Okay, so what we have here are two worlds, somehow linked to each other. The first world is where the previous episode took place. The second world is something like the past of the first world, in which the story of Ashura and Yasha takes place. At the beginning of this episode, Mokona teleported our two parties to the second world. What happened to Kurogane and Fye remains a mystery, though Sakura, Syaoran and Mokona end up with Ashura.

Don’t ask me why, there’ll probably be no reason for this at all, but Ashura immediately takes a liking in Syaoran and Sakura, and invites them as guests of honor in her palace. Sure. I’d do that to any stranger who just came popping in from nowhere. In any case, the concept of the world is the following: up in the sky, there’s a huge floating castle. Every night, certain people get transported to that castle. There’s got to be some way of selecting people, but that isn’t really explained. In any case, Ashura’s and Yasha’s armies seem to end up inside that castle. When the moon reaches its zenith, however, all parties are kicked out again. The legend goes that whoever can conquer the castle, gets his deepest desires. Apparently, Ashura and Yasha have been fighting each other for quite a while now (Ashura talks about centuries).

If we look at the overall story for this arc, I have to say that so far, I like it. The thing with the filler arcs is that they’re just too fast. One of the great points of the first season was its mystery which was put in every arc. The Piffle arc was a bit too fast in order to fully develop this (seriously, I read somewhere that the Piffle arc was the longest chapter in the manga. Why would the creators just reserve a mere three episodes for this, only to air three filler episodes afterwards… that makes no sense at all…) though this arc seems to go into the right direction. There is enough material to make this arc last longer than just three episodes, which will really give the mystery a chance to develop.

First of all, it’s clear that Yasha and Ashura love each other. Then were there differences in their statues? Why was Yasha’s statue crying, and Ashura’s not? Why did Ashura’s statue display an eye, while Yasha’s did not? In fact, how did the two of them even fall in love when they only see each other at the castle, in the middle of people fighting? Second of all, the Kurogane and Fye-clones. If they’re really different people with the same soul, then how the heck did Kurogane get his sword? If they actually are our Kurogane and Fye, why the heck aren’t they at least recognizing Syaoran? Third of all: Mokona mentioned a number of really strong powers. That means more than one, with the strongest one being in the castle. Will this be a country with two feathers as well, or is there any other huge power existant? In any case, it’s not Ashura. After all, when Mokona told Syaoran about this, he would’ve immediately poited at Ashura if she actually was one of the strong powers. If we consider Ashura just as strong as Yasha, this means that there really is more to this world than what was actually shown during this episode.

The way the art was managed in this episode was rather strange. On global level, everything looked awesome, though when you start to look at the details, some of the eyes of the characters recieved very little attention and thus looked horribly off. Still, evil-Kurogane looked just totally awesome, Ashura looked just beautiful, and Sakura, getting embarrased looked just so extremely cute. ^^;

Some interesting details which happened at the beginning of this episode:
- Fye calling Kurogane “Kuro-sama”, and not even in his joking way, but in his serious way. That’s a new one.
- Fye smiled in an evil way when he found out that there was something horrible going on at the second world.
- The leader of the circus troupe hopes that Ashura is not the one to blame for what’s happening, otherwise, she won’t be able to see her lover again. This means that the two worlds are linked in some kind of way, other than just future-past.
- The tears of the leader of the circus troupe are the ones who caused the Ashura statue to open up her third eye, after which the portal to the other world allowed Mokona to get in trance (first time he did that, by the way) and teleport the four to the second world.

Some interesting questions which will probably be some errors on the creators’ side:
- Mokona sent the bottle to Yuuko, but doesn’t she have an eye-for-eye tooth-for-tooth-policy? I wonder what she sent back.
- Why did nobody freak out with Syaoran’s crossdressing? I mean, it isn’t that often that you’d run into a guy, dressed up as a girl, now do you? O_o

Only a small amount of events happen each episode. But that gives the anime a great opportunity of building up to these events, and the events that do happen are just awesome. Apart from that, characters change, relationships change and the whole world is just living its life.

