This episode focused again on Emily, but it seriously was an awesome one. It’s definitely one of her most thought-provoking ones, even though none of the other side-characters were involved. As much as I’m hoping for the Teddy-episode, I can’t deny that this episode was pure awesomeness.
It starts when Emily’s poem finally gets printed in a local magazine. The previous episode definitely had an effect, as Emily is starting to get known in the town now, and people are actually recognizing her. With that comes her first job, and the first time that Emily needs to learn about responsibilities, and a hard lesson it is.
The job is writing a poem about a recently deceased guy. The problem is, though, that from the outside, he lived a really boring life. He just worked and worked, and when he didn’t work, he drank alcohol. Emily needs to get lectured by both Elizabeth and her teacher, before she really understands the job that she’s been given. She’s obviously very inclined to just give up. Heck, it doesn’t hurt her at all. But I can imagine how much it must hurt the family if Emily broke her promise.
Still, it’s great to see both Emily and Perry growing considerably. Notice how Perry continues to study really hard, in order to catch up with the others? This episode also shows that Emily is continuing to develop her skills, and I can imagine that Teddy has been sketching as well. I’m just a bit disappointed that we never got to see Ilse’s talents. According to Wikipedia, she’s a talented Elocutionist, but I’ve yet to see that from her.]]>
Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 31
This is just a hunch, but could it be that this episode started off the fourth arc of the book? Signs do point to yes, since the previous episode had a major climax, and it affected lots of different characters. This episode was also mostly quiet, aside from one nightmare, and it basically spends its time moving pieces on the chess-board around.
I’ve got two issues with this episode; though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I just know that the creators are going to use them in future episodes. The first is that we didn’t get any clue as to what happened with the people who were arrested. Do they go free? How long do they have to be locked up? Me wants to know!!!
The second is Cosete. I just hate her at the moment, as she’s currently the only character who isn’t suffering because of something. The Thenardiers are in jail now and they already had huge money-problems due to Jean. Jean came down with a fever this episode due to burning hinself and falling out of a window, and he’s clearly still being haunted by his fears of going to prison. Eponine is currently homeless! Marius has his family, Ursulle and money problems as well. Javert is probably still after Jean. And what about Cosette? She lives in a comfy home, gets protected by Jean, has a guy who can’t stop thinking about her, wears pretty clothes, doesn’t need to work, can take it easy, has time to look at flowers and worry about others. It’s so not fair when considering the other characters!
I LOVE where Eponine is going, though. Now that the Thenardiers have been arrested, she lost her home, and we see her wandering the streets of Paris, stalked by the only companion of Thenardier who managed to escape as well. It doesn’t look like she’ll be returning to her parents, even when they get released. I’m dying to know what’s going to happen to her!!!
A lot of the episode was about Marius, as he moves out as well, and starts living with Courfrac (spelling?). His aunt still tries to convince him to go back to his uncle, but fails.]]>
Kaze no Shoujo Emily – 18
This episode was another one, aimed to develop Emily. It follows a basic plot, that you see more in shoujo-anime: there’s a party, Emily is invited to a party (Oda’s birthday party), where she’s pretty much an outcast. At the same party, one big celebrity is invited as well, though she doesn’t like all the commotion and she and Emily come together in the end and make friends. Still, it was carried out decently. Emily first has to embarrass herself when Lola suddenly invites her to cite her new poem out of nowhere, and the fact that one of her first supporters was none other than Emily’s father.
The side-characters were the one who stole the show with their commentary in the background, though. Perry and Ilse were brilliant in their attempts to infiltrate in the party. There are those kinds of characters who are perfect when they watch from the side-lines. Souta on Otogi Juushi Akazukin was one of them, and Perry and Ilse are also really good at this. While the episode was nice, this show really shines at its best when the side-characters also play a big role, instead of a random adult.
One thing that I do hope is that Oda’s going to receive some background in one of the future episode. She’s about the only flat character of the cast, and it’s getting a bit annoying to see how she just doesn’t develop.]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 30
This episode can be summarized with one word: AWESOMEness.
I’d like to go in a bit more detail, though. It’s strange, but after watching, it does feel that the most logical course of events had taken place, and yet it still surprised me. Especially Thenardier, who again showed that he does have brains, despite his looks, and the fact that Marius screwed up after all his worries.
