Review: Steins;Gate Anime

In Short:

Steins;Gate is a 2011 anime by White Fox that follows the humor and tragedy of self-proclaimed mad scientist Okabe Rintaro as he, and his friends, get in over their heads when they accidentally create a time machine by hooking up a cellphone to a microwave. Steins;Gate features great characters, witty dialogue, one of the better time travel plots around, and easily one of the best English dubs in all of anime.

Steins;Gate has a unique, desaturated art style that may not sit well with anime fans used to more colorful works. It is also one anime where you cannot use the “three episode rule” to determine its quality. Instead, it takes nearly twelve episodes for it to put all its pieces on the board. But, once it is finally ready, it goes all out for a thrilling, non-stop second half.

Suggested Minimum Watch: 3 episodes. You can’t give up on the show until Kurisu is made a lab member. But really, you should watch till episode 12…

Full Review:

Okabe Rintaro, or “Hououin Kyouma” as he prefers to call himself just because it sounds cooler, likes to pretend he is constantly engaged in a secretive, high stakes battle for the future of humanity against a fictional group he calls “The Organization”. He often speaks in a grandiose, self-important tone, deflects scrutiny away from himself by pretending to get urgent phone calls as if he is a secret agent, and he likes to assign meaningless norse code names to his mundane tasks and projects as if he really is the mad scientist he claims to be.

In reality, Okabe is an intelligent, if slightly eccentric, university student with a decent sense of humor who lives in a tiny second floor apartment which which he calls the Future Gadget Labratory. He and his best friend, computer hacker and fellow student Itaru “Daru” Hashida, frequently hang out together and come up with silly inventions in their spare time. Although he can in no way be called normal, Okabe mostly keeps up his mad scientist act for the benefit and delight of his childhood friend Mayuri Shiina.

One day, while attending a lecture on the possibility of time travel, Okabe is pulled out into a hallway by genius university student Makise Kurisu. Strangely, Makise demands to know what Okabe wanted to tell her earlier… which is odd because Okabe has never spoken to her before in his life. Stranger still, just minutes later, Makise later ends up lying dead in a pool of her own blood at that same conference! But, strangest of all, is that everything seems to shift when Okabe texts news of Makise’s murder to Daru. Okabe soon finds out that the events of the past day have drastically changed. In this new timeline, Makise is still very much alive. In fact, she is the one now holding a talk on the impossibility of time travel.

Makise and Okabe verbally spar over time travel theories at the lecture with Okabe coming out on the losing end. But still, Makise is intrigued enough by Okabe’s claims saying time travel is possible that she comes to visit him at his Future Gadget Laboratory apartment. Though the two frequently argue and spar and tease each other endlessly, they are both dedicated to the pursuit of science and actually hit it off fairly well despite a rocky start. The way these two characters interact is just brilliant and becomes even more so as the show moves into its non-stop second half. A scene where the more serious Makise at one point imitates Okabe’s eccentric mannerisms is easily a top highlight of the show.

And that brings us to pacing. Steins;Gate is somewhat known for its slow start, and for good reason. For the first three or four episodes, you’re kinda left wondering if this time travel thing the show seems to be built around is even real. And, if it is real, will it ever be consequential enough to carry a twenty four episode series? The constant setbacks and limited time travel successes Okabe and friends achieve with their strange cellphone activated microwave almost leads you to believe that Steins;Gate is going to be about the boring, unimportant subtleties of time travel. But that’s not the case at all!

Every episode in the first half of Steins;Gate is packed with good character moments and interesting plot developments, even when those developments are occasional subtle. As an example, Okabe and friends at one point early on try to prove they can send messages back in time by attempting to win the previous day’s lottery. It’s a classic time travel trope. And their plan works… except the person they send the winning lottery numbers to gets them mixed up and they don’t end up winning after all. That’s the sort of thing that keeps occurring in the first half of Steins;Gate. Except it’s not the whole story.

The closer Steins;Gate gets to it’s half way point, the more show ratchets up it’s level of tension. Things that seem innocent or incidental at first keep becoming more and more important and keep intruding more and more on the somewhat leisurely flow of the plot. Little by little, the story starts to accelerate, and you do start to see major consequences caused by Okabe’s meddling in time travel. By the time you reach the halfway point you know something big is going to happen. And then it does. And from then on the show’s pace changes from lazily drifting down a stream to battling the toughest white water river rapids imaginable. You quickly come to realize that the first half of the show was like the long slow pull up the first big hill of a roller coaster. Once you get to the top, the show doesn’t stop and doesn’t let up until it puts you through a series of thrilling high speed loops and drops and turns that continue all the way to the end.

If it’s solid, exciting time travel plot is one of Steins;Gate’s strengths, its characters are its other strong point.

Okabe plays the role of pretend mad scientist with equal parts charm and delusion. He’s really not so out of the ordinary when he occasionally drops out of his crazier persona, but when he is fully in his role as mad scientist Hououin Kyouma, he can be quite egotistical and infuriating to his friends.

Daru plays a great straight man to Okabe’s mad scientist, but he can be just as wacky as Okabe thanks to his occasional semi-lewd observations and his devotion to his online video game character harem that he has to keep up with.

Then there’s Makise who really is the show’s second main character. She is intelligent and witty and is constantly verbally sparing with the goofier Okabe over everything from legitimate scientific theory to how bad she is at cooking. One of the funnest things about Makise is she’s just as much of a nerd as Okabe and Daru are, but unlike them, she does her best to keep that fact hidden. Her attempts to hide her knowledge of nerd culture lead to some of the best lines of dialogue in the series, and Okabe’s teasing, antagonistic love/hate relationship with her is a highlight of the show.

Steins;Gate also has a small cast of interesting characters who help or hinder Okabe in various ways. The stories of these seemingly minor characters are a lot more personal and fleshed out than you might expect, and actually play a larger role in the main story than you might at first think. There are some great, weighty moments that I don’t want to spoil, but check out the Dig Deeper section below if you are interested in learning more about these side stories and why they are included alongside the main plot.

One final thing that makes Steins;Gate’s story so good is that it pulls in a lot of real world elements and twists them around for its own fictional purposes. For instance, time traveler John Titor actual was the originator of the time travel theories that the lecturer plagiarized at the beginning of the first episode. “John Titor” was a real username who posted on message boards about time travel back in 2001. Likewise SERN, a misspelling of the real world CERN, better known as the European Organization for Nuclear Research is a real world group of scientists who do high energy particle physics. Their fictional counterparts play a major role in Steins;Gate and help make the show feel more grounded in reality than it otherwise would.

Graphics & Sound

Graphically, Steins;Gate is… different. It has plenty of detail in its characters and backgrounds, and while it’s by no means an animation powerhouse, it gets by well enough. What makes it a little odd is its palette and style that sorta sucks the color out of most of its scenes. Indoors, this mostly just means that a lot of the colors, especially the background colors, are somewhat muted. But outdoors, the show often combines its subdued colors with bright glare meant to convey the heat of summer. This subdued but also blown-out look was a little distracting to me at first and took a while to get used to. I wouldn’t even say its unique style is used to any great effect. It simply is what it is and you can like it or not. Personally, I kinda don’t.

Where Steins;Gate shines, however, is in its dialogue and voice acting. It’s fine in Japanese, and there’s some great moments like Okabe’s odd broken English greeting to a back alley vendor, but I will probably never watch it in Japanese again because the show is stellar in English. Steins;Gate is one of maybe five anime that I’ll hold up as incontrovertibly better in English than they are in Japanese. In either language, Steins;Gate’s dialogue is fast paced and witty, but in English, Funimation both provided great voice actors and made some substantial changes to the dialogue to make it flow better for an English audience.

What this means is, the English dialogue and acting in Steins;Gate is among the best of the best. Conversations flow brilliantly and you can hear every emotion the characters are conveying. But it also means that English dub is very decidedly not a direct translation. If that matters to you, by all means stick to the Japanese. In most places, this is wonderful. In episode 9, for instance, the English dub swaps out a confusing joke about @channel (Steins;Gate’s in-universe version of Twitter) for a trio of sly references to Star Trek. This kind of thing happens throughout the series. The English dub never changes the intent of the characters and it doesn’t at all alter the plot, but individual words, sentences, and exchanges can and do sometimes end up a bit different in the English version than they were in Japanese.

There’s not a lot to talk about in terms of music for Steins;Gate. There is some music, I guess, during tense or important scenes, but I can hardly recall it. What did stand out to me, though, was its opening theme. “Hacking to the Gate” is upbeat and relevant to the plot without being any kind of direct spoiler. I still listen to it on occasion, but this is not a show where I picked up the full instrumental score like I do for some of my other favorites.

All In All:

Steins;Gate is one of my favorite anime of all time. Its combination of great characters, fantastic witty dialogue, and a very strong time travel plot kinda checked all the boxes for me. Yes, it’s a little slow in the beginning, but rest assured that things really do build on themselves and pick up as the show approaches the half-way mark. Steins;Gate has tension, and emotion, and excitement to spare, it simply doesn’t show its full hand nearly as quickly as some other shows. But once it does hit its proverbial 88 miles per hour, you will, indeed, see some serious shit! (What?! I had to get a Back to the Future reference in there somewhere!)

Steins;Gate’s Visual Novel Influences: 

One of the interesting points that I kinda feel is necessary to fully understanding Steins;Gate – the anime – is that it was based upon Steins;Gate – the visual novel. For those that don’t know, Visual Novels are a popular type of role playing game in Japan. In them, you typically play a lead character in a story and you travel around various locations in an area such as a town and have branching conversations with several other characters. But it’s almost all presented in fixed screens and backgrounds and unmoving character art instead of in 3d like an open world game. Visual Novels often have several different endings depending on who you talk to and what what you say to them and what dramatic choices you make.

Steins;Gate is one of the better known Visual Novels, but there are other anime based on Visual Novels you might recognize. For instance, Fate/stay night was also originally a Visual Novel. In the Steins;Gate game, you played as Okabe and, along with talking to the characters represented in the anime, you could also receive text messages from the future where acting on them was critical to get one of the better endings. To get the best ending, which is basically the one depicted in the anime, you almost had to replay the game multiple times so you could act on information you learned during your previous failures.

Steins;Gate’s original form being a Visual Novel also plays into some of the anime’s plot choices. The various one off episodes where Okabe spends time with each of the girls and rolls back their altered futures comes directly from the Visual Novel. Depending on your choices Okabe could end up paired off with any one of the girls in one of the game’s multiple good endings. Or he could end up dead in various ways in the game’s multiple bad endings. The anime pays respect to that by working in most of those sub stories that were mutually exclusive from each other. You actually had to play the game several times to see each of the endings.

In the anime, I thought this worked fine, but it does shed a little light on why the anime seemed to string a few side stories together and made them critical to progressing the main story of saving Mayuri and Makise.

The Almost Perfect Time Travel Plot: 

Out of all the time travel shows and movies I’ve seen, I think Steins;Gate has one of the best, most consistent time travel plots out there. All the pieces fit into place across several timelines and several failed attempts to set things right… except one thing. I’ve never been able to justify the video Okabe gets from himself being static the first time he looks at it. Oh, the justification in the show is fun and clever… that it was locked or inaccessible until he moved onto the worldine where he killed Makise, or some such thing. But how does that make any sense? I think it would have been better if he’d never looked at the video of if it had been slow to download so he didn’t have time to look at it before he had to rush to see Makise seemingly dead in the hallway. The way it is now, it feels like the one puzzle piece that doesn’t fit into the great time travel plot. 

by Ragashingo

Review: Land of the Lustrous Anime

In Short:

Land of the Lustrous is a 2017 anime by CGI powerhouse Orange about a small group of immortal, genderless people whose entire bodies are made of the gemstone or mineral each is named after. While most of the gems, like Jade or Diamond, are content to carry out their same routines day after day, just as they have for hundreds or even thousands of years, the show’s focus on the spunky but naive and physically brittle Phosphophyllite rewards viewers with one of anime’s best character arcs.

For better or worse, the anime only covers the first few chapters of the manga it is based on. So, while Land of the Lustrous tells an interesting story filled with great characters, some spectacular combat, and a deft combination of fun humor and intense drama, it does end just when it seems the real story is about to begin.

Suggested Minimum Watch: 2 episodes. It would be a big shame to quit the show before you get to meet Dia and Bort.

Full Review:

Land of the Lustrous (houseki no kuni) is one of those rare anime that requires a lot more explanation than usual simply because its setting is so different from anything else out there. It’s not set in a high school, or on a military space ship, or a sports field, or really anywhere else your typical anime is.

