Kiba – episode 20

August 16, 2006 on 11:46 pm | In Kiba | 5 Comments

“Reunion”

or

“Noa versus the Squid Faces! Old friend or new foe?”

How many times can one character die? As many times as narrative dictates, apparently. A vaguely interesting story of the value of religion among beasts, and an incredibly obvious hint of what is to come for Roia, are contained within this not exactly tour de force of an episode of Kiba.

Spoilers

The beasts decide to sacrifice Roia so that they may revive their god, Tasker. Roia won’t hear any of that, and has “subtle” memories of her mother.
All the while Hugh is on the lookout for Zed, and Noa’s on the lookout for Kis.

The first signal of cleverness in this episode is that Neotopia have “prison shards”: easily trackable shards that they implant in prisoners. It makes the whole exercise much easier for reclaiming criminals but, at the same time, it makes one wonder how Kis managed to find his way to Tempura before he was found.

The second is the structure of Task: to an outsider, it looks like its king is a beast, but the true governing body is made up of humans who have installed a series of rituals to keep the beasts in check. With the promise that, if they sacrifice enough shard casters, their god Tasker will be resurrected, the beasts are going to be obedient in hopes of seeing that day. The one problem with being a human living in Task is that you must wear a stupid mask at all times, but surely that’s only a mild discomfort to suffer for the sake of ruling over a nation of hideous morons.

The big “revelation” of the episode is that Noa has a key spirit, Sachura. It’s not really a revelation, because we’ve had this hinted at since he killed everyone everywhere he went back in the day. Like Miki under the influence of Dumas’ spirit, Noa couldn’t control the power. All of that changes with the mystical intervention of Neotopia, who have mind control vegetables at their disposal. They can control Noa and, consequently, he can control Sachura.
With this shock and the implication of Noa’s sheepishness, we then get Kis’ second death!
Stabbed! Right there in Task! If he comes back from the dead again, after having only been kept alive so that he could be killed, I am not going to be happy. It must be tough to exist as a character that has to die twice to indicate a change in Noa’s character. Poor Kis. Poor entire nomad tribe except for Sagiri.

The other small thing of the episode is the revelation that Roia comes from Task. It’ll be just like that time when Peter Parker grew two extra pairs of arms: she’ll get over it.

5 Comments

  1. Man, it’s all the retarded, implausible character “developments” that are really killing the show for me. If some plot device is genuinely messing with characters’ heads, the show needs to be more explicit about it so that the people don’t look like idiots when their personality shifts radically. Sadly, I suspect there’s no in-story reason, and Kiba just has terrible writing 🙁

    So yeah, Noa stabbing Kis was genuinely shocking, exactly because it’s so implausible 🙁

    At least the plot’s gotten a little more interesting.

    Also, Sachura looks cool. I kinda thought he’d be more gold-colored though, since his silhouette reminded me of Ra.

    Puronimo is easily the least cool of the three Key Spirits, in both her appearance and her name. I mean, “Puronimo” sounds like a horse or something. I’m probably thinking of “Palomino”…

    Comment by MechR — August 18, 2006 #

  2. Haha, soon you’ll find out that Noah didn’t stab Keith (why is everyone calling him Kis or Kees? that’s like leaving Sumisu as is ^_^) to kill him but instead to remove the tracking shard. So he’ll live to be “killed” again yet another time.

    Unfortunately that even sounds like a plausible development, lol. I’d rather that Noa kill him for whatever brainwashed reason than have some take-back BS happening repeatedly.

    Noah’s spirit is very cool, though.

    Comment by Walter — August 19, 2006 #

  3. Forgot to say that I like the key spirit “sync” sound effect more and more every time I see/hear it. It sort of resonates with me. No wonder Hugh is hell-bent on getting it for his private rave party, lol.

    Comment by Walter — August 19, 2006 #

  4. I should probably put on “anti-spoiler” things. Although now I’m not even sure if that’s for serious. Also in the instance of Kiba I don’t particularly care.

    When names are in Katakana, you can never be sure. “Kis” sounds to me cooler than “Keith” because “Keith” is a pretty lame name.

    Comment by Alex — August 19, 2006 #

  5. That was definitely not an actual spoiler, I just made it up. I thought it was obvious from the way I said it sounds plausible ^_^;;;

    Comment by Walter — August 19, 2006 #

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