Once again, Saiunkoku continues to stun me with some amazing episodes and plot developments. I do admit that the struggles within the Sa-clan dragged on a bit, but the current arc more than makes up for it. I can’t believe how awesome Shuurei is when she’s determined. (On a side-note: only now I noticed that Shuurei still wears the make-up that she received from Kochou).
So, in the last episode, it seemed that the cause was somehow spread through the snow foxes into the water-system, and the disease wasn’t contagious. In this episode, we finally get to know the truth about the disease: it’s caused by the bugs that live on the snow-fox. People swallow them while drinking the water, and the bugs start to take over the human body.
The only cure: manually removing it by cutting into the human body. This is where the problem lies, though: nobody of the palace-medical team knows how to do this. And this is where the strange guy we’ve been seeing with Sho Taishi comes into the picture: he actually was the doctor who took care of Shuurei when she was sick, and he turns out to be a legendary medic who knows how to properly cut into the human body. He then agrees to go with Shuurei to the Sa-province, along with the medical staff from the palace, with whom he spends the rest of the episode teaching how to properly cut into the human body (I know there has to be some kind of special word for this, but I just can’t seem to remember it), by practicing on a pig.
If this wasn’t already enough, we also get to know why Doushu’s death means Eigetsu’s death: Doushu died once already. Yougetsu then put half of Eigetsu’s soul inside Doushu, so that he could remain alive. Apparently, this only kept him alive for about six or seven years, before this part of the soul died along with Doushu. Now that Eigetsu has lost half of his soul, I can imagine that he can’t live without it.
I’m glad to say that I actually understood the first half of the episode quite clearly. The second half… however, was a different story. I know that Shuurei went to a department to ask permission for something, but which department that was, and what she needed from them still remain a big mystery to me. Shuurei also exits the episode with the message that she only has one job left to do, and I do wonder what that job might be…
It’s interesting how you can compare the pacing of Saiunkoku Monogatari with Les Miserables. With both shows, you just know some things are definitely going to happen. With Les Miserables, it’s for example Fantine’s death and Jean, revealing his own identity, while for Saiunkoku Monogatari it’s for example the scene where Eigetsu either dies or gets saved somehow, and the revelation of who the mysterious Li Senya actually is. With both shows, these scenes are definitely going to happen, and with both shows, you won’t be able to predict exactly when these moments will come. It can be the next episode; it can also take five more episodes. That’s another thing I love about both of these series.]]>
Author: psgels
Death Note – 31
Okay…
I didn’t see that coming…
You know, that new plot twist was quite good, and surprising as well. I never thought that Light would give away the only Death Note he had left to someone he didn’t even know personally. I suspect that he’s found a way to continuously keep touching either a couple of pages torn out of it or just a snippet, but the fact does remain that he doesn’t have the faith of the world in his own hands anymore.
Especially Misa shocked me. She’s horrible when she’s not serious, but when she gets involved with serious events she turns out very interesting. I can’t believe she’s just returned to a regular housewife like this. And suddenly, she wrote herself out of the show. We probably won’t see any major role from her until after the aftermath, or something.
Still, I’m glad that Light finally made another move like this, that is risky but brilliant at the same time. I can’t believe he actually believed that he’d get Near with the plan he came up in the previous episode. Even when Near didn’t have the possession of such an amount of money, or even if he didn’t manage to contact the police, he just could have used a secret underground stairway, or some kind of helicopter and Misa would’ve never seen his face. Luckily, when he realized that Near actually got away Light fortunately got a bit back to earth, and finally acknowledged Near as an enemy he should take serious. Near’s going to have a hard time proving that Light will be Kira with the notebook gone.
Also, we’ve got a new hair-colour: green! I think that this shows that Aizawa is on neither’s side. I do wonder what he’ll do from now on, after Mikami killed everyone on Demegawa’s show. After all, Light could never have known the names of the people Demegawa selected, since they were shown on TV for the first time.]]>
Ooedo Rocket – 07
Okay… whoa at the cliff-hanger of this episode. I never imagined Akai to be the person behind the serial murders, but it makes perfect sense now. The other beast from the sky was the one who killed the first ones, though when she was hurt and unable to, she made Akai take over her role. This is pretty easy to do, especially with a person like Akai.
