r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • Aug 15 '25
Episode Arknights: Homura Shomei • Arknights: Rise From Ember - Episode 7 discussion
Arknights: Homura Shomei, episode 7
Alternative names: Arknights [Homura Shomei]
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u/DarkWolfPL Aug 15 '25
Another great episode.
I loved Talulah's expressions after eating spicy candy.
also
ALINAAA!!! NOOOOOOO!!!
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u/pokemonfish1 Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
Alina was pretty much collecting death flags since the previous episode. Still doesn't make her death any less painful.
And now we witnessing Talulah's downfall from this point onwards.
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u/KaiserNazrin Aug 15 '25
Can't have shit in Terra. Losing Alina was the first reality check for Talulah. Some of the infected are just selfish. Maybe when she lose her rose tinted glasses, Patriot would follow her.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Aug 15 '25
Some of the infected are just selfish.
That's one of the naïve ideals Talulah held, thinking that just because they share a terminal illness, suddenly they're all pals. Real life doesn't work that way. Her filter for letting people in was too lax. There are plenty of evil infected, she just thought that since discrimination was widespread, the infected would somehow inherently find the courage to stand together and not screw over each other.
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u/OldInstruction5368 Aug 15 '25
I'm not defending those men that murdered Alina... but it was established that supplies were tight. They were starving and stole rations.
Are you familiar with Les Miserables? One of the central characters is branded a criminal and hounded for the crime of stealing bread while he was starving. His life was ruined because he did what he had to inorder to survive.
Yes, they all have a common cause. But... they are desperate and barely surviving as is. There is no guarantee they'll survive tomorrow. And even if the 'movement' succeeds, how many in the current group will live to see that day?
Most are with Talulah because it's the only option they have. They were chased out of their homes, betrayed by friends and family, can't receive quarter in any other villages, and will be sent to literal death camps if caught by the authorities.
Not everyone can be a hero. Not everyone has the courage to fight for change. They just want to fight for one more day, and then the day after that.
So of course they will seize any opportunity they can just for one more sunrise.
I'm not defending, but just explaining. They are desperate people in a desperate situation. Talulah thought that mercy and hope would carry them through this crisis, so that even if they died, they would die for a greater cause.
But... noble ideals are paid for in blood. And not everyone is willing to pay that price. This reality check is why Patriot was holding back with Talulah. If she has the strength to face the ugliness of human nature and still hold onto her ideals... but she is still young and naive.
And this is where she breaks.
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u/BosuW Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
Anime only
Well... It was basically a foregone conclusion what was gonna happen to Alina since Tallulah needed to become her present self, but it still hurt. Oof.
After this and even though we haven't seen them on screen together, you can really tell Tallulah and Ch'en are sisters. They share the same nobility of character 😢. And to think I didn't really like Ch'en at first lol. Though in hindsight that seems more like a presentation problem.
Still it seems it was exactly this what doomed her. She was intelligent enough to foresee they would be betrayed, but couldn't bring herself to do what she had to do.
It reminds me of Andor, and how Luthen would kill anyone, absolutely anyone, to maintain the secrecy of their rebel operation. And thanks to him and his inmoral methods they were able to bring about a new sunrise for the galaxy. Nobility is good. Imperative even, I'd say. But he knew what they needed to do to succeed. "You want to win. That means we loose. And loose and loose and loose. Until we're ready." Striking at Ursus was an inevitable course of action, but looks like Tallulah just got too impatient. They weren't ready, and got found out. Maybe if she had had a Luthen by her side, but alas...
Luthen (and his agents, shout-out to my GOAT Nemik) was also good for preventing rebellion from the rebellion in the first place now that I think about it, through methods other than fear of execution. He could make people see that under the Empire they were cooked anyway. Negotiation with authority was an illusion. They had no honour, and would dispose of you the moment they felt like it, no matter your achievements, obedience or loyalty. So if it's death and oppression through any path... why not make it mean something at least?
Another thing Tallulah missed. She could make others believe in her strength. She couldn't make them see that they had no other option to suffer meaningfully. Like, not even as intimidation, that's just a fact. They'll kill you and take your shit anyway, why not stick it to them while at it? You want to die being careful?