Basically, Marius was ordered to give Javert a sign when things got out of hand inside. And then he suddenly finds out Thenardier’s name, the one who “saved” his father. Obviously, he’d not want that guy to prison, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to harm his “Ursulle”. I can imagine how hard it must be to think clearly at such a moment. The solution he finds is to warn Thenardier that the police is coming. This plan, however, backfires because Thenardier and his henchmen were just way too loud when they tried to escape, resulting in everyone but Jean and Eponine getting arrested! Even Azelma gets caught!
Jean, meanwhile, decided to play for dumb. He tries to use his huge strength to escape when Thenardier attempts to hit him, though he’s against too many and gets overpowered. By this, Thenardier figures out that Jean himself is on the wrong terms with the police, since he never cried for help at all, in the hope that neighbours would call the police. Since Jean didn’t really bring a large amount of money with him, Thenardier decides to use Cosette. I didn’t fully catch his plan, but it was probably to make Jean send a letter to Cosette, luring her towards Thenardier, so she could get kidnapped. Afterwards, if Jean made any wrong moves afterwards, or Thenardier would end up in jail, he’d order his henchmen to kill Cosette.
He didn’t take into account, however, that Jean would never tell him where Cosette lived. ^^; The nice gentleman-look indeed hides the fact that he used to lead a horrible life before he became major, and that he’s at the point where he cares more about Cosette’s life than his own. He afterwards manages to escape in the confusion, created by Marius, after Thenardier threatened him with a knife.
The question now remains: will the Thenardiers go to jail, and if yes: for how long. I’m not really familiar with the French system of law and order around that age, but I think they’ll get off relatively light due to lack of evidence. It will become awesome if they indeed do have to serve jail for a few years, though. The fact also remains that we’re nowhere near the end of this anime, and something tells me that this already awesome mini-arc was just the beginning.]]>
Kaze no Shoujo Emily – 17
Yay! Yay! Yay! Finally we get to see Ilse’s background! And boy, does it deliver. This episode was a beautiful tear-jerker, and it more than made up for the lacklustre sixteenth episode. Now all that’s left is Teddy, but I wonder, will there be more? I definitely hope so!
Ilse was another one of these persons, just like Perry, who didn’t like to talk about her own problems. That’s why it took so long for this to be addressed, but now that the anniversary of the day where her mother and father met each other had arrived, it had to be more on her mind than usual. Ilse’s mother died because of an accident, and her father was so shocked by this, that he decided to pretend that she never existed, in order to protect Ilse.
Ilse, however, interpreted this in a totally different way. Because her father never spoke about her, and would react startled and scary when she was mentioned, she began to think that he hated her. Obviously, as a curious child, you’d want to know the truth about your mother. The result was amazing, and I loved the way in which their misunderstandings were solved, after Ilse gets incredibly angry at him for not telling, and runs away, in the middle of a storm. This episode illustrated perfectly what Kaze no Shoujo is about: the friendship between children and their relationship with adults.
In this episode, Emily provides a huge amount of support for Ilse, and we’ve seen Ilse provide the same amount of support for Emily and the others as well. Furthermore, there will always be a gap between adults and children. The adults have experienced things that they don’t want to talk about, while the children can’t understand these things yet. Especially in these days, the adults were afraid of change and rather stubborn, and this can sometimes create conflicts with the playful children. Children, on their turn, often draw the wrong conclusions with their hastened deductions, while adults are way less naive. And that’s what this series is really about, and it does this perfectly.]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 29
Haha! So people did recognize each other after the previous episode! The result was the extremely dark, fast-paced, serious and awesome episode that we got to see now! I really expected Thenardier to milk Jean out with the same technique that killed Fantine, but here he comes and he directly attacks him.
To make matters even better, Marius heard ALL of this, and went to the police. Because of this, none other than JAVERT is now waiting to arrest Thenardier, as soon as he mutilates JEAN! Seriously, I never expected things to go so incredibly fast, and we’re only at episode 29! I’m starting to understand now why people call the novel epic.
