The Smell is Sweet, the Heart is Bitter(DTB Season 2 Episodes 5 + 6 + So much more)
First off I’ll apologize in advance. I don’t plan on including many screen shots this week because I’m not really writing a summary post so much. This is going to cover a lot of stuff, but I know how hard it is to look at a wall of text so I’ll break it up with a lot of other series art :).
The Memory of Betrayal is that of an Amber-Colored Smile
I’ll sing a Love Song at the Garbage Dump
Is the Dream That a God of Death Has a Darkness Darker Than Black?
Do you ever wonder what the incredibly long titles for the DTB arcs mean? I suppose they could be considered obvious, but then again, for me at least, they are a perfect summary of the episodes. I talked about Amber a little last time, but I fear I’m going to include her more this time because quite frankly this post isn’t going to be about only episodes 5 and 6 of the second season. I’m starting to get a feel for some of the things I was missing and for those things to garner some meaning I think I’ll first have to take a look back at some very important dialogue from the first season. More importantly up until this point I’ve been assuming Suou is the protagonist this season and I think now I should revise that opinion. Hei is still by far the main character. The cast revolves around him and moves for him. The meteor fragment and warnings of doom are small change compared to Yin, Kirihara, Amber, Bai, and Suou’s deep obsession with the enigma known as Hei.
I’m going to write out some of the quotes from episodes 15, 16 that are pretty key to understanding Hei and why people are moving for him.
Episode 15 –Flash Back To South America—
Amber: “I can’t find a bread knife, can I use it”?
Hands her the knife
Amber: “You know, I like the smell of freshly baked bread, spread with a generous serving of lime marmalade and topped with whipped cream. Should we run away? Somewhere… somewhere far away? You, Bai, and me, the three of us.
Hei: Where to?
Amber: A place where we can see the stars.
Hei smiles
Amber: thanks, it’s a good luck charm (she hands him the feathers on a leather strap) Please protect your smile.
Episode 16 –Amber to Yin after kidnapping her-
Amber: “There was one time when he actually laughed from the bottom of his heart. His sweet smile captivated me. That’s when I thought to myself. You really did it this time. I felt as if I could do anything for him. I’d do anything to see that smile again… I’m sure you feel the same way.
Yin: “Me?”
Amber: “Yes. Look after him okay?
Same episode after she freezes time. To Hei’s frozen form.
Amber: zithromax buy online “Hei, I’ve traveled very far, even across the plane of time, I wanted to see you ever since that day. Always, always… I’ve always wanted to see you.
I also would include the super long conversation from episode 25, but you should just go watch it for Amber’s incredible voice acting.
If you want answers to the first season, get in line so do the rest of us. However, from the brief pieces of dialogue we get from Amber in both episodes 15 and 16 and finally in the last episode we can piece together that she did everything to protect Hei’s smile. The end result of reuniting him and his sister under the real stars with the other contractors was a direct promise from the episode 15 dialogue. From episode 16 we can gather that Yin feels this way too and the brief glancing smile Amber aims at Misaki also gives us the impression that Amber can see the love in her heart too. I don’t know what Hei’s secret is, maybe Cologne or something.
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I think the real question we should be asking ourselves as we approach episode six of the second season is “Why is Hei still involved in the contractor world even though he’s lost his powers?”
The most obvious reason comes from his decision to be both human and contractor at the end of the first season instead of living a double life. For better or worse Hei has decided to stop being two people. However, I also think that Hei can’t be himself by himself. Although many girls are obsessed with him it’s also true that many of these girls also leave him with little explanation. The sad truth is that most of them do it for Hei’s own good. Bai did it because she was tired of seeing him following the syndicate’s orders and she wanted to save him from it. Amber wanted to create a place they could run away too. What’s Yin’s reason? We don’t know yet, but it’s pretty apparent that she still loves him an awful lot to be following him around as a surveillance specter.
Amber also makes clear in the last episode of the first season that Hei has the power to change people. Not just on a molecular level using Bai’s power, but the ability to “make their heart move” as Yin so poignantly put it in her arc. We can already see the effect starting to take on Suou, yep, she’s falling in love with him.
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“Where does this leave us” you might ask? Unfortunately it seems like we are going to end up with a conflict between three girls trying to protect Hei from the other two: Misaki, Suou, and Yin, to be more precise. Suou is already showing her clear dislike since Yin apparently killed off Norio’s mother and Misaki is actively trying to capture him using a less than trustworthy organization.