At its simplest, Land of the Lustrous is an anime about a group of immortal sentient humanoid gemstones living together on an otherwise uninhabited grassy island. The gems are primarily organized by their hardness, durability, and personality. The green haired Jade, for instance, is logical and factual and serves the role as the group’s day to day organizer. Bort, with its long black hair and cold, demanding demeanor is the most durable of all the gems and so it serves as their most potent defender. Other gems take on a variety of roles from lookouts to gathers to even a clothing designer and a surgeon of sorts.

The gems do not age and cannot really die. They essentially just lose consciousness if sufficiently dismembered, but even if they are shattered by an accident or by an attack, they can always be pieced back together and wake up good as new. They don’t breath, so operating underwater is not much of a hinderance. They don’t eat, per say, since they get their nourishment and energy from the sun, so even food is mostly a non-issue for them. It does mean that they tire easily at night to the point of sometimes falling asleep unintentionally, and that they spend the long cloudy winters in hibernation, but they can, with effort, stay awake, so even those actions are more an inconvenience than an outright limitation. The gems also store their memories all throughout their bodies instead of just in a brain. This means that if they are shattered but not put completely back together they can forget things they once knew. But, since they are immortal, it is rare for them not to be able to track down all the pieces of one of their companions.

The only true enemy the gems have are the show’s second set of strange, otherworldly creatures: the Lunarians. Their sole goal appears to be to shatter the gems and cart them back off to the moon for some unknown purpose. Each time they appear, they emerge in the sky out of what looks to be strange ink blots that open to reveal a small army riding on a large yellow disc of clouds that hovers above the island. These raiding parties are armed with bows and spears, but they almost seem more ritualistic than warlike, as roughly half the Lunarians in each raid come playing drums, tambourines, or flutes, while others hold flags and banners. If anything, the Lunarians appear to be based in Budist imagery. Interestingly, the Lunarians appear to be made of clouds themselves. They are the same yellow color as the clouds they ride on and they blow away when defeated.

For the most part, the gems are content to live their immortal lives doing the same thing day in and day out for years, decades, centuries, and even millennia at a time. Although there are some, like the doctor Rutile, who show curiosity in their specific fields of expertise, it seems pretty clear that the gems are not especially inquisitive and prefer to simply carry out the roles given to them by their leader, Sensei Kongo.

But then there’s Phos.

Phos, short for Phosphophyllite, is a brittle, easily cracked peppermint green gem who bears the distinction of being the only one of the gems to not have an assigned task. Phos is upbeat, happy, energetic, and spunky. It is also clumsy, prone to complaining and talking back, and more than a little inattentive. For the first nearly 300 years of its life, Phos has just lounged around in the sun doing little more than occasionally annoying its fellow gems. In all that time, Sensei Kongo has been trying to find a task that the short attention spanned and easily broken Phos can carryout without wandering off or being shattered. Phos seems to be a poor choice for any sort of repetitive task, and even though they wish to take part in what they naively see as the glamour and excitement of combat against the Lunarians, they are far too fragile to do so.

Phos is the lead character of the show, and deservedly so. Early on, it is tasked by Sensei Kongo to compile an encyclopedia for the other gems. It immediately tries to find a way out of the job either by getting others to fill in for it, or by at least roping one of the other gems in as an assistant. In the early episodes, Phos’ wit and spunk shine, filling each scene with humor and laughs. Land of the Lustrous could have easily padded out its twelve episodes with Phos’ delightfully dismissive antics, but it goes far above and beyond that. Where this could have been a show of nothing but humor, Land of the Lustrous is actually more an examination of tragedy and change, with most of that change happening to Phos itself. One of the strongest points of the show is the arc Phos goes through. The Phos we see by the end of the twelfth episode is a far different character than the Phos we get in episode one.

Phos’ journey is set in motion by Cinnabar, a second oddity among the gems. Where most of the gems, including Phos, live together on the island, Cinnabar lives alone away from the others by its own choice. Cinnabar, you see, is literally toxic to the plants and animals of the island thanks to the never ending flow of mercury it exudes. This mercury is even dangerous to the other gems as it can damage their finish and prevent them from absorbing the sun’s rays. Early on, Phos hears that Cinnabar is very clever, so it tries to rope Cinnabar into its encyclopedia task only to learn Cinnabar has a tragic secret.

Although Cinnabar is tasked with performing the night watch for the other gems thanks to the way its mercury lets it live off starlight, this tasks is actually pointless and futile. The Lunarians have never once, in several thousands years, appeared after sundown. When Phos finally meets Cinnabar, the latter admits it would welcome being incapacitated and taken away to the moon if only to end its monotony and isolation. Day after day and night after night Cinnabar stands waiting for the Lunarians to come for it, yet, for some reason, they never do. That it isn’t even desired by the Lunarians only serves to push Cinnabar into further self-loathing.

When Phos learns of this shocking, bitter secret, it makes a hasty yet sincere promise to Cinnabar to find them a better job than the night watch. To find Cinnabar a job that only it can do. This heartfelt promise from the flighty Phos, who has likely never promised anyone anything like this before, drives much of the plot throughout the rest of the show.

Graphics & Sound

One of the first things you often hear about Land of the Lustrous is how it is computer animated. This is a rather divisive issue among anime fans as 3d computer animated shows are often thought to be more clunky and less fluid and expressive than 2d hand drawn shows. Land of the Lustrous got around these problems by taking the best of both worlds. Orange brought in noted 2d animators to help with storyboarding and combat scenes. They would sometimes literally draw expressive line art on top of the unfinished computer animations to give the computer animators tips and goals to shoot for, ensuring that the show remained just as expressive as the best hand drawn anime.

Orange also recorded the voice actors first and did the animations second. This is opposite of the way most 2d and 3d anime are done. By recording the voices first, it gives the animators something to work off of. They were able to time movements and invent new animations that added fluidity in time with each characters’ already recorded voices. The end results is that Land of the Lustrous has an extra level of snappiness and expression that you don’t often get in anime.

But beyond all that, the show is just beautiful! Land of the Lustrous makes brilliant use of lighting and color. The island the gems live on is detailed and scenic from its wave-swept beaches to its marshy forests to the two white stone structures the gems live in. It had me captivated by the very first blade of green grass that came on the screen.

Each gem looks spectacular, as well, with their own diverse styles and colors of translucent hair that casts light on nearby objects and environments. One of my favorite visual tricks the show pulls is showing that the irises of each gem are, in fact, composed of a complex facet of gemstone shapes that appear whenever the camera gets close enough. The Lunarians, too, have such an interesting and creepy look to them that feels so different from everything else in the show. They have an entirely different visual style that can at times be awe inspiring.

A lot of the show’s general look and feel comes from its manga. While the Land of the Lustrous anime is not a shot for shot recreation, it does take some of the best panels from the manga and mixes them up where necessary to make a more compelling tv show. This is a fine line to walk, as showing the same scene from a different angle could ruin it, but Orange pulled it off with room to spare. Check the Dig Deeper section below for some links to videos that go in-depth about the show’s visuals.

On the audible front, I love this show’s sounds and music just as much as I love its colors and animation. There’s this great mix of piano and strings and horns and more exotic instruments that come together to create a wide variety of moods. Special call out goes to the chillingly strong piano notes of the main theme you get just seconds into starting the first episode.

I actually bought the soundtrack to this one like I do for all the anime whose music I love, and it’s been great to listen to Phosphophyllite’s upbeat, hopeful theme as well as the sad, worrisome, lonely theme provided to Cinnabar. Then, of course, there’s Sunspot, the strange theme filled with bells and tambourines that plays whenever the Lunarians appear. The battle theme, Battle, is great too!

I also love the show’s opening. It has a complexity about both its graphics and audio that is entrancing. It’s also interesting because while Phos is the one who dominates the screen, the song itself appears to be sung by Cinnabar. Listen closely to the lyrics where the singer talks about being the only one to wander through the night. Those words don’t belong to Phos or any of the other gems!

Finally, in regards to voice acting, Land of the Lustrous is excellent there as well. The Japanese cast did an amazing job bringing their respective characters to life. Phos’ voice actress, in particular, brings a ton of energy and fun to the character. The show’s English dub is also very good. The Japanese cast set a hard act to follow, but the English actors did a great job. I was a little afraid for the English dub just because of how fast paced and nuanced characters like Phos could be at times, but the English actors for Phos and the other gems matched those performances to my satisfaction.

All In All:

Land of the Lustrous is an interesting show that is unique even among other great anime. Its setting and concepts are delightfully alien while still being relatable. Its look, animation, and sound are excellent. And, its characters’ desires and motivations, especially those of its lead character Phos and secondary character Cinnabar, are complex in ways you may not expect from just watching the first episode.

Even though it tells an enjoyable story on a surface level, Land of the Lustrous is, in some ways, one of the most complex anime I’ve ever recommended. Its characters and their motivations are often pulled in opposite directions. The show itself has overarching and deeply rooted Buddhist themes. And, the show is bold enough to often have its characters greatest learning moments be their biggest failures. I may be a little scattered here, because there is so much to talk about, but let me share a few things that I think push Land of the Lustrous above and beyond.

One of my favorite parts of Land of the Lustrous is just how much Phos changes throughout the course of the show. The final episode has a great moment where Phos looks back at its past self, but there are some great moments along the way that made me love Phos all the more.

After Phos gets its new legs and its super speed, it joins the Amethyst twins and quickly finds out that joining the other gems out on patrol is not nearly as cools as it had hoped. It was great to see Phos spend the entire first day jumping at every little thing that happened. A few days later, we see that Phos has already grown tired of waiting. It was a neat demonstration on how sometimes the fantasy of a thing doesn’t match the reality.

Another great moment is when Phos is chasing down the Lunarians that are stealing away Antarcticite. Phos’ lines about overcoming its limits but still failing were unexpectedly powerful to me. In most other shows, Phos would have succeeded, having finally come to grips with the responsibility it owed its fellow gems, but that wasn’t the point here. I loved the way Land of the Lustrous used hope followed by further failure to grow Phos’ character.

Cinnabar also got some neat subtle moments. Throughout the series, Cinnabar all but refuses to interact with the other gems. Even when it could have stepped out of the shadows and alerted all the gems looking for Phos under the sea, it didn’t. Why not? It all comes back to Cinnabar’s true motivations for staying away.

Yes, Cinnabar was tired of being alone and terribly distraught at the way its poisonous mercury harmed and killed everything around it, but that wasn’t the real reason Cinnabar stayed away. Instead, listen again to what Cinnabar says in the first episode when it is complaining to itself about wanting to be free of the night. It also says that no, it can’t trust Phos.

For the longest time I forgot about that part. It seemed out of place and unimportant, until it was made clear that Cinnabar didn’t trust Sensei Kongo and the other gems precisely for the same reasons as Phos is losing trust at the end of the series. Cinnabar had long ago determined that there was some link between Kongo and the Lunarians, but unlike the other gems who were mostly content to continue on with their lives, Cinnabar distanced itself from Kongo and thus the gems that he led. I love how this second layer gives Cinnabar’s actions so much more meaning once you realize what is going on.

Finally, there’s something I didn’t want to talk about in the main review. It’s that I’m actually happy that Land of the Lustrous has not gotten a second season. I kinda don’t want it to ever get another season even though it does end itself on a major cliffhanger. This is because I don’t like the direction the manga heads in. What I wanted to happen is for Cinnabar and Phos to join forces and solve the mystery of the Lunarians together. Things didn’t need to end perfectly happy, but I was happy with where Phos and Cinnabar ended up by the end of the season. I wanted to follow those characters through to their eventual conclusion.

That doesn’t happen.

Instead, the manga sees Phos get more and more pieces replaced, most notably its head. Phos actually gets taken to the moon where it communicates and joins forces with the Lunarians. Phos eventually sparks a kind of civil war between the gems back on earth. There’s also the revelation that the Lunarians were grinding the captured gems into dust and spreading them out on the surface of the moon because they wanted Kongo to see and agree to their demands. I would be fine with that except the manga then breaks the rule about the gems always being able to be put back together. It is said that any of the weaker gems spread out this way had their inclusions bleached away and were truly dead. This included Antarcticite, which made me very unhappy.

In general the manga sounds like it just gets more and more unhappy, to the point that an even more drastically changed Phos at one point demands that Sensei Kongo murder it because it cannot live with itself and what it has done. I will check back once the manga finishes. A good ending could very well be worth all the turmoil to get there. But for now, I don’t want to read most of what I’ve heard about and consequently, I don’t want to see it animated either.

As usual, I do have a few recommendations if you want to learn more about this anime:

by Ragashingo

Magma & Team IcyHot vs The Friendly Fortune Teller

Magma entered the small farming town she and her companions had agreed to visit, hopeful the job they had heard of was still there. It had been a long, exceedingly lonesome day of riding… and now, snow was beginning to fall as she searched the few streets and alleyways for the tavern her friends were to be at. Though not as bad as a heavy downpouring of rain, the darkened evening sky and falling icy flakes affixed a frown to the face of the dark-skinned Fire Genasi. None too soon, however, the faint sound of music called out to her, and lead her to where she needed to be: a tavern with a depiction of a harvest goddess of some sort set large above its entrance.

