GARO THE ANIMATION

Episode 7

Sometimes shows have good episodes, and sometimes they have bad ones. GARO THE ANIMATION just had a weird bad one. Equal parts "what the hell?" in narrative and unusually incompetent in visuals, this installment is an odd outlier that does little more than break the series' flow and make me wish it was next week so I could watch GARO's real next episode.

The episode started out in the typical way, with Germán schmoozing and León browbeating his old man. Before long, however, León is attacked by Bernardo, an evil Makai Knight with an unspecified grudge against Germán. León loses the fight, blacks out, and the episode takes a sudden left turn into crazytown. For starters, León wakes up in the middle of a medical procedure performed by a man we've never seen before. Villagers burst in, kill the man, and accuse him and León of being werewolves. Then León actually IS a werewolf, transforming and killing the villagers before running off into the night. BUT THEN it turns out that was all a dream, and León is under the delusion that he's a normal villager named Pepe, living with his grandfather and sister. Some shady stuff is going on in this village involving the church and a Pied Piper, who turns out to have been the REAL Pepe all along, possessed by a Horror to enact revenge against the church for selling him into slavery. He opts to carry out this revenge by...leaving people who work at the church alive and stealing the children for some unspecific purpose instead? Then the doctor from León's dream turns out to have been Pepe's father, who was murdered in order to sell his son into slavery, and León experienced this dream (I guess) because the grandfather (who is a Makai Alchemist) fed him a potion to make him think he was Pepe, and all of this was done to make the sister happy?

In the end, León goes home as if nothing happened to find Germán standing naked in the street, and all is right with the world again. It's difficult to overstate how much none of this made any sense. I watched this episode a couple of times, each time only growing more confused about what's happening and what it's supposed to mean. Was this some sort of recompense for how narratively and thematically cohesive the last episode was? I want to go back to that.

In theory, this shouldn't have been so bad. According to the classic laws of protagonist hero writing, at some point León is going to be tempted away from his call of duty. Immediately after an ego-crushing loss (as happened with Bernardo) is a good time for that to happen. However, this episode has the makeup of a lotus-eater story—amnesia, suddenly forcing the hero into a non-heroic identity, intoxicating substances, and an eventual return-to-arms—without an understanding of what this situation is supposed to signify within a larger character arc. Part of the problem is that the fantasy doesn't seem appealing to either León or the audience. León is never happy during his day as Pepe, nor does he seem to suffer much from having lost to Bernardo. It's a "temptation to stray off the path" episode that fails to convey both the temptation's appeal and the hero's moment of weakness. The only thing that jives with León's prior characterization is him getting flustered when a girl wants to marry him, which calls back to his issues with sexuality. The transition from León's loss to him waking up in the dream village was also jarring. I can imagine this story working if the episode opened with León waking up as Pepe and the why being revealed in flashback. That way it'd be intriguing and suspenseful rather than irritating and confusing.

It also raises a number of plot holes. How far could this remote village have been if León ended up there after his fight in the city? Why didn't Bernardo chase León down, and why didn't Ema pick him up? Wouldn't it have been better to directly show León's anxiety from having lost to an enemy knight rather than imply it in a roundabout way through his escape to some village somewhere? Just how long was León gone? His interactions with Germán at the end of the episode make it seem like it was only one night, but that's too brief for everything that happens in the village. This episode is not only incongruous with the narrative standards set by previous ones but ultimately irrelevant, just sound and fury signifying nothing.

The animation also took a nosedive in this episode. There are quite a few panning still frames in lieu of actual animation, and motion often consists of characters just sliding across the frame. Wolfman León looks wholly unscary, and scenes of him mauling the villagers are so choppy it's difficult to make out what's happening. There are also some bizarre extras, like this guy and Mr. Handsy here. It's still well-directed, but this seems like a dump episode in more than one way. I'm also not sure if Bernardo is supposed to be really gaunt or actually have two lines tattooed down his cheeks. Cheekbones don't look like that.

GARO THE ANIMATION delivers its first dud, but its built up enough goodwill from me to take the hit for now. Hopefully this episodic mishap won't permanently derail the adventure.

Grade: C-

GARO THE ANIMATION is currently streaming on Funimation.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.