The real meat of the episode was a bit disappointing though. I especially expected something better, seeing as it’s focused on Shinza, who was really funny in the first episode. Even though there was one hilarious scene in the episode, where everyone considers him dead, while he’s actually right in front of them and Ginjiro freaks out. In the rest of the episode, though, he went berserk in some kind of predecessor of modern mechas, which wasn’t very funny or deep, unfortunately.
There’s a bit of development on Sora’s and Seikichi’s side as well, when Seikichi finally understands that Sora really is from the sky after she saves Shinza from the berserking mecha. This wasn’t anything special, though. I do hope that the next couple of episodes introduce some fresh meat in this series, because I do feel that the formula is getting old, unfortunately.]]>
Claymore – 07
To be honest, this episode was quite good, but I’m not too sure about Priscilla. Not only is her character even more annoying than Raki, she also came from nowhere, as this anime portrayed it. I liked Irene, and Noel and Sophia also work well with her, but there’s something I just don’t like about Priscilla.
I think it’s the fact that she got her powers just a bit too easily. Power comes with with experience, and she looks more like one of these shounen-heroes who suddenly got hold of an incredible power. I would have liked to see her at fourth or fifth place at this point, so that we could really see her develop a bit more, as her character definitely is interesting.
I’m also interested about the next episode. There are going to be two possibilities: Teresa dies, or she lives, but she continues to hide herself. I actually do hope that Teresa is going to kill Priscilla, but that probably won’t happen. I can see her become some kind of major antagonist later on. Something’s telling me her devotion to the right is going to have a major smack in the head somewhere in the future.
I’m wondering, though… why don’t Noel and Sophia appear in the OP?]]>
Wellber no Monogatari ~ Sisters of Wellber – 07
You know, I’m really beginning to warm up to Wellber no Monogatari, as strange as it may seem and despite its obvious flaws. The current episode was extremely silly, probably the silliest of the entire series so far, but I just loved it. I don’t know why, but every week I’m really anxious to check out the next episode of this series.
The episode starts out serious enough when Rita’s brother confronts his father about how he doesn’t do anything to ensure his daughter’s safety. He then starts carrying out a strange magical ritual, if I’m not mistaken it’s to find out the future of the country of Wellber.
The rest of the episode is basically one big treasure hunt when Rita’s scroll gets stolen. To give a short summary, a thief first tricks Rita and Tina into thinking he’s from the border-guard and steals their money and the scroll. He sees the scroll as useless so he throws it away into a hay carriage. A crow then comes and picks it up. After a fierce battle between this crow and Sherry, it drops it in a tree. Rita then gets it, but the branch she’s standing on breaks and she falls into a post office, onto a pile of letters and scroll-tubes. Then villagers who mistook their treasure-hunt to be a real treasure hunt rampage, but they eventually get scared away by Bergerac. In the end, it appears that Rita put the scroll in her suitcase, so the whole chase had been for naught.
This hunt by itself wasn’t the thing that made this episode great; it was the reaction of the different characters to all of it that I absolutely loved. Tina was just awesome; you just have to love her facial expressions and gestures during the entire episode.
Also, Sherri finally is a bit useful for something when she starts chasing the crow. It was quite awesome though, seeing a fight between two such small creatures. Tina also missed with her gun, when she tried to shoot this crow down. I loved it how this came back later in the episode when the scroll-case is stuck in the tree and Rita doesn’t trust her shooting-skills anymore. ^^;
The episode ends with Rita’s brother, realizing that Sangatras is planning to invade Wellber. This scene definitely shows promise for the future episodes, as I do suspect that now Rita is out of Wellber, her journey didn’t suddenly become a lot easier. The next episode should get back on track when Galahad returns, but that doesn’t mean that this episode was useless. While the plot went nowhere fast, some good character-development and fleshing out did happen. I do hope that some fansubbers start actively subbing this series, as it really deserves it in my opinion.]]>
El Cazador de la Bruja – 07
You know, at one point, I didn’t really like this episode, for obvious reasons (fanservice, a rather annoying Lilio). But when the episode finished, I do admit that I left it with a good feeling. It’s a typical example of an episode which was good and annoying at the sane time.
The thing I like about El Cazador is that each episode has some kind of semi-hidden meaning behind it. Every episode shows a certain character who is special in one sort of way, and it shows how Ellis and Nadie relate and react to this character. The character of this episode: Lilio. The difference with the previous episodes was, though, that we didn’t delve into her background. We never get to know anything about who she is. Instead, the episode spends its time fleshing out her character.
