Short Synopsis: Ringo and Ouji get separated.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Okay, so either this series got its timeslot shifted to Tuesday somehow, or the Thursday timeslot went into a hiatus and the Tuesday timeslot didn’t. Anyway, about the episode: CasshernXLyuze: you were right. Casshern and Lyuze are indeed the main couple of this series. The final few minutes of this episode were wonderful, as they showed that Lyuze finally accepts that she can’t kill Casshern if he has the potential to get rid of the destruction, and Ringo realizes that she belongs with Ouji. Oh, and the surprise guest at the end of the episode only made things better. 🙂
Regarding the rest of the episode, Dio and Leda are my two least favourite characters of this series, so it didn’t rank among the highlights of the series for me. I’m not sure why, but they just aren’t as likable as the rest of the cast, and I hope that the second half of the series is going to change that. Right now, all signs point to the direction that Dio isn’t going to stupidly chase after Casshern anymore, and I really want the guy to develop and turn into someone completely different, and with a bit of luck Luna is going to make sure of that. The same goes with Leda.
In any case, the arrival of Luna is definitely going to make the second half of this series incredibly different from the first half. I’m not sure whether this was actually THE Luna, but nevertheless the despair of the early episodes will be turning into hope. Whether Luna is real or not doesn’t matter, but she is going to have a very big placebo effect on humans and robots alike.
Oh, and this episode finally showed the real new ED of the series: the previous episodes merely showed an insert song. While the song still isn’t exactly of my taste, the visuals are still awesome as ever.
casshern moved to a sunday airtime…its been on youtube for days.
I started watching the raw on zomganime, but the video had no audio. At first, I thought it was just one of those dramatic effect things, but I quickly realized that was not the case. I just closed the window… but after reading your post, I just had to see it.
It’s pretty obvious to begin with. I just don’t know why nobody else seems to see it.
SPOILER ALERT
But you know what’s just weird about that scene in which Casshern, Lyuze, and Friender were walking away? They, like, practically just left behind a wounded old man and a child there, and with the robots who assaulted them still around (I think). What the hell’s up with that? Seeing Casshern have his arm around Lyuze was of course a treat, but leaving Ringo and Ohji behind like that was just plain unbecoming of them.
Or… Maybe, finally getting close to Lyuze made Casshern forget about everything else? And maybe Lyuze has been waiting for it all along as well. It all makes sense now. 😀
Speaking of Ohji and Ringo, I’ve always wondered what the former’s gonna do in case they run into some trouble. Now I know.
I guess I was also right in saying that Lyuze and Leda are “destined” to go up against each other, but I didn’t expect that a confrontation between them is what would bring Casshern and Lyuze closer to each other. Lyuze has been made out to be a “strong female” type, that, while I wanted to see Casshern rescue her or come to her aid, I’ve never really expected it to happen. But then, one of the strengths of this series is the unpredictability of the twists and turns in its storyline.
SPOILER ALERT
The Luna at the end kinda gives me the impression that she’s a robot or something.
I’m guessing it’s still “Aoi Kage”? I think, one thing the fansubbers (or any uploader, for that matter) could do is to put the old ending song over the new visuals. I think that would work out well, and I doubt anyone’s gonna complain (except maybe for some people in the production).
Speaking of the ending, I wonder if I’m also gonna be right in thinking that Braiking Boss and Luna were intended as a couple in this series?
Well seeing as Luna is there it makes Lyuze’s revenge point totally moot anyways.
As for Leda and Dio, well I was more interested in Leda anyways than Dio. Dio always just seemed like a jealous psychopath, who probably didn’t get special treatment which Casshern may have basked in. Leda was more interesting in that she so far the sanest and most ambitious arguably, still planning ahead, and she’s pulling the string with Dio. I’m not so much interested in how Dio will develop with Luna but with how Leda will react with all these things that may hamper her ambition for an empire. Perhaps, she may just be more capable than she lets out, we’ve yet to see her berserk mode in the first place.
But noone’s even sure that’s the real Luna. And from what I understand, what Lyuze primarily wanted was to honor her sister’s “last wish” (by killing Casshern) – it doesn’t matter whether Luna’s alive or not. I don’t know if she’s over that now though. I have yet to watch the subbed.
Now that you’ve mentioned it, it does seem like Casshern and Dio would rather be in the other’s place. While Casshern may have been getting “special treatment” in Dio’s eyes, Casshern may very well be thinking that Dio’s better off.
I am so glad that the new ED is this song and not the previous one, I really didn’t like the one playing last time.
Maybe I’m just a Leda fan but that woman really is ranking up to be a better schemer for me, fact that she actually thinks before she acts such as her choice of using Lyuze as bait is pretty good. I’m still thinking she may just be last boss material, unless Dio from the looks of it may just start to change as he realizes more and more that its Leda whose been doing everything like raising an army.
Luna part at the end was a shocker, but again we have nothing to say that she’s 100% the same Luna considering that the primary witness Dune went mad believing she’s dead. Well we do get a better answer to this next episode since its Dune again, perhaps we may just get our answer. Yet, I am more than doubtful of this Luna considering on episode 11 from Margo it doesn’t sound like she plans to save the robots, she after all advocated for the ruin of the city and found it beautiful. Adding to that with the previous episode, considering that a robot said he took her treatment but still ended up ruined makes me doubt she can heal. So if that’s a grasp of how this Luna is well it puts a lot of doubt.
Interesting note by Braiking boss, it seems he’s more or less aware of how the ruin works in that he knows how it may speed up, based on his comment with Ringo. I wonder more and more the nature of the ruin, as to why some ruin and others don’t. The ruin is becoming more and more of a question to me.