Darker than Black has always straddled the line separating good and bad. It’s the bittersweet feeling I used to describe the end of Yin’s arc. Besides the few straw men (The syndicate, Eric, The section chief, whoever it is this season) we’re generally given understandable enemies thrown in horrendous situations. In this episode we’re once again shown the humanity of contractors. This is apparent in Norio’s mother trying to give advice to her son to stay away from her world. Yet in the same episode we see Suou and Hei form a deeper bond. We see Suou’s first instinct towards hating Hei was ill conceived and she’s started seeing what the others have already seen. How deeply Hei loves.
Hei had an emotional reaction to Yin’s supposed betrayal because he loved her deeply. He didn’t abandon his sister even when she became a contractor. He became someone he didn’t want to because he loved her. Once Suou realizes this she can’t help but feel sympathy for the guy who’s been kicked over and over again. Right now it’s probably not much more than pity, but she’s a young girl and curious about the idea of love. And what the heck Hei’s woman my butt.
What’s that supposed to mean?
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The part I’m still having a little bit of trouble with is “why did Yin kill Norio’s mother?” Maybe she didn’t want Hei to suffer from the loss of another person he’s started becoming close too? Perhaps the beginning of the end is another good reason to keep her with Hei, regardless I was a little caught off guard. It’s still possible that Yin didn’t kill her, but it sure seems that way. The way she killed her was interesting too. It looked a bit like April’s power, but Norio’s mother looked like she was being attacked from the inside long before the water actually started drowning her. In other words it looked like a direct attack on her as a contractor. Has order cheap tabs Yin become some kind of super powerful anti-contractor weapon? I can’t be certain. What really drives me nuts is even though she told Hei not to leave her alone at the end of the first season but it’s somehow ok for her to leave him?
I’ve heard mixed reviews from people who both liked and dislike the first season. I’m not entirely happy with the direction they’ve taken the second season and I certainly don’t get the same feelings for Norio that I did for Mai or Nicholas. It almost feels like pandering to a wider audience this time around by throwing in stock ridiculous characters when most of us were attracted to the darker side of the first season. That doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy Kiko’s antics, or Saito’s unrequited love for Misaki, it probably just means I just don’t like Norio very much. He just seemed kind of flimsy and innocent for the world he was living in, not nearly scarred enough from his mom walking out on him and his dad coping by going transgender. I think I would have a few more emotional scars… then again maybe not.
The implication is that Norio still dreams of a whole family and the emotional response comes from his dreams being shattered by the cruel reality of the contractors. It just seemed a little too forced for my tastes. His mother’s death wasn’t a result of her choices unlike so many of the emotional ones from the first season. It just seemed kind of random. The more I type the more I start to agree with myself that the general dislike I have for this season is the general lack of character development. How is it that in two episode arcs the first season of Darker than Black was able to develop characters so completely that at the climax I was left virtually overwhelmed? In the second season they barely developed Norio’s mother at all and the scenes we got of Norio were all happy go lucky with little to no time spent on a brooding inner struggle.
Along the same lines it always felt like during the climax the focus of the two episode arcs would always gain something back that was critical. The character would come to a realization about their true nature or finally overcome an overbearing past. With April and Norio’s mother they just died. I don’t know, maybe you disagree with me. The season isn’t bad I just feel like it’s lacking in execution and writing a little more than the first season. Who knows maybe it will make it more approachable for a general audience.
To end on a positive note I really like that in DTB you don’t have a bunch of people going out with stupid bravery trying to save the world. We’re shown the darkness and eventually the characters show us how to accept it. Sometimes we just have to accept that the world isn’t perfect. At least I think so.
With that said I’m happy Yin is back in the series even if she still is lacking a speaking role, hopefully we’ll find out more about Inuzumi and all that.
Until next time.
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12 Comments
i agree with you 99%, but i have to say you’re going easy on this season. it is soo much shallower than the last for the reason’s you mentioned. the 2 episode arcs were unique and i think it drove the story well because at the end they were all stringed together for the finale. i liked the 2 episode arcs much better i don’t know why others hate on it so much. i’m a misaki/hei fan because well she’s a woman not a girl. but according to the ova preview it looks like hei’s commited to yin. SHIT!
You’re right I am going a little easy on this season. I want to give it the benefit of the doubt though because even though it’s not as good as the first season it’s still a lot better than a lot of the other anime I’ve watched. It’s also quite possible I just don’t get it yet. What do I not get? I don’t know. Still the Misaki ending isn’t completely out of reach. I watched the OVA preview as well and I must say that I don’t see much of a difference between the way he treats Yin to the way he treated Bai. Truthfully I think Hei has replaced Bai with Yin a little bit. Whether or not he has a sister complex is open for debate I suppose. The OVA still looks a lot more interesting then the next episode of the second season… Didn’t that one girl look an awful lot like Amber too, I have a hard time imagining her working for the syndicate though. Was she holding a primrose. Crazy stuff.
