I know I said another episode was my favorite, but this one easily took its place. It had everything; action, storytelling, and comedy. Well, the title for this episode is Historic Country, but those barely any screen time for the place, at least from Kino’s view. There’s actually no real connection to the name other than the story Kino is about to tell is linked to the country’s history. Ok, ok. Maybe there is a connection.
The episode begins with Kino sneaking around with her gun. I didn’t know what was going on but just assumed we were going to get some flashbacks to how we got there, when this was actually flashback itself to the time when Kino was with her master. Finally, we hear about her! It gave me a bit of a shock since there was a jump scare thrown into the mix before forwarding to the present day.
Kino then begins telling Hermes of a story her master told her once about a country not to far from where they’re at. It begins with her master, her remains nameless, and her male partner, I think he’s her apprentice as she called him that, heading to said country to sell some gems they had for money. Unfortunately, the place had one hell of a corrupt police force which lead to the false arrest of the male partner. Now, these two are pretty good at what they do and I can see where Kino got her serious poker face skills from. One thing I want to note is the while her master was trying to bribe the officer in charge, he told her “ So, what’ll you give me for it?” which she later throws back at him in the most brilliant of ways.
Fast forward and the two are now on top of the clocktower firing away at all the officers, without killing them of course. Kino must have inherited her mad gun skills because the two aim for everyone’s knees and such to cause as much chaos as possible. Beginning form here, you see the breakdown of the police force as they just can’t handle them. They begin cocky as when they were during the interrogation, but I LOVED seeing how the leading officer ended as a broken man. I almost felt sorry for him, but it was too hilarious. There were about 7 different attempts to talk them down, but each time they were shot at they ran away like children.
With each attempt you can see the police force get more and more desperate, but they just wouldn’t budge! It’s uncertain what exactly they wanted at first, but they claimed to have accepted their death at the clocktower so they were going to take down as many of them as they could, but everything was so carefully planned it’s beautiful. At some point, the white flag of surrender comes out and they beg them to leave and that’s where the line, “ So, what’ll you give me for it?” comes in. Just like he shot her first offer down, so did she! But she literally shot it down. In the end, all they wanted to do was show teach them a lesson and throw back their words at them. Well, they managed to extort money out of the government and leave safely.
Back to Kino, she makes it to the very same place as to where the story took place. There, you get to see the aftermath of that day. Everything actually turned out to have a happy ending. You’d think the people would consider that day to be a terrorist act but it’s actually the opposite. The people think of them as heroes, heroes who got the people to speak out against the blatant corruption of the police force. Heck, they even have a monument in front of the clocktower. Apparently, some of the corrupt officers were ashamed of their actions and turned over a new leaf and thank the travelers for opening their eyes. Truly, they made their country a better place.
Final Thoughts
Ho boy, was this a rollercoaster of emotions. It began so innocently before jumping to an all out shooting range. Even more, we learned that Kino’s master was a badass woman, maybe even a bit frightening as my Kino’s jumpiness at thinking her master was behind her. You can see where she got all her skills and that poker face. I love origin stories and this is one of my favorites. I always love a badass woman and this episode showed just that. You mess with her, and you are seriously going to regret it. The action was well mixed with comedic effect that you didn’t know who to root for. Our girl may be the protagonist, but you start to feel bad for the police after they begin to break down more and more after each attempt.
On a side note, we now know everyone in the image for the show, the one I use for the feature image for this anime. Top right: Kino’s master and her partner, middle left: Shizu, Riku, and Ti, and in the middle: Kino and Hermes. I’m surprised Photo isn’t in the image considering she got an episode to herself.
That concludes this week’s post on Kino’s Journey. I’m working on having a fixed posting schedule of three times a week, so I hope you enjoy these. I know I need to work on my writing style, or voice, but it’s hard to break out of that work-like style after only writing school papers for so long.
Dragonas Talk 