DO NOT discuss the source material beyond this episode. If you want to discuss future events or theories, please use separate threads. DO NOT ask where to watch/download this episode or give links to copyrighted, non-fair use material. DO NOT troll/bait/harass/abuse other users for liking or disliking the series/characters. DO read the Anime Discussion Rules and Site & Forum Guidelines.
watsym said: I hope they change it every time MC changes, it would be really awkward to have this OP/ED next episode when everything from it doesn't reflect the new arc
That would actually be really cool. I mean, Chainsaw Man had a different ending for each episode, changing the visuals wouldn't be that radical compared to that, but it would require a lot more work too.
Phlaryx said: changing the visuals every time a new arc starts would be pretty spoilery to those who haven’t seen the show yet. Rafal being the center focus makes more sense since it shows that even though he’s gone, we can still feel his influence and presence going forward in the story. The opening also already shows the whole cast anyway and even events from the last few chapters, so they’re probably just gonna stick with this one until the end.
But this might also be a problem too, it could become quite spoilerlish over time. And ending the episodes with the remainder of Humbert and Rafal's inspiration would be interesting too
@PokefanPT I think the visuals are pretty vague enough to where anime only’s wouldn’t know what was being spoiled. There were references that only manga readers would remember.
@PokefanPT I think the visuals are pretty vague enough to where anime only’s wouldn’t know what was being spoiled. There were references that only manga readers would remember.
Phlaryx said: There were references that only manga readers would remember.
Yes, that's true, there are things happening at the opening that I just can't even imagine what they're about xD
@PokefanPT Try to avoid spoilers as much as possible! There are so many great twists that happen later on!
Phlaryx said: Try to avoid spoilers as much as possible! There are so many great twists that happen later on!
Thank you for the warning! I will try my best to keep out from watching related videos on YouTube, that is the place where I most commonly get spoiled! Really REALLY curious to see how this anime will unfold!
This episode was really good. Can't believe that after 3 episodes the mc is dead though. This episode really showed how knowledge is passed down from generation to generation I feel.
Wait he really just died? Like bruh? Intense episode and Rafal just proved that a man will die for his dreams. Just like Hubert left his dreams on Rafal's hands he left it too. Insane episode.
Hahah holy shit what a twist. Rafal is dead! They did a good job trolling us with OP and ED, making it seem like Rafal was the MC. So it seems the show will be about different people all pursuing the same goal.
Wait he really just died? Like bruh? Intense episode and Rafal just proved that a man will die for his dreams. Just like Hubert left his dreams on Rafal's hands he left it too. Insane episode.
@MegamiRem yeah he's prob Dead, you cant fake a fire execution can you
My man casually went out with a giant middle finger to the system. What an absolute alpha.
In essence, this is how we reach modern-day science. A genius took what they had learned from the previous generation, built upon it, then passed it to the next generation, one step at a time.
I was not expecting he got catch this soon, but he also died omg.
So if we are going for multiple MCs, I wonder if it will reach until Nicolau Copérnico? The one that actually manage to prove the theory.
@ScarRufus I think that is the case. These first 3 episodes have established the theme for this show. This story isn't about Rafal. It's about passing on the burning curiosity of astronomy. The quest of scholars to unravel the universe's mysteries. This upcoming episode will be critical, it could go either way. Hope it manages to keep the intrigue
"In this world we are all transient guests!"
- Vampire Hunter D
Holy shit, i don't even know how to describe the sheer amount of quality these first 3 episodes had.
The dialogues are just on a whole another level, man.
And i guess this anime is going to change protagonist after the death of the first one like jojo's
The level of writing of this show is off the charts, Rafal starts out as an arrogant genius and attention hungry teenager but after his meeting with Hubert he realises his love for astronomy and the reluctance to live by the lies of the church grows in him. His story ends as he decides to denounce the church's blatant lies regarding geocentrism and accepts his death for his love of "truth" that is as he sees heliocentrism. As rafal said " I would let inspiration survive even if it costs me my own life ". He will go as far as to give up his own life as long as it inspires someone else in the world to seek the truth as it did for him by Hubert.
To introduce, build, develop and conclude a character like this in just 3 eps is just mad work.
Hats off to Uoto-San and RIP Rafal
was censoring and stopping publications of the work and stuff like that. The biggest, and only, event where they were a bit more aggressive was against Galileo Galilei, that was put on Trial. The verdict was simply ''Describe the pro and cons of Heliocentrism'', but Galileo trolled them and his published research was pretty much just a ''Ya, I'm right, gg no re'' lol
The plot twist is FUCKING INSANE
This is such a well-directed ep. The dialogue is so well-written, and the story keeps gettin better and better. What an underrated show!
