Without a question, that was the best episode of Darwin Jihen. Which is great for the few of us still watching it, and a non-entity for everyone else. In fact we’re getting to the point where the manga really starts to find its narrative footing, which makes it all the more irritating that the anime only has 5 more episodes remaining. It’s also interesting that this was probably the most low-key episode so far, though it wasn’t entirely free of violence (and the threat of it).
I think there are a couple of reasons why the series arcs upward from here. For starters, the plot tightens up and becomes more elegant in the way it unfolds. We also start to see a little more clarity in what the series is trying to say, and the questions it’s asking. Which has been a little muddy up to this point if we’re honest, albeit in an interesting way. More people in the murky middle take a role in the story, with less of a focus on the black and white poles which tend to oversimplify difficult questions.
Deputy Graham is obviously one of those people. He came into this with a vendetta based on what happened ten years earlier. Which is kind of understandable, really. But he’s not stupid – Phil is capable of revising his worldview based on new evidence presented to him. The question is whether any of that matters. For all that it gets wrong about exurban America (which on the whole is less than one might expect) Darwin Jihen is correct in that once opinion hardens in a place like this, it’s very difficult to change it (which is very Japanese, actually).
Another commonality Shrews has with Japan is suspicion of “outsiders” (and let’s not even get started with haafu). And it doesn’t get any more “outsider” than being a different species. After the school shooting the townsfolk are fed up, and Charlie and his family are the obvious scapegoats. When folks “posse up” as ringleader Ronnie Schultz calls it, it’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle. But Schultz himself is sort of caught in the middle. He’s one of those influencers small towns like this always have, and in his way he’s trying to keep this from exploding into an even bigger conflagration than it already is.
What Schultz is doing is still wrong, that’s the problem. As Graham (a friend, clearly) says, going after a scapegoat isn’t going to solve anything. Schultz says that doesn’t really matter – the mob wants blood and they’re going to get it. And Phil is wrong too in trying to get Gilbert to move his family out of town – they have every right to be there. Yet can one rebut his point that if they want to protect Charlie, they’re in probably the worst possible place to do it? It’s not like the FBI is going to help – school shootings are a dime a dozen to them. They’re only here because they can use this one as cover to kidnap Charlie back to Quantico.
I think the climactic conversation between Graham and Stein is about as close as we’ve come to The Darwin Incident clearly spelling out its raison d’être. Graham says that Stein’s problem is that he sees the world as it ought to be, not as it really is. Stein counters that change is the only constant in history, and you can either ride the wave or be swept away by it. I won’t for a moment compare this series to Vinland Saga in terms of depth or subtlety, but it is musing on the same concept to an extent. As I put it in discussing Thorfinn’s quixotic life, “History changes because of people who reject the notion of impossibility and aim for something strictly because it should be done. They fail most of the time, but often they drag a resistant world a little ways behind them in the process.”
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