English Dub Review: Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World- “In The Clouds”

Life is an uncountable mass of tiny deaths, and the survivors are the stronger for it.

Overview (Spoilers)

Kino and Hermes happen upon a merchant camp in the higher altitudes. Before we see what our heroes saw, we see the story of the merchants. Recently, they did business with a priest who led a religious town. Though they were often good business, this time, the town lacked the money for the grain. Instead, the priest traded an orphan girl as a slave. The merchants treated her terribly: chaining her to the wagon, beating her, and insulting her with their every breath. The only person who was even close to being nice to her was the hired guard. What astonished them was how she refused to hate anybody or resent her treatment. She abides by the laws of her town, which treated hatred as a sin. Even though others would plot the deaths of their captors, she would allow these merchants to kill her with a smile. The women of the camp send her out to wash some herbs while they cook dinner. As she does, she realizes that the herbs are poisonous. And the merchants are eating them! At first, she hesitates. These are terrible people, right? But that would make her a murderer. She speaks out to warn them, but it’s too late. They’re already eating it, and it’s only a matter of time before it kills them. Wracked with guilt, she tries to eat a bit of the stew herself, but one of the kids knocks it out of her hands. He then turns around to his father, and asks for permission to beat her to death as a means of “getting strong”. She finally snaps, her screams sounding high and clear in the mountains. Just as they are about to leave the table to silence her, the poison kicks in. Everyone in the caravan collapses and dies except the guard, who didn’t eat much. He sits to the side, his guts rotting away. He gives the girl his gun and tricks her into shooting him to end his pain. The freed slave girl is called by a voice in the truck. It is a small motorcycle named Sou. He consoles her and convinces her that not of the events of the day were her fault. The two of them ride off with all the merchant goods and start a new life.

Our Take

I actually enjoyed this episode, after a few that I’ve been unenthusiastic about. The story focuses on the debate between whether people are intrinsically good or evil, and whether hatred is wrong. On one side, you have the intrinsically good slave girl, and on the other, the merchants. Yeah, I didn’t shed a single tear for them. Little herb, thy name is karma. It is a sad story, to be sure, but it’s awfully heavy-handed. The merchants aren’t just abusive. When the son of the leader rears his smug face, the show spotted a shark to jump and asked how high. The boy asks to buy her for the express purpose of killing her and lays out his plans to do so. Not only is the town not horrified by this behavior, but they actively approve and commend him. The story has gone out of its way to establishing that these people are evil. They aren’t unbelievable as such. This behavior has been seen before in America, in the slave-owning states. Still, it’s pretty heavy-handed as a way of establishing them as evil, while pushing up Photo as a good person. It makes her less believable. As an audience, I’m still astonished over her feelings of guilt over the lot of them dying. Gonna be honest, I’d probably let them all eat the herb and be done with them. No guilt. It is good that she has the moment of wanting to let them die because it shows she isn’t just a goody-two-shoes.

The actual dialogue was good, and the ADR writing got everything pretty much spot on. There was no point where I felt like the voices weren’t believably synced. Greg Ayres was great as Sou. He sounded like a young Hermes (Derick Snow), which fit well for the smaller motorcycle. The stand out voice, however, was Brina Palencia as Photo. She was more than the monotone, recessive character I’ve been used to hearing out of Brina. There was a good depth to her during her breakdown near the end, and her scream was chilling. Keep it up, Brina. I’m a fan. The art on the episode had some good style. The merchants all had strange noses, which distinguished them from everyone else we’ve seen. You could see the desperation and pain all over Photo. I was also impressed by the punchy animation during the mass death scene. The background was all read, but the characters were animated in black and white, leaving all the color as transparent. It wasn’t smoothly done, but the roughness of the animation made it feel more raw and brutal.