"Your enemy is a resilient one. The thing you all oppose isn't me. Nor is it heretics. It's part imagination and part curiosity. In short, it's the truth itself."
I geek out a bit again as I've written before that what happens in this anime is pure fantasy. A couple of more episodes are just a confirmation of that.
For ease of reading, I'm going to hide chunks of text under the spoiler and denote the subject matter. This is a simplified, brief summary.
Heresy. What is it?
In short, it is not a faithful interpretation of Scripture. That is the 'official' position of the Church. Anything else is heresy. The Inquisition focused its attention on - those who preached. The clergy. Because they were fighting against the 'wrong' interpretations. The faithful flock suffered too. Examples of heresies. Bogomils, Cathars, Hussites. The latter believed that Scripture was supreme and the Church was an appendage. They attacked the sacred. The authority of the Church and its power. Four crusades were launched against the Hussites.
Calvinism and Protestantism were heresies from the point of view of the Catholic Church at the time.
Usually, the heresy movement first undermined the authority and power of the Church. There was also the phenomenon of popular heresy.
The study of astronomy was not a heresy. Neither was the heliocentric model. Unless you start running around shouting that the Church is lying and the world is wrong, there is no heresy. Scientific research itself was not heresy either, because it did not involve scripture.
A bit about the Inquisition.
It's a very specific organisation that was concerned with maintaining the purity of the faith. And the Inquisition was very different in different periods. And in different places the differences were significant. For example, the Spanish Inquisition raged because in Spain, after the Reconquista, there were a lot of Christians from Muslim lands, baptised Muslims and so on. All this was spiced up with land redistribution and hatred of infidels. The work of the inquisitors themselves is quite boring. It's typical legalism. They'd organise trials. The accused had a lawyer. The most common punishments were not the death penalty, but fines, fasting, penance, confiscation of property and much more. Repeat offenders could be burned. You have to understand the basic purpose. To maintain the authority of the Church and the purity of the faith. It wasn't in the Inquisitors' plans to fuck everyone up and burn them at the stake. Nor was it the Inquisition's job to hunt down learned men and look over their shoulders. How did the Inquisition get its role as persecutor of science? Quite simply. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Jesuits and the Inquisition censored books.
Maleficars. Who's that?
There's a wonderful compendium. Malleus Maleficarum. The hammer of witches. It is an essay by a couple of priests on how to look for devil worshippers and witches, how to identify them and what to do with them. Of course, it goes into great detail about what malefaction is. It's a very depressing read. Witches, sorcerers, devil worshippers were mostly victims of ordinary village priests who had read this nonsense. It was not without legalism. The priests tried everyone and everything. There are records of cattle and even beetle trials.
A little bit about times and dates.
According to the description, the anime is set in the 15th century. That's 1400-1500. In Poland. Heliocentrism was banned in 1616. At the time of the anime, the ban had not been lifted for at least 116 years. The banning of Copernicus' teachings means that you cannot advocate a world view that is contrary to the teachings of the Church. No one said anything about using the Copernican system. It was even used in calculations by quite good Church astronomers.
Printing press.
Gutenberg mastered his press in 1440. By 1500, printing presses had spread throughout Western Europe. This greatly accelerated the production of printed matter and stimulated the manufacture of paper. But books were still very expensive. It was not until the 19th century that they became cheap and accessible.
I don't think Rafal is really dead. I think he faked his death, in order to be burnt before the torture and so he couldn't escape somehow when guards were not watching because they didn't expect a dead body to escape. Remeber the scene with the burnt paper, where father said to Rafal: "You should watch until it's completely burnt" and I hope that will be the plot 🙏
First two episodes bored me a lot but this episode was just perfect. The dialogue in this anime is very well written and the final scene literally gave me goosebumps. 10 year timeskip let's see what happens next.
Ain’t no way they just fucking pumped faked us with a fake MC mannnnnn this shit hurted dawg I was truly ready to see Rafal spend the next 30 years of his life proving to the world that the Heliocentric model is the true model but no bro died and we got a 10 time skip so quickly I’m sadden that bros gone now hopefully bro managed to escape from the flames or something😢😢😢🥺🥺🥺 (THIS IS JUST WISHFUL COPING FROM ME DONT PAY IT ANY ATTENTION😭)
On this episode gave me To Your Eternity type vibes with the sad and tragic death of our MC I’m happy as well that bro went out as a real nigga and tortured his would be torturer, he had that man Novak shitting his pants in fear hahaha🤣
While Novak was scared I can’t forget that that man is truly scary with how his voice is still the same after threatening you with torture like bro is next level sadistic man
I wonder where this 10 year timeskip is going to take us? And how did those guys find Rafal’s stash I need the next episode NOW man😩🙏🏽
Wow, manga readers must be reading this thread with the largest grin on their face!!
