English Dub Review: 18if “And Now There Are None”

Where did this episode come from, and where can I get more?

Spoilers Below

Um, Wow. I’m gonna lead with having to pick my jaw off the floor.  The art and animation on this episode is MIND BLOWING. The whole thing looks as if it is in CG, but the textures and filters put over it makes the whole thing so soft and kiddy, as if it were made of construction paper and colored in colored pencil. As things start to get darker in the story, it begins to build the characters and sets as if they were puppets or toys. Once the story resolves, and the heroes exit the witch’s domain, the art returns to the normal character models, but the animation and style has improved by a parsec. So, if just for the visuals, if you haven’t watched this episode, go. Go now.

Courtesy: Funimation

This story leads off with Haruto answering his door. A little robot wants his help getting to his friend Nene, who is the tallest tower in the land. He has to do so before the flower wilts, or she’ll be gone forever. Haruto, mysteriously turned into a scarecrow, agrees to help along side Dr. Kats, who is now a plush lion. Teleporting through the robot boy’s memories by way of magic cards, they relive his life prior to being a robot. He was a prince named Pol. He and his friend Pot moved to a new town and met Nene at school. Hmm… Those names sound familiar… Anyways, after they rescue a kitten from the street and bring him home, the three are the closest of friends. Pol vows that when he becomes king, his kingdom will be warm and welcoming to all.

Courtesy: Funimation

However, the story takes a dark turn when the kitten gets run over by a car. Pol runs to his rescue but nearly gets killed himself. He and Pot are whisked away to protect them, and for Pol to learn how to lead his country. However, he is too isolated and doesn’t understand the problems of his starving people. Robot Pol, journeying through his mindscape, finds himself chasing after Nene’s spirit in the machine tower, which reveals itself to be a rocket ship. A rocket ship headed straight into some trippiness, and a portal to the emotion of Anger that is shaped like the moon. On the other side, he finds himself chasing Nene again, this time through paper doors. But, Nene is not happy to see him. Pol was not a good king. While his people starved, he ordered mass executions of those who opposed him. He even executed his best friend, Pol. Nene can’t forgive him, and her hatred transformed her into a witch in the dream world. She turns the rocket ship around, now a missile dedicated to destroying their happy childhood memories. The dream ends shortly after impact, with Nene finally waking up. She wants to meet with the tin man…

Let’s unpack all this, because there is a lot going on here, and it doesn’t all make sense. First, this is referencing the Cambodian despot Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot. while he ruled Cambodia, he instituted a policy called Year Zero, where all of the original culture and government is wiped away, and the new government starts fresh. They forcefully evacuated everyone from the cities and forced them to work in agriculture. Afterwards, many of these people either died of starvation because their rations were drastically cut, or they were forced to dig their own graves and were buried alive. His rule killed between two and three million of his own people. And, at the end, in order to save his own skin, he ordered his right-hand man executed. Nice guy. Oh, and that right-hand man, Son Sen, looks exactly like Pot did in this episode. Even his glasses. Further, as Pol begins executing people, they are shown as puppets. In reality, Pol Pot accused those who opposed him of being puppets of the Vietnamese. Here, he is shown stamping execution orders blindly, until he comes to Pot’s. This is similar to real events, where Pol Pot claimed that he didn’t actually order all of this, and it was his advisers and officials that did things without telling him.

At the end, Nene appears as a puppet, but also in the form of a Jiangshi. This is an undead monster in Chinese folklore. These are often times angry ghosts, or zombies reanimated by necromancy, who steal a person’s chi (life force). This has an interesting connection with the next episode’s title: Threshold. In feng shui, you must install a six-inch wooden strip along the bottom of the door into the house. This prevents a Jiangshi from entering. It may be that what we saw was not the ending at all and that the next episode is a two-parter. Maybe Nene has used her control over the dream world to take control of her real body again and plans to assassinate Pol. That would be crazy. It would also give this story a proper wrap-up.

When we reach the end of the story, Pol realizes his friend is nowhere around and… the dream simply ends. The Witch wakes up with no real explanation of why. Did she just want to tell him how she felt? If so, is that really enough to drive her to become a Sleeping Beauty? After starting so sweet and turning so dark it just… ends. I hope that is because it will continue. This episode was really good and broke its formula while staying true to its core concepts. If the rest of the show is this good, I will gladly forget its shortcomings from the previous episodes. I give it nine pairs of broken glasses out of ten.

SCORE
9.0/10