Category: Pandora Hearts

Okay, so in this episode we continue where the previous episode left off, at which Oz and Alice end up returning in the middle of one of the Pandora council meetings, of all things. It was definitely fun to see the chaos that erupted from such a weird scenario, and this also allowed the proper introduction of Oz to the rest of the people from Pandora when Jack took over his body. That does leave the question of what he actually is, and if that was the real Jack, then what the heck was he doing in Cheshire Cat’s dimension, of all things?

But my favourite part of this episode was that we finally get to see a really different Break, now that Vincent pretty much screwed up his plans of getting to know what really happened at the tragedy of Sabrie. His hate and annoyance for Vincent is strangely adorable. At the same time, we finally get a bit of insight into Vincent’s intentions. Or at least, some of them: he kidnapped Sharon to prevent information about him being behind the tragedy of Sabrie from leaking out, but something tells me that his ambitions are far bigger than that.

There’s also this revelation that the leader of the Baskervilles turns out to be still alive, which for some reason is something that onnly Jack knows. My guess is that that guy is hanging around somewhere in the Abyss as well, and Oz was targetted by them because they believed that his powers could end up bringing him back, though that failed.
Rating: * (Good)

This series just continues its string of downright excellent episodes. This episode was much more about the characters than the mystery, but that’s also one thing that this series stands out at. The reunion between Oz and Alice was nothing short of adorable, and made the rather annoying cheese of a few months ago well worth it.

Alice, Gilbert and Oz work really well as a lead trio. All three of them try to fill in, for better or for worse, to fill in for each other’s flaws and weaknesses, and when you have such a setting as with this series to play with, it works really well.

We also learned something new about Break and his chain: it’s a chain, made to negate any influences from the Abyss, and so a chain made to hunt other chains, and for some reason this power is similar to that of Oz and B-Rabbit. This episode also reveals that Vincent is indeed trying to make Break do something: bring Alice’s memories to the real world. Since Break’s powers are very hard to beat in a fight, he indeed seems to have resorted to just manipulating the guy. This episode also showed that Break isn’t perfect, and flawed just like all the others. Now we just need to see some flaws of Vincent, but there’s no doubt that those are going to appear when we get a bit of a bigger look into his mind.

The end of this episode also had a nice little twist: why did the horse just take Alice and Oz with it, and leave Break and Gil behind in that collapsing dimension. Break was smiling, so there obviously had to be something else that saved them, but why was this so important for Sharon, and why the heck did she teleport them in the middle of a big meeting involving Oscar?

Also, I’ve stopped caring about the bad animation by now. This series just looks so damn good that I don’t mind the cut corners in the animation.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
An excellent character-based episode, after last week’s major plot twists.

What an amazing episode. It may have had a bad episode director, but even he couldn’t stop the awesomeness of this episode. The build-up in this episode was just perfect, and the revelations that were pulled were stunning. This series has a bit of a lull after Oz came back from the Abyss, but it’s really been getting better and better ever since!

So the Jack Bezarius of the previous episode was just a fragment of Alice’s memories; we have yet to find out what happened to the real bugger. I really thought that he was going to be one of the major bad guys in this series, but the complete opposite seems to be true, and he seemed pretty genuine in this episode.

But damn… to think that the tragedy at … was caused by Break, of all people. And Gil was there too?! For some reason, that tragedy caused them to plunge into the abyss, and return 100 years later (if I assume correctly, Break appeared 10 years before Gilbert; at the moment I can’t remember whether we saw him along with Sharon in episode 1). To make things even worse, one of them killed Alice, when she still was A NORMAL PERSON. Something then happened that not only turned Alice into B-Rabbit, but also created white Alice, and possibly even that Dark Alice that we saw in one of these shots… Alice then got plunged into the Abyss and remained there until Oz came along for who knows how many years.

Damn, I have to say that I’m impressed. Pandora Hearts is turning into a really well-crafted mystery-series. I really hope that Xebec is going to be smart enough to make a second season of this one, because it truly deserves it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
An awesome string of new developments and revelations.

Awesome episode! With all of the small hints to Alice’s past and all, the actual revelation of how deep it actually is really amazed me. This episode was full of awesomeness that further developed the mystery that’s going on, instead of just answering some of the lingering questions. After a small dip in the middle, this series sure as hell picked itself back up again.

