"Hey, you know what would be fun? If we made a backstory episode that explains nothing and raises even more questions!"
Oh, Ganiax. I remember back at the beginning of the season when I was really excited about this show and couldn't wait to see where it would go, and now... it's just gotten really bland. It's not that I'm mad at you, Ganiax, I appreciated the basketball scene that showed how incredibly straight Huey and his poetry writing BFF are, but otherwise this episode was a snore. It might be because this is the second to last episode, so despite finally officially introducing the last two characters, there's not much that you can do with them at this point. Or maybe it's because your animation budget is obviously failing, with the most sparsely animated aerial base I've ever seen. Or it could be because the episode failed to even accurately explain the basic premise it was working off of. They were best friends, but then Huey was suddenly betrayed? Let's not explain that! Why does the character of the week want to keep fighting? Because death allows him to write bad poetry! No, wait, he actually died a while ago just before getting married to a woman we never see! And that's not even mentioning the article that inspired him to fly which he memorized despite not knowing how to read. ("A Flying Machine that Flies!")
The only thing that was mildly interesting about this episode (aside from the aforementioned heterosexual basketball scene) was the explanation about how Phantom Books are made. This explains why the duo have been causing trouble and possibly their overall goal, but this was only lightly touched on and the plan to turn BFF's bad poetry into a Phantom Book ultimately failed, so all this led to nothing. Then you wrap up with Huey lighting stuff on fire in front of a no smoking sign and then, oh look! A scene from the first episode! Basically, I don't think that this is the backstory episode that most of us wanted. It was so convoluted in some areas while obviously lacking in others to even be somewhat entertaining, like the earlier episodes before the format wore thin. So while I'm not mad at you, Gainax, and I don't hate Dantalian (unlike a certain other show this season), it's turning into a train wreck of boring proportions. Or maybe you planned it that way all along and will unleash one of your famous endings on us. I'm thinking that either Huey will turn out to be a Phantom Book, or the entire episode will be a loop of Dalian eating bread. Either of those would be more coherent than this episode.
Images from NicoNico.com.
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