It does look like the battle is speeding up. The less important executives are going down per episode. And unlike the last one, I found this one excellent the entire way through. Excellent in a super unique way. This episode hardly focused on main characters at all, and it was this concoction of absurd humor, melodrama, and heart.
To start with, the initial old jokes from Lao G weren’t my thing but the absurdity of him facing the wrong way, Chinjao ignoring him to speak to Sai, and the confusion of Lao G being angry but actually just dying of a natural death was a sense of whiplash that made me laugh like the hardest I have in this arc. And after that, the situation that emerged with Baby 5 and Sai was just as crazy. Sai doubting Baby 5’s commitment to doing what people want her to, told her to kill herself. But she was actually about to do it, she was happy to put someone’s needs above her own life. This sequence was melodramatic and chaotic with Chinjao fighting his own grandson, going so far to even bend his drill, and a flashback of Baby 5’s revealing a short but extreme past where she was abandoned giving her an admittedly cheap reason for this complex of hers, at least in the sense of it getting little screen time.
All of this could be one big joke in the right atmosphere but there was some heart and sadness in it. Sai saw Baby 5 for the sad girl she is, and her flashback answered a long lasting question: That is, why Baby 5 joined Doflamingo as a child and stayed through the horrors that the family committed. It was inherent that she had to be messed up, and as cheesy as her background is, her child voice actor did a great job as she begged not to be left behind and the cruel way her mother called her useless became a truth to her. Sai saw that and was so compassionate to amazingly tell her: “You have been living in a world where nobody ever told you that you’re getting it all wrong?” Chinjao ends up crying happy tears to suggest that Sai has surpassed him and the masterful technique has been passed to him, as well as agency in his life to marry who he wants.
It was this big happy moment happening at breakneck speed and then it all culminated in the absurdity of Lao G becoming a huge buff man because he stored his energy all this time. If I recall a certain character in Saint Seiya literally does this as well, he stores his muscles and youth and releases it all for the final battle becoming young and muscular again. And in this conflict Lao G ended up calling Baby 5 convenient because she is theirs, like property, and she would even die for them. But she had just been treated, maybe for the first time in her life, unconditionally by Sai. Despite it being good for him for her to do something that was against her wellbeing, he didn’t want that, and he told her that living that way is wrong. This probably marks her first steps to seeing herself as valuable as a person… And now Sai ended up winning for her hand in marriage.
This was seriously awesome, I never expected something like this to happen, and it brings up a serious issue. I have said before that the Don Quixote family is probably better than being alone for people like Dellinger. Further, in the past we saw that Doflamingo killed everyone that tried to abuse Baby 5, like a big brother figure. But, despite knowing Baby 5 since she was a child, it almost seems like she only got worse. That she only began to feel more like she had to do what she could to feel needed, she was never taught that she’s okay as she is. That her mother leaving her wasn’t her fault. One has to ask why Baby 5 was brought into the family and if it was really as Lao G said, due to her convenience and only that. Regardless it goes to show that although the Don Quixote family brings some good to its members, especially those taken in as children by giving them a home, it probably ends up doing a lot more bad. Seeing a look into what made Baby 5 tick makes me hopeful that we’ll see the life that people like Dellinger and Buffalo had assuming they get some more screen time. |