Episode 23

What a perfect finale to this story.

yes, I know that anime“>Vinland Saga He’s not quite finished with Season 2, and if the preview is to go through it, then it is actual The Season 2 finale is sure to get the tears flowing again as Thorfinn makes his way home after all these years spent wasted. Still, “Two Paths” is where this stage of our heroes’ journeys comes to an end, and I couldn’t have imagined a more fitting way to end Thorfinn and Einar’s long and difficult road to freedom. Like many of this season’s episodes before it, the vast majority of “Two Paths” concerns a group of men standing in a field talking about their perspectives on the world, and like many episodes before it, “Two Paths” manages to gather more drama and raw emotion from its This absurdly simple setup in just a few minutes is more than many animators could accomplish over entire seasons.

Something I’ve been grappling with all this season anime“>Vinland Saga is whether it is possible—or even necessary—to reconcile the simple beauty of Thorfinn’s dream of a peaceful world with my knowledge of the world we live in. After all, we are Known What exactly happened in Vinland that Thorfinn and his growing band of followers had always dreamed of, and let’s just say it hasn’t been a land without war or slavery since… well, since humans set foot on its soil. Even if we ignore the true history of Thorfinn Karlsefni’s journey to the New World, there is no way to take our Thorfinn’s utopian vision as anything other than a tragedy is doomed, at least not otherwise anime“>Vinland Saga It ends up being a complete alternate history fantasy.

“Two Paths” is the episode that finally convinced me to set aside any concerns I had about historical or cultural “realism” and embrace Thorfinn’s dream without irony or irony. We are already occupying a version of history where two cocky slaves try to talk Canute the Great out of his war propaganda campaign. Not only did they survive this ridiculous encounter, but they too also succeed. Laughing in the face of their audacity, Canute then packs up his army and leaves the land of Ketil with a smile on his face.

Thorfinn’s vision of a world that can function outside of a system of brutality and oppression that men like Canute have simply succumbed to manipulation from within silly. naive. doomed to fail. Yet in this one instance, against everything we know about human nature and the immutable facts of humanity’s past, present, and future…it works. Peace triumphs over war. Freedom wins. Rather than be cut down or thrown back into slavery, Thorfinn and Einar are set free for the world to make their impossible dream come true. They could devote their lives to building a society that would give the poor and the downtrodden the hope of a better life, rather than a quick and merciful death. Damn the fantasy. I will gladly follow Thorfinn to the ends of the horizons he will have to cross to make his world a reality.

What can be said? anime“>Vinland Saga is to achieve each of his artistic goals, and he does so with a confidence and skill that makes the act of being a genre-defining masterpiece seem easy. The only flaw I found with this episode is that its finale means we’re only one week away from this season of the series being finally done. I don’t look forward to an inevitable future where we don’t have the privilege of having more anime“>Vinland Saga every week.

evaluation:

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which can also be found here Twitterand his blog and podcast.

anime“>Vinland Saga Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.