Ron Does Stuff

We had a great start with the first episode of this anime adaptation of Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan, so let’s go on right ahead and see where the show takes us!

We start this episode with Aleksander being jolted awake by Count Volger, who trains him in sword fighting while at the same time trying to hammer in Aleksander’s head that war is coming, and he needs to be prepared for it. There’s much to be desired when it comes to Count Volger’s bedside manner, but who can blame him? War is on the horizon and there’s no time to be delicate about the young aristocrat’s feelings.

And boy does Volger not care about Aleksander’s feelings. I get where Aleksander is coming from because even if he is nobility, he is still a child, but the surrounding circumstances just require him to grow up and grow up quick. He really did need that slap, sorry to say!

Meanwhile, Deryn is just having the time of her life on the Leviathan, after encountering it by chance because of the runaway Huxley she was on. Or at least, she was having the time of her life until she gets bullied by some of the soldiers. I mean, at least she knows her male disguise is good because the men have no idea she’s a girl. They’d still be just as condescending, but at least they wouldn’t hit her.

All the men are excited for war, but mostly I think because they’ve never actually experienced it and think it’s going to be an adventure. I don’t have the energy to look for it now, but I think there was writing beforehand about how the generation that went into World War I thought of it as an adventure, but the reality of it was very much different, traumatizing a generation. Tolkien hated it so much he wrote The Lord of the Rings!

Aleksander, elsewhere in Europe, is still grappling with the deaths of his parents, and while it’s a small scene, it not only makes Aleksander even more sympathetic to the audience, we as the audience also slowly get to feel the danger surrounding Aleksander. He can’t fully trust anyone that isn’t Volger or Klopp because they might be sympathetic to the Germans.

Over in Paris, Deryn meets Nora Barlow, a scientist that the British government is escorting. Nora Barlow immediately clocks Deryn as a girl, but doesn’t tell her yet. That’s for later on in the ship, when she tells Deryn that she knows she’s hiding something. Deryn says that she’s too young to actually be on the ship, and Nora plays along just so she can blackmail Deryn into taking care of the eggs she’s planning to hatch. But it’s pretty obvious that Nora knows what Deryn’s real secret it.

Down on land, Aleksander learns another hard lesson as they try to evade the gigantic German Walker on their way to Switzerland. While the death of his parents is very real, it’s something that he didn’t witness up close and is sorta abstract in his mind still. Hoffman’s death as they try to evade German troops is something very real and something he witnessed, and it takes everything he has to push past such a horrible experience.

But it’s not just Aleksander encountering death for the first time. The Leviathan encounters German flyers in the air, and while they’re able to repel the attacks, a collision with a German whaler sends two of the soldiers Deryn was working with tumbling down to their deaths.

Or at least, sent one of them to their deaths, because one of them managed to grab onto a rope! He can’t pull himself up by himself, but Deryn takes matters into her own hands and saves him. For how long though, we’ll have to find out in the next episode, because the collision sends the Leviathan crashing down into the Alps.

This second episode really brings the book to life, I gotta say. I love how they animated the bats, which really look like the Kevin Thompson illustrations in the book. So far, so good, and I can’t wait to get into the rest of the episodes!