This was such a cute episode. And a great one as well. It’s a great one this time, and it really reveals some very interesting things about her past with Hansel. She loves her brother because when they were even smaller than they are now, they used to be very close to each other. Hansel was very kind to his little sister. Then, they ran into the house, made of sweets (was I the only one to love the reference in this one?) and met Cendrion, who then brainwashed Hansel.

This episode, Akazukin and the others are in the same forest as back then. Of course it’s nostalgic to both Hansel and Gretel when they found out. Gretel then finds out that Cendrion has been controlling Hansel, as she quickly drives this nostalgic feeling out of him. She then goes to the sugar-house again, and waits for Akazukin and the others, in order to ask for help. Ringo, however, doesn’t trust her, so she leaves, along with the others. Gretel, however, keeps following them, in a very sad way. I can’t believe how cute she was at that time. ^_^

In any case, Souta decides to trust her. Quite a touching scene follows between the two of them, though just when you think that Gretel has agreed to join him, things move differently as she reports to her brother. She tries to convince him that Akazukin and the others can help the two of them, but he’s only interested in Souta. In the end, Gretel tells him the location of Erde’s key. The next morning, Hansel appears in front of him.

I can’t believe how evil Hansel looked at that time. He just ruthlessly charges, and fires a spell which kills almost the entire forest. Gretel’s reaction to this also was awesome. In the end, Akazukin, Shirayuki and Ibara manage to take him out by combining their powers. I’m not sure how they managed to do this, seems like I failed to understand a few sentences. Anyway, Gretel then chooses Hansel over Souta, threatens the latter with her sword and escapes along with the unconscious former. I quite like her case. Especially because she loves her brother, who’s been brainwashed.

We also met up with a new character: a very old, talking tree. I like him. He behaves just like a very cheerful old man. He also saw Hansel and Gretel when they were still young, and he actually protected Souta and Ringo from Hansel’s poison rain. At the end of the episode, he also provides a nice message, regarding the destroyed forest. Things will just recover. Give it a few years, and the forest will be back again. Ibara also presents him with a magical seed.

Randagio also was as cute as ever. He was needed at the beginning of the episode, in order to tell Hansel and Gretel about Souta’s location. Afterwards, he rushes off to find them, though the creators found a very nice way of keeping him out of the main events of this episode. ^_^

Anyway, I think that this episode marked the end of another part of this anime. The next part will probably be even darker, as during the next episode, Raikan will be coming into action. Be sure not to miss it.

(On a side-note: did anybody else notice that when Ibara was sleeping, she had Kyupi wrapped up in her vines?)

And the fall season has started. So far, it’s promising to be a load of garbage with a few good shows. I SO hope that the coming month will prove me wrong, though the current batch hasn’t really managed to change my opinion.

Black Blood Brothers

It’s got hate, it’s got angst, it’s got despair, but it’s also got a main character with absolutely no sense of fashion and an annoying little brat who is annoying for the sake of being annoying. The anime also plays in a world in which hundreds of bullets can be stopped by a single swing of a sword. Not really that realistic. Even though the angst was nice to see, I decided to drop this show. The decisive reason for this happened at the end of the first episode. We first see our main character on a ship, moving things (including the annoying brat) with just the power of his mind. Then, the brat falls into the water, and suddenly his power stopped working, and he actually jumped after him, sustaining significant damage as the water seems to dissolve him. Why couldn’t he just zap the brat back to the ship?

Sci-Fi Harry

Yeah, I know. This series aired in 2000. But as this section is called “some quick first impressions”, and not “newly aired anime”, I might slip in an old one once in a while. And this one was just a tad too good to ignore. The anime plays around Harry. He’s been alienated from society, and he’s an extremely shy boy. Then, it seems that he’s a psychic who can’t fully control his powers. People are now obviously after his powers, and the few people who did spend time with him then will probably get entangled in this. The series immediately starts out very intense. And by the third episode Harry already killed about fifty people at once. Overall, it’s a very good, but the series does have its own annoying moments. The main female character’s feelings towards Harry are nothing short of obnoxious, and a lot of scenes show some facial expressions which just don’t work. It does give something unique to this anime, though the fact that looking at these characters’ faces is annoying.

_Summer

Okay, things can’t be good when this anime immediately starts with a perverted onsen-peeking-scene. And indeed. This anime has one of the most WORST. SETTINGS. EVER. A male who’s been copied and pasted right from any other random harem is surrounded by a huge load of “beautiful” girls. Of course, each of these girls absolutely loves our main character and they all perfectly fit the stereotypes. The anime is about a very difficult choice: which girl does the main character want to spend the rest of his life with. Seriously, I hope that this isn’t some kind of sign, regarding the overall quality of the rest of the season. Anyway, thankfully some small details prevented this anime from becoming a total disaster. There were some funny moments (the teacher and the evil girl were rather funny) and also, at times whenever we see characters talk, you can see rather random things go on in the background. I do admit that it was a nice touch. Still, I’m not really recommending this to anyone. (Oh yes, and in case you were wondering, I watched this one raw. You need to wait a bit before the subs appear, but you’re better off forgetting about this series)

Hmm, this case is beginning to get more interesting by the minute. I was sceptical at first, as I thought that each arc in Night Head Genesis would be full of hate and suffering, but the concept they used for this arc also worked out very nice.

First of all, the vision of Kamiya shows a bit more of itself. We have a golden elephant who flies away. Then we have a black glove, in which a silver snake appears. This snake dissolves into a flour-like substance.

Also, if the visions keep coming, this anime can do some very interesting things. I think it’s going to try and play with the future. As things stand now, the woman who attacked Naoya will kill someone other than Naoto, Naoya and Kurahashi and end up in jail. Naoya will end up touching someone and have the worst shock of his life, making him unable to recover. Then, an airplane disaster occurs in which a young pilot takes his parents along with him and afterwards, about fifteen, twenty years into the future, the disease will kill humanity. The question remains, how much of this will come true?

Remember the first prediction we saw from Kariya? Naoto and Naoya were looking at a street full of corpses. As this will happen about twenty years into the future, it has to be a symbol, instead of a realistic vision (just like the elephant and the snake). What if their own meddling was the actual reason for Kurahashi to develop the virus? Was it their meddling that caused Kurahashi to become nervous, and messing up so much that the virus was set loose? At the end of the episode, we also see Kurahashi’s assistant in a very unhealthy condition, dumping a few strange flour-like medicines and dropping them in the drinks he was supposed to be getting. What could it mean?

Why did so little anime change their OP or ED after their first half ended? For as far as I know, only xxxHolic showed us a new ED after episode 14. I like it when a series does this. It symbolizes change. Anyway, now that that random comment is out of the way, here’s once again the summary of the past month. I still can’t seem to come up with good names for these things.
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