Arkanaut is a Warhammer: Age of Sigmar animation on WarhammerTV about Kharadron Overlords on an expedition to find loot and get paid. This is my review of episode 2, Endrinfall.
In this episode, things are starting to look grim for the Therodosson. I mean, even grimmer than before. Upon exiting the cursed skies, the crew is pursued by a host of nighthaunts. The ghasts want the lost soul that Captain Orra captured in the previous episode, and they're willing to fight for it.
In the fight, many nighthaunts are destroyed, but Bjarnikk (I think that's the guy Orra was talking to in the previous episode, but he's wearing a helmet this time so it's hard to tell) is lost. The crew recover from the attack quickly, but the loss of Bjarnikk weighs heavy on everyone.
Helmsman Frodrikk tells Captain Orra that she's got the classic RPG travel choices: Take the fast route through dangerous territory, or take the long route through less overtly dangerous territory. They've got enough aether-gold to sustain them through the long route, so that's what she chooses.
Unsurprisingly for the pacing of the episode, the long route turns out not to be as safe as Frodrikk had hoped. The Therodosson is attacked by a giant duardin construct, they see a ghost ship, they witness a skaven attack on some Dawnbringers, and then they're attacked by a very angry dragon. The Therodosson goes down, and if I didn't know better, I'd have to assume the series is over because presumably everyone's dead.
Nighthaunt fights
The highlight of this episode for me were the Nighthaunts. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel the Nighthaunts are iconic to Warhammer : Age of Sigmar. They're simple monsters, no more than a ghost really, but of course the quality and consistency of design makes the Citadel miniatures of the Nighthaunt army feel especially unique. Seeing them animated and in battle was a lot of fun.
I'm not sure it was scary, and I think that maybe is a missed opportunity, but then again this is how you're likely to use them on the tabletop. As much as they read haunted house to me, most people are going to have hordes of them rushing into battle, which is cool to see on its own.
Faces and helmets
The crew of the Therodosson all wear enclosed helmets, so you don't often see faces. I like the look of enclosed helmets for duardin more than I like it for Stormcast Eternals (I guess I feel like the Stormcast Eternals need all the personality they can get.) I'm very conscious of how much easier it must have been to animate this series with very few scenes requiring lip-sync. However, I have to admit that it's a little difficult to connect with the crew through helmets.
Frodrikk and Freya are characters that at least made it to the second episode, but I've never seen their faces, so I'm still not sure whether Frodrikk is Bjarnikk or not. All the other crew members, whose names I've forgotten or never knew, haven't removed their enclosed helmets even once. I don't know how much it matters, though, because I am invested in the story despite having no one to cling to. I have Orra, but the jury's still out on her, frankly.
Orra spellt backwards is Ahab
For what little we actually know about her, Captain Orra is an interesting character. In the first episode, it was obvious to me that she's feeling desperate. She needs money so she can keep paying her crew, she needs aether-gold to keep sailing, she needs to keep the spirits of her crew up, and I sense that she's a little worn down from a hard life in the skies.
In this episode, I'm sensing that maybe she's a little too driven by profit. I don't know what the alternative is, but I do sense that the crew may not agree that her prize soul was worth the losses. Maybe I'm misreading them (I can't see any of their faces, so it's hard to tell sometimes), but I think I detect some serious doubt. Whether that matters by the end of the episode, I'm not sure because they've all apparently fallen or crashed to their deaths.
One does not just sail to Azyr, maybe?
Good episode
Episode 2 of Arkanaut was a bit of a downer, but still intriguing. I'm still loving the skyship as a setting and a mechanism for plot traversal, I'm interested in the duardin crew and their story, and I'm eager for the next episode!