I'm so shocked that Rafal died! I really thought he was going to stay alive. They even burned him too, for good measure! I haven't been this excited to see where the story goes since Vinland Saga.
Yeah talk about a major swerve, I was thinking that Rafal was going to lie and get through university while being more incognito about his heliocentric research, damn. This type of surprise has happened once before to me in another anime called
Oshi no Ko.
I'm curious to see where this goes from here as I think other characters will take over Hubert's and Rafal's research.
Nobody was burn at stake in the 15th century for subscriving to the theory of heliocentrism for purely logical and scientific reasons. You got problems only if you start speaking out against the major dogmas of Christianity, and heliocentrism is NOT one of them. That's why Copernicus lived a peaceful life despite working on the theory of heliocentrism and even sending his books to the pope (who didn't particularly think anything about it), while Giordano Bruno was sentenced to death because he wrote ideas like reincarnation of the soul or Jesus being not God.
It seems like the mangaka didn't care about finding out how people lived and thought in the 15th century to write such a ridiculous story. I'm okay with works of fiction set in historical context, but you have to do your research first to avoid writing, well, bullshit. A story set in a historical context doesn't have to be perfectly historically accurate, but at least it shouldn't give a blatantly false view of the reality of said historical context.
Let's just talk about the discussion between the boy and the inquisitor about death. Boy starts to quote ancient philosophers about nobody knowing what is death, and so on. Come on, we are supposed to watch a story set in Europe, in the 15th century, when everybody believed that a man named Jesus died, descended into Hell where he freed Adam, Abraham etc, then was resurrected. Actually, everybody at the time think they know what is death, because everybody have faith. You just don't ask yourself what is death, or what happens after death, in the 15th century in Europe.
Characters in this anime are behaving like today's people, and sometimes particularly like today's Japanese people (like the boy in episode 1 saying "you're like a god", like he was living in a Shinto society). To write a good story set in a context far from your cultural and historical time, you need to do a lot of work, a lot of research, or else you just write something mediocre and not believable. Unfortunatey, mangaka didn't even try to do that.
Biggest problem, however, is that there are still people in the anime community thinking that the "reality" depicted in this anime is true because it reminds them vaguely of clichés about the Middle Age, and then are going to recommend watching it. It's okay believing in clichés until somebody opens your mind and shows that said clichés are totally false. But the lazy author of Orb doesn't do that, it's even worse, he or she continues to spread these clichés. So please, let's not label his work as good and well written when it is just not the case.
The level of writing of this show is really high. When I first started watching this anime, I didn't know it would be so...good. This third episode is the best one so far. I hope it continues to be this good.
"When you die, I'll be the one writing your name in my Death Note" - Ryuk.
Nobody was burn at stake in the 15th century for subscriving to the theory of heliocentrism for purely logical and scientific reasons. You got problems only if you start speaking out against the major dogmas of Christianity, and heliocentrism is NOT one of them. That's why Copernicus lived a peaceful life despite working on the theory of heliocentrism and even sending his books to the pope (who didn't particularly think anything about it), while Giordano Bruno was sentenced to death because he wrote ideas like reincarnation of the soul or Jesus being not God.
It seems like the mangaka didn't care about finding out how people lived and thought in the 15th century to write such a ridiculous story. I'm okay with works of fiction set in historical context, but you have to do your research first to avoid writing, well, bullshit. A story set in a historical context doesn't have to be perfectly historically accurate, but at least it shouldn't give a blatantly false view of the reality of said historical context.
Let's just talk about the discussion between the boy and the inquisitor about death. Boy starts to quote ancient philosophers about nobody knowing what is death, and so on. Come on, we are supposed to watch a story set in Europe, in the 15th century, when everybody believed that a man named Jesus died, descended into Hell where he freed Adam, Abraham etc, then was resurrected. Actually, everybody at the time think they know what is death, because everybody have faith. You just don't ask yourself what is death, or what happens after death, in the 15th century in Europe.
Characters in this anime are behaving like today's people, and sometimes particularly like today's Japanese people (like the boy in episode 1 saying "you're like a god", like he was living in a Shinto society). To write a good story set in a context far from your cultural and historical time, you need to do a lot of work, a lot of research, or else you just write something mediocre and not believable. Unfortunatey, mangaka didn't even try to do that.
Biggest problem, however, is that there are still people in the anime community thinking that the "reality" depicted in this anime is true because it reminds them vaguely of clichés about the Middle Age, and then are going to recommend watching it. It's okay believing in clichés until somebody opens your mind and shows that said clichés are totally false. But the lazy author of Orb doesn't do that, it's even worse, he or she continues to spread these clichés. So please, let's not label his work as good and well written when it is just not the case.
