I knew it! Misao finally cuts her hair! During this episode, it also gets clear why the witches were so interested in Misao: she’s got the same kind of power as Sasami. This episode was mostly meant to develop both of them. The witches try to give Misao a feeling of comfort, while Sasami debates whether to go after her (after all, she went on her own will).

As usual, the dramatic moments were awesome. Sasami really has her own way of worrying, and the fact that Misao disappeared, and the police had to arrive only made this better, as rumours started to appear about her. Anri, Tsukasa and Makoto were great, trying to cheer her up. Washuu also tries her best to do something in her own special way. She actually attempts to learn magic herself. She really is one of my favourite characters of this show, with the others being Sasami and Misao.

The episode ended rather interesting, with Sasami, about to head to the magical world and Misao, who got the instructions of eliminating Sasami. The next episode should prove to be an awesome one. But then again, each episode so far has been awesome in a sense. :)

You know, this series actually turned out pretty good. This episode really convinced me to that. The fact that this anime is so incredibly intense did require me to get used to it a bit, but right now, this anime is turning better and better. Also, if you thought that the first episode was intense, just wait till you get to see this one. ;)

We start the episode with Sara, kicking Lotti out of the way in order to fight her brother. It seems that both of them are using special Strains, which means that nobody can really keep up with them. There’s one thing I disliked about this fight: at one point, Ralph Werec has used his Strain to grab Lotti’s Strain. He hits her, but surprisingly, her Strain remains intact, opposed to all of the Strains he wiped out in the first episode with just one blow.

Still, the fight was only meant to introduce the episode. At the end, Sara manages to deliver some small damage to Ralph, forcing him to retreat. She actually wants to go after him, though another Strain pilot stops her (I forgot his name for a bit). She then cries in the same way she did in the first episode, pretty touching. Still, things get even better afterwards, when Lotti meets up with her.

Sara must’ve felt pretty horrible. She’s probably hated by almost each of her fellow-students after this incident. After all, she appeared like she didn’t have a MIMIC, so she had to train extremely hard in order to catch up with all of the Strains. She was already seen as a show-off, but now that she actually appears to be able to fly a Strain, it must seem to the other students that she’s making fun of them.

Lotti also seems to have a very good reason for hating Ralph Werec. She also had a big-brother complex when she was young, just like Sara. It seems that Ralph killed her brother at one point. It’s probably the reason she decided to be a Strain Pilot. We also get to see Ralphs allies for the first time, and our first hints to why he changed. He does work for people, it seems. Whether this is forced or not, I’m not yet sure.

I’m also glad that more blogs have started to speak about this series. Code Geass seems to have gotten a contender of best “mecha-series of the season”. Still, there’s one problem with this series: it’s abundance of fanservice. It seems to do this in order to please the otakus, while it doesn’t even need this. In my opinion, it only hurts the series.

This one may be from a while back, but it’s a beauty. Like the title does suggest, it’s a science-fiction OVA. But because it’s so old, it actually got the chance to start with the basics of science-fiction, in contrast with the science-fiction anime you see appearing today, which take the basics for granted. Because of this, this anime turned into a beautiful piece of art. Definitely recommended for any science-fiction fan.

It’s hard to tell anything about this OVA without spoiling it (I therefore tried to make the screenshots as vague as possible). It’s really best to just watch this, without knowing anything about it. All I’ll say is that the creators spent a LOT of research into this, and they came up with a number of fascinating theories regarding the space-age. In a sense, you could call this anime partly a documentary.

The graphics indeed look old. But for their time, they look pretty impressive. Still, the thing that really stands out is the background music. It’s a collection of very fitting tunes, which really scream that they’re coming from the eighties. The story, characters and music combined turn this OVA into a huge chunk of atmosphere.

If I had to mention one downside of this OVA, it’d be that it does require some physical knowledge to fully understand it. The creators really tried and succeeded to make everything as believable as possible, but if you’re not into physics or space-travel, all the talk sounds like a bunch of techno-babble.