Holy god, this anime just keeps introducing more and more characters, and they still manage to make each of them unique. I really wonder whether we get to see Tetsuju again. At the beginning we see him flying off again, but this time he actually doesn’t come down. I do hope we do, actually, he was hilarious in the time he was featured.

The current episode was focused on the daughter of the famous fireworks craftsman Kagiya. I also just realized: Sekichi’s family name is Tamaya. Is he actually THE Tamaya, or one of his relatives? Come to think of it, we’ve never seen his father, have we? I suspect that that’s the real one. After he got exiled, Seikichi and his brother remained in Edo, which does explain why they live without any parents now.

Anyway, it seems that Kagiya’s daughter has some kind of crush on Seikichi, which in a way is obvious, since she too has a passion for fireworks. She’s just a bit less “subtle” about it, and because of this she just had to get jealous of Sora, who then confirms to her that she thinks that Seikichi is just a good friend of her. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be so willing to send her to the moon. ^^;

Also, this episode was the perfect example of what happens when too many anime centre around the same time-period: shows start to use the same events and people. We already knew this through Hijikata Toshizo, who probably holds the record of most appearances in different anime ever, but those who saw Ayakashi Ayashi probably noticed a lot of similarities with Ooedo Rocket as well. First of all, this episode briefly mentions the Ayagami, while Ayakashi Ayashi had an episode to mention the firework craftsmen of Tamaya and Kagiya. Both anime featured the serial murderers of women, in which one of them was killed on the harbour, and not to mention Torii, who makes an appearance in both anime as well. It’s a good thing that both anime are excellent, otherwise it would have gotten repetitive fast. ^^;

My favourite character of this episode was Akai, though, even though this may have been a bit too much on the wrong side when he thinks of naughty thinks in front of a corpse, and then actually wets himself when the blue monster from heaven appears. Later, though, we see this monster actually reveal that she too, has a human form. That’s promising to become interesting for the future episodes.

Also, I just loved the military helicopters which suddenly appeared. Especially because of the reason they appeared there in the first place, when we see the characters actually look at some drawn cells, used in anime. Finally, it took me a while to notice that the tall guy’s hair changes, depending on his mood.

The Teresa-arc so far has been better than the Raki-arc, in my opinion. Even though the young Claire herself could have been more interesting, it’s Teresa who really stole the show in this episode. The emotions that Claire evoked from Teresa were much more captivating than when Raki saved Claire from turning into a Youma.

I especially loved when Teresa realized the real reason why Claire kept following and hugging her. It’s not because she saw her as her only way out, surprisingly. She realized that Teresa herself was in the same pain as herself, and she wanted her to realize that. Later in the episode, we see Teresa actually killing humans for her, a crime that can’t be forgiven. Because of this, she’s going to be hunted by the four strongest Claymores, apart from herself.

The question now remains: where does Elena come into the game? Will Teresa survive all this? If she does, then where is she now? And what made