Category: Finished Series: Horror

Short Synopsis: Casshern is still alive but heavily damaged and Leda attempts to receive eternal beauty from Luna.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Whoa… the voice actors were really having the time of their lives in this episode. Seriously, there was a lot of screaming and moaning in this episode, but those scenes hit me really hard. In any case, it seems that my worries in the previous episode were just completely out of place: although I would love to run into a series some day in which the main protagonist dies before the final episode of the series, Casshern indeed still needs to do some things in this series. The huge beating up he received in the previous episode was meant for his character-development: he’s no longer a senseless killer, and also for some reason, his body’s regenerative abilities have declined a lot, although they’re still there.

And I’m really glad to see how Leda and Dio turned out. I remember noting about eight episodes ago how the two of them were my least favourite characters of this series, but now that they too have received their development, they too have really become part of the amazing cast of this series. This episode really was about the two of them, and worked really well. As Casshern demonstrated: Luna’s blood isn’t perfect. It’s not like you drink it and become immortal with the push of a button. In this episode, Leda only drinks a bit of her blood, though that doesn’t turn out to be enough for 100% regenerative abilities. Remember how Casshern needed to impale her chest in order to drink enough blood and the past two episodes showed that that still wasn’t enough to be purely immortal. I also think that the “immortal”-part of Casshern was just a rumour: Luna’s blood regenerates, but it doesn’t toy with life.

And it also turns out that not every robot is able to take the huge amounts of blood from Luna either. This episode shows that Leda just couldn’t take even a fraction of the blood that Casshern must have drunk from Luna. She doesn’t look dead, but that does explain why Casshern lost his memory: he too received the repercussions of drinking too much of her blood. It’s a bit hard to imagine how this would chain-react into the ruins, though. And I also think that Luna never gave her blood to Dune because he probably already had drunk too much of it, and giving him even more would only ruin him. Luna indeed isn’t a villain, but just someone who is incredibly tormented by her own powers.

But what does that mean for all of the robots who have been saved by Luna before? Did they simply drink a little bit of her blood, that would allow them to heal their wounds, but didn’t do much else? In that case, then it must mean that the robots who were hurting themselves like crazy were just ecstatic: they were too happy that their wounds recovered that they didn’t notice that new ones popped up.

Unfortunately, it really does turn out that this show has only 24 episodes, that means two episodes left. I’m really curious to see whether this series can pull off a great finale. It really has the potential for that, but series as Ghost Hound have shown that lots of build-up doesn’t necessarily mean a perfectly planned ending. At the very least, I want to see a satisfying explanation of where the ruin came from, and why it appeared when Casshern killed Luna. That coloured rock has probably something to do with it. Speaking of which, where the heck has Ouji hidden it?

Short Synopsis: Ouji returns.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I’m not getting my hopes up. I’m NOT going to get my hopes up this time. There is no way that this cliff-hanger is going to be real. This series is going to be one of the best things since sliced bread if Casshern DOES end up dead, but I’ve seen too many cliffhangers like this one in which the main character supposedly gets killed off before the final episode. The next episode is probably going to feature some kind of plot twist that is going to keep Casshern alive. It’s going to be an awesome one, that’s for sure, but as much as I’d like to hope for a series to kill off its main character before its final episode, it ain’t gonna happen.

But that’s enough ranting, because this still remains such an excellent series. In this episode, it becomes clear that Luna indeed is very different from your guardian angel. In the time before her supposed death, it was so bad that anyone who met her met with death. When Braiking Boss ordered to kill her, he basically ended up killing his own subordinates, it seems. Still, since Luna was seen as the sun, nobody seemed to either bother or notice. Still, Casshern for some reason wasn’t affected by her death-rays, he stabbed her, and got in touch with her blood, and that’s why he became immortal. Nothing to do with love, like I originally suspected. This however, still leaves a truckload of questions yet to be answered:
– Why didn’t Casshern get himself killed?
– Why did Luna’s powers change all of a sudden?
– Where did the ruin come from?
– How come Casshern got pulverized at the end of this episode, without regenerating?
– Did Dune get his nickname really from his own actions, or were all the rumours of the people the original Luna killed delegated to him?

And here’s one thing I’ve been wondering:: every single recurring character has his or her own purpose in the series, except for Friender. Seriously, what was the last thing that it ever did? Try to dig out Casshern from a bunch of rocks. Apart from that, it’s just… there. Is Friender going to be more than just a simple cameo fro the original Casshan series, or will it have an important role in the end?

Short Synopsis: Casshern finally meets Luna
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Casshern Sins has just been a string of awesomeness for the past few episodes. Especially this episode was one of those where everything comes together. Casshern finally gets the chance to meet Luna, and because the entire series has been building up to this moment, the results were nothing short of awesome.

So as it turns out, Luna doesn’t turn out to be such a sweetheart after all. In this episode, she shows that she hates things that are about to die, so because of that she simply kills them off. Dune’s reasoning seems to be that if they’d die, they’d make Luna sad, so it’s just better to kill them off so that this doesn’t happen. In the end, Luna’s just someone who’s been obsessed with her own status: she never dies, and if she were to, everyone would go with her. She continuously needs to heal others, and eventually she changed from a nice healer to some sort of obsessive guru-type person.

