Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
There’s a simple trick that anime sometimes use to signal that the episode you’re about to watch is intense. If an anime’s OP is either skipped entirely or played right at the top of an episode, you know you’re in for quite a time. takt op.Destiny does the latter here with its eighth episode, “Destiny -Cosette-“, and it delivers on all counts.
We pick up immediately after last week’s cliffhanger. Takt–quite understandably given what we learned in that episode–has lost it. He charges into battle like a madman and, perhaps predictably, this is not a great approach against the more skilled Shindler and the just generally very strong Hell. He’s beaten within an inch of his life before Destiny carries him off.
Takt, thus, spends a good chunk of episode 8 bleeding out and delirious. Anime characters have pulled off compelling turns in more unlikely circumstances, so it’s not really a huge shock that for the third episode in a row we get some interesting insight into Takt’s character here as Destiny tries her best to nurse him back to health. Even while Takt, barely-conscious, mistakes her for Cosette. All of this takes place over the episode’s relatively brief middle third, and packs a pretty impressive amount of emotional character work into just a dozen or so minutes. The dark atmosphere of the cave that Destiny drags Takt into helps, admittedly, providing a suitably transitional backdrop for the emotional development in question.
It hasn’t been hard to intuit that Takt is still hung up on the late Cosette. Admittedly, with how these things sometimes work in anime it was hard to initially be totally certain that she was even actually dead. (takt op.Destiny would not have been the first anime to pull this sort of double bait-and-switch maneuver.) But as the show’s gone on it’s become clear that Takt really misses the girl. We get some elaboration on the “why” here, and some questioning into if holding that old flame is at all healthy.
On the one hand, yes, it was Cosette who pulled Takt out of his depression while Anna was taking care of him. But these feelings are complicated and muddy, and Takt has never been able to sort them out. Wisely, they’re not given any specific name here, which would risk cheapening them and would turn Cosette’s early-series death into little more then a vehicle for cheap tears.
It may be a touch surprising to add takt op to the list of anime this year that understand that emotional connections are not clear-cut things, but it’s welcome. When people leave our lives, we remember their shadows as much as the real person. Things left unsaid must remain so, and Takt’s inability to deal with that has held him back from genuine connection with the people who need him now. Chiefly Destiny herself, but also Anna and the scores of people they’ve met along their journey.
It’d be easy to criticize all of this as fairly standard “male lead gets all the depth” stuff, but I think looking at Destiny and her own struggles both throughout this episode and in prior ones makes it pretty clear that that isn’t true. Her loyalty and earnestness are not traits she has because she’s in a role that expects them, but because she lives them full-heartedly. Plus, there are little details that could easily have been played up for easy romantic tension but aren’t. When Destiny has to give Takt mouth-to-mouth, for instance, it is refreshingly devoid of any blushy hemming and hawing, something a lesser show would absolutely indulge in.
Random aside to remind you that mid-distance models are great, actually.
Instead, the closest the two are here is when Takt finally calls Destiny by her real name for the first time. I have to confess that I’ve been pretty “meh” on the idea of the two as a couple (the entire “a new person living in the body of Takt’s dead crush” thing is, admittedly, weird) but this scene is the best case for it that takt op has ever made. It feels natural in a way that the light hinting toward the pairing in prior episodes hasn’t.
If I could make one complaint, it’s that Anna does continue to get the short end of the character screen-time stick, as she’s physically quite far away from the action here. Although her own mini-plot here is quite good as well. She confronts her own insensitive habit of calling Destiny “Cosette” as a way of ignoring that the latter is truly gone, and at episode’s end she calls Destiny by her proper name too, bringing this ongoing subplot to a warm close.
(I would like to take an aside here to brag about being six or so episodes ahead of the actual characters in terms of referring to Destiny and Cosette as two different people. But hey, I’m not an anime character and thus have agency of my own. Not everyone is so lucky. 😛 )
Most of that in just the middle of the episode. So how does it actually end?
Well, let’s discuss its antagonist first. It should not be news to any readers who’ve been keeping up with the show that Shindler sucks. He’s a petty, grasping would-be authoritarian shitheel with no regard for other people, and whose hatred of Takt stems from jealousy at the boy’s talent and perceived importance. He is not a subtle or deep character, but he is very easy to hate, which happens to be a good trait for an arc villain to have. We also learn in this episode that he apparently actually hates music full stop. Sure, why not.
Hell, his Musicart, is entertaining, although she leans a bit too hard on the “sadomasochistic berserker” archetype that seems to pop up in every action anime. Her fun design and incredible choice of weaponry (I’m still not over the heel-mounted blades) make her a good counterbalance to Shindler.
Isn’t she just the worst, folks?
Why relitigate these characters? Because the episode ends with a rematch, of course. Destiny initially confronts Hell and Shindler alone. Unable to transform with Takt still recovering in the cave, she comes out swinging a pair of woodchopping axes* and nothing else. It’s commendably confident, but she can’t stand up to Hell’s full power by herself. Naturally, Takt staggers in to lend his power. Also naturally, Destiny chews him out for not taking care of himself and calls him an idiot. (Sidenote to the show-writers: if you’re going to make them a couple in the four episodes we have left. They need to keep this dynamic.) Naturally again, Shindler gets angry because they’re arguing with each other instead of paying attention to him. Naturally one more time, Leonard and Titan make their grand return in the nick of time, the foreshadowing from last episode (and, to be fair, some appearances earlier in this episode that I haven’t discussed) paying off wonderfully.
This machine kills fascists.
And then, honestly, the sort of scene that words cannot really do full justice to. This is where the aforementioned bit where Takt calls Destiny by her real name comes in, and the renewed connection between the two lets them re-enter the fray with full force. The fight scene is just superb, capping off with one of those huge energy blast vs. differently-colored huge energy blast sequences that, just speaking personally, I’ve loved since I watched Dragon Ball Z with my stepdad as a kid and have never stopped loving.
The fight ends here, not because Hell is entirely defeated but because a mysterious Musicart intervenes. Given this show’s general lack of subtlety her name is, of course, Heaven. Heaven’s proper debut here makes quite the impression; she apparently has the authority to both strip Shindler of his rank and to requisition his Musicart, both of which she does, leaving the now-former Conductor a stuttering mess. He promptly has a breakdown, which, honestly, after all of the nonsense he’s put our cast through, feels about right. Leonard and Titan are reprimanded too, apparently more for interacting with Takt than anything else.
We conclude on a note of triumph and catharsis tinged with an ominous shadow. Our heroes have succeeded for today, and are closer than ever as Takt silently vows to Cosette that he’s going to move forward from now on.
Also, and I cannot stress this enough, Anna and Destiny hug and it’s very cute.
Ah, but the final shot of the episode is this, revealing that Takt’s scarring is getting worse. Perhaps implying that using Destiny so much has really started to take a toll on him.
What will the consequences of all this be? It’s hard to know for certain, but I hope we’ll find out together, anime fans.
(Minor programming note: You may have noticed this week’s column was delayed by a day. That is a product of some personal stuff going on and I don’t expect it to repeat next week. Fingers crossed!)
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