This episode was the second episode of the aftermath-of-Ovan-getting-captured-arc. The major purpose of this arc is to get rid of a number of characters, to break up certain relationships, and to create new ones. So far, Goad has quit the game, TaN has been disbanded. B-Set quits at this episode. Naobi and Ender return in some new forms (interesting note: this means that they’ve returned to beginners, or they must’ve had some kind of backup-account). Sakisaka and Tabby have left the Twillight Brigade. Shino changed her clothing and the only one staying the same is Phyllo.

Ovan’s disappearance really broke up the world. It appears that the only reason Goad and B-Set played the game was because of him. B-Set also thought about things a bit, which resulted in her quitting the game as well. It’s very interesting to see characters just being gone, like that. Phyllo makes a nice comment about this. The fact remains that if today is the same as yesterday, and tomorrow is the same as today, this cycle won’t be continuing forever. That means that the world will change. Even the side-characters can make this happen. That’s also the problem with the anime who refuse to kill off their characters. It just limits the change that can be possible in the world. I’m not saying to the creators to let all kinds of persons go berserk and commit genocide, though the right balance has to be found, in order to make for the best development.

Naobi seems to have secured some kind of place, which even the administrators don’t know, most probably a lost ground, in which he’s keeping Ovan. It seems that Naobi finally gets what he wanted, as Ovan’s left arm seems to have been cracked (pun intended, by the way). Now it’s up to the next episode to determine whether Naobi’s plan was a success, or that he won’t be able to control the thing that came out of Ovan’s arm. We also have to take into account that Ovan knew about what was going to happen, so he had a reason to do this. Still, I never even once saw a smile on his face while getting hacked. Either this means good acting, or it means that things aren’t going as he had hoped to, which makes you wonder how much he can predict.

Tabby begins to get more interesting by the minute. Yay for the fact that she’s not a little brat after all! First, when she talks to Haseo, the two get in a bit of a fight. Haseo, as he’s not good in dealing with other people, doesn’t really know what to say, and eventually Tabby walks away angry. The discussion mainly was about Tabby getting jealous that Haseo was around with Shino all of the time. And that Shino was her reason to enjoy the game. She also comfirms that she indeed doesn’t want to be with Sakisaka because she wants to. This actually means three things:
1: Haseo’s incredibly thick-headed.
2: Tabby actually likes Haseo, but she realize that she’ll never be able to reach his heart.
3: She’s using Sakisaka in order to make him jealous. This doesn’t quite work, because of point one.
4: This means that she’s actually quite an actor, able to lock away her true feelings, and pretend to be someone else.
I like this. For some strange reason, I like this conflict, while most love-triangles like this one actually totally bore me. First of all, we only got our first hint only at the previous episode. Only at the end of that episode there was a moment in which Tabby’s feelings lost to her acting. Apart from that, she’s been concealing her feelings all along. Normal anime would feature some kind of suspicious close-up, in which the character looks to the ground, rather unhappy. I find this kind of buildup better, though. It’s way more integrated with the storyline than just that simple, suspicous close-up. These close-ups are like putting a big sign on the character, saying “Hello, I am in love with the main character but I’m too afraid to confess, what should I do?”. Or something in that direction.

Sakisaka indeed is a pityful character. if the above indeed is true, he’s being used from all kinds of sides. He was right about one thing, though: leaving the guild. We finally get told the exact reason why Goad and B-Set left the Twillight Brigade (after all, being used is kindof a vague description, isn’t it?). It seems that when there was no sign of the virus cores yet, they used to skim through every single inch of certain fields. Or they would stay at a lost ground for a whole day and see what happens. I could so understand that you want to leave the guild who only does things like these. Sakisaka had enough beliefs in Ovan to last till the end, though his attitude quite changed when Ovan was gone, which drove him to the wild theories of Ovan who had actually been working together with TaN and they finally managed to get their hands on the Key of the Twillight, so they ran off with it. Eventually, this resulted in him leaving the Twillight Brigade.

Shino also came as a surprise. Not only because of her new clothing, but also because she mentioned Aura. Apprantly, the rumors of her have scattered around the net. It also seems that Aura ran away for some strange reason. Shin doesn’t plan to. She’s been gloomy for two entire episodes, though as expected, she got stronger out of it. She still wants to wait for Ovan, though she definately changed. It was also surprising that she got crazy enough to disband the Twillight Brigade, though Haseo managed to stop her.

