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EP. REVIEW: Shadows House Season 2


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gsilver



Joined: 04 Nov 2007
Posts: 611
PostPosted: Sat Aug 13, 2022 11:37 am Reply with quote
I've never felt that Shadows House is the best written series, but have always felt that the characters more than make up for it, and I do really like the aesthetics of it, especially in the manga.

I've always really liked the Emilico and Shawn scenes in this episode and last, and while the wall-of-text infodump could have been done better, I still really like what it does for the characters.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Sat Aug 13, 2022 3:09 pm Reply with quote
I wouldn't have minded the infodump but it was, one, extremely blunt, like a string of badly written NPC dialogues in a game, including some completely deus ex machina type events; two, completely out of the blue for some the characters involved (eg. Shaun); and three, the characters jumped to conclusions that were extremely far-fetched, knowing the info they have. So yeah. For me these could have been really good character moments, but they were completely undercut by me just going "...OK, but on what basis does do they even assume this??" "...yes, but have we even seen them thinking about this stuff?" "oh man, this is so contrived!" etc.
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gsilver



Joined: 04 Nov 2007
Posts: 611
PostPosted: Fri Aug 26, 2022 7:27 pm Reply with quote
John is so hilarious:
Lacks basic information about the mystery but still manages to find an essential clue to solving it

I really liked this episode. It once again was wall-of-text'y, but they handled the tension really well. Really positive on the whole season so far, really. All of the characters are so endearing on their own ways, and even the more villainous characters like Edward have a lot to like about them.
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2501
PostPosted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 12:54 am Reply with quote
Ep8- This one had me waiting 'till the very end, I couldn't wait to see and what a twist! The writer had too much fun swinging the audience around to suspect Margret and the twins, but at least it wasn't someone from the "shadows" that we never knew. Just that the height gave it away, but Master Robe seemed too tall in the artwork to be one of the "children". In the one shot it even had me thinking that it was Margret being carried piggy-back on her doll...

However, I'd like to point out that the anime team may have deliberately mislead the viewers, as I checked "A Great Cleaning" and Rosemary's face wasn't clean when she appeared in the great hall, and when the scorches erupted at 09:03, her face was quite dirty.
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Aerdra



Joined: 02 Feb 2022
Posts: 320
PostPosted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 3:25 am Reply with quote
Hiroki not Takuya wrote:
However, I'd like to point out that the anime team may have deliberately mislead the viewers, as I checked "A Great Cleaning" and Rosemary's face wasn't clean when she appeared in the great hall, and when the scorches erupted at 09:03, her face was quite dirty.

About 10 seconds before that, there's a shot of Rosemary's face, mostly white, though her hair looked sooty. The next shot shows her face blackened with soot along with her hair. My guess is that, like me and most of the audience, the animators didn't realize the significance of this detail at the time.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 10:12 am Reply with quote
Hiroki not Takuya wrote:
However, I'd like to point out that the anime team may have deliberately mislead the viewers, as I checked "A Great Cleaning" and Rosemary's face wasn't clean when she appeared in the great hall, and when the scorches erupted at 09:03, her face was quite dirty.

I think Emilico meant the time when she and Kate saw the other dolls being force-fed with water in the infirmary, I don't remember which episode it was, but it was later than the cleaning story. We saw the Belles and I think Rosemary as well.

Anyway, this was a cute episode, even though the mystery aspect has lost my attention since the annoyingly awkward infodumps and contrived plot conveniences in the past episodes that messed up any organic development I was hoping for... also, Maryrose was suspicious ever since she refused to allow Louise into her room because it was "messy" (c'mon girl, it hasn't been that long). Also, well, she's given pretty much main character treatment in the ending, so she had to be relevant to the story somehow. (I'm now wondering about Barbara, she's been on the sideline since the first few episodes, so I really wonder what is going to be revealed about her to justify her being a main character in the ending...)

For me, this episode was almost solely carried by John and Patrick. John is just so charming and cute, and Patrick also has his own slightly confused and angsty charm, especially in duo with Ricky who is a great foil to him.

What I'm wondering about re: shadows and humans:
- OK, so shadows are morphs that develop shape and consciousness(?) by imprinting on, and then imitating humans. If that's the case then how come some shadows are so different from their humans? Kate and Emilico aside (obviously both are Very Special), all main shadow-human pairs are foils: brash and not very smart John and smart, cautious Shaun, introverted and complex-filled Patrick and calculating and ambitious Ricky, kind of shallow, socialite Louise and quiet Lou. So obviously there's something more going on here. If the end goal is for the shadow to eventually fully copy the human and then take over their body why are they not more perfect copies?
- During the debut party we've seen some of the adult shadows, and there was one with very conspicously insectoid features, she even had a butterfly theme going on... but she was humanoid. What happened there?? x_x

(I really hope these won't be answered in an infodump...)
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John the Dark Lord



Joined: 19 Jun 2020
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 11:01 am Reply with quote
Those questions you have were actually answered in the chapter that was just adapted. The problem is the way they were answered. In the panel where the Robe is explaining about how morphs lose their memories when mimicking humans, there is an image with text in the background explaining a couple of things. It's not very clear if it's something the Robe is saying or if it's just there for the sake of the readers. The anime staff seems to have decided it was the latter, so they didn't put the words on the mouth of the Robe, despite them being important.

As for what was said, it was "The original personality remains. Everything else is overwritten by the human's influence". The example given is that Lou is docile, but Louise is noisy. "There is also overcapacity." Which is why Shaun is smart but John is dumb.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 3:14 pm Reply with quote
John the Dark Lord wrote:
As for what was said, it was "The original personality remains. Everything else is overwritten by the human's influence". The example given is that Lou is docile, but Louise is noisy.