And I really have to say, that with this episode Xebec has shown that they very well know how to animate an anime. Especially in the first half of the episode, there was lots of movement, and the entire episode was full of really good and creative camera-angles. Xebec really is a strange production company: a lot of their shows just aren’t good, with especially disasters like Kanokon and To Love-Ru going nowhere, and yet there are some of their series that are nothing like their usual series, or any other series for that matter. Hitohira had a unique chemistry between its main characters; I’m still looking for a series that managed to attain the same feel as The Third, and now Pandora Hearts does it again, with this really dark gothic fairy-tale like style that again I’ve never seen before.

The big revelation in this episode was that Alice erased her own past. She didn’t want to remember it, so she tore it up and had Cheshire Cat guard it, she just didn’t make sure to prevent Alice from trying to find out her own past. A hundred years apparently, something huge happened that somehow involved her getting betrayed by the one she loved (Jack Bezarius, to be exact), and blowing up an entire city. But still, where is B-Rabbit’s place in this? What does the white Alice have to do with all of this? How exactly is Jack Bezarius tied in with the rest of the Bezarius family?

And really, what the heck is Vincent Nightray up to? All this build-up was put into making him a huge villain, and yet this episode showed that he regards his relationship with Gil above anything. At the same time, he really seems to hate Vincent, as this episode showed Echo doing… something to Sharon while she was investigating what happened 100 years ago.

I also have to praise the amazing voice acting in this series. Especially Cheshire Cat’s actor was really good.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Lots of juicy revelations, gorgeous visuals, plus an awesome performance from Cheshire Cat.

Now this is Pandora Hearts! This definitely was my favourite episode of this series since episode two and three. We learned lots of new things about our characters, and the quiet moments were pure comedic gold. This episode really had the dark and gothic tone that originally made me fall in love with this series.

Break really showed a different side of himself when both he and Alice got captured by the Cheshire Cat (another Alice in Wonderland reference) and it showed that he isn’t perfect in his schemings. He too seemed to be bothered by some sort of dark alter ego that he didn’t know about, like Alice. I’m really curious now as to what was up with that. At the same time, why did the lair of the Cheshire Cat contain hints of Alice’s memories?

The lighter moments were also wonderful in this episode. I loved how Oscar completely appeared from out of nowhere, in front of the two boys he hasn’t seen in ten years. Or Break’s attempts at camouflage, or Gil’s obsession with his particular hat. There really is a huge value put to that hat: for some reason he’s really attached to it, and yet he leaves it with Oz when the two are apart. I’d love to see the full story behind it.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Lots of things happened, new developments and overall a really enjoyable episode.

Ah, finally it’s time for Raven to reveal how he ended up with the Nightray family. This episode mainly talks about his past, and again it was quite an enjoyable episode. But something is bothering me. Some of the comments on last week’s entry talked about how this chapter was supposed to be one of the best of the series, but I don’t really see why; there have been much more impressive episodes so far. This one felt more like a solid build-up. And besides, even if this was supposed to be the best part of the series, then what does that mean for the rest of the story?

Still, I was pretty surprised to learn that Vincent is Gilbert’s younger brother, that was pretty random. Another surprise is that he also seems to have made contact with a being called “Raven”, probably in an attempt to get Oz back. Which apparently failed since Oz found a way to get back on his own. It also turns out that Vincent isn’t like Break in that he doesn’t age. Instead, ten years ago he was just a child as well, which begs the question of who was with Alice when she was younger. My guess now would be Oscar.

This episode also marks the return of Oscar, which at least also answers the question of where he went, although I am still curious as to what happened to Oz’s father. It’s going to be interesting if the two of them ever got to meet each other again. I’m interested to see how this guy changed over the past ten years.
Rating: * (Good)
Not among this series’ highlights but a solid episode on Gilbert’s past nonetheless.

Muaha! Now this is more like it! I urge those who were unimpressed by the past few episodes to at least stick around until episode 10, because this episode really was heaps of times better. This episode really showed the power of this show’s scriptwriters, who really understand the characters they’re working with. I’m really glad to see that the building up is coming together!

