The thing about Chaika’s, man – apparently there’s more than one of them?!
It turns out that not only is there more than one of them, there’s potentially several Chaika’s running around out there! While our heroes have postulated that it would not be uncommon for the late emperor to have had many wives and thus many children, there are not certain as to the true origins of the Red, more capable Chaika and their own demure white Chaika. Just what is going on here?
Again, the show has proved that time and time again it can entertain the hell out of me. What we had was a classic juxtaposition / stockholm syndrome with the reversal of two Chaikas. Neither group of saboteurs is really so bad as they are just on opposite sides of the same goal – both want the same thing and are inevitably going clash over it. These episodes do raise a good question though – how many other Chaika’s are out there gather the emperor’s remains? That, uh, “remains” to be seen for the moment (god please kill me).
Gillete has also been taken off the task of catching Chaika as the rulers wisely ruled it a “waste of time” (Thank god!) so now our own Chaika is free of pursuers…except every other Chaika. Yeah, I may have forgotten about them. I somehow also doubt that Gillete will let himself be taken off this task so easily – my bets are on him going rogue. We’ll see for sure.
Toru and Akari are really awesome. I love how the show just lets them be themselves without force-feeding their personalities down our throats – this leaves a lot of room for some naturally character development and lets the viewer form a bond with them in their own way, all the while forming their own conclusions about what type of people they are and what they value (as opposed to having this explicitly pointed out for you rather than shown). So far the show nails it in storytelling, character building, and pacing – how can it keep this up? That’s a question better saved for next week!
