Tuesday 18 November 2008

Real Drive - Episode 19

This particular two-part story arc of Real Drive continues into episode nineteen, concentrating once again on the battle between nature and technology.

While the last episode ended with Holon losing her connection to the Metal completely, it turns out that this was less to do with the noise interfering with said connection as it was the inclement weather - You'd have thought such important links would be a little more resistant to rain clouds, wouldn't you? With Holon out of action for a while, Sota chooses to stay behind to wait until she recovers, leaving Haru, Minamo and their guide to carry on towards their destination.


Once the group safely reaches what is supposedly the source of the noise, and Haru dives into the Metal to see what's going on, things take what is frankly a rather Biblical turn - Haru discovers some kind of forest within the Metal, which removes impurities and fixes things that are broken... This somehow extends to allowing Haru to regain to power to walk, and curing Minamo's cold.

While the whole nature versus technology debate is an interesting one (and the dicussion of "weather particles" to control the weather and how this would affect nature is a particularly important debate to have), I was really a little disappointed at how readily this episode seemed to "jumpt the shark" into miraculous territory - Find, link the forests and the "noise" they generate to the Metal, but don't start making nature a cure for all ills and suplementing it with a load of jargon that really makes no sense. All good science fiction is based upon the first of those two words primarily, and while artistic license is to be expected (nay, encourage) this just felt like a step too far, from the realms of "ooh, cool" to "huh?". Still, I suppose at least Haru's 'levelling up' to walking mode offers some interest possibilities for the rest of the series, so it isn't all bad, and I can't criticise the fact that at least we've been given a story arc that isn't filler for the first time in way too long.

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