When you ask people about the women who can really think for themselves, featured in anime which came out this season, you most often hear Firiel and Shiurei. Honoka, however, is mostly left out of this, while she has all the right in the world to belong in this category. She’s another one of these female main characters that really is unique in her own way, can think on her own way, and has her problems her own way. Shiurei has an amazingly strong personality and great morals. Firiel has her incredible curiosity and self-confidence. Honoka has an extremely cheerful personality and some very sharp observation skills. I don’t think I’ll be able to determine the best among the three of them.

It does seem, however, that this anime will manage do delve better in the mind of Honoka. The narrator was a very good idea, as he is able to inform the viewer about the unspoken and unwritten events that happened.

The episode immediately starts with the footsoldiers of The Third forcefully separating a man from his wife and kid. Lots of drama, though surprisingly nowhere it gets over the top, turning this into a good scene. We then switch to Joey, suspiciously watching Honoka and Ikus talking while he actually should be performing maintenance on Bogie. Honoka says goodbye to Ikus in a bit of a slow discussion. She feels a bit sad when he leaves.

We then get a bit of info about the town which Honoka frequents. It’s called Emporium Town, it’s a rather large-scale settlement in the Rokugou Desert. It’s also good that the cities actually have an explanation for their source of foods, in contrast to a certain Trigun. It appears that The Third loans bio-plants to these settlements, while they can build up their own, self-sustained system. This makes me wonder about The Third. They provide food for settlements, but they also just kidnap people and take them to somewhere remote. Are they good, or are they evil? Anyway, Emperium’s a bit different from other settlements, because of the huge number of mechanics (or Technos) and great mechanical skills posessed by these people. Thanks to the narrator for informing me on this.

Honoka’s meanwhile on her way to a doctor, just in case her wound appears to be something dangerous. On her way, she meets up with a lot of mechanical shops, and she really needs Bogie to remind herself that she can’t spend any more. She also runs into some guy named Kevin. The two of them apparently know each other. He pokes a bit of fun at her, but then he tells her that a certain “Blue Breaker” has started moving.

I also noticed that a fair number of people keep reminding Haruka that she doesn’t look too feminine in her outfit. Still, I have to say that I like it. It’s so much better than the generic maid-costumes. Anyway, Honoka arrives at the doctor’s office, but then it appears that the guy’s a huge pervert. I was fearing the worst, but Honoka’s reaction to this was actually pretty funny, rather than annoying like in most anime. The doctor also mentioned the “Man’s Romance”, which totally reminded me of PopoloCrois.

The doctor examines her arm a bit, and gets a big smirk on his face when he realizes that Hokona might have someone she loves. They also talk a bit about how she fought with the 4th model, and how he adviced her not to get involved with Jouganki anymore. He also mentions that the foot-soldiers from The Third are more active than usual, and that they seem to be looking for someone. Ikus directly comes to Honoka’s mind.

After she left the hospital, Honoka contacts Bogie for a bit, explaining that she’ll be working for a bit while he warns her about the Blue Breakers again. Whoever they might be. Honoka spends the rest of the afternoon taking on small jobs in order to earn enough money for the things she bought last time. Joel, meanwhile, still wonders who Ikus might’ve been. Honoka also hears about the event which happened at the beginning of the episode. It then appears that the guy got kidnapped because he was using too many technologies, as The Third only allows a limited technology. Lawbreakers will be regulated strictly. This is called the Technos Taboo (thanks to the narrator for this information again).

That evening, she suddenly sees Ikus, acting like nothing’s going on, while he’s the one being searched for. She takes him to a bar, which Kevin also seems to be frequenting, and tries to talk some sense into him. Ikus, however, has no idea what she means, so she gets a bit startled by this. Honoka also explains that Kevin works as a mercenary soldier. Ikus then admits that he’s had fun while staying with her, startling Honoka once again. We then get a very small taste of the plotline in future episodes in the scenes which follow.

To begin with, Ikus mentions that Honoka’s more special than any life since he’s been there. The fact that he uses “life”, instead of “humans”, or “people” must mean that there are other sentient beings wandering on the planet besides humans. Then, the series really gets entertaining when the foot-soldiers enter the bar, and approach Ikus. They demand him to come with them and go to the place named Hyperius. He refuses, and Honoka tries to do something. She forms some kind of strange energy in her hand, though before she gets to use it, Kevin smacks the foot-soldiers standing in front of her, pretending to be drunk. What follows is the other people in the bar suddenly getting the motivation to smash some foot-soldiers as well, giving Honoka and Ikus the chance to escape. Still, these scenes to suggest that there’s something special to humans in this world. Honoka is special in some kind of way. It’ll be interesting to find out which kind.

