Whoa… that was just incredible… I expected the last episode to be of the same scale of the second one, but the way it turned out, I never saw coming. Bake Neko definatly has earned itself a spot on my list of most memorable stories. I’m encouraging everyone to at least take a look at it. You don’t nessecarily have to see episode 1-8 in order to enjoy Bake Neko, Ayakashi is just a combination of three individual stories which have nothing to do with each other.

This episode consists out of two parts: the Makoto being found out, and the Kotowari being found out. My favourite moment is when we get to see our first glimpse of the Kotowari. You SO DO NOT see that coming! I like the way that we’re completely kept oblivious about it until that moment, then everything suddenly becomes clear. You’ll understand when you see it.

Overall, Bake Neko was just total awesomeness. Starting from begin to end, this is a story that’s just totally incredible. I’ll probably have the review up tomorrow. It’s a bit too late for that now.

Okay, now I know what happened to the “horror”-part of Ayakashi ~ Japanese Classic Horror: they saved all of it for the last two episodes (yes, for some reason, Bake Neko consists of three episodes, instead of the usual four). For one of the first times ever, an anime managed to actually scare me. Not much, but still… Needless to say that I absolutely loved this episode.

I would try to give a summary of this episode, but I feel like I won’t be able to. So many different things happened all at once, this was just a roller-coaster ride from one scene to another. If the third episode doesn’t disappoint, then Bake Neko will easily be the best out of the three stories presented in Ayakashi.

Another thing I loved is the attention paid to exorcism. Our medicine seller uses finally a bit more than just the basics in order to get rid of this demon. The line of salt, the flying scales that would tell the demon’s location, the paper seals which would show signs whenever Bake Neko was near it, it all made sense once you saw it in action. The dialogue also was a major plus of this episode, ranging from the characters going berserk to the bickering between the bodyguard and the medicine seller and from the desperate characters to the calm characters. Speaking of characters, these also were great. Each of them seems to be unique in some way, and for some reason, all are interesting to watch, especially the uncle freaked me out, as he seemed to be extremely happy when the demon arrived, in a scary way.

The artwork, the more I look at it, the more I actually like it. It’s really something different, for both the characters as the background.

The art is a strange thing in this anime. At one time, it looks very crisp, at other times, it looks messed up. The main characters look very good, though the side-characters, which only appear one episode could have been done much better. The animation, especially the supernatural looks great at some times, though it’s horrible at other times.

Anyway, this episode was about fortunetellers, fake ones and real ones. Yuuko decides to take Watanuki to one of them, but later it appears that she’s a fake one. She only tells you what you want to hear, instead of what you want to know. She uses common knowlegde and guessing in order gain the victim’s trust and tries to make it believable. And true, that’s how most fortunetellers run their businesses, although some people refuse to admit it. I’ve even heard of fortunetellers that tell the exact same story over and over again, without anyone noticing it.

Fake fortunetelling, by the way, seems to be a sensitive subject of Yuuko. For the first time, we see her dead-serious, instead of her usual cheerful, playful or explaining personality. She then takes him to a real fortuneteller, using an interesting technique of conjuring a hankerchief into a butterfly, which flies to its target, in this case, the fortuneteller. She indeed has no need of information from Watanuki, except for his name, perhaps, and she does tell him things only a person who knows him would know, and leaves a big impression on Watanuki.

I have to say that I enjoyed watching this anime. It follows the same pattern as Mushishi and Jigoku Shoujo, as in one story every week, though it’s more focused on the main characters than those two were.

Honoka heads to the person she was supposed to meet in the first place. It’s a guy and his daugher, and apparently, the three share a very tight bond. The entire episode was again mostly meant as an introduction. We get to see some more sides of Honoka, including a ticked-off side and a motherly side. We also learn that she’s already seventeen years old, which does explain her behavior and reasons a bit more.

We also meet up with an important-looking guy, apparently a member of the third, who makes decisions on planetary level. How he is aquainted with Honoka remains a mystery, though. My guess is that he’ll be some major bad guy in the future.

So far, the only thing The Third has been doing is building up. I suspect that this will continue for a couple of more episodes. Still I’m curious about the final results of this.

First of all: Woo! 200th post!!

Second of all, this is another one of my end-of-the-month-summaries. I’m going to do this slightly different than last time, and hopefully a bit more organized. Where last time was just a list of lists with some occasional ranking lists, I’m going to turn this month into a list of only ranking lists.
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These all feature an episode in which a female tries to do her best. The first two fail horribly, though the last one succeeds.

Inukami

Okay, I think we’ve identified the worst anime of the season. And I thought Joshikousei was bad. Seriously, stay away from this anime. Far, far away. It’s that bad.

Love Get Chu

I was hoping that this would become something very insprirational. Well, my guess was wrong. There’s nothing exceptional with this anime. Just an ignorant little girl who wants to become a seijuu and happens to have a very strong voice. She’ll probably make it to some of the best seijuu ever, and live happily ever after with the guy she happened to meet in this episode. The side-characters also are one cliché after another.

Tsubasa Chronicle 2nd Season

Aah, I missed this. It really is just as good as the previous season. The music is the same awesomeness as before, with a couple of extra tunes added. This time, the feather is the grand prize for a racing event. The racing vehicles are some kind of flying-chibi-cars, not optimally aerodinamic at all, but somehow, they manage to fly. This episode is about the qualification for the final race, as only ten people may enter it. I can’t say anything but the fact that I loved this race. All of our four main characters enter. Kurogane and Fye both manage to come in first, Sakura still has difficulties driving her flying car, and Syaoran has engine problems. The two of them do manage to get the ninth and tenth place, though. Even though this was totally predictable, I really liked it. Especially when you consider the humor thrown in, and the fact that someone’s cheating in order to win the feather. I’m expecting a lot of goodness from this.