Splitting timelines.
What They Say:
Episode #5: “That Which is Not Wholly Abandoned”
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Yuri has a lead on Mage’s last known location, and they head off to another abandoned city to find the place where she was last seen. On the way to that location, the assassin discovers them once again and the hunt resumes. Volker has an item he wants to pick up in the run-down town anyway.
The place they end up is a museum, and one with a history to Derrida. He went there once with his father, a memory he’d forgotten. That causes him to remember much about his childhood that he’d chosen to forget. The respect he once had for his father turned into contempt at some point, but we really have no idea why.
Derrida’s memory seems to be faulty, and not just because of the time travel. I’m having a hard time believing that he’d forget how he looked up to his father as a child. I can believe that a childhood trip to a museum would be forgotten to time, but the emotional attachment to a father? The show didn’t do a particularly good job explaining why Derrida wasn’t getting along with his father in the present day, so repairing that relationship with one conversation feels strange. Once again, this series is having a hard time creating a real emotional bond with the viewer, and in a show that relies on a rescue as a plot device that’s a very big problem.
We learn in this episode that Volker used to be a cop, which explains a lot about where his combat knowledge came from. You don’t just survive a robot apocalypse without some sort of training. I still question his bringing his daughter with him everywhere, even if he’s leaving her in the car. It’s only a matter of time before that assassin lady uses that against him, especially since they drew blood this episode.
The key piece of information we get in this episode is that the blips in time Derrida is having seem to create a small effect on the future. When I say small, I mean small. Yuri’s camera breaks yet for some reason it is unbroken after Derrida’s latest slip. During that slip he tried to warn his father about the assassin’s about to attack both of them but it’s to no avail. The future refused to change, but why? Is time a flat circle beyond minor, non-consequential details? Also, how does this time slip work? There are still so many unanswered questions in this series.
In Summary:
Derrida’s quest to find Mage continues, but the future refused to change. He’s mostly at the mercy of other people’s actions and help, while suffering from the effects of whatever ‘Ange’ is doing to him. Derrida’s time slips are becoming more pronounced, but how they work is a mystery. The incremental changes to the past don’t always affect the future the way he would hope. He tries the drastic measure to stop his father’s murder, but it amounts to saving Yuri’s camera instead. If Derrida was a stronger lead, the show might be more engaging, but right now he’s not particularly engaging and it drags everything else down with it. I’m still curious as to how the time travel aspect is going to be explained, and that alone is keeping my interest.
Episode Grade: B –
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