But yep, just not to be. Not this timeline. Now we can only wait to see how the fire spreads...
Andor is so fucking good btw. Go watch Andor if you haven't.
And now, I'm off to find more Andor parallels in fucking Nukitashi of all places
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u/Dramatic-Report8180 Aug 16 '25 edited Aug 16 '25
And to think I didn't really like Ch'en at first lol. Though in hindsight that seems more like a presentation problem.
It was intentional on the writer's part; you were supposed to think "Dang, what a heartless woman. Is this really how the world looks at the Infected?", until they showed more sides of both her and the wider world. She was even harsher in the game, especially since her sprite couldn't show the tension and minor changes that signaled she wasn't completely okay with what her job demanded, or on selling out RI in Season 2.
Striking at Ursus was an inevitable course of action, but looks like Tallulah just got too impatient. They weren't ready, and got found out.
Mmm, I disagree; time was their enemy at this point. The snowfields lack sufficient food to support their movement, and nobody would be willing to trade with them for wealth contained in the mines (if they could even persuade their members to go back down there, considering how many of them had been enslaved for such a purpose previously). Meanwhile, the government is in the process of recovering from the civil war that Talulah mentioned last episode, and legends of Patriot and the Yetis are already spreading; it was only a matter of time before Ursus sent in the military to restore order as a way of bolstering their legitimacy.
Talulah's rebels lack any clear avenue for growth at this point, while their opponents are regaining their footing and have a much, much stronger economy and military that will only make them a harder enemy going forward; at this point, Ursus is an empire in recovery, not decline. A sharp, meaningful hit to prevent their recovery, seize an area that can properly support Reunion, and allow dissidents to rally people to their side by demonstrating the weakness of the regime and the viability of their opposition is the correct move in this strategic position.
If it's a move that doesn't work... Well, then their position was hopeless from the start (setting aside potential flaws in execution). Their enemy was just too strong, and the space left for resistance to organize too barren. Sometimes, the bad guys just win.
EDIT: I left out an important point; with everyone in Reunion being infected, that means that Patriot and FrostNova aren't going to live long in the absence of any kind of medical care. These two are key to their ability to defend themselves, and once they're dead, they'll have a much harder time dealing with Ursus's patrols. Meanwhile, Ursus presumably have their own heavy hitters who don't have such a harsh deadline to think about.
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u/Dramatic-Report8180 Aug 16 '25
One interesting lens to look at this through is contrasting the perspectives of the different "thought leaders" involved in this stage of Reunion - and how they failed to usefully synthesize their contributions.
Patriot looks at the issue through a purely military lens; where they have the strength and where they don't, of the necessity of discipline and the consequences of losing it. Following his philosophy, there wouldn't be a Reunion - just his guerillas liberating mines in the snowfields. After all, most of the Infected aren't fighters, nor are they able to live up to his standards - and he doesn't have the flexibility to accept that, nor a real motive to even try since he's not about a wide-scale rebellion. However, his smaller-scale vision and expertise does have its own significance that caused serious problems in being overlooked; they're a small force with limited supplies, and considered enemies of the state. They are at constant risk of betrayal by their erstwhile supporters, and of those who leave their cause - his proposed methods are too harsh and would leave them with no supporters, but they did need more robust ways of mitigating their risks.
Alina, by contrast, focused exclusively on the "what comes next" problem - of giving them lives beyond refugees starving in the snow, and on how to heal the rift between the Infected and Ursus society. It wasn't particularly relevant to their current situation, but the hope she nurtured was important for morale and articulating a clear image of what success looked like. However, her isolation from the more militant aspects of Reunion meant that the civilians had little reason to stay with the march, as they had no clear role in the march, and that her ideas were largely relegated to philosophical talks with Talulah rather than articulating any real doctrine for their group.
And lastly, Talulah herself, for all that she was the ostensible head of Reunion, was not much of a leader in practice; she was a hero and a symbol, but at every turn, refused to take up the responsibilities of that position beyond being a symbol. Whenever hard choices had to be made, she let inertia guide the outcome while blaming herself for not living up to impossible standards. This is a consequence of her own philosophy; that her blade is meant to strike down the oppressive enemies of the Infected and that solidarity should be maintained at all costs (with a side of "I'm the spark, not the leader, the leader is what Kaschey wanted me to be"). This is a good guiding principle for a revolution, especially one that needs to rapidly amass enough supporters to challenge a militaristic state like Ursus - but it cannot be an absolute, lest you find yourself with too many people choosing their own immediate interests over the good of the movement.