@EckhartPilgrim its not meant to be historically accurate, its more like a alternate history fantasy.
Wow, okay, I’m used were left flat on the ground, did we just see our MC die in three episodes? Was it supposed to be this kind of show?
Seriously though, that whole dialogue with the detective was on point and the moonshade created that eerie atmosphere. Can’t contain the truth, am I right
It was amazing to see the deep dive into his mindset though. Poor father couldn’t save his child after all. Where’s this going now?
Three episodes in , and the story takes a drastic turn of events. Reminds me that the story revolves around the theory, and not the character/s per se. So, who will take up the cudgels of Rafal next?
This episode was crazy from start to finish, there were some crazy twists that i never saw coming. Rafal's speech moved me to tears, and the ending left me genuinely awestruck. :0 This was a beautiful start, I'm super excited to see where this story goes, and I think it will definitely be an underdog of this season! ^-^
Well, RIP first MC. It was really good arc. Would be actually cool idea if anime will have few arcs with different MCs slowly building one theory over time
Do we have any reaction regarding this anime from the Catholic Church in Japan? Did they put it on the Index Prohibitorium? Are the japanese faithful able to watch it without committing sin?
(I know very few japanese christians remained in the aftermath of Nagasaki and Hiroshima nuking but I think there is one japanese government minister, a lady who is practicing catholic, so they still have presence in the society.)
Adizcool said: I think it's cause Nowak was trying to find evidence to catch him, since it is pretty clear he was suspicious of Rafal from episode 2. But as we know from Potocki, he could not find any and so directly confronted him to ascertain the truth. And Hubert's necklace and Rafal's reaction gave it away that he was still continuing his research.
Why did it take so much time between their inital meeting until Nowak went in to hound Rafal and question Potocki? If Nowak was so certain that Rafal was already in cahoots with Hubert he should have made it his top priority, specially since someone that had been involved in heresy readings/teachings could have fled town and start a new somewhere else. This feels like pretty bad forced drama.
Adizcool said: And they do not give away poppy seeds to prisoners lol. If you watch the episode carefully, Rafal had a feeling that he might be turned in to the inquisitors by Potocki when he asked him about heliocentrism and heard Rafal's answer. So he prepared the pouch on him just in case. We even see him hiding the pouch on him before he goes to sleep.
I watched the episode carefully (I love it when fanboys think they have some sort of gotcha argument). Rafal never had any internal monologue that would state he was fearful of getting handed to the inquisitors. In fact his relationship with Potocki was pretty solid, he forgave him several times when he was disobedient of the strict rules. Potocki wasn't going to hand him anyway (specially since he was a heretic that had to recant his statements), it was all due to the forced and badly written introduction of Nowak.
I'll just humor you and will play a hypotetical scenario. You don't think that these ruthless inquisitors hadn't met another wise guy before Rafal that would have kept any suspicious belonging that would aid him into killing themselves before being tormented to death? Frisking the fresh to be tortured prisoner should had been their priority once they had him ion custody. This is as cheap as it is as contrived and pure writer's convenience as Gaby using a loosen brick to smack the only guard in a whole prison wing in Attack on Titan.
Adizcool said: And finally, going against the authority is not a Shonen trope, it is a storytelling trope. Not just in anime, but even many of the literatures greatest pieces have it's characters rise up to the status quo. Would you call them shonen as well? What a strange thing to try and critique a story for.
This is where you should really focus on proper reading rather than make terrible argumentations. I never said that going against the authority was a exclusively a shonen trope, I did it in a mocking way given how common it is in terms of storytelling in that demographic to shock and awe the gullible preteens and claim "that's a badass character, I wanna be like him when I grow older".
Adizcool said: Especially when the story has built Rafal's character enough that it makes sense for him to do that.
Quite the opposite. His character was established as someone that kept his head low and didn't want to get in trouble with anyone by sticking to the rules no matter how unfair they were, it was even in his very first monologues about being a crowd pleaser among the class. His sudden change and martyr role in just a few days goes against his whole character that was built upon years of societal repression.
Adizcool said: I do agree on the animation though. It is pretty lacking on that front. But since it is a dialogue based anime with great direction and story boarding, I don't think it is that important.
The storyboarding is just as average as it's animation. My original point wasn't that it was important, it was that the other guy was overreacting about the quality of the animation by saying "it's accurate to the source" which is absolutely plain non sense as some sort of animation quality measurement.
Adizcool said: And given the reception of the past 3 episodes, I think most people agree.
The reception is just as average as the story and the animation. If the numbers of people jumped drastically after episode 3 based on MAL numbers or other viewership in other sites you would have a point, but it's really not.