The third Casshern Sins contained a slower, smaller story than the second, more reminiscent of the first episode’s long walk on the beach. Though it wasn’t as rich in character or narrative, it did fill in gaps in the story so far; Casshern met his first human, and that experience lent a necessary warmth to counterbalance the show’s usual solemnity. We’re still wandering through archetypal vignettes in a desolate wasteland, but Casshern’s cumulative experiences are slowly building him into a person worth following on this journey.

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In my first writeup on Casshern Sins, I worried that the show’s distant and deliberately mythic tone might prevent it from succeeding on a personal, emotional level. That issue remains a possibility, but this episode certainly didn’t reflect it; it was sad and intimate and remarkably successful, maintaining the sense of inevitability the show consistently demonstrates while offering up enough personal moments to make the Ruin succeed as small-scale tragedy. Things are still progressing as an intentionally archetypal epic story, but intimacy of telling and strong execution could make that work as well here as it does in something like Madoka Magica.

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Casshern Sins is a weird one. Coming out in 2008, it got in at the front end of our recent “heavier reinterpretation of classic cartoon” trend, which has more recently given us Gatchaman Crowds and Yatterman Night. Casshern Sins takes off a ‘70s anime about the android Casshern, who fights evil robots; this new version seems more focused on ambiguity and melancholy than justice. The writer, Yasuko Kobayashi, has a resume that mixes a bunch of tokusatsu shows and recent hits like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Attack on Titan (as well as 2014’s Garo, which splits the difference). The director Shigeyasu Yamauchi’s credits are more scattered – he’s handled a number of DBZ and Saint Seiya movies, but beyond that it’s mostly episodic directorial work, including the, er, Ami/Mami Detectives episode of Idolmaster. Perhaps his most notable credits I’m familiar with are two of the most visually compelling episodes of Shinsekai Yori – the controversial fifth episode, where people originally complained about the divergent visual style, and the transcendent tenth, where his evocative interpretation of Saki and Shun’s conversation represented one of the clear highlights of the series overall.

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