Wow. That was just fantastic.
Kiroumaru. BAMF of the year. That was just a haunting scene to start the episode off with.
Squealer...it's always difficult to react to a character like him. Intellectually, I fully understand, and even empathize with, what he's doing. On the other hand, he's on the other side of the line, and if I was a human of Saki's village, I'd do everything in my power to stop him. I'm not "enlightened" enough to want someone to beat me, just because I understand them.
My only real quibble over Squealer was his giving up once his "Messiah" died. I thought that was out of character.
The juxtaposition of him and Kiroumaru was great as well. If I was a rat, I could definitely see me proudly carrying the torch for Squealer's cause. I'm not, so I'd like have been killing every rat I could find, instead.
Saki...had me worried for much of this ending arc, but in the end, I got to see the Saki that was such a good character for much of this series. That great mixture of empathy and pragmatic brutality. Not being able to see where she guides her village over the years is kind of bittersweet, especially in regards to interactions with the rats.
Do Squealer's (and, to some extent, Kiroumaru's) wishes end up being addressed down the road? Hopefully so. Though, some of the spoilers seem to indicate the peachy, rainbows and sunflowers ending was a departure from the more foreboding one of the novels.
The revelation about the rats' origin seems super obvious after the fact. I always did wonder why there were no humans without Cantus around. The civilization that existed at the time that change was implemented must have been...interesting.
There don't seem to be any easy answers to their society and relationship with the rats. I suppose they could do more genetic engineering and attempt to wipe out the genes for Cantus, after which they could all kill each other with impunity, within the constraints of whatever society rose up to take the place of this one, but convincing those who get to live in the current human society to make the sacrifice for the sake of the rats seems like it would be a naive pipe dream. If I was to insert myself into such a situation, I suspect what I'd do are small things, to make things a little less seemingly arbitrarily scary for the rats. It wouldn't result in major social change, but some compassion, when you have all the power, can make things better than none.
And, lol at Maria's child being a girl. Now I don't feel bad for teasingly calling it a girl. Novel readers shouldn't be so quick to presume.
I suppose it'd have been nice for some clarity of Maria/Momoru's fate, but I think we can all imagine it was gruesome, and leave it at that.
This really was a great show. Easily the best of the last two seasons. Stuff like this keeps me an anime fan, even during the dark days.
Though, if isn't doing well financially, I wouldn't be surprised. Anything remotely intelligent does seem to rarely gain traction among Japanese otaku.
Though, I realize I'm over simplifying it. Especially if the source material did reasonably well, though if the very few people in these threads who've seemingly read the novel is something to go by, it's likely not many Japanese otaku have either, so the source material doing well may have little bearing as the audiences are probably fairly different.