This episode really was about Oz and his memories about his father, who clearly left a deep-seeded trauma on the guy. In this episode he in vain attempts to save the father of the little kid, even going against Alice and Gil in order to give the kid a good father, and yelling at the father for the horrible mistakes he made. The father tries to justify himself by saying that he killed all of those people for his son, in order to get his house and wife back, but OZ understands like no other that at this time, it simply would have been enough to spend time with him.

The animation also looked better than ever for this series. I especially loved Break’s evil grin at the end of this episode, where Vincent has made his formal introduction after shooting said father and Break lets him know that he doesn’t really like this in his own way. Still, everything in this episode was just pure goodness. It’s nothing like the cheese of a few episodes back: this was genuine drama that really came from the heart of OZ and Alice.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Such a genuine episode, where the build-up really comes together.

I must say, I like Echo a lot with this episode. Her antics are really fun to watch.

This episode also sheds a bit more light on the mysterious Vincent Nightray, who seems to be central to the plot’s mysteries. The guy looks a lot like the one that was with Alice when she was young, and for some reason he’s very interested to see the potential in either her grown up version or Oz himself. I have reasons to believe that he was the one who sent Break after Oz in the first place. There seems to be a lot going on in that Nightray family that’s being kept secret of us.

In any case, the rest of this episode showed Oz a situation he can relate to very much: fathers. Because he grew up with such a terrible father he really wishes for nobody to go through the same things as he did (speaking of which, what happened to that bugger in the past ten years anyway?). And sure enough, this features a kid who is about to lose his father to a monster of the Abyss. Yet again it’s an episode that’s meant to enforce the bond between Oz on one side and Gilbert and Alice on the other side, who both never had a parent in the first place (or can’t remember them anyway) and can’t relate to how much Oz wanted to have respect from his father.

Rating: * (Good)
Building up, but this show is still going strong.

Ah, now that most of the major questions that were asked in the first episodes have been answered, it’s time to start developing the characters, with the biggest issue being Oz’s parents. His situation was already pretty weird when he was still living a normal life, this episode reveals that he can’t even remember his father’s name, and on top of that we still have no idea what happened to them through the past ten years. There’s this on-going question of what exactly eh turned into when he was sent into that abyss and now that his clock started ticking he’s not going to last for a long while anymore.

On top of that, the creators continue to develop the bond between Oz, Raven and Alice. I noticed that whenever Raven leaves Oz, he leaves behind his hat. Not only does this hat look pretty good on Oz, but it also symbolizes how the two are going to stay together from now on, especially since Raven was separated for ten years from him. Raven may really be a bit too keen on protecting Oz because of this: he knew that Oz’s parent’s story is a bit of a taboo with him, though Alice on the other hand doesn’t seem to mind, since she only knows the strong side of Oz.

On a side-note though, one of the biggest reasons why I’ve seen people drop this show is because of the animation, which is something I don’t quite get. Sure, this series definitely doesn’t have the best animation this season, but what makes the animation bad enough to drop an otherwise excellent series? Especially since there’s much worse animation out there this season (Tayutama, anyone?)

Rating: * (Good)
Nice build-up; plus: Break was hilarious.

I’m not sure what exactly this series has done to only warrant very low quality releases like this, because after last week’s cheese the show really is as good as it once was, and it really deserves some files of higher quality. Ah well, while the cliff-hanger of the previous episode ended with a bit of an anti-climax, the rest of the episode really rocked.

It really was meant as an episode to strengthen the bonds between Oz and Gilbert, who distanced himself from Oz out of the fear that he might not have liked the way he changed, and Oz and Alice, who has been continuously wondering whether or not to trust Oz, especially now that he seems to have found his childhood friend back.

In the meantime we learn a bit about Alice’s past as well, which indeed seem to have taken place in the house of Bezarius. The person she once was with looks like another member of the Bezarius-family. A hint is given that we’ve seen the guy before, but I can’t exactly place my finger on when that happened. And we also learn that there’s another Alice, who my guess would be was either the one Oz met in the first episode, or responsible for Alice’s memory loss.

With this episode, the introduction now seems really over and the characters are established, so I’m curious to see what the real meat of the story will be about.

Rating: * (Good)
The cheese is gone, good character-development and the mystery got a little deeper again amount to a very enjoyable episode. Plus, that bunny looked awesome.