For the second season, you may not be looking at the right place. So far the focus has not really been on Hei and Yin at all; the major narrative of the second season is about Suou. She’s doing the entire journey of self discovery thing; the path to adulthood juxtaposed with her apparent (or perhaps false) transformation into a contractor.
In summary: it’s been a deconstruction of the magical girl genre. Seriously brilliant stuff. Try looking at it from that angle and see how it goes.
I haven’t seen the first season in a while, but I’m enjoying the second season so far. Maybe you guys just needed to let the palate be cleansed? Of course, once we reach the ends it will color how we perceive the means that got us there.
And Dustin, why don’t you apply your interest in analyzing darker story telling to helping me develop a half-Indian girl without a father?
I gave it a try passerby but even though I said the series was still about Hei my main complaints are still the lack of character development and the seemingly meaningless death of Norio’s mother.
If what you’re saying is correct than they took DTB in a new direction and decided to give a commentary on the current magical girl genre. Though it might be brilliant from a social commentary standpoint it’s not brilliant in terms of its own writing. I always liked DTB for saying something about us and for creating its world to point out its themes. By making DTB just a reproof of a genre is belittling it don’t you think?
Anyways if you come back I’m still not entirely sure I get your argument. A little proof and a few examples of what you’re talking about would be extremely helpful in deciphering your argument. Thanks for the thoughts though.
For the most part I try to be positive about the second season. This post was just particularly negative because I didn’t like the way they handled the death of Norio’s mother. Maybe they’ll be able to do more with it in later episodes.
@Rachel OK :x !!
Ok, here goes nothing.
First of all, the magical girl genre is all about growing up. The main character (the magical girl of the show) goes through trials and tribulations and learns lessons and matures and all that. One long transition into adulthood.
Suou is the magical girl. She suddenly gains these ‘magical’ powers and gets involved in a ‘magical’ world. Sne even has a stock transformation sequence of sorts (and a talking mascot animal!) so to me it looks pretty obvious. Indeed, we bear witness to her path to adulthood as well which happens to coincide with her becoming contractor.
Aside: you know how in transformation sequences they always make a point to show the girl nude? It’s not (just) fanservice; in the magical girl genre nudity is a symbol of innocence and purity. Oh the irony.
Anyways, becoming a contractor and becoming an adult is almost equated in the second season. Right after Suou starts becoming a contractor, we see her have her first period. She is now a woman, she thinks. Adulthood is, however, not merely biological; DtB puts to the forefront the mental components. Suou has not had the luxury of actually growing into an adult; she has been thrust into it violently. When she commented that the world can change in one night in the first episode, it is not the world changing per se, but rather all the preconceptions about the world changing when your own personal slice of it is turned upside down. Her father is killed, her friend kills her other friend, general bad stuff happens, and she is forced to try to come to an understanding and develop some acceptance. And what would you know, she becomes a contractor. She’s no good at that either though; Hei is quick to notice how inconsistent she is. Mao hypothesises that she had yet to learn what is actually required for the proper contractor mindset, and Hei sums it all quite neatly; Suou was still a child.
Aside: Hei is our premier pretend-contractor, and Suou’s journey allows us to, perhaps, retroactively understand his own.
One of the themes from season one comes back here; is the ‘rational’ mindset of the contractor what is needed to cope in the modern world? Is it part of being an ‘adult’ (that is, a developed member of society) to be able to be totally shameless, to do what it takes, and to make the most utilitarian choices? Both Suou and Hei act like contractors as some sort of coping mechanism. As you have noted, Hei is actually a very emotional man; he loves deeply and gets angry easily. Suou, on the other hand, is using it as some sort of surrogate for maturity. Both, I might note, have siblings who are contractors, which I’m sure will come up later.
Final note: Yeah, Norio’s mother died really quickly. I would have loved more development as well, but I think they just wanted to put Norio through the wringer and kill more people in front of Suou. Yes, this is what it means to be a contractor. Yes, people are going to get hurt, other people are going to hate you. Her own father got whacked in episode 1, and maybe some contrast can be had here.
Hmm, you say some darn good things.
First off I didn’t even notice she had a period, that’s crazy intense observations. I think I went off a little on how this was a young girl grows up story in a previous posts comments, but I wanted to at least get back to Hei since at least some of the mystery revolves around him.
