Thursday 12 March 2009

Viper's Creed - Episode 7

After somehow squeezing a cooking episode into its narrative last episode, Viper's Creed has firmly planted itself in the "Well, it can't get any worse" pile. The trouble is, series that land on that pile tend to... well, get worse.

Thankfully however, episode seven of Viper's Creed is a considerable improvement upon recent episodes, brining us back towards the gritty reality of the world it presents us with. The whole thing starts out with a terrorist attack on a shopping centre (yes, I know, Rideback did it first) which causes vast numbers of casualties, an atrocity which is claimed by a group calling themselves Hound (I can only assume they're Transformers fans). This chain of events causes disturbances and riots as people pick sides - Some support Hound's attempts to rid Davia City of rich, foreign companies while others want to maintain the current status quo.


This breakdown in civil obedience seems to bother Haruki more than most, while he also continues to deny that Hound had anything to do with the terrorist bombing (even though he was injured by it himself). Just what is going on? As the episode progresses, so his allegiances get tested to the limit.

While this was indeed a far better episode of Viper's Creed as I just mentioned, it still didn't really hit all the right notes - The dialogue felt extremely stilted to the point of being a bit daft at times, while the general progress of the episode was mapped out so clearly the second half felt entirely inevitable rather than even vaguely surprising. Still, it manages to sprinkle in some action and a far stronger storyline, so all in all this was a far more compelling, albeit imperfect, instalment.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I haven't had any tremendous complaints about viper's creed thus far but I do agree the last couple episodes were slow. I think the show is at it's worst when it is episodic. The sniper episode was okay but the angry rival driver who plots and is captured in 1 episode; and the infamous cookie episodes were pretty bad.

My biggest reaction to this episode was "Lelouch and Suzaku together again" Fukuyama Jun as Haruki and Takahiro Sakurai (I think) as Ulla.

Episode 8 has more things in common with Code Geass too and you might be a tad surprised.