C&C - Fena: Pirate Princess - "The Burning Sea" [9/18]

Kitschensyngk

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Anyone you're NOT going to kill today?

And here comes the cavalry.

Okay, good. they took the two of them and left. I was afraid there'd be a one-on-one showdown or something.
 

zoombie

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So Fena has some SDD issues.

This time Yukimaru is not going to pretend it is only a flesh wound, no Monty Python clips this time.

I told you before, the only way for Fena to grow as a character is for Yukimaru to be out of the picture. This could do the trick, though judging by the next episode preview and Fena being reduced to a nurse, might have the opposite effect.
 

PicardMan

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Okay, this episode had a lot happen in it. The antagonist pirate group got blown up with a super cannon and it kinda sucks they were taken out of the picture so quickly and anticlimactically. Admittedly, the scene was cool, but those pirates had cool designs and seemed to be built up as something more than literal cannon fodder. After wondering what type of character Abel is supposed to, it is clearly established that he is a male example of a psychotic yandere. Glad the show didn't try to make him sympathetic. Last episode, I was thinking there was might be a traditional love triangle between Abel, Yukimaru, and Fena, but I'm glad this episode shot that down. We also find out that Abel is part of of a psychotic crew of pirates who brutally murdered the people on the ship Fena was on as a child (also it seems like there's a possibility that Abel might have killed Fena's father as revenge for being in love with Helena, at least that's a fan theory I saw pop up that seems plausible). After a long stretch with not much action, we get the slickest action scene where the Samurai Seven (okay, that's a cool tribute to an underrated 00s anime) rescue Fena. This was one of the better episodes. Next episode it looks like the old guy in charge of Goblin Island will be the antagonist next episode and we find out what all that business about her being a witch is.
 

Yojimbo

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Super cannon check. Probably gonna use that on Goblin Island next. Pity, the O'Malley crew got taken out.

Ok, so Yukimaru will be off the board for a couple episodes. And pretty much set up Kei as the next threat that no one could beat. So is Fena going to go into trances and become a ultimate sword fighter like a certain someone in Demon Slayer? lol.

It seemed like they were heavily implying Abel and his crew plus O'Malley's attacked the ship young Fena was on in that fateful incident. Sounds about right that Abel killed Mr. Houtman out of jealousy but wouldn't he have been considerably young at the time? The silhouette seemed to be the same height and frame as he is in the present. I guess he hit puberty early on...

At this point, I don't trust the next week promos. Too out of context.
 

zoombie

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Who saw the 2010 TMNT series, Abel is like Shredder, only thing is Shredder is not nearly this creepy. Making any version of Shredder look normal is quite a task.

Though can I understand feeling O'Mailey had it coming from Fena's prospective, but what about the younger members, they are Fena's age, they had nothing to do with what happened, that is kind of cold if you think they deserved the same fate.
 

PicardMan

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At this point, I don't trust the next week promos. Too out of context.

Interesting how half of them were complete misdirections. I'm thinking it's been deliberate on Toonami's part.

Episode 4 promo: Shows Fena training with weapons. Actual episode: This is just a minute long sequence and it's really about the secret of the crystal.

Episode 6 promo: Shows Abel detailing a dark secret of the Samurai Seven. Actual episode: This dark secret ends up being a complete lie.

Episode 7 promo: Shows a confrontation between the Rumble Rose Pirates and Abel. Actual episode:
Was extremely one sided because Abel had a super cannon. Actual big battle scene was the Samurai Seven versus Abel's crew.

Episode 8 promo: Leader of Goblin Island demands that Fena be killed for being a witch. Actual episode: ??????
 

Space Cadet

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Interesting how half of them were complete misdirections. I'm thinking it's been deliberate on Toonami's part.

Episode 4 promo: Shows Fena training with weapons. Actual episode: This is just a minute long sequence and it's really about the secret of the crystal.

Episode 6 promo: Shows Abel detailing a dark secret of the Samurai Seven. Actual episode: This dark secret ends up being a complete lie.

Episode 7 promo: Shows a confrontation between the Rumble Rose Pirates and Abel. Actual episode:
Was extremely one sided because Abel had a super cannon. Actual big battle scene was the Samurai Seven versus Abel's crew.

