Short Synopsis: While Rui continues to fake amnesia, Ran and Midori try to get him back.
Highlights: This is EXACTLY why Yoshihiro Ike is amongst my favourite composers!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
I must say, that Telepathy Shoujo Ran has been a delightfully consistent series so far. Really, my experience with most arc-based series is that some of their stories can differ significantly in quality when compared to the others, but the opposite is the case in Telepathy Shoujo Ran: no story has stood out for me as the best, and neither was there a story that clearly less in terms of quality. Every single story so far has had interesting mystery, engaging scriptwriting, nice production-values and awesome banter. No exceptions.
The bad part about this is that I’m not going to expect to be blown away by this series. It’s not of the kind to take huge risks. The good part is that with this set-up, I just know what I’m going to get with every single episode. While this is not as well-written as in a series as Kaze no Shoujo Emily, it’s definitely something to look forward to every week.
In this episode, it was the soundtrack that was exceptionally good. Ike Yoshihiro showed some of his new tracks, and they were excellent. The guy may not be exceptionally good at writing good standalone songs, but he’s a master when it comes to creating an atmosphere with his works. The animators were also on fire again for this episode. It wasn’t as noticeable as in the arc with the dead girl, but nonetheless the episode was full of nice poses and creative animation. It was just “fun” to watch everything that went on on the screen.
In a way, it’s very good that the creators decided to go for cheap Photoshop-effects for this series. In a way, it fits, and at the same time they didn’t end up blowing half their budget on flashy beams of the sort that you find in many other series. In this way, they could really add to the characters’ expressivity. I really never understood why creators have to make those CG-beams as flashy as possible. I mean, they don’t really add anything to the series.
I’m really hoping that in the autumn-season, another series will pop up that manages to choose where to focus its animation on so well. Obviously, after episode 1 it’s still too early to judge: you never know which series blow up their entire budget within one episode, and which ones instead decided to save most of their budget for later.
