Zetsuen no Tempest - 16

"The Wandering Apparition"

Ghosts as vestiges of desires; in other words, we see ghosts because we want to, and not all ghosts are the spirits of the dead.

Zetsuen seems to have gone off in a somewhat different direction this cour, and I have to admit I'm having a hard time adjusting. That's not to say that the dramatic tension and grandiosity of the first cour is gone, but there was a sense of urgency in those episodes that's blatantly missing here, and I think that to some extent the lack of that urgency has skewed the focus of the series as a whole. There's no time-crunch here, and we haven't been given a direct goal either. Samon and Evangeline have developed some sort of plan using Hanemura to gather attention, but we're clueless as to what the purpose of it all is, unless it's to somehow lure another Mage of Exodus from hiding. I personally find it unlikely that there is a second Mage, because it's pretty obvious that Hanemura does indeed possess the power of Exodus. However, Evangeline does make an interesting comment in regard to Yoshino regarding "the heart of Exodus," which seems to imply that there is a possibility that the Mage exists as two or more entities.

If that's the case, I place my bets back on Aika, even if she's dead; the flashbacks this week revealed more about her, and I'm inclined to agree with Yoshino that she does indeed have a bad personality while alive. Interestingly though, Aika seems more detached than ever, as if she knows more than she should and can't be bothered to deal with the present. Whether or not she had a hand in her own death to bring about certain events is still unknown, but I have a suspicion that she does have a place in everything one way or another. She is a ghost in more ways than one, and her existence has influenced nearly every character in some form. "Seems? Nay, it is. I know not seems!" Whether or not you believe in the idea of ghosts, or rely on your eyes to determine the truth of the world, there are some things that can't be quantified by what your senses detect, and Aika's influence on the world of Zetsuen makes her more of a ghost than if she were an actual apparition.

Coming back to the changes in the series, however, reveals a change in storytelling format. The urgency I mentioned before was part of it, but there was also a sense of a play being performed as Yoshino and Mahiro got ever closer to the clash between Genesis and Exodus. If that was a tragedy, then this half seems to be playing as a comedy, with Hakaze and Hanemura at the center of it. Hanemura is by all accounts a dork, and he's so pathetic that he spends most of his time being dragged around unwillingly at the hands of people like Evangeline or Mahiro. Hakaze, in the meantime, is mortified by the fact that she's in love with Yoshino, and the whole world seems to be conspiring against her. Both are funny developments, but they feel almost out of place with how central they are to the plot, considering how serious everything was (and is) around them. Perhaps things will start to feel more natural in time, or perhaps the clarification of what's going on and why will help change the pace to a more familiar one.