One of the things I absolutely love about this story is the visual storytelling. The fact that you can draw answers from the worldbuilding for questions.

Take the factions, and how they get around. White does it with animals, coats, and gunpowder weapons.
Black does it with wooden(could be metal, that would be worse on resources) ships, metal armor, and bows and arrows.

Which faction depletes important resources quicker? Black would need water to smelt their armor, and their ships and weapons require wood... and where would you get those?

Black could be the reason that Kaina's people are down to a single village: If you don't believe in the legend of the Sage, you would have no issue chopping down trees that ghosts live on...

Agreed this show is underrated

And that's an understatement

The way you described it sounds like a game from Settlers of Catan.

Beautifully said

that is a seal, not a "snow horse"

That is the Sperm, not the "Snow Sea"

I mean, we call another set of tiny creatures "sea horses" that clearly are not horses.

Though if they were big enough to ride, they might be used like horses.

Perhaps the people who named it are the ancient people that knew about horses.

Kaina's like the ADCs in my team in League of Legends when the frontline or the support is in trouble. Just chillin. And when he does make a skillshot, he misses targets right in front of him 🤣

You only play with ADCs who's first day it is in the game?

Nope. They somehow make it to level 30+, play Ranked games, and somehow have the skills of people playing their first day 🤣🤣🤣

I don't think many play adc at the beginning, so lvl 30 and still being a noob at adc isn't too much of a stretch. It's been some time though, so you might be more informed.

No I really mean it. That's how my ranked games go when I go as support. My ADCs got no map awareness, gets too scared, and barely hits a skill shot 💀

Gets me in the mood to play some Morgana ADC. Though my current circumstances make that impossible to do.

In any case, my compliments to you for keeping these ADCs company!

So uhhhh....why was Kaina just standing there with his GUN out and just watching Ririha struggling to fight?

Guess we'll have to equate it to him not having dealt with too many people yet.

Yeah....but even so....he's got a gun, he sees his friend of a few days, only friend his age that he's ever met, might I add, getting captured....and he just....lets it happen? I mean, sure, he might not want to kill humans, since the only things he's killed he's had a purpose for I'm pretty sure, but still

The scene had a lot of such clumsy moments. And they were not just Kaina's.

"Yeah....but even so....he's got a gun, he sees his friend of a few days, only friend his age that he's ever met, might I add, getting captured....and he just....lets it happen?"

It's also his first time down the canopy, being instantly chased by people, caught without any idea why or what such a thing would normally mean.

Wouldn't you agree that finding yourself in a completely new situation you haven't even been able to imagine beforehand, is enough of a reason to not take decisive action?

Besides, I think we tend to unconsciously factor in the invulnerability of the leads. We wonder why they don't act. But in situations where leads do act, we don't wonder why the enemy with it's greater number is first winning decisively and then just watching on while they're letting themselves get killed one by one.

Yeah his reaction says it all when he was like, "Wait, why are we fighting?"
This isn't even his fight in the first place and he doesn't even have any idea what's going on.

Besides he's just flabbergasted that people are killing each other. You don't get to see or experience that shit in the Canopy, where he lived with only a handful of people.

He had to be confused out of his mind, he's lived on a piece of plastic bag with 3 or 4 old people for 15 years.

It's all new to him. Still shocked that people will actually kill each other.

That was actually fascinating. He has never seen people killing each other so he doesn't even understand the concept

Not only has he not seen it, he can't even understand why

He saw they were way outnumbered against a very aggressive enemy.

His biggest enemy is big bugs that he hunts for survival, like hunters and prey. That is the only kind of fight he had to experience. Plus there was only one village (or more like one house) left in the canopy.

For him is the weirdest thing in the world. There is no reason to fight other humans because they are not prey to eat. It's kind of like the concept of currency. If someone never encounters a city with currency in their life, and in exchange for a meal some person gives him paper or coins, he will give the most confused face in the world, "How is this going to help me or attractive enough for me to keep?".

His small village of 5 elderly people seems to know each other for their entire lives to understand each other and how to handle each other conflicts through conversation.

For him fighting is for hunting, and talking things out is when there is human conflict.

And now he has been thrown into this very aggressive political war over resources where both sides will die out if they do not do something.

