Boy, this series surely is on fire. After the climax of the previous episode, you’d expect a quiet episode as an aftermath, but this series wastes no time to head to its next target. It’s been only one episode and Jomie is already on Artemesia at the end of it. There’s also no time-leap, surprisingly. Toni and the others just grow up incredibly fast.
The episode starts with the return of Swena. She’s been tracking the sightings of the “Moby Dick”, which seem to suggest that it’s heading back to Artemesia. Meanwhile, she sees Keith on television, and the fangirls’ reactions to him. We then cut to a scene where the children ruthlessly kill off an enemy fleet, with the biggest of ease. The crewmembers are shocked by the amount of destruction they cause.
We then see Swena, who went to visit Sam, who now has the mentality of a 8-year old child. This seems to be a progress on what it was before. Keith has also come, and Swena starts asking him questions. Naturally, she doesn’t get much out of him, though she does give him Shiroe’s Peter Pan-book, and she tells him that Station E1077 has been destroyed, ten years ago. I’m surprised that Keith didn’t know that.
The elder members of the ship then complain to Jomie (who now has the title of “Soldier”) about the behaviour of the children. He simply says that they’re the best way to achieve their goals, while one of them notes how Jomie has changed. We then see some crewmembers talk about how scary the children have become, after which the children themselves appear with confident and cocky smiles on their faces. They basically make fun of the others.
We then see the same older embers complain to Physis, but she is in too much doubts to give a good answer, and tells them to trust Soldier. We then see Toni report to Jomie. Toni is clearly impressed by Jomie, but Jomie replies emotionlessly. We then cut to Swena, as she visits the guy who spotted the Moby Dick, and delivered her Peter Pan. When she tells him that it’s going to head for Artemesia, he gets enthusiastic and agrees to go with her.
Keith meanwhile reads Peter Pan, and suddenly finds a microchip, hidden in one of the pages. He plays it, and finally Shiroe’s message gets revealed. He’s inside of floor 001, where he shows Keith the place he’s been born. We then switch back to Physis again, when she has flashbacks of Blue. How he rescued her, and took care of her.
The next scene features the children, who come back from another mission, and the crewmembers are getting ruder and ruder in their comments, when they try to speak behind the children’s backs, which misfires because they somehow can hear everything that’s being said. When they’re alone, Artella suggests taking over the ship, for Toni to become Soldier, but Toni is the only one who opposes this plan. He then ends up being made fun of.
We then switch to the time where the Myu arrive on Artemesia. People are evacuated to safe spots, and Swena arrives on the planet as well, after being early blown up by Toni. The defence system of the planet is easily blasted to smithereens, which makes for some nice fireworks for the people on the ground. It’s also interesting to see that Shiroe’s parents have a new daughter.
The Myu then land, and a group of five people exits the Moby Dick: Jomie, Toni, Artella, Rio, and the commander-guy whose name I forgot. Swena is the only one who dares to greet them, and the two of them finally see each other again. We then turn to Keith, who is travelling with Matsuka to E1077, and the episode ends.
I must say, I LOVE the new dimension that the children have given. They may have great powers, and they may have grown up incredibly fast, they form a great problem for the Myu in the future. Simply because they don’t have a clear raison d’être, and yet have enough power to easily retaliate. The original Myu all were exiled, looked down upon and generally treated badly, after they were saved by Blue. Even the youngest ones knew the feeling, and they were grateful to the people like Blue, and later Jomie who were willing to lead them to happiness.
The children, however, have never known suffering, apart from Toni. Because he lost his parents early, and he was alone for a time, he wasn’t influenced by his own power, and grew up like a normal boy for his first years, he developed a huge respect for Jomie, through his parents. We even saw him claim that his “grandfather” was his raison d’être at one point. Artella is clearly in love with Toni, and she will go wherever he goes, he’s his raison d’être. The same doesn’t go for the other five, though. The only thing that holds them together is Toni’s authority. If you threw them a knife, they’d kill.
