Haha! The best episode so far. Papu finally reveals his reasons for coming, the Seirei of Darkness is beaten and Luna comes with a very nice twist in the end. It’s like this: Papu really is the Seirei of the Moon. He’s the Seirei, overseeing all other Seirei. This explains why the Wind and Fire Seirei got so startled when they saw him. It’s always scary to see a superior coming without notice.

In any case, Pinon uses the power of the moon, combined with his own power in order to beat Yasm in Phantonesia. By doing this, however, Papu is forced to return to the moon while he transports Pinon, Luna and Marco to the normal world again, giving Luna the tip that her pendant is made from the power of the moon, thus able to defeat the darkness. The catch: it breaks. This makes Luna unable to retain her human form.

That is a very interesting development indeed. For the latter half of the series, we’ll be seeing Luna in her true, beautiful though different form. I’m not sure whether Papu comes back. At the end of the episode, we see him return to the temple, but I’m not sure whether that is a dream or not. I guess I’ll have to wait till the next episode to find out.

The second half of the episode shows quite a few very funny moments. The most memorable definitely was the Jankenpon. Punpun and Kotoro were funnier than ever during this episode. It’s indeed quite pitiful to be playing Jankenpon with a robot who only can do scissors. Kotoro also began to look more and more like his father a bit later in the episode, in which he has *cough* “trouble” while fixing his giant-crab-machine-thing. Punpun, meanwhile, shows that she accepted that Pinon has an eye for Luna, by helping the two get closer to each other. An interesting development, at this stage of the series.

Other funny moments include when we see the cook bake eggs in a very quirky way, with Pinon noticing the results afterwards and Lulu who messes up with her magic once more, turning Pinon in a very cute kitten. ^^;

Last big revelation: we get to see the one who named Yasm. The real bad guy in this series. Or bad girl in our case. It seems to be some kind of demon, sealed away and hoping that Yasm would free her.

This episode’s Proxy has the ability to delude someone’s mind. You could describe it as bringing its victim in a dream-world. In this dream world, The Usagi has arrived in Romdeau, after which Real turned Vincent in and hid Pino away. Afterwards, she was taken in by Daedalus and his assistant: Swan, in order to become a perfect citizen again. Vincent, meanwhile, turned into Ergo Proxy and was locked up. Real, meanwhile, felt bad for betraying Vincent, so she created an alternative Vincent in her subconscious mind.

The Real Vincent gets to be this alternative Vincent, while the Proxy gets to be Swan. Over the course of the episode, Swan tries to make him believe that he needs to kill Real. She tries to make him believe certain lies about his subconsciousness. I’m not sure what her goal was in doing this. I think that, if this continued on for much longer, Vincent’s mind would break, or something, allowing her to defeat him.

Swan also shows Vincent a bit of his past. In this, Real and Daedalus are brother and sister, Vincent works as the Chief of the Civil Guard with Raul as his subordinate and Vincent and Real who are about to marry. Obviously, this isn’t how it really went. But I wonder if there’s some sort of truth in this. After all, Vincent remembered a few details on his own, before this sequence started (the cup falling and Real cutting her finger on it). Of course, this could also have been the Proxy, trying to play with Vincent’s mind, creating the events so that in both cases, Vincent would naturally act the same way, thus creating a deja vú.

In order to confuse Vincent, Swan creates an illusion, within an illusion. But it makes you wonder what’ll happen once they actually reach Romdeau. The Proxy also made a few mistakes. Pino suddenly looked fancy again. Vincent didn’t know about the new Real, so there also was no new Real in the illusion. For some reason, Swan also gave herself and Vincent the two pendants. Proxy is able to move so fast, why can’t he dodge bullets like that? And why didn’t Real look for Monad? Still, it was a very nice attempt at fooling him.

While an interesting watch, this episode wasn’t really anything special. It was just another Proxy, playing mind games with Vincent. I think the bad thing was that this Proxy didn’t really have well-defined rules. Proxies like in episode 14, 15 and 19 all had certain rules they had to follow, which made these episodes very enjoyable.

Interlude is a dating-sim mystery anime. It’s an OVA, containing three episodes. It’s really one of these anime you need to think about in order to fully understand it. We’ve got our main character, living his everyday life. Until he meets a strange girl, alone at the station. Starting from that moment, he’ll learn that something huge went on in the past. Especially the first half is covered with small flashes in which our main character, along with his girlfriend lie mortally wounded next to each other, which is enough to keep you excited.

The mystery-part definitely was worth it. Especially in the first episode, when nothing is revealed yet. The background story slowly gets unravelled, and it’s full of creativity. In just three episodes, the storyline gets told, revealing a bit more every time. I have to say, though, regarding the flashes mentioned above. When their meaning gets revealed, it sortof lacks impact. It’s the case with most other revelations as well. Together, these revelations form a great concept, but individually, they aren’t really that exciting.

When the anime turns to the dating-sim-part, however, it goes nowhere fast. In a bad way. A large part of the second episode just consists out of our main character, trying to hit on a girl, and the first and third episode also contain rather boring romance scenes which didn’t really move me in any way. The creators also somehow found it a nice idea to throw in lots of useless fanservice, which didn’t really do this anime any good.

The characters themselves, however, are a major plus in this OVA, though not in the way you’d expect it. I have to admit, while watching the third episode, they became a bit annoying at times. But when the episode was over, and I began to think about the characters a bit (especially the side-characters), only then I realized what they’ve gone through. Only then I realized the horrors they experienced. That’s the strength these characters have. Especially Tama got my respect at that point. Still, this effect could have been bigger if some unanswered questions were answered. Some things just are never explained, which sortof hurts this OVA.

The character art used in this anime is most of the times very high-quality. Most of the characters have interesting character designs. The creators also liked to play with lighting effects, which gives an interesting result. Still, I’ve got one complaint. The main character just looks ugly.

Overall, I’m glad I’ve seen Interlude. It was a very interesting watch, which really requires you to think in order to fully enjoy it. A good example of an anime which has more than just what we see on the surface. Still, it could have been much better executed at certain points.