| The Tower of DRUAGA -the Aegis of URUK-, Episode 6: Bridge of Lightning |
|
|
| Wednesday, 14 May 2008 | |
 Back to the more serious side of the story again, as Druaga get sidetracked into the issues that a family living in the Tower are trying to work through. I wonder how many rampaging monsters fell on the city of Meskia while they were working on this one...Jil and the gang encounter another party that has practically been wiped out in a fierce battle against the Tower's ogres. There they manage to rescue an old warrior named Gigi, a famous Guardian of the past. They travel with Gigi to a village within the Tower - Gigi's on his way there to visit his "idiot son" - but along the way, Jil loses the group's money to a pickpocket while a row between Coopa and Melt sees Coopa decide to go her own way. As she's leaving the village, she spots the pickpocket and goes after him in an attempt to get Jil's money back. By coincidence, the pickpocket - Yury - is Gigi's grandson. His father's been branded a traitor after leaving the village with a valuable artefact, and now Yury's out to try and clear his name...   For all that I'm enjoying Druaga hugely, you have you have to wonder about the internal consistency of it all - cities and villages in the middle of the tower, the damage that has to be caused by all those falling monsters versus the apparent lack of haste by anyone getting to the top, the invisibility of the eponymous Druaga himself (who, if he's as evil as his PR company would have you believe, should really be engaging in some high-level villainy by now), and the uncertainty surrounding some of the characters and their true motives and identity. There's an interesting comparison to be made here between Druaga and its GONZO stablemate BLASSREITER, in that they're both committing the same sin of not bothering to explain themselves - but I've been letting Druaga get away with it, while marking BLASSREITER horribly for just that reason. The difference between the two? Druaga seems to be all about having fun with the audience: I may not know what's going on, but I'm too busy enjoying myself to care. BLASSREITER takes itself seriously, so it fails on the same point. It's that sense of general fun that means that even this comparatively serious episode is enjoyable to watch - Yury's predicament and the shame that's been heaped on his family as a result of his father's apparent cowardice are serious matters, but put them in the hands of Coopa and suddenly there's a bright side, and you just know that there'll be a happy ending. Never mind that having this small town halfway up the Tower really makes no sense. Of course, with this episode bringing up the show's half-way point, it's looking ever more likely that the series isn't going to go anywhere. I'll be happy to be proved wrong, but if there was a point to the series I'd be expecting to see it be obvious by now where we're going - instead, Kaaya & co are just meandering their way through the Tower having a series of apparently unrelated adventures. If there's one thing that'll kill the show's appeal for me long-term, it'll be a lack of any 'ending' or resolution - and time's running out for the show to come up with one. In the meantime, though, it's still great fun, if entirely pointless.  |