What also surprises me: Keith is opening up more and more, while Jomie is turning more and more stoic. I’m surprised, but Keith will not be playing a major role against Jomie in this arc, as he’ll be busy to figure out what happened in E1077. Matsuka is one big reason for this, I believe. Jomie is also going the wrong way, after Blue died. Before, he had to prove himself worthy as a leader to Blue, whenever he might have woken up. Now that that is gone, I fear that he’s turned a bit too unbalanced, and he doesn’t have anyone to look up to anymore. We don’t see him socializing with the crew anymore, which may turn out bad, in combination with the children.
Now that Makoto has started subbing this series, I’m not sure for how long I’m going to continue with the extensive summaries, but I’ll continue for now, since the previous entry got a lot of positive comments for this. Besides, this series is just way too awesome to neglect.]]>
Dennou Coil – 13
This episode continued to flesh out the Illegals. While the previous was a comedy, this one was a tragedy. There’s no Daichi this time, or Kyoko. This episode was all about Denpa, and it turned out really sad and overall an incredible episode. Only a heartless bastard would not be moved at the end of the episode.
The episode starts with Haraken’s aunt, who is using the Kyuu-chans to get rid of the white fogs that surround the old buildings. And this couldn’t have been a better introduction, as it really shows that the Illegals are in trouble, people see them as viruses, which need to be exterminated. This episode introduces an illegal you just have to feel pity for.
It seems that Denpa has been taking care of it, at an old football-field where the Sacchi’s can’t come. It’s based on the stories of the Loch Ness monster. He ran into it among its friends. They disappeared very soon afterwards, though, and only that particular illegal stayed, because Denpa fed him some metabugs. It’s interesting as it can only move on the muddy parts of the field, and it gets hurt by the grass, like it’s water. It also hates direct sunlight.
Yasako and Haraken discover Denpa at one point, and they comment on how sad it is for such a creature to be there without its friends. When Fumie sees it, though, isn’t enthusiastic about it, and she reckons that Kunbinaga (as Denpa seems to call him) will die soon anyway, and leaves. Later, however, Denpa discovers that the soccer-field is about to be turned into a new building by construction-workers. Therefore, in order to save Nessie, they have to find a new home for him. Yasako manages to find a nice spot in the end, though there’s one problem: getting Kunbinaga there. They decide to ask help from Haraken’s aunt.
And finally I know her name! Harakawa Tamako. Finally I can address her as something other than just “Haraken’s aunt”. Another interesting thing to note is that she is in fact seventeen years old, and she does attend a high-school (god, she looks strange in a school uniform).
In any case, there won’t be help from Tamako, since she started asking strange questions. Yasako, Haraken and Denpa then decide to just try to move Kunbinaga themselves. The first attempt fails when the Kyuu-chans and Sacchis arrive. Fumie then arrives and decides to help them. They spend the rest of the day, trying to find the best route, while Fumie stalls the construction-workers as much as possible (quite funny, actually ^^;). In the end, the best way turns out to be to use the local river at the time of dawn, when the sun hasn’t reached it yet.
That morning, the move can begin, and Kunbinaga has to try and survive beams from the Sacchi, beams of light, coming from the streetlights, the white stripes on the asphalt, and the atmosphere of the new buildings. The children try to help him as much as possible with darkness spray, though he suffers much damage from them.
Becuase of this, they run out of time, and reach the river after the dawn had reached the river. Kunbinaga then sees a couple of industrious towers, and thinks that they’re his family; he tries to swim to them, but is overwhelmed by the incoming sunlight, and dies. It’s interesting how Fumie ends up crying along with everyone, even though she once said that Kunbinaga would die soon anyway. Anyway, that scene in particular was awesome, and an excellent closure to the first half of Dennou Coil.
Isako is beginning to look like a villain more and more. Not only does she have a huge amount of power, and does she make use of everyone she runs into, she also got her powers from taking them from Illegals, who turned out to be intelligent creatures, just like humans and animals. It’s a miracle that she didn’t run into Kunbinaga. I also believe that the current episodes are not only awesome to watch, but also vital for the final part of this series, as they illustrate that Illegals themselves definitely do have their own problems, and right now we’re really sympathizing with them.
The Illegals sometimes remind me of the mushi from Mushishi. They’re all just trying to survive. The Illegals are just taking control of the pets because they really don’t have anywhere to go, and the amount of white fog is decreasing drastically. I believe that the creators are using this as a parallel with our world, where countless of animal species are about to get extinct by the hands of humans.]]>
Saiunkoku Monogatari – 56
Before I start with the usual episode review, I’d like to make a prediction about the rest of this series.
