~Beyond the Border~ > Sara's Audio-Visual Import-Overflow Retail
Kemono Friends - 2017's First Surprise Hit
Silent Harmony:
I really hesitated on making a thread for the show the last couple of weeks because I felt it was too late in the season, but after today (episode 10) I decided fuck it it's worth a shot.
Today's episode- Lodge- answers a ton of questions that the show has slowly been building all season, followed swiftly with a rather poorly-executed cliffhanger; the latter not being a surprise to anybody following the continued "quality" of the animation.
Still, focusing on the positives, we have several confirmations today:
* Spoiler: Friends are made not only when sandstar contacts a living organic creatures, but the remains of one as well.
* Spoiler: Ceruleans are made when sandstar comes into contact with inorganic materials. Thus, they are not, in fact, humans transformed by sandstar as some speculated.
* Spoiler: Lucky-san (aka "Boss" to the friends) is a malfunctioned device that was meant to serve as a park-guide. It was damaged during a rainstorm.
* Spoiler: Mirai-san, the voice we've been hearing this whole time, was indeed the human who possessed the hat Kaban currently wears.
Now for the fun part, the new revalations/hints:
* Spoiler: Friends were around at the same time as humans on the island (more below*).
* Spoiler: Lucky-san is capable of recording and projecting video and audio. Spoiler: Mirai used this function to vlog, which explains the random non-attraction audio we hear
* Spoiler: There is one giant Cerulean that the humans and friends could not defeat, in fact it could regenerate damage. It's implied it had/has multiple crystals and can regenerate them.
* Spoiler: There is multiple types of sandstar.
* Spoiler: Mirai's talking to somebody (almost certain the friend below) about how they (the friend) thought she was an alien because they're not from the island and flew in. This implies the island's existence and the existence of friends in fact precedes the park. In other words, the park is not a man-made island a-la Spoiler: Cage of Eden.
* Spoiler: Mirai's partner is a Spoiler: friend. Not only that, it was Spoiler: Serval-chan.
* Spoiler: The hat that Kaban wears (that was Mirai's) was in Racoon's possession shortly before the events of the show but was stolen when a sandstar eruption caused her to fall off a cliff and a "black shadow" stole it before she could recover it.
Holy crap that was a lot for 30 mins, and the best part was it didn't feel like an exposition dump. It was cleverly interweaved into the larger narrative of the episode (a ghost haunting the lodge) and even the post-credit portion. Definitely the episode I've waited all season for (well, since i picked it up around episode 4).
Edit: corrections.
Edible:
For all of its low-budget 3dcg (which quickly became incredibly charming), the show has brilliant writing and directing.
Definitely the surprise hit of 2017.
Silent Harmony:
Episode 11:
Spoiler: Welp, this episode did a fantastic job of justifying my fears in the end, especially that heart-rending cliffhanger. I want my cute girls being cute back dammit. ;_;
As far as speculation goes, we got more mysteries as expected:
* Spoiler: More mysterious objects on the mountain. Including the possible plane parts (see link image below) there were mysterious tablets that act as a filter for some wierd black substance that creates Black Ceruleans. This stuff seems to be called "Low Sandstar" and the tablets were called the "Four Gods".
* Spoiler: The plane parts are especially interesting concerning last week's speculation of past-Serval thinking that the Humans were, in fact, aliens because they flew onto the island. Were the original humans survivors of a military plane crash? Just when did they arrive in the first place?
* Spoiler: Creatures eaten by Ceruleans appear to not "die" in the traditional sense, instead the Sandstar is eaten and they lose their memories. I may be wrong, but it sounds like they turn back into whatever they were before contacting the Sandstar.
* Spoiler: There's another Island within eyesight of Japari Park, visible mostly if you are on top of the mountain. It seems likely this is where the humans evacuated to.
* Spoiler: I honestly don't remember Lucky-san referring to Kaban-chan by "name" ever before today's episode. If so, that seems an interesting development.
* Spoiler: Raccoon says Kaban-chan saved her life? Am I forgetting something or did they never meet since we first started in the Safari?
Image linked: Spoiler: I noticed the wing too, but somebody apparently discovered a lot more hidden imagery on the mountain.
The next and (presumably) final episode is titled Spoiler: Amusement Park, so it seems like we're finally going to get our answers as to Spoiler: what happened in the past, including the source of the humans, friends, and Sandstar. Hopefully we also get resolution to the current crisis involving Kaban-chan and the Black Cerulean.
Honestly I wouldn't mind an episode 13 at all, but with a seemingly low budget and Spoiler: a very sober episode preview compared to the usual PPP previews I'd honestly be shocked if we did.
Delfigamer:
--- Quote ---"We'll cross paths with a planet."
"Wait, seriously?"
"Yes."
"No, really, did you just send our spaceship on a course to crash into a planet?"
"Yes."
"You're ferrying 30 tonnes of magical dust across the galaxy, and of all the empty space, filled to the brim with loads and loads of nothing, you landed on a course with a freaking planet?"
"Apologies."
"For fuck's sake. Do you at least have a lifeboat?"
"Two of them."
"Great. Here's the plan then: I'm flying off to Switzerspace and taking the insurance money, while you are landing with the cargo and staying there to wipe the garbage."
"No need, we have cleaning automata."
"Will they do the job?"
"Maybe."
"...Fine, but look, if this planet will have a life developing on it, they will try the dust and feel unsatisfied, it's you personally who will deal with them, don't even call me about that."
"I won't."
"And you're not flying in the same boat as me."
"Figures."
--- End quote ---
Taiga says the 12th episode will be the last one, and usually it gets them right.
Thaws:
I love this show, came for the quirky, bright, unique characters (Seeing toki, sandcat had me sold), stayed for the storytelling.
Contrary to how the show was joked to lower your IQ due to friends having like slightly above avg IQ than a typical animal, the storytelling did NOT treat their audience to be stupid at all. You can tell they planned the whole thing out since episode 1.
Spoiler: The way how things are tied to the died app game is amazing. People have pointed out the voice actor for the serval in boss's recording from epi 9 is the app's serval's voice, thus being able to guess that the recordings we've been hearing are Mirai and Serval's. Instead of pretending the dead app didn't exist, or simply reproduce the app story, they went ahead a build upon the remains of the app and throughout epi 1~3 we can see that Japari park clearly was occupied by humans before but only the ruins remain (e.g. worn signs, old sofa seen in epi 1), before it was hinted at on epi 4 and confirmed by epi 7.
Can't wait to see how everything concludes in the last episode! The disappearance of friends silhouette in the ED and the unnerving preview is very unsettling though...
--- Quote from: Silent Harmony on March 22, 2017, 09:54:54 PM ---Episode 11:
Spoiler:
* Spoiler: Creatures eaten by Ceruleans appear to not "die" in the traditional sense, instead the Sandstar is eaten and they lose their memories. I may be wrong, but it sounds like they turn back into whatever they were before contacting the Sandstar.
* Spoiler: There's another Island within eyesight of Japari Park, visible mostly if you are on top of the mountain. It seems likely this is where the humans evacuated to.
* Spoiler: Raccoon says Kaban-chan saved her life? Am I forgetting something or did they never meet since we first started in the Safari?
--- End quote ---
Spoiler: Seeing how most friends do not remember why humans left, it seems to heavily hint that most friends got eaten by the last battle with Miral against the Cerulean?
It's really sad to see how Serval has been talking to Kaban about being together after finding where humans inhabit since around epi 9, while Kaban seems to have figured out humans are far away from the island and she might have to leave.
Pretty sure Raccoon is referring to how she almost drowned in the river but was saved by the bridge build by Kaban on epi 2