Pushing her way inside, Magma let out a sigh of relief at the upbeat fiddling and generally cheerful attitudes before her. The small marks and faint longer lines on her skin glowed ever so more brightly red as a smile came to her face for the first time in more than a day. She reached back and pulled at the tight bob on her head so that her dim, glowing, red-orange hair fell around her down to her shoulders like the lava from a volcano erupting down a mountain. She gave her head a shake and ran her hand through her hair to make sure it had all loosened properly, then let herself move, and sway, and twirl in time to the music as she made the short trip over to the bar with a big smile on her face.

“Hey, ‘Keep, I need a drink, first off. Something good, but not too good,” Magma said cheerfully, “…and after that, this road weary traveler needs something good to eat. Local specialty or what not, if you please.”

“That’ll be a silver for the drink and…” the barkeeper began to say, but Magma cut him off.

“I’ll want a second drink with the meal. This cover it all?” She asked as she placed two gold coins from her coin purse onto the bar. She got a enthusiastic nod from the barkeeper and a large tankard filled to the brim with drink of which she quickly downed enough of to allow her to move again without fear of spilling. Only then did she see Red, their party’s Dragonborn cleric, who was naturally still dressed in his gaudy heavy armor. Elsewhere in the establishment were Cheldon, their Tortle Artificer and Welty, their Halfling Rogue. Each was eating and talking to those around them.

“Red!” She called out cheerfully, since he was the closest. “Nothin’ seemed to be on fire as I rode in, so I’m guessin’ that means I’m probably not too late?” A couple of the locals turned their heads at that statement, but she just smiled and moved deeper into the venue to sit by the cleric. A couple of the plainly dressed regulars gave her an annoyed look, one even seemingly finished his meal early and left the table altogether, but Magma took it in stride.

“The name’s Magma, it’s a pleasure to meet ya,” she said to the few that remained.

“Brad. Likewise,” one said in return, but most of the others just continued eating or talking amongst themselves. Over the next few minutes, Magma managed to hold herself mostly quiet as Red sat beside her and regaled her at length about the rest of the party’s adventures during the past day. Mysterious disappearances among the townsfolk, a crazy Lord, the Lord’s wife who worriedly hired them, and an out of place fortune teller who seemed maybe more involved in things than she should. Magma could already tell that this would be one heck of a job.

“I rode. The wind was near freezing. There was no one to talk to. Now, I’m here,” Magma deadpanned once she was caught up. About then, one of the serving girls placed a large dish of lamb and yams before her along with a second drink. “Oh, thank you! This looks wonderful,” Magma said, smiling warmly.

It was then that Magma caught eye of the very fortune teller that had the others in doubt. The woman was older, but more fluid in her movements than one would think she should be. Her dark colored dress with its blues and blacks was pretty enough, and it was certainly tailored a large step or two above the clothes the other locals wore, but it was her bright orange sash she wore around her shoulders and the large, equally orange dyed hat that she wore on her head that really made her stand out. She was not an outsider, though. If anything, she was a trusted friend to many within the tavern. They talked to her, nodded to her as she passed by, or smiled when she greeted them. The older woman came and took a seat across from Magma a few moments after Red wandered off for another ale.

“Darling,” she said, drawing out the word, her voice happy and extravagant, “my apologies if you haven’t received the warmest of receptions. The people here, they’re… not so used to visitors, and I’m afraid your friends have already stirred the pot somewhat.”

“No worries from me, and please, call me Magma,” the Fire Genasi replied, mouth full of yams.

“Helgram Grendal,” the woman said with a big smile.

“Sounds like something out of one of those old fairy tales, tha ones where children get eaten,” Magma mused after swallowing her latest bite. The older woman gave a good natured laugh, but there was the slightest twinkle in her eyes that conveyed that there was, perhaps, a slight truth to Magma’s musings.

Though she was taken slightly aback, Magma nevertheless continued, “Sorry. Don’t mind me. I’m sometimes too straight forward for my own good. I’m just glad to have something good to eat and someone interesting to talk to. I had to stay behind on our last job, make some extra amends, and… well, I cannot stand riding alone.”

“I completely understand, Magma darling. May I ask why you and your friends have come? Four such yourselves is a bit out of the ordinary, after all.”

“The disappearances. We’ve been hired to do something about them.”

“Oh, indeed? Eighteen gone so far. It’s just awful. I do the best I can to help, but this so does have the town in a foul mood.”

“So, you know about the disappearances?” Magma asked.

“Oh, only just more than you. But enough of that, darling. Would you care to play with me? I have cards, I have dice. I do so enjoy wagering with newcomers.”

“Dice sounds good. Do you know Bos’ton?” Magma asked.

“I do! And I have a perfect set for it!” Helgram reached a hand into one of the large hanging sleeves of her dressed and came out with a small, deep leather bound tray with tall walls that held five identical dice. “Your wager darling?”

“One gold, if that’s not too much. I enjoy overpaying a bit when I first arrive somewhere new. I’ve found it helps ease tensions some,” Magma said.

“I’ll wager three gold then.” As the one with the higher bet, Helgram went first. She scooped all five dice in her hand and rolled them into the tray then picked out the highest roll of the five which she placed in clear view between herself and Magma. She then repeated the process four more times, each time lining up that turn’s highest roll. When it was all said and done, she’d totaled a decent score slightly on the lower end of what she could have rolled.

Magma went next. From her first roll it was clear that fate was on her side. She beat Helgram’s rolls with each of her five turns and ended up with a very high total.

“Ah! I’m afraid that’s what happens sometimes!” Helgram exclaimed before hading over her three gold coins. “Again?”

“Mmm, I’d like too, but I’m afraid I’m gonna miss out on the best of this meal if I continue to play. Another time?”

“Of course, darling. Whenever you wish. Which reminds me, your halfling friend requested a fortune reading of me. I’d be glad to provide you with a reading as well, once you are finished.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I make my own fate,” Magma replied with a confident smile.

“Oh? Very well. I shall leave you to your meal. It was a pleasure, darling.”

With that, Helgram placed the dice and tray back into her sleeve then stood and moved away to spread conversation and joy to a group of townsfolk just entering the tavern.

Dusk turned to night by the time Magma finished her meal and the delicious pudding she allowed one of the serving girls to tempt her into. A steady snow was falling outside now, and the tavern slowly emptied until only a few regular patrons, Magma and her companions, and Helgram remained. The fortune teller was busy now speaking to a mildly well dressed middle aged woman at a table near the front of the room.

Though the two spoke in hushed tones, Magma and the others could make out a few of their words in the now quiet tavern. The snow and a very rare failed harvest seemed to be the topics of discussion. Magma looked around to her companions and rolled her eyes at the way they each seemed to be trying to eavesdrop yet still be discrete when they were literally the only other ones in the entire tavern aside from the barkeep and the two women talking. So, instead of joining in on her companions’ brand of awkwardness, Magma decided, as she often did, to create some awkwardness of her own.

“Hi. My name is Magma. The Lord and Lady hired my companions and myself to solve the case of these disappearances. I heard others speaking of their own unexpectedly bad harvests. When did they start. Which crops did they affect? Has anything else unusual happened recently?” she asked after she sat down across from the local woman.

“Darling!” Helgram exclaimed in shock by Magma’s side

“The nerve!” The middle-aged woman from the town all but shouted. “This was a private conversation with a trusted friend… and… and, you would not find any of us who would simply tell you the extent of our harvests. We all run tight businesses, after all!”

“I’m not interested in learning your coveted family farming techniques,” Magma shot back, “the land reacts and changes in response to mysteries more often than you might think. All I’m asking is…”

“You are being a pest and… and a bother, that’s what you are!” The woman said. She shoved her plate away from her and stood abruptly to leave, only to nearly run into the tall, stoic mass of armor and faith that was Red blocking her way.

“I ask you to forgive our Magma, there,” he said gently while holding out a pair of gleaming gold coins to the woman, “she is often hot-headed, hot-tempered, and never learned to take a gentle approach. It is all we can do to keep her in line, sometimes.”

“Hey!” Magma called out.

The farmer seemed ill at ease at it all. At being the center of attention. At the large dragon-like warrior before her. At the put out fiery-haired trouble maker behind her. Tentatively, she took the coins and said, “Well… please try harder.”

“You can go, dear,” Helgram interjected, “I’ll speak to them.”

“Thank you, Helgram,” the townswoman said with honest relief before making her way out into the cold. Red shuffled off back to his own table, leaving a dejected Magma to mumble to herself as she nursed her drink across from the ever opulent Helgram.

“…just trying to sort out why more than a handful of their town is dead. Not like we can do that if no one will talk to us. ‘Extent of our harvest’, as if I’ve grown anything in years…” Magma grumbled. Though her hair and markings were never especially bright, their glow now seemed almost nonexistent as she sat chastised, mug held in both hands.

“Darling,” Helgram said, placing a reassuring hand on one of Magma’s, “I don’t know where you’ve come from or been, but many here work their farms and send off their crops and go all their lives without seeing more than a handful of outsiders, and never any as radiant as yourself. Your desire to help is clear, perhaps just hold yourself in a little more, is all.”

“Grrr,” Magma grunted. Holding herself in wasn’t really something she was used to.

“I know something to cheer you up! Your friend, the halfling, requested a fortune telling from me earlier. Why don’t we do that now. I think you’ll enjoy watching,” the older woman said temptingly in an almost sing song voice.

“Meh… alright,” Magma said begrudgingly.

“Sir, I think it has quieted enough, now, let’s see to your fortune,” the teller said. Curious at all that would entail, Magma stood from her table and followed the woman over to where Welty sat. The Rogue actually looked slightly nervous, for once, as Helgram reached again into her same sleeve. This time, using multiple pulls, she came out with a line of chalk, two wood-wicked bottles of incense, and a hefty crystal ball. She arranged the incense at opposite ends of the table with the crystal ball in the center. She then took her time drawing a magic circle with the chalk that consisted of shapes and runes that ultimately served to connect all three items to herself and Welty.

“You said before you did not know what kind of fortune you wished me to tell. I could tell you of your prospects in love, or life, or livelihood,” Helgram suggested.

“Well… I just ain’t sure…” the deep-voiced Halfling replied. “Can you just… sum things up?”

“A general reading then? Yes, darling, I can look ahead and find anything extraordinary I see.”

With a flick of her wrist and a few precisely said magic words, Helgram began the reading. Her eyes flashed to an eerie white and the lines of chalk on the table began to glow. The incense, which had not had any discernible smell thus far suddenly filled the air with a sweet perfume, and the previously clear crystal ball became clouded with dark, wispy swirls. Magma and her companions watched this all with interests while Welty looked on with something more akin to concern.

Several long moments passed as Helgram concentrated, but finally her eyes returned to normal and she shook her head.

“It is not such good news, I’m afraid,” she said gravely. “I see your mission here going badly for you, Welty. I saw you caught up in a storm of ice and of failure. It was quite ghastly, to be honest. For all of you, in fact. I don’t do this often, but you each seem so good natured in your own way, that I urge you to move on. Forget about this mystery. In all likelihood, it is mere coincidence, not something that even can be solved.”

“Well, damn,” Welty said after a moment. “And here I was hoping to spend a few gold on some fun lies.”

“Yes, darling, but sometimes the truth is the more pressing. Please, keep your money. A warning such as this is far too important to be played off as a game.” Helgram sat for a moment with a sorrowful look on her face, but then placed her fortune telling items back in her sleeve and stood to leave. “Good evening, to you all,” she said in parting.

“To you as well, I thank you for your hard work,” she said to the barkeep as she breezed on past toward the door. She did take a moment, though, to reach into her sleeve and toss him a small bag of coins that clinked when he caught it. Helgram nodded to two guardsmen who had largely stayed silent and unseen at a small table near the door. They too rose. One opened the door for her and then both they and the fortune teller exited out into the snow. A few moments later the sound of horses and rolling wheels echoed faintly inside and Magma could just see a sliver of an expensive, well made carriage rolling off towards the large, high-walled manor of the Lord and Lady in the distance.

“Ok,” Welty said once he and his three companions were alone. “So… spooky fortune aside, we’re still going with the plan? I sneak into the manor house while the rest of you see if you can find anything in the woods where the lord’s wife says he likes to wander at night?” The other three nodded.

With their own meals finished and final tabs settled, the four companions headed off into the night. They made for the manor and the forest beyond it where the townsfolk had all disappeared, but took the long way there through the center of the town. There, in the center of the cobblestone square, a talk, ornately carved obelisk stone pillar stood, with various runes and markings on its sides. Around it, along the edges of the town square, were a variety of shrines to various gods and goddesses. Magma stopped briefly to pay her monetary respects to a local goddess of fire and life, before continuing along with the others.