Saiunkoku Monogatari is going to have three major arcs. All of these three arcs can be divided into two sub-arcs. The first arc is about the rise of Shuurei. The two sub-arcs are Shuurei’s time as a concubine, and her struggles in the palace, to be accepted as a good government official. The second arc is Shuurei’s reign as a government official, and it’s by far the largest arc of the series, with more than forty episodes dedicated to it. The first sub-arc is about freeing the Sa-province from the clutches of the Sa-clan, the second sub-arc was about the disease and the cult.
With this, some interesting things can be concluded. For example, that the mood of the first arc and the second arc was quite different. The first arc was relatively fast paced, due to its short length. Its strength came mainly from encouraging Shuurei not to give up, no matter how hard her trials were. In the second arc, she had to prove herself to be worthy of her position, and she did this quite nicely, though the strength of that arc lied in the immense amount of time it spent building up, and how the different relationships between the different characters evolved. The most notable were Shuurei vs Sakujun, and Kourin vs Eigetsu.
Humour also played a major part in the first arc, where it was flawlessly integrated with the dramatic scenes, turning every episode in a real joy to watch. The second episode didn’t need the humour, and mostly used it in the more light-hearted moments, away from the drama, so that the drama could really focus on being as touching as possible.
With this episode, the second arc has been closed and the building up for the third arc will start in the next episode. The third arc will be 20 episodes again, if the second season of Saiunkoku Monogatari will indeed take up 39 episodes, which means that it’s about the same size as the first arc. With two major sub-arcs, the pacing should increase a bit more with this.
Eigetsu may live, I suspect that his role as a main character ends here. Same with Ensei, Kourin, and all others who remain in the Sa-province. We’ll probably see them a few times after this, but Shuurei’s now officially done in the Sa-province. Ryuuki, Ran, Seiran and Shouka will probably return as the main characters again, and Kouyuu will probably get a lot of screentime as well, as his story of marrying Shuurei will take the spotlights again.
The next arc will probably focus around Shuurei and Shouka, as they deal with Riou, and his plans to go after the soul of Bara-hime. Sakujun will also officially return. If I had to guess, then the first sub-arc will explain Riou’s background, and why he’s doing what he’s doing, while the second sub-arc will try to resolve his case. About the atmosphere of the arc, I think that the scene in which Shuurei ran into Riou is the best indicator for this. I hope it will, actually, because I loved that episode to bits.
Shurei has now been stripped of all her authority until further notice. I think that her next step will take place inside the Kou-family. About a year ago, wontaek hinted that Shuurei was indeed going to take over the position as head of the Kou-clan as the rightful successor, and I think that this is going to happen in the third arc, especially considering that she’s got Kouyuu after her.
At least, these are just some speculations. It will be fun to see how many of them turned out to be true.
Anyway, about the episode: it’s another one of those nostalgic ones. Nothing much happens, but we see Shuurei saying goodbye to the Sa-province. Even though there’s nothing worth noting, I really recommend this episode, as it’s a really light-hearted, heart-warming one.]]>
Seirei no Moribito – 18
i think I now understand why Barsa refused to let Chaggumu go back. It’s not only because she promised to take care of him as a mother,but the fact also remains that he’s going to die once Rarunga arrives. She couldn’t let Chaggumu know this, which is why she’s been acting so cold to him. In this episode, he finds out about his fate when during their travels, he, Barsa, Tanda and Torogai run into the village where Tanda grew up. In there, a local girl tells the true legend of the Seirei no Moribito, including the pat of Chaggumu dying.
I definitely need to rewatch this series subbed, though. for once, I did manage to pick up all of the big lines of the story, but what happened in between, so the motives were surrounded in too much dialogue to make some sense to me. This episode was definitely a building-up one, though. We see the hunters tail them, and near the end of the episode they’ve moved quite close to Chaggumu’s location. Chaggumu now knows that he’s doomed to die, and now has to come up with a way to deal with it. Meanwhile, we get a bit of information about the place in which Tanda grew up. Not really an exciting episode, but a nice enough watch.]]>
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 31
It took me a while before I found out that a new fansub group called Ni-paa~ released this episode on Animesuki. I’ve been so used to the fact that Tokyo Toshokan lists all available fansubs that I didn’t realize that there are sometimes exceptions. I never understood what was so great about this Ni-paa~, by the way. It’s just a random word to sound cute, same with the “Uguu~” and all other variations. The only phrase I’ve found that actually worked was Akazukin’s Zukkyun, because it actually had a deep meaning in her backstory.
