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Has anyone watched this anime series? I just watched the last four episodes last night, and would like to discuss the ending.
If you like serious anime and haven't watched Wolf's Rain, I highly recommend it. Interesting characters, a compelling plot, beautiful animation and a good soundtrack: it's got it all.
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I still must watch the ending. But isn't the music Lovely? It's by Yoko Kanno, who, if she isn't married should marry me.
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I loved the series up until the OAV episodes, which I thought violated previous characterization of one of the leads in order to make him a traditional villain.
Plus, the "Gotcha!" coda annoyed me. Yeah, Yeah. I get it. Paradise is unattainable on this world, there will always be bad tainting the good, in the end everything dies.
I just found the handling of it trite. (In those last 4 episodes. I had enjoyed the non-OAV ones.)
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quote:Originally posted by Puffy Treat: I loved the series up until the OAV episodes, which I thought violated previous characterization of one of the leads in order to make him a traditional villain.
Do you mean Darcia? If so, I disagree. His sanity (what there was of it) had been slipping ever since Jaguara killed Hamona. Then he had Jaguara's poison in him, so he was dying. I don't feel that his actions in the last episodes were out of character.
If you don't mean Darcia, I'm not sure who you mean.
quote:Plus, the "Gotcha!" coda annoyed me. Yeah, Yeah. I get it. Paradise is unattainable on this world, there will always be bad tainting the good, in the end everything dies.
I don't know that that was really the coda. They basically come out and say that at the beginning of the 27th episode: something along the lines of "each world is a Paradise that someone else opened." At any rate, I felt that there was enough foreshadowing of the end that I didn't feel cheated.
I need to watch that ending sequence again, but I didn't see Tsume anywhere in it. Did I just miss him, or was he really not there?
Darcia spoke of wolves that had turned human and forgotten how to turn back; I wondered if that is what happened to Kiba and the others in the new world. They also seemed to not know each other anymore, and that was what really made me sad.
It was certainly a bittersweet ending, but it worked for me.
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My take on the ending was that Paradise is the search and the quest itself. Remember, when Kiba got stuck for some time in the false Paradise? It was false because it was stagnant, nothing ever happened there. As long as the wolves keep searching and recreating the world, that is Paradise.
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The Nobles are so awesome. What would happen if the goths became the ruling class. The Nobles are kinda like the Elves... ageless beings living on the remnants of their once powerful civilization... living so long that the world began to die before they did. And instead of trying to save the world they just try to preserve small pockets of it... and in the end their quest for a Paradise that would freeze their moment of time... to preserve but not to grow. Very tragic but beautiful in a way.
And besides... they really knew how to dress!
As for the ending... I love the sense of doom that is everywhere. You really get the first true notes of that doom in "Pieces of a Falling Moon".
The episode opens with chaos. Lady Jaguara’s military continues its conquest of what remains of the world. The various peoples are evacuating, by force and by choice, to her City. The world is ending and soon life will be impossible on the surface. Only Jaguara’s city, the last fully functioning dome and site of the opening of Paradise, can save what remains of Man. Nighttime falls and ominous shooting stars fall in the freezing sky. Pieces of the Moon itself...
In the OAV Lord Dacia uses the last of his ship's power for one mega strike on the Tower of the Seal...he looses his ship, the last remnant of our high technology, something I personally found very emotional. The whole Light and Shadow battle begins... you cannot have goodness without evil. Paradise is opened but Darcia's Eye remains to taint perfection... and what does it create?
OUR world. The fallen paradise is our reality. The Wolves from Kiba's pack have forgotten that they were Wolves, or perhaps have become pure Human. Toboe likes cats, Tusme can ride a motorcyle, Hige well...he's still eating. And we see Cheza as a pure flower, hidden in an ally. And the opening song, so strange and not fitting with the series at all, becomes clear... as Kiba runs...searching for Paradise and his friends again.
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Huh. You're right, that is Tsume on the motorcycle. The first two times I watched it I thought it was Blue. I blame OSC; apparently Magic Street got into my head enough that when I saw a black-leather clad person on a motorcycle, I thought it was a woman.
It makes more sense that Tsume would be there rather than Blue. After all, the water destroyed all of Darcia except his wolf's eye (probably the coolest death scene ever), so it would have been surprising if Blue had made it to Paradise.
As I was driving home yesterday, I did come up with the theory that since Kiba and pack have appeared in our world, it's time to open a new paradise.
The last bit, with the scenes from the modern city, felt a bit like waking up from a dream, or finishing a really long novel. I really liked it.
Interesting comparison with Tolkien's elves. I'll have to think about that one a bit. Do you think, if the elves had chosen to remain in the world rather than leaving it, they would have become as corrupt and destructive as the Nobles?
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I think the Elves very well might have become like the Nobles. Tolkien said in one of his letters that we can consider the Rings of Power project as the Second Fall (or at least error) of the Elves. Because the Rings of Power in effect highjacked the will of the Gods, to recreate the bliss and timelessness of Heaven on Earth.
As Tolkien says:
"But the Elves are not wholly good or in the right. Not so much because they had flirted with Sauron; as because with or without his assistance they were 'embalmers'. They wantd to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle-earth because they had become fond of it (and perhaps because they there had the advantages of a superior caste), and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasurance, even largely a desert, where they could be 'artists' - and they were overburdened with sadness and nostalgic regret."
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The Wolves from Kiba's pack have forgotten that they were Wolves, or perhaps have become pure Human. Toboe likes cats, Tusme can ride a motorcyle, Hige well...he's still eating. And we see Cheza as a pure flower, hidden in an ally. And the opening song, so strange and not fitting with the series at all, becomes clear... as Kiba runs...searching for Paradise and his friends again.
