This episode was another brilliant one. It’s major focus was around Gamigami Maou-sama. For one episode, he loses the effects of the love potion. The result was absolutely hilarious.

We start with Gamigami, Ston and Sanda in their eccentric zeppelin. Apparently, Hyuu has run off again, and they’re still searching for her. Gamigami’s getting all giddly over a badly-drawn picture, while Ston and Sanda are making some sarcatical comments. The flight comes to an abrupt halt when they fly above a field full pollen-producing plants, which make the zeppelin crash.

Pietoro meanwhile sets off to tht same area, leaving Narcia behind. Narcia then blames herself for not being able to ask to join him. She scolds herself for not having the courage to do the things she wants to do. Hyuu, meanwhile enjoys being alone, and flying free in the air. Until Pietoro’s memories hit her.

Meanwhile, Ston and Sanda suddenly realize that Gamigami’s love potion has worn off, as he suddenly seems to have no interest in Hyuu at all. He’s meanwhile planning his ideas for world conquest. ^^ When Ston and Sanda start to get annoying, Gamigami kicks them far away. He still hasn’t lost his “Man’s Romance”, though. ^^

He then managed to turn the zeppelin into a weird crossing between a car and a zeppelin, though it can’t fly yet. Meanwhile, his love for Narcia has fully returned. What follows is Gamigami getting his own theme-song (guess the title ^^), in which he goes berserk in a nearby village, destroying all kinds of homes in order to collect enough material to fix his vehicle. After this plan has been carried out succesfully, he keeps raving about how good and awesome he is. He’s even great enough to have the sun kneeling for him. I laughed so hard when it actually did. ^_^

Gamigami spends the rest of the evening fixing his vehicle. Meanwhile, he’s still sneezing. Then he runs into Hyuu. The combination of the pain in her heart with the pollen has made her very sick. And this is where Gamigami really gets awesome. He’s lost his love for Hyuu, so he just leaves her for dying. Hyuu also finds out that the love potion has worn off. Gamigami also mentions the difference between her and Narcia: Narcia is selfless, while Hyuu is selfish. Hyuu then finally realizes her problem. Gamigami really gets his doubts when he leaves her. You can tell that he’s getting embarrased. Especially when he has to explain Hyuu the meaning of “Love”. ^_^;

Gamigami really begins to get annoyed when Hyuu attempts to dring the dew of a poisonous plant. He spends a couple of more hours fixing his vehicle, and once it is finished, Hyuu’s health gets worse and worse. All that’s left is to put one of the jewels he stole in his rampage inside the generator, in order to deliver enough power to fly. Though, he can’t get Hyuu out of his head. He finally ends up bringing her to a nearby house, and trading this very jewel for the antidote of the poison. He uses the excuse that he forgot his wallet. He was so cute at that time. ^_^

Ston and Sanda, meanwhile, have a great idea: stop looking after Gamigami Maou. The love potion has worn off, so he’ll treat them like trash, instead of listening to him. They then realize that the two of them are free at last. I wonder how the two of them will end up.

Gamigami, meanwhile, runs into a strange situation when Pietoro runs into him and Hyuu. Gamigami now has to make Pietoro believe that he was the one who hurt Hyuu, as it wouldn’t be good for his reputation when it came out that he actually did something nice. What follows is a huge wave of pollen blown his way by an enthisiastic Ston, which causes the love potion to get active again.

Overall, this episode was great. It’s the standard “bad guy sees good guy in trouble and helps”, though Gamigami manages to turn this into something awesome.

Too bad. Keiichi’s voice-acting so did not match with his facial constortions. He looked so fake in this. On the other hand, Satoko was awesome when she started yelling. About the episode: I liked it. It wasn’t as good as the previous two, though it was very enjoyable indeed.

The game, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni consisted of eight arcs, if I’m not wrong. Four question-arcs and four answer-arcs. Right now, we’re being treated with the four question arcs. We’ve only got one of them left, in which Rika will stand in the attention. This’ll probably take till episode seventeen. What follows are the four answer-arcs. I’m wondering whether the creators will decide to show all of them, or just two.

Anyway, about the episode. We start with Keiichi, lyin in his bed. He’s obviously extremely confused, after what happened in the previous episode. He then grabs a hand axe, and heads for Satoko’s place. When he heads out, he thinks he sees something behind him, though there’s nobody there. He himself thinks that it’s Satoko’s work.

