Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 14

Short Synopsis: Jean finally tells Cosette about Fantine’s death. Good: Can this anime truly get any better? Bad: How are Jean and Cosette going to outrun the police for such a long time? Oh, wait… that’s not really a bad point, is it? Overall Enjoyment Value: 8.5/10 The Fall-season of last year broke a trend I was beginning to notice: the fact that each season had at least one truly memorable series, starting from Fall 2005, which had Noein and Mushishi. Winter 2006 had Bake Neko, Spring 2006 had Simoun and The Third, and Summer 2006 had Otogi Juushi Akazukin. While the fall-season did feature some really good shows as Asatte no Houkou, Bakumatsu, Jigoku Shoujo and Red Garden, they just weren’t good enough to compare with their predecessors. I feared that this would be the same for the Winter-2007-season, but Les Miserables has proved to be an absolute delight. And that already at this point. This episode definitely convinced me of this, as it displays the huge strength of Cosette’s character. She’s only a little girl, she gets the news that her mother, her raison d’être, died, and she doesn’t even cry! All she does is sing a small song, and even though we didn’t see any tears, that was such an incredibly sad moment. Javert also got some more screen-time this episode, as he can’t seem to find any trace of Jean anywhere. Then he learns of the Thenardiers, and they tell him about what Jean did when he visited them. Gavroche also learns of this, returns to his old home and throws a tantrum. I’m not sure if that was the smartest thing to do, but you can’t blame the boy who wants to protect the girl who took care of him ever since he was born. To make things worse, Javert figures that Jean would flee to Paris, so he heads there as well. I couldn’t understand exactly why, though.]]>