REVIEW: Ghost 29
So I can say with confidence that we are indeed back to having smaller, incremental storylines that have smaller additions to the overarching narrative, rather than having big plot dumps. But in all honestly, for some reason it doesn’t feel as bad as before. Whether it is a tighter plot in the sense that there isn’t a million things happening at once, or I’ve gotten used to it, or in fact a lot happened, with episode 29 I’m not as bothered or annoyed by the more episodic plot.
As with every week now apparently, I want to start off with this week’s edition of Alain watch 2k16 and boy is it a doozy. Firstly I just want to reiterate how much I appreciate the slow burn they have had with Alain’s character. Again his arc is indeed ostensibly the same as Chase’s, but it’s certainly not bogged down by a giant conspiracy or a million other plot lines; Alain feels more like a protagonist and less of an afterthought than Chase. I feel this is especially so this week since, well, a lot of time was devoted to him and his development: the whole of the B plot was dedicated to his character arc.
Again the fact that they are giving time to Alain’s story and making his gaining of humanity gradual is doing his character arc wonders. But I do have to address the elephant in the room: Fumiba’s death. Now on the one hand this feels like a contrived swerve to get cheap drama; she just kinda ups and dies out of nowhere and to kinda move the plot along. But on the other hand, it makes sense and can easily be read as a good way to develop the plot and Alain’s character. It gives him even more of a reason to protect earth and humanity. Now I personally fall somewhere on the middle on this: I feel that Fumiba’s death is a bit cheap (and leaning on the ‘Women in Refrigerators’ trope a bit) but at the same time it still works to an extent; it makes us pity Alain and feel sad.
What’s more annoying to me is that for this to have its full impact and make more sense, you would had to have seen Alain’s Heroic Legend. This annoys me to no end because this is a situation where a spin-off, one which not everyone has seen, is integral to a major part of the main plot. That is piss poor writing and planning: A spin off should elevate the main product, rather than be integral to it. I’m of the opinion that a show or a movie or a comic or any story should stand up by itself first, before being held up by other properties. It’s fun to have side things and all, but you have to make the main story make sense and good first. With this case, Fumiba’s death and how it is going to affect Alain is better with the knowledge from his side story and by relegating this really key thing to something not everyone is going to see is really bad and baffles me.
Another thing that was kinda bad this week was the contrived way the writer’s tied in Alain’s story and the victim of the week story. So with Alain, he has been slowly learning from Fumiba about listening to his heart and all that right? This week he learned to listen to his heart to find out what he should do and it just so happens that Takeru casually mentions the exact words that Fumiba told Alain to Yuki Shirai, the client of the week. It is such a contrived and forced way for the two stories to connect and for Alain to be affected by the main plot. I like that they are trying to connect the two different stories, but this just felt really forced and dissonant. It is honestly fine enough to have Alain appear up to help fight and hear similar advice, but for Takeru to use the exact wording without hearing it before is just lazy and awful.
However, I will give the writer’s props for doing their best to have a better connective tissue between the two plots this week. It’s nice to see that they are at least trying to tie the plots together so it doesn’t feel like a random cut away to a completely different show. Maybe it’s because both plots are quite low key enough where to intercut between them doesn’t suck any of the tension out of the other, like we have been having with the past few weeks; It’s also probably because the show isn’t balancing a comedy b-plot with a serious main plot.
In all honesty, there isn’t much to say with this week’s episode apart from what Alain is doing. I don’t particularly want to bore you guys with a simple recap of the events of the episode and would rather give you my opinion on them. With the main plot, nothing really happened, but it does have a germ of an interesting plot-line, it just didn’t go anywhere thus making Alain’s story more interesting to me. It’s not a bad main plot, just very average and I think that’s how it’s going to be next episode as well, but we shall see.