Joel really gets annoyed when he finds out that Ikus asks Honoka to allow him to travel with her. He offers a large sum of cash for this. Honoka accepts after a bit of thinking, but deep in her heart, she’s happy that he comes along with her (thanks to the narrator for this info, once more. He really needs to have some kind of name if this continues). He has his own reasons for joining her, though he doesn’t want to tell her yet.

Honoka definately is one of the most dimensional characters ever. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character with so many different sides as she has, no character acts as natural as she does. In most anime, I’m able to tell how a character feels. Character A feels happy at this moment, character B is embarrased, while character C is thinking. In The Third, I need the narrator in half of the cases, as I just can’t describe how Honoka feels with just one or two simple words. The best examples of this is probably when she meets Kevin for the first time, and when she says goodbye to Ikus.

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.

We now continue with the fifth of thirteen episodes of Good Witch of the West. I was surprised at first when I found this number, as I assumed that there would be something along the lines of 24 episodes. Still, it does explain why the pacing has been so huge, it has less time than other anime to tell its story, so there’ll be no room for fillers. I’ll be curious about how this will turn out to be. So far, Good Witch of the West is heading in a very good direction.

The Secret-Garden arc ends here, its main goal was to introduce a number of important characters, the main villain among them, and to teach Firiel the things she needs to know about swordfighting. I’m not too happy about the skimpy outfits worn by some of the evil characters, a wrong decision by the creators. The plot twist was amazing. You knew it was coming some time, but at the time it finally comes, it’s totally unexpectable. It’s also very good to see that there’s another third party, who aims to oppose both the good and the evil side. It adds such a nice twist.

Sister Lain invites Roux over to her place again, Roux heads off, and Firiel finds the invitation letter on his desk. Naturally, she gets angry. At the meeting place, Roux gets greeted by the student council, along with Sister Lain herself. She then tries to seduce Roux, while attempting to make him talk about the Ephemeris. She then reveals that she oversees the Snake Rod (the ones that gave Roux his scars), and that she actually only lets them live because they might be useful to her. There was a lot of vague dialogue in this scene, so I didn’t manage to pick up everything. What I do know is that Lain is actually Leandra, Adale’s rival for queenship. She snuk into the Secret Garden for some kind of strange reason we still don’t know. Firiel reveals this, as she barges into the room, worried for Roux. Her argument is her inutition, something which surprises Leandra.

The two parties make a deal. As Roux needs to keep his manhood a secret, and Leandra wouldn’t profit from being found out, the two parties agree to keep each other’s secret. Leandra then puts a little extra stakes on the battle versus Ravenna: when Firiel wins, Roux won’t be harmed, when she loses, he’ll be Leandra’s posession. Roux is still absent-minded about thse things, and Firiel scolds him. It really seems that both of them are careless, in their own unique ways, and both of them need to remind each other that they are.

Anyway, this keeps haunting Firiel, and she begins to linger a bit during her training (at which she begins to have more and more fans and admirers, which is really awesome). Igraine tries to talk her out of it, though she doesn’t manage to do this for a hundred percent. Vincent then brings the news that the duel is only one night away. Igraine and Firiel spend the evening for a bit of very extensive training, which was supposed to make her ready for the swordfight. They do this in a special place in the academy, a very romantic one: a terrace, at a high place on the castle. After this training, Firiel promises to fight to her full extend. Roux also takes her to this place during the night, with the excuse of some shooting stars which will be able to be visible. This turns into a very romantic opportunity for the both of them. Another thing Good Witch of the West is extremely good at: the love-scenes. These will be great for every fangirl and fanboy, I totally love them.

Another interesting issue is that Ravenna actually gets a personality in this episode. She’s no more just an evil 1-dimensional character. This became clear first after the scene with her, Roux and Leandra. She just stood a bit helpless next to the two of them, unable to do something worthwile. The duel just increased this fact.

Anyway, the next day, it seems that someone has been sending Firiel some threat letters. She immediately suspects Leandra for doing that, though it appears that there’s another third party involved. Someone who’s against both Firiel and the student council.

