Nobody warns you when a monster show decides to stop being a monster show for a full episode, and Requiem is just that but damn to be honest drama is getting a grip of this show, it just drops you straight into forty something minutes of grief television wearing a MonsterVerse costume, and if that sounds like a complaint I want to be clear right now that it is not entirely. Grief episodes are their own specific genre inside genre tv series like this one and they live or die on whether the cast can carry the weight without the spectacle doing the heavy lifting, in this case The Titans, and what Requiem manages to do is make you sit with a family falling apart in a way that actually stays with you, was really sad to see Hiroshi going down though, not because the writing is consistently great but its the actors in this case that pull this off, you can see Keiko, Kentaron and Kate really showing that grief. The Randa family is in freefall after Hiroshi gets struck down during the chaos of Titan X breaking loose from the Apex containment attempt, and watching that loss ripple through Kentaro and Cate separately, the way the episode harness their grief into something that literally almost make me felt we were watching a different show and I was ok with it, is the real meat of everything this episode is trying to pull off. Two weeks before the funeral, there is a quieter version of Hiroshi on Skull Island, sitting next to Kentaro while the man sketches Kong, and knowing what is coming for him makes that whole scene feel like someone left a bruise on the screen before the episode even really starts, these writers do that thing where they make you regret caring and then dare you to stop.
Ren Watabe is doing the kind of work in this episode that should earn him way more attention than this show gets I think his character Kentaro is going to start to grow from here just as Cate did, because the version of Kentaro at the funeral is not some romanticized version of grief, it is kinda uncomfortable, he goes after Cate and the truth is that it didnt felt fair and take in consideration Im no Cate fan, and not something you walk away feeling good about, and the fact that Watabe plays that scene without softening it even slightly is what makes it hit the way it does. Anna Sawai carries a different weight entirely, the specific exhaustion of a person who knows she is a the main reason not only a new titan is loose on Earth but now took down her father and why everyone around her is suffering, and the moment she shares with Keiko down at the pier, where the water starts moving around her in a way that cannot be explained by anything ordinary, is one of the most bonding scenes on this family since Season 2 started. Then Dr. Suzuki shows up at the funeral and the whole atmosphere shifts because this is a man everybody assumed was out of the story entirely, and Dr Suzuki brings a worn down version of scientific guilt to the role that feels completely real, like a man who has been carrying a specific failure for so long that his posture has changed around it. The detail that Suzuki has rebuilt the Titan phone, which Lee Shaw already though about using if there is any hope of drawing Godzilla into direct fight to take out Titan X, funny enough Titan X hasnt done shit to anyone, its just them scare of another G Day, but this sets the table for what the show is obviously building toward, and even knowing that the MonsterVerse movie canon makes certain outcomes structurally impossible does not stop you from feeling the confrontation can not be avoided.
Here is where things went sideways for me and I am not going to pretend its all perfect becuase the show even though is a good watch has it flaws and drags from time to time, its the dream sequence its a real problem and not a small one. Kentaro is walking the streets of Tokyo, the sirens hit, the skyline lights up, and Godzilla is right there above the city going at it with Titan X, and your body reacts before your brain does, you sit up, you lean in, and then the whole thing dissolves into a dream and you realize you got played. BIG WTH, its the show teasing you, I understand the executive producer went on record explaining that the MonsterVerse movie timeline cannot allow Tokyo to be destroyed inside a TV show, and knowing that reasoning does not make the trick feel any less as a cheap shot because we all been waiting a Godzilla fith. It is a bait and switch that the show tries to dress up as a window into Kentaro is psychological state but the execution lands somewhere between frustrating and condescending to anyone who has stayed patient with this season through its slower moments. What makes it worse is that right alongside this cheap move you have Keiko, a woman displaced across decades of time who should be one of the most fascinating characters this season, and the episode keeps treating her adjustment to the present day as background noise rather than something worth slowing down and show off, which is a very weak creative choice when her situation has more natural drama built into it than half the plot the show keeps prioritizing instead.
I feel the same frustration I used to feel watching other shows when they just stretching the context and keep teasing you almost like you lost, the flashbacks were working just great but I guess at some point in time writers thought it was just too much and now its the present days that dont hold up the same weight, and Requiem has that exact problem, I end up wanting more of that good old context where they keep taking about their past because the present is boring. The show keeps pulling you backward into meaningful moments and then yanking you out before those moments finish, and this episode is probably the clearest demonstration of that becoming a real structural issue rather than an occasional writting style choice. Kentaro finding Sota is bar refurbished under completely new management is the kind of detail that could have sat there and done serious work as a visual metaphor for how completely his world has been rearranged since he left Tokyo, but the episode is already moving toward Isabel and the Apex angle before you even finish noticing all the changes they have done to the place. Amber Midthunder walks into this show as Isabel, daughter of Walter Simmons, and she has a presence so immediately charged that you know she matters, but the episode make her presence looks vague she almost feels fake int he sense that she doesnt matter at all and all you walk away knowing for certain is that she has her sights on Kentaro at a moment when he is emotionally weak as any guy who just lost his father can be.
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