Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Kiba – episode 21

August 24, 2006 on 6:22 pm | In Kiba | 3 Comments

“An Unforgettable Memory”

or

“Roia goes out of character in the pursuit of a story!”

The modeling of this episode implies to me that they’re not even trying with Kiba any more. The key audience is now clearly people who don’t know how to stop themselves, and will watch regardless of quality.

Spoilers (courtesy warning, because as if you care)

With the discovery of the horn on her shoulder, Roia decides that she’s from Task. Sadly, she’s too stupid to ask Jiko a direct question about her heritage, and he’s too stupid to come out and say what she needs to know.
Yes; turns out that Roia is wanted by Task … for killing.

For the sake of making Roia an idol, the first parts of this episode have her being some kind of crazed person who cares for shard casting glory all of a sudden. You get the very strong impression that she has simply been a tag-along until this point in the story and as such we don’t have a real feel for her and I, at least, am incapable of feeling empathy for her cause.
In the episode’s “defence”, I realised that Jesara and Despara are separate characters, in that Jesara is Roia’s mother and that Despara wants to destroy Roia. For whatever reason, I had transferred all of the positive characteristics onto Despara and discounted the existence of Jesara.
Although it would be really funny if my memory was serving me correctly, and they had just split what was one character into two. I don’t think I’m that cynical, though.

Essentially this episode is an exercise in frustration at characters not expressing themselves in an expedient fashion, with disastrous results involving green haired guys. I can’t believe we have to go back to Task again before we even think of touching Neotopia. Stupid Kiba.