Snowball Earth

Episodes 8-9

I am not a perfect person and I make mistakes. The big one this week: I have to stop wishing for that Dawn of the Dead moment that's obviously not going to come. At least not in the way I want it to. Because you see, the building where the survivors are is a school building and not a mall. But it's constantly called a mall. The Mishima Mall! It might not be a commercial mall where you grab Chipotle and then shop at GameStop in between fighting kaiju, but still? Can you blame me for coming to this conclusion? I see monsters ganging up on survivors hanging out in a building called “a mall,” my George A. Romero senses start tingling. It happens. Hey, I'm still down for an awesome climactic showdown between man and beast. Whenever it happens, at least.

Despite the big climax being further kicked down the line, I can kinda dig how this build-up is paced. The kaiju just got done beating the everloving crap out of Yukio and are now heading to the school/mall/building where shit is supposed to hit the fan. How many times has Yukio been utterly decimated? I feel like he's gotten the wind and bolts knocked out of him quite a few times over by now. And he still gets up after all is said and done? Either the writing is that repetitive, or Yukio is able to rise up like he's Rocky Balboa. I didn't hear no bell!

Episode eight of Snowball Earth has Sagami and his goons close in on the survivors' hideout, which defends itself via a protective barrier that Hagane's mother built before she died. This portion is well-paced, tense, and explosive. Of course, the CG has to make everything look...off. One of Sagami's men's kaiju comes in the form of a bat, and the way he stomps over the protective barrier looks like the legs of a pouting CG'd child throwing a fit over not getting the toy he wanted. I'm not sure if that's what the animators were aiming for here, because it looks very awkward. Another has antlers that can grow into a bunch of bizarre-looking mini kaiju that act like projectile missiles aimed right at the school. I'm sure they'd look weird even without the CG.

The end of the episode actually has one of the coolest looking moments the show has to offer. Ao looks amped up as she gets ready to fight on top of her flaming chicken kaiju, surrounding herself in bright, orange fire to really show you that it. Is. ON. The colors shimmer with radiance, the characters' and fire's outlines thicken up for further intensity, and best of all, the shot is done in 2D! Another similar shot happens midway through the ninth episode for a more-than-deserved moment of sakuga where a firestorm obliterates Ao's opponent right into the sky. It's shots like these that make me wish the entire show looked like this. I feel like I've done a lot of complaining about the CG. It's not just that. It's that Snowball Earth is so inconsistent with its animation choices that it makes the CG that much worse by comparison. Part of me that feels like these few moments of 2D each episode gets are just there to tease us.

The ninth episode ends with Ao and her chicken kaiju starting a fight with the aforementioned bat kaiju. And bad CG animation aside, it's a well-paced fight. Too bad it lasts maybe a minute before episode nine decides to focus a bit more on Sagami's backstory. Even if it was going to be awash in an animation style that I'm indifferent towards, I was at least curious enough to see what sort of epicness could be birthed out of an airborne kaiju fight. It's a bit of a let-down that this week's episode decides not to show it to its fullest extent. That's me being picky. My bigger problem with episode nine's fights, however, is that they are so stretched out and filled with flashbacks and interludes of characters talking. I'm fine with adding a few quiet moments for the fight to take a break and breathe a little bit, but when it's chopped up like this, it creates some narrative dissonance.

Speaking of problems in the narrative, let's go back to our villain here, who might be leading the race to see who can become the dumbest, lamest villain of the season. Sagami's plan is to slaughter the innocent masses who don't side with him, which is exactly how he's going to be the savior of the innocent masses, somehow. It's burning the village in order to save it in the most nonsensical way possible. Sagami and his kaiju fail to kill Tetsuo (of course), which causes Sagami to break down and scream out why his plan isn't working out. Like he really needed to ask. Dude had the perfect opportunity to kill Tetsuo an episode or so ago, only to let Tetsuo escape his grasp. What did he think was going to happen? The flashback sequence that's supposed to shine some sympathy on this poor devil doesn't work either. It makes Sagami, nay, his entire world that much dumber. You mean to tell me that this (a) highly ambitious soldier (b) who also has a psychotic complex, (c) whose close military peers kept dropping like flies for quote-on-quote “no apparent reason,” (d) whose then up-and-coming plan of disposing the need for Tetsuo, so riddled in insecurity and egomania, gets (e) approved by Earth's army? How? Why? The villainy teeming from Sagami in his flashbacks are so obvious and visible that Toph Beifong could have seen them coming from a mile away. If only Sagami's evil plans were beaten over the heads of his fellow Earthlings like the bad CG of this show is with ours. If only.

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Snowball Earth is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.