"The Valley of Death III"
WHAT? NO, ABORT ABORT!
Recently, I hung out with Zanibas and Xumbra-senpai from over at RC, seeing as we're all in the same state and are going or have graduated from the same school. Of course the conversations turned to anime, and seeing as Zani covers
Kaminai, we talked a bit about this series as well. I hadn't caught up yet, but when asked what I thought about it, I answered truthfully: "I really like it, it's
gorgeous and probably my favorite series of the season." Now that I have caught up (and gotten back into the blogging game a little), my answer is a little more defined: it really is my favorite series of the season. Now, that's not saying a whole lot as a lover of fantasy in such a slice-of-life dominated season, but there's something truly beautiful about
Kaminai, an elegance of sorts that is almost unfitting for a series about zombies and
loli girls running around with silver shovels. This isn't a series that explains everything from the start, or wants to explain things at all, but that doesn't make it captivating in the sort of way
Dansai or
Shinsekai were, despite being a very different sort of animal. There's plenty to nitpick if we want to talk about narrative choices and the like, but in general, this is a rather profound little story, one I've come to like quite a lot.
Of course, I'm much further ahead than this point by now, and I'm afraid there's a chance I'll be dropping episodic coverage because both Ivan and I have been far too busy and distracted to keep up with this all season consistently, but I'll try my best not to let that happen. This episode is both the best and the trickiest episode of the series to talk about as far as I've seen, and there are definitely some things that were done on purpose and perhaps a tad too rushed to sit as well as they may have in a different medium (it is an adaptation after all). Overall, however, I have to stick to my guns and nod approvingly, because for all its
emotional manipulation and weird choices, this is a pretty touching and somewhat different way to tell a story. I can't deny being pretty shocked that Hampnie would so quickly be taken out of the narrative, nor that I had no idea he would be, seeing how prominently he fit into the larger scheme of things as it built up to this point.
I was pretty sure Ai and Hampnie were father and daughter, even if Hampnie denied it, so that wasn't too hard to guess, but it is a bit of a cheap shot to use that new revelation to then kill him within the next few minutes and milk it for emotional reaction. That doesn't mean that it isn't emotional, however. It is incredibly cruel that after having lost her mother, her village, and her whole way of life, at Hampnie's own hands, in fact, that she would also
lose her long lost father and have to bury him with her own hands. I have no doubt that what Hampnie said is true; he would not have made for a good father, but in his last moments and his only day as an undead, he does his very best to give his daughter a few memories to carry her through with, and to impart his name onto her, the only way to tell her he cares despite the circumstances. It also strikes me just how interesting it is that Ai's village was
made up of the undead; if her mother was a true gravekeeper, like Scar, why didn't she feel the need to bury everyone? How did she fall in love and bear a child anyway? Is this all to do with God granting wishes after all? I'm not sure, but I do think this is a lovely little series; certainly not a masterpiece but full of charm and grace against all the odds.
N.B.: Thank you so much to Ivan for the caps! Good luck on your driving test today, ganbatte!
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