Short Synopsis: Now that the enemy has fled, Darl tries to make the villagers get rid of Shall. Especially now that the two great protectors have announced to leave. He still believes in them, though.
Good: How! Incredibly! Refreshing!!!
Bad: It’s annoying! This series is sparking so much thoughts into me, but I just can’t get them into words.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8.5/10

Oh my god. I’ve fallen in love with another anime. I don’t care if this anime turns out to be disappointing for the rest of its episodes. The past two episodes were SO worth watching, as they easily breached more than a dozen clichés. I can’t believe how realistic this anime portrays the actions of our heroes, and I can’t believe how incredibly NEGLECTED this anime has become!

Like I mentioned above, this episode felt SO refreshing, I want to say so much about it, but I feel that I just can’t put all of my feelings to words and do this series justice. I’ll try, though. For starters, usually in battle, when people die you see a few shots of them in the midst of dying, usually with lots of blood, and that’s the rest you’ll see of them. In Strange Dawn, however, this guy really mattered in the aftermath. His death was seen as a real loss, and we even see his family in pain, even though that’s the first time we see him. If an anime really wants to try, it gives a bit of background about the guy before he dies, but never have I seen that background is given after the guy died, like in Strange Dawn. This emphasizes the fact that he’s just a random victim even more. His son, coming to Eri, asking her to bring his father back was heart-wrenching.

Also, how many times have we seen characters who get thrown into unexpected situations, and suddenly know exactly how to behave? Or they take one episode, in which they yell at the one responsible about how they never asked about their “duties”, and then suddenly everything’s fine and they’re ready to save the world? Probably too many to count. The combination of Eri and Yuki greatly breaks this stereotype. Eri likes to dream and keep everyone pleased. She’s afraid to go against people, and she likes the idea of keeping everyone happy. Because of that, she tries a few things here and there, but you can see that she doesn’t even try.

Yuki, meanwhile, cares far less about what other people think of her. She hates being in the centre of attention, and with people referring to her as the “great protector”, just because she’s large greatly annoys her. All she cares about is getting home. To make things even better, we don’t have that melodramatic crap where a character like that sees the light in the end, and cooperates with the main character like nothing happened. She indeed helped during the last episode, but that was probably more out of a reflex than wanting to help out at all costs.

I also love the village chief. He’s the perfect example of how easily people are influenced. Also, notice the vultures which have been circling around the town. Eri also was cute when she tried to find a toilet. It’s definitely something you’d expect of her. She just keeps worrying too much over things, and while Yuki started the toilet-thing, the probably forgot it not long after she said it.

When I first saw Shall, I feared that he’d be your standard strong hero. Even with that, I’m proven wrong. He isn’t impulsive at all, heck, he has lots of doubts about himself. For some reason, though, he keeps clinging to the thought that Eri and Yuki are the great protectors. It seems that he went to “the city” for a while, which seems to suggest that he went to the main capital, and that the village is just an outpost. Something probably happened during his stay in the city, which influenced him greatly.

I probably missed a lot of things in this short review, but there’s one final thing I’d like to say, if you skimmed through this article: do NOT get fooled by the character designs! The story in fact is quite dark and serious!

Short Synopsis: Hone Onna’s background! A woman, meanwhile curses a man because he refuses to be responsible for the baby he gave her.
Good: Finally we have a bit of a good explanation of what happened to her; nice twists.
Bad: Right during the climax, the sound of my computer decided to call it quits. Me no like.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10

First, before I start with the episode, I finally realized something. You can play nice games with the scene where the candle is added: some candles have the same description on them. Try to find as much look-alikes as possible!

Anyway, with this episode, the background of the three dolls finally is complete. Hone Onna has quite an interesting background. We already knew that she was in a brothel and that she ended up dead in a river somehow, but now we finally find out how this happened. Things can basically be summarized by Wrex’s statement: all men are bastards. First one sells her off to the brothel, then when that guy has finally decided to free Hone Onna from the brothel, another one comes and kills both of them. In fact, he used a former friend of Hone Onna, whom he later dumped, after impregnating her. That girl committed suicide afterwards.

Right now in the present time, the spirit of this girl keeps sticking to people with similar experiences, so it’d be only a matter of time till Ai would run into her, and Hone Onna would meet her spirit again. During this episode, this happens. It seems that she still bears a grudge against her.

Out of the backstories of the three dolls, I’d have to say that I like Wanyuudo’s most (apart from the fanservice, perhaps). That’s probably because he had the biggest influence on Ai’s method of working, since he was the first one she recruited. It’s interesting, Wanyuudo had a standard backstory, but a large influence on Ai, while Ichimoku Ren and Hone Onna had interesting backgrounds, but they didn’t really have a large influence on Ai and how she works.

This episode also had quite some nice production-values. Some camera-movements were looking very interesting, and especially the punishment-scene looked better than usual.

So, with five episodes left, and Hone Onna, Ichimoku Ren and Wanyuudo have had their background show. What’s up next? Kikuri will probably make her move in the next episode, but will that be everything? I’m hoping for Hell-boy to return!

Human Crossing tells the tale of thirteen different people. Each episode is dedicated to one of them. All these persons are unrelated, but they all have some kind of worry, or something that occupies their thoughts. Human Crossing features these people, it explores them as they encounter events that make them see the light. We’ve got another highly unpopular series here. So far, only 18 people have voted for it on AnimeNewsNetwork, and AniDB has similar numbers. Does it really deserve this much negligence? Well, people who’ve been reading my blog probably know my opinion about shows like these by now. ^^;

The thing I really liked about Human Crossing is that nearly every episode features a heart-warming tale. This is one of the very few anime which features actual adults as its main characters (okay, 12 adults and one high-school kid), and it makes perfect use of this by portraying some of the worries that adults get through. This can go from as simple as forcing your own memories down to your 4-year-old son and being heavily abused by your husband to an old man who teaches younger people a lesson so that they don’t end up like he did. Some of the stories are very different from each other, but nearly all of them were full of atmosphere, and I couldn’t help but feeling along with its characters.

It indeed was a good choice to watch this one after trying out Sentimental Journey, as these two anime are very similar. It´s just that instead of high/school girls, Human Crossing uses all kinds of normal people, mostly adults. Instead of past crushes, the main characters are or were already married. Still, I have to say that overall, Human Crossing definitely was better than Sentimental Journey. Apart from a few cases, Sentimental journey never really made me feel the emotions of its characters as much as Human Crossing did.

I definitely recommend this anime if you’re into stories, but there’s one point in which Human Crossing messes up at times: the point at which a character sees “the light”. In about 50% of the cases, these work very well, but in the other 50%, the change is a bit too forced. It’s a pity, as the episodes build up perfectly, with many interesting cases. But yeah, there’s only so much that you can do in only 20 minutes. The background music also perfectly fits the atmosphere in this series, but you may have to get used a bit to the character-design. It’s obviously not something this anime focuses on, but it may lose viewers because the character-designs look a bit “standard”.