Before I begin with the review, I’d like to bring the great news that this is my exact 250th post! Yay!!!! In a bit more than half a year, I managed to produce quite a number of material. Now, up to the 500!

This episode was a very interesting one. Remember the last episode of the first season? Well, it seems that the spirit world last episode talked about was actually this world, there seems to be another feather at this place, and we have another arc which only takes up one single episode. It brings up some nice discussions, though I believe that this was mostly meant in order to flesh out the main bad guy a bit.

The thing I loved about this episode is the fact that we didn’t get to see a happy ending. The characters who died and got revived back last time, are at the verge of disappearing again. They hope that a second feather, located in the horn on the nose of a dragon will be able to please the statue from last time, so that it’ll be able to stop the people from disappearing.

The feather is obtained, thanks to a smart plan from Kurogane, though then it appears that the statue won’t be saving those people. The wish Sakura made last time appeared to have been a temporary wish. The power of the feather wasn’t enough to accomplish it. What follows is a sad scene of people who have died vanishing once more, saying goodbye to their loved ones for a final time. Even though this didn’t mean a lot in terms of the plot, I found myself enjoying this. It really reminded me of Mushishi in some way.

But then we have the bad guy. He’s first seen when the statue refuses to grant Sakura’s wish, at which he seems in very deep thoughts when he sees this. We get to see him again at the end of the episode, after which the persons have vanished into thin air, or green sparks, in this case. While holding a wine glass, he says the same thing that Sakura’s father (or Clow Reed) said to her when she was young: you can’t bring people back once they have lost their lives. We switch to Syaoran and Sakura for a bit, and when we return to him, the woman arrives. They both agree that everything went as they expected. The wine-glass, however, has fallen and the bad guy looks very annoyed. This suggests that our bad guy has once lost someone he dearly loved. This someone probably has something to do with his reasons for acting. I wonder who it could be, and if we already had this person introduced.

On a side-note: it’s great to see that the quality of the graphics has turned up again. Last episode was just a bit too horrible.
On a side-note-2: Yuuko looks more like xxxHolic-Yuuko than ever.
On a side-note-3: Why the heck doesn’t xxxHolic have Tsubasa-Chronicle references? Or will these just appear in the later episodes?

Noein suddenly accomplished the impossible: it surpassed itself. This episode was utterly, utterly incredible. It focuses around Isami, Ai and Miho as they grow up, and also gives some hints towards what made them change towards Fukurou, Kosagi and Amamuki. As always, it’ll be very difficult to give a good summary of Noein, as there are tons of things happening at tons of different places at tons of different times and tons of different timespaces with tons of different characters.

Before I continue, I have to make a very embarrassing confession. I actually cried during this episode. I almost never cry. Up till today, only Full Moon wa Sagashite managed this, and now Noein comes and just accomplishes this like it’s nothing!

Anyway, Noein, in order to attempt to win her for him, shows Haruka one of the possible futures for her friends. Believe me, it isn’t going to be pretty. Everything starts with Isami’s grandmother who died. As his parents died before, they have nobody to take care of them, so a distant relative came up and offered his help. This means that Isami and Ai had to be separated. Ai also grew away from Miho. Back in Shangri’La, Atori refuses to go out, while Miho makes him do it. He was just so adorible when he listened to her. Just compare this to the Atori of the beginning of the series.

Miho, Isami and Ai meanwhile are already attending highschool. Miho’s combination of having weird ideas and being rich doesn’t fare her too well, as she gets bullied in a horrible way. She doesn’t have any friends at all, and people are openly making fun of her. It was just too sad to see her, locked up in a toilet, and seeing the once so cheerful Miho suddenly victim of one of the pranks of her fellow classmates again. This is probably what turned her into the cold-hearted Kosagi.

Isami doesn’t have any better luck. He grows up to be a true delinquent, hitting people for fun, stealing money, the usual. He’s totally forgotten about his love for Ai. When she meets him, she tries to talk to him, but he then begins shouting at her. This is probably what turned him into the kind-hearted, though determined Fukurou. These were also great scenes to make the strange use of graphics stand out to their best. The messy art really added up to the scenes at which Isami kept kicking another one of his victims.