I can hardly even begin to predict the next episode, as there are so many possible scenarios. Jean and Thenardier will obviously escape, but how the heck will they do it? I suspect they will make use of the confusion of Javert when he finds out about Jean. I also keep thinking that this is a regular anime, and people will just retreat after things are done, but things will definitely change after this, and the Thenardiers will need to find new lodgings, while Jean will need to watch out where he goes. I’m now really beginning to see the power of the World Masterpiece Theatre.]]>
Kaze no Shoujo Emily – 16
Ah so she didn’t visit her grandmother, but two of her father’s elder sisters. Emily basically went back to her father’s birthplace. In this episode, she met her father’s childhood friend, with whom he went to college. Obvkously, the two of them would make friends fast.
This was one of the lesser episodes of Kaze no Shoujo Emily, though. It may be because the awesome music from the previous episode was gone, but I suspect it was because nothing much happened. I’m glad that Emily went back to Elizabeth at the end of the episode, as I’m eager to see Perry, Ilse and Teddy again.]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 28
What a surprise! After the previous episode, I expected that the light-hearted mood would stay for a few more episodes. Boy, was I wrong when Thenardier threw his tantrum right in the middle of it! I’m really excited to see this series turn dark again, and I’m even more excited about the fact that finally the Thenardiers were the major focus of the episode!
Eponine and Azelma were so sad in this episode. We already knew that they weren’t in such a good position, but they’re actually being abused by their father. Azelma even ended up with a bleeding hand at one point. It’s sad to see how she turned out, by the way. It seems that both her and Eponine stopped going to school, soon after Cosette left. Because of this, especially Azelma had no real chances to make any friends, with the result that she now clings to Eponine, the only one who treated her normally (I suspect that Thenardiére also stopped being nice to her when their money ran out).
And Yes! Eponine finally talked to Marius! The two of them were so cute, even though nothing major happened. Still, it seems that Marius will be able to hear everything that happens in Thenardier’s room, due to a crack in the wall (this Episode showed this, when Thenardier started yelling), so something tells me that he’ll start feeling sorry for her very soon. Cosette had better be fast with making her move.
And speaking of her I could almost strangle her at the end of the episode! She didn’t even recognize Thenardier, who has hardly changed a bit for the past years! And he was right under her nose! There’d better be some kind of recognition in the next episode!]]>
Kaze no Shoujo Emily – 15
Oh my god, I loved this episode! Not necessarily because of the story used, as it’s a standard one that’s been used more often by other stories. It’s neither because of Emily, okay, she was as awesome as usual, but she didn’t really add anything new. But seriously, the background music was magnificent. This episode introduced a few new background tunes, and they’re absolutely beautiful! The original soundtrack already was great, but these tunes were still much better than anything I’ve heard on this show up before.
About the rest of the episode, Emily visits her grandmother this time. It’s nothing new, it’s nothing special, but Emily’s character alone made this episode yet again so incredibly sweet, so that it was well worth watching, even without the awesomeness of the soundtrack. There was a really creepy atmosphere through the course of the episode, because Emily’s grandmother’s house was supposed to be haunted. Obviously, Emily wouldn’t like that, due to her abundance of imagination. ^^;
On a side-note: that eye-catch really scared me! You’ll understand when you see the episode yourself. Anyway, Emily keeps surprising me as one of my favourite series of the spring-season. I can’t wait till the series draws near its end, and even more drama is going to be included. 🙂
Oh, and *note to self: get hands on soundtrack!*]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 27
Okay, so this was a filler. At least it had a few hidden meanings, when compared to the fillers we see in shounen-fillers. This episode was really meant to symbolize the relationship between Cosette and her mother, when les amis, Cosette and Jean reunite a young girl with her mother, and AGAIN barely missing each other.
Still, I do wonder why this filler was included. After all, there is no danger at all that this series will catch up with its source material, so there has to be some other reason. If I had to guess, then I’d say that it’s to fill up a bit of time, and to make sure that the second half of the series, which has now officially started, doesn’t move too slow.
The third arc has really been building up so far. Basically, all it’s been doing is move the pieces on a chess-board, and developing them. And after all, especially Marius needs to catch up in terms of fleshing out.
Still, there were moments that were important for the storyline as well. I was quite surprised when Gavroche suddenly ran into his father! Luckily, the guy is too drunk to really take advantage of him, but I wonder what will happen once they run into each other again. Marius also reveals that he’s still interested in his “Yulle Shulle” (I really wonder how you spell that one in French). Also, the episode had one really good point: I really liked les amis after watching it.]]>