This episode also seems to explain why there are so many of those angry robots fighting. Before the ruin, they basically lived in a world where they couldn’t die: if they got hurt, they’d simply visit Luna in order to get healed. Because of that, they grew up in a society in which there was no fear of death, and the morals must have been pretty low on each other’s mind: nobody had to struggle for survival, because Luna was there anyway! Now that the ruin started, and everyone’s going to die anyway, they still can’t remember what it means to have your life lost, or to take the lives of others, since it’s so new to them.

She really is symbolic of the sun, in a much less overglorified fashion as usual: she’s there. Without her, everyone will die, but she never grants wishes, cares for anyone or helps those in need.

But damn, this series has now accumulated quite an army of villains: we already had Dio, Leda and Braiking Boss, and now Luna also joined their ranks. All four of them have their own agendas, and with only four episodes left in this series it’s going to be very interesting to see how all of their story-lines are going to be concluded.

Short Synopsis: Casshern and Lyuze get attacked by a mysterious robot-duo.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
ZOMG, two full episodes, dedicated on nothing but Lyuze! Oh, how well this series makes use of it. This episode was simply awesome. There was surprisingly little dialogue between Casshen and Lyuze, but that’s also what made this episode so beautiful: the two of them didn’t need a lot of dialogue in order to develop the bond between them.

Speaking of beautiful, I think that the screenshots already gave some indication, but I absolutely LOVED the visuals in this episode. It felt like every single shot oozed with style, and there wasn’t even a single frame that didn’t impress me. Madhouse truly did a terrific job on animating this episode.

Anyway, about Lyuze: it turns out that my theory of love bringing immortality is wrong: Lyuze still rusts in this episode, though what’s interesting is that even though Casshen bleeds again in this episode, we never see him regenerate himself like he did a number of episodes ago, so the source of his immortality is still pretty much unknown. However, Casshern and Lyuze officially became a couple in this episode. It turns out that the entire previous episode was building up to that moment.

Then there are the two guest-characters who appeared in this episode: the female robot and her friend. It’s strange: I loved the two of them, even though we learn hardly anything about them. Their development really is minimal: they come from out of nowhere, attack, and disappear again. They only appear for what… three minutes? And yet they’re fully fleshed out for them to work. We know that they’re strong, care about each other and are obsessed with not dying.

Short Synopsis: Lyuze finds a bit of time to reflect on herself.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
It’s episodes like this that really set Casshern Sins apart from all other anime out there. It just takes one single character, and easily manages to fill the 20 minutes of an episode with it while other series even have trouble to fill up five minutes. While CxL may have found this episode disappointing (which I don’t get, by the way; the entire episode was about Lyuze, what more could you want?!), I really loved this episode. This really is one of the reasons I originally fell in love with this series.

Throughout the episode, you really have trouble to figure out what’s real and what’s not. In fact, I even dare to assume that this entire episode simply happened within Lyuze’s head: otherwise we would have seen Ringo somewhere. The enemy robots, her crumbling sister who appeared over and over again, the strange guy who came from out of nowhere to hit on her, I think that all of them symbolized the doubts that are inside of her. We hardly saw anything of her personal troubles for the past few episodes, but I think that throughout the series, she more and more hid her own personal worries inside of her, instead of unleashing them on Casshern, like she did when she first met Casshern.

And I do have to say that Lyuze was nearly as cute as Ringo when she was young. In this episode, this younger version of her really helped her complete her character-development and accept Casshern, which has been built up for the past ten episodes or so. Before, she believed that she only lived for her revenge on Casshern (hey, the ruin was going to kill her anyway, so she might as well use her last life to take revenge), but she finally sees that the death of her sister did have one positive side-effect: it made her meet Casshern.

Now then, to relate this back to the previous episode: if it indeed is true that love is the recipe for immortality, then I think that Lyuze just attained it. It’s interesting how love in this series is some sort of contagious disease: Luna started it, then Casshen got “infected”, and now it’s his turn to introduce love to Lyuze.

Short Synopsis: Our cast arrives at the place where Luna supposedly was born.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Nothing short of an awesome episode. Not only does Leda finally get her development, turning her from a dull character into a great one, it also pushes the plot also gets pushed into an entirely new direction.

So, let me get this straight: Leda once was pregnant!? So Ouji’s research did succeed, apparently. If I understood things correctly, she entrusted her child to Luna, who would grow it in some sort of artificial womb (probably to guarantee the survival of the infant), but along the way something went wrong and her child died. It turns out that she was after some sort of secret that Luna left behind. I’m not yet sure for what kind of motive, but in this episode when she’s this close to attaining it, she simply loses control of herself. I’m beginning to think that Casshern and Leda’s emotional stability are inversely proportionate to each other: Casshern has calmed down a lot since the first few episodes (as noted by Luna and Ouji in this episode), while the only emotional support Leda received was from a power-hungry Dio.

