Noein Episode 2 - Running Away
OP - idea (eufonius) - boo to (admittedly lovely) recycled footage from the first episode! Hurray for the rest of it! I like the song - I think it would benefit from me having better speakers and audio quality to hear some of the percussion and synth stuff, but it’s grown on me very rapidly. The echo effect on the vocals at the beginning makes it a bugger to understand what they’re singing, though…
More people like Karas materialise in Hakkodate - their leader, Kuina, despite the loss of an arm during the manifestation, orders the situation to be monitored as he mutters that this dimension is unstable…
Karas bats Yuu away as Haruka repeats that she recognises Karas, but she’s put into even greater peril as another person like Karas, Atori, appears on the scene - unlike Karas, he has no concern for Haruka’s wellbeing, and is willing simply to wrench away the Dragon’s Torque. Karas and Atori immediately come to blows, and their fight brings the flow of time to a complete standstill; only Kuina’s intervention brings the fight to a halt, and as Karas positively identifies Haruka as the one who possesses the Dragon’s Torque they all fizzle away into nothingness once more, returning time to normal. While Ai and Miho argue about whether there was really a ghost, Isami notices that Yuu seems down about something…
Karas and co. re-materialise in their own world and discuss their mission - the Dragon’s Torque is key to the Lacrima Dimensionalists’ plans to defeat the Shangri-La forces that oppress them. As Karas cares endless bird statues, he expresses his weariness at his responsibilities as a Dragoon for ensuring the equilibrium of space-time with Fukurou - neither of them is really sure why they do it any more…
Back in the real world, Yuu continues to angst about the pressure his mother puts on him and Karas’ words - “You can’t do anything…”. The girls, meanwhile, go out for the day with Yukie-sensei - she doesn’t really believe their story about the ghost, taking the piss out of Miho without her really realising it and causing Haruka a great deal of embarassment!
Yuu’s mother continues to “support” Yuu by nagging him about entrance exams, but he finally snaps and runs away, grabbing a pre-packed rucksack from the garage. On the way, he bumps into Isami, whose friendly attempts at cheering him up turn quickly into a fight as Yuu expresses his desire never to see him again - the girls turn up just in time to break things up, and Haruka calms Yuu down despite his anger by saying she’ll run away from home with him.
Together, they head up to a local observatory to look at the town for the last time before they run away, and both wistfully look at a genuinely happy, conventional family. Meanwhile, Yuu’s mother sinks deep into depression, and almost phones someone unspecified…
The observatory closes, but Haruka and Yuu have hidden from the security guards in order to camp out for the night. Yuu asks Haruka if the previous day’s events were a dream or not, growing angry again about Karas’ words. As Haruka goes to comfort him, however, the Dragon’s Torque re-appears around her neck, and ghostly images of all the visitors to the observatory re-appear around her and Yuu before an ethereal voice starts to speak to them - the images are “space-time echoes”, before making cryptic comments about the “Urobolus” and how once more it is the beginning of the end - Yuu and Haruka look up to see the giant Urobolus Ring encircling the town. Meanwhile the Dragoons all begin to materialise in the present day once more - but Atori appears to have ulterior motives, as he laughs that the Dragon’s Torque is his at last…
OKay, first off, I’ll try and not be too fanboy-ish. Satelight’s infamously inconsistent character designs rear their heads once more - everyone looks much more conventional here (well, the humans do - the Dragoons all retain their sketchy, odd look) which is a little off-putting. Plus this episode isn’t as exquisitely animated as the first one, particularly towards the beginning - while there are some awesome key-frames, the inbetweening isn’t always that great.
Okay, I think that’s enough.
Noein is so awesome. So, so awesome. The fight between Karas and Atori is one of the most incredibly imaginative sequences I’ve seen in a long time - the way Atori’s spidery laser things burst out from under his cloak, or Karas’ melding into the ground and wrapping tendrils around Atori, or… the list goes on. On top of all that, we got some light relief from Miho once more, some proper development for Yuu’s mother (she’s obviously not that bad really, this episode portrays her a lot more sympathetically), the really rather good scene between Isami (who only got to say “arienee” once this episode!) and Yuu, and the cliffhanger ending!
I’ll be going through the episode a couple of times more anyway, but I’m still not totally sure how the whole Lacrima/Shangri-La world relates to Earth. Is Karas Yuu but 15 or so years older, or is he some kind of alternate dimension version? An alternate dimension would explain the amazing powers and the radically different technology better, and also why Haruka isn’t there in some form - although given that she possesses the Dragon’s Torque and appears to be able to manipulate space-time anyway perhaps she stands outside all this. If it’s a future scenario, though, it makes more sense for Karas to tell Yuu he can’t do anything - because Haruka’s probably died for some reason by then.
Whatever the situation, Noein has me hook, line and sinker, as you can probably tell from the waffley entry. I’m actually quite embarassed about how excited I got about watching this episode today - while it still lived up to my expectations, I can’t afford to do this every week or Noein will undoubtedly disappoint me somewhere along the line…
October 19th, 2005 at 4:14 am
This just completely increases my desire for the US release of this show to be completed as quickly as possible. As far as I know, it’s been licensed by Media Blasters… In the meantime, it’s watching RAWS and using your posts to puzzle out more meaning from the episode. XD
I will agree that so far, though, Noein is amazing. Easily the best show of the season, as of now. (like that means anything… but its production values are certainly some of the highest.)
