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This week, our participants are down to John Sato, draggle, and Foshizzel (who provided pictures), the hardiest of the hardy. 

John Sato: Episodes 9 and 10 of Horizon were so full of classy content that we here at Classy have been in a veritable stupor just trying to process it all, but one detail that stands out above the others is the attention to cultural clashes.

One of the top-secret working interpretations of Horizon we have in the Classy vault suggests that it is about it is about our cast of high schoolers entering adulthood. That idea certainly has a lot of support from these episodes, as all of the conflicts in these episodes are centered around cultural differences, subtly or not. These conflicts are only truly settled when the cast members learn to accept each other.

draggle: Yes, as John Sato mentioned, at its heart Horizon is a coming of age story, along the lines of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen or JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. The closest analogue I can think of is the story of St. Francis.

Francis was a rich and spoiled child born into a life of privilege. However, he began to see those in need around him, and donated some of his father’s posessions to a local priest to help rebuild a church. His father was angry, and had Francis bought to trial to straighten him out. At one point, his father said something to the effect of, “I gave you everything you own, including the clothes on your back!” So Francis stripped off his clothes, gave them back to his father, and danced out of the courtroom, naked and singing.

Like Francis, our lead character has renounced the things of this world and tossed the clothes off his back. He has become fully human and entered a primal state prior to the Fall. He has spit the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil back out, and eaten of the Tree of Life. He is no longer ashamed of his nakedness.

Note from draggle: everyone else has given up on Horizon, because Horizon is not up to the high standards we’ve come to expect from classy anime. Queen’s Blade: Rebellion was frankly a much better show, with a much firmer foundation grounded in history, philosophy, and feminist theory.

Any suggestions for what we should watch next season?