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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Sunday, 03 June 2007 17:00 |
 Fantastic Children returns for its second volume. While Thoma spends his time fooling around with Helga and Chitto, the Children begin to make progress in their search for Tina while Cooks begins to unravel the secrets behind the Ged Project...
6 - Kokkori Island (Part II)
Thoma finds Chitto easily enough - but with him lying unconscious underneath a hive of killer bees, he's not about to rush into saving him, especially as his grandfather had been killed by the bees. Helga's not so restrained, though - arriving on the scene a little bit late (running through wet forests really isn't her thing), she simply walks straight up to Chitto's body, oblivious the bees that are settling on her, and carries him clear of the swarm. After seeing her as nothing but a nusiance, the incident gives Thoma a new repect for Helga - and leaves him feeling just a little bit shamed that he hadn't rescued Chitto himself. Meanwhile, Tarlant pays a visit to Thoma's island - but will he find Helga, or realise who she is..?
7 - The Children of Befort
Cooks heads to Clairmont, on the trail of a dark stone known as the Fragment, discovered 100 years previously and in which the mysterious GED Project has an interest. His new observer from HQ isn't quite sure what this has to do with the investigation he's meant to be working on - and that she's meant to make sure he's working on - so Cooks begins to share the information he's uncovered over the years about the Children of Befort, and how he believes they tie in with the missing children he's supposed to be searching for...
8 - A Warm Family
Thoma's mother eventually catches him raiding the cupboards - when she learns he's been hiding Helga and Chitto on his island, she immediately agrees to let them stay at her home. Until she's had a chance to contact the orphanage, at least - something that Thoma would much rather she didn't do. It only takes one conversation with the orphanage director, though, for her to decide that Helga and Chitto now have a new permanent home. Meanwhile, the Children continue their search, using a copy of one of Serafine's paintings to try and jog peoples' memories. Eventually, some of the kids from the orphanage get to see the painting, and are able to link it to Helga. The Children of Befort finally have their lead - but good fortune means that Cooks is right on their tail...
9 - Orsel
Seeing her father, and the almost pathetic state he's fallen to, reduces Soreto / Flo to tears - but she knows she can't go back to him, not now that she knows who the latest reincarnation of Tina is. She shares her news with the rest of the Children, but just as they're about to head off to where they've been told Helga was last living, there's a strange blue flash in the sky. Crooks also sees it, and traces it back to a home where a man has been killed in mysterious circumstances...
10 - The Ged Group
Seeing Dumas again after 100 years was a surprise for the Children - seeing he'd only aged by about 8 years in the interim was an even larger one. The only way he could have done that would have been by using Orsel - and the only way he could have gotten that knowledge would have been from Mel, who he'd captured when he last met the Children. That possibility is enough to make the remaining Children curious. Cooks is also suffering from a dose of curiosity, and heads for an old GED research base - which he soon finds isn't as abandoned as he'd been expecting. Meanwhile, GED's leaders meet to discuss recent events, and Professor Gherta has trouble persuading them to hold back on their more destructive tendencies..
Five more episodes of Fantastic Children, and while there is the odd bit of interaction between the various threads of the story, we're still really dealing with 3 or 4 separate plotlines that are just waiting to be pulled together. We're getting there, but not quite yet.
Thoma and Helga get the early attention, as Thoma has a run-in with one of the Children of Befort on Kokkori Island. At first I'd thought they were about to stumble upon Helga and start putting two & two together, but no – instead, the Children had hidden a robot named Wonder on the island, and he's there to retrieve it. It's not the first time that one of the Children has almost stumbled upon Helga – it's part of the way the series takes the time to weave the various plot threads together without really allowing them to touch yet, and I love the way that works. Later, Thoma's mother finds out about the help he's been giving to Helga and Chitto, and when the orphanage director refuses to take them back, allows them to live with her family, giving Thoma more opportunities to really get to know Helga, who's beginning to open up a bit and develop more of a personality at the series goes on. As with the first disc, Thoma's part of the story is very laid back and slice-of-life, with the island setting and the ruins around them helping to reinforce that feeling, in contrast to the scenes featuring the Children themselves or Cooks.
Episode 7 is a flashback story, going back to when Cooks' grandfather was on the trail of the Children of Befort himself. It fills in a lot of the details about the Children and why Cooks is so obsessed with them, as well as explaining the origins of the Ged Project, which gives you the first pointers to how the characters are perhaps going to come together. Ged becomes the focus of one of the later episodes on the disc as well, as Cooks starts digging where he shouldn't after encountering one of the victims of the project's experiments, and as his investigations continue – despite his new assistant's constant querying of how relevant it is to the missing persons case he's supposed to be working on – more and more background information is revealed, and the story really begins to click into place. The only problem with the way this is done is that it seems a little about-face – by the end of the disc it's easy to make a good guess at the Children's origins and where they'll be heading when they finally find what they're looking for, but the "why" of their mission and the significance of Tina and her reincarnations is still a mystery. To my mind, it would have made more sense to fill in that background the other way around.
As for the Children themselves, they're also developing and becoming more than the simple threatening characters they appeared to be in the early parts of the series. While some of them are still taking their quest – and their eventual fate if they fail in it – with a sense of acceptance, others are showing signs of being scared of their fate, and showing regret at leaving behind the lives they had before their reincarnated personality reawakened. This makes them much more human and easier to connect to, instead of just being gray characters with a sense of foreboding wrapped around them. Now, there are even occasional signs of happiness, particularly after they're alerted to the possibility that Helga's the one they're searching for.
On the downside, pacing is still on the slow side – the way the story is being told, it pays to keep a close watch on what's happening, but the slow pace works against that a little. There's also maybe a little frustration that things aren't coming together a little quicker. That's balanced out by the general feel of the show, though, and as the characters continue to develop they're becoming more likeable, on all sides of the story (with the exception of the clearly evil Dumas, of course), while the continuous drip-feed of information and story background during these episodes just leaves you wanting to see the next volume as soon as you can.
Fantastic Children's second volume follows much the same pattern as the first – separate stories woven around each other, and beginning to come together. These episodes begin the process of explaining what's going on, and although there are still a lot of questions left unanswered, there's enough to give you a good feel for where the story is going. Add in the ongoing development of most of the main characters, and the series continues to be engrossing viewing. Recommended.
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