As the four neared the walled manor, Magma hurried a bit forward and with a few quickly spoken words caused a dance of twisting fire to appear in her outstretched hand. She held it effortlessly and allowed it to light her way. That, along with her hair and face glowing faintly in the darkness, made her easy to pick out by the guards atop the manor wall. Consequently, it made the company’s small, darkly dressed Rogue traveling several paces behind her all that much more difficult to notice.

“Hey, who goes there?” One of the guards called down to Magma and the others.

Magma waved her fire back and forth in a wide arc and called back, “we’re the group hired by your Lady to investigate those who have gone missing. We are heading to the woods to see what we can find.”

“Very well,” the guard called back. “Be careful!” He did not notice the rogue drop back even further from the others.

“Pour this on your head,” Cheldon, the group’s Tortle Artificer said in a whisper to Welty as he offered him a small flask of liquid he’d pulled out of his lumpy bag of odds and ends. The Rogue did so, and within moments, instead of simply being hard to spot, he disappeared from sight completely!

Magma and the others continued on without him. Soon, they reached the edge of the forest and Magma extinguished her flame. The three companions waited some minutes silent and still. Magma even did her best to keep her glow to an absolute minimum with slow shallow breathing. It was like being told to sit still and stop fidgeting as a child, or like being forced to stay silent and talk to no one in the midst of a roaring party, but somehow she managed. Through no small amount of tension and effort on her part, her eyes, face, hair, and hands became dark as the night surrounding her and her companions.

Finally, after several more long minutes of standing silent and still, Red, the Dragonborn Cleric, spotted someone moving through the night. Once pointed out, Magma spotted them too, her unnaturally good night vision allowing her to better make out the person concealed by the darkness. It was none other than the farm woman she’d spoken to earlier! But there was something off. The woman had no torch or lantern, and she did not seem to be looking to her feet in the dim starlight to avoid tripping or stumbling. Neither did she once look back or around as she approached the tree line. Instead, her movement seemed both strangely stiff yet perfectly confident as she entered the forest.

The three companions followed, with Magma and her dark vision allowing her to better lead the way. The woman ahead of them seemed to know the exact location of each leaf, branch, briar, and vine, and avoided them all with effortless ease. Magma, and her companions, in contrast, made more noise than they would have liked as they attempted to keep up with the woman… yet strangely, she never once turned to notice them.

Over the course of another half hour, the woman lead the companions deeper and deeper into the forest until she emerged into a clearing. In the center was a small lake perhaps a hundred feet wide at its widest point. And, in the center of the lake was a small grassy island with a single ornate stone pillar similar to the one in the center of the town! Like before, the townswoman preceded on the straightest path to her goal which now seemed to clearly be the pillar. She waded into the cold water without a moment’s hesitation and swam the short distance over to the island before taking to her feet again and moving to touch the pillar. That’s when something truly strange happened! The woman’s hand and arm pushed through the pillar with some effort, and vanished into it as if it were some kind of portal. This must have been what happened to the other townsfolk!

Magma and her companions sprung into action.

Cheldan reached into his lumpy bag and pulled out then assembled pieces of a tube about the size of his forearm which he then threw at the woman and the pillar. It shattered on impact with the ground and released a large mass of stringy webbing that slowed the woman’s progress into the pillar.

Meanwhile, Red said a brief prayer then ran across the surface of the water as quickly as he could in his heavy armor. He grabbed the woman who was now more than halfway into the pillar and attempted to pull her back.

Magma approached the lake but stopped at its edge. Maybe it was just the though of throwing herself into the near freezing water, but no… something else made her stop. There was a foreboding feeling she got at the though of crossing through the water to the island beyond. Instead of wading in, she did what she did worst, and paced anxiously back and forth along the pond’s bank desperately wishing to be useful.

Within in moments, everything began to go awry. The webbing Cheldan had deployed, which had worked wonders on creatures large and small in the past, seemed to do little to deter the woman from the pillar. Likewise, although Red was the largest and strongest in their group, his attempts to pull the woman back met with little success before she somehow tugged free of his strong grasp! Finally, having waited long enough, Magma let lose bolts of fire directed towards the top of the pillar. Her first hit the obelisk and it seemed for a moment as if the woman’s progress was slowed, but Magma’s second bolt missed in her frustration and went wide into the forest beyond. The trees around the three companions shuttered and frightening nosies and whispers rose to prominence from among the them even as the woman disappeared completely into the pillar. The unnatural noises of the forest continue to increase and the three companions look at each other uncomfortably.

“Maybe we should leave?” Magma suggested, but as she did so, a tall, white-skinned woman emerged from the lake. She was elegant and timeless with long hair, indistinct eyes, and a flowing dress that turned into a thick misty fog that concealed her lower legs and feet. The woman hovered atop the water as her fog spilled out across the lake. She was the spitting image of one of the goddesses depicted back in the town square. A nature goddess of some type, if Magma remembered correctly.

The goddess looked among the companions then asked in an echoing voice filled with warning and contempt, “You trespass! Why have you disturbed us, the powers and spirits of this forest? Why have you threatened our designs?”

Magma was the first to speak, her hair and body now glowing with worry and challenge. “We did not mean to trespass, we only wished to help the people of the nearby town. Several have gone missing like the woman who just now entered the pillar behind you. One was found dead at the forest’s edge, his flesh torn apart as if by some sort of beast. What have you to say to that?” She demanded.

“You come to our forest and make demands of us?” The spirit woman asked incredulously.

“We come to put an end to these disappea…” Magma began, but was cut short when Red spoke over her from across the lake.

“We have only come to gain understanding of why the people of the town have been vanishing into your forest. Why the one was killed at its edge. We have no demands of our own,” Red said diplomatically while glaring at Magma from across the water. The Genasi glowered back, but, for the moment, she held her tongue.

“The death… it was not our doing. It was… inconvenient. The others? We took them in recompense, in payment for their peoples’ misdeeds. We have repaid them three fold for what they have done. The woman just now was the last. On this small part… we are satisfied.”

“What was the town’s crime?” Red asked.

“They stole from us,” the spirit woman said, a harsh, angry edge now present in her voice. “They built their pillars and sapped the life of our forest so that their harvest would remain bountiful come snow or drought. But we are finally free enough of their magic. For fifty cycles of the seasons they used their ill-gotten power, and so for one hundred and fifty cycles, the snows will come and their crops will perish”

“You said the debt was repaid… that you were satisfied!” Magma challenged.

“On one small part, yes. But the years, too, must be repaid. All of the forest demands it. Nature itself demands it. On this, there is nothing we can do, even if we wished it.”

Magma took a step back, her face filled with worry and sadness. “But… few if any in the town know know of these wrongs. They are good people who will be punished for something they did not agree to. Is there nothing we can do?” she asked, clearly in anguish over the thought of so many being harmed.

“There was one who knew, but she is of little consequence to us now. She fancies herself a protector of the people and facilitator of the good harvests, but she is a hidden rot, a hag disguised as a helper among the people. It is she who killed and devoured the one you spoke of. He was to be ours, but instead we were forced to choose another. The long winter cannot be stopped, it is already here. By morning this plentiful green valley will be buried in snowfall. But, it may be delayed perhaps long enough for you to warn these people you hold so dear. A payment delivered for services rendered.”

“What services? What can we do to help?” Red asked.

“The one you spoke of. I think we know who she is. You say she is of no consequence, but we have a story among my people,” Cheldan said, speaking up for the first time. 

“There was once a fisherman in the islands of my people that went out every day and caught just what fish he needed to live. But one day a greedy gull saw this, and would sneak along and steal from the fisherman when he didn’t see. Day after day the fisherman would have to fish up more than he needed because of the gull’s theft, till at last the sea grew angry and lashed out, sinking the ship. But the gull escaped, and found another ship, hungry to glut itself on more fish. The sea sank ship after ship, until at last there were no more. But by then, the waves were too rough, the currents too wild, so no more fish would live there. So all were ruined by a greedy gull, who flew free still.” 

“You speak wisely,” the spirit said in admiration. “Very well, Do these two things and the forest and valley will coexist in peace one again after the long winter ends. First, we will deal with the pillars within our forest in time, but there is a larger pillar, one that stretches from deep in the earth to taller than even our trees in the sky. The others are of little consequence, but the final pillar is out of our reach and beyond our power. Smash it so that true healing may begin. Second, rid us of the deceiver we spoke of. She must not be allowed to steal our power a second time. Do this, and we will delay the onset of our wrath long enough for you to lead the innocent to safety beyond the valley.”

“Thank you,” Red replied. “We will do as you ask. Is there any chance you can speed us back to the edge of the forest?”

“No,” the spirit woman answered. With that, she sunk back into the water and the angry sounds of the forest ceased.

The three companions stood still for a moment, surprised at the devastation coming soon to the town and at the deals they made to delay but not avoid it. It was Magma, naturally, who spoke first.

“Come on, guys! We did it! We solved the puzzle. Now, let’s smash it and save these people,” she said excitedly, glowing brightly once more.

“That is not how puzzles work,” Cheldan said to her with a wry smile. She just scoffed and relit the fire in her hands so she could help guide her companions back through the woods once more. An hour later they emerged back at the town where there seemed to be quite the commotion going on. Though some snow was falling, it did not appear that the deadly blizzard had yet to start. Their first task was to find Welty, or rather give him a way to find them which Magma made simple by shooting several bolts of fire high into the air.

A short time later, the small rogue appeared out of the shadows, looking haggard from his time sneaking into the manor in search of clues. He was injured quite badly, in fact, something Red saw to with a spell of healing.

“Helgram, the fortune teller,” Welty told the others breathlessly, “she isn’t what she appears. She attacked me, and would have killed me if not for the priestess we met this morning. She saved me and fought Helgram while I escaped. I think she is in serious trouble if she isn’t already dead.”

“We need to find her and a pillar. One far bigger than the one in town. We were told it is both buried deep and is taller than the trees.” Red said.

“The only thing taller than the trees around her is the Lord’s tower at his manor,” Welty answered.

“The Lady spoke of catacombs this morning,” Cheldan said.

The four companions looked to each other then all at once rushed back to the manor. There they told the Lord and Lady all that had happened. The Lord seemed incredulous at first, but then revealed he had suspected something was amiss for some time and had been going into the forest in secret in order to protect his town and his wife and avoid the suspicion of the fortune teller. He quickly led them to a secret tunnel set behind a bookshelf in his grand study and told the four companions that it lead down into the hidden catacombs.

Inside was a series of tunnels leading to unused burial chambers, which made sense since the manor itself had only been built some fifty years ago. No one in the family had died since its construction. The four searched the passages for the better part of an hour before they came across a room supported by four columns. There, a number of shadowy creatures emerged from the darkness and rushed to attack. Though two or three of the creatures got hits in on Magma and the others, two of them fell instantly to Magma’s twin fire bolts. Their edges burned and flickered until they were consumed by fire. All but one of the others were destroyed by a blast of bright divine light that lit the entire room as Red channeled the power of his god. The final one, weakened by the holy light, fell and dissipated when Welty delivered a surprising killing blow with his rapier.

The four pressed on and soon found a secret door that had been left open. Inside, they found a large round chamber with a huge pillar that extended from the floor all the way up through the ceiling. It had to be the core of the Lord’s tower! And there, at the base of the pillar, was the priestess, beaten, bruised, and passed out on the ground. And towering above her was not the airy, good natured fortune teller, but a large monstrous werehag with rows of sharp teeth and large arms that ended in sharp claws. She greeted them with the teller’s voice, saying, “I know why you’ve come, but you cannot stop me! I’ll weather this storm and deal the forest a harsh lesson once it ends.”

She took one look at the adventurers bunched in the doorway and unleashed a powerful swirling storm of wind and ice at them. Some of the adventurers managed to shield themselves from the storm, and Cheldan, especially, seemed to weather it just fine thanks to a blessing gifted to him by the forest spirit as they departed her lake. Magma, however, faced the blast head on. She glowed in bright defiance, as her fiery magic rebuffed much of the icy attack.

All at once, her companions struck back. Red flanked the hag and struck at her with his sword. Welty delivered a painful attack while she was distracted. Cheldan wrapped her in a thorny vine and pulled her closer, all of which gave Magma the shot she needed. She called upon her fiery heritage and unleashed four blindingly bright bolts that briefly lit the room. The first, and most powerful, along with the third and forth struck the fortune teller turned werehag and left sizable smoldering burns on her chest and torso.

In response to the group’s attacks, Helgram took to the air on a broom she had nearby. Magma ran round the pillar in an attempt to flank the hag, but Helgram flew the other way and cut her off. Welty fired an arrow at her as she flew, and some of the others tried to strike her as well, but their efforts did little good.

