MAO ‒ Episode 8

© 高橋留美子/小学館/「MAO」製作委員会

I'm just going to start this out by answering a question I'm sure some of you were wondering as you watched the episode (certainly it was the first question I had). There's a pretty big asterisk there, but yes, it's technically true that the Asakusa Tower survived the Great Kanto Earthquake. Note the words “asterisk” and “technically,” however. Following the earthquake, it was in such rough condition that it had to be demolished. So, the demolition happened because of the massive damage it sustained during the earthquake—your call whether or not that qualifies as it being destroyed “by the earthquake.” Either way, I really liked that Takahashi represented that in this episode. I've noted in the past that in her previous works (InuYasha) didn't do much of anything with their historical setting, and I think we're at a point with MAO where it's safe to say that she's much more interested in doing exactly that this time around. Incidentally, perhaps she's doing it this time because she realizes how little she did that in InuYasha?

Still, that doesn't mean this episode gets a gold star in terms of how it's handling history in this episode. We just learned that there are fellow disciples of MAO's master from when he was human, who are also still walking the earth for reasons that aren't yet clear. Furthermore, in a Naraku-Kikyo-InuYasha-esque twist, it sounds like they have a completely different perspective of the events that took place that led to MAO getting tangled up with the Byoki—something the Byoki himself alluded to only weeks ago. As a viewer, this is some good drama—a nice, hearty wrinkle to the story. My criticisms don't lie with that. Rather, it's the fact that these other disciples—which include the flaming heads guy from the circus—haven't yet crossed paths with MAO in an entire millennium.

I don't think there's much of an appreciation for how impossibly long a time a thousand years is. Not an issue exclusive to MAO, certainly, but one that MAO is in the unusual position of having to grapple with directly. Usually, when anime (or any fictional media, really) invokes something happening once in a thousand years, they don't ruminate on the past time it's happened, and how they may or may not impact the current version of whatever's going on, or the impossibility of it. And yet, in this case, we have someone who knew MAO during his time as a human. In fact, we're learning that a small handful of such people exist. Even if they were unaware that MAO was still around (which I'm skeptical about, but whatever), you're telling me that they never once heard about his whereabouts until now? That they ignored him for a thousand years? Even though we have no reason to believe they haven't all been in Japan this entire time? Press X to Doubt.

Let's put things into perspective: Do you know what was going on in England one thousand years ago? Trick question, because England as we know it didn't exist yet—1026 is close, but still 40 years away from 1066. Incidentally, have you walked the earth for 40 years? What's your perspective on how long that is? A thousand years is an impossibly long time—more time than I think most of us can really wrap our brains around. That's before your grandparents, your grandparents' grandparents, their grandparents, and so on. It's so, so much time. An almost horrifyingly long time. It's something worth thinking about next time you're in a museum, and you see something that exceeds that age. It's truly against all odds that many of these objects and places survive at all, let alone—in some cases—in such great condition, considering their age.

While I like that Takahashi is very clearly doing more with her historical setting this time around—which is to say, that she's using it at all—she still leaves much to be desired in how she handles history and the passage of such an extraordinarily long time. Which, to be fair to her, is a pretty common pitfall to fall into. Saying something only happens once in a thousand years sounds like a hyperbolic number meant to illustrate how rare something is—so she kind of wrote herself into a corner by taking that literally, and not confronting the implications of that, given how there are apparently other people with similar circumstances. Still, my nitpicks aside, the episode was more enjoyable than not, and left me curious as ever about what's going on. As always, she's great at keeping the audience on our collective toes about what the truth about what's going on is. So, considering everything, I'd call it a good (albeit not great) episode.

Rating:

MAO is currently streaming on Hulu.