Anyway, about the episode: I loved it. This is exactly the kind of Higurashi that I originally fell in love with, and finally this anime picks up its mystery-roots again, and it starts introducing and answering questions again. I originally thought that Rika was to be proven wrong, by some kind of miraculous act from Satoko, but that turned out completely wrong. I originally thought that this would be a Rika-arc, but guess what: Satoko is the actual main character. Rika plays the part of the vital character, while Oishi is the main side-character in this arc.
Rika’s going to have to wait till the next arc to be proven wrong. After a long recap of the previous episode, she realizes that her murderers are about to kill her, so she hides Satoko from them. The murderers turn out to be the guys in uniform, the people working under the Sonozaki-family, but now under the control of the real killer. They were after something in her stomach. Satoko runs into her after everything is over, though she didn’t wait long enough for the killers to go away, so they notice her. They start to chase her, until the bridge, from which she falls, just like Keiichi in the third arc.
And yes, this in fact means that she survived the Hinamizawa-disaster. To make things even better, she doesn’t lose her consciousness after falling, and wanders into Hinamizawa, just after the great disaster took place, and people are busy to collect the bodies. Satoko then wanders to the school, in which the entire population of the village seems to have been dumped. They all look like they’ve been brutally murdered from the inside, or that they were in the middle of awakening from the disease at the point of death.
Satoko then goes into a mental shock, and gets taken to the hospital in a nearby town. Oishi (who happened to be away at the time of the disaster) then goes to visit her, and quickly sees that she doesn’t respond to anybody. He tells her something interesting, though. Rena’s hat was found, bloodied, quite a distance away from Hinamizawa.
Oishi suspects that Satoko knows some key elements to this mystery, though he leaves her alone. However, when he mentions Rika’s name, she reacts for a split second. The nurse says that this is just a subconscious reaction, and that she didn’t really awaken or anything. She looks worried, though. Especially a close-up of her hints at her significance in this scene.
Oishi then returns to the police station, where he talks with a colleague about another one of his colleagues who disappeared. I suspect that that’s the guy who got shot at the previous episode. When he hears that the guy was about to do stuff relating Furude Rika, Oishi suddenly remembers that Satoko and Rika lived in the same house. He then realizes that Satoko didn’t turn out the way she did because of the Hinamizawa-disaster, but because of the things that happened to Rika. Okay, this isn’t exactly right, but this does make him go back to the hospital.
He’s too late, though. The nurse seemed to work for the killer as well, and the killer’s henchmen have started to appear in the hospital. Satoko actually awakens, and imagines Rena, running away from the same henchmen, and getting killed, with her hat being the only thing that remains. She gets killed before Oishi reaches her, though. Probably via an overdose of medicine. The episode ends with Oishi screaming because of this loss.
The most interesting thing in this episode for me was definitely Rena escaping, because it ruthlessly shattered the theory I’ve been having that Rena was able to survive in the sixth arc because her disease was rendered useless. This arc suggests that the sixth arc wasn’t the only one in which she received Takano’s scrapbooks. We’ve never seen her much in this episode, but we just don’t know what happened to her, and she may have been doing quite some interesting things while the attention was focused on other characters. In fact, this could have happened in the second, third and fifth arc as well, simply because we don’t get any information about what happened to the individual victims. The big question is now, why did Rena survive?
Now the following is just a theory, but could it be that Rena knew quite a bit about what was going on in the different arcs? What if the sixth arc was the only exception for this, whn she was too much distracted by her disease which awakened too early? She managed to survive back then because her disease was indeed already cured, but what if she just saw all of her friends going berserk and dying, right before her eyes? I can imagine that this would cause an even bigger trauma than with Satoko in this episode, and that she quite simply forgot all about it, which is why the killer let her live: she didn’t pose a threat anymore.