From trying to understand their cultures, conflicts and their societies in the span of a day when he only had to deal with 5 people in his entire life, where society and politics may not have existed at all.

I'm just going with what he said, which seemed to be obvious to him...I don't think I can peg him as a "blank slate" who can't understand anything new, as you are interpreting it...but I can agree to disagree, no worries...

I hope for more explanation of how this world works. I'm thinking we'll get it since the MC is pretty much a stand-in for the audience who also in many ways have no idea what's actually going on. My biggest question is this whole thing with the "snow sea". They're in the middle of a snow sea but they have a shortage of water? In the scene where they dove in it's obviously not solid snow but...water underneath? It can't really be salt water or the trees wouldn't be a thing.

Given that the canopy trees are running out of water and that one canopy tree looked like it started to fall over in a previous episode means that even the trees are dying. It might be salt water or something else poisonous to human life.

Well even in the real world humans cannot drink seawater, they need lakes and rivers, and ponds.

But in the end, this snow sea is very weird.

Salt water can be easily converted to drinkable water by evaporating it. I am guessing, judging from the particles that left their mouthes underwater, which did not look like bubbles, that it is made of a different substance.

more like a dense gas layer than a liquid

Love it, the armor and weapons still amaze me like holy shit. Although I do have a small little issue with the fact that Kaina is very oblivious and honestly doesn't show that many emotions whatsover. He was told he'll never be able to return to the canopy - "Okay cya lol". He saw a person die for the first time before his eyes - "Okay whAAaaat uncool" and just overall is very dense. I get the bug scene cause he'd be glad to get a gift like that so he wanted to give someone else the same thing but the others not so much.
Doesn't make the show unwatachable or anything but it just kinda feels sorta cliche I guess

Good episode.

CGI is good.

Love watching this show

A catapult on a ship seems so impractical when the enemy you're fighting uses nimble creatures instead of big & cumbersome ships.

Pretty hilarious how they always work their way towards tropes. With the visor part of the helmet up, it looks like she has cat ears. Or I'm just so brainwashed by the furry trope, I now see it in even the smallest thing resembling it.

well the Snow Sea isn't water. because light would reflect, refract, and the underwater scenes would be much dimmer and the light would look different. but it obviously isn't air because you can't breathe it. the buoyancy provided by the snow foil bags isn't perfect or Lili and Kaina would have popped up faster. so how are Kaina and Yaona going to walk on the roots under the Sea? if those two used ropes and tied them to their respective snow foil bags, the bags could float along on the surface and the two guys could 'walk' underneath the bags. if the guys needed to 'float up' they could just tug on their ropes and 'climb/pull' up to the bags. they have his two breathers, but how long will the air berries last?

there is a crapton of worldbuilding missing from this show!
what are their buildings made of? it can't be stone, where would it be quarried from? wood i would guess comes from cutting parts off or the tunnels they have dug inside the tree. where does the cloth for the flags and their clothes come from, fiber crops like cotton? where do the metal tools/weapons come from? constantly smelting/recycling old metals? how do they cook? can't be fire or the tree would be entirely denuded of everything generations ago, maybe animal dung? does it never rain there? catching rainwater and having it flow into cisterns and underground/inside the tree passages would work... but is ALL their water coming from the tree? if so, that would probably be why the Canopy is dying and the trees are too and Kaina's village was running out of water. the 'cities' are draining the trees faster than the trees can make water.

the world building is reallyyy nice :3
but there's no way those snow horses can compete with those massive war ships :(

Those snow seal thingies and those ships run on the same thing. Dunkin! The whole world runs on Dunkin.

Wait, they run on dunking donuts?

Man that underwater BGM felt like Nier was back again

Still, wtf is this snow that isnt water. And why their wounds create steamlike puffs. Stuff is alien for sure.

Was wondering where they get oxygen to breath or replenish those oxygen tanks. Air berries. This story gets more interesting each episode. My only hope is Kaina isn't dense the whole story and can start reading the room better.

Right now he's just using the Cliff notes...

Weird anime thats expected.

Here is this gift of delicious bugs!
Queen: 🤢🤢🤢

- "Snow"
- Somehow sink into it like water.
- Somehow see through it even clearer than water.

swordmanship pretty decent.