What the hell? Another new OP?
I could understand the first OP change, after the break up of the band who performed the first OP. The second OP was a pretty logical choice seeing the time constraints. The third OP though… is just pure madness. It’s like the creators went “ah, we’re doing these random songs anyway, so we might as well roll with it”. The new song is just completely bizarre and random. Talking about something completely different. This really sounds like they let a cat walk over a keyboard and constructed a nice melody around it. And yet for some reason I like it a lot. It’s been a while since an OP this pleasantly surprised me.
Anyway, this episode continues with the aftermath of Oda Nobunaga. It’s clearly build-up, but it nevertheless retained that great atmosphere, and did a great job of getting everyone to prepare for the inevitable chaos and run for power that will ensue. Mitsuhide realizes that his position is very frail, and Sasuke meanwhile gets a new position offered by his brother. I couldn’t exactly pick up what he’s going to do because the dialogue is so freaking complex, but I understood enough that this could very well become the glory that he always hoped for.
Also, more wtf-news on this series: it just distanced itself from the manga it’s based on. What the hell? Wasn’t this supposed to be an incredibly accurate adaptation? From out of nowhere, the official site lists the manga author credited as “original scheme”, instead of “original story”. They refuse to say exactly why, so did they get into a fight or something? I mean, I can understand why Clamp got angry at them for Tsubasa Chronicle and all, but with such an accurate adaptation?
The weird question right now is of course: what’s going to happen to this series? Will it just continue adapting the manga like it has always had, or will it in a few episodes go into its own direction? It’s here where those 39 episodes really are going to be interesting, because it’s got plenty of time to resolve all of these issues. With Bee-Train, it’s definitely going to be interesting.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Wha??? Clamp was mad at the producers of Tsubasa Chronicle? I heard nothing of this! I wonder why?
@Firechick: Idk if Clamp is really mad at the anime producers (Bee Train, that it) for messing with the Tsubasa Chronicle anime but it could be the reason why they rather have Production I.G. do to the OVAs instead. The manga became dark in the latter part while the anime (most especially season 2) remained lighthearted as usual. Oh wait, Hyouge Mono is also under Bee Train so yeah, karma strikes back at them again.
Sasuke meanwhile gets a new position offered by his brother. What I get from that sceane was that his brother was struggling with two different offer from Mitsuhide and Hideyoshi, and Sasuke convinced him to get on with Hideyoshi side because he saw more possibility for his promotion.
@firechick: yeah, the anime took a number of creative liberties that Clamp really wasn’t happy with. There originally was supposed to be a third tv-season, but that got cancelled and shifted to OVAs by production IG instead.
RE: The OP change:
The first OP was the planned one, but then Cro-Magnon did some random crap, and so the producers had to cook up a replacement on-the-spot. It sucked.
Now, after they’ve had some time, they can bring out a new OP, even though the cour’s ending in two episodes…
I wonder if they’re going to change it in Episode 13.