This episode ends the Gravestone-arc, and what a great ending it is! I really adored this episode.
Honoka, Paife an Ikus all have an encounter with Gravestone. Ikus with Gravestone himself, Paife with a copy of Gravestone and Honoka with a copy of herself. Ikus tried to convince Gravestone to stop, though it seems that he decided not to force him to make decisions. He does tell Gravestone (and us) some details about the great war. It seems that a certain “everyone” died. Ikus would like to explain it to him, though he claims that he doesn’t have the permission nor right to tell him. This suggests that he works for some kind of superior. Ikus also tells Gravestone that he’s met similar cases. There are more people like Gravestone. While he tells this, we see weapons of mass destruction attack planets. It would suggest that Ikus witnessed all these events somehow.
Honoka, meanwhile, has a duel with her copy. Here it really seems that she can’t even draw her katana in order to defend herself. She just can’t cut another human. Her copy then tries to play with her mind, by trying to make her believe that she hates everyone else. In the end, Honoka finally gets her piece of character development when she realizes that all of this is nonsense. In the end, she meets Gravestone in person, and she manages to change his mind. Awesome.
Paife, meanwhile, finally gets the chance of trying out the plan she tried to use against Honoka, but failed. The Gravestone copy seems to be immune for guns and bullets, so she decides to use her fists and ki. Though even that proves to be useless. Her final trick is to use some kind of barrier, with one small opening. Force a huge amount of ki through that opening, and the pressure creates an explosion. This is too much for the copy, and it disappears. This is another reason why the narrator comes in handy. He actually explains the fighting strategies of the different characters. It’s a nice touch.
In the end, it seem that Gravestone was a young boy, who died during the Great War. His father was an important scientist, who tried to save his son by turning him into this. By letting him retain his child-form, he’d never have to fight or be used in the war.
I’ve also seen the preview for the next, infamous episode. Let’s just say I can understand the rumours. The art looks SO different. I’m glad that it’s just for one episode. Let’s hope it’s not too bad. This episode, in any case, was awesome.
The art in the next one looks just terrible. Honoka’s face is so fat… WTF? Tell me it’s just that one episode. A low budget show like Higurashi could get away with it, but all I can say is… why?
People are indeed saying that it’s just for one episode. Thankfully.
But I wonder why in Epi 13 this happened. Was the budget low, was the art designer drunk … or wtf?
Well, lets hope its really only that one. The third is great, and shouln’t be ruined like that.
I wonder if Gravestone reappears, since he left this timespace.
I hope so, I like him ^^
To bad he didn’t eat Paife ;D
I think it’s got something to do with a bad choice of animation studio. With most anime, different studios are working on it. I think a very bad studio somehow got permission to make the thirteenth.