The next episode should really start the second season off, where the final two arcs will be told in nineteen episodes. Unfortunately, I’ve already been spoiled about the identity of the real killer and the role of Rika’s companion, but there remain enough questions that still need to be answered, especially the whats, hows and whys of everything. Arc 8 should deal with the whats and hows, while arc 9 (in the anime, not the game) should deal with the hows, if I recall correctly.
Overall, I do like the past arc. Not only did it introduce some new questions, and answered others, it was a good build-up to the next arc. We now know a bit of what’s going on inside Rika’s head, and that she’s pretty much in despair, and that she doesn’t want to do anything. Let’s see if she still thinks that way in the next one. :)]]>
Baccano! – 02
Awesome. This episode was much better than the previous one, somehow. Probably because Isaac and Miria provided for a bit of nice comedy. The current episode is way more focused than the first one, and it basically tells the story of what happened on the Flying pussyfoot, as the previous episode suggested that a lot happened there. People were murdered and thrown off the train, ad lots of things were going on.
First of all, Isaac and Miria, who were sortof central in this episode. You could probably classify them as “unlucky bystanders”, because they were just invited by Ennis after they hadn’t seen each other for more than a year. The two of them spent their time mining in an abandoned mine, somewhere in California. After they got Ennis’s letter, they rob a few banks, and they’re off to New York.
Jacuzzi and Nice also had a lot of screen-time in this episode. They’re with two accomplices, and Jaccuzi needs to do something I haven’t exactly understood what, though. I like the relationship between Nice and Jacuzzi, by the way. I’m not sure how the two of them met each other, but she’s helping him getting a bit more social to others. Isaac and Miria are of course perfect for that. I wonder though, how the barman he was sitting next to knew who he was…
We also meet the girl we saw Cheslaw with in the OP. Her name is Merry, and her mother is called Nathalie Williams. They bump into Jacuzzi at one point, and they looked really cute together. ^^; The question remains, though: why didn’t we see them exit the train together? But then again, that might have something to do with Cheslaw’s head being blown off. An interesting point is that we saw him enter the train with a man who refused to show his face. Could that be the same individual whose silhouette we saw in the previous episode?
The thing is that lots of mafia-like thugs were on that train, and something went terribly wrong, as the first episode seemed to suggest. There are two main parties, one lead by Ladd, and one where Chane seems to be working for. Both parties have people working undercover as the train staff (one of them killed one of his colleagues at the end of the episode), and they’re both after something. What that something is, however, I couldn’t understand, due to my limited Japanese.
Then there’s also the mysterious woman. In this episode, we see her enter the train. In the previous episode, we saw her exit the train. What she did in between remains a mystery.
I really wonder what’s going to happen next in this series, as it’s shaping up to be quite an interesting mystery-series. We know that a lot is still going to happen. Isaac is going to get his ear stabbed, How did someone like him turn immortal? Was it because of something that happened on the Flying Pussyfoot? And there are still those matters with the Gandor family, and the other two mafia-families. Dallas Genoard seems to have been the one to cause troubles with one of these two, after they killed his older brother and father. And where does Firo fit in all of this? How is he related to the story, besides being an old friend of Luck?
Still, I’m glad. The amount of questions I have after this episode is considerably smaller than the amount of questions I had after the first one. I have high hopes for this series now, as it seems quite plausible right now that every character is going to get enough development and background. The only things that annoy me about this series are the mafia-guys. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re so incredibly difficult to understand. But then again, that makes it even more fun to try and figure out what they’re up to. ^_^]]>
Mononoke – 04
About the only thing that I was afraid of for this series was that there wouldn’t be enough ideas for a fully fledged series. With this episode, these fears also got shattered. Umibouzu is one of the arcs that take up three episodes, and this episode spends most of its time fleshing out the different involved characters. How? By showing for each of them their biggest fear, with the help of illusions. I must say, it’s a brilliant idea, and with this show, it works extremely well.
The owner of the ship is up first, and his biggest fear is seeing his beloved goldfish die. Quite the interesting fellow. He himself thinks that it’s losing all his money that’s his biggest fear.
Next up, the samurai. According to himself, he has no fears, though Umibouzu shows him that he’s being haunted by the countless numbers of people whom he slaughtered.
