The good news about this week’s episode is that the animation is not as awash in CG as it was in the previous episode. True, the CG still makes up a good half of this episode, and the 2D animation we do get is mostly utilized in flashbacks, which…weird? It’s odd to see the memories of the past being filtered through such a lens, but I’ll take what I can get. There’s a scene where an adult is being held down by his peers who are preventing him from risking his life to save someone from being attacked by kaiji. It’s not much, but the animation is more detailed this time around, and easier on the eyes than any fight scene from the first batch of episodes. Unfortunately, it’s better than the fight scene we get in this episode’s final moments. More on that in a bit.

The episode decides to properly introduce the girl Ao, one of the survivors from last episode. She didn’t come filled to the brim with personality at that time, so I expected the anime to wait an episode or two before letting the audience get to know her a bit. And we do, with hit-or-miss results. Ao is a kaiju tamer. And she might have a thing for Tetsuo. Ao gives Tetsuo a pineapple to share, and since Tetsuo has communication issues, his response is full of stuttering anxiety. That’s okay, though. It turns out that Ao can’t communicate either. Their social awkwardness makes them Like Two Peas in a Pod, and I like how the anime uses this moment to ignite a chemistry between the two of them. It’s adorkable.

Where the episode makes its misses, however, is within the flashback detailing Ao’s backstory. It starts out good enough, showing how a kaiju rose from underneath the ocean ten years ago to freeze the Earth. Wait, I thought they all came from space? Maybe one fell from space and then into the ocean. Whatever, I can suspend my disbelief for this. Eleven months after the freeze begins, Ao and her group of survivors are left to fend for themselves, surviving on dead kaiju meat for food that kills half of them. Ao eats some of it, and later when two kaiju appear in the middle of a frozen field, her group accidentally leaves her stranded and woozy between the two mastodons. Great! So we’re finally going to get a kaiju fight that’s all 2D animation, right?

Wrong! Ao has a Power of Love and Friendship moment that energizes her so much that one of the kaiju swift-kicks the other one in the head, and KO’s it just like *snaps fingers* that before the fight begins. And then said kaiju gives Ao magical powers, which leads Ao’s gang of survivors to believe that Ao stopped the fight all by herself. Did I mention this kaiju is a fiery
chicken monster? And it gets CG’d at the last minute because…reasons, I guess? It’s all anti-climactic, to say the least.

I’m giving this episode a mixed-to-negative score, although there are a few things I’m looking forward to despite everything. In the present, Tetsuo and the survivors are escorted to a mall that hides away other survivors from the kaiju. And I kinda like it. This is already “What if The Day After Tomorrow was a kaiju anime,” so I’m hoping that the mall being a survivor’s hideout
allows Snowball Earth to channel some Dawn of the Dead-isms as well. One can be hopeful. So long as it’s not too compromised by CG. Which my inner cynic tells me it probably will.

Rating:

Snowball Earth is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

Project, backed by budget of 39.9 billion won, will develop 4,909-square-meter complex

Daejeon Metropolitan City has cleared a key administrative hurdle in its plan to build a large-scale webtoon industry hub, after its Webtoon IP Advanced Cluster Project passed a central government investment review with conditions.

The approval from South Korea’s Ministry of the Interior and Safety effectively recognizes the project’s necessity, feasibility, and fiscal soundness, paving the way for Daejeon to position itself as a major hub for the K-webtoon industry.

The project, backed by a total budget of 39.9 billion won (about US$27.0 million), will develop a 4,909-square-meter complex, featuring office space for webtoon companies and creators, as well as facilities for content production, technology support, education, and meetings. The cluster is designed as a convergence hub that integrates creative work with advanced technologies.

Officials say the initiative will establish a full-cycle support system spanning talent development, content creation, startup incubation, and IP expansion, while strengthening collaboration between industry, academia, and research institutions.

Following the conditional approval, the city plans to move forward with land acquisition, compensation, and pre-construction procedures, while also addressing operational efficiency requirements outlined in the review.

