Fractale – 10
In which Sunda punches the hell out of everyone for dramatic effect
Sorry for being a bit tardy on this one. It’s not like I wasn’t writing up blog posts, I just saved Fractale for last because I haven’t been particularly thrilled with the show recently. Maybe I’m just cynical now that there’s no weekly Madoka to speculate over though. Tegami Bachi ended too so this is the only weekly show that’s left for me now! Come on Fractale, don’t fail me now!
Pew pew~ bullets everywhere! Clain flies his mini airship right into the battle between LM and the Temple, barely managing to dock with Sunda’s ship before getting shot down. Sunda asks why the hell they’re there only to find out that Phryne is in enemy hands. Not. Good. Clain then goes through the process of asking to save her, getting punched, calling them murderers, calling them FRIENDS, and then asking to go again. Then Sunda agrees. WAT. At least Nessa is staying behind for sure. No way they’d be stupid enough to let Nessa go to the Temple.
…Scratch that, they’re stupid enough. With Nessa’s amazing persuasive techniques (i.e. pout and say you have to stay together…forever!), Enri is powerless to her will and sets out to the Temple. Meanwhile, Clain and Sunda go full throttle in that dinky little airship to make it into the Temple. As for Dias, who knows what that slimy eel has planned. Oh, cheap Izaya rip-off, do those dastardly deeds that only you can do~
Bitchzilla AKA Phryne has a one on one meeting with the high priestess. She tries to convince her to call off their attacks on LM, boasting persuasion skills just as powerful as Nessa. She points a dagger to her throat and threatens to kill herself. The high priestess looks worried for a moment, but then quickly turns it around. The people here can’t live without Fractale, and she would just throw the world into chaos by stopping the cycle of keys.
Negotiations are going swimmingly
As a last ditch effort, Phryne begs for sympathy. The high priestess used to be her, so she should understand. Except, she isn’t Phryne any more so she DOESN’T understand and instead tries to strangle her. Oh dear. After her crazy outburst, Phryne bites her ankle and runs off to find Clain. Come on, if you’re going to have a moment of insanity at least crush someone’s windpipe properly!
Alright, time for some action. Sort of. If your type of action consists of airships suddenly appearing and miraculously killing only the bad guys. And random bullet sprays by Clain going berserk. All of this leads to everyone meeting up after killing a bunch of old ladies – Nessa’s group, Clain’s group and Alabaster. They send Clain and Nessa to get Phryne while Dias tells his men to kill Phryne on sight. A sensible solution, but he still gets punched by Sunda for it. Oh, and did I mention Dias has a terminal still? That’s like…double the rebelliousness.
Nessa uses echolocation (or rather, singing that creepy Temple song) to find Phryne. She’s fading fast, so it’s a good thing Phryne makes good use of some old lady meat shields to find her. They have a nice, happy reunion through a glass wall until pedobear comes. Oh dear God, his pedo laugh is…Oh God and he..he licks her..I…why…WHY WOULD YOU END IT LIKE THIS?
*CRIES*
Dias picspam:
Well hello, and welcome to a picspam of yours truly, Di-
JESUS CHRIST, MY PERFECTLY CHISELED JAWLINE. HOW COULD YOU
Ugh, you bastard….Hey, wow, my blood tastes like chocolate.
End Thoughts: Avoiding this episode for a while was probably for the best. It just served as a reminder of how shallow this show really is. I’ll give it brownie points for being ambitious and trying to present a lot of action and drama, but it’s really too late to recover from the horrible set-up that’s been built up since the beginning of the series. This show feels empty. It’s hard to empathize with any of the characters because they’re downright unlikable and dreadfully inconsistent. Pair that with a meandering storyline that likes to only briefly touch on issues before skittering off to the next one with no connection and you get an anime as deep as a paper plate.
Considering how scattered Fractale has been, episode 10 isn’t really the worst of episodes. It’s better than the laundry episode, at least. But it’s an episode where it attempts something a bit more – and fails – which really shows me how far this show is from salvation. My cynicism has been steadily growing, to the point where I put off this episode for quite a while…*sigh* Just one more episode to go! (The sad thing is, it remains one of the few winter shows I haven’t dropped…) Hopefully I’m more inspired for the last episode.
You know what really bugged me? Clain going from “you’re a murderer!” to suddenly opening fire on a bunch of old ladies. Also, who the hell would let Nessa go to the Temple knowing full well what would happen? Oh, contradictions and stupid decisions. I could discuss how clones like Phryne must feel, what the hell kind of relation Barrot has to Phryne and if Nessa will just disappear if she doesn’t reboot the system. However, I don’t want to force myself to talk about things I’m not interested in for the sake of it. You know what I WILL talk about? I’m sure you can guess. Dias. Dias, baby, my only light in this show! All this time you had a terminal in you so you could download porn AND run a rebel organization. The man’s ambitious and I like that. I really hope it ends with him winning somehow, no matter how much of a clone he is of other villains (*cough Izaya cough*).
About Overcooled
A neuroscience graduate, black belt, and all-around nerd. You'll either find me in my lab or curled up in my rilakkuma kigurumi watching anime.
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ with 339 comments
I think the main failing of this show might be that the premise and the moral don’t actually match up at all. You’ve got this Ghibli-Summer Wars hybrid setting, with a cast taken from both those and more but a moral/theme fitting…a different story? I feel like if the aim of the show, the moral, the theme, whatever, actually matched the fairly awesome world they had created then maybe it would get somewhere a bit more than ‘BFF Forever’ (extra forever for extra effect).
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
The disjointed characters certainly don’t help things. It’s like they put a bunch of children in a serious world and they can’t decide whether to be innocent and naive or dark and realistic. Fractale is just really bad at connecting everything together…>_<
POWUH: Occasional (51-75) with 53 comments
Clain is both a murderer and a wannabe-hypocrite, but since he is an incredibly poor shot he still has the moral high ground.
Dias probably wiped out everyone’s terminals so he could steal all their monay and donay, woooooo!
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
He was secretly commenting LM when he called them murderers. His dream is to become a serial killer.
Wonder what he buys with all that monay/donay…XD
POWUH: Occasional (51-75) with 53 comments
His awesome red haxxor slug, obviously!
POWUH: 400-499 with 428 comments
I know Fractale is a little disjointed but I choose to just enjoy the story as it comes. Honestly, Fractale is one of the better shows, I mean, at least it’s story is more entertaining than GoSick, now THAT’S a disappointment. True, Fractale isn’t as great as Madoka (come back to air quickly please!) but it’s still enjoyable. Kinda reminds me of Eureka 7 with the whole shounen to man transition over series but obviously more compact. Wished it wasn’t just fit into only 13 episodes but definitely not dragged into 50+ episodes, probably the norm 24, to get more more backstory and the whole character development spiel. Often leads to greater enjoyment of the series, especially if there was an episode explaining Dias’ family connection to Izaya (they were destined brothers in evil). As for that pedobear…the less said, the better…
Can’t wait for the next episode!
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
It’s watchable, but I still find it especially frustrating considering my really high expectations for it at the start of the season..OTL Would they really manage to make it work in 24 episodes, or would it just be more laundry episodes? I really would like to think they would flesh out everything more with more episodes too though, it was such a great concept!
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 88 comments
Clain missed them all, so I guess it’s a way for the show to have him “man up” (pffft) while still staying “innocent” (annoying).
And the whole Sunda/Phryne hint was SO RANDOM
I can’t wait until this show is over… Sunda can just punch everyone for all I care…