Honestly… there aren’t few anime who would let their characters make a long journey to some distant place, only in order to discover that the key to solving their problem lies in the place it all began. But for some reason, Ergo Proxy is one of them. And actually, there’s nothing wrong with such a plot twist. It keeps the characters busy, in any case.

But now that I’m looking back, this twist had to come. After all, it was the only way to bring Real, Vincent and Pino back to Raul, Daedalus and Monad. After all, Monad did for a large part of the story but at the same time she was still in Romdeau.

In any case, the episode focuses around Real and Vincent realizing that they have to go back to Romdeau. Remember the rocket from the previous episode? Well, apparently, it hit Moscow. Now nothing’s left of it. While Real and Pino explore the ruins, Vincent seems to be bothered by a nasty headache. In there he has a strange dream. He’s in Proxy-form, somewhere in Moscow. He uses his pendant as a key, to go inside a door, in which an autorave is waiting for him. It seems to be the autorave he left in charge with his lost memories. Apparently, Proxy One let this autorave copy all of the memories he was planning to give to Monad.

The autorave then thinks that Proxy One came back to get his memories. Proxy one, however, kills the autorave and starts crying out of happiness. Vincent then wakes up, back in the Usagi. Real and Pino have returned as well. They then too, somehow find the same room. Vincent then uses his pendant again to open the door. In there, they find the dead autorave, nearly dead. He keeps repeating one sentence, after which he starts uttering the word “Romdeau”. Then, he finally shuts down.

Now, the question remains, when did Proxy One kill the autorave? Was it before he came to Romdeau, or was it in Vincent’s dream? The fact that Real and Pino noticed him sleeping suggests the former, though the fact that the autorave looked just recently destroyed suggests the latter.

Raul, meanwhile, is given his title back. He then pays a visit to Daedalus, who seems to have forgotten about Real, and selected a new one as if nothing happened. This does suggest that Real is replaceable, and it explains why Daedalus said that Real would never betray him. Whenever she does, he’d just create a new one. Still, what do the old Real and the new Real have to do with Monad Proxy? (interesting note: when Raul finds the ball of yarn, he grabs the ball, while the new Real holds the end of the string. Then, she comes running to him, this string is gone and she takes it like nothing happened. Maybe I’m just thinking too much.)

Oh, and Raul still has visions, and has sworn to kill Vincent. It must be convenient for him to know that Vincent’s coming back, isn’t it? Also, who was this person at the beginning of the episode, right next to the explosion? And more importantly, when did it happen? Overall, it was an interesting episode, though it wasn’t extraordinary in any way.

Well, that was rather cure, wasn’t it? This was probably one of the first really slow paced arcs of Tsubasa Chronicle. Clearly, the creators couldn’t manage to fit these two episodes into one, so they decided to stretch them a bit. The result is interestingly enjoyable. Still, a lot of strange things happened during this episode.

Remember when Syaoran planned to steal one of the bad guy’s motors during the previous episode? Well, somehow, this plan gets lost and he and Kurogane only manage to chase them away. Then, they board the bus again, as if nothing ever happened. ^^; The silent, long-haired woman also appears to be a former mechanic of the rail bus, now fleeing as well because of the usual things. She worked too hard, lost sight of the important things in her life, broke down and now attempts to take a break.

The true identities of the two eloping lovers? An idol and her manager. This gets found out when a news reporter conveniently mentions the fact that they’re missing. I have no idea why those bad guys are after them, by the way. It seems to be some kind of revenge, or something, but that’s never explained. In any case, the two of them are eloping because they believe that a relation between idol and manager is taboo.

Also, for some reason, either changing tires on a truck takes an awful lot of time, or the truck managed to catch up an interesting distance. Then the cute stuff begins, when Syaoran manages to land on the back of the truck and the bad guys arrive. All of the passengers on the rail bus are cheering for him, and Kurogane, Fye and even Sakura spend their time with attempting to shoot down the bad guys. For some reason, the bad guys keep their attention at Syaoran, and never even aim for the others. All of this is accompanied by an “interesting” background tune.

Despite the obvious flaws, the episode just remains very enjoyable. It’s like I’ve said before. You don’t need to think too much while watching Tsubasa Chronicle. It’s got a story it wants to tell, and it will tell this story no matter what, even if some parts don’t make any sense at all.

Apart from the amazing Mahou Shoujotai, Studio 4C has produced much more material. The Animatrix, for example. And Eikyuu Kazoku. I just saw it, and it only proves the awesomeness of Studio 4C. This movie just is so incredibly nuts, it actually scares me.

Okay, the concept: take several people, mostly dumped by society, brainwash them and make them think they’re each other’s family. Broadcast their actions on TV, and make money. The members of the family range from a sadistic baby equipped with scissors (and who isn’t afraid to use them) to a daughter who gets obsessive over fire and from a silent girl who uses her puppet to speak for her to a son who likes to play with machine guns. There are also two pets, a chicken and a dog, who only become the victims of the sadistic ideas of each of the family members. They especially don’t like the baby. At the halfmark of the movie, the family actually escapes, and splits up. And even then the fun doesn’t stop.

Eikyuu Kazoku consists out of a large number of small clips, all pasted after each other to form 30 minutes. Because these clips are incredibly small, the pacing in this series is enormous. So many things succeed each other in such a fast pacing. But then again, when there is a quiet moment, you really notice it. That’s one of the few bad parts of this anime.

Another major good part of this anime is that the creators can’t seem to run out of their incredible amount of creativity. So many original elements have been put in this series. The characters remain quirky throughout the entire movie, and new situations just kept amazing me. Also, despite its length, each character also got a healthy dose of character development.

The character art looks different from most anime. I can understand what people mean by the special style of Studio 4C. It reminded me of Mahou Shoujotai, which is always a good thing. The characters indeed look really interesting. The way they’re drawn really makes them unique. The animation also is very interesting, not to mention the choreography of the different action scenes.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this movie. It really confirmed that Studio 4C is my favourite anime studio. It had me laughing at so many times. Especially the characters were something else. If you manage to locate this movie, I certainly recommend you to watch it. It will be a very interesting watch.