With a shower- AND pool-scene less then five minutes apart from each other, this had to become annoying. But these scenes did show one thing: Lilio and Ellis are very similar when they’re together. At one point, they’re both waiting for their companions, they’re both getting enthusiastic when someone similar to their companions comes close, and they both remain enthusiastic when they realize they’ve got the wrong person.
For Ellis, this was obvious, since she likes to imitate people, and Nadie never told what she was going to do (this time, she just went to get some cash from Blue-eyes to pay for the hotel they’ve been staying in). But Lilio raises lots of questions. Why doesn’t she get lonely while she waits for her father? Why does she always smile? Why can’t she talk? Why would her father take her along on a dangerous mission like this one, and heck, why would he leave the girl unguarded? Does Lilio know what her father is doing, and if she does, then why doesn’t she mind?
Also, I LOVED LA. Not only did he kiss Ellis in the previous episode, he also cut off a piece of her hair and turned this into a straw doll. His obsession is really getting freakier by the minute, and now it seems that he’s a walking killing-machine with that string of his. Still, who does he work for I wonder? All I know for sure is that Rozenberg has possession of the videos the guy makes, so why does he want to have the guy removed from the scene? It seems now that LA indeed is acting on his own, but if that is the case, then I do wonder how Rozenberg got a hold of his videotapes…
The question also remains: what did Ricardo did to LA after knocking the guy unconscious? Obviously, the guy will wake up with quite a headache (Ricardo did this in quite an original way, actually. I never recall seeing someone getting knocked out when a gun is shot too close to his ears), but I do suppose that Ricardo didn’t just leave LA’s body afterwards. It’s a bit strange for his mission to just knock the guy out and just leave afterwards.]]>
Bokura no – 06
I just don’t know how to start this entry… it just was so… disturbing. Bokura no is just grabbing me like no other series this season, and at this point, it’s become my personal favourite of all the anime I’m currently watching. You can really see that the same mangaka for Narutaru worked on this, and Narutaru already was amazing.
This episode can be best described by a quote from Takami: “if we do find him, what should we do?” Isao had been missing since the previous episode, and it’s only natural for the others to try and find him. Yosuki, Takami, Moji, Chizuru, Aiko and Yoko did, at least. I’m not sure about the others. Jun probably didn’t care enough, and Kana didn’t have something to tag along with. Kanji has shown that he’s got a relaxed personality, so he probably doesn’t worry too much, which is probably why he didn’t come. Daiichi feels a bit distant from the group, somehow, which could explain why we didn’t see him. I’m not sure where Maki and Mako went, though. I can see Mako being too shy to come, but Maki did show in the previous episode that she definitely cares about everyone.
Anyway, this pretty much is a Chizuru-episode, in which she tries to find Isao, who has been turned crazy by the premonition that he’s going to die. I kept wondering how he’d pilot Zearth in a state like his, but this episode showed that he’s probably one of the few to actually die without having piloted Zearth when Chizuru kills him after he tried to assault her.
The only bad point about Bokura no that I can really think of is that we just know that Chizuru will be the next pilot. While it would be awesome to see someone else in the pilot’s seat, she’s the only one whose background is fleshed out enough for it. Still, I loved how Chizuru blamed herself for killing Isao, and that she didn’t try to find some kind of excuse.
Another thing I just realized is that the OP indeed shows little blurbs of what’s to come. I really noticed it after watching this episode, as it shows both Chizuru and Isao in the aquarium, and I actually recognized these scenes. Based on this, I’m especially curious as to what Yoko’s scene means, when she stands in front of a burning city.]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 19
Quite an interesting episode this time, it centres on Jean and Cosette, trying to leave the safe but heavily guarded monastery-ground. It was really meant to bring Cosette and Jean even closer together. The plan indeed was to smuggle Jean out of the grounds by transporting him in a coffin, about to be buried, but the problem was Cosette: she didn’t fit in along with him, so she went ahead of him in a bag of apples, carried by the salesman.