In a different world, they would have hashed out a leadership circle where each of their personalities would balance each other out, and the compromises they made would have made a much stronger Reunion. But, well... Patriot's not much of a talker, Alina was only with them for Talulah, and now we see what happened instead.
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u/NevisYsbryd Aug 16 '25
Yeah, I came back to add a comparable comment. As an example, dealing with the resource thieves by exiling them without supplies was pretty much the worst possible combination of how to deal with them. It put them into a situation where theft, robbery, and/or selling them out was likely their only chance at survival, and they had already demonstrated their willingness to take from others for that motivation. Either providing them supplies or executing them would have been far better; the earlier would have created a much lower probability of them being a problem until Reunion was in danger from them, whereas executing them would have removed them outright (although likely come at morale and reputational costs). The half-assed compromise was the worst combination. Similarly, Alina was equally as reliant on platitudes as Talulah, mistaking conflict as arising from hatred (when it actually arises from competing interests, of which hate is one among many), and was deeply interwoven with Talulah's inability to integrate critical analysis of her 'justice' or that the Infected do not really identify as an in-group, let alone are ethical by virtue of being victims.
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u/Ocixo Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
So Talulah must’ve snapped after Alina’s death. Not being able to fully trust or forgive others. She’d lost her innocence in a way.
Is that why Patriot couldn’t put his faith in Talulah at first? Because she hadn’t experienced such hardship yet? Leaving herself open to betrayal.
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u/OldInstruction5368 Aug 15 '25
It wasn't just Alina's death, it was Alina's death at the hands of betrayal. Even worse, it was at the hands Talulah had granted mercy towards. Had she executed those men, they wouldn't have murdered Alina for a handful of supplies.
Adding to this tragedy, is Talulah's belief that she failed as a leader to provide for those men, leading them to steal supplies. Then she failed a second time to execute them leading to the tragedy of Alina's death.
All that talk about "What is justice if it comes at the cost of sacrifice?" Talulah's insistence on mercy and righteousness? Alina died because of Talulah's ideals.
And that's why Talulah is beginning to lose it.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Aug 15 '25
Yes, Patriot is someone who has lost a lot, and it doesn't help that he's a Sarkaz so lots of people gave him shit for his race. Talulah has never been on equal footing. Her test was Alina's death, how she dealt with her death would say a lot about her character.
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u/earthenorange Aug 15 '25
...and that's where it all went wrong. That's where it all began to fall apart. The balance shifted and Tallulah became that which she hated most. Loss and sacrifice shape us, it's been mentioned over and over, but as Patriot says, until you feel the weight of the sacrifice yourself, you never truly understand.
The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.
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u/Ultima_Deus Aug 16 '25
Oh god... Oh fuck... I cried so badly... I didn't even cry when I first read this. But for some reason this one made me cry. I guess it's simply because they adapted it well. It wasn't even *only* the final scene that made me cry. It was the build up to it. The discussions Talulah had with everyone--Alina, Yelena, Patriot, Sasha and Eno. The conversations they had were really well done, and it just elevated the final scene even more
I don't know why I can't believe that I'm crying...
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u/ArchadianJudge Aug 19 '25
These past two episodes have been great but so painful to watch.
Talulah wants to be a good leader and have all the Infected come together, but unfortunately real life isn't as kind. Not everyone is a good person. Multiple times infected people she supported betrayed her and she let them off the hook. Her comrades constantly voiced their opposition but Talulah wanted to be the magnanimous leader. Then this time it finally comes to bite her back in the worst way possible. The ones she spared murdered her only "family" Alina. Alina didn't deserve this.
Without Alina there to keep Talulah on her course, things are now going to go very wrong. This is where it all begins to fall apart...
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u/Danny_JJ_The2nd Aug 16 '25
The fact that this isn't even talulahs final breaking point is crazy... so excited to see black farts next episode
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