“I deal with you in just a moment, darling,” Helgram said with a vile, toothy smile. She turned and unleashed an even more devastating blast of ice at the others in the room. The priestess who still lay motionless near the pillar was shielded from the blast, and Cheldan with his gift from the forest spirit along with his thick, turtle-like shell fared the best of those caught within it. Red, too, avoided much of the deadly cold by deflecting it with his heavy armor.

Welty, however, was not so fortunate. The Halfling Rogue saw the icy blast approaching in time that his finely honed reflexes would have been more than sufficient to save him, but it was not to be. At the last moment he remembered Helgram’s words about ice storms and failure. Her words turned out to be more than just a pretend glimpse into the future. They were, instead a powerful curse she had placed upon him. Where he normally would have dodged to safety, Welty instead stood and suffered the full brunt of the icy attack. He fell to the ground bloody and unconscious a moment later.

“You all should have listened to my fortune!” The hag called out, sure she had won.

“Did you forget…” Magma asked, with determination and no small amount of smugness in her voice, “…that I make my own fate?”

The Fire Genasi pulled on every last reserve of strength and magic she had and unleashed it upon the flying hag. First, a fiery pinpoint of light streaked from her hand and detonated in front of the sneering former fortune teller, sending her smoldering body smashing up against the chamber’s circular wall. Then, an intense bolt of fire streaked towards the hapless hag and burned a deep hole into her chest.

Helgram fell to the dirt floor badly burned, but still not quite finished. She pushed herself up on her hands and looked to Magma, and over to the others, then, with a pained, agony filled voice said, “I… will have my revenge…” She cast one last spell then fell back to the dirt.

There was no time to verify Helgram’s demise, however, as the temperature in the room began to drop dangerously fast. Soon, a breeze picked up and intensified into a circular icy swirl that ripped at the walls and at central pillar and threatened to finish off the brave adventurers. It was only thanks to Red’s wide cast healing spell and the now revived priestess’ healing magic that they managed to get Welty on his feet and everyone back out the way they came. Magma and Red pelted the ice-weakened pillar with fire and a final arrow from Welty widened a devastating crack at its core that saw the whole thing, along with the tower it held up, come crashing downwards.

Back on the surface, the four companions and the rescued priestess had the unenviable task of telling a town of hundreds that their easy lives filled with plentiful harvests would have to change. That a deal that they had no real part in saw to it that several of them were lost to the forest spirits and that their town and entire valley were doomed to a snowfall that would last longer than any of their lives. They didn’t believe it at first. There were shouts and anger, but as the snow intensified, the realization that these adventurers were right quickly set in.

The forest spirit upheld her end of the bargain. Though the snow continued to fall, it built up slowly over the next few days giving most of the townspeople ample time to collect their belongings and exit the valley in an orderly fashion. Only a few stubborn souls stayed behind, unwilling to leave the land they had lived in all their lives. They, and their entire valley, were buried under several crushing feet of intense snowfall by the time the last of the townspeople had escaped to safety.

Magma looked back over the miles and miles of white and felt a eerie chill tug at her heart. She’d helped save an entire town. Even started the long process of restoring a balance between people and nature. But there was something about Helgram’s final words. Were a few arrows and stabs and fiery blasts enough to kill a creature that had spent decades siphoning the power of an entire forest?

‘Well, if not, I’ll just have to make sure I’m ready for her,’ Magma thought as she turned back toward the crowd of people, carts, and horses slowly making their way away from the snow-filled valley. It was going to be a long and possibly frustrating journey helping all these people resettle, but at least this time, she’d have someone to talk to.

by Ragashingo

The cast of Revue Starlight on stage seen from above

Review: Shoujo☆Kageki Revue Starlight Anime

In Short:

On its surface, Revue Starlight is an anime about nine young women who attend an all girls music and stage production school. They learn to sing and dance and act and perform as you might expect. But, when they aren’t attending academic or artistic classes, these same girls are called to fantastical Revue auditions where they must literally fight each other, weapons in hand, in thrilling, character revealing, one-on-one musical stage battles for the right to be their class’ Top Star.

Revue Starlight, to its credit, is built around a detailed, veiled criticism of the Takarazuka Revue style of stage shows and music schools, but some viewers may be unfamiliar with these real world contexts, leaving them lost to the show’s finer points.

Suggested Minimum Watch: 1 episode. The first episode encapsulates both the mundane slice of life and fantastical Revue sides of the show well enough to let you know what you’re getting into.

Full Review:

It was the stage battles of Revue Starlight that first caught my eye. They looked like something out of a Magical Girl anime with flashy transformations and superhuman movements. That the show also seemed to focus somewhat on the behind the scenes aspects of a performing arts training school interested me, as well, since I tend to enjoy anime that really know their real world influences. In some ways, I got a bit more than I bargained for as you’ll see in the Dig Deeper segment at the end!

In the first episode, we are introduced to eight girls who attend Seisho Music Academy. They do everything together from attending typical academic classes to participating in all the different dance, acting, and performing arts classes you might find at a music academy. For the most part, the cast is split into pairs early on. Our main character, the energetic yet lazy Karen Ajio gets paired up with the more reserved and responsible Mahiru Tsuyuzaki. The most accomplished dancer and actress in the class, Maya Tendo, often gets paired off with her competitive rival the French-Japanese Claudine Saijo. And so it goes. Each of these pairings end up carrying through the anime’s twelve episodes with transfer student Hikari Kagura throwing a wrench into the balanced mix by the end of the first episode.

In and out of class, the girls are relatively friendly, but there is an air of competition between some of them that complicates things. Others have different personal issues that need to be worked through. For instance, elegant hometown star Kaoruko Hanayagi’s over reliance on her long time friend Futaba Isurugi eventually becomes an issue. There’s also the soft spoken but intelligent and hard working Junna Hoshimi and the capable but surprisingly motherly Nana Daiba who form a strong bond later in the series after a shared revelation.

If Revue Starlight were merely a slice of life show focused solely on these girls and their preparations for their upcoming stage show “Starlight” it would passable but a little dull. All the characters are generally likable, and there are minor conflicts, but there’s just no intense spark between any of them that makes you sit up and take notice. That’s because the show is saving its biggest emotions and character moments for the stage.

At the end of each day of classes, most of the girls receive a strange text message with the cute icon of a giraffe inviting them to special Starlight Revues. The girls enter a not normally there elevator within the school and are brought down deep underground to a giant circular stage surrounded by an even larger pool of water all beneath a bizarrely underground version of Tokyo Tower. Here, their singing, acting, and combat abilities(?!) are pitted against one another in one on one stage battles.

These Revues make up the core strength of the show. They are fantastical and highly reflective of each’s girl’s almost magical stage presence. The Stage of Fate they fight on often shifts and changes in response to the current combatants’ deepest thoughts and desires, and in response to who currently has the upper hand in the performance. Backgrounds, which can be anything from brightly painted cardboard flames to abstract city sets, often magically move in and out as if part of a stage play. The girls themselves transform as if they’re part of a Magical Girl anime. They fight in fancy military dress uniforms instead of the clothes they are wearing when they arrive at each Revue.

The girls clash their weapons and leap to impossible heights and dodge and tumble as part of these battles, but there is always a strong theatrical element involved. They move with a dancer’s grace and follow dramatic stage direction that sometimes even sees them coordinate their singing and dancing as if part of a stage musical. Despite the clang of weapons, there isn’t any actual violence in these Revues. I can’t remember even a single time that any of the girls actually get hurt in the several Revues they attend. Their goal isn’t to stab or maim their opponents. Instead, they try to cut the tie that holds their opponent’s cape-like overcoat on their shoulder so it falls to the ground.

The Revues always feature two different girls paired off against each other, but the real thing keeping each Revue interesting is that they have a larger point than just seeing which girl is better with their chosen weapon. The Revues are not really about the physical combat at all. Instead, each Revue highlights the various girls’ interpersonal conflicts. One early Revue highlights how one of the girls came to see being on stage as a way to free herself from her childhood shyness and how her opponent’s newfound success threatens to take the shy girl’s stage, and confidence, away. Another Revue is squarely focused on demonstrating that one girl’s spirit and enthusiasm by themselves are not nearly enough to overcome another girl’s innate talent.

While these Starlight Revues are the heart of the show, Revue Starlight actually manages to tie its flashy combat back into its stage girls’ daily lives in interesting ways. The lessons about kindness, hard work, jealousy, and sacrifice the girls learn during their Revues often change them for the better off the stage. But, more than that, Revue Starlight tells a satisfyingly cohesive overall story with a couple of twists and turns along the way. I appreciate the way it broke up details about the Starlight Revues and about its characters’ motivations and backstories. You don’t learn everything all at once, but the pacing delivers new revelations almost on an episode by episode basis.

If I was to levy any criticism of the show’s plot, it’s that the school’s two top ranked stage girls, Maya and Claudine, don’t get the backstory episodes they deserve. Each has a big personality and have hints at compelling pasts, but we never dive in. And that’s a shame.

Oh, and I guess I should address the elephant in the room. Or, more specifically, the giraffe. These magical Revues are coordinated and overseen by a full-sized, deep-voiced, telepathic talking giraffe. It is the giraffe who introduces girls to the Revues and who sets the schedule for who battles who each day. Yes, his inclusion is strange, and while I don’t want to spoil everything about him, you should listen to what he says, as his plainly stated desires and love of the stage make up a small but important part of the show’s plot. 

In terms of art and animation, Revue Starlight ranges from good to stunningly great. Once again, the Revues represent its heights. Most start with brilliant character introductions featuring larger than life statements of intent while a dazzling array of spotlights light up the screen in ways that left me breathless. The on-stage combat is also generally well done with nice use of sparks and some fun combat flourishes. Computer animation occasionally pops up, but generally only to animate the spotlights or provide a handful of really good sweeping camera moves that would be difficult to pull off with hand drawn animation alone.

Outside of the Revues, character designs, and, oddly enough, some very tasty depictions of meals are Revue Starlight’s biggest strength. Each of the nine girls is unique and identifiable and some of the food that Nana “Banana” Daiba cooks for her friends just looks delicious.

The only real criticisms I have of Revue Starlight’s art is that the show is well known to have run out of time and budget by the end. It never gets bad, but if you pull yourself out of the moment and watch closely, it does become apparent that the breathtaking combat animations and scene changes of the show’s earlier Revues give way to slow pans across unanimated still shots by the final big battle. The show always reaches for greatness, and still delivers some excellent animation here and there even at its low point, it’s just unfortunate the creative team wasn’t given the budget or time necessary to fulfill the entirety of their vision.

Soundwise, Revue Starlight is uniformly excellent. I’d expect nothing less given that Yoshiaki Fujisawa is involved. His work on A Place Further Than The Universe and Land of the Lustrous was outstanding. The characters, here, have distinct voices and are well acted in both the Japanese and English language tracks. The songs the girls sing in the middle of their Revue battles are catchy and the lyrics they sing at each other are actually surprisingly important and impactful. “Star Divine”, the battle song for episode ten’s Revue, “The Star Knows” sung in the 2nd Revue, and “Re:Create” which plays a pivotal role in the 8th episode are all especially noteworthy. Be sure to turn on the song subtitles or you’ll really will miss out during the series. The song lyrics are very important since they are how each girl primarily expresses her mood and reason for becoming a stage girl.

Finally, I’d like to pay special note to Revue Starlight’s opening and its multiple closings. The opening starts with this nice look at the main characters set to a slow stage curtain opening before it transitions through fun slice of life moments and on to showing the type of combat featured in the Revues. The opening song Hoshi no Dialogue (Dialogue of the Stars) is great, too. The endings are neat in that most of the episodes have similar but distinct end credits sequences based on the primary character or characters who just took part in that episode’s Revue.

All In All:

Revue Starlight is an interesting anime with a unique premise. The way which it uses its magical stage play Revues to resolve various emotional and status based conflicts between its cast members is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I love that the songs being sung by the characters in the midst of combat often mattered as much or more than the action within their fantastical stage battles. If you love anime with music and theatrics, you should at least give this a one episode try.

Interestingly, Revue Starlight has yet another hidden side that really pulled me in. Almost everything in the show from the varied heights of its characters to the small pink lens flare glows that are present in almost every single background serve as a veiled criticism of the real world stage shows and music schools of Japan’s Takarazuka Revue. We’ll need to Dig Deeper and enter spoiler territory to really talk about this aspect of the show, but the basics are that Revue Starlight actually speaks out quite strongly against the 100+ year old practices of pitting actresses against each other in competitions where only a handful can reach the highly revered yet highly regulated position of a Top Star.

