirit. It’s petty and annoying, and shows an incredible lack of forethought.
The other flaw is that Zed is a freaking moron. Every time he sees someone manifest a spirit in front of him, he says “Is [X] a shard caster too?”.
NO ZED, EVERYONE CAN MANIFEST THESE SPIRITS THAT ONLY VERY FEW SHARD CASTERS EVER HAVE A CHANCE TO POSSESS. Moron.

After what I’d read, I was expecting pure boredom. It’s getting to be quite troublesome that I’m finding myself enjoying this show.