Dantalian not so Shocker 12
So it’s over. I had just watched the premiere of Terra Nova when I started this, and since I found that 2-hours to be absolutely awful I wasn’t in the most forgiving of moods to see Dantalian‘s finale.
But it was OK. I mean, it was Dantalian through and through.
It makes one wonder what Huey was waiting for in trying to rescue his girl. I mean, he sits with Dalian everyday teasing her about breadcrumbs and bantering and reading the paper. Why didn’t he try to rescue his beloved back in episode 1?
The duality of Dalian is somewhat unique. Usually when you have a dual character like this it tends to be composed of opposites [Jekyll and Hyde]. Sure, the pink-haired princess is quiet and very meek, whereas Dalian is rather feisty, but they’re both good girls through and through. And they’re young girls! If you put them next to each other, the pink-haired girl seems way more mature, but honestly, Huey is dealing with two lolis here. Maybe the message of the show is that love transcends age, since Huey was awfully young when he “fell” for pink hair to begin with!! I know technically speaking these are paleololis and they’re probably thousands of years old but you know, if it talks like a duck and it walks like a duck…it’s a loli, no?
It was an embarrassment (of riches?) to see the six big characters at play in this final episode. Hal, Flamberge, Raziel and the Professor are walking tropes, but Gainax designs and animates them so nicely it almost doesn’t matter. It’d have been nicer to see them do more though!
The notion that Dalian represents/defends England and Raziel represents/supports Germany could be weaved into an epic anime series. Imagine Raziel and Dalian fighting throughout the 1920s to secure this and that mystical advantage for its own side. One wonders then which side Flamberge would be on (I’m guessing France).
Anyway, it was a very pretty show, and I’ll remember it as such 🙂
Kritik der Animationskraft 
Dalian is quite an odd dual character. I’m not even sure I can pinpoint the difference between the two. In those flashbacks, we saw the toga-clad pink haired girl opening what looks like Pandora’s box, and later Dalian with Joan d’ Arc. Maybe opening the box led pink haired girl into despair, to hide among the books of the library (and hence, the black biblioprincess). Only now because of Huey is she looking at the bottom of the box.
I feel bad for Dalian though, Huey is giving her the shaft. I guess she will be happy as long as she gets sweets though.
I feel bad for Dalian too, though it’s very possible she will be absorbed into the pink girl once she’s been freed, so that the two will be one and they’ll both get to be with Huey..
I think Dalian’s nature as the Archive of Dantalian effectively convinces us to believe that she has a lot of “faces” to portray her different personalities and alter egos. Dantalian is, after all, a demon “with all men and women’s faces”. However it also leads us to think if the pink-haired girl is Dalian’s “reverse form”, or the form she takes on inside the archive’s world, which means that if the pink-haired girl is the true form, then the Dalian we always see is her reverse form. This is a most interesting theory for her, I believe.
Also, nice crotch screenshot on the second image, AK. Stay classy :).
Haha! Hey, pictures are neutral. It’s the observers who are naughty 😉