This episode ends the Gravestone-arc, and what a great ending it is! I really adored this episode.

Honoka, Paife an Ikus all have an encounter with Gravestone. Ikus with Gravestone himself, Paife with a copy of Gravestone and Honoka with a copy of herself. Ikus tried to convince Gravestone to stop, though it seems that he decided not to force him to make decisions. He does tell Gravestone (and us) some details about the great war. It seems that a certain “everyone” died. Ikus would like to explain it to him, though he claims that he doesn’t have the permission nor right to tell him. This suggests that he works for some kind of superior. Ikus also tells Gravestone that he’s met similar cases. There are more people like Gravestone. While he tells this, we see weapons of mass destruction attack planets. It would suggest that Ikus witnessed all these events somehow.

Honoka, meanwhile, has a duel with her copy. Here it really seems that she can’t even draw her katana in order to defend herself. She just can’t cut another human. Her copy then tries to play with her mind, by trying to make her believe that she hates everyone else. In the end, Honoka finally gets her piece of character development when she realizes that all of this is nonsense. In the end, she meets Gravestone in person, and she manages to change his mind. Awesome.

Paife, meanwhile, finally gets the chance of trying out the plan she tried to use against Honoka, but failed. The Gravestone copy seems to be immune for guns and bullets, so she decides to use her fists and ki. Though even that proves to be useless. Her final trick is to use some kind of barrier, with one small opening. Force a huge amount of ki through that opening, and the pressure creates an explosion. This is too much for the copy, and it disappears. This is another reason why the narrator comes in handy. He actually explains the fighting strategies of the different characters. It’s a nice touch.

In the end, it seem that Gravestone was a young boy, who died during the Great War. His father was an important scientist, who tried to save his son by turning him into this. By letting him retain his child-form, he’d never have to fight or be used in the war.

I’ve also seen the preview for the next, infamous episode. Let’s just say I can understand the rumours. The art looks SO different. I’m glad that it’s just for one episode. Let’s hope it’s not too bad. This episode, in any case, was awesome.

Ah, okay. Akazukin and the others weren’t heading for Cendrillion’s castle, they were heading for the magic school, in the hope that their teachers might be able to find out her location. This episode was a Ringo-episode, though almost every character played some kind of role in it. Except for Akazukin, perhaps. She remained in the background as usual, doing the things she’s supposed to do. I’m dying for an Akazukin episode.

In any case, Ringo has a problem. She can’t do anything. This becomes clear when she gets lost and almost gets killed by a wandering Nightmarian. She then asks Ibara, of all people, to teach her a bit of magic, so that she isn’t totally helpless. In the end, she doesn’t get very far.

Shirayuki, Akazukin, Baru and Souta, meanwhile have somehow ended up in the local school play (a festival is going on inside the school). Souta plays the prince, while Shirayuki, Akazukin and Baru (yes, you read that right: BARU) play as princesses. Randagio and Gretel also decided to invade the school festival, and then they notice this strange play. They decide to just play along with them. Well, in the end, this ends up in chaos in which Gretel hypnotizes Souta and takes him away.

Next, they’re on a roof, along with Ringo and Harmeru. Harmeru makes Gretel drop Souta, and Ringo jumps after him, thinking that she can fly. Of course, she can’t. Shirayuki get to be the one to save them with her magic, though Ringo believes that it was her own magic that did it.

If Ringo wants to learn magic, why doesn’t she start with the basics? Why doesn’t she try to start from the beginning? And why didn’t Ibara advice her to do so? I’m suspecting that there’ll be a moment in which she’ll actually learn some (seeing the length of this series). For some reason, she’s really reminding me of Eva from Mahou Shoujotai at this point.

There was also a lot of cosplaying in this episode. With a small exception of a certain wolf, every character looked so cute in their outfits. Especially Akazukin. ^^ Apart from that, there was lots of cute stuff in this episode. Shirayuki and Ringo’s fight over Souta, for example. And Randagio’s evil plans and seeing them fail.