Daejeon hosted the 2025 University Webtoon Championship at the Daejeon e-Sports Arena last November. The city invested 700 million won (approximately US$510,000) last year in building local webtoon infrastructure, operating a webtoon campus, and supporting emerging regional creators.

Source: Daejeon Metropolitan City press release

In a landscape dominated by isekai and lighter fare, King’s Maker stands out for its unrelenting darkness. Not that it’s fully grim, but even when the plot is touching on lighter topics or having a moment of humor, there’s always an understanding that the underlying reality of its world is a seething morass. That’s certainly something that dual protagonists Soohyuk (not an isekai’d character despite his Korean name) and Wolfgang know personally. Wolfgang, despite being the fourth prince, grew up on the streets after his father the king had his mother killed, while Soohyuk is one of the king’s “Sovereign Darlings” – young boys he’s grooming to be his sexual partners.

This is, easily, the most disturbing piece of the story. While it primarily remains in the background of these volumes, Wolfgang only initially agrees to act like a prince in order to free Soohyuk from his father’s grasp. That Soohyuk is a Sovereign Darling in the first place is symbolic of the monarchy’s corruption under this leader: most Darlings are orphans, but Soohyuk’s father is the foreign minister. He was snatched both as a means of controlling the elder Shin, but also in a demonstration of the king’s absolute power. He wanted this boy, and so he simply took him, social status and parental position be damned. Equally horrible (or perhaps even worse) is the fact that the only reason the king spends times grooming the boys is that in the past he raped a young child who died. Rather than deciding that pedophilia wasn’t worth it, the king instead made a personal policy not to have sex with anyone younger than fifteen. The grooming is, in his worldview, just making the fulfilment of his desires easier.

Soohyuk, then, has several very good reasons to want Wolfgang to step up to the plate. Despite being the fourth child, Wolfgang has both the coloring (golden hair and eyes; his younger brother has green eyes, thus disqualifying him from inheriting) and the intelligence to be king. And more importantly, he has the care for others that his father and at least his third brother lack. After his mother’s murder, Wolfgang followed her admonition to take nothing that belongs to his father, falling in with a group of street orphans. He had every intention of remaining with them, taking care of them, before his father forced him out by threatening to kill all boys named Wolfgang. He didn’t emerge because he had any desire for luxury; he came out because he couldn’t let other boys die in his name. This told Soohyuk what he needed to know about the prince, and he’s not above letting Wolfgang declare that he’ll be king just to save Soohyuk from his father’s clutches.

At first, it looks like Wolfgang’s crush is one-sided, and in all fairness, this is BL in name only (or may feel like it) for most of these volumes. I do think that Soohyuk cares about Wolfgang as a person by volume two, though he’s also willing to let Wolfgang “mark” him when the king announces his intention to move Soohyuk from Darling to lover. He wants Wolfgang, yes, but the desperation in his act also comes from a place of fear. He doesn’t want his first (and possibly only) sexual experience to be with his rapist, and he’d rather be tortured by a cruel king than violated by him. The romance subplot reflects this, and it’s generally very subtle until the end of volume two, getting lost in Wolfgang’s work to become a worthy crown prince and Soohyuk’s political machinations and guidance behind the scenes.

But a large part of the draw here is in seeing Wolfgang and Soohyuk eventually overcome the corrupt system the current king has put in place. It’s imperative that they do, and not singly, but together. Soohyuk may be using Wolfgang to a degree, but it’s hard to argue with that given the situation he’s stuck in. Wolfgang’s earnestness remains largely untarnished by the horrors he’s witnessed and the difficulties he faces in the palace, and the two do feel like two halves of a whole. The writing supports this with small moments and statements rather than grand declarations, and that really works for this type of story. They have to be subtle, or neither boy will survive.

King’s Maker is a political thriller above all else. Carefully crafted, it does feel like it loses its way at times, but for the most part does a solid job of pulling readers in and keeping them interested. It comes with a very large content warning for sexual abuse of a minor, but if you like your fantasy on the darker side, BL or otherwise, definitely give this a try.