Oh my god.
Dude wow. That was an amazing episode. Going into this episode, I had been pretty concerned about the pacing of this arc thus far. It had really felt like they were rushing through the fight with acro-silky. That is, until this episode at least.
At first it seemed like they were rushing through the episode like all the last, but then the backstory hit. Immediately the episode slowed down. It was quiet, and they showed a woman lying in bed. That was about what I had expected in a pretty faithful adaptation of the manga. They then proceded to go through the first few panels of the flashback pretty accurately. But then they kept going. And the music swept in. This was beautiful. The music of this show has already been phenomenal thus far, but the beautiful classical track hit like a truck. The way they extended the sequence and the way it was edited together made the love of the mother and daughter palpable, and the framing of the shots and the art direction combined to make the daughter downright adorable.
And then came the scene where the daughter was taken.
This was definitely the shining star of this sequence, and I think maybe my favorite part of the whole series so far. The way the music abruptly paused midway through the montage, transitioning into the scene was stunning. I think this scene in particular was where the lengthening of this segment shined the most. The way you could almost feel ever single shard of glass in the woman's arm, and the blood wiped over the picture was saddening. The scene where she was running through the town was beautifly done as well.
All this fell through, however, in the final scene with the jump off the building. It wasn't bad, per se, but compared to the manga, and especially compared to the rest of the sequence, it's kind of sad that the pivotal scene fell flat imo. The thump at the end was nice, but just not enough for that particular shot.
Despite my one, single complaint, I still think this sequence was amazing, and really made this a contender for my favorite episode so far. Everything about this sequence and the episodes proceding it all came together perfectly.
Patiently waiting for next week. // Forks.