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R1 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Sunday, 02 December 2007 16:00 |
 Misaki Chronicle continues from where Divergence Eve left off, but you'd be hard pressed to tell that from the way these opening episodes jump all across the timeline. And just where is the 'real' Misaki, anyway? Initially, it's up to Lieutenant Lyar Ertiana to find these things out, and that's not proving to be the easiest of missions...
1 - 2315: Allied Forces Military Academy
2315 (two years before the events of the first season of Divergence Eve), Allied Forces Military Academy, and Misaki's in basic training - and the only thing impressing her instructor is her complete lack of talent in just about every department. She's trying her best, but it's just not clicking into place. A chance meeting with a military officer who seems to have known her father (although he initially denies it) leads to her being given her first flight experience, and a much-needed boost to her determination. Out at Watcher's Nest, meanwhile, Lyar prepares her Rampart Armor for its first mission to a world from a time warp - a world created by Misaki herself...
2 - 2316: Field Practice
On a training mission with Luxandra, Suzanna & Kiri, Misaki's once more being enough of a klutz to bring down their scores - with the usual griping as a result. But is this a real world, or a construct? Lyar observes from a distance, out-of-time but not out of the picture, trying to figure out what's going on - and between seeing younger versions of people she knows, and ghostly images of a childlike Misaki, nothing is making much sense to her. Even in this world, though, the Ghoul are a threat...
3 - 1594: The Assassination of Totomi Hideyoshi
Observations from Watcher's Nest show that something very strange is going on: time is passing on the station as it should, but beyond it, time seems to have frozen. Behind the temporal barrier, time is also passing on Earth, but not in the normal way - as Lyar finds when she makes a second trip down to the surface and finds herself in 16th-century feudal Japan. Another world of Misaki's creating - a place for her to escape, but for what purpose? If it's the Ghoul she's trying to avoid, this isn't the place...
4 - 1594: Frightful Shadow
The theory about what's happening is that it's all the responsiblity of the Ghoul - they appear to come from an alternate universe, and if they have the ability to break the connection between two universes, then messing around with time shouldn't be an issue. That's why the Ghoul on Earth is Lyar's target - destroy the Ghoul, and things will return to normal. But the longer she stays in the past, the more she comes to realise that Misaki herself is responsible...
5 - 1936: The February 26th Incident
An infinite number of parallel worlds, but you only get to perceive the one - so goes the theory, if you follow your physics, and Lyar is beginning to believe that's what's hiding behind the temporal barrier: the different world each time she goes there, as Misaki searches for the one that she wants. On Watcher's Nest, Kiri runs into Suzanna - still missing her memories of her time with Seraphim, she's beginning to feel that something's missing from her life, and speaking with Kiri may just have jogged her memory of what it was. Down on Earth, the date is February 26th, 1936, and revolution is brewing. Misaki, ever looking for a happy ending, is trying to prevent a young couple from being separated - she has the power to change the flow of time, or believes she has, so what's the harm in using it to prevent times of sorrow? Her younger counterpart doesn't agree, however...
So at the end of Season One, Misaki was attempting to control the passage of Watcher's Nest from its location in deep space back to Earth - the Exodus. Not an easy task, even for someone who's not entirely human - and so when the Ghoul escape through the resulting inflation hole to Earth itself, you know there are going to be problems. That's where this series comes in - and while Watcher's Nest is back at Earth, with the Moon having taken the place of the original planetoid that the station had been built around, there's something definitely not right about the situation: a temporal barrier surrounds the planet, and the Ghoul are running loose within it. Of Misaki, there's no sign.
So there's your setup. These five episodes leaves lots of questions hanging in the air, but doesn't go a long way to answering them, other than making it clear that the strangeness going on is mostly down to Misaki, wherever (or whatever) she may be at this stage. Season one had a light-hearted aspect to it that's almost completely lacking here, with the primary focus being on Lyar and her attempts to figure out what's going on and defeat the Ghoul that they intially believe to be behind the temporal anomaly, and while the truth is slowly beginning to dawn on her, it's happening slowly.
There are a few other story threads that we're just reminded about here, but that aren't dealt with in an sort of detail - Alchemy are still about, and presumably leBlanc will have a role to play somewhere down the line; while Suzanna's still around, with her (possibly incomplete) memory wipe being brought into the picture as well. Interesting pointers, but saved for another time.
The big problem with these episodes is that they're almost too obscure or confusing for their own good - it's hard to get a real feel for what's going on, and that does get in the way of the enjoyment. Season one wasn't exactly easy to follow either, but it was more straighforward than this. I live in hope that the remaining two volumes will clear everything up in a way that makes sense - in the meantime, this volume gets a cautious thumbs-up.
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