And the Kariya arc has ended. It was quite interesting. We start with where last episode left off: Kurahashi’s assistant, Tadano, suddenly has trouble breathing and nearly collapses. It turns out that someone used mind control on him. Kurahashi meanwhile finally understood the message, and deletes her research records. The visions, however, only stop after Tadano freaks out and attempts to strangle Kurahashi, only to get shot down by a crossbow, coming from a rather enthusiastic fan of Kariya. Quite a nice scene.

Afterwards, Naoya gets a vision of Kariya, disappearing. And indeed, when they leave, the guy behind Kariya’s powers, Sonezaki, finally shows himself. Along with a shady character called Asano-kun. The vision with the gloves, the snake and the elephant never had anything to do with Naoya, but with Kariya’s own death. The gloves are Sonezaki’s. He first shows Kariya a golden elephant, as a symbol that his job is done. Afterwards follows the silver snake who turns into flower, as a symbol of Sonezaki, poisoning Kariya.

The thing I liked about this episode was the huge number of references to earlier episodes. Somehow, the case with the women dressed in purple got addressed again. We’ve got a reference to the suicide-arc, the golden elephant and silver snake of the past few episodes, Shouko gets mentioned again, new information about Naoto and Naoya’s parents turns up. Each of these pieces of information actually contributes something to the individual stories. That’s the beauty of having these arcs who look finished on the outside, but still contain a lot of mysteries on the inside.

Okay, so if I understood things correctly, there’s one guy who hires other psychics, in order to try and understand the whys and hows of Naoto and Naoya’s X-factor. For that, he hired the guy from episode eight, Sonezaki and Asano. Sonezaki was the one who gave Kariya his visions. Probably to make him manipulate Naoto and Naoya. The way Sonezaki laughed at the end of the episode probably means that he’s got some ideas of his own he’ll probably be executing in the near future.

I’m wondering how the next arc will be. This show showed that it can be both a strong drama and mystery series. I wonder whether the mystery-element will be even more emphasized in the next episodes.

More shounen-action series. Not exactly the best genre out there, is it?

Busou Renkin

There’s one thing I like about this series: its pacing. Okay, it’s a shounen-series, in which a boy gets superpowers because of a beautiful girl, and the two will probably fall in love, but it’s the little details which managed to save this show. Because of the pacing, the fights are nice and short, the main character’s whining doesn’t take forever (same with the main female) and the creators made very clever use while switching between scenes. But then again, apart from the pacing, this show doesn’t have much else to offer. The attempts at comedy are decent, but none of them actually made me chuckle, the fights, although short, lack any substance as well, and like I said. The main character will be falling in love with our main female character. One thing I did appreciate was the cast of side-characters. For probably the first time ever, our male main character actually has a sister who looks about the same age, instead of a obviously older or younger one, and his roommates actually tried to differ from the stereotypes.

Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the first episode of this anime was about the character designs. They just look so plain. The anime itself turned out mediocre. Perhaps the next episodes will be better, but this first episode wasn’t a good sign. My main issue with this is that our main character seems to have superpowers for no apparent reason. He just “awakens” when a big, scary monster comes charging at him. Ah well, at least his personality actually has been developed well. The kid-samurai also was a nice touch, except for the fact that you’d wonder how he managed to get such a high position at his age with his skills. I’ve also been asked about my opinion between Ayakashi Ayashi and Bakumatsu, as they both involve samurai-people who slay demons. If you don’t know which of the two you should check out: go for Bakumatsu.

Gin-Iro ni Olynsis

You’ve got to be kidding me… The fact that so little was revealed about this anime made me somewhat curious. I can’t believe how disappointing this one turned out. First we’ve got a bunch of kids who drive mechas. Shouldn’t they be going to school? Second of all, one of these kids is the main character. One of his team-mates is in love with him. He then runs into a beautiful girl, who probably aims to manipulate him. Then, yet another beautiful girl appears (our main female character) and she (guess what) suddenly starts acting all lovey-dovey towards him. Supposedly because he did something he can’t remember anything from. It involves a giant robot. Seriously, I’ve got so many issues with this anime, it’s almost impossible to list all of them. Stay away from this one, it’s garbage.