It’s quite interesting, the Fantine-arc had Cosette as main character, but the cat-and-mouse arc currently has Jean as the main one. Still, Cosette does remain my favourite character, and this episode definitely proved this yet again, when she found out that she was getting left behind again. The symbolic value of Jean’s return at the end of the episode was huge, since he actually did something her mother didn’t: come back to her. I’m eagerly awaiting Cosette to take up the role of main character again, though I think that Jean also is going to turn out very interesting in the next couple of episodes. 🙂
Seeing Jean’s plan nearly getting screwed up also was quite amusing to see, though. It seems that the merchant also works as a gravedigger (which does explain why he could come up with such a plan, and why he’s allowed on the monastery’s grounds, even though it’s inhabited by nuns), so he planned to actually break up Jean’s coffin when everybody was away, and he was supposed to bury the body alone, or with an ally, or someone he could trust. So, what happens? The merchant screws up with the schedules, and another guy shows up, who actually doesn’t know anything. Letting him know the plans at such a point also wouldn’t be the brightest idea, as the guy will probably freak out when he hears and tell anyone in his innocent fears. Because of this, Jean nearly suffocates before the merchant finds an excuse to send the guy away. ^^; This episode definitely had an unusual focus, especially for an anime, especially the merchant and the things he’s put through you’ll never see in another anime again, and even though it doesn’t beat some of the episodes when Cosette was still with the Thenardiers, I couldn’t help but love it.]]>
FREEDOM – 03
Even after its third instalment, FREEDOM still doesn’t fail to entertain, and yet again, it leaves us with another powerful climax. This probably is strengthened even more by the ED. The best OPs and EDs, in my opinion, don’t just consist of good songs, but also contribute to the anime they belong to. Mushishi, for example, just went on with its peaceful mood even when the ED set in. The OP for Wellber no Monogatari is a perfect introduction, which captures the essence of the anime quite nicely. It’s so much better than these OPs which feature flashes of each different protagonist just because they have to, or the EDs, whose only purpose is to show the credits.
The goal of this episode: send Takeru to Earth. Pretty straightforward, and it’s handled quite decently. He managed to escape from these strange robots we saw in the previous episode, barely avoiding suffocation, though. And I finally realize how important Alan is in all this. He took in the citizens who didn’t want to live in Eden. If I’m not mistaken, he called it Freedom, hence the title of this anime. Because he helped Takeru, though, he endangered it, and the citizens of Freedom are threatened to be retrained and turned into proper Eden Citizens. Still, he does manage to give Takeru instructions on how to use one of the escape rockets that were in the original version of Eden.
One thing I also like about this anime: it knows what it wants to be. It doesn’t try to introduce any needless side-quests in order to impress its viewers, it just wants to tell the story of Takeru, and how he unravels the mysteries around earth. That’s one of the advantages of being an OVA: you can’t waste time on needless fillers. So far, things have been very believable, with only a few botches, like the fact that when you slowly drive a car, it uses less fuel than when you race at full speed, and the fact that Tairo was very lucky to have run into Takeru like that. Apart from that, it avoided some major pitfalls, and it actually made the fact that Takeru got lifted off in the end plausible and believable. The solution for the food-source also was pretty nice, although I do wonder why people would leave a box full of instant-noodles in a place like that. XD
What also surprised me was how Kazuma ended up being left behind, while Bis, who was reluctant to go ended up going. Taira also was great when he tried to help Takeru get his way. Without him, Takeru probably would’ve failed, and I love how the rivalry between the two of them ended up. ^_^]]>
About
here. Regarding the content on my blog, most posts will be episodic, with either a summary, commentary or a combination of these two, depending on my mood. Occasionally, though, I do tend to write special features. These are the most important ones: Some quick first impressions: At every season, I try to watch the first episode of as many series as possible, before deciding which are good and which aren’t. Most of these episodes don’t really provide enough material for one post, but when I combine three series, and provide a small blurb about my opinion, it works out quite well. Monthly Summaries: I watch more than just she shows I blog, and that’s one of the reasons I write up a summary at the end of every month about all the shows I managed to see, ranking them from worst to best. It’s also meant to list the new anime that have been announced in the past month and the individual episodes I enjoyed the most. Anime Reviews: Inspired by Anime Academy. Before I started this blog, I was already an avid reader of the reviews provided at that site, and some of the writers have amazing writing skills. I just tended to disagree with their opinions way more often than not, so I decided to write my own. Most of the site here is filled with spoilers, but for the Reviews and the Monthly Summaries, I try to stay away from any major revelations. Some quick second impressions: Basically a spoof of the quick first impressions. When I want to really say something about a show I’m not blogging, I use this category. Up till now, these turned out to be eiter underrated or overrated series.]]>