At this point, people are really starting to take Umibouzu (who appeared in the form of a strange fish with a Shamisen and the voice of Norio Wakamoto) seriously, since the owner went into OTL-position, and the samurai fainted. Our lovely servant from Bake Neko, however, is up next, though she can’t really describe her biggest fears. She originally thinks that she fears not being able to get into a great relationship the most, but Umibouzu shows her that she fears being unable to give proper birth. The medicine seller manages to bring her back to her senses by convincing her that everything is an illusion, and nothing has changed in reality.
The bard has quite a strange fear. Manju. Apparently, they make him vomit. ^^;
The medicine seller knows quite well what his fears are: a world without a Katachi, Makoto and Kotowari. In other words, void. It’s quite logical as his biggest weapon wouldn’t work, and the beginning of the episode already hinted that his life is linked to his sword somehow.
Then the episode starts focusing at the real story of the arc when it’s the monk’s turn. His biggest fear is the priest. He may be his devoted master, but he’s been acting strange ever since they went on board of the ship. It also seems that the priest was the one who changed the course of the ship, and not Umibouzu, like I first thought.
The priest seems to be the centre of this mystery, and he involved everyone in his problems. 50 years ago, something strange happened on that very sea. Umibouzu then uses strange ropes of fish to pull up a huge round chamber from within the tank of the ship. Inside seems to be a human, who’s rumoured to have been in there for fifty years!
I’m sure as hell anticipating the next episode, as something tells me that something really disturbing happened fifty years ago.]]>
Ooedo Rocket – 18
While the previous episode was all about the characters, this episode is all about the story, and its beauty lied in the different plot twists that we saw in it. While the episode was less touching than the previous ones, the plot twists were both wacky and shocking enough to make this episode worthwhile.
In chronological order. Kinjiro can’t do anything in the open, due to his position, but he leaves a message on an on-line forum, telling about a secret doorway inside the prison (yes, an on-line forum). Kagaya and the others help him to get there.
We learn that O-Ise wields a strange Yo-yo, Tenhou carries throwing knifes and Tenten uses a construction of strange pens as weapon. If I recall correctly, it was around that time that only Samurai were allowed to wield swords, and I must say that they’ve found creative ways to avoid this rule. In any case, they use this to save Ginjiro from Torii, after he officially abandoned them in favour of Sora.
This is a strange one. The third blue monster of the sky runs into Tetsuju, and the two make friends due to his strange personality and affinity with gunpowder. I seriously have no idea what’s going to happen with the two of them, but I’m really glad to see that Tetsuju will be appearing more frequently. ^_^
Hiraga can walk! He appears to be ore eccentric than I already thought, by letting himself get carried around by his “concubines”. He sure gave both me and Ginjiro quite a scare when he revealed this. He also seems to be an acquaintance of Mizuno. Why this is useful, we’ll learn in the next episode.
Tenhou, Tenten and O-Ise spy around in Akai’s house, and find out that he’s affiliated with the blue monster of the sky, and they recieve clues that he might be the one after the serial killings. While he’s been on fire for the past few episodes, this twist should make it more difficult for him in the next episode.
The episode ends with quite a nasty cliff-hanger. Sora seems to have accepted that she doesn’t belong with Seikichi, but she eventually agrees to escape from prison along with him. Akai then shows up, and then pretends to help the two of them escape, only to aim a freakin’ gun at Seikichi when he doesn’t look! The question is obviously not whether Seikichi will survive or not, due to one of the golden rules of anime, which says that main characters don’t die, unless it’s the final episode, but how he’ll survive. That gun had enough time to be properly aimed at Seikichi, Sora wasn’t near enough to protect him. What I suspect what happened was that Akai probably didn’t aim well enough, and only managed to hit Seikichi’s arm, leg, or any other body-part that isn’t fatal.
