Hilda S1E3: "The Bird Parade"

In which Hilda rescues a herald of Odin.

No, really. That's what this episode is about.


Hilda and her mother have been living in Trolberg for about a week now. To the latter's dismay, Hilda has spent much of it in the tent she's pitched in her bedroom, trying to convince herself that she's still in the forest.

Today she has a good excuse to drag Hilda outside and make her try to socialize, in that it's the day of the Trolberg annual Bird Parade. Her mother, who we learn in this episode is actually trolberg-born herself, remembers this civic holiday fondly from her own childhood. She ends up poising this as a kind of challenge for her daughter; Hilda prides herself on her ability to befriend animals, spirits, giants, goblins, you name it, but is she really not up to doing the same with other children? And yep, that lights a fire under her ass. At least for a little while.

Things go well at first, with Hilda quickly befriending the group of local kids that her mother bade her introduce herself to. The kids are reasonably (though not perfectly) tolerant of Hilda's naivete about normal human things and ignorance of their usual games and sports. The problem is one of disposition. Hilda just stares blankly when they invite her to participate in their hobby of ringing old people's doorbells and running away to watch them totter laboriously across their houses for no reason. When they move on to their second favorite hobby of throwing rocks at birds, she's spurred into action. Particularly when a boy named Trevor actually ends up hitting one.

As Hilda grabs the wounded raven and shelters it from any further assault, she hears it babbling in pain. But like, in words. So too does Trevor, who had run up to try and get his victim back from Hilda.

What ensues is a kind of weird three-or-four-way-chase as Hilda makes caring for the wounded talking raven her new mission, Hilda's mother tries to get her to stop messing around with animals and weird stuff and do normal civil holiday stuff, Trevor trying to steal the raven back from Hilda to prove to his friends that he's not crazy and he really did hear it talk, and the raven himself trying to recover his memories after that nasty head wound left him amnesic.

Alfur, meanwhile, helps Hilda and the raven in turn while writing everything down for his intelligence report. He also reveals that the elf kingdom doesn't actually care what the humans of trolberg are up to, but that they really like receiving reports. Lol.

As zany as this plot is, it actually ends up having some surprising social commentary in it. The context of its placement right after the two-part intro adds to this.

Hilda's mother taking her for another walk around town after her ill-fated play session that morning includes a moment that kind of encapsulates (but also undersells) the message. Hilda takes notice of a flower pushing its way up between the cracks of the sidewalk. Her mother acknowledges that this flower and other bits of untamed life pushing their way in from the corners are part of the city. Hilda starts to warm up to the place a little bit, but something still feels off.

The flower is part of the city, but it's also fighting against the city. It has to force its way in through the weak spots of the concrete. Hilda's mother's take on it seems contradictory, and indeed it is.

Hilda's mother secretly discovers the raven hidden in Hilda's room and tosses it out, claiming that she doesn't want her daughter bringing "random birds" into the house anymore. And then brings Hilda to see the centerpiece of the bird festival: a statue of Odin over which a giant magical raven - believed by the townsfolk to be Hugin or Munin - makes a low pass on the same day each year. The parade has been held in the bird's honor every year for centuries since its initial pass shortly after the town's foundation. The one year when the raven DIDN'T fly overhead, Trolberg was afflicted with plague and famine for the following year, nearby bringing the town to ruin.

As a Trolberg native herself, Hilda's mother believes in this. She takes it seriously. Not just as a matter of social obligation and cultural tradition, but one of genuine religious belief. "Religious" having a slightly different meaning in a world like this one than it does in our own, what with spirits and gods actually making themselves seen and heard by normal people on a regular basis. There's not much faith required for the faiths of Hilda's world.

But...she doesn't want her daughter taking in birds or running around discovering things in the forest.

It's almost like a version of Abraham with his father's idols. She believes that the gods are near and that the natural world relays their will and messages for her people. But she doesn't act like that's what she believes when it comes to how she tries to raise her daughter.

Are the flowers growing in the cracks part of the design, or a flaw in it? Hilda's mother is trying to have it both ways. And really, so are the rest of the Trolberg residents. Who the hell doesn't teach their kids to not throw rocks at birds in a world where any given animals could turn out to be able to talk and/or serve as a divine messenger? The invisible elves really do have their houses all over the place, and everyone can see the letters they leave on the doorstep. And yet, there's a weird distinction between them and "the real world" according to the adults.

The penultimate scene has Trevor recapturing the raven and trying to get it to talk again, and losing his shit at it when it refuses. He even asks it, in an outraged tantrum, "why do you hate me like this?" when he's the one who knocked it out with a rock. Like...there's this weird void inside of him where some basic intuition ought to be, and I feel like the show is attributing this to alienation from the spiritual and the "childish" that these kids are being raised in. Even while their parents wait for the magic bird to fly by every year and bring them prosperity.

It's fitting that Hilda's triumph at the end of the episode comes by her reminding the raven of who he is. Bringing back the identity that was buried under a thrown rock and bashed out against a concrete floor.

The Great Raven confides in Hilda that he isn't actually one of Odin's corvids. He's just a normal thunderbird with the power to change his size, control the weather, and be immortal. He's been flying by every year on the same day because he didn't want to disappoint anyone.

Then again, the town does actually seem to be blessed when he flies over the Odin statue and cursed when he doesn't. He attributes this to coincidence himself, but it seems equally likely that he's an avatar of Odin without knowing it.

As the thunderbird creates a spectacular lightning storm overhead just in time to prevent the curse, Hilda and her mother have a reconciliation.

Hilda understands now that living in the city doesn't have to mean the end of her childlike spirituality. Hilda's mother is glad that her daughter knew better than to play with children who hurt animals for fun despite her inattentive parent's incentivizing her to do so...and she finally agrees to sign the paperwork herself so that she can see and hear Alfur, as Hilda has been trying to get her to do.

There's that contradiction again. Her mother knows that Alfur is real. She experienced the elves' attack on their old house firsthand. And yet, she was reluctant to let herself see and hear him, and annoyed by her daughter's doing so. Why was that?

Also, the artists do as good a job with urban landscapes in this style as they do with wilderness ones:

The shading. I swear, you can have the simplest art style in the world, and with good shading you can still make it breathtaking.


Is the message here a luddite one? I don't think so. At least, not exactly. I think this episode isn't attacking modernity per se, except maybe certain very specific parts of it. After all, the episode does end with Hilda accepting city life, seemingly without losing anything of herself in the process.

I think it's more about questioning the boundaries of what is considered "adult" or "mature." And how hypocritical and self-deceptive a lot of it really is. How much of it is just superficially paving over the self without even building anything interesting on top.

Honestly, I feel like the style and construction of "Hilda" itself might be making an argument along these lines. It's scrupulously wholesome and child-friendly, and yet very watchable and thought-provoking for adults as well. Family-friendly entertainment media is hardly a new concept of course, but something about the way that Hilda does it feels like the medium making itself part of the message.

This episode definitely makes its point more clearly and with less unintentional baggage than the previous two. If this is a representative example of "Hilda," then I think I'll be making a point of watching through it with my son.

On a different topic, I wonder if this show might have become a major culture war bugbear if it had drawn more attention to itself. It's a very recent release, and well...it's an explicitly pagan children's cartoon. Like, "literally praying to Odin" pagan. Was it subject to any religious right backlash during its run? I'm almost surprised that I never heard about it in that context.