Onyx Grackle

The episode starts out with a shot of the sky, the moon eclipsing the sun as the narrator gives an opening narration on how the current state of the world came to be. Many years before the story starts, magic was equally distributed throughout three continents. One canine did not have magic, so after studying it her entire life, she changed the distribution of the world’s magic, drastically and permanently changing how different civilizations lived. The majority of people had lost their magic but a few were lucky, such as our protagonist Dusky.

Dusky is a fox street vendor who sells bracelets. She is well known by the town as she is greeted multiple times, making her way to her booth. She is intercepted by another, dark blue and more shark-like fox named Angler. As per his name he has an antenna thing of an angler fish. He threatens Dusky and tells her her debt is due by sundown.

During the day, tourists visit. A fox with folded ears and wings stops by Dusky’s booth, who says he's only window shopping. At the end of the day Dusky heads home and counts her earnings. She makes 15 coins and is satisfied with the amount, claiming that she would soon be able to pay off the debt of her mother.

We are reintroduced to the fox with folded ears and wings, who introduces himself as Zoro and offers a job to Dusky. Zoro is a bounty hunter looking for people with special skills or magic to help find a magical artifact. He assumes she possesses, or knows someone who possesses, magical powers pertaining to plants because she has flowers that are not native and too expensive for her to have. Zoro leaves, giving her until tomorrow to decide.

The next day, Angler, along with a light grey shark-like fox, and the leader, Typhoon, who is a turquoise and grey shark-like fox breaks into Dusky’s home. The leader has vines in his right eye, strongly alluding to him and her fighting in the past. After Typhoon threatens to kill Dusky, she fights back by creating vines that hold the other two foxes in place as Dusky escapes out the door. 

The three loan sharks follow her into a dark and abandoned part of the town, cornering Dusky. She attempts to use her magic, but it fails. It is later revealed that she needs sunlight to use her magic. When her magic fails, she attempts to fight without it, but is restrained and knocked out.

Then a flashback of Dusky who returns home looking for her mother. Typhoon is there, telling Dusky she isn't there as the screen shows her mother bleeding on the ground.

The flashback ends as Dusky wakes up in a room where organs are harvested. Her leg is cuffed to the ground and she starts to panic. Zoro calmly climbs through the windows into the room after breaking the glass. He immediately asks if she made her decision as he helps her break free. Dusky, wanting to leave by any means possible, hastily agrees, and Zoro smiles.

Zoro asks why she didn't just kill the three with her magic. Dusky explains that she doesn't like killing, and that her magic is weak and doesn't work without sunlight. Zoro says that her magic can be worked on.

Angler interrupts them. Zoro tells Dusky to jump out the window and she protests. Rolling his eyes, Zoro pushes her out. She falls until Zoro catches her on his back, using his wings to fly.

They make it to a dock, jumping into a boat and leaving shore. Dusky is being made to maneuver it despite having not been on a boat before. The episode ends with Dusky narrating how this was her first real job and that the rest of her journey is even crazier.

While much of the episode isn't animated, and generally not at all on par with other indie cartoons, it's an incredibly charming story that obviously has a lot of love and care poured into it. The world takes inspiration from Latin America, specifically Mexico, and that shows in the architecture and music.

I like how the foxes have traits of other animals, and even work them into their character. The loan shark foxes, for example, have shark fins and tails, as well as gills. I personally like the fox with a tortoise shell, even if I only got to see them a few brief times. I wonder if in the past foxes with different animal characteristics were from different continents, but had to migrate after the world's magic was redistributed.

I also wonder if Zoro knows who the loan sharks are or if he is so used to danger and seeing trafficking that the fact he found Dusky there is not alarming, or even surprising. He noted that Dusky is not financially well off, and he thinks she would be a good fit even though he had only briefly seen her at her booth. He even followed Dusky home, which she had commented on almost immediately. 

This leads me to believe he may know more than he lets on. He commented that she probably uses, or knows someone who uses, magic due to the flowers, but she didn't have them with her at her booth. So, I think he may have just seen something about her that he may have thought as worthy, but then noted the high possibility of magic in her life once he saw the flowers in her home. The way he got her to agree was also quite predatory. I don't think he's a “bad” guy, but I do think he saw a situation that he could take advantage of, and took it.

I'm interested in seeing what Dusky’s relationship with her mother was like before she was killed by Typhoon. And how that death affected her relationship with the world. 

Dusky is quite naive, letting a stranger enter her home despite knowing she was followed, and being reluctant to kill even when her life is in constant danger. I expect that she will grow a lot as she helps Zoro in finding that magic artifact.

I do have a few criticisms, however. The story relies a little too much on telling than showing. For instance, when Zoro follows Dusky home, she asks that he followed her home and she blankly asks if he followed her. This comes across to me as the narrative telling us how Zoro got there rather than letting the visuals show it. From an in-story perspective, her calling him out isn't necessarily bad but I don't believe it was the best choice for her character as a naive girl, especially since she lets him in her home a few seconds later. I think if she was able to connect the fact she was followed, she would be more hesitant to invite Zoro to her home. 

Another example is when Dusky was caught by the loan sharks. Typhoon directly says to Dusky, and to us by extension, that she would be killed for her organs. I think this does a massive disservice to the story when we see her panic later when she wakes up. If this part was cut out, the reveal of the organs in the room would hit a lot harder.

A different criticism I have has to do with the visuals. The art is beautiful but there are some parts that, on first viewing, I couldn't tell what was happening. For example, when Dusky was using her magic to restrain the two of the loan sharks so she can escape from her home. We see Dusky move past the two loan sharks, but the way the angle was drawn in, and how slow the characters moved, I hadn't realized that Dusky had already made her escape until Typhoon told his goons to follow after her. For this scene to work, I believe It needs to be redone from the bottom up.