“Mixed bag” is about what comes to mind for me after that episode of Orb. But that’s a funny term – context means everything. Depending on where you’re starting from it could be a grave disappointment or a big step up. As such for me this ep was an improvement. There was stuff here I really hated, but mixed with some better moments than we’ve seen in a while. Last week was probably the low point for the entire series, so the baseline was set pretty damn low.
On the heels of those preposterous developments last week anything Nowak had cooked up this time was going to be taken in stride. I mean sure, I wouldn’t have expected him to take what Antoni had done lying down – if it made no sense to me it certainly wouldn’t make any to him. In this series guys about to die are big on making posthumous plans – that pattern has repeated itself over and over starting with Rafal. Nowak’s is to kill Antoni and burn the church down so everything gets blamed on the heliocentric heretics, discrediting them. Like I said, it all comes in stride at this point.
Draka and Nowak each make their speeches to camera, and then Nowak executes his stratagem. He stabs Draka on the way out but she removes the knife (which pretty much seals her own fate in the circumstances) and stabs him with it before escaping. The big dramatic flourish here is the return of Rafal, in the form of a self-aware illusion conjured by Nowak’s dying brain. The simple truth is that Sakamoto Maaya’s voice just makes everything better. Playing women, playing boys, singing, it doesn’t matter – just hearing hear makes things better. And so it is here.
Of course this is also a reminder that Rafal was a much better character than anyone in the show now. But having him around for a few minutes elevates the experience. What drags it down is that – inevitably – Nowak gets played offstage as a sympathetic character. Fuck him and fuck that. Who cares if he felt bad (effectively) killing a child all those years ago? I knew we were headed down this road so at least I wasn’t surprised, just disappointed. In point of fact it seems Nowak knew that the leader of the Heretic Liberation Front was Jolenta, which at least means he can carry the weight of her death with him.
There is one area where this really works (in addition to some beautiful imagery), and it’s the way Nowak’s death is juxtaposed with Draka’s. He had it coming and I never cared about her one way or the other, so their individual ends carried little weight. But it was fascinating to see a devout believer and what I think you’d call an agnostic face their final moments. This was poetical and profound in a way Chi Chikyuu can be and always could. In that moment, all are equal. Faith, skepticism, wealth, poverty, it all goes in the hopper – what lies ahead is a true unknown and that’s what makes it so terrifying.
Any series that can deliver moments like that cannot be dismissed out of hand, no matter now much it stumbles on the road between them. Now, with two episodes left, the story does what it always does – casts aside the dead and moves on to the next in line. And for the first time it seems we’re looping a real person into the mix – Albert Brudzewski (Ishige Shouya, a familiar face at Madhouse this year). Albert was an important figure, especially as a teacher (Copernicus himself was one of his students). Here we meet him in 1468 as a 23 year-old baker in Krakow, then Poland’s great metropolis. But little is known of his life before arriving at Krakow Academy, giving Orb a blank slate to fictionalize his role in the events to come.
The post Chi.: Chikyuu no Undou ni Tsuite (Orb: On the Movements of the Earth) – 23 appeared first on Lost in Anime.