Speaking of Haseo, the fact that he’s not good with dealing with people gets another major role in this episode. One reason for Tabby and Sakisaka to leave the Twillight Brigade was because he, as the only one who still wanted to continue the guild, never was able to stop them, or cheer them up. He didn’t know what to say, which only made Sakisaka’s anger greater. On top of that, his attempts at doing this only worked the opposite way, not to mention his thick-headedness. Only with Shino, he’s able to say a few words, and for some reason, these few words are the right words.

Phyllo has a busy day, it seems, as a lot of people stop by at the bridge (I loved Haseo’s joke about Phyllo’s reasons to be in the game. ^^). An interesting fact is that he was the one who brought the two of Shino and Ovan together. I really like his character, at the moment, although I’m getting annoyed by his voice-actor. He seems to know exactly what’s going on. Overall, the big thing still hasn’t happened yet, as the previous episodes decided to focus on character development, and on shifting the relationship with each of the characters. With a bit of luck, the supernatural thing will happen at the next episode, and decide the second half of the anime. Episode 10 showed a bad day of .Hack//Roots, though it managed to recover itself pretty nicely. I still have no idea what the second half of the series will be about, but it promises to be a lot different from the first half. I can’t wait for it. :)

Is there really no limit on Gamigami Maou’s brilliance? It really seems that he manages to come up with a genious invention at every friggin single episode! Ah well, not that I’m complaining. ^^;

Today’s models are a stylish radar in order to track down Hyuu, brilliantly code-named as the “love-love-sensor”, and a giant zeppellin, Gamigami-style. Especially the former was just awesome. It indeed tells Hyuu’s exact location, and displays this on a giant radar-screen. Gamigami’s only mistake was that he forgot to put up some kind of index, which means that he can’t even understand his own invention. It gets only greater when later in the episode, they finally manage to reach Hyuu, though it seems that they took a huge detour in order to get to her. ^^;

In any case, about the episode. It’s clearly another character-development episode, in which the episode doesn’t have too much plot progression, so that it can really focus on the character development for some of the different characters. In this case, Hyuu, Pietoro and Narcia. Apart from that, Gamigami, Ston and Sanda are just totally awesome once more and queen Sania shows some motherly affection.

Pietoro gets blown away by a huge gale of wind (Hyuu’s work, she unknowingly blew Pietoro away) and he ends up in some kind of desert, or sand plain. As the desert is a very nasty place if you come there unprepared, he starts having visions after quite a short time. These are all visions about the Popolocrois Castle, and the friends he made there. (Interesting note: no Hyuu in these visions). Still, his stubbornness gets himself back to civilized areas. The creators used an interesting little trick, which really worked out well. Pietoro struggles further, he has no idea where he is, and so, he doesn’t even notice that he’s near civilization. When he starts calling out people, Shirokishi and Narcia just used the right timing to run into him. It’s a nice effect, and it makes more sense than when they would’ve found him in the middle of the desert.

Narcia, meanwhile, as she is separated from Pietoro, gets a few lessons about loneliness. She’s extremely lonely without him, though a helpful townswoman comforts her a bit. Overall, she learned quite a bit from this.

Hyuu, meanwhile, still has her own problems. As last episode showed, she flew off randomly. She’s been doing that ever since, and she came to realize that she’s a Wind-kind, destined to be lonely (this really went well with Narcia’s struggles). She even blasts Gamigami, Ston and Sanda away when they come in the Zeppelin to look for her (which also blasted Pietoro away). (Interesting note: before she did this, all kinds of birds were following her. After the blast, even the birds wouldn’t come near her. She then spends the night in the open again, having nightmares about Ston and Sanda’s true feelings. In the end, however, she realizes that she really needs the three of them. Especially after they show up the next morning in the barely working remains of the zeppeling. It’s funny if you imagine that Gamigami spent the entire night trying to get that thing back to work. ^^;

This episode also featured Queen Sania’s theme song. It’s been a long time since we’ve had another one, but I still love them. Things are also going very good at the new location of Popolocrois castle, as the first plants start to grow. Shirokishi leaves again, though. In order to search for the great sword. I wonder if he’ll ever find it.

Overall, it was a very nice, laid-back episode. Not too many thing happened, characters got some healthy dose of character-development, and Gamigami, Ston and Sanda were just as great as ever.