Last episode of Shadows House did pretty much set the way for what was to come. Namely a more action heavy finale. And at the time, I wasn,t quite certain how to feel about it. Let’s say I was cautiously optimistic. And although I did find episode 11 of Shadows House less “interesting” in the sense that I wasn’t glued to the TV and trying to figure out what was goiong, I still found it fun to watch.
As I said, I enjoyed the story this week. I like the cast of Shadows House which helps a lot. I don’t like them in the sense that I think they’re precious little angels that deserve all the love but I think the show did a good job establishing all of them and I enjoy it as a character study.
But before we get into that, Shadows House looked really good this week. More specifically, the repetitive framing was on point! Here are a couple of examples. Yay, I get to use the slidey thing again!
There is one thing that bothers me a bit about this whole revelation. Why not tell the Shadows the truth right from the start. It just seems like secret is so much more likely to cause problems down the road.
I couldn’t help but think, this must have happened before. Like it must happen to at least one pair after every debut if not more. Even if we decide that Kate is special and particularly attune to Emilico, which is not something the series has really shown us so far, the others also did were unhappy about having their dolls change. And we’ve seen dolls that have gone through their debut and don’t seem so obviously brainwashed.
It’s actually a compliment to Shadows House’s consistent personification that everyone reacted exactly as I thought they would. I figured that John would not be happy at all, and I was surprised at first but it turned out he was just a bit too slow to have noticed the change yet, which makes sense. But he would have eventually and he would have tried to get Shaun back t normal then.
Patrick is a bit too timid to confront the situation even if he did notice but he’ll probably also try to get Ricky back if he has the support of others. And Louise is too self-centred to care and actually considers it a good thing. That’s the kids I know! It’s sort of ironic that Lou, the one least likely to get her personality back, was probably the funnest doll. But it seems that at least for now, Louise’s selfishness is playing in our favour so who knows.
I don’t care much about the larger storyline right now. The village and Grandfather and all that. I’m a little interested in the House politics but that’s more because I like a densely constructed fictional universe. But the village scene was striking in a way. Now I may just be reading into it, but is Shadows House an environmentalist tale? Like pretty much all Ghibli movies. There were a few moments that struck me that way. If it is, I enjoy that messaging. Even if it isn’t, it’s cool that it leaves the possibility to interpret it that way.
I should say, none of my questionings are lore-breaking. We know the effects of the brainwashing coffee wear off in time. New dolls get it slowly dissipates. So the dose after the debut probably weakens after a while, explaining why the older dolls seem normal enough. And the secrecy could be explained because the fledgling shadows need to form emotional connections to the humans that serve as their faces in order to develop personalities and evolve. If they knew the truth all along, it might be more difficult.
Finally, for all I know, this does happen after every debut. Maybe there’s a mini-revolution every few years in Shadows House and the higher floors already have a plan in place to deal with this exact thing. Oh man, I wonder what we’ll discover next week!
Previous Posts
- Shadows House episode 1 – Emilico
- Shadows House episode 2 – Impure
- Shadows House episode 3 – Broken
- Shadows House episode 4 – Murder
- Shadows House episode 5 – Bearer
- Shadows House episode 6 – Proposal
- Shadows House episode 7 – Sunshine
- Shadows House episode 8 – Revelation
- Shadows House episode 9 – Reunion
- Shadows House episode 10 – Fairies
I’m actually curious about Edward’s motives. He seems loyal, but he also seems to have some hidden objective. What about his peers, who we’ve seen once? There’s probably some intricate power balance throughout all the floors, with social insect style pheromone control from the top. It’s possible that the top dog changes every few years, and just the structure remains? It feels like we’re still in the set-up phase to be honest.
He feels like tis is a chance to gain prestige and get colser to grandfather but how? why? seeing as there are 2 episodes left, I’m not sure we’ll find out, inless we get another exposition dump.