Because of all this, I highly encourage you to watch Revue Starlight then come back here to learn more about the sharp criticisms it is voicing, or, if you aren’t afraid of spoilers, continue along with me and learn about the show’s hidden depths so that you can go in with a better understanding of everything you are about to see.

Revue Starlight is actually one of the more interesting shows with one of the most well organized subtexts I’ve ever seen. In addition to its already tightly woven plot about the power of a long held promise, just about every aspect of the show also works to demonstrate the flaws of the real world Takarazuka Revue system. This is going to require a bit of a history lesson, so bear with me.

The Takarazuka Revue is a stage show company that was founded in 1913 by a Japanese railroad tycoon in the city of Takarazuka, Japan. The city had become a tourist city at the final stop of a rail line and in order to further boost the city’s tourist potential, this tycoon created an all girls theater that quickly grew in popularity and status. The theater eventually formed the Takarazuka Music School, an elite acting school similar to the one in the anime. This school only accepts a few of dozen young women each year. The real life school is very strict and the actresses compete against each other to become one of the handful of “Top Stars” maintained by the company at any given time.

There’s an extra wrinkle there, though. Even though the company puts on a wide variety of shows with male and female parts, think Romeo and Juliet or Phantom of the Opera, all the parts are played by female actresses. To accomplish this, the girls joining the school are split up at the end of their first year into Otokoyaku (boy role) and Musumeyaku (girl role) groups. Sadly, only Otokoyaku are eligible to become Top Stars, and typically they are paired with a single Musumeyaku whose job it is to support their performance and popularity until they retire. Tragically, retirement usually happens just a few short years after an actress obtains one of the Top Star positions since it takes so long to reach that level and since once there, the actress is at the top. There’s nowhere left to go.

In the Takarazuka system, young women compete fiercely with each other while, right off the bat, half of them have no hope of earning the most money and fame because only the ones sorted as Otokoyaku even have the potential to become a Top Star. Those are just the rules. That sorting is almost entirely based on physical attributes such as height, vocal tone, and looks. Things like acting ability and singing ability are secondary. To be a Top Star, you have to fit a certain predefined mold and everyone else is treated as significantly lesser than the Top Stars.

Just as there is only a singe Otokoyaku in each troupe, there is also only a single Musumeyaku, as well. You’d think that would make them equal, but it doesn’t. In reality, there is enormous pressure put on the Musumeyaku to support their Otokoyaku. If there’s a mistake the Otokoyaku makes, the Musumeyaku takes the responsibility. If there’s an opportunity to boost the Otokoyaku’s popularity, the Musumeyaku is obligated to pursue it. It’s the Musumeyaku’s job to enhance the desirability and fame of their Otokoyaku, but the reverse is never true.

The Top Star is the only one who truly matters in this system, but there is a ton of pressure and isolation demanded of the Otokoyaku, as well. In the past, there were strict rules like no romantic relationships for anyone at the school, especially either the Otokoyaku or Musumeyaku pairs since they have to remain potentially available to all their fans. Girls at the school or in one of the troupes, especially the Otokoyaku or their Musumeyaku, were also forbidden from receiving or responding to fan mail as well. These kinds of rules and restrictions, combined with the fierce competition to become a Top Star, led to a lot of burnouts, bullying, lawsuits, and even suicides over the years. The Takarazuka Revue has cleaned up its image a good bit in the modern age, and it has cut back on some of its rules, but all these problems still linger over it to some extent.

We can see so many aspects of the Takarazuka Revue system within Revue Starlight. For instance:

Why are Maya Tendo and Claudine Saijo generally seen as the school’s two top students? Why does the always cheerful and motherly Nana “Banana” Diaba have the ability to surpass the both of them as seen later in the series? The answer is that Maya and Banana have all the physical attributes like height and stature they need to become Otokoyaku in the Takarazuka Revue system. Claudine comes close, but ultimately she is too girly and in the real world she would have been seen as a top performing Musumeyaku. And that’s exactly where she ends up! The way Claudine breaks down in episode ten and takes responsibility for Maya’s loss are classic Musumeyaku tendencies drilled into those counterpart women who are forbidden from reaching Top Star status. Sadly, someone as hard working and skilled as Futaba Isurugi would never be considered an Otokoyaku. I believe we see her lose out to Maya, Claudine, and even her friend Kaoruko over the course of the series for largely for these reasons. (Though her loss to Kaoruko is actually its own interesting character study… Their relationship was always based on Futaba supporting and following Kaoruko. If Futaba had won, it would have driven them completely apart which neither actually wanted.)

Similarly, look at the way the Revues are set up. The girls are all battling to become the Top Star, but we later learn that the Top Star usually robs their rivals of their Shine. This is one of the real world criticisms leveled at the Takarazuka Revue system. A small handful of women, one from each acting troupe, achieve Top Star status. These women are the ones to get the fame and press and money while all the other candidates are treated as mere actors. This can be devastating to those who fail to reach the exclusive Top Star position. Revue Starlight takes this even further as we see Hikari Kagura and later Karen Ajio straight up lose the will to continue their careers after losing out to their class’ Top Star. That Karen’s ultimate loss was to her best friend just made things all the more tragic!

With all this in mind, take note of just how often our main character Karen Ajio goes against the Takarazuka Revue system. Her promise to Hikari is for them to share the spotlight… in direct contrast to the Top Star system that recognizes one actress above all others. Her declaration at the end of her transformation sequence, “We will all do Starlight!”, sets it up for all her classmates to join her as equals on the stage which, again, is the opposite of the normal Top Star system.

In contrast, look at Maya and Claudine. Both of them never really had any competition until they met each other. And how do they eventually end up? As an Otokoyaku and Musumeyaku pair determined to claim their first and second place roles from within the Takarazuka Revue system! It’s not an accident that these two represent one of the final obstacle our main characters have to overcome.

It’s all this history and deliberate veiled criticism that I think propels Revue Starlight past its merely average presentation to become one of the more interesting anime I’ve had the pleasure to dig deeper into. But that’s not all there is to say. I didn’t know any of this when I started Revue Starlight, and I almost abandoned it because of that. But then, I caught a series of videos and articles that go into even more detail and saved the show for me:

by Ragashingo

The girls with the southern lights in the background

Review: A Place Further Than The Universe

In Short:

A Place Further Than The Universe is a 2018 anime by Madhouse that follows the challenges and triumphs of four Japanese high school girls who become the best of friends after choosing to join a research expedition to Antartica. The show features strong art and animation, great characterizations for its four leads, a realistic portrayal of just what it takes to go on such a journey, a ton of great humor and funny moments, and a surprising amount of depth and heartache that you might not expect given the show’s premise and early episodes.

Suggested Minimum Watch: 1 episode. If you don’t love the show by the end of the end credits train ride you’d be better off finding something else.

Full Review:

When I first saw the key art and heard the initial pitch for A Place Further Than The Universe, I almost immediately put it in my ignore pile. The premise of four high school girls going on an adventure to Antartica just seemed too cutesy to me. The visuals reminded me a bit too much of shows like Girls und Panzer and High School Fleet, two shows where groups of girls join their school’s tank club or crewed warships with no adults and no real risks or dangers. I figured A Place Further Than The Universe was like that. Cutesy without any real substance. Turns out I was super wrong! Instead, this is a show that is both packed with humor and laughs, and one that tells a surprisingly character focused coming of age story.

The show begins with Mari Tamaki, a second year Japanese high school student who wakes up one morning and realizes that she hasn’t really done anything with her life. Desperate to go on an adventure, she attempts to skip class one morning but chickens out and ends up at school on time, same as always. That evening, on her way home, she happens to pick up a bank envelope dropped by an unknown girl from school who rushes by. Inside is a million yen! Mari manages to track down the owner the next day and is introduced to Shirase Kobuchizawa, a girl her age who is determined to make her way to Antartica.

After a bit of a rough start, the two girls hit it off and soon come in contact with Hinata Miyake, an intelligent, upbeat girl their age who works full time while studying for college, and Yuzuki Shiraishi, a girl from out of town who is a year younger than them and who is a childhood actress and social media star. She is being forced to accompany an expedition to Antartica to record a social media type documentary.

These four girls are the main reason to watch A Place Further Than The Universe. Each has a distinct personality, and a distinct reason for wanting to go to Antartica.

  • Mari is goofy and upbeat, but, having done very little beyond obtain perfect attendance and excellent grades at school, she is a little sheltered as to how the real world works. She wants to go on the trip so she can say she actually did something.
  • Hinata is fun loving, athletic, and smart enough to become the brains of the group, but she tends to hide her troubles behind a laugh and a smile. She says she just wants to do something big before entering university, but her stated reasons for dropping out of school aren’t the whole story.
  • Yuzuki is essentially the girls’ ticket to Antartica. Her mother is helping fund the expedition and Yuzuki is set to record a fun, social media heavy show detailing her trip. Sadly, because she’s been a child actress for as long as she can remember, Yuzuki has never had much time for friends. Worse, often any friends she does try to make care more about her popularity than actually getting to know her.
  • Then there’s Shirase. At the start of the story she has a somewhat cynical, reserved personality and her plans are often a little under-thought, but she is determined to get to Antartica as part of the upcoming public expedition absolutely no matter what. You see, her mother was a member of the previous research expedition that left for Antartica more than three years ago. But, while the rest of the team returned home, Sirase’s mother did not. She was lost in a blizzard, never to be seen again.

A Place Further Than The Universe is a show filled with jokes and laughs and humorous situations, mostly of the four girls’ making, but it is also a show that has a more serious undercurrent. Though it’s not obvious at first, each of the four girls has some obstacle in their life that they wish they could overcome, and the friendships they form with each other during their joint trip to Antartica helps them do just that.

The resolution to Shirase’s troubles had me in full on tears like no anime has before or since. The full stories of the other three girls turned out to be pretty impactful, as well, and serve to further illustrate the strong bonds of friendship they form along the way. The friendships these four girls make on their journey, combined with the emotional payoffs to their individual stories, puts this anime on a different level than many of its peers.

Beyond its four main characters, A Place Further Than The Universe boasts a surprisingly solid look at what it takes to attempt an expedition to Antartica. There’s an episode dedicated to training for the trip. There’s an episode just about exploring the ship that will be their home for the weeks long journey. There’s an episode all about life on board the icebreaker as it sails from Australia to Antartica. Although issues like loading supplies, or obtaining funding, or the sacrifices people make to go on such an expedition are never super heavily focused on, they all come up during the course of the series. Really, what I thought would be the four girls’ unrealistically goofy adventure actually turned out to kinda be the opposite. There is realism to spare here, and the show is all the better for it.

In a show about high school girls going on an adventure, a decent amount of attention is given to the secondary adult characters, as well. In particular, Mission commander Gin Todo and vice commander Kanae Maekawa, both of whom were close friends of Shirase’s mother, have standout minor roles. Gin’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Shirase is one of the high points of the series. The loss of Shirase’s mother, who was friends with most of the returning crew, is keenly felt throughout the second half of the show. Not in any big way, but there’s a subtle acknowledgment of sadness and a determination to try again despite the last trip ending in tragedy that makes things feel ever more real.

That’s not to say this show isn’t also goofy and enjoyable, because it certainly is. The girls’ antics had me cracking up more often than not while watching this series. They joke and goad and screw up and make amends and grow as people in the funniest ways that feel authentic to four high school girls tagging along to Antartica. The show does a great job balancing the handful of truly sad moments with the general sense of cheerfulness and adventure that it puts forth most of the time.

A Place Further Than The Universe is also a beautifully animated series. When it wants to, it’s artistry can rival even anime like Your Name or Violet Evergarden. In particular, it pulls some of the same tricks we see in Makoto Shinkai films where it recreates the look and feel of real world locations with a great attention to detail. The real life Antarctic base of Syowa Station really comes alive in animated form, as do the tourists areas of Singapore and the port areas of Australia’s Fremantle. The show also often goes above and beyond on its animation. A goofy chase scene in the second episode is fantastically well done, but just everywhere you look there are extra touches and flourishes to both the foreground and background characters that help enliven each and every scene.

The show is no slouch musically, either. The main theme is upbeat and enjoyable, but it’s the reoccurring insert song Haru ka Tooku (roughly, “No Matter How Far”), that gets played during moments of friendship and forward movement that really gets me. The music knows just when to come in to perfectly enhance moments of adventure or sadness.

All In All:

A Place Further Than The Universe is something I did not expect. It is hilarious, charming, heartwarming, and occasionally tear jerking. And it’s all based on the strength of its characters and the journey they go on together. Plus, and this is a minor point, it wasn’t made to sell an incomplete manga or light novel. It was made solely to be a great anime, something that is fairly unique these days.

by Ragashingo

Toybox in orbit over earth with a sunrise ahead

Review: Planetes Anime

In Short:

Planetes is a well made, character-driven anime that depicts life and work in Earth’s orbit in the near future of 2075. Its realistic portrayal of space, combined with its complex, well-rounded ensemble cast, delivers humor and fun along with a strong helping of angst and character drama.

