What They Say:
Episode 13: “Grayland is in the House”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, it seems that Emily has gotten way more than she bargained for, continuing to cower in terror at what Kiri did to her. Still, it’s slightly inconceivable that Iwai, who was going to be brutally murdered by Emily, decides suddenly to save her. I guess it’s because after reading her father’s journals, she’s feeling pity for Emily. At least Iwai is not oblivious to her plight, as she even tells Emily that she’s fully aware that she wants to kill her. She picks up Emily, who is immobilized by fright, and begins to carry her out of the now-burning woods.
Of course, the two of them might not make it out alive, as Kiri suddenly appears, still completely under the psychopathic spell of Grayland. Iwai tries to talk him out of hurting them, but it doesn’t seem to work. And then it gets worse, as Kiri comes up to Iwai and basically sexually molests her. But then he cuts her hair in his animal rage and that seems to calm him slightly. The spell is over and Grayland controls his mind no more. It’s not all “yay the storm is passed,” however as there is psychological damage for Iwai. The way her hair was cut this time caused actual pain and terror. Which, of course, should not be possible as hair has no nerves within it.
And so, it must be bath time. Emily and Iwai share a bath and bond. Emily finds out about Kiri and Iwai being a item and suddenly she’s all interested in seeing how far they have gotten. I’m not exactly thrilled by how Emily went from a cold-blooded assassin to being Iwai’s cute little sister, though this development was utterly predictable. The “fanservice,” if we can call it that, in this scene was also not necessary.
While the two of them are having fun, Kiri is in the hospital recovering from his injuries. There, he is visited by Violet Witchy. She tells him about the process of making an Order Made. It’s quite horrible. They first created small-time killers and then let them breed, on the off-chance that one of their descendants would be born an Author. Thus, we know the origins of Emily now, one of only three successfully “captive bred” (if we can call them that) Authors. All of the exposition shows just how demented Gossip and its leadership is. Kiri, however, is not intimidated by her talk and vows to fight her and her Authors, using the insanity of Grayland. This does not intimidate Violet. Quite the contrary.
It turns her on.
Violet kisses Kiri full on the lips to his shock. She then wishes him luck in surviving what is to come. We get a long good-bye speech from her that sounds like a season wrap-up (which it basically is), noting that there are more trials for the two of them (Kiri and Iwai) to face in the future. For a final shot, however, we see Iwai come to the hospital to visit Kiri and get her hair cut again. The old, kind Kiri is back, and the hair cutting, done with a special ED theme playing over it, takes us out to the credits. The credits are interrupted to give us a montage of future events, some that look far more interesting than anything that has happened during the course of the series.
Series Retrospective:
Since the source material goes well beyond the point where this season’s anime ends, it was clear that we would get not an ending but a stopping point. That sense of being incomplete comes through entirely in Violet Witchy’s ending monologue. Whether the producers hope for a future season to tell more or are just making it clear that there is more to tell and that one should go to the original manga to see what happens next, is not made clear. For now, they have lowered the curtain.
While I was initially skeptical about the premise when I first learned of this show, the early episodes did much to dispel my nagging doubts as it did a decent job of creating a world with a certain logic to it, fantastical as it was. It was silly, filled with mind-boggling aspects and utterly beyond belief, but at least it had established a tone of dread and horror that made sense. The problem with this series is that it then fell prey to some poor execution, whether on the part of the anime adaptation staff or owing to the source material itself (I do not know, since I have not read the original manga this is based upon). While it had campy elements from the start, it went overboard with it at times while also including aspects that were far too creepy or, frankly, borderline disturbing to sustain an honest feel of camp horror. The S&M student council vice president and her arc went too far in the direction of camp. Both Nakajima the self-proclaimed judge and Emily the toddler assassin went well past the point of entertainment into the viciously psychotic department at times. Then there was the over-sexualization of the very underdeveloped Iwai, made worse in the final episode here with Emily who is even younger, getting too much bath time focus. Really unnecessary. Finally, there is the by-now notorious urination scene earlier on in the series. Looking back, I’m not sure if the producers’ intentions were to make us squirm…or laugh.
It was the unevenness exhibited throughout the season that is the most memorable thing about it. It’s as if they wanted their audience to squirm, laugh, and feel sickened. All at the same time. Emphasis seemed to be centered on shock value more than telling a good story. To that extent, there was a severe underuse of characters who might have contributed to livening things up or to provide some respite from what were, in the end, rather formulaic and repetitive encounters between Kiri and the other Authors. After spending some time introducing the Byouinzaka sisters, for example, we rarely met them for the rest of the series, only having them appear as useful plot devices (Houko is used as an exposition delivery service on the point of the silver coins; Yamane is brought out as a medical device to temporarily cure Kiri after he had been seriously injured by Emily’s Opener). Similarly, Kiri’s school friends get some effort and time expended on introducing them, only to ignore them for the most part except for use as plot and exposition devices (Nigi is there to tell us about Grayland; Kashiko’s main purpose was to show how Kiri came under the influence of his Killing Goods while at her mother’s salon in a flashback showing us about Kiri’s awakening before the series began).
While obviously the encounters between Kiri and the Authors out to kill Iwai were the central focus of the show, they ended up being rather repetitive, as I said before. Author comes and threatens Iwai. Kiri tries to channel (and in the end does fully channel) the destructive power of the Crime Edge. Enemy Author is defeated, sometimes through death sometimes not. Rinse. Repeat.
I’m not sure I know of any way out of that trap, other than to spread out the encounters and provide more world building or character development in between. There was some attempts at that with Kiri, mainly centered around his becoming more like his psychotic ancestor so that he could better defend Iwai. Little was done to provide growth for the other characters, and most importantly, the main villain, Violet Witchy, remains little more than a caricature. An over-sexed, depraved, psychotic caricature. Then again, most of the characters are similarly shallow. Perhaps the producers recognized the shallowness of the characters and decided that the best way to handle that was to focus on the fights and distract us from how little depth there was to the whole work. It didn’t work, as this tactic only helped to highlight it to some extent.
After an initial period of interest, this show worked as hard as possible to make me less and less taken with it over the course of its run.
Episode Grade: B-
Series Grade: B-
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
