In the Land of Leadale

Episode 11

Did anyone else feel like this was the final episode of the show? Not gonna lie, I actually had to check whether the show caps at 11 episodes because a lot of this episode felt like resolutions to existing plot threads. While I still think the circumstances and overall approach to Cayna just adopting a little girl felt awkward, it was used here as a nice framing device for revisiting most of the people and locations she came across throughout the show. We check in on characters we haven't seen in a while, make references to some of the major events that occurred, and we even have Cayna reflecting on some of the situations she got into. Honestly, one of my favorite bits of this episode was her commenting on how she just seems to get involved with a bunch of seemingly random events, which is a really good summation of the show itself. And then, the episode ends with her revisiting the town that she originally woke up in with the intention of living there with this new daughter. I honestly don't know how Cayna is going to raise this girl; if I'm remembering correctly, she wasn't an adult in the real world and doesn't have a lot of life experience due to her condition. We know that she “raised” her children in the game, but they were NPCs (or at least assumed to be) at the time and the show hasn't really done a great job of establishing how some of these characters and interfaces worked before the servers were cut off.

This actually got me thinking about a couple of things outside of the show's sentimentality. The butler and maid that Cayna summons comment that there's nothing left where they're from and so it's better for them to get summoned and stay in this world. Cayna thinks that it probably has to do with the fact that most of the other servers for the game are shut down, but I'm very curious about the creatures and NPCs' perspective on stuff like that. It's clear that certain gameplay elements are re-contextualized as real-life occurrences, such as how Cayna's children view her as a mother that raised them, but what about things like summons? Where do they come from, and what specifically binds them to the player characters now that everything is “real”?

I'm probably reading too much into this, but that's a consequence of me finally getting invested in this show and wanting to have a better grasp of how this world works especially now that we are 11 episodes in. I don't know what's coming next week considering the fact that, aside from the major overarching mystery of how things became the way they are now, there isn't really a lot left to do. Everyone seems comfortable where they are and Cayna seems content with just living her life in the woods with this young girl. Maybe there will be some major shake-up next episode that will act as a cliffhanger for another season but I still don't think that would diminish the nice full circle that I feel this episode tried to bring us to.

Rating:

In the Land of Leadale is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.