Giant Beasts of Ars

Episode 8

Outside of a few minor hangups, this episode is a very exciting push to ratchet up the tension as we head into the final stretch for the season.

Most of the episode focuses on Kumi and her clone fighting in the past and present, with Mezami orchestrating villainy throughout. The child experimentation element is as chilling as you would expect (and as it should be), with grim recitations and captives forced to knife fight one another in the scientific thunderdome. Mezami is as quintessential a villain as they come: he's willing to do anything to achieve his ends and raise a glass to toast his success all the while. As if that doesn't make him unlikeable enough, he even pesters the attendant who's there to observe and report on the experiment's progress, chasing him out to the driveway and nagging him even as the window rolls up on the car.

There's also a nice bit where the fights mirror one another. In the underground bunker, Kumi almost loses as her twin goes to stab her. In the field, Kumi almost loses again, but this time the outcome is more disastrous. I liked that Kumi ultimately won through sacrifice and opening her eyes to the truth of the world, and the resulting explosion made for great drama when all seemed to be going so well.

My issues with the empire bits remain: the scenes continue to feel too distant, despite this being the first time we actually get some meaningful explanation/connection with what happened to the mountaineers. Also, Facade is an odd villain and his power is strangely framed to boot. We're led to believe that Jiro is supposed to be at a huge disadvantage when Kumi leaves since he's dropping off in power and Facade was almost winning before. But then Facade almost loses anyway to the underpowered Jiro due to a pretty basic “aha, I turned my weapon backwards” maneuver. It's a shame this half of the fight lacked any meaningful tension when the Kumi/field scenes were so strong.

Rating:

Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

Giant Beasts of Ars is currently streaming on HIDIVE.