Wolverine – 10

This episode kicked ass! It was just simple action, but that’s exactly what this show is best at. Wolverine isn’t anything deep, but the things that it’s supposed to do, it does really well here. Ten episodes in, and it’s still consistently entertaining action that has shown very few, if any, unexpected weak moments. It pretty much delivered exactly what it promised. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.

Also, in these types of action and adventure series, how often do we really see the creators killing off the cute moe character? Unless we’re talking about a mostly female cast, it’s always the older ones, or some of the guys that die in the middle of a battle. here in Wolverine though, the creators just killed off just about the only moe character of the entire series. The only teenager actually DIES here, due to her inexperience and naivety. That’s rare!

The strange thing about this episode is that it also flew by: I really got the feeling that it was less than 20 minutes of total airtime, that’s how it caught me up in its pacing. It’s again something that we’ve come to expect from this series: the battles are long, but not too long, and most importantly: they’re not drawn out but actually play out without characters just standing there and looking at each other for what feels like ages. Wolverine’s motto is “don’t talk, just act” and the anime so far has made great use of that.

Oh, and Yukio: she’s a great co-lead. For once she actually isn’t the romantic love interest for the main guy, but the way in which this episode had her both busy fighting the bad guys and fighting alongside her grandfather that she had many problems with, seeing the girl who replaced her die… that definitely was a nice touch for her character.
Rating: ** (Excellent)