Hm, but I'm not really seeing this, though? I mean, maybe this is different with other shadow-human pairs*, but for one, this would still mean similarity in personalities, and that's just not happening in the main characters; and two, even in a previous episode when Patrick was musing about the influence Ricky has had on him, it just felt like a relationship dynamics thing, a weaker personality being pulled along and influenced by a stronger, more dominant one. Indeed what we've seen so far is Ricky leading the duo, and Patrick going along, not Patrick picking up traits from Ricky. Similarly with John/Shaun and Louise/Lou, there's no sign of the shadow taking on personality traits from their human, at least not in a way that I noticed.

John the Dark Lord wrote:
"There is also overcapacity." Which is why Shaun is smart but John is dumb.

Oh boy, I hope this is not an official translation. Anime smile + sweatdrop At least I can't parse this any other way than the Japanese word being キャパオーバー (literally "going over capacity") which means that basically Shaun's smarts were more than what John's small brain could handle, and as a result he basically became dumber than he would have been otherwise. ("Overcapacity" would be along the lines of "設備過剰" and it's a different concept.)

Also, this doesn't explain what happened with the adult shadow who looks like an insectoid human. Like, dear god, what did she merge with? I kind of want to see her non-shadow form...

*Something funny I noticed is that aside of referring to themselves in the third person, shadows always refer to other shadows as "pairs". In this episode when they were talking about the science group, Louise mentioned that they look old, but did so in a way that literally means "those three pairs" (三対). It's happened elsewhere as well. It's kind of like they regard a shadow and a doll as a single entity in two forms.
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gsilver



Joined: 04 Nov 2007
Posts: 611
PostPosted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 4:58 pm Reply with quote
SHD wrote:

Oh boy, I hope this is not an official translation. Anime smile + sweatdrop At least I can't parse this any other way than the Japanese word being キャパオーバー (literally "going over capacity") which means that basically Shaun's smarts were more than what John's small brain could handle, and as a result he basically became dumber than he would have been otherwise. ("Overcapacity" would be along the lines of "設備過剰" and it's a different concept.)


Why am I reminded about the Lupin III part 5 (or 4; not sure which) episode where there's the machine that requires the user to become so dumb that it circles all the way around to genius (or vice-versa)
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SaneSavantElla



Joined: 25 Jan 2013
Posts: 216
PostPosted: Sat Aug 27, 2022 7:35 pm Reply with quote
Aaah I didn't see that coming at all! With the sudden introduction and flashbacks on Christopher, and all the focus on Barbara and Maryrose in the ED (who are the characters we've seen interact with Christopher) I was pretty confident it was going to be him and then the story might segue smoothly into revealing to the children what happens when they become adults. But still looking very much forward to how this reveal plays out.
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MagicPolly



Joined: 26 Nov 2020
Posts: 1568
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2022 8:15 am Reply with quote
Originally I was gonna read the manga after season 1, but I got too lazy and I figured I might as well just watch season 2 and man I don't regret it at all. If the ending animation had been different I don't think I would have suspected Maryrose at all, and I was getting really worried it would end up being Edward again which would have been awful. Season 2 overall has been much more engaging since the world opened up after the debut and there's more characters.

I think my biggest issue was the conversation Emilico and Shaun had on the roof, especially him saying "I think my name used to be John". Like huh? What? Where did this come from?
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2022 2:46 pm Reply with quote
MagicPolly wrote:
I think my biggest issue was the conversation Emilico and Shaun had on the roof, especially him saying "I think my name used to be John". Like huh? What? Where did this come from?

Right?? That whole conversation came out of the blue, like... wait, where did they get all the info to draw these very specific conclusions? Have we even seen them (especially Shaun) thinking about such things? Just how... when... why???
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q_3



Joined: 02 Sep 2015
Posts: 129
PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2022 10:21 pm Reply with quote
I get the impression that after years of dead ends and the ultimatum of fusion, Maryrose has given up and is intent on just executing her one final scheme. Which probably involves going out in a blaze of glory, or at least on her (and Rosemary's) own terms instead of dying in a padlocked coffin. If she had any hope for herself left she might be more open to working with Kate and company, but I think her intent is to leave them in what she sees as the best position she can, even if that means being their enemy for now. And I'm not certain she's entirely wrong, especially if her actions can refute Edward's theory that she and Kate are already collaborating.
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gsilver



Joined: 04 Nov 2007
Posts: 611
PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2022 10:26 pm Reply with quote
SHD wrote:
MagicPolly wrote:
I think my biggest issue was the conversation Emilico and Shaun had on the roof, especially him saying "I think my name used to be John". Like huh? What? Where did this come from?

Right?? That whole conversation came out of the blue, like... wait, where did they get all the info to draw these very specific conclusions? Have we even seen them (especially Shaun) thinking about such things? Just how... when... why???


The "My real name is John" thing came across a bit better in the manga, IMO. Still a big leap in logic, but didn't feel quite as jarring or out-of-the-blue.

Definitely helped by some gorgeous art around that conversation, too.


I was pretty happy with this episode. They captured the action pretty well, and while Maryrose is definitely making some bad choices here, I can understand the intent.
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2501
PostPosted: Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:11 am Reply with quote
Thinking about Edward, last season I could have sworn his personality changed when the soot "came out" as he was playing the piano which lead me to conclude that the human and shadow really integrate. Maybe a little schizophrenic but the human personality is still distinct from the shadow personality. And now they say the shadow kills the human. I guess... Confused

That last part was almost sickening. I can't help but wonder if Rum and Tiny Shirley won't show up to save the day for Maryrose somehow. I definitely want to see them again.
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