It is good to see Hank is back in this week “To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts” (かつて神だった獣たちへ). But his strong and determined mind is certainly affected by the White Church Incident, where his Incarnate power ran out of control.
The guilt of killing his friends/ subordinates drags Hank to the brink of collapse. It is something that inflicted him for so long that we’ve already realized from the previous episodes. All this time, he insists the oath to annihilate the Incarnates whose hearts are corrupted, although the ordeal hurt him profoundly.
It is not difficult to imagine how agonizing this man is. The appearance of Shaal certainly brings light to his distressing life. Hank starts to open his heart and enjoy the presence of this young girl. Yet the greater the light, the larger the shadow will cast. Schaal being shot right in front of him finally draws him insane. The poor man starts to see illusion of the Incarnates he takes down, while the scene of Schaal and Elaine getting killed keeps repeating in his head.
Under such an unstable mental state, Hank is too damaged to fight properly against his tracker Roy, who is known as Incarnate Garm (a wolf or dog guarding Hel’s gate in Norse mythology). Hank resists to transform into his beast form and thus fail to withstand the strong attack from his former subordinate.
It is almost painful to watch Hank struggles to fight against not only Roy, but the beast roaming inside of him. The scene where blood covering his eyes as he almost gives in to his beastie side, is impactful, and the sorrowful wolf roaring sounds like he is begging for help.
On the other hand, Roy seems to be genuinely respect Hank as his former commander and you can feel his pride when he describes the oath that they made in the past. He is pleased that they are no beast in the eyes of Hank, but Incarnates with pride and wills. At the same time, Roy considers Hank’s resistance of his beast form is an insult of his pride.
Deep down, Roy desires to have his leader back, so he goes easy in his fight with Hanks and refuses to kill Hank outright. Hank’s absence leaves the Incarnates with no leader and the only one who is willing to give direction to them is Cain, making Roy turns his loyalty to Cain.
I can’t help but imagine if Hank didn’t stay in coma after Elaine got shot and he found a way to lead the Incarnates staying in their sanity, would things be different or the Incarnates just meant to go insane no matter what.
The conservation between Schaal and Claude may give us some answers. As Claude becomes too sick to track Hank even with his driving ambition to eliminate all the Incarnates in the country. His urge to stop his brother makes him almost irrational and obsessive in the hunt of Incarnates. It is proven by the hunting of Beatrice in last week episode. Even though Beatrice was weak and unarmed, he was still unwilling to put his gun down.
In the eyes of Claude, the Incarnates are monster that need to be eliminated from the world. But on the contrary, Schaal focuses on the humanity side of the Incarnate and trying to remind everybody that they are no monster, but barely human. She makes an interesting notion that Incarnates can keep their sanity if they maintain bonds with humans.
She may be true considering the fact that most of the Incarnates started losing their minds when they lost the connection with humans. There is an obvious turning point when the Incarnates lost control, like when Beatrice’s friend was killed, Willian was driven to the forest due to the fear of the villagers, and Hank thought that Schaal was murdered. While the humans continuously treat them as monster, so monsters are what they became.
God I hope Schaal is right. It would be just too sad if death is the only ending for Hank and the Incarnates. Anyway, the next episode appears to be an emotional one with the little chat between Hank and Schaal. Can’t wait to see how Schaal turns things around.
▍Read More:
■ All Reviews for To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts
■ Ultimate Guide of Summer Anime 2019