Silky's not a familiar, she's a neighbor/the landlady of that house. And as for rent, I'm not sure if you can see it in any scenes (though it would be awesome if you could), but I believe a saucer of milk or cream on the mantelpiece is traditional. =)
Elias is kind of a special case among magi. Most of them need familiars so they can ask the spirits for help with their magic, but I don't think Elias needs to since he's a lot closer to being a familiar himself than he it to being a human magus.
It's been fun."Silky's not a familiar, she's a neighbor/the landlady of that house. And as for rent, I'm not sure if you can see it in any scenes (though it would be awesome if you could), but I believe a saucer of milk or cream on the mantelpiece is traditional. =)"
That's awesome. I'm loving the attention to folklore this series has.
I tend to find these non-human aspects of characters interesting, especially when it's done so well. A lot of the time, characters are humanised too much, especially fey and youkai. I suppose it's done to make them more relatable, but I find it backfiring, since they're more relatable if they're their own characters, rather than projections of humans.
Silky's a lot more human than Elias is, but at the same time, she's distinctly not. In the manga, I forgot if it was also mentioned in the anime, Elias mentioned that Chise should think of her as a neighbour who lives in the house, and perhaps she's the true owner of the house. She's a servant, but he's not her master. I could make a comparison to fairies in Touhou, who settle in trees and other things, taking them as their own and making them thrive. As such, Silky cares for the house and the people living in it. Thinking of her as a landlord probably isn't off. I'd say that perhaps Elias is the legal owner of the house, and she's the spiritual owner. I wouldn't even say they have an arrangement like that, or any kind of arrangement similar to it; it just is what it is. And regardless, they're all a family of sorts.
Edit: I forgot to mention it before, but I like the small detail of Lindel wearing Sami clothes, since that's pretty much what he is there.
edited 11th Dec '17 11:09:50 PM by AnotherDuck
Check out my fanfiction!Huh, I have to say I never thought of that second possibility. Color me intrigued.
There was a manga omake showing the rules for dealing with Silky
◊ (don't worry, no spoilers)
Offering up my review of the third episode. I had to watch this one a couple times because this anime has got layers and I like to wrap my brain around a good episode.
We start out where we left off, Chise in the mouth of the blue eyes white dragon’s little cousin. Its appropriate that we start out flying through the air, since this episode is all about the flying, and the falling, and the rising and the sinking and all the metaphors it can apply to those. More on that later.
We get a brief bit of exposition on the Dragons. Iceland is the magic world’s equivalent of an endangered species park. Fabulous. Then she gets abducted again by the asshole dragons. Lots of gorgeous scenery porn, which this anime loves to give us and I approve. Poor Chise can’t be very comfortable riding inside a dragon’s mouth, though. Also, whatever blonde has to say to her would sound like “whoosh whoosh windy noise windy noise”. But whatever. And we arrive. Asshole dragon continues to be an asshole by ‘putting her down’ in the water, and looks much too pleased with itself to have done so on accident I might add. But that’s okay, because floating in water is close to flying and that’s the theme this week. Chise spends a concerningly long period of time sinking in the river. As she is sinking down, looking up at the white light banks of the river close in around her darker and darker, her view changes to a window in a dark room. We had a brief shot of a window with its blinds bursting open last episode right after her mother declared that she should never have been born. It makes me wonder if her mother died by leaping out that window. Chise did mention she died ‘right in front of me’. Either way, I’m pretty sure the window represents her mother’s death, and by extension the river is a metaphor for Chise slowly sinking into darkness, unable to breath. And for the second time this series, it’s the voice of Elias that inspires her to come back up for air.
I see where the series draws comparisons with Miyazaki. The aging dragon identifying his company by smell reminds me immediately of the giant bore from Monoke-hime. Which is fine by me. This anime so far deserves a few comparisons to the masters of the craft.
So Elias and…Echos know each other? In fact, as we’ll see later this episode, Elias was on his way to meet with Echos or Lindel in the first place. So…the whole “abduction by dragon” thing was meant to accomplish….what again? Other than provide a cliff-hanger for the last episode, of course. And I’d give Linden points for coaxing Elias into drying off poor Chise whose standing in freaking glacial frigid mountain waters…if he himself hadn’t stood by wondering when she was going to surface without it occurring to him that she might not know how to swim to begin with. Either way, that warning to be careful around the guy because he’s an unpredictable elder seems pretty accurate so far.
Well, I mean….the baby dragon isn’t WRONG. Humans can fly. Chise just doesn’t have a spare airplane or hangglider on her at the moment. Luckily, the dragons all seem content to run around and show off and get their bellies rubbed. I like how a significant chunk of the spirit world is essentially made up of cats. Doesn’t matter what the actual creature in question is. Its all cats. These dragons are basically talking, scaly kitties.
It took me a little while to see what the elder dragon was saying. The idea that living life to the fullest can prevent regret doesn’t sit well with me. You can live a full life and still have regrets, because some choices can only be made once and not every decision will be the best one you could have made. But his words about joy and pain make more sense. Life will be full of both. It isn’t that dragons never make mistakes or suffer hardship. Its that they don’t linger on the pain or what might have been. They accept that there will be suffering in life, for better or worse and try not to resent it or despair about it. I feel like that distinction is important for what follows.
The dragon says he should not be mourned, to which Chise replies that she can’t mourn him. He peeks inside her mind and chatises her. The living should not envy the dead. He says that it was good that Chise never tried to jump off the roof of her school, because humans can’t fly. He echoes Elias point from last episode that all her suffering has lead her to this moment and her life with Elias. He offers her a dreams of what it is like to fly as a dragon. In the dream he makes the metaphor plain- the dragons flew for a time, then came down to earth when their time was done. Its Chise time to fly, and she must learn how soon. And her name means ‘bird’ which helps make sense of the fair folk naming her Robin.
Its hard to say who helped who in this scene. The dragon encouraged Chise to live, which is something she’s still struggling with. But Chise gave the dragon one last vivid vision of his early days. Even though he had accepted his fate, that doesn’t mean he had to die a lonely death. Chise says, despite the old dragon’s words, that she envies how he died peacefully. That’s ironic, because she directly ensures that he died with more peace and joy than he would have otherwise. And as Lindel and Elias allude to, her struggle will be to help others without sacrificing too much of herself while doing so. She was convinced not to kill herself by the notion that someone else might have a better use for her life than she herself had. The reason she didn’t go to the fairy world was because Elias might need her. Now it seems that her nature will allow for great feats of magic, but at the danger of burning herself out. So she needs to find a better reason to live.
edited 12th Dec '17 5:46:52 PM by nothri
Episode 11:
We learn more about Elias past, and that he... used to eat humans? Honestly that's hardly surprising. Of course Chise is desensitized to this sort of thing.
The world of forest gods is pretty.
Chise should think more about herself. That's a good advice.
The dance was really beautiful.
Interesting episode.
So the name of Elias' master is Rahab? There's two Rahabs in the Bible, one of which was a prostitute
and one of which was a sea monster.
edited 16th Dec '17 4:00:17 PM by Druplesnubb
About the new manga chapter: I guessed that her mother still really loved her and it was the stress of the whole situation that resulted in that happening, but I was not expecting there to be some third party influence involved and goddamn I feel so bad for her mom now. Nice to get the names of the whole family though.
…So that's what the last shot of the opening was about. And it turns out Chise did have a normal childhood at some point…
Twas a very soothing episode overall.
Actually, I'm wondering if this series can qualify as Iyashikei in episodes like that…
edited 24th Dec '17 6:29:18 AM by Lyendith

Yeah, Elias struggles a bit with that whole "behaving like a human" thing.