Back in the current timespace, things aren’t going too well either. Firstly, Haruka’s mother comes back, and suddenly sees that her entire house is gone. Of course, she freaks out and goes to Yuu’s mother, who manages to calm her a bit. An amazing scene again, the reactions also totally fitted.

The great big jerk is at the verge of putting his experiments to the test, at the major displeasure of Haruka’s father. Kosagi, Uchida, Kooriyama and Tobi are on a mission to try and stop them. This will probably be their final goal for the scenes, as the great big jerk has absolutely nothing to do with Haruka, directly.

Yuu and Karasu aren’t doing a lot during this episode. They mostly spend their airtime getting to Haruka. As Shangri’La is a timespace full of incoherences, the two of them must have an iron will to save Haruka, instead of iron feet. At the end of the episode, it becomes clear that Yuu’ll be the one to protect her, as he gets to be the one teleported. I wonder what the final role of Karasu might be. He still needs to do something over the last two episodes.

Back to Miho. Things get even worse, when she eventually locks herself up in her room, for two whole weeks. When her mother finally manages to get her to open her door, it appears that all of the psychological strain caused her amnesia. I’ve said it somewhere before on this blog, but I’m an incredible sucker for stories featuring memory loss. This made me absolutely love this moment.

But wait, there’s more. Isami and his gang get into a fight with another gang. The other gang is no match for them, but then one of them comes with a knife. He’s frozen with fear, but when Isami gets too close in order to stop one of his gangmates from doing something stupid, the guy with the knife charges, and manages to cut out one of Isami’s eyes. This explains Fukurou’s scar. More importantly, this is when Isami begins to realize what a jerk he has been, and he begins to hate himself. His gang-members run away, and he’s left all alone. Can it truly get any better?

Certainly! Ai still practices football. Then, she hears about Isami and tries to rush towards his house. Then, her knee begins to act weird, and she falls down with pain. When she gets to the hospital, the doctors give her the news that if she doesn’t amputate her leg, she’ll die within three months. Three friggin’ months! Besides this scene explaining why Amamuki doesn’t take part of any action, it was one of the best ever!

Things get even better when Miho attempts to take in an overdose of pills, Ai attempts to jump off a building, and Isami attempts to kill the one who took out his eye. Haruka, as she’s been watching this for all this time, can’t bear any more of it. Her thoughts reach Yuu, and he jumps to Isami, stopping him, and telling him to meet Ai. Miho is saved by Atori, who managed to show up, and the teenage Isami is the one who makes up with Ai. Best. Scenes. Ever.

Noein only strenthens this effect by showing his face for the very first time. He keeps trying to get into Haruka’s mind, by reminding her that Yuu was the one who didn’t manage to recover from his miseries, unlike Ai, Isami and Miho. It seems that Haruka’s death was just too much for him, and it turned him into Noein. So, what was the difference between Noein and Karasu? Why did Noein change, while Karasu didn’t?

Overall, this episode was just totally incredible. The best episode of Noein yet. I’d gotten a bit demotivated from the inconsistent releases, though this episode really reminded me why Noein is one of the best anime ever. Period.

Compared to the first two episodes, this one was kindof meager. Nothing special really happened, the art looked weird, and everything just seemed to go according to plan. I found myself thinking this after thee quarters of the episode had passed. Then the last part came, and totally waltzed me down with total awesomeness. I felt a huge urge to scream during these scenes.

We start with the crash from last episode. Syaoran and Ryuuoh are indeed out of the race, which makes clear that Sakura was meant to win this race. She manages to catch up to the contestants, and we finally get to see her use some of her power, while she’s aware that she uses this power. For some reason, she’s able to avoid all of the obstacles the other contestants except Kurogane have difficulties with. Kurotan was so cool at that moment.

