Miran really likes killing people, but to learn that he already was plotting to take over the world at the age of five… That’s some hardcore bad guy.
In any case, I wonder what the creators intended to do by suddenly killing off a ton of different people who were conspiring against Shion: it’s either going to fuel the other anti-Shion people in the kingdom, or they intend to take care of them all at once. Either way, this episode was building up towards more international intrigue with those pink-haired people and all.
I’m still waiting for something to catch my interest, though. People keep saying that the second half of this series will be awesome, and I’m willing to wait for that. My main issue right now is that there are no characters that interest me left: there just are too many of them and they’re too similar. Even the humour between Ferris and Ryner is getting old. The best is probably Miran: I feel that if this guy develops, he can change into something great, as this episode hinted.
Perhaps I’m comparing this show too much to Guin Saga (which arguably did have a much better direction, and it did pull off a huge cast), but I’m not really feeling anything with this series at this point. At this point in the series, that’s nothing too disastrous, though, as there still is plenty of time for this series to redeem itself, though it is a bit of a chore to get through these episodes.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
This remains my favorite anime this season after (tied with?) Shiki. I love the gobs of political intrigue punctuated by bouts of humor and sinister undertones. Very well done, and very interesting. Sure, it doesn’t grab you by the balls every episode. It’s not supposed to, not here.
That’s the thing. This series is just a prologue which sets up events for the sequel. So there is too much time spend on character introduction and building up. But things should be starting to get serious soon as we are already halfway through the series
Well… After watching this episode I have to admit that things are slowly getting interesting. So far Miran is the most interesting character; I’d like to think of him as an Antihero with a good ideal, I’d hate if as the story progress he turns to be on the bad side, but given the so far linear format of the story, it seems that he is heading that way.
I’ve read some summaries of events that will happen in later novels and to be honest I wouldn’t be holding my breath if I were you. While it will get somewhat more interesting, you are bound to be disappointed if you expect the next Guin Saga here.
@anon:
Then again, I read the “summaries” of later events in Clannad/AS and dismissed it as boring drivel too. Then I actually watched the series and was blown away. To each his own, but do remember that summaries are often very poor distillations of the real draft.
Miran is probably my favorite character at the moment. The thing is, I’m worried they are going to turn him into a static two-dimensional character that doesn’t really develop or even worse some a bad guy that’s evil because he is evil (really bad writing for a villain, but seems relatively common).