Hello all! Welcome back to my weekly reviews of Hilda. This week we move on to the third episode of Season 1 – ‘Chapter 3: The Bird Parade’.

 ‘Chapter 3: The Bird Parade’, Season 1, Episode 3 (Release Date: September 21, 2018)

Synopsis – Hilda’s mother, Johanna, convinces Hilda to reluctantly take a walk with her around the city. As they are making their way along, Johanna notices a group of kids playing together across the street. Wanting Hilda to make some friends her age, she nudges Hilda to go introduce herself. Hilda hangs out with them for the day, but finds their sometimes mean-spirited antics off-putting. Things reach a head when the kids begin throwing rocks at a flock of birds. One of the boys, Trevor, manages to hit a large raven that promptly tumbles to the ground. Hilda rushes to the bird’s side, shocked when it briefly speaks. Trevor hears it speak too, but the other kids don’t believe him. Hilda takes the bird and rushes it home, hiding it in her room. The raven realizes that it cannot remember anything and begins to freak out. All it is able to dredge up about its past is a vague reference to a statue of a large bearded bald man with a cape.

Listening through the door, Johanna becomes suspicious. She calls for Hilda to come join her at the annual Bird Parade that is about to start. As they leave the house, Johanna pretends that she forgot something and rushes up to Hilda’s room, where she finds the raven. Frustrated that Hilda brought a bird into the house, she sets it out on the fire escape and closes the window, leaving the raven – and Alfur, who Johanna still can’t see yet – outside. The raven is distraught by this predicament, but Alfur convinces him that they can go search for the statue themselves.

Hilda and Johanna arrive at the parade, where Hilda sees all sorts of costumes and floats that look to be in the image of a large raven. Her mother tells her that every year during the parade the mythical Great Raven will swoop down overhead and bring good luck to the city. Hilda has a sinking suspicion that the raven she found actually is the Great Raven, a suspicion borne out as the Raven does not arrive on time. Hilda tells Johanna about this, and Johanna is forced to admit that she had put the raven outside. She and Hilda rush off to find it.

Alfur and the raven find the statue but are captured and put in a cage by Trevor, who wants to prove that the raven can speak. Hilda and Johanna catch up to Trevor on a footbridge, surprising him and causing him to accidentally drop the cage with the raven into the river. Hilda shouts to the raven that she believes it is the Great Raven and jumps in after it. Moments later the river begins to glow, and the raven pops out – except it is now massive and has Hilda riding its back. As it flies into the clouds, it reveals that it remembers everything now. It actually isn’t a raven at all, but is actually a Thunderbird. Long ago the townspeople had mistaken it for a raven and associated it with the chief god. When the city subsequently had a good year, they believed that it was a blessing from the Raven. Although the Raven had nothing to do with it, it kept coming every year so that the people of Trolberg wouldn’t worry or take it as a bad omen. As the Raven swoops over the parade, it drops Hilda back with her mother and together they sit down to watch the parade.

My Thoughts – This was a sweet (although somewhat slight) episode that serves as another early-series highlight. Parts of it do feel like the main characters just running around the city, which isn’t always the most exciting thing to watch. We do get to see a lot more of Trolberg, however, which does make up for it in many respects. Given that we are shifting from one main setting in the first two episodes to a (mostly) entirely new one moving forward, the hunt around the city is quite helpful for getting us familiarized with Hilda’s new surroundings. We do also get to see, through the Great Raven, that Trolberg is perhaps not as devoid of fantastical creatures as Hilda once thought. Maybe she will still be able to have fun adventures after all despite no longer living in the wilderness.

Another benefit of the episode’s structure is that Hilda and Johanna are given plenty of time to bond. We can see the conundrum that Johanna is in – her daughter needs the chance to form relationships with other children her age, but at the same time she knows how important exploring and interacting with nature is for Hilda. This produces some measure of conflict between them – Johanna feels that she needs to push Hilda to interact with her peers, while Hilda feels that Johanna is dismissing Hilda’s own wants. Although this leads to a potentially disastrous miscommunication, with Johanna putting the raven outside, the two are able to bridge the gap and solve the problem together. At the same time, Johanna helps Hilda to see that even the big city has its own beauty and uniqueness. It is nice to see that although they may not always see eye to eye, Hilda and Johanna still trust and love each other.

I also like the way that the Great Raven’s backstory works out. Everyone in Trolberg believes that he is a messenger from the gods that brings good luck to the city every year. In reality he has nothing to do with the fortunes of the city, but he knows how important the parade tradition is to the city dwellers, so he flies by every year anyway. It’s a fun little twist that serves to make the Raven a more interesting – and even more admirable – character. He knows that him showing up has no bearing on whether the city is going to have a good year or not, but he does so anyway because he wants the citizens of Trolberg to have that peace of mind.

Episode MVP – Johanna. She manages to convince Hilda that there is worth to Trolberg after all and she shows great patience with her daughter, listening rather than dismissing Hilda’s thoughts and ideas out of hand.

Folklore Connections – It seems quite likely that the god depicted in the statue is inspired by the Norse god Odin, who was always strongly associated with ravens. Odin had two pet ravens in particular, Huginn and Muninn, that he would send out on errands and fact-finding missions. If the god that the Trolberg founders worshipped was similar to Odin in this respect, that would explain why they would take a large raven-looking bird as a beneficial omen.

The Thunderbird is one of the few mythological creatures to appear on the show that is based on non-Scandinavian folklore. Thunderbirds are instead strongly associated with Native American folklore, featuring in stories from many different tribes across North America. It was typically portrayed as a powerful and massive bird spirit that brought rain and thunder. This tracks with what is seen in the episode, although what a Thunderbird was doing in Scandinavia in the first place is up for debate.

My Totally Arbitrary Episode Ranking – A pretty strong B+. Although it feels at times like the story spins its wheels a bit, there is some great character building and thematic resonance (and some great visuals too).

Trivia/Stray Observations –

• “They don’t really care about Trolberg, they just like reports.”
• “You did talk, right?” “I did? When?”
• “I hate to say this, but he is not a great interview.”
• “I think I’m important.” “Who doesn’t?”
• “Now I’ve forgotten grammar! And I love grammar!” “You love grammar?” “Maybe…?!”
• “I thought I was bigger.” “I’ve made that mistake many times.”
• “I’m a bird, I don’t walk! If I did I probably wouldn’t have these little sticks for legs.” “I walk, and I’ve got little sticks for legs.” Some nice meta humor there.
• “Look at those things! They’re like giant nittens!” “They’re called cats…”
• “So you can talk!” “What? No, I can’t.”
• “In that case, I’m proud of you for not making friends.”
• That is one oddly shaped bird.
• The raven’s clumsy awkwardness was quite endearing, I have to say.
• How did no one else notice the raven when it was busy screaming for Hilda?
• The Great Raven remembering its true self after Hilda uncovers its identity was strongly reminiscent of a particular scene from near the end of Spirited Away. That has to have been an inspiration for it.
• There are a lot of gorgeously animated sequences in this series, and the scene of Hilda riding the Great Raven is definitely one of them.
• This episode is based on the graphic novel Hilda and the Bird Parade. After the season was launched, a novelization of the episode titled Hilda and the Great Parade was released. Yes, there is a novel based on a TV episode based on a graphic novel.

That’s it for this week! Next week we will continue with ‘The Sparrow Scouts’.

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Thanks for reading!