The series is definitely picking up now that all major players are out. I just can’t wait to see how they’ll all interact with one another, now Casshern has completed his party of Lyuze and Friender (I wonder if anybody else would join Dune would seem too far off but Jin seems plausible).
Another long one…
I’ve just seen the subbed vid and this episode is just amazing. The continuity from the previous episode wasn’t so good though. First, I think they should have shown Casshern pulling out his hand from his chest, so that the viewer would know at what point Casshern decided to stop trying to kill himself and more or less what he’s thinking at that moment. Second, it just doesn’t make sense how Lyuze and Ohji could possibly let Casshern and Ringo wander off like that in the first place.
Well, this episode has some pretty cool lines from the male cast – Braiking Boss, Dio, then Casshern. It also turns out that Braiking Boss and Dio aren’t that “evil” at all. I’m beginning to think that Leda may turn out to be the actual villain of the series. Or maybe something or someone connected to her in some way, but is yet to be revealed. But then again, there’s also “that Luna”…
The best part of this episode however is the development between Casshern and Lyuze. It’s not exactly what I hoped for or expected, and I wouldn’t say it’s better, but it’s also okay. I guess I was expecting Lyuze to have “softened up” a lot more when it happens, and that she would have somewhat looked past Casshern’s crimes (especially after Braiking Boss’ revelations in the previous episode), but no; she’s still saying the same things. Of course, as I’ve also noted before, she could just be saying things like that – which makes this episode all the more like episode 06. And as with then, we all know very well that she cares about Casshern a lot more than she’s showing.
On a better note, this episode finally shows how concerned Casshern really is about Lyuze. His reaction to Leda’s rhetoric says a lot about what Lyuze really means to him. Even when I’ve watched it “muted”, I could tell a lot from the expression on his face alone. “A picture is worth a thousand words”, I guess.
By the way, I stand corrected. It turns out that my computer had an audio device problem. I didn’t check, but the raw on zomganime should’ve been perfectly fine. They have the subbed now, and that’s where I’ve just watched it.
CASSHERNxLYUZE I think regarding Lyuze I doubt she’d end up being romantic, in the sense that she’s open about how she feels and openly acts upon it. In any case she’s still pretty much conflicted, though I think its pretty obvious that things may be headed for her to develop feelings but as I said I doubt she’d be open about them just doesn’t seem like her character.
As for continuity, well lets face it this show is going for a somewhat experimental style towards breathing life to the franchise, after all its difficult to really capture the magic of the original given that the audience is totally different and so is the vision of the director from the original. I any case I don’t really mind the lack of continuity since one way or another I think its the fun of the show to connect dots, kinda like in Kaiba its not advisable to be such a passive audience in watching the show. (Geez we’re such long posters for this show XD)
I agree with what you said about Lyuze. I realized earlier (while composing the draft for my blog post about the first episode) that she has consistently been keeping a wall between herself and Casshern since the beginning. But I don’t think she’s that conflicted anymore. I think she has already realized that Casshern isn’t fully responsible for the things she has been blaming him for, but she just needs to have someone to hold accountable for the death of her sister. In other words, she just cannot let the death of her sister go unavenged and she needs to have someone to blame for it.
But her sister being in the new ending might be a sign that Lyuze is going to get in touch with her again in some way, and maybe find some kind of closure from it that doesn’t require or involve killing Casshern.
I’m not referring to the continuity from the original series. You probably missed that argument I had with Solaris back in episode 10. What I’m talking about is the continuity between episodes 13 and 14.
I was referring to the lack of establishing shots or scenes of additional info to strengthen continuity between scenes, or shots. That is what I comment by connecting the dots, IE remembering previous episodes or attention to shots, in any case with or without the small details of continuity I think its still quite easy to trace what happened if one still recalls scenes vividly.
And of course this is why I say its more experimental than other revivals or remakes, take Toward Terra, in that its not linear entirely linear in story telling. Course not everyone may like it, but I don’t think it would mar the show’s quality much since its pretty easy to connect dots to previous scenes.
Leda is Evita Peron to Dio’s Juan Peron. It’s a classic characterization. 😛
I doubt Casshern and Lyuze are that romantic yet, but Lyuze knows now who to side with. And since she heard of Luna’s death second-hand, I guess she might want to see it out with Casshern to find out the truth.
But between her and Leda in a fight, it looks like she won’t stand up to Leda.
And why is Braiking Boss always smiling? 😛
She got blindsided. So far, she’s got beaten twice; both by “Casshern-types”, and in both cases, “sucker punched”. Leda, on the other hand, lost to an arguably inferior model in a fair and actual fight that she herself started.
I was thinking Braiking Boss’ smile may have been a feature taken from the design of the original Braiking Boss, but after checking what the Braiking Boss in both the original series and the OAV looked like, that apparently isn’t the case. Maybe it’s also a characterization? Of the Mona Lisa?
@ Machi:
Sorry, I apparently overlooked your last comment. Just saw it now. But just as well, I was going to say something relevant to what we’re talking about.
Well, yeah, I know what you mean. But the thing with this episode is that… I don’t know. Let’s put it this way. Remember psgels’ post about Ep. 13? When he said that he doesn’t know what the cliffhanger is for? Not only there was a cliffhanger; but there was also a build-up of Braiking Boss’ character, and some intro to Casshern’s past and origin. And then, there’s also the relationship between Casshern and Ringo, and a possible connection between Ringo and Luna…
I guess, I was expecting the writers of the show to follow through with the things that have already been established at the end of Ep. 13. I think that’s only sound storytelling. But what happened was they completely trashed all of that and started off Ep. 14 with an entirely different mood. I guess, if I were to use your “connect-the-dots” analogy, it’s like connecting a round dot to a square dot.
now lyuze can get down to her real job! makin babies! but wait, robot + human = ???? = profit! ?