アニ・ノート

Tower of Druaga is full of mysteries. I am a bit intrigued, but god help the creators if they use them for sequels. This time we learn a little bit about the mysterious duo of ghosts (I call the blue one H1 and the tan one H2), but not too much. H1 always was cold. H2 talks about waiting for special someone and informs Jil about Neeba getting into a pinch. So I’d say they are something like opposite halves of Ishtar.

Dunno if this is significant, but here’s the list of people who recognized the end of the summer: Gilgamesh (duh), Ahmey (!), Parsuz, Kelb, Neeba, and… Kaaya. Oh yes, she sure has an agenda, check out this face:

Regretfuly, Druaga suffers from the generic face syndrome. I only distinguish H2 and Kaaya because of the ghost glow that surrounds H2. On the other hand, Kaaya has awakened H2, so maybe it’s all right.

Plot is coalescing towards the final showdown (ANN says only 12 episodes are planned, not 13).

Looking at it the other way, the chessboard is being cleared of extra pieces. But don’t worry, Coopa is still with us.

Kurogane is not happy about YouTube versions of [Tower of] Druaga which started to pressure viewers to use Crunchyroll. According to him, the Druaga 10 used the upper letterbox space in the 4:3 YouTube window to advertise Crunchyroll, and Druaga 11 is truncated and ends with an offer to see the full episode at Crunchyroll.

This looks like a good time for me to say something about superiority of actually buying the episodes (I spent 1100 BOST points, or about 22 U.S. dollars thus far), and to lampoon Kuro’s cheap-ass lameness. But I won’t. What Crunchyroll is doing is just nasty. The deal was to show the series for free on YouTube. We don’t know why GONZO agreed to that, and the deal made little sense to me, but since they did, they should have followed through with it. Now we know that either Cruncyroll or GONZO is not trustworthy (if GONZO made the decision to truncate the episode, it’s them; if Crunchyroll made it behind GONZO’s back, then the obvious).

In short, Kuro is still lame for not paying for his show, but he made his decision based on the information available at the start of the season, and was deceived. That is inexcusable and outrageous.

UPDATE: Kurogane swiftly replies, with objections to the adjective “lame”. Numbers he’s giving for DVDs are pretty bad, although being in Malaysia he could have watched at BOST (the only country locked out is Japan, due to GONZO’s deal with Goia). Keep in mind that BOST sells DRM-free downloads, which makes $2/ep a much better deal than mere streaming would. In the end, he’s asking a key question:

I wonder if Author would’ve been willing to spend USD 70 (that’s the amount of ringgit that 22 USD converts to) on Druaga, if it were priced as such.

The answer is “no”. Druaga is not worth 70 bucks. That said, there are shows which I would buy for that much, and in fact I have (for example, I collected Azumanga volume-by-volume, for approximately $130).

Seen at Random Curiousity:

My main problem with this episode is that they spent so much time on her death and on the fight to defeat Druaga that all of the critical questions of the series still have yet to be answered. In fact, Pazuz’s death already eliminates one avenue of answers - I’m still not quite sure what he was after or what was in those caskets, and now it looks like we may never find out.

I didn’t think about it too much, because I mostly was thinking about making a post on Ahmey and her legacy. Personally I suspect that the creators rely on the connection with the game too much, or, as the silly wiki says, “It’s All There in the Manual”.

Kuro scooped me today, so go there for precise spoilers. But honestly, is anyone surprised that Tower of Druaga continues? This is exactly the thing GONZO did with Vandread. God help them if they reach for the 3rd part though.

By the way… Anyone remembers Gascogne? Unfortunately, GONZO cannot repeat themselves here, because Ahmey expired very definitely. She’s more of Kamina, I’m afraid.

Finally, a few short notes:

• Final battle was quite exciting.
• What the heck was the water rat?
• Gonzo is feeding shippers.

QUICK ROUNDUP: Aira posted a suspiciously short item with a bare minimum of facts, and murdered me with the grammar:

ニーバとカーヤに予定通り裏切られてZAP。

Umm… Neeba and Kaaya… planned road… betraying and then ZAP. For the life of me cannot remember what the verb-rareru construct means. It’s either someone made someone do something, or a passive (something is done to someone); neither seems to fit.

Omni writes:

[I]t’s incredibly frustrating to see virtually nothing get explained […] they tease with the mysterious girls and then with Gilgamesh at the end.

I thought it was made clear that H1 (blue) was the lover of Druaga, and H2 (brown) that of Gil, made into ghosts as a side effect of the Gil-Druaga boss battle.

UPDATE: I think that for a dead secondary character, GONZO is loading on Ahmey too heavily. Consider this:

What does that even mean?!

UPDATE LATER: There’s a review at Shameful Otaku Secret (I guess the love of Druaga qualifies these days).

INFORMATIVE UPDATE: J.Greely e-mails:

-rareru is passive. X+toori is “following X”, often used in phrases like omotta-toori, “as I thought”.

So, “as planned, (someone) was betrayed by Neeba and Kaaya, and then ZAP”. The episode summary on wikipedia says, “Neeba and Kaaya end up betraying Jil”, so I’m pretty confident. :-)

Coburn’s analysis was a fascinating reading, but I cannot help thinking that Ahmey offers more. It can be just a prank by GONZO, but I’m haunted by the kerchief on the water. Surely he must see Ahmey’s dramatic role? Perhaps he was just tired by the end of the long essay.

With the Eva streak happily over, The Pink Sylphide turns towards Druaga, The Tower Of. The entry lacks screencaps, but it should be easy to fix…

The more lines Ahmey speaks, the better she’s revealed to be as a character. She’s the experienced one, even if she’s otherwise a person of few words.

He has a good eye to see it just after three episodes.

Yes, despite the above.

Kaaya’s intention of saying her kid brother shows she’ll do her best, no matter how laid back she and the rest of the group (with obvious exception of Ahmey at times) is (assuming her reason is the truth, something she doesn’t make easy to determine).

Gee… what are odds Kaaya’s lying? I think it was obvious that she had her own agenda ever since her dialoge with Gil[gamesh].

Took Fatina longer to figure it out. Too long.

Jil may feel shot down, but Kaaya’s the one for him.

In theory, yes. But the story is more twisted than may be expected. Here’s a non-spoiling spoiler for Christopher:

I say this is non-spoiling because of the damn poster in the every OP where Fatina leads her party as Jil’s opposite number.

UPDATE: There’a final review, pretty good stuff.

It must take a special effort to write a review of Druaga and not mention the role of Ahmey (should I complain to Impz?), but an interesting perspective all the same.

The review at Sea Slugs does not stray far from the consensus, but adds the following observation:

I giggled at how the three groups stole moves from the Star Wars movies in trying to take down Druaga like he was an AT-AT or AT-ST.

Not sure how intentional it was, but heh.