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Rescue Wings – episode 8

June 15, 2006 on 11:37 pm | In Rescue Wings | Comments Off on Rescue Wings – episode 8

“The Journey of a Young Boy (part one)”

What’s three months between episodes between friends? It’s kind of a long time, actually, but let’s not harp. Rescue Wings is back, and as necessarily contrived as it’s ever been.

Uchida goes biking up Midoriyama and meets what appears to be a teenage runaway. The teen, Yoshioka, has a bike that wouldn’t be able to withstand making it up the mountain, so they catch the ropeway together. In traditional Rescue Wings style, the ropeway car has a fault and stops 100 metres past the gate. Then the winds pick up. For Uchida, it’s going to be one of those days again.

The episode doesn’t give a good sense of Yoshioka’s character simply because he doesn’t say much of anything: he’s an observer of the people around him at the ropeway station. As is further tradition in such a disaster situation, you get several disparate types on the ropeway car, including the old married couple, the newly formed step-family, and the middle-aged punk with girlfriend. Their broad strokes seem to represent something to Yoshioka, who appears to come from a family paralysed by the loss of its mother/wife.

There’s no point complaining about contrivance in this series because if you had a show about military rescue in which no actual military rescues were carried out, you wouldn’t have a military rescue show at all. This episode is the preparation for the second half, which is mercifully enough already out. I’ll be right on it, with almost as much proactivity as Uchida in a crisis situation!