Episode 8 promo: Leader of Goblin Island demands that Fena be killed for being a witch. Actual episode: ??????
K-dramas do this all the time. The next episode promo looks like something big happens but then it's actually something else.
 

zoombie

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Though who knows we might not have seen the last of O'Malley. She seems like a person in which death is inconvenience and not stop her from getting in the last word. Her ghost might haunt Abel, at the very least show up to laugh at him when he is finally defeated.
 

Grenzer

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Though who knows we might not have seen the last of O'Malley. She seems like a person in which death is inconvenience and not stop her from getting in the last word. Her ghost might haunt Abel, at the very least show up to laugh at him when he is finally defeated.

There was an interesting detail from this episode that no else here seems to be mentioning. Right before the Rumble Rose explodes and we get a close up of O'Malley's face, she calls Abel's name and an odd bluish-white light appears around here. Maybe it was the flash from the secondary explosion, but I felt there was something else to it. The rest of her crew might be gone, but I have a feeling O'Malley will trouble both the British and the Goblin Knights at some point again in the near future.
 

PicardMan

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It's also interesting to note yesterday's discussion having a few users describe this show's tone as Disneyesque. I think that just got thrown out the window with this episode. This show does still feel very unique and unlike the stereotypical niches of Adult Swim Action or Toonami shows. It's not incomprehensible, weird and artsy like an Adult Swim Action show, not a ultraviolent shock show like the ones that dominated the early years of Nu Toonami, and not a battle shonen like the ones that dominated the more recent years of Nu Toonami. Fena is hard to pigeonhole into a subgenre of action anime as it doesn't follow any stereotypical niche like isekai, battle shonen, gore seinen, whatever. Historical adventure is probably the closest we can get to a specific subgenre. It's actually probably what makes the show so interesting that it doesn't fall into these subgenres and it doesn't have to follow the playbook that makes those genres so formulaic. My enjoyment of the show does go up and down depending on the episode, but overall, this is a breath of fresh air in the current shonen dominated era and its ratings success (at least before football season) proves that non shonen can succeed and that Toonami doesn't need to only rely on one niche of a specific type of action show. Toonami picks often felt samey with them picking tons of gore shows in the early years and battle shonen in the later years, with rare times we'd get something like Space Dandy or something else outside of whatever fad was popular. Maybe the 2020s will be a more experimental era for Toonami with streaming taking away all the battle shonen and Fena succeeding. It would be cool if Toonami showed the diversity of action anime by experimenting with other subgenres of action anime besides battle shonen.
 

Light Lucario

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I thought that this episode was pretty good. While most of the Samurai Seven crew still feels a bit too unmemorable to me, I liked the speech about how Fena is part of their crew and they all want to save her. It was a nice little friendship moment.

Abel was certainly creepy with his fixation on Fena's mother. Fena asking him if he loved her mother was also just weird considering he said that the painting was based on a memory he had as a boy. However, he doesn't really look that much older than Fena. Part of that could be due to the character designs, but it just makes me wonder how old he was when he had this crush on Fena's mother.

The destruction of the Rumble Rose was actually kind of sad. While the crew wasn't particularly interesting or full of good people, they had some of the best character designs in the series thus far and I even thought of how cool it would have been to have a series focused on them instead just due to their designs. It is possible that at least O'Malley survived, but even that might be pushing it given how their boat exploded. It was still disappointing to see them killed off in such a harsh overkill manner. I assume that was the point to show just how unstable Abel really is. Sure, they did attack first, but it was still pretty harsh to kill them without mercy like that.

It also led to Fena having a PTSD panic attack. It seemed like the British army was the one who attacked her ship instead of the red devils like Abel claimed. While Fena calling out to Yukimaru could have been annoying, I was fine with it. She was in a clear panic attack, overwhelmed and these people were not interested in helping her. Yukimaru was able to fight back pretty well at first, but Abel just shot him. Despite his earlier behavior, that just surprised me. It was the more realistic outcome with one person against an army with guns, but I thought that Yukimaru had at least a bit of plot armor to avoid serious injuries. At least the rest of the crew came back super fast to help them out and get them back to their submarine. Overall, it was a pretty good episode.
 

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