Anyway, Sakura and Kurogane end up flying next to each other, and the bad guy aims to take out the both of them. Kurogane then sacrifices himself for Sakura, a very noble deed. Syaoran and Ryuuoh, meanwhile, found the location of this culprit. They make clever use of the first-aid zeppelin to bring them there. Kurogane and Fye meanwhile managed to make their way towards Tomoyo, who confesses that she indeed was the one who put nanomachines in the air during the qualification match. She did this in order to make Sakura win, as a certain person told her about the day that our heroes would arrive and about the fact that the feather rightfully belongs to Sakura. Her reasons are quite good, though before Kurogane can ask who this person might be, Tomoyo’s security managed to find out the location of the one who messed with the vehicles in the final round, as there seems to be another party attempting to sabotage the race.

This gets clear once the bad guy attempts to disable Sakura as well. He aims a couple of lasers at her, though Syaoran and Ryuuoh manage to stop him in time. Then it appears that the bad guy is Piffle’s president himself. This explains how he managed to be able to manipulate the race at such a level. His reasons are never given. Though I have a few assumptions. Anyway, Sakura eventually manages to reach the finish in first place, so she wins the feather. Syaoran realizes that there’s still one culprit left, who hasn’t shown himself yet. I wonder how he made that assumption.

Anyway, at that point, my enthusiasm wasn’t really big. The only thing keeping me from getting demotivated were the mysterious person from Tomoyo and the mysterious culprite. The episode had nothing really special, and it felt a bit incomplete. The character art also took a turn for the worse, especially the faces of the characters.

Then, the two missing links got revealed. Holy god, everything suddenly makes sense. The culprit appears to be Dr Kyle from the Jade world. That’s what the woman meant in the first episode when she assumed that he’d be viewed as the same character in a different world. She wasn’t talking about the Syaoran-clone, she was talking about Dr Kyle! My assumptions from last episode were totally wrong as well. Tsubasa Chronicle indeed made a great use of this.

And if things weren’t great already, the one who informed Tomoyo was actually Tomoyo-hime! I found myself having the same reaction as Kurogane at that moment. It really seems that Tomoyo is interfering with Sakura’s quest as well. This also explains why Tomoyo found out about the exact time that our heroes would be showing up, and the fact that Tomoyo trusted Sakura immediately.

Anyway, Mokona demonstrates one of her 108 secret skills: Super Suction Power, in order to protect the feather from Kyle. Sakura gets her feather, Kyle teleports away, the different parties say goodbye and Mokona teleports our heroes to a different world. Then we see the bad guys having a small talk. Cryptic as ever, but we do learn a few things. They are indeed able to direct the world Mokona teleports to. Next time, it’ll be the Spirit World. Sounds scary. Still, what does direct intervention mean? They also begin to see that trying to get the feather for themselves won’t work at all. They also talk about some kind of miracle, what could that be? And why are they so eager to get Sakura to get all of her feathers back, while they try to take the feathers for themselves?

Overall, I liked the Piffy-arc. Especially the first two episodes were great, and the plot twists at the end of this episode also totally made up for the weaker part of the episode.

Okay, everyone who wrote this series down really needs to take a look at episode six. The children’s elements are still clearly visible, but apart from that, the episode’s brilliant! It nearly killed me from laughter at times.

I knew it was a good idea to keep following this series. We start with our “heroes” walking over a very fragile and more importantly long bridge between two floating islands, over a vast mass of nothingness. There’s no continuity in these masses, and Laharl quickly gives Flonne a demonstration of their characteristics. ^^ They then end up at another large, dark castle, at which the one who put the reward on Laharl’s head is said to live. They got the directions from Sardia, from last episode.

Inside the castle, Laharl puts his plan of collecting his own reward into action. He sees a butler (a miniature-zombie with a very introvert personality), who tells him the master of the house is coming soon. The master appears to be an extremely girly demon, up to the point at which it becomes funny. He gets giddly over everything. Then, Etna reveals to be actually working for this guy. She grabs a large, black box and captures Flonne and Laharl into it.

The black box appears to be a kind of board-game, at which the ones who get caught into it will be living out random lives for all eternity. I so loved this. You can really see that the creators had lots of fun trying to think of different roles for Laharl and Flonne to play (imagine seeing Flonne as the leader of a motor-gang, hairstyle included, and Laharl as a ballet-dancer and a sumo-wrestler ^^).

