GARO -Vanishing Line-

Episode 12

This week's episode of Garo is called “FAMILY”, which is about as perfectly literal a title as could be. Not only is the Horror of the week centered around a down-on-their-luck family running a motel in the middle of the desert, but the thematic crux of the episode is all about how Sophie, Sword, and Gina are growing into their own family unit. While there's nothing especially surprising or mold-breaking for GARO -VANISHING LINE- here, the show has really grown into the strengths of its cast, its themes, and its setting. I think there's a tendency for people to look at more episodic stories like this one and dismiss them as filler, but I don't think that's entirely fair. This adventure has enough of its own share suspense, atmosphere, and charming character interactions to make it worthwhile in its own right.

After the cold open sets up the creepy motel (fashioned after the Bates motel) that will become the main setting later on, we get a few good minutes of Team Garo simply making their way through the western expanse, but where last week played heavily into the “Western with a capital W” imagery, the mood this time around feels more apocalyptic than anything else. Gina informs Sophie that the government of their nation has failed many of the people living outside of Russel City, and thousands have been forced out into the broken streets of cities out in the lawless zones. When we learn later that the main antagonist of the episode is also a victim of financial hardship, the whole story feels so much in touch with current American struggles that I found it almost disarming. While I've never been to a place that felt quite as bad as what Team Garo drives through, I've spent plenty of time traveling through some of the areas of the USA hit the hardest by recession, industrial collapse, and the inevitable drift of communities and opportunities. In a year where ideas like “economic anxiety” have been burned into the cultural dialogue, I never expected for GARO to be the anime that approached America's relevant current struggles.

All of this gets put into sharper focus when Team Garo finds the Bates-esque motel, and the rest of the episode does a mostly excellent job of balancing the suspense surrounding this horror of the week with the more lighthearted moments of Sophie, Sword, and Gina simply acting like a family on a road trip. Sophie exudes her characteristic glee at simply having a shower and a bed, while Gina takes on a more matronly role as she bonds more with Sophie and keeps Sword at bay. Sword has the least to do character-wise, but the episode does give him a monologue that explains his almost spiritual reverence for women's breasts, which is so enthusiastic and impassioned that it manages to be genuinely funny and incredibly stupid.

However, the overabundance of levity brought by this speech does make for one distractingly jarring transition. Before Sword goes on his boob rant, we see how the motel's owner has become broken by his financial woes, and he spends his days obsessed with earning enough money to restore his old life in Russel City. This character and his fate at the hands of the Horror that eats his motel's guests feels like an even more pointed critique of the egotism that leads to people making poor decisions based on the desire for economic prosperity alone. All Matthew's wife and son want is to remain together as a family, but Matthew won't be satisfied until he can make his own life feel great again. The town around them is as dark as pitch, and while the show doesn't immediately cut from Matthew beating his wife to Sword waxing poetic about the historical significance of breasts, the tone does feel mismatched all the same. I understand that the point was probably to break the tension up, but after watching something so thoroughly unpleasant, I think the transition could have been handled better.

Outside of that off note, this is a tightly written and genuinely suspenseful episode that worked well as a standalone story for Team Garo to fight their way through. The animation was a little wonky in places, but the strong character interactions and interesting themes made up for it. Sword was at least able to turn his breast obsession into something funny, and Sophie and Gina getting more screen time to spend together is always a good thing. Even the horror of the week was refreshing, eschewing the overly sexualized design choices of past monsters and instead going with a sentient pool of murderous water, which becomes all the more menacing in its simplicity. Even if it lacks any significant plot developments about El Dorado, to call this episode “filler” does a disservice to it as a successful example of episodic storytelling. Seeing Sophie, Sword, and Gina grow closer and stronger over the course of their journey is becoming a key feature of GARO -VANISHING LINE-'s story.

Rating: B+

Garo -Vanishing Line- is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.