Every single episode, this series continues to remind me why I consider it among the top of this season along Darker than Black and Aoi Bungaku. Unlike those two however, it looks like Armed Librarians is going to cover up 26 episodes. And it’s already this good. The question of course is going to be whether the creators can keep this up. I’ve seen a lot of series that started out awesome but disappointed near the end, but oh, if the creators can keep this kind of quality up for the rest of the season we could be dealing with a potential classic here.
Okay, so what the hell happened here in this episode? On the foreground, it mainly told about the battle between Hamyuts Meseta and Segal. Segal prepared well: with divination he predicted when the next typhoon would hit. He’d then poison Hamyuts with a deadly disease, and got his hands on Shlamuffen, a sword that automatically parries all attacks thrown at it. To make matters worse, Hamyuts eventually disarms Segal, but Schlamuffen then takes on a mind of its own as if it really wants to kill Hamyuts. Eventually, she gets saved by Colio who was warned by Shiron that this was going to happen because it was the very first divination she had. So in the end, Hamyuts is saved… and Colio dies anyway?
That’s something that wasn’t expected, and it also gave a bit of an extra dimension to the books when you combine them with Shiron’s divination: at the end of her life, she knew that Colio would read her books, and therefore warned him about what he needed to do through divination, in order to recreate the vision she had. Now, the question remains why it was so important for Colio to do this, or was this just a symbolic event? And are we ever going to see both of them back? I mean, their books still exist, but what? They were really built up to be the main characters for the past four episodes…
Also, David Production may not be the best at eye-candy, but these people sure know how to choreograph a good action-scene. The fight scenes in this episode really rocked, and really weren’t what you’d expect after the mediocre animation quality of the first episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Wouldn’t mind having characters (females) like Hamyuts Meseta play leads in more animes. She’s no Michiko Malandro, but at least she not a broken hearted women who can’t move with her life (yet).
With Coolio dead (hopefully not) it seems Volken will be getting more screen time and I don’t think that it’s a good thing, in episode one he came off as standard and very dull “I want to try and save everybody, because every life is precious” hero.
I was actually kinda shocked they just plain killed off Colio, especially since I expected him to be the main character after he “became” human. I had gotten pretty attached to him, too. If this sets the bar for the whole show, then I’m sold. 😀
David Production is forgiven for that awkward first episode. The music is also among my favorites this season, along with Letter Bee (Kunhiko Ryou is love).
Glad I decided to stick around after all!
my favorite series of the season so far, the 1st four episodes have been amazing.
can’t start watching darker than black II yet until i watch the first season.
The Bomb in Love is dead? But he was my favourite character! There are no other characters in this 🙁
Volken better step it up right fucking now or else. >:$
The story in this series appears to be quite original to me, which makes it appealing. I agree, hopefully they can keep this up.
Colio already ****** i knew this would happen. but didn’t expect it to happen this early. but i wander did Shiron and Colio story will take part in the overall story, or they will treat it like the introduction or arc base show, try to reveal the real villain behind the scene
I’m not digging this episode at all. The tension/excitement of the earlier episodes is gone. I don’t know if it’s the novels fault or the director’s but there’s a lot that I don’t like about this episode.
ie.
Hamyut’s unhesitatingly killing off a whole train full of people without a sign of remorse, is too over the top for me.
The sword, I was given to understand that without someone holding it, it’ll just revert to it’s non-harmful state. But no, it seems to have a mind of it’s own and wants to kill Hamyuts. Why did it want to and why did it not do so?
Also, the knifing of Segal by Colio positively screams Deus ex machina. Segal was able to fend off the all powerful director of the Armed Librarians but not a weakling like Colio. Sure, Hamyuts was the one who enact the killing blow but still . . . *sigh*
And the cure for the plague, how did they find it? I would have thought that Segal’s accomplice would have taken off with Shiron’s book.
I don’t think that Shiron’s memory was the only place where the cure would be described, an my guess was that Segal only used it to toy with her.
Also, Colio was able to deal the striking blow because of the sunlight, that was prophecized by Shiron, which apparently was a weak spot for Schlamuffen. How does it scream Deus ex Machina if it was explained by her vision? The sword having a mind of its own also isn’t necessarily a weak point, as long as they explain why it did that in a later episode.
excellent episode indeed….
I really wish we could see more of Colio and Shiron . . .*sniff* I don’t care if it’ll be anime original . . .I want more of them *_*
From wikipedia:
A deus ex machina is a plot device in which a person or thing appears “out of the blue” to help a character to overcome a seemingly insolvable difficulty.
Sunlight – it literally came out of the blue skies. 😛
Colio, coming out of the blue(how did he know where to find Segal anyway?), interrupting Segal’s and Hamyuts, then being able to get near Segal -with the help of the very convenient ray of light- then stabbed Segal is not very consistent with his character and the of the sword’s ability.
Hell, the sword, on it’s own, can deflect Hamyuts swift attacks with ease, it can throw a body through air. Again, why wasn’t it able to stop the knife? Because of the sunlight? The sword doesn’t have eyes to be blinded, that excuse won’t count, so the outcome of the fight pretty much came out of nowhere.
