As I mentioned this has been a travel week for me , and episodic posts were going to be taking a back seat to series reviews posts (and the Top 10 countdown of course).  That included Radiant, which is one of a couple of multi-cour shows that’s on the bubble for next season (Karakuri Circus being the other).  I wouldn’t necessarily have expected that after the first few episodes, but this series has yet to really light the blue touch paper plot-wise after a strong start (perhaps due to its divergence into anime-original material).

These decisions will come down in part to what the new shows bring, of course, though mostly it’s a matter of the series themselves – and I certainly hope Radiant convinces me to stay with it, despite it drawing little commentary here or anywhere else in English.  I believe in the potential this show displayed out of the gate, and there are indications that we’re starting to segue into more canon material now – the stuff Tony Valente teased in his pre-airing interviews.  And this “Rumble Town” arc seems to be a part of that, as Radiant digs into the issues of racism and intolerance which are matters of clear import to the author.

Indeed, Rumble Town is a real mess.  Not only does it have an “immigrant problem”, but it’s also dealing with geological instability due to excessive mining (fracking, anyone?).  The man in charge on the Inquisition side is Dragonov’s old subordinate Konrad, and he’s obviously not too concerned with social harmony.  The reason Doc and the kids have been called in is because Konrad’s forces refused to take the word of an “immigrant” (who’s been in the city for 20 years) that her son was attacked by a Nemesis.  The mother put out a call for help, believing her son Taj (the fact that there’s something Middle Eastern about these immigrants is, I think, not coincidental on Valente’s part) was cursed, but the father wants nothing to do with any of this, believing calling attention to the matter can only cause his family trouble.

This is clearly a complicated situation, above and beyond the fact that there are seemingly dozens of Nemesis “echoes” wreaking havoc in the streets.  Dragonov is in town, and informs Konrad that Torque (how I missed that it was short for “Torquemada” is beyond me) wants the sorcerers in town to be left alone for the moment.  Grimm is also after the Nemesis, among other shady dealings, and there’s the matter of the Pied Piper figure who seems to be controlling them.

By the second of these two episodes it’s clear that the real plot of Radiant has kicked in.  And the series, as if a switch has been flipped, becomes exponentially more interesting and compelling.  Whether it’s simply a matter of reverting back to original manga material or not I don’t know, not having read it, but the commitment level amps up tangibly – all of a sudden Radiant is really about something in a way it hasn’t been since the it centered on Seth and Alma’s relationship.  Sure the political inferences here aren’t exactly subtle – this is a classic shounen after all – but they could hardly be more timely in Valente’s Europe.

What’s interesting, of course, is that for all the debate over immigration in Europe it is at least still a debate.  In exporting this series to Japan, it’s unleashed on a country where immigration is still virtually a taboo subject.  I can’t think a storyline like this is terribly comfortable for the locals, but then it’s not intended to be.  I also wonder if in using the historical model of the Inquisition as a vehicle to explore what’s happening in Europe today, Valente isn’t drawing a strong (and rather obvious) parallel between it and what happened in that dark period in European history.

It’s pretty much all here – talk of “ticks” and “vermin” (yes, the political climate of the United States is hardly immune from uncomfortable inference here), purity, and – most tellingly – a fascist politician using the threat of terrorism to rouse the rabble into anti-immigrant violence.  Neither the U.S. or Europe was in quite the state they are now when Valente started Radiant (in 2013) but the whiff of it was in the air, and he looks positively prescient in hindsight.  Rumble Town (like Valente’s home country of France, where his parents emigrated to from Portugal) has a history of terrorism for Le Pen Konrad to drawn on, a wellspring of fear from which to draw hatred.

The man seemingly caught in the middle of all this is Dragunov.  He works for the bad guys, he’s in town to hunt Seth, and to some extent at least it must be assumed he believes the religious doctrine about sorcerers.  But he also clearly despises Konrad and his methods and has become something of a black sheep in the Inquisition – though for whatever reason Torque (who’s on his way to town) seems to rely on him if not trust him.  He sees Konrad ignoring Nemesis in his town and instigating violence civilians and he feels he has to act – though whether he feels this is in violation of his charter or support of it is hard to say.

As for the good guys, Doc – whose continued ill health in town suggests something more than a sensitive pair of lungs – finally decides to bail, but is captured before he can.  And Taj’s parents are arrested and the boy about to be burned at the stake (back to the historical rather than the contemporary Inquisition) when Seth and Melie rescue him.  The Pied Piper is still out there too, and she’s a woman – apparently a “Domitor”, as Doc calls those sorcerers who control Nemesis (who have marks which glow when they’re being controlled).  This has gotten really interesting and really intense all of a sudden, and I find myself anticipating next week’s Radiant in a way I haven’t since the second week of the season.