He heads for Satoko’s house, and then notices that Satoko’s uncle’s bike isn’t there. The door is left open, and the tv is left on. Keiichi then searches for Satoko, and he hears something in the shower. It then seems that she’s been in the shower since the entire night, counting till 10000. When Keiichi asks for the reason, she mentions something about her uncle. Then Keiichi goes berserk in a few very fake scenes. That’s the problem when you’re low-budget. Scenes like these don’t work. Still, I have to say that Satoko was just too sad.

Keiichi then attempts to bring Satoko to the clinic. She’s getting better and better, one thing I liked about this. When Keiichi goes to investigate, he sees that Irie’s killed himself. Oishi’s also vanished without a trace. When Satoko hears this, she’s terribly shocked. Though, she manages to recover after this. These scenes were greatly excecuted. Satoko then asks Keiichi to bring her to Rika’s house, in order to borrow some clothes. Keiichi manages to get more paranoid by the minute, by the way. The fact remains that both Takano as Oishi as Irie died, after Keiichi wished thim dead. This makes him think that he’s the reason behind these deaths. He then also confesses Satoko about what he did to her uncle. Satoko tells him not to mention it, though the disease has spread enough for Keiichi to not notice it. Satoko then leaves, in order to pick up her stuff.

What follows is Keiichi, who notices Rika’s dead body behind the shrine. It’s being eaten by crows, so he screams in a very fake way, and attempts to chase the crows away with the axe he’s wielding. This axe then gets covered in blood. When Satoko sees Keiichi wielding a bloody axe right next to Rika’s dead body, she breaks. She then runs away and Keiichi follows her. They end up at a bridge narrow drawbridge.

Satoko mentions that she used to see Keiichi as her new Nii-nii. Keiichi tries to convince Satoko, but this doesn’t really work, since the idiot forgot to throw his axe away. When he finally realizes this, Satoko calms down a bit. Though, she still thinks that he murdered Keiichi. She gives Oyashiro the blame, as she knows that Keiichi wouldn’t hurt anyone.

She then tells about something that happened when she was young. She used to play along with Rika, and then she ended up inside the shrine on accident. While trying to get out, she broke Oyashiro0s statue, though Rika was seen as the one who did it and punished severely. This has made a huge impact on Satoko, especially her parents disappearing, her aunt dying and her brother running away only strenghtened this. She now views those as a devine retribution for the things she did back in the shrine. This was a great moment, though I’m wondering something… what the heck was a chibified-Keiichi doing right next to Rika? And why the heck did they look of the same age? O_o

Satoko then tells Keiichi that she really was glad that Keiichi got transferred, and now she breaks when she finds out that the only hope she had left has als obeen posessed by Oyashiro. She then pushes him off the bridge, and he falls a loooong way down in the river which lies behind the bridge. What follows is the usual conclusion of the arc. In the first arc, this was Oishi who read the report about the things Keiichi had been doing. In the second arc, it was Keiichi who recovered along with Rena after what happened in Mion’s basement. The third arc shows a couple of unknown people, watching the local news about something that happened in Hinamizawa. Guess what? Poisonous vulcanic gass erupted from somewhere, killing off the entire Hinamizawa Population. Except for one person: Keiichi.

Did you see that one coming? Keiichi, ending up as the only survivor of Hinamizawa? It makes perfect sense, though. A fall from a bridge like that hurts a lot, though you don’t nessecarily die from it. Because Keiichi was unconcious at the time when the gas erupted, so he didn’t breathe in as much as the other residents of Hinamizawa. That’s why he stayed alive.

So, let’s take a look at the total death count:
Keiichi: 1,5 (We don’t know if he really died at the end of the second arc. It was probably the disease again, though he could have killed himself at that time. Only time will tell).
Rena: 2
Mion: 3
Shion: 2
Rika: 2
Satoko: 2

Isn’t this interesting? If it turns out that Keiichi didn’t die at the end of the second arc, he’s been the main character with the least number of deaths on his name. You might wonder whose body it was which appeared at the beginning of this arc. It’s simple. It’s Satoshi. It seems that Mion somehow ran into him after he killed his aunt, and gave him some treatmens he didn’t really like. It seems that Satoshi indeed had every intention to run away, though Mion had other plans.

The best thing about this episode is probably the huge amount of questions it managed to introduce. It seems that there’s so much more than just the disease which is claiming its victims. Poisonous gas roams around, people are killing each other, people are disappearing, and all these events have been influenced by the things that Keiichi did, with the only exception of Tomitake and Takano’s deaths.

