The following contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Arknights: Prelude to Dawn, "Ripple" now streaming on Crunchyroll.
With only eight episodes this season, Arknights is heading into its latter half with a strong foundation and just enough intrigue to lure audiences in beyond the pretty lights. So it's incredibly disappointing to see the visual quality noticeably dip, and the narrative flow feels so heavily handicapped at what should be the beginning of the end.
Last week ended rather quietly and without conflict, as Amiya convinced Misha to come quietly with them so that they could bring her into protective custody, despite her initial protests. Lying in the darkness, Reunion was waiting to strike and take Misha for themselves, for reasons as yet unknown.
Allies and Enemies
This week's episode felt like a collage of the show's most unfortunate habits, namely the supporting cast and the directing of action scenes. In past weeks, it has been recounted how the screenwriting forces confrontations between characters in really unnatural ways. It's as if the characters turn around for two seconds and suddenly an entire crowd of enemies has shown up.
Perhaps in a perfect world, this bizarre screenwriting flaw could have been remedied had the action been of a higher caliber. At least then it would have felt like a conceit to justify action scenes in an adaptation of a tower defense game. Unfortunately, the animation is at its worst in this episode, with the art direction only just keeping it upright.
In fact, this episode makes one look back at previous action scenes in this markedly action-based premise and realize that the action design and choreography have been consistently weak. Besides the opening, there hasn't been a lot of truly impressive action as yet, and hopefully, this is just a sacrificial episode before some much better final episodes.
Exusiai and Texas are the newest characters to be introduced, who fans of Holy Knight Light will recognize from that OVA, but their involvement is limited. Texas' introduction effectively establishes that she is a competent and cool fighter, but for all the enthusiasm with which Exusiai arrives prior, she never quite justifies her introduction in this episode.
At this point, it has to be an understood conceit that the cast at large will not truly be fleshed out besides a few who are truly integral to the plot. When they are clearly important, they are written well and the surrounding story is well done, but when the show has to adapt clearly defined "gameplay" sections, it all becomes rather dull.
Coming to An Understanding
The story this week is at the mercy of the action's construction and how it segments small moments of character-building. However, "character-building" might be giving it too much credit, as the story can be summed up as Misha coming to believe in Amiya after suspecting that she couldn't be trusted.
There is also the matter of Misha's Oripathy, which slows them down, but ultimately doesn't contribute much to the tension of their pursuit, which never feels very urgent. However, while this episode has definitely not fared as well as previous ones, there was one moment that almost made up for what the rest of this week sorely lacked.
In Episode 2's review, I wrote that there was a strong sense of empathy felt in the characters' philosophies and their persistence despite being caught in a very messy political situation. This week, Franka offered an explanation for the infected's unwillingness to align with Rhodes Island and their tendency to join Reunion.
They talked about dreams and how Reunion's promise, unrealistic as it may be accused of being, appeals to people who can't see past the darkness. And because Amiya isn't the kind of person to sell an unrealistic dream, it's difficult for her to reach people. After a fairly underwhelming episode, it was nice to return to what Arknights does pretty well: ponder why people do what they do.