English Dub Review: Darwin’s Game; “Fireworks”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Kaname and Rein put their heads together to come up with a strategy to outwit The Florist with their limited time and space. 

Our Take

Let’s briefly go over the little bit of new information we learned from this episode. Notably, using a Sigil takes an energy toll on the user’s body, as we learn from Kaname and The Florist at the end of the episode. This enacts a somewhat stricter time limit on these battles; more so for the physically average Kaname, though, as more combat-experienced players can probably go for hours. 

The other big reveal is the details of Rein’s Sigil: the ability to observe the mass and momentum on every object she sees, effectively allowing her to predict the physical future. This is obviously an incredibly useful ability, giving her a highly distinct advantage in many physical confrontations. It’s also appropriate for her character: a shrewd girl who prefers wielding information and running away over fighting. The use of her Sigil is portrayed by time slowing down, with all of the objects in the room leaving outlines behind them as they move. This entire effect is accompanied by a liberal amount of bass-drop sound effects which this show seems to love overusing.  

The exacting details on everyone’s Sigil being exposited highlights their importance in the battles in this show. A surprising amount of depth is revealed through them during the confrontation in this episode. 

Backed into a corner, Rein and Kaname come up with a sound plan to combat the seemingly omniscient Florist. Rein causes a distraction and lures all of The Florist’s thralls to the upper floors, where she is able to deftly dodge all of their bullet with her Sigil. Meanwhile, Kaname descends to the lower floors to find the security control room where The Florist is hiding. 

The Florist soon emerges from his den and has a quick exchange of semantics with Kaname. The Florist tries to pick Kaname’s brain a little by asking for his motivation, his own being greed. As expected by his outburst in the previous episode, Kaname has understandably little patience for this. 

Kaname conjures the LMG he had encountered earlier and opens fire, but The Florist grows a suit of armor made of plants and tree bark. I expressed this sentiment before in the review of the previous episode, but this show is just getting started and I feel like we’ve already reached the weird end of the superpowers spectrum. We’ve gone from prehensile vines taking control of corpses to a primordial tree-man withstanding bullets and grenades, all in the span of about twenty minutes. I think I saw a person wielding ice powers in the opening animation, so this might just be the tip of the iceberg here.

The Florist withstands everything Kaname throws at him and pushes Kaname back into a corner. Facing his potential demise, his inner voice emerges once again in the form of on-screen text. This time, instead of a lone flame, the voice is accompanied by the clanging of a hammer on steel.  With these two images, the form of Kaname’s inner voice becomes one cogent image: a blacksmith forging weapons, an occupation befitting his Sigil. 

From this conversation with the deeper part of himself, he comes to realize the full extent of his powers. Not only is he able to recreate any object he has touched before, but he is also able to completely understand it’s structure and can alter it upon recreating it. Utilizing this new knowledge, he crafts a bandolier of bullets for his LMG, this time making them slightly heavier than normal to increase their firepower. With this, he successfully guns down The Florist.

Now completely at the mercy of Kaname, The Florist decides to spill all of his beans. He has a daughter and a heart condition, which could serve as potentially justifiable reasons for his greed. The Florist’s motivations don’t matter to the inherently passive Kaname though, so he is spared. Furthermore, his motivations normally wouldn’t matter here anyway, as an antagonist on his deathbed. However, it seems they might become a bit more relevant, as the plot as other plans in store. 

Rein shows up to deliver her two cents on the situation, which, as the resident all-knowing analyst of the game, is worth much more than that of the other two. She had been collecting information on all of the other players in the event this entire time, and only now decides to inform them that all of the strongest players in the event have already thinned the herd and have collected most of the treasure. This ostensibly means that she, Kaname, and The Florist have been wasting a lot of time and energy over what is relatively very little. 

And now said stronger players are headed straight for them, which forces them to form a hasty alliance. Let’s hope Shuka shows up in time to assist them as well; otherwise, this probably won’t go very well for them.