English Dub Review: Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World- “Historic Country”

This episode did me a chuckle.

Overview (Spoilers?)

While eating a hot dog, Kino is overcome with a memory. A time when her master was cooking sausages, and still managed to best her at paintball. It wasn’t Kino’s best memory, but it reminded her of a story her master told her.

Back then, Master was a traveler, and had a companion. The two stopped in a town to sell off some jewels and get provisions. It was a country with good technology and a heavy police presence. Master warned her pupil that in countries where there is this much police, the government is often corrupt. While she got the room, her companion went off to make the sale. Shortly thereafter, police officers arrived to question her. They had arrested her companion for possession of drugs, and took all the money he got in the sale of the jewels as “evidence”. She attempted to negotiate on his behalf, offering to pay them to let him go (since they were obviously crooked), but couldn’t pay enough. In the end, she left the country, taking his super-secret case as he asked. It was loaded with gear an assassin would use. Under the cover of night, she infiltrates the city, laying bombs and starting fires. With the police otherwise engaged, she rescued her companion. Strategizing afterwards, the companion figured they should lay low in the city until the gate opened and they could leave. Master had a different plan. Instead, they raided the armory and storehouse, and sealed themselves inside the clocktower that served as the government headquarters. Any police officer who got close took a bullet to the knee. The stalemate continued for several days, with the government ground to a standstill. Every attempt by the police to force or intimidate them out was met by a hail of precision gunfire. Eventually, the officers began surrendering. They offered the pair a free out (refused with gunfire), then a big car to leave with (blown up with a rocket launcher). It was only when the government gave them a copious sum of cash that they agreed to leave.

Kino and Hermes continue on their journey, arriving at a country with the same description as the one from Master’s tale. A plaque had been erected in the courtyard around the clock tower. It commemorated two travelers of justice who “led the people” to “reform their corrupt government”. Kino also noticed that most of the older men walked with canes. Hmm. Hermes wonders what would happen if Master were to visit the country now. The very thought fills Kino with dread, and she looks behind her in fear of her Master being there…

Our Take

The big point of this episode was to introduce Kino’s Master, and hint a bit at her grueling training methods. We get a sneak peek at how awesome her Master is, and perhaps will see her again in a later episode. Other than that, it’s a funny story, and I enjoyed it.

However, There is a pattern that emerged a while back, and it is becoming a go-to tale for this iteration of the show: Corrupt governments and the travelers that single-handedly quash them. Four of the episodes thus far have either had overthrown a government as the main plotline, or as the country’s backstory. Today’s entry in the mix, though hilarious, is unrealistic in the extreme. Anybody tried doing what they were doing, they would die long before the police gave up. Snipers, infiltrators, grenades… there are a million ways to take back that clocktower from two people. As much as the rule of cool says that they can do this, it is a departure from the reality the show quasi-clings to. Or does it? It’s easy to take the Master’s word for her own story, then say the corrupt government revised their own history to make themselves look better. What if the truth lay somewhere in the middle? Master may have fudged her own story a bit to make herself seem more terrifying. What if she did inspire a revolt, then said it was just her and her companion? What if the two of them did most of the work, so there wasn’t anything to tell about the commoners helping them? Who really moderates the storyteller? Still, I’d like the show to branch out a bit from this overthrow theme. As much as it’s obvious the writers are not happy with their government, there’s such a thing as too much.

The dialogue is smartly done, showing at least a bit of a past with Master and her companion/student. The way they talk to suggest that the two of them had been through a few situations together, though it is odd she wasn’t aware he was an assassin. If she’s really as good of a fighter, she should have noticed from his own prowess, unless he hid it. The dialogue between Kino and Hermes reminded me of that old Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, where the dog would interject with jokes and ask questions. Derek Snow gave Hermes a childlike glee at hearing the story.

The animation on the episode was of good quality, though not what I would tout as incredible. there was a good number of shortcuts, but none of them were so bad as to hurt what was going on. My big dig on the episode’s visuals was the choice to have all of the story time (two-thirds of the episode) be in sepia tone. This sort of thing works when you bounce back and forth a few times, or if the past is in short bursts, but if it’s the majority of the episode, you might want to reconsider what the focus of the episode needs to be in how you wrote it.