The Third – 10 – Still Going Strong

Aah, I’ve been longing to see more of The Third, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. The episode mainly focused at showing yet another side of Paife, though many more things happened at the same time.

First Honoka. She’s getting really unstable now. I really noticed that she’s trying to keep cheerful, in order to hide all her worries. Still, once she’s with her PSP, she really is cheerful. ^^ It also seems that there’s something more to the last episode, in which Honoka cut down the man-turned-monster. She was extremely shocked afterwards. The reason seems to be that she never cut any human before. For some reason, cutting a human feels different from cutting a Desert Ant, Sand Worm, or Blue Breaker. Honoka found out at that moment, and it keeps haunting her, even in her dreams. Still, this gives evidence for two very interesting things. 1. Honoka did kill before, but not with her katana. What happened at that time? Who did she kill? 2. Honoka has been having nightmares like these every night. There must be more things occupying her mind than just Ikus being gone and having killed a human.

Paife seems to be very annoyed when men are around. That becomes clear when Ikus rejoins Honoka. Her personality is totally different from what she was before. She’s more blunt, and not afraid to hide her annoyance of Ikus. In the end, this annoyance leads to a fight between her and Honoka. She’s noticed that Honoka’s feeling uneasy. This also becomes evident when she practices her swordfighting in the evening. That’s why she steps up to her, to try and talk her out of this depression. She thinks that Honoka should know what reality is. She also lets Honoka know that she’s done some horrible things in the past and that Honoka wouldn’t want to be with her if she knew the things she did.

I’m not sure what she tried to accomplishing by fighting Honoka. I think that she wanted to beat some sense into her. In the end, Honoka beat her in both fighting with and without weapons. Ikus, meanwhile, displayed interesting behaviour when he found out about Honoka’s first kill. This does suggest that he was somehow involved with these punks, and apparently, he felt bad about letting Honoka kill a person.

Over in space, preparations are meanwhile taken to activate the Wormhole Drive, or a huge cannon, used in the great war. Just what went on during the great war anyway? It must’ve been pretty bad. In any case, Joganki has found out that Ikus was located near the site of the warped space. It seems that The Third are indeed tracking him. In any case, he then realizes that Honoka has to be with him. Long story short, Honoka will be blasted if she doesn’t move away from the warped space. Ikus knew this, and tried to stop her from going, though he didn’t really try this with enthusiasm.

There are two main reasons why I’m so in love with The Third. The first one is that it doesn’t seem to have any obvious weaknesses. That almost never happens in anime. Even the best ones have one or two small parts that annoy me. The Third has absolutely no flaws at all. It’s building up perfectly. The second one is the characters. Never have I seen characters who are so fleshed out as in The Third. Especially Honoka shines like no other in this department.

Also, someone from within the warped space was calling Honoka. Who could that be? Who wants to contact Honoka from such a place?