Even though its art direction is top notch, Planetes is an older series, and that sometimes shows up in art you’ll wish matched up better with today’s higher resolutions.

Suggested Minimum Watch: 1 episode. You get to meet most everyone and you get to hear the first of Tanabe’s several epic rants about love.

Full Review:

It was something of a Space Week last week for me and millions of others across the globe as SpaceX launched two Astronauts on a test flight of their new Dragon crew capsule. I celebrated in a bunch of different ways: I finally got around to building my LEGO International Space Station. I listened to podcast about the Apollo program. I watched my copy of Apollo 13 (the director commentary this time.) But even after the docking I still wanted to do something else, so I’ve loaded up my copy of the 2003 anime Planetes and have been having a blast rewatching it. 

There are several great anime set in space. Obviously, I have the entire Macross Frontier Episode Guide here at my site, but I also love anime like Cowboy Bebop, Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Aldnoah.Zero, and Strain: Strategic Armored Infantry. One thing all these anime have in common, however, is though they may be set in space, they are generally not about space. There is one anime, though, that is different. One that explores what the near future of life in orbit might be like. And it is great!

Released in 2003, Planetes primarily follows the lives of six members of a fictional space-based corporation called Technora in the year 2075. Based out of a large space station in earth orbit, Technora is made up of a number of different divisional Sections each with their own jobs and responsibilities. Our main cast doesn’t work in the Control Section which acts as the space station’s air traffic control, nor do they work in Administrative section or Engineering Section or Accounting Section… no, they work for Technora’s much derided Debris Section. Their job is to go out in an old beat up cargo shuttle and retrieve or deorbit space debris before it can collide with other ships, satellites, or stations. They are essentially Space Trash Collectors, and while their jobs are important to help keep earth’s orbit free of dangerous space junk, they aren’t paid particularly well and don’t contribute much to Technora’s bottom line.

There are a two main things that make Planetes something of a must watch anime:

1. It is set in a near future of commercial space operations that you can almost see from the here and now if you squint hard enough. Planetes gets almost everything about space right. Spacesuits are big and bulky. Moving around in zero gravity is tough to get a hang of. Ships don’t zip about or change directions easily even when their engines are at full power. And, of course, engines, thrusters, and, heck, even laser defense satellites make zero noise out in the vacuum of space.

We get to see everything from moon colonies, to astronaut training, to a spaceship capable of transversing the solar system, but it’s all done in ways that makes a whole lot of sense given where actual space technology seems to be going. Planetes’ realistic vision of life in space is easily one of the best out there in any medium.

2. Its complex, well rounded characters and their relationships drive the show. Yes, there are some interesting plots and happenings that put our Debris Section employees into challenging situations, but more so it’s the hopes, fears, and desires of our main cast that push them into places they never thought they would, or could, end up. Sometimes, their journeys are a struggle. Not everyone is ascendent. Not everyone achieves their goals. And the ones that do sometimes take routes that both they, and their colleagues, wish they hadn’t.

That’s not to say Planetes is depressing or all about drama, drama, and more drama. It, and its characters, have good times as well as bad. The members of Debris Section, in particular, are mostly oddballs that are somewhat looked down upon. They don’t have a lot of staff. They have barely any corporate influence at all. But, on the plus side, it means that they aren’t all that closely supervised and can get away with a good bit of goofing off and trouble making that the more respectable sections, like Control Section, could only dream of.

On top of that, some of the main cast can get pretty eccentric at times. Take Ai Tanabe, the newest, most inexperienced member of Debris Section who will, at the drop of a hat, yell your head off about how life is not worth living without love even as everyone around her scoffs or mocks her for it. Or, take Fee Carmichael, Debris Section’s primary ship pilot whose addiction to smoking, despite living in space where it is almost universally forbidden, leads to one of the most exciting moments in the series. Then there’s Debris Section’s second in command, Arvind “Robbie” Lavie, who is such a bend over backwards yes man completely devoted to pleasing the highest ranking person in the room that his antics drive a decent portion of the show’s comedy.

Every member of the Debris Section, and quite a few of the lesser cast of characters, all have senses of humor, and personal sticking points, and reasons for why they behave the way they do. There are friendships made and broken. Arguments that persist a long time only to finally be resolved. And choices that make total sense but will, at the same time, have you wanting to grab hold of characters and shake them, and make them realize just what they are doing to themselves and others.

Another reason I like it is Planetes speaks to bigger things. With so many realistically portrayed characters, it kinda has to. As the show progresses, it touches on things like: national economic disparity, racism, abusive relationships, corporate greed, dying with dignity, harsh uncompromising determination, and more. But, again, Planetes isn’t a depressing show by any means. There are plenty of friendships and growing moments and characters finding the strength to overcome their troubles or hold fast to their ideals, too.

Animation wise, Planetes is decent, but there’s always a sense that it sure would have been great if it had been made in 2013 instead of 2003. Don’t get me wrong, ships and stations and characters and background are all pretty well detailed and animated, but the show does maybe lack the sort of awe inspiring grandeur that a realistic show set in 2075 made more recently might otherwise have. In particular, I wish some of the shots of earth were crips, detailed, 4k backdrops instead of nice but somewhat blurry 2003 artwork. That said, everything space related is so well realized, plus this is one of the fairly rare shows that actually take the time to make good graphics for the things that appear on screens and reports, so that, at least, makes me happy.

All in All:

Planetes is a wonderful show for anyone who loves space. It gets so much right in so many areas that the few places it is lacking are almost just complete non-issues.

by Ragashingo

The Last Word

Bite-sized Backstory 57: The Showdown at Dwindler's Ridge

For decades, Shin Malphur hunts the man who killed his friend, mentor, father figure. Shin and Yor finally met atop a place called Dwindler’s Ridge. And… this is how it played out. I don’t often quote large portions of Grimoire Cards, my goal is to summarize and make available, not to copy and paste, but this showdown is one of my favorite scenes in all of Destiny’s lore. It is a scene that deserves to be read:

Now.

We stood silent, the sun high.

Seconds passed, feeling more like hours.

He looked different.

He seemed, now, to be weightless – effortless in an existence that would crush a man burdened by conscience.

My gaze remained locked as I felt a heat rising inside of me.
The other spoke…

“Been awhile.”

I gave no reply.

“The gunslinger’s sword… his cannon. That was a gift.”

My silence held as my thumb caressed the perfectly worn hammer at my hip.

“An offering from me… to you.”

The heat grew. Centered in my chest.

I felt like a coward the day Jaren Ward died and for many cycles after.

But here, I felt only the fire of my Light.

The other probed…

“Nothing to say?”

He let the words hang.

“I’ve been waiting for you. For this day.”

His attempt at conversation felt mundane when judged against all that had come before.

“Many times I thought you’d faltered. Given up…”

All I’d lost, all who’d suffered, flashed rapid through my mind, intercut with a dark silhouette walking toward a frightened, weak, coward of a boy.

The fire burned in me.

The other continued…

“But here you are. This is truly an end…”

As his tongue slipped between syllables my gun hand moved as if of its own will.

Reflex and purpose merged with anger, clarity and an overwhelming need for just that… an end.

In step with my motion, the fire within burst into focus – through my shoulder, down my arm – as my finger closed on the trigger of my third father’s cannon.

Two shots. Two bullets engulfed in an angry glow.
The other fell.

I walked to his corpse. He never raised his cursed Thorn – the jagged gun with the festering sickness.

I looked down at the dead man who had caused so much death.

My shooter still embraced by the dancing flames of my Light.
A sadness came over me.

I thought back to my earliest days. Of Palamon. Of Jaren.

Leveling my cannon at the dead man’s helm, I paid one final tribute to my mentor, my savior, my father and my friend…

“Yours… Not mine.”

…as I closed my grip, allowing Jaren’s cannon, now my own, to have the last, loud word.

“Yours… Not mine.” is easily my favorite quote in all of Destiny. It was already a powerful line, but knowing the history of it, how it was both a confident, forceful statement, and a memorial to a lost friend, makes it so much better. It would make a great ending… but this is not the end of the story of The Last Word!

Unless killed in unusual ways, Guardians are immortal, meaning Shin does not just grow old and die happy. Similarly, the call of the Darkness and the Hive did not go away just because Shin put an end to Dredgen Yor. From here, Shin Malphur takes it upon himself to put a stop to any Guardian who would dare meddle with the powers of Darkness like Dredgen Yor did. And, once he becomes known as a feared boogeyman restlessly and ruthlessly devoted to the Light, Shin goes a step even beyond that…

I hope you’ll join me next time as we begin to delve into the frightening Legend and thought provoking truths behind The Man With The Golden Gun.

Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 4

by Ragashingo

The Last Word

Bite-sized Backstory 56: Thorn vs The Last Word

For the next several years Jaren Ward stays at Palamon after freeing it from Magistrate Loken. We know that Shin Malphur thought of him as the town’s savior and eventually came to think of Jaren as a friend and father figure.

The Fallen were still a major problem for Palamon, however. It sounds like the town gets hit hard by Fallen raiders again. Jaren Ward and a few of the toughest survivors leave to give chase and possibly to prevent that group of Fallen from coming back. Four days later, someone new comes to what was left of the town. This man is tall and dark and solemn. Shin recalls that there was an intense sadness about him, but that he was polite and took up a room. This is Shin Malphur’s first time meeting Dredgen Yor.

Something happens soon after and we find Shin and a few others out in the wilderness having put Palamon’s “ash” to their backs. The lines get a bit hard to read between, but we learn that Shin and those with him were seeking vengeance for something. Could just be the fallen attack, but I think there’s a strong chance they are hunting Dredgen Yor. We have another transcript featuring the corrupted Guardian being drawn into a loud conversation with some local bandits one of which wants to see his gun, Thorn.

[u.1:0.1] Can I see what you got there?
[silence]
[u.1:0.2] Yer cannon…can I see it?
[beat]
[u.2:0.1] I know you?
[beat]
[u.1:0.3] Not that I can say.
[u.2:0.2] And you wanna hold my piece?
[beat]
[u.1:0.4] Just that I never…seen one like it.
[beat]
[u.2:0.3] No, you haven’t.
[u.1:0.5] Looks dangerous.
[u.2:0.4] Seems, maybe, that’s the point.
[u.1:0.6] Suppose so.
[u.1:0.7] Can I see it?
[u.2:0.5] Not likely.

Dredgen Yor banters with the leader of this group of four men for a bit and takes it unkindly when the leader states as “fact” that no one has ever been to the moon. The men begin to threaten Dredgen Yor and after warning them off in his own sort of way Yor finally has enough of their tough guy acts and guns three of them down. He saves the leader for last. This man who had wanted a look at Thorn now gets to stare down its barrel as Dredgen Yor explains to him about the nightmares of the Hive and how they will soon be coming for them all. And then the leader, too, is murdered.

Now, there is nothing that directly says this sorta old west bar room “conversation” happened in Palamon, but just nine days after Palamon is reduced to ash Shin Malphur and his group of Palamon survivors encounter Dredgen Yor again. I don’t think they were hunting Fallen because Shin notes that they had accidentally wandered into Fallen territory as they tracked the trail of something or someone. Along the way, some of Shin’s group are killed, “gunned down”, we’re told. But, what’s left of Shin’s group also meet up with Jaren Ward, and together they continue tracking their target. Jaren has an intense confidence that keeps the group going even though hope seems to be lost. But then, everything falls apart late one night.

A crack of gun fire then several more echo through the woods… These shots sound familiar, perhaps even comforting to the group. They’ve come from Jaren Ward’s prized hand cannon, but, tragically, they are not the last word this time, as one sickly, unfamiliar shot answers Jaren’s several. Afterward, there is only silence.

Everyone back at Shin’s camp knows what has happened. Jaren had gone out alone to engage “the other”, the same thing Shin termed Dredgen Yor when he met him, but this time Jaren Ward was not coming back. Those with Shin soon leave fearful for their lives. Shin, though, stays and searches for his mentor. Shin doesn’t find Jaren Ward, at least not at first. Instead, he finds Jaren’s still very much alive Ghost. The Ghost has something for Shin: Jaren Ward’s hand cannon. Dredgen Yor left it for Shin. How do we know? Because Dredgen Yor and Jaren Ward’s Ghost have a little conversation after Yor permanently kills Jaren Ward with a single shot from Thorn. The conversation between the two is interesting for a few reasons:

  1. Both the Ghost and Dredgen Yor agree that Shin Malphur is special. We know that of course, since we know Shin’s history of being revived in the Light by his long lost Ghost when he was nothing more than a baby. But we’ve also gotten some little indications that Jaren Ward and his Ghost knew Shin was special. We now learn that Dredgen Yor knew, as well.
  2. Dredgen Yor tells Jaren Ward’s Ghost to give his Guardian’s gun to Shin Malphur. Yor calls it a gift. He calls it giving the apprentice his master’s sword. The Ghost thinks that Yor is mostly just trying to further anger and sadden Shin.
  3. Jaren Ward’s Ghost calls Dredgen Yor a monster. Yor responds by alluding back to when his own Ghost called him that before they parted ways.
  4. Jaren Ward’s Ghost also argues that Dredgen Yor is not just a monster or an evil force of nature, but that he’s still a man that can be killed. And Dredgen Yor agrees that, yes, in that there is a sliver of hope.