In the end, this “secret” was hidden inside three child robots, that Luna left behind at her birthplace. At this point, we’re not sure what its purpose is, but Ouji is going to find out. For that, however, he was forced to break up with Ringo, which made for a really emotional break-up scene between the two. I also wonder: those children referred to Luna as their mother, but also talked about a father, who has long since died. I can’t imagine anyone who fits that bill, other than that the children somehow misheard about either Dune’s or Braiking Boss’ death or something. Also, that one comparison they made with Leda and Luna is also very interesting, hinting that there’s much more to Leda still.

Also, this part is what I’m a bit unsure about, but if I’m not mistaken those children also revealed something about the concept of immortality in this series: if you want to be immortal, you’ve got to know the meaning of “love”. If this is true, then it does explain a few things: Leda herself can’t understand that concept, so despite her wishes to be immortal that became apparent in this episode, she’s never going to attain her goal. Dio himself is stuck with such a woman, so the concept of love also shouldn’t occur with him. And now that I think about it, all of the robots feelings we’ve seen so far in the random stories were despair, admiration, obsession and fascination, but no romantic feelings. Luna herself somehow did understand the concept, and when Casshern “killed” Luna, he somehow understood this as well, fell in love with her and lost his memories because of it, or something similar.

Also, bad things are going to happen to Ringo, with this episode I’m sure, due to one particularly nasty case of foreshadowing where Ringo’s legs stopped working (does that mean that she really is a robot?). When this is going to happen again, Ouji won’t be there to cover up and fix it. At first sight, it’s a bit irresponsible of him to just leave her like that, but I think that the reason why he’s decided to say goodbye to her is to be able to find the solution to the destruction as soon as possible, because he knows that she’s about to suffer from it.

Short Synopsis: Dio and Leda run into some old acquaintances and Ouji reveals a few things about his past.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
It’s good to see that Dio and Leda get their fair share of attention. While they are my least favourite characters of this series, their extra development is quickly getting rid of these problems, and makes the two of them more enjoyable with every episode that focuses on them. In this episode, they meet Braiking Boss’ top soldiers before Dio and Leda arrived: Barkan and Mars. The two are still angry for the two of them taking their place.

The interesting thing here is that they too beat the crap out of Dio, though still all he can think about is how he can’t win of Casshern. Leda manages to save him and leads the two of them away, but something bugs me about her reaction when Dio returned (pumped up by Braiking Boss’ words of motivation): her joy at seeing Dio back was definitely acted. I’m still not exactly sure about what she’s planning, but she definitely has a hidden agenda. This series has shown by now that she simply isn’t as strong as Casshern or Dio, so instead she has to resort to trickery and deceit more.

Speaking of which, Braiking Boss also hasn’t been simply wandering around for no possible reason. Something’s telling me that he’s trying to set up Casshern and Dio against each other, but what especially bugs me is how in the ED, he’s lying right next to Luna. You’d think that that would be a place for Dune, so what’s he doing there?

But my favourite part of this episode was obviously Ouji’s background. He seems to be some sort of cyborg: mostly human, but with artificial limbs. It turns out that the reason he’s taking care of Ringo is because she saved him when he was at the bottom of despair, when she was only just an infant. That really begs the question to what she is, though. I can understand how Ouji is a cyborg: the guy was a scientist for Braiking Boss, so I guess that he also had enough time to experiment on his own body. But Ringo on one side is just a regular child who grows up, gets hurt, and apparently doesn’t need any food (at least, we’ve never seen the two of them eat so far), and at the same time she feels the effects of the destruction just like any other robot…

Short Synopsis: A Dune-episode
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Awesome colours!)
You know, it might actually be the case that Casshern’s random encounters are not going to appear in second half of this series anymore, and instead this series is now going to full-time focus on the most important characters. This episode was entirely about Dune, the next episode seems to deal with Dio and Leda again, and so it seems that the random episodes in the first half were really meant to flesh out the setting of this series. Now that that’s happened, it’s time for the characters to develop, and I can’t wait to see both the lesser and the better characters of this series change.

This episode also yet again provides a piece of the puzzle on what happened to Luna: Casshern did stab her through the heart, and she fell into a pool of some sort, and Dune witnessed this. However, nobody said anything about Luna losing her immortality: her body simply sunk to the bottom of that pool, and somehow Dune assumed that she wouldn’t survive it. The big question is now: why did he care so much about protecting her in the first place when she’s immortal? Why didn’t he dive after her to rescue her body? It’s now obvious that she survived, although I guess that it took quite a bit of time for her to recover. The question also remains where the ruins came from and how Casshern became immortal himself.

I also absolutely loved the art in this episode. The art director really went all out on this one, and the use of bright colours forms a huge contrast with the dark and gritty colours that were used in the rest of the series. This again symbolizes the new direction this series is going to take, I assume: the first half of the show was full of despair, so it was mostly filled with grey colours, and perhaps red. The second half, however, confirmed that Luna is alive, and is filled with hope instead, so that’s going to make for bright and cheerful colours.

But the landscape that this episode took place in was also fantastic and truly original. I’m still not sure exactly what it was… some sort of dried up ocean that was filled with semi-glass transparent blue salt, or something?

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.