I can see what you’re saying with the magical girl system as well, for some reason them just making fun of sailor moon didn’t suit my tastes, but making a statement about the unpleasant disgusting elements of growing up is something else entirely. I also like what you say about a coping mechanism much like Yin’s arc where they went deeply into the renumeration or Yin becoming a doll as a way of paying for her mother’s death.
I remember arguing for some of the meaningless death in season one in the first few episodes. It seemed like everything with a pulse was dying. Of course when it came down to the important characters in the arcs this wasn’t the case.
I just want to point out that I did point out that I did notice the magical girl theme in my previous post. When I saw the transformation scene it was just a dead giveaway :x .
Along the same lines of growing up, we can see her starting to love Hei as well. I guess this is kind of exploring some of the mature emotions. At first it was just flat out hate which seemed very childish (like hating a cock roach) but it’s developed into something at least a little more complex. I guess we’ll just have to see where it goes.
As you say the way they handle Suou isn’t bad and for the most part I agree she’s the main character. The Norio arc just feels really unnatural to me. Maybe it’s because Yoko Kanno wasn’t wrenching at my heart strings during the death scene. Who knows… let’s see where this takes us.
Of course in the end I’m more interested in why they chose a magical girl scenario as opposed to how it’s a magical girl scenario…
I always end up one post behind :oops: Can’t help backlogging DtB abit, since its such a serious show its kinda hard to find time to watch it. I think its kinda nice to wait abit and watch a few eps in one go though :)
I liked the select pieces of conversation you had at the top there. Some of the details in Season 1 has gone kinda fuzzy in my head, and they really helped put things back in perspective. I also found the whole magical girl discussion up there really intriguing. I didn’t actually notice the allusions before (magical girl isn’t exactly a genre I can claim familiarity in). In any case I think its a neat idea, and I don’t think it’s a matter of making fun of Sailormoon. The idea as I see it is that magical girl shows tend to have some sort of overriding positive growing-up message central to the theme of the show, and that message tends to be fleshed out in an idealized world of colourful powers and clear-cut villains. Starting with similar kinds of circumstances and with the same theme of growing up but passing it through the cruel world of the DtB universe and seeing what kind of changes happen around the message is at least interesting experimentation, I think.
At any rate, as a member of the ‘two-eps-is-a-little-short’ camp, I’m actually quite happy with the way things are going this season, even if we have to deal with peculiar artifacts like Norio the long-living strawman (truthfully I never expected him to last this long as an important part of the plot). Still, things are evidently not over at the Norio end yet, so Bones may still surprise us in the end.
I also have absolutely no clue on what was going on in the Yin-Norio’s Mum scene.
(And I loled hard at Cologne btw :D )
Oh if you like the magical girl discussion I discussed the idea of it a lot more in the next post. I think you’ll like where it goes.
You’re right about the putting them magical girl in the DTB world, but as I include in my next post the theme is more of a harp on innocence and our transition. The magical girl allusions are prominent, but that’s not all that’s going on.
I think they are still sticking with the characters entering and leaving quickly, but I’m more disappointed by some of the plots being skimmed over. I’m still waiting to marathon the whole thing.
As always I really appreciate your comments and compliments :). Hopefully we’re reaching plot escalation now.
Well I just want to say shame on my for not finding you sooner. I am so intrigued by the ideas and thoughts here and happy to know I am not the only one noticing and thinking about a lot of this stuff. Now I don’t have too much to say because you guys have already said most of what I was thinking, but I will say this. From a girls point of veiw, I really dislike the thought of another girl loving Hei like that. I don’t see it going that far, but still, the idea does not sit well with me and maybe it’s just because as a girl I do have that attraction to Hei that most girls I know that watch the show have, but then again maybe it’s just because she’s so young and that honestly bugs me.
I also share your oppinion on Norio, and Yin supposedly killing his mother. It seemed kind of meaningless to me too. But I honestly cannot see them leaving it where it is now. I’m sure they will devolope it more and it will make sense. I have not know DtB for having too many meaningless fillers. I still like this season, even though I was completely thrown off and slightly panicked at the thought of Yin not being there. But as was said even if it doesn’t live up to the first season so far (at least for me) I still think this anime overall is one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of watching. I look forward to seeing the rest of it.
Sorry I meant me not my. Can’t believe I didn’t catch that :oops: .
Definitely a good thought with respect to not liking other girls liking Hei so much. That probably plays a roll in Suou kicking the light pole after seeing Yin near Hei (The other reason of course being that she thinks Yin’s specter killed Norio’s mother). Suou is probably too young for him. I’m not sure what her age is, I think 15 or 16 and Hei by this point is reaching his mid twenties. He still views her as a kid though (as do the rest of us).