Etna, meanwhile, has problems of her own. It appears that she actually had some reasons to work for the castle lord (apparently named Maderas), as he stole some of her memories. She worked out her part of the deal, so she asks Maderas to give in to his part. Of course, this is a children’s anime and Maderas is a devil, so he refuses. Etna notices him looking at a suspicious-looking painting, so she suspects the memories to be there. She gets kicked out by Maderas, who goes to take a shower afterwards. She sneaks in, only to find the memories being absent from behind the painting and realizing she walked into a trap.

Maderas threatens to let her memories lose upon the demon-world. These memories come in three different kinds of levels, ranging from mildly to normal to highly embarrassing memories. Furthermore, these seem to be memories of an unrequited love. I wonder who the person that she loves might be. It doesn’t get mentioned anywhere in the episode. Still, it does show that the show is actually capable of delivering some character background. Laharl also gets a bit, in a flashback at which his father tries to teach him a lesson about the reliability of demons. Very enjoyable indeed.

I loved Etna at this part. She tries a bit of acting, and ends up imitating a crying little girl. Too cute. Maderas then tells her that he’ll give her her memories back, if she throws the box with Laharl and Flonne in it in the fire. You would expect an Etna who begins to struggle with her feelings. Hell no! She just throws them in the fire, like it’s nothing. When Maderas again breaks his promises, Etna really gets angry, and Mid-Boss arrives to save the day. At least, that’s his version. As he stands outside, the fog surrounding the castle blinds him, he throws some random roses, and disappears again. ^^

The roses, however, hit three suspicious Prinny statues, revealing them to be actual Prinnies, petrified. They then reveal that Maderas put the memories inside the Prinnies for safe-keeping (you were expecting a quest through the castle in order to find al three of them, weren’t you? ;)). With this, Etna feels confident enough to release Laharl and Flonne from their burning prison, after which she quickly hurries to silence the Prinnies, who nearly can’t bear to not tell about her embarrassing memories.

I’ll ignore the next scene for now. Basically, Maderas summons an army of mechanical angels who keep yelling peace-inducing quotes. This doesn’t really work, and it gets carried a bit too far. Flonne is about the only one who can manage to do this right. Laharl manages to recover in time, and Etna takes gets scary. She then reveals her motivations for helping him. She was actually waiting for the right opportunity in order to get revenge on the bastard who ruined her life. The Prinnies, meanwhile, can’t hold back anymore, and release Etna’s memories. Everyone inside the castle gets to see them. The viewers, however, don’t. Like I said, I wonder whether we’ll be able to see them once. Eventually, Laharl and Etna manage a truce.

This anime is actually well developed, full of surprises, and there’s been an exceptional attention to detail. The bridge, for example. Flonne breaks one step of it, and some pieces of wood fall down. About a minute later, we see the same wood, falling down again, suggesting the dimensional gateway between the top and bottom. Laharl sees this as well, so he sends Flonne into the void as well, knowing that she’ll just end up back at the bridge. Flonne also notices a rose-petal before the three of them enter the castle. This suggests that Mid-Boss is in the area, just waiting to make an appearance. Etna, also sees Maderas look at his portrait in a very suspicious way, and figures that her memories might be there. Then, this seems to have been the intention of Maderas all along. And the Prinny Statues. I kept wondering why Maderas would keep some statues of a Prinny, but then it appeared that they were to actually guard Etna’s memories. It’s these little details that I can appreciate.

In terms of voice-acting, this anime also is amazing. Especially Laharl, and most importantly Etna and Flonne sound awesome. Flonne with her screaming is just way too cute, and Etna’s voice really fits her when she turns evil and manipulative. In terms of the relationships between the different characters, this anime also is brilliant. Just think of Etna who desperately tries to stop the Prinnies from doing something stupid, Laharl ignoring Flonne on short terms, but getting more used to her on long terms, Etna either being incredibly dependant or incredibly manipulative towards Laharl and Mid-Boss trying to get our heroes’ attention at almost every episode, only to disappear five seconds later.

Overall, this anime is going into the right direction. Elements of children’s shows are definately visible, but they’re packaged inside something brilliant. It’s just too bad of episode 3 and 4. These seemed to make no sense at all, and the more I think about it, the more badly they were executed.