Then the duel begins, and it’s awesome. First of all, it appears that Ravenna also got threat letters. Second of all: finally, we have fight again. Do you honestly think, that your first serious fight would be a piece of cake? Do you think that you’ll be able to give everything you have in order to win? No. Of course not. Everyone sucks at his or her first fight. I experienced this myself. I practice martial arts myself, and I entered a tournament once. In my opinion, pretty decent, but during that tournament my actions were totally horrible. Firiel is the same. Nerves take over, and she’s not able to do her best at all. She eventually manages to win because somebody in the audience uses a mirror in order to blind her, giving Firiel the chance she needs.

This brings up another interesting issue. When bad guys do this, it’s a dirty trick. The bad guys have to be punished, and nobody likes them. When a good guy cheats, everything seems to be allowed, just because the good guys are so awesome. You see that a lot in anime. Good Witch of the West gives a nice twist to this, but I’ll get to that later.

First, there comes the plot twist I talked about earlier. From the point that Firiel beat Ravenna, everything happened so fast, I really had trouble following everything. For starters: apparently, Firiel gets to be blessed by some kind of “princess”. First time I heard that. Anyway, the princess comes, and when she’s about to give her blessings, the princes grabs her own sword and throws Firiel to the ground. Remember Cisaria from episode three? Guess who this certain princess is. Cisaria then admits to have been the one to send all of the threatening letters, and the one who killed Roselitte. She then holds a monologue about her motives, ending in an attempt of suicide. Roux manages to stop her. These were a couple of amazing scenes. Especially the background, and use of scenery turned this into a feast for the senses, not to mention the twisted ideas of Cisaria, and the fact that Ravenna also is on her bad side.

Roux then reveals that he only came to this school because he wanted to stop the one after Firiel’s life. His mission is finished, so he prepares to leave. But not until Ravenna unleashes her anger upon him, by suspecting him to be the one with the mirror. To be honest, I also believed this in the first place. However, we never see who actually did it. It could’ve been someone totally different. But who? And why was this person so determined to go through such lengths in order to make Firiel win? Anyway, Roux gets unmasked as a boy, and he eventually manages to get saved by Adale, who appears to have been waiting for this duel in order to unassign the Student Council. This ends the Secret Garden-arc, Roux leaves in a way which will certainly please all of the fangirls out there, and we later see Firiel, Adale and Marie in a carriage, suggesting that Firiel’s abut to leave the academy as well. Leandra, meanwhile, isn’t too happy with Adale’s actions, and gets even more motivation to carry out her evil plans.

I’m pretty sure that this anime’ll reawaken my inner-fanboy. After all, this anime really seems to focus on fangirls/fanboys, rather than otaku’s (with the exception of Leandra, unfortunately). I currently totally love the art, it’s among the best ever. The dialogue may be a bit too vague, but it does work. Especially if you combine it with the incredible music which accompanies Good Witch of the West. The story hasn’t been amazing so far, though I’m pretty confident.

The concept: somewhere on the net, there exists a website. When you access that website, you can enter the name of a person you want to take revenge on. This person then gets sent to hell immediately. There is a catch, however. When you die, you also get sent to hell. Your soul will never find peace, and it’ll burn forever. In some anime, concepts like these never work. Jigoku Shoujo, however, somehow manages to turn this into something awesome.

Each episode is a standalone episode, except for the latter ones. In each of these, a person wants revenge on another person, and struggles whether it’s worth it or not. While some of the cases may look like each other, the majority of these cases manage to produce a unique standalone story, with beautiful characters, beautiful motives and furthermore great storytelling. I especially liked episode 7, 16, 22 and 23.

The characters are amazing. Each of the main characters has a unique personality, a good background (in most cases great) and really adds to the story. There were no annoying main characters at all. The characters who only appeared for one episode, even though there were a lot of them, all had something different from each other, and each of them had some kind of background. At the end of each episode, we could really enter the mind of these characters.

The art looks amazing. Especially the character art is among the most crisp ever seen in anime. The music also has turned into a masterpiece. The storytelling also couldn’t have been done better.

Overall, Jigoku Shoujo is an amazing anime. I’ll definately recommend it to anyone. Although, I have to say that there were a number of episodes which didn’t really seem too impressive. Apart from that, I have no complaints about this series.

Final Rating: 92/100

And it’s over! The ending definately was interesting. It doesn’t belong to the collection of amazing endings, though I did enjoy it. A lot.

Especially the first half of the episode is worthwile. I’ll say it again: WARNING: HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD!