For example, what caused Irie’s death? Was he so much in love with Satoko that he couldn’t bear it and committed suicide? Or does it have something to do with his part as a director? And how did Oishi disappear? Are their deaths linked in some way? Ddi they both have something to do with Satoko? Or could Oishi have been the one to set the vulcanic gas free? After all, this all happened two days after the Watanagashi. In the first arc, Keiichi was busy fleeing from Rena and Mion at that time, while in the second arc, Keiichi was having strange phone calls with Shion.

Another thing that remains a mystery is the following: what happened to Satoko’s uncle? There are two possiblilties: Keiichi did kill the guy, though Satoko’s disease imagines that he’s still with her, or Keiichi never killed the guy, and he suddenly went out on his scooter, leaving the tv on. Both of these theories have got their holes.

Also, what happened to Mion and Rena? Weren’t they supposed to go on a treasure hunt? What happened afterwards? What did they find? Or were they the ones who set off the vulcanic gas? And why did Mion kill Satoshi in the first place (I’m assuming now that she’s the only one who can perform the Watanagashi). And who was the one who killed Rika? And why? Why did the murderer put Rika in such an obvious place?

Rika was just too sad in this episode. She’s an incredibly strong character, as she manages to recover fastly after what happened to her in the shower. She also gets shocked when she hears that Irie’s dead, though she behaves normally afterwards. Though when she realizes that Keiichi has been posessed by Oyashiro, she breaks. It seems that when he transferred, she clinged to him, and she turned him into her raison d’être. When such a thing betrayed her, she broke.

Differences with previous arcs:
- The vulcanic gas never escaped in the previous episodes.
- In the first arc, Keiichi wanted to flee. In the second arc, Keiichi wanted to understand. In the third arc, Keiichi wanted to protect.
- Keiichi isn’t going to move.
- It’s the first time Oishi disappears.
- We see the drawbridge for the first time in the third arc.
- Mion and Rena didn’t attempt to cure Keiichi from his disease, like they did in the first arc. In fact, their part in this arc was very small.
- For the first time, Keiichi wields an axe, instead of a bat.
- The second arc is so far the only arc in which Keiichi actually got help. It seemed like Mion would be helping Keiichi during this arc, though she gets out of the picture after the second episode.
- Each arc also focuses around one side-character. In the first arc, this was Oishi. In the second, this was Shion, and the third had Irie.
- In the first arc, Rika stays alive. In the second arc, she commits suicide. In the third arc, she gets killed.

Another thing I’m curious about is Rena. And more importantly her behavior in the first episode of the third arc. At that time, it was clear that she was under the disease. Though it stopped there. The Watanagashi-murders were mentioned, and she went berserk. Though after this episode, these never were mentioned again. It’s like she got cured. Why and how did she get cured?

This surely was an interesting episode. But at the same time, I really wonder where this show is going. It’s going to run out of characters if this keeps continuing. Still, if the anime doesn’t fall during the next episode, we could be in for an extremely awesome second half of the show.

This episode featured a perfect buildup once more. It starts out really slow, only to whack the player down with some amazing scenes during the second half.

Ovan’s case keeps getting stranger. Last episode, we see the lock on his arm being broken, and something came out of it. This episode, it appears that he just disappeared into thin air after this, without leaving any trace. Naobi and Ender meanwhile continue to analyze the data he left behind. And their PC’s… I’m sure that I’ve seen those bodies somewhere before. I’m almost certain that they already appeared on the show, but when?

Shino also was just awesome. At the beginning of the episode, she keeps getting closer to Haseo. The two of them exchange phones. These were some very nice scenes. Later, the guy called Tri-Edge gives her a call, and tells her to come to the cathedral, after which she gets data-drained by him. Still, she looked awefully relieved when she got the mesage. Could it be that she thought that Tri-Edge was actually Ovan? But that can’t be, as Tri-Edge already was around before Ovan got captured. The look she also had on her face when she saw Haseo at that time was awesome. And not to mention the fact that we get to see our first scene of the outside world. It took awfully long, but it was worth it.

Also, after the previous episode, I think I knew about Tabby’s feeling a bit, though right now, I realize I was wrong. She actually wanted to be with Shino, though Haseo kept her away from her. She didn’t dare to interfere with the two of them, as she was too afraid to lose them both, so she decided to give them some subtle messages. Well, that plan backfired when Shino got data-drained. The then realized that Haseo went straight after Shino when he heard about where she was going. Something Tabby was not able to.