The cure coming from elsewhere besides Shiron’s book I can accept, if only this episode had bothered to explain where it came from, as the disease was an important part of the story. A couple of sentences would have help cleared that up.
Is Colio really dead!?.. “¡I did see the chapter!” don’t they turn into stone books when they die!? “he didn’t turn into a book!”
MarceK:
Sunlight – When the storm was over, the cloud were blown away and sunlight came out.
Colio – In Shiron’s book, she told him to go to the place that “the precious person who lost his/her precious one”. Hamyuts and Segal was fighting where the human bomb took the food vendor’s life. The precious person (the prostitute) lost her precious one (the food vendor)
That sword reacted only when his bearer was able to. When his bearer was hindered by the sunlight, it couldn’t function properly.
The cure and all the things above didn’t mention properly in the anime but they did in the novel.
The production team is too rush to make you feel they are “out of the blue”.
Actually, with the main setting a library it doesn’t surprise me that they managed to find the cure. It’s not like Shiron made a secret of it when she eventually made it public.
Interesting ep, but what’s with killing off Colio? They had something very nice going there with the love story that transcends time between Colio and Shiron.
Still so many questions to be answers. Who’s that old man that extracted Sagel’s book? and why did Volken take off? Everything feels a bit disconnected.
Every detail was actually well foreshadowed and explained. Nothing came out of the blue, it just felt like it did because it all worked out so beautifully.
1) Every book fragment Colio has read has given him a hint about how to defeat Shigal. First, he was told that when the wind quit blowing he was to run to battle. Then he was told where to go, “the place where the precious one [the girl with the disease] lost her precious one [her husband].” That girl had previously mentioned she had a cat named Calico, which was an idea Shiron gave her through the book. That tipped off Colio to go visit her, which gave him the last book fragment he needed, which would basically help him tie everything together. First he finds out that there is two-way communication between Shiron’s books and those reading them, due to her ability to foresee the future because the girl and her husband had been talking to Shiron. He learns that Shiron was talking specifically to him, that she was in love with him, that she loved him for this moment when he rises up just like he fell in love with her when she finally rose up against Wizakh. She tells him something like he will charge into battle with a knife. So he now knows When : when the storms stops, Where: the field where the food vendor was killed, How: using the knife. He does so, and charges Shigal just as the sun blinds him. Hamyuts then flings a stone, which Schlamuffen deflects, and with Schlamuffen occupied with Hamyuts stone, and Shigal blinded by the sun and confused by the windmill which Hamyuts deflected stone knocks over and which also knocks Schlamuffen out of Shigal’s hands, Colio is able to sink his knife into Shigal’s chest before being killed by the falling rubble. Schlamuffen can’t defend against him because unlike before because what allowed Schlamuffen to “act on its own” before was Shigal’s fear, anger and strong desire for Hamyut’s death. Here Shigal hasn’t longed to kill Colio forever like he has Hamyuts, and can’t really form a proper thought because he is disoriented by everything going on and it all happens so fast.
Finally, the man who takes the book from Shigal’s body is the same guy that kept giving Colio just the right book fragments to make things fall into place, and who has also visited the library. He wasn’t Shigal’s co-conspirator, but rather someone manipulating events for his own reasons. The book he took from Shigal’s body was Shigal’s book, not the Shiron fragment with the cure. He obviously wanted Colio to win this fight, I think because he wanted Hamyuts to finish “her story” before she dies because he wants the book that will create. He says something like that. Obviously he then would want her to have the cure. Then, he sells or gives Shigal’s to the old man from the Church of Drowned God or whatever who was Shigal’s co-conspirator in the very first episode. The book-thief is clearly someone with a lot of knowledge and an agenda all his own who is manipulating pretty major events for whatever reason. Anyway, that should tie up all the seemingly loose ends, and show how the weren’t actually loose. Sure, its all a little too neatly tied together to be realistic, but isn’t that part of what we love in a good story? That elegance of events that transcends the mundane world we live in and provides meaning and pattern to form a perfectly woven tapestry. That seems to be how we judge whether or not the ending of a story is satisfying.
oh btw Hamyuts killing off everybody on the train is totally in character. That’s Volken’s issue with her: Hamyuts has no qualms at all about killing innocents, she decieved Volken and the rest in the first ep and blew up all those meats. I think she believes “the ends justifies the means” kind of thing. And if this show can explore her position and Volken’s intelligently, and with some original insights into an argument we’ve seen in anime before, in the same way they have done everything else in this series so far, we really could have a classic on our hands. Or it could turn into Volken’s Cheesey Angst-Fest…To early to tell, but so far, I’m quite impressed because of this episode.
I think the train is actually a cargo train
I dislike Shiron very much because she doesn’t value her life. It seems that she intentionally put all the blame on herself to get executed.
I personally disdain these type of characters who don’t value life. Shiron is a really crappy human compared to Aya of 1 litre of tears who value life and think life is beautiful even though she has an uncurable disease.
I’m really surprised how far the show got in just 4 episodes. It felt like..this was supposed to be the end, but no, lots of episodes left over. XD This is so awesome.
This series is okay so far, but I have a question. Where did Volken runaway to in the end? He just stole the plane for what?