What an amazing episode...
I was literally shivering the whole episode. They nailed the tension that this episode needed. Right from the start, when Nowak revealed to them that he received a tip, the tension was everywhere. And when he was searching the documents, and they had nothing, you could still feel that smoething was coming, and that something was the necklace... THE NECKLACE STRIKES AGAIN. When they showed (by not showing) Nowak's reaction to the necklace, you could see that things were going to bad, really bad.
But in between all that tension, we got the really interesting talk between Badeni and Oczy, where Oczy suggested Badeni to stop isolating himself, because working in group was really important to the advancement of science. Not only that, we can see Oczy's character development, when he talks about the symbolization of passing the torch.
When Oczy notices that Nowak is coming ready to kill them, and offers to give Badeni time to escape, you can see that Badeni was really trying hard to make Oczy give up on that idea and escape, saving his own life in the process, which is really unexpected from Badeni, and knowing his backstory you can see that he really saw in Oczy a friend, in a way.
But now we have to talk how Oczy was the MVP of this episode, when he didn't back down, and said that he would prefer dying and maintain his hope alive (or faith in the heliocentrism theory), than continue living, but with his hope destroyed, really speaks volumes on how much Oczy grew as character, when in episode 4 and 5 he was so confused on why his master on the guild and the herectic had a hopeful expression when they died, comparing to other people, and now he is willing to do the same. Badeni's prays for Badeni shows that he really respected Oczy for his attitude, even though he might have not understood why. I might be wrong, but what Badeni did wasn't one of the 7 sacraments of the Catholic Church, the Extreme Unction, that is given to those that are in the immenence of death?
The animation for the fight scenes was insane, and the shots from this episode were all so good (that shot from Oczy standing in the road was cold and cool). Not going to lie, one of the knights falling over his own sword and dying has to be one of the most embarassing deaths in anime history xD. But Oczy killed 4 knights like it was nothing.
And then the episode ended with the Oczy vs Nowak! I can't wait to see what happenes next week!
It seems like episode 13 really is going to be the final episode of this 2nd part of the anime, like I suspected last episode, and I supposed we are maintaining the opening and ending for at least 1 more episode. We are probably going to get a look at the new generation in the next episode, which I suppose is going to be that knight that appears in the opening, but has yet to appear in the anime (in fact, I think this episode was the first episode to show these knights). Also, we are finally getting the resolution for the battle between Oczy and Nowak that was stopped in episode 5.
This episode was for sure the best one so far (maybe on pair with the 3rd episode), and I'm also curious to see what Nowak is going to do about his daughter, since she was also part of it. Is he just going to ignore that she was part of it? Because it does seem only he knows about this, so it would make sense for him to not tip his own daughter. But I suppose Jolenta isn't going to be accepting what happened to Oczy and Badeni so easily. This episode hinted that Oczy is probably dying next episode, but I wonder if Badeni is going to die too (and Jolenta too, for that matter). It must be hard for Nowak to know that Rafal was able to inspire his own daughter after his death, so many years ago.
NOW, IMPORTANT MATTER, HAS ANYONE REWATCHED THE 1ST 30 SECONDS OF EPISODE ONE? If you didn't, only do it if you are ready for some SPOILERS. I was alerted about this in the comments of the episode, and I must say, I'M COMPLETELY SHOCKED. Like, I literally don't know what to say about that. |