Now there are two ways to look at this forth point, and I think both are valid. On one hand, Dredgen Yor is someone we have quoted as saying “Nothing dies like hope.” He is probably gifting Jaren Ward’s gun to Shin Malphur to fuel that hope so he can crush it too.

But, and we’ll get into this a whole lot more very soon, Dredgen Yor is also agreeing that there is hope that maybe he still is a man who can be stopped, who can be killed. It will take someone very special to stop him, Dredgen Yor knows, and maybe he thinks he’s found that person in Shin Malphur.

Next time I get to take y’all through one of my very favorite encounters in all of Destiny: The Showdown at Dwindler’s Ridge!

Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 4
Ghost Fragment: Thorn 2
Ghost Fragment: Thorn 3
Ghost Fragment: Thorn 4

Next: Bite-sized Backstory 57: The Showdown at Dwindler’s Ridge

by Ragashingo

The Last Word

Bite-sized Backstory 55: Rezyl Azzir & Dredgen Yor

If Jaren Ward was the embodiment of Light and Hope, Dredgen Yor was what you get when that hope dies. You see, long before the Titan we know as Dredgen Yor became perhaps the worst, most corrupted Guardian in history, he was a man known as Rezyl Azzir.

Rezyl was one of the Risen. One of those found by their Ghost before the Iron Lords, or The City, or the concept of Guardians existed. Rezyl, along with legends such as Zavala, Ikora Rey, and Lord Saladin saw to it that The City’s great walls were built in the first place. Rezyl was a hero, a bringer of hope. I love this quote about Rezyl Azzir:

The noble man stood. And the people looked to him. For he was a beacon – hope given form, yet still only a man. And within that truth there was great promise. If one man could stand against the night, then so too could anyone – everyone.

There are some great stories of Rezyl’s accomplishments. In one, he charges an entire Fallen Ketch on his sparrow knowing he’d be killed in the process. But he has a plan. He had his Ghost hang back. When the Fallen Kell and his troops came out to parade Rezyl’s lifeless body as a prize, Rezyl’s Ghost slipped into the crowd and quickly revived him. Alive again, Rezyl unloaded on the Kell with his hand cannon Rose and then:

In one motion, Rezyl rose from a crouch, his fists clenched and raised high as a storm of Arc Light built within him, his full might raining down on the Kell’s chest. The shockwave of Rezyl’s attack hit like a meteor, shattering the Kell’s body and any Fallen within the Havoc storm’s radius.

Through cleverness and strength, Rezyl had managed to kill a Fallen Kell, one of their highest ranking leaders!

In another story, Rezyl tracks a group of Fallen to a small town nestled in the snowy, tree covered mountains. Although it is not named, the town is almost certainly Palamon. Rezyl saves the town and leads those that are willing back to The City, but some stay behind. This might very well be the event that set Magistrate Loken down his bad path. And for Rezyl, this is yet another time that he does good and saves lives, but only after evil and suffering occur. We learn here that Rezyl is tiring of the endless war and is realizing that the good that he does is never enough.

By this point, Rezyl is a hero known far and wide beyond The City, but there are shadows growing in his mind. Shadows coming from a specific place. From the Moon! There were stories and legends of an evil far worse than the Fallen pirates that Rezyl and other Guardians had been fighting. This is a man who is already slowly losing hope after centuries fighting the Fallen, but Rezyl is also a proud man who is trying to push forward and be the hero he is expected to be despite his fears. So, at some point, Rezyl goes to investigate the strange calling he has been hearing from the moon.

On the moon, Rezyl soon finds and begins to investigate the Hive structures that have long been silent. This is long after the Hive emerged once before and killed thousands of Guardians, and long after Eris Morn and her fireteam managed to kill the Hive god Crota which banished him temporarily from our world. Rezyl’s Ghost notes that the Hive are all supposed to be gone. Once they lost Crota they fell silent… and yet the giant doors of the Hive structure Rezyl is investigating creek open for him as soon as he arrives. The Hive have been waiting for him. They have been calling to him. They invite him in.

Rezyl leaves his Ghost behind with instructions for it to run for help if he doesn’t return. He then proceeds down and down into the depths of the Hellmouth until he encounters waves of Hive being lead by a Hive Wizard. Rezyl does his best, but even his Rose is not enough to save him… and yet the Wizard and her Hive do not kill him. Instead she taunts him, goads him, and plays upon those fears that have been growing in his mind. She show him that the Hive are preparing to reemerge and that there’s nothing he nor The City will be able to do to stop them this time. And then, cruelest of all, she lets him leave.

Two days later, Rezyl emerges back on the lunar surface, but he has been permanently changed by his experience. One of the first things he does do is begin to affix some of the tough, cursed bones of the Hive he fought and killed to his hand cannon Rose. Later, perhaps after warning The City about the reemergence of the Hive, Rezyl spends one last day looking up at the moon while struggling with himself. He was a hero. Someone who spread hope wherever he went. He saved towns and killed alien leaders and helped establish a Last Safe City whose walls now guard millions. And yet, all he can do is look up at the moon in fear of what is coming.

In that cool evening air, as dusk was devoured by night, the noble man ceased to exist. In his place another stood.

Same meat. Same bone. But so very different.

The first and only of his family. The sole forbearer and last descendent of the name Yor.

In his first moments as a new being, he looked down at his Rose and realized for the first time that it held no petals: only the jagged purpose of angry thorns.

And so, the man that was Rezyl Azzir dies, and in his place stands Dredgen Yor. As Yor, Rezyl leaves a gash of death and destruction in his wake. We don’t hear a lot about his deeds, one of the few acts we do know about is that he uses his corrupted Rose, now called Thorn, to permanently kill Thalor, a famed Crucible Champion. It is clear from surrounding context in Destiny’s lore that Dredgen Yor becomes infamous and feared by even Guardians of The City. After that Crucible match he is likely driven out of The City after which he continues to wander and continues to sow destruction wherever he goes.

Interestingly, Dredgen Yor’s Ghost stays with him through everything he does. But, eventually, Yor even sends his Ghost away. We have a transcript of the final conversation between Yor and his Ghost. We learn that his Ghost never even really considered leaving his side, not because it agrees with the terrible things he is now doing, but because, as his Ghost says:

I rekindled your Light, it falls first to me to aid in its survival.

Ultimately, though, Dredgen Yor convinces his Ghost to leave by talking up how he now only inspires hope so he can crush those that have it all the more. “Nothing dies like hope” he is quoted saying. But there is one very interesting thing at the end of this transcript that needs to be pointed out. Something important for the future:

[u.2:5.5] If you cannot let that man go, you will forever taint his legacy. All the good I have ever done will be washed away in the fire of who I have become. (Note: u.2 is Dredgen Yor speaking)
[u.1:5.3] If you care, there is still some promise within you. (Note: u.1 is Dredgen Yor’s Ghost speaking.)
[u.2:5.6] If I am being honest, I care only to give hope to the frightened, huddled masses so that when I come upon them they will have more to lose. Their pain will be greater. Their screams more pure.
[u.1:5.4] You…
[u.2:5.7] Nothing dies like hope. I cherish it.
[u.1:5.5] You’re a monster.
[u.2:5.8] Finally, you see the truth.
[u.1:5.6] [REDACTED] is truly dead.
[u.2:5.9] So I’ve said. Long live Dredgen Yor.
[u.1:5.7] This is farewell, but you can only run from your sins so far. In the end, you will die alone.
[u.2:6.0] Maybe so. But I gotta tell ya… I tend to like my odds.
[u.1:5.8] Your tainted “Rose” will not always save you.
[u.2:6.1] Old friend… It already has.

Yes, Dredgen Yor wants to be remembered as the hero Rezyl Azzir for the sole purpose of crushing the hopes of those he next murders, but that one final line, “Old friend… It already has.” is very curious. We’ll come back to this transcript in a bit. For now, I’ll just tease by saying that Dredgen Yor’s Ghost was right the first time.

We don’t have anything even close to a timeline of what Dredgen Yor does once he and his Ghost part ways, but we do know he eventually returns to Palamon, the town he once saved. By doing so, one of the darkest, most twisted Guardians we have record of will come face to face with Jaren Ward, one of the best and brightest.

Next: The Last Word vs Thorn

References:
Rezyl Azzir – Before These Walls
Rezyl Azzir – War Without End
Heart of Inmost Light
Legends and Mysteries: Rezyl Azzir
Legend: Rezyl Azzir – The Triumphant Fall
Ghost Fragment: Thorn
Mark of Contention
Ghost Fragment: Thorn 3

Next: Bite-sized Backstory 56: Thorn vs The Last Word

by Ragashingo

The Last Word

Bite-sized Backstory 54: Jaren Ward

Even though he is the gun’s original owner, Jaren Ward is really just a minor character in the story of The Last Word. He came to the town of Palamon nestled in the snowy, tree covered mountains one day like a heroic gunslinger out of an old western. He walks in from the south and everyone stares but no one talks. That is, until someone we recognize, Shin Malphur, the child of light, now a growing boy, breaks free of his adopted father and races out into the street to greet the newcomer.

Jaren is described as a Hunter that wears a racing helmet with thick tinted visor. So, shift your mind from straight western, to something with a little more sci-fi. He silently greets this kid that ran out to him, but also knows there’s something special about him. Shin, for his part, looks Jaren over in awe, but his gaze is soon fixed upon Jaren’s golden hand cannon. Jaren notices this and instead of chastising the boy or driving him away, he leans down and holds out his gun for this kid to inspect and hold. This is the first time Shin Malphur ever gets to hold The Last Word.

No one really moves after that. You have this sorta high tech western gunslinger with a Ghost floating over his shoulder standing in the street. You have towns people all crowded around waiting for something to happen. You have a young boy in awe, holding a very special gun for the first time. But they’re all waiting on someone. On Magistrate Loken. Loken is someone who started like all the other people who founded Palamon. He started out as the town’s overseer. He was someone who helped enforce the rules they’d all agreed on. But, over time, Loken became stricter. He began to enforce his will over everyone instead of just maintaining order. We’re told he lost people, but unlike most others, unlike Shin who barely remembers his parents and a small spark of Light that he tries not to dwell on, Loken’s losses eventually broke him.

As Loken grew more and more dictatorial people left. Palamon shrank. Soon, its people lived under one man’s rule… Loken’s rule… until Jaren Ward shows up. I don’t think we see Jaren and Loken’s first meeting, but we do catch up with Jaren Ward after he has done something to set Loken off. I’d like to think Jaren Ward took a few days to understand the situation in Palamon then decided to change it. In response, Loken sends nine men to surround Jaren in a courtyard and then he comes to confront the Hunter himself.

Loken does the classic villain thing. He struts and taunts and threatens Jaren all while Jaren just stands there calmly with his hands on his belt. The exchange ends like this (as recounted by Shin):

“This is our town! My town!” Loken was shouting now. He was going to make a show of Jaren – teach the people of Palamon a lesson in obedience.

Jaren spoke: clear, calm. “Not anymore.”

Loken laughed dismissively. He had nine guns on his side. “Those gonna be your last words then, boy?”

The movement was a flash: quick as chain lightning. Jaren Ward spoke as he moved. “Yours. Not mine.”

With those words and Jaren’s quick movements, Loken falls dead in an instant, and his men back down almost as quickly. From then on, Palamon is a free town. Jaren stays and helps. We don’t know a lot about his activities after freeing the town, but we do know two things:

  1. He becomes a new father figure to Shin Malphur, watching over him and teaching him for several years.
  2. He would sometimes lead hunting parties to track down and kill Fallen who got to close to town.

It’s while Jaren Ward is away on one of these hunts, several years later, than a second stranger with his own very special gun strides into Palamon. If Jaren Ward was the embodiment of the Light, this new man is his opposite, someone smothered in Darkness. And nothing good will come of it when these two meet.

Next time, we’ll work our way through the long history of the man best known as Dredgen Yor.

References:

Ghost Fragment: The Last Word
Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 2
Ghost Fragment: The Dark Age 2
Ghost Fragment: The Last Word 4

Next: Bite-sized Backstory 55: Rezyl Azzir & Dredgen Yor

by Ragashingo