The spider! The spider was behind all this. He forced her to become Jigoku Shoujo, in order to repent for her sins. Anyway, Ai isn’t satisfied, as Hajime, who indeed is a descendant of Sentarou, hasn’t been sent to hell yet. She then uses Tsugumi, she gives her the black doll with the string, she shows her the accident at which her mother died and tries to make her paranoid. Tsugumi actually believes this.

Then the infamous scene occurs, at which Tsugumi’s saved by Hajime who enters just at the right time, but let’s ignore that, shall we? Hajime then finally begins to break down, and Tsugumi comforts him. A bit overdramatic, but it works. Tsugumi was too cute at this once more. Ai sees this, and she decides to cease hostilities. She takes a moment to destroy Sentarou’s temple, and she leaves, along with her dolls, in order to just play Jigoku Shoujo again. Like I said, it was nothing special, but I definately enjoyed this ending.

This also gives a lot of room for the second season of Jigoku Shoujo, which has been announced. There are a lot of unanswered questions left, like who the hell was the spider? What is the meaning of the candles, which get shown at the end of each episode? Where did the grandmother come from? And does Hell-boy make another appearance? I wonder whether Tsugumi and Hajime will continue to try and stop Ai. The tension concerning the three of them certainly has died, so there has to be something else to take their place, while the two of them get to play another part. In any case, I’ll definately be looking forward to the next season. Does anyone have an idea when it starts to air? The concept just so totally rocks.

Like expected, this episode deals with Ai’s past. And holy god, it’s even better than the previous episode made it seem like. We start with the aftermath of the previous episode. (WARNING: HUGE SPOILERS COMING UP)

Ai goes berserk, and manages to hit Hajime and Tsugumi. The dolls try to stop her, but they fail. A huge lightning strike follows, demolishing a nearby tree, and sending Ai on the way to hell. She exits with saying that she doesn’t care about herself again. Hajime and Tsugumi, meanwhile, fall into a spring, and they enter Ai’s past. They get to see a vision of what turned Ai into Jigoku Shoujo.

Could it have been done better? I really don’t think so. Emna Ai really has the most awesome backgrounds ever, along with Ginko and Alice. For starters: Ai was being viewed as a monster back in her childhood-days. These ideas were based on total nonsense, but when an idea slips in, it isn’t possible to get it out of the villagers. Her only friend is Sentarou, and the two of them played together a lot. Sentarou protected Ai as much as he can, though he often loses his temper when she gets called names. Sentarou’s father also is a special person. He’s incredibly weak, so he can’t go and do work on farms. He volunteers to make straw slippers for the villagers in order to repay them. He also encourages Sentarou to play with Ai.

Then, Ai gets the message that she has to be the next victim in the ritual of Sending Seven, in order to appease the mountain god. Sentarou suspects that the villagers chose her on purpose, in order to get rid of her, which might actually come very close to the truth. They however, rely on their stubbornness and authority to ignore these facts. Sentarou gets even agrier when he hears this.

At the day of the Sending Seven, Ai’s parents come to Sentarou and beg him to help her. During the ritual, they hide her inside some kind of temple, and try to make the villagers think that she actually died. An interesting note: when Ai was picked up from her house, the ones who came to take her only thought about themselves, and acted impatiently. This shows that they really wanted her gone.

Anyway, the plan works, and for six years, Sentarou hides Ai in a well disguised place. He heads for her every night, and the two grow up together, and they begin to feel more and more for each other. Until one night, at which the villagers discover him, and the true awesomeness starts.

In these six years, the village has been dying. Harvests have been bad, and everyone’s complaining. When everyone finds out what happened, they immediately blame the cursed Ai for bringing misfortune to the village. Everyone demands the mistake to be corrected, by killing Ai once more. All they use are incredibly selfish arguments. Sentarou tries to do something, but none other than his father is the one who stops him from doing so. Ai gets chased and beaten down by the villagers, including them trying to drown her.

Later, both Ai as her parents have to be burried. They’re blindfolded, and all three of them get hit by a plough. When the villagers think they’re all dead, the bodies get thrown into a pit. Ai, however, remained alive, and she wakes up and sees hears Sentarou. Sentarou, however, is put under such enormous pressure, that he gets forced to be the one to burry her. Ai sees this, an then (while covered in blood by the way, an incredibly sad sight) she gets filled with hatred as the villagers finish filling the hole in which she lies with earth. Talk about horrifying scenes!