October 19th, 2005 at 4:40 am
The show isn’t liscenced by Media Blasters, nor anyone else. It’s partly produced by Media Factory who do not want fansubs of theire shows being solicited, that’s why you won’t see it on animsuki for example (same as Aquarion for another example)
October 19th, 2005 at 5:31 am
Lelldorin - What’s your source for saying Noein is licensed by Media Blasters? I know it is a Media Factory title, and a while ago they sent cease-and-desist letters to many English fansub groups warning them off subtitling anything that they produced, but I have no news of anybody actually licensing Noein.
I hope you’re right, of course!
October 19th, 2005 at 5:32 am
Oh, and because I just noticed it - isn’t it Ouroboros, not Orobolus?
October 19th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
Woohoo. Can’t wait to watch this. Pity about the pictures looking different but it can’t be helped. I share the same sentiment about being so excited that yuo’re scared that you’ll get disappointed sooner or later. But to a real pathetic fangirl, there IS no disappointmetn! You accept everything and twist it some way or another…
And for once I’m using my brain and looking for a torrent I can download form…
As for Noein and licensing, well there’s always http://www.noein.jp/news/subwin/050928.html …
October 19th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Nothing to do with Noein, but have you made some changes to your blogs theme recently? Its been taking ages to to load everything after your Blogroll for a few days, which leaves the background white until it does finish loading making the entries rather hard to read…
October 19th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
I haven’t changed anything, but you’re right, it’s been going screwy for me too. I’ll have a fiddle and see if I can work out why (answer: I have no idea why it’s doing it).
It is Ouroboros. I’m just lame.
Oh, and there are plenty of people subbing Noein - one version of episode 1 is already out, and I know that there’s at least another group planning on doing it.
October 20th, 2005 at 1:03 am
Ohhh, I think what it was is I misread the wiki-table I got all my information about releases this fall from. It had “media something” filled into the “licensed/subbed by” thingy, so it was probably just saying that it was a media factory title.I feel terribly stupid now. >.>
October 20th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
For some reason I can’t get the AssSubs version of Noein (fishy name; do you have anything to do with it, BluWacky?)…
And this particular raw of ep 2 over at greedland is sadly stuck at 82.4% although I’m connected to a seed and 2 peers.
The saddest thing is I can’t wrench the torrent url out of the damn system (my brother tried some odd stuff like wget and uh… “spoofing the username” or something like that) so I can’t post it over at tokyotosho. Rargh.
October 20th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
For some reason I can’t get the AssSubs version of Noein (fishy name; do you have anything to do with it, BluWacky?)…
And this particular raw of ep 2 over at greedland is sadly stuck at 82.4% although I’m connected to a seed and 2 peers.
The saddest thing is I can’t wrench the torrent url out of the damn system (my brother tried some odd stuff like wget and uh… “spoofing the username” or something like that) so I can’t post it over at tokyotosho. Rargh. It’s redirected from http://bt.greedland.net/download.php?btId=240843 …
October 20th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
I can neither confirm nor deny that I have anything to do with AssSubs ;)
Apparently “they” are working on episode 2 at the moment and it’s an absolute bitch to translate (”A unique ESP is causing a boundary transgression of awakening reactions!” WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN??? And what the hell is a “piece of Quantum” supposed to be?). Episode 1 was a HELL of a lot easier… not that I have anything to do with it, of course.
Not sure why episode 1’s torrent isn’t working. It could be (of course, I can neither confirm or deny any knowledge of being involved with AssSubs) that they fiddled with the script a bit to correct some errors and that’s stopped the torrent working, but if I were involved I would probably be thinking about doing a hard-subbed version once they knew how to encode properly.
(if anyone reading this hasn’t got the hint by now, they are PHENOMENALLY dumb)
October 20th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
I watched the first episode of this, and I’m liking it a lot. I’ve been interested in it ever since the website was first put up. Anyone know how many episodes it’s shceduled for?
By the way, I think the “Dragon’s Torque” is supposed to be Dragon’s Torc- “Torc” is a twisted neck collar thing that the celts made during the bronze age (art history strikes again). The thing definetly looks like one when Haruka is wearing it.
October 20th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
Iris, I’ve just checked in the Oxford English Dictionary (because I’m sad) and both “torque” or “torc” are acceptable spellings of the word - I found “torc” listed in a prehistory journal, but several British academics have used “torque” - and since I’m a Brit I’ll go with that for now ^_^
Thanks for that, though, I didn’t know there was an alternative spelling! The word comes from the Latin “torquere” meaning “to twist”.
October 21st, 2005 at 6:42 am
Could a “piece of quantum” be a quanta?
October 21st, 2005 at 7:13 pm
Glad I could be of help :D Do your mysterious sources have any idea when we might expect the second episode of Noein to be subbed? I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so impatient to watch something XD
I also noticed you ordered the Kino’s Journey box set. Only a few more days until it’s released…damn you ADV >:0 I want mine now!
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:51 am
dbm - quanta is plural, isn’t it? Maybe “quantum energy” or something like that, although it’s just “koitsu no ryoushi no kakera” (and I assume it’s not “ryoushi” as in “parent”!). Stupid sci-fi dialogue!
Iris - my sources say soon, probably some point over the weekend, and they’re three quarters of the way through the episode (it took a weekend to do episode 1, and it’s already taken three days to get that far in episode 2, although the second half of the episode is much easier to translate even with Isami’s slang)
October 28th, 2005 at 4:04 am
[…] Go over to Cinnamon Ass for the detailed summary and such of this time. Just a few thoughts from me after the break. And sorry for being so late with things […]