Truth be told,Kaina of the Great Snow Seahas been quite interesting thus far. We get to seetons of strange and mesmerizing places, and also hear about some intriguing concepts. Unfortunately, the story itself is actually rather boring, because hardly anything happens to the main characters at all.
Thankfully, Kaina and Ririha finally arrived at the Snow Sea in the last episode, greeted by swords and arrows. With such a sour welcome, it’s clear that the story is ready to move forward now. The “Descending the Great Tree story arc” is over, and episode 4 marks the beginning of a new story arc for the series.
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Conflict At The Snow Sea
After months of descending the Great Tree, Kaina and Ririha finally arrived at the Snow Sea. Much to their surprise, a small fleet of Valghian army is ready to ambush them. Thankfully, an Atland’s search party who’s been looking for Ririha manage to intercept Valghian’s force in time. As expected, a fierce battle between the two forces inevitably happens.
As somebody who’s been living peacefully all his life, Kaina is shocked to see the bloodshed that suddenly happens all around him. Not only that, he is basically hopeless against people who aretrained in martial arts and swordsmanship. Seeing the Valghian forces vanquishing Atland’s soldiers one by one, Ririha orders one of her soldiers to take Kaina with them and flee, even though it means she will have to stay behind as a hostage.
The soldiers reluctantly agree to follow their princess’ command, and take Kaina with them back to Atland. Once they arrive, Kaina and the soldiers are told to meet the king and give their reports. Much to Kaina’s surprise, the king refused to rescue Ririha. He knows that the Valghian will use his own daughter as a bargaining chip, and yet he still refuses to rescue her. It seems thathis mind is already set for war.
Story Progression, At Last
As mentioned earlier, the story ofKaina of the Great Snow Seahas been rather dullfor the last couple of episodes. The reason is simply that there’s basically nothing happening other than the two main characters descending the great tree. Thankfully, things finally begin to move forward in episode 4.
Contrary to the previous episodes, there are a lot of things going on in this episode. First of all, we know how powerful and coordinated the Valghian’s forces truly are. We also know about the fact that this conflict has actually been happening for a very long time. Because Valghian is actually a mobile country that gets their water supplyby invading other countries.
Additionally, we also know that the King of Atland is a hard-headed man who is not only stern, but can also be ruthless. There may be another side of him that we haven’t got the chance to see yet, but at least we know he is somebody who is willing to sacrifice his own daughter in order to save his people. All of these things are the sign that the story is moving forward, at last. And that is wonderful news.
Exploration + Infiltration
We’ve talked about the possibility of Kaina infiltrating the Valghian forces back inthe reviews for the first and second episodes. We also talked about the likelihood of Kaina using his expertise in order to explore the great tree and possibly find the solution to the water supply problem. Well, as it turns out, we are kinda right on both fronts.
In this episode, after listening to the king’s refusal to rescue Ririha, Kaina decided to rescue the princess by himself. It’s true that he knows next to nothing about the snow sea, but he knows everything about the great tree. WhenKaina and Ririha dive into the snow seain order to flee the Valghian army earlier that day, Kaina realizes that the roots of the Great trees are actually connected to one another. So if he wants to go to another country that is located in another base of a great tree, all he needs to do is simply follow the roots of that tree.
So this means, Kaina has become both an explorer and a potential soldier as well. We don’t know what will happen to him in the future, all we know is that there might be a thrilling adventure ahead for Kaina. Once again, that is wonderful news.
Episode 4 proves to be one of the most eventful episodes in this series thus far. There are a lot of things to unpack from this episode, all of which are incredibly intriguing. But the most important thing is the fact that with this episode,the story ofKaina of the Great Snow Seafinally starts to move towards an interesting direction. And for the third time in this review, that is wonderful news.