I’m also wondering what’s up with Tri-Edge. For the first time in the series, he actually does something, which involves travelling through the world, and fixing bugs at certain places. But why did he attack Shino?

So, what’s happened with each of the characters:
Goad: Left, because Ovan was his raison d’être. At least, in the game.
B-Set: Left, because Ovan was the person who made her keep playing.
Tawaraya: Left, account suspended.
Ender: Account suspended, returned in a new PC.
Naobi: Account suspended, returned in a new PC.
Shino: Data-drained.
Ovan: Vanished into thin air.
Tabby: About to leave, because Shino was her raison d’être.
Sakisaka: Left, because the game reminded him too much of the Twillight Brigade.
Phyllo: Stays.
Haseo: Stays.

Overall, .Hack//Roots keeps getting better and better. I’m really curious how the anime will continue after this. The second half will probably be totally awesome.

This episode was a special one. It was specifically aimed at the relationship between Watanuki’s relationship with Hinata and Domeki. To top everything, the creators tried to implement some really scary scenes, combined with some awesome comedy. Guess what? It actually worked. This episode was probably one of the best yet.

We start with Yuuko, Watanuki, Domeki and Himawari arriving at a beach house. Meanwhile, Watanuki continues rambling to Domeki, and a ghost keeps writing blue letters on a wall. One thing I really can appreciate in anime is when all kinds of things happen in the background. It shows that the creators really have been planning. Watanuki was just too great. He really hates Domeki with passion.

They enter the house, and a creepy tune keeps playing. Watanuki checks out the kitchen, and notices a strange vase with a blue flower. Lots of Watanukis getting giddly over Himawari and bickering towards Domeki later (too funny, by the way), evening falls and all of the characters go to sleep. Watanuki then wakes up, in the middle of the night because he hears some scratching on the walls, coming from the room next to him. The only problem is, the corridor shows no sign of a room being there. He checks out more carefully, and then notices that the wall on the corridor was a fake one. He then sees a door, and walks into the room. What then follows is a great attempt at a scary scene. It had great backgrounds, and Watanuki really made me believe that something really scary was going on.

This episode also had just a perfect build-up. Even though the ghost appeared to be just Mokona, the preparation was just perfect. During the entire episode, letters kept appearing on the wall, a very creepy tune played, and Watanuki’s ramblings were enough to make the viewer not notice about the small details which might have given this away (for example, the cardboard wall). The blue vase at the end, of course, was a standard thing with ghost stories. People are pulling a prank about some kind of ghost, they make the main character believe that there really is one by dropping lots of clues. But one of these clues doesn’t belong to them, and actually is a real ghost. Still, this episode had something which most of the other shows who attempt this don’t have: the fact that ghosts are common. Watanuki sees them everyday. Most other shows just use ghosts once, without a real explanation. Another thing is Watanuki’s reaction to this. He became scared at the moment when he saw the real ghost. Really scared. This was an aweosme sight.

These things may have been awesome. The ghost story was probably one of the best in xxxHolic yet, and Watanuki and Domeki were just too funny at times (you’d think that jokes like these would bore after a while, but surprisingly, they don’t. Seeing Domeki making use of Watanuki’s imaginary merry-go-round was just hilarous), the truly awesome part lies in Himawari, and Watanuki’s reluctance to call to Domeki for help. Himawari actually felt sorry for Watanuki, as he wasn’t able to swim because the sea seemed like a very popular place for spirits. So she thought she’d do something for him, which involved getting Watanuki to call Domeki for help. If he managed to do that, Yuuko would lift Watanuki’s curse for one full day, so that he could go swimming with Himawari. (Watanuki’s right about one thing: Himawari’s just too cute)

Watanuki, however, was not able to call for help. He still hates Domeki for the things he did, and he doesn’t realize that he actually likes being with him (just refer to any episode at which the two of them were together and had to solve a mystery. Watanuki’s mind was just too occupied with the thing which were happening, that he took Domeki’s existance for granted). Though when it comes to calling for help, Watanuki’s mind interferes too much for him to be able to say it. Despite the fact that Domeki’s saved his life many times before (heck, he even stood in the rain for ten hours in order to save him).

Overall, I loved this episode. Himawari was just too cute, not per se because of her looks, but because of the plan she had.The ghost story really made a good attempt at being scary. This really was xxxHolic at its best.