Short Synopsis: This episode brings us Telepathy Shoujo Ran’s version of the story where a ghost has been waiting under a sakura for her loved one to return for ages.
Highlights: Just when I thought that the banter in this series couldn’t get any better.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, so apparently, the nine volumes of the original light novels that this series is based on turn out to be just a bit too short to fill in 26 episodes, hence why this and the past episode have treated us with anime-original material. I’m not going to use the word “filler” for it, because that term seems to have become something incredibly negative in the fandom, while in fact the past two episodes were highly entertaining, though not in the way you might expect. ^^;
In this episode, the creators did exactly what they’re good at: sending Ran, Rui and Midori on an adventure and having Ran and Midori bicker endlessly in the process. I think the big problem with anime-original episodes is that it’s here where the writers of the anime have to show that they can write for themselves, rather than copy somebody else’s work. This episode showed that the creators of this series most definitely know how to write. With series as Claymore, it’s entirely the opposite: its writers were excellent at copying and pasting, but when they went with their own storyline they fell flat on their face.
The story wasn’t that special, and it’s been done many times before: two lovers who were once separated by a war. The lady is still waiting under a Sakura for her loved one to return, and over time they became youkai. But then again, this series was never about its originality. I remember World Destruction doing a very similar story (if I recall correctly, I dropped that series after that exact episode), and it never tried to spice things up, even though it was dealing with a very dull storyline that would never work on its own. Telepathy Shoujo Ran, however, knows exactly how to spice things up, with the above-mentioned banter between the characters, and the plot of trying to find the tree that the woman waited under, even though it already had been cut down. And of course how their romantic reunion was disturbed by a bitch-slap instead of a heart-warming and overacted hug.
