Category: Crystal Blaze

I’m still surprised at how solid this series has turned out. It keeps interesting things on the table, while not forgetting to provide background on its different characters. No character feels useless. This episode continues to create a good base for the second half of this series to work with. It’s the least eventful episode so far, but instead the characters get some extra attention. Even the bad guys get a surprisingly large amount of screen time. They’re still flat at this point, but there’s good potential for them to actually develop at the end.

My favourite character of this series so far surprisingly turned out to be Shu. He’s a strong character, he’s no idiot, and yet he doesn’t feel like an overpowered all-knowing action-hero. All the things he’s done up till now make sense. In this episode, he realizes he’s being observed by high-tech cameras at the scene where everything began. Due to the transvestite, he’s used to being observed, which sortof explains why he was able to notice them. Afterwards, he ends up being followed, and instead of going home and leading the enemy to Sara, he just fools around with as many women as possible.

Meanwhile, Manami and Ayaka are looking for an old classmate of Manami who now has turned into some kind of idol who happens to visit the town. They go past one of her other friends who became a guitarist who just made his debut. In the end, they find nothing about her. In the end, Akira finds her address because of how Ayaka wanted Manami to find her classmate. However, Manami refused the help of others earlier, saying how she wanted to find Yuuko (the classmate) on her own. She then gets angry at Ayaka, and then it turns out that Ayaka is indeed a person who gets hurt quite easily. Shu also rescued her from a bunch of punks once, which is probably why he took her in.

The doctor meanwhile gives Sara a strange potion that causes her arm to turn into glass at the end of the episode. Shows a lot of promise for the next episode! I’m also glad to see that Manami’s voice-actress is getting less and less annoying. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s something different and it does fit her naive and ambitious character quite well. She’s especially good in her quiet moments, when she isn’t screaming.

I’m really surprised with this series. At first look, it sounds more like a rather childish series with adult themes, but if you take a closer look, you’ll realize that this series is much more than that. I’m really surprised at how genuine this series has turned out, and I especially love the subtle chemistry between the characters. To be honest, I had my doubts about this series when I first saw the character-designs on the website, but this yet another example where you shouldn’t judge a series by its character-designs.

As a mystery-fan, I’m really glad at the large selection of mystery-series that 2008 has offered so far. I’ve said before that 2007 was rather disappointing in terms of mystery (the only series with really good mystery in my opinion were Dennou Coil and Bokura no, but these two turned out great because of other reasons than their mystery, especially compared to 2006, with Ergo Proxy, the first season of Higurashi and Night Head Genesis). That’s why I’ve got high hopes for Himitsu, Crystal Blaze and Kaiba, and Persona is getting better and better as well.

This episode of Crystal Blaze showed me how well it’s developing its mystery at the moment. This episode was an aftermath, and we hardly get any new information apart from a second glass girl, but this episode was mostly meant for the characters to catch up to all the questions that were raised in the previous episode, like how dangerous the enemies of this series are, and what kind of a strange woman Sara is, due to a constantly high body temperature of 42 degrees.

One thing I also like about this series is how the characters have a plausible reason to be involved in this story. We basically have a private investigation service that gets its jobs from a transvestite, and one of these jobs turns out to be a dangerous one. At the investigation-service, there’s one ambitious but naive intern, so obviously when she realizes that there’s an exciting job, she doesn’t want to abandon it and causes a huge scene (although I feel that nobody of the foursome is really willing to abandon Sara). It’s much better than all of those series that focus on teenagers who just happen to be on the wrong place at the wrong time by coincidence of have certain hidden powers that are just meant to get them involved in the series.

On a side-note: I feel pity for that voice-actor doing the dog’s voice, but he must be having the time of his life. 😛