For the past few weeks, I was busy with some exams and papers to write. It was expected that I would delay my blogging of Fractale, Wandering Son and Gosick for a while.
To help lessen the burden, I will just write my brief thoughts for Episodes 4 to 6 of Fracale in one post.
Episode 4
While I feel that the Lost Millennium’s motives of killing innocent people may be immoral, I have to give them some credit. They have good intentions since Fractale is a bigger brainwashing organization. With the impressive escape of rebellious Phryane and Clain to the Lost Millennium’s air ship, there is no doubt of Fractale look like a big jerkass. The getaway scene was epic with the Fractale Airship being attacked by missiles that hits the leader. That should teach him a lesson!
Episode 5
Unfortunately, this is where the show goes downhill since the stuff happened on the ship was so stupid that I facepalmed. Apparently, Nessa got very angry with Phryane that she played hide and seek. As a result, she caused havoc on the airship system, which causes the air conditioning to turn off and steers the ship into a thunderstorm. It makes me wonder, where are the fail-safes like manual control on the ship? Shouldn’t the Lost Millennium be steering the airship manually since they are the good guys? Well they didn’t, which annoyed me a lot.
Also, there is a scene where everyone does some funny dance moves to lure Nessa out… Even though it was funny, it didn’t save the episode from failing. Sorry guys, try again next time!
Episode 6
Compared to Episode 5, this episode is a big improvement since it focused on a certain aspect of Fractale System with the addition of fanservice. Apparently, the area where the air ship stopped is a dead zone since the balloon that was broadcasting the signal went down. As you expect, the refugees don’t have any consideration for other people and steals from other people. Another faction of Lost Millennium called Alabaster eventually takes the refugees and misleads them by telling them to take a vaccine when they are actually taking their terminals out. They show their true colors when they kill one of the refugees and tell them that they were tricked after the temporary radio waves turned on.
Also, Clain meets a man that looks very familiar that collects a lot of old technology. He even has technology that would be current in our time period like a cellar phone. This means that all the smartphones, iPads, Kindles, HDTVs and computers we have today are pretty much obsolete. At night, he shows a secret to him and Phryane, which reveals a city that used to exist.
After the man gives his DSLR camera to Clain, the camera reveals pictures of Clain’s parents and of course, himself when he was a baby. My theory is that Clain’s father might have lost his memories when he came apart of the Fractale System. This is a possible reason why he doesn’t remember his son anymore.
To make up for the lousy episode we had previously, they had to throw in a fanservice scene where Phyrane strips all her clothes off and goes skinny-dipping. I guess this is the only part of the episode where the animators put the most effort on since she is completely naked and the perverts going to like that! At least it stayed classy! ¶
Actually, Ep 5 worked for me as we got to see more of the Danan’s crew working together, and a few good character moments involving Clain (getting his pants removed!) and Phryne “bonding” with Nessa near the end. Nessa is an extremely powerful AI with a child-like temper, so she can easily trash any computer or electronic system, perhaps even shutting off the Danan’s manual override out of sheer spite. (If I were an AI out for revenge, that’s the first thing I would do!) Also, it sounds like the Danan is based off late 20th-century or early 21st-century Earth technology, and even today there aren’t many planes that don’t rely on some sort of computerized avionics, so a big airship like the Danan probably needs some minimum computer control. Besides, it looks like the Danan’s chief engineer isn’t that smart, since he had to hack together different OSes instead of making his own!
I liked Ep 6 a lot, though — and yes, I think the old man who collects antiques is Clain’s father. How else would he possess photos of Clain as a kid? I wonder what Clain is going to do with that camera? Big future plot point?