I also loved the small parodies with Tenhou and Tenten, sitting in the internet-cafe. It’s nice to see that Madhouse actually put more of a meaning behind its Death Note reference than Lucky Star is currently doing. That line “Shinigami only eat apples” was meant to confuse L, which is exactly what it does in the context in which Ooedo Rocket uses it. ^^;
On a side-note: gg has suddenly released episodes 1 to 4 on Tokyo Toshokan. If you’re not following the raws, then go and check them out, and I’m glad that this series is being handled by such a quality-fansub group.]]>
Claymore – 18
Heh, and here I thought that this episode would disappoint. I was proven totally wrong when this episode comes and brings no less than twenty-four Claymore in one place, in order to fight the awakened beings in the north. It’s clear that this is just a way for the organization to buy time. They’re quite predictable once you figure them out. First, they sent out the worst possible party to Riful of the West, to show her that she isn’t going to get anything good that easily and now they send out an entire army of Claymore, but with the best four of them missing.
This is understandable, though, It seems that the little incident of Priscilla made a huge impact on them as well, and they now know that they shouldn’t waste their top-Claymore that easily. That does raise an interesting question, though: are Alicia and Beth really as good as their numbers seem to suggest? The two of them may have special powers and all, but because they’re so protected by the organization, they do lack the battle experience in really dangerous situations. I may be wrong, but I think it’s safe to assume that number five, Rafaela, is the real strongest Claymore.
Anyway, about the episode, many interesting new characters were introduced. We see Helen, Deneve and Miria return. Number eight, Flora, seems to have the fastest ability to draw her sword and attack. I assume that she’ll be a major character for this arc, due to the huge amount of screentime she already has. Same goes for number eleven, Undine. Interestingly enough, they all ended up fighting alongside Claire at the end of the episode.
Number 13 seems to be Veronica, though I don’t think she’ll get much of development, unfortunately. I do wish that some more unknown Claymore show their personalities in the next couple of episodes. I also hope for these male awakened beings to get fleshed out a bit more. Right now, only the spider one that Jeane was up against looked interesting and I hope that they turn into more than just random goons. But then again, Claymore has showed that it can make some pretty interesting antagonists. I’m looking forward to the next episode.]]>
Boogiepop Phantom Review – 87/100
It’s hard to find a good way to start this review. I think the best way is to compare this series to a very badly manufactured jigsaw-puzzle. Some pieces are too big, others are too small, pairs of pieces don’t attach to each other when they’re supposed to, and vice versa. There are pieces missing everywhere, and now it’s up to you to make some sense out of it!
This, in essence, is basically Boogiepop’s best and worst point. What we’ve got here is basically a case-based series, in which we some really deep case-studies of some seemingly random people, throughout the twelve episodes of its airtime. The catch is, however, that beneath the surface of this series, there’s an incredibly complex plot going on, that pops up once in a while. Boogiepop Phantom may be a case-based series on first looks, at heart, it’s a fully fledged mystery-series.
The mystery in this series is slightly different from other mystery-series. While most series of the genre choose the easy and straightforward way of “Hey, I’m a mystery-series with an unknown plot; through the course of my episodes, I’m slowly going to reveal my secrets so that you’ll understand everything in the end”, Boogiepop goes “Hey, I’m a mystery-series with an unknown plot; through the course of my episodes, I’m going to keep dropping references that you’ll only understand in four episodes, so that you’ll need to rewatch me at least once in order to understand the vital parts of my plot”.
And that’s the beauty of this series. It’s basically chockfull of references to other episodes, it keeps hopping from one time to another one, and the amount of red herrings it throws at you could satisfy an average fish-factory for at least a week. If you want to understand this series, you’ll have to work for it, as it’s not going to present itself on an open platter so easily. As mystery is my favourite genre, I just couldn’t help but love this. In fact, I’ve only seen one series that carried its mystery even further, and that is Ergo Proxy. It’s series like this one that really show the beauty of the mystery-genre.
Unfortunately, I think that this series went a little too overboard with this. After rewatching the important parts of the series, I think I now finally have an understanding of what’s going on, but there are still plot-holes that seemed to have come from nowhere. I remember seeing at least two characters who came from nowhere, did something important, and then vanished again. Kirima also lacked a reason for her actions (at least, I think she does, it may be a plot-hole I missed).
Still, this series also shines in its cases. Rarely have I seen a series that went so deep into the minds of its characters with a relatively low amount of time spent on them, and the results are great. A few cases really stand out as memorable. If I had to describe my feelings of Boogiepop Phantom with one word, it’d have to be “fascinating”.]]>