Anyway, a couple of years later, Ai arises from the earth, goes berserk and sets the village on fire. Sentarou sees this, and he flees. Tsugumi and Hajime wake up. Tsugumi doesn’t understand why Sentarou acted the way he did. Hajime, however, does. Does this have something to do with his former relationship? Anyway, as Hajime and Tsugumi didn’t get sent to hell, Ai hasn’t been finished either. We end the episode with her opening her eyes again, in a boat leading to hell.

Still, what role does the grandmother have? She hasn’t been shown at all during these flashback scenes. How did the dolls end up in hell in the first place? All questions, waiting to be answered in the last episode. The flashback was just amazing. This also explains what happened in the previous episode a bit better. Ai somehow seemed to have forgotten why she became Jigoku Shoujo in the first place, and thought that Hajime and Tsugumi could help her to understand this, and tell her what happened to Sentarou. The both of them are probably related to Sentarou in some way. The question remains: how?

Some very interesting events happen this episode. We start with where we left off last week: Shiurei’s being tied down and Ryuuki’s about to walk into a trap. Ryuuki, however, noticed this in time, and manages to finish the assaulters off. Seiran, meanwhile, has a dream from the past, at which he was to comfort the young Ryuuki when he was fleeing from his brothers again. Shiurei’s father sees this and smiles, but dashes quickly as he hears footsteps running. Apparently, he doesn’t want to be found out, so he flees.

Ran Shiuei enters the door, and sees Seiran unconcious. He orders his soldiers to search the place, but nothing is found. Ryuuki, meanwhile, finds Shiurei, he unties her, and gives her a big, unexpected hug. She faints afterwards (after all, she does remain poisoned). Ryuuki freaks out. Koyu, meanwhile, gives a little rant about Kourin. Last episode, she wasn’t assaulted at all. She actually attempted to poison herself from doing such things to Shiurei. I’m beginning to like Kourin more and more. Can she get even more awesome?

When the doctors put an examination on both Seiran and Shiurei, it appears that Seiran will be fine. Shiurei’s a different story. There’s no antidote at all, and she’ll be in danger if something isn’t done. Ryuuki freaks out even more when he hears this. The advisor arrives, and the two hold a small conversation. I couldn’t really follow this, but at first, the advisor is reluctant to give out the antidote. After Ryuuki shouts to him, he gives it anyway, and Shiurei is saved. The strange thing is that this guy was smiling thoughout this talk. Why would he want to do that?

Ryuuki leaves and Shiurei’s father enters, and I was getting more and more questions about this advisor-guy. For some reason, he makes Shiurei’s father angry, though not to the point at which hostilities begin. The old man also gives a flashback of a strange man on a horse. Probably the former emperor. Some shots about the time during the fight of the sons of the emperor are also shown, with people barely being able to stay alive. I then realized that Shiurei’s father might be the scary guy mentioned in the fourth episode. He’s some kind of assassin, or something in that direction.

Shiurei, meanwhile, wakes up, and Ryuuki gives her another big hug. We then see Shiurei’s father once more, talking to Shiusui (the older servant of Shiurei), for some reason dressed in the same outfit as he does. She apparently is one of the few people who does know that he’s this scary guy, and the two hold some kind of conversation. Why do I get the feeling that this woman is Shiurei’s mother?

I really have NO friggin idea what’s up with the old guy. Just before, he was making both Ryuuki and Shouka (Shiurei’s father’s name) angry for some reason, and now he walks up to the culprit from last episode, and the two of them talk like they’re best friends. The culprit-old guy is dying from the wound he got from Seiran, and makes his way out of the castle in hope for a miracle. He then runs into the advisor-old guy, surrounded by two sparkles. He might possibly be one of the sages, mentioned in the beginning of the story. Anyway, he lights up, and changes into a twenty-year-old version of himself.

He then professes his LOVE for the other old guy, the other old guy takes his last breath. Apparently, they were really close in the past. I have no idea what that was about, but I want some answers!

We then switch to another very interesting development: Shiurei will be leaving the castle. Ryuuki’s got some sense into him, so she’s not needed anymore. During her departure, the advisor doesn’t show up (what is up with him?) and Ryuuki finally manages to confess to her. She, of course, immediately begins to yell at him.

I’m very curious about where this anime’ll go from now on. Ryuuki surely isn’t going to abandon Shiurei, but she doesn’t have to work at the castle anymore. Not to mention that we’ve only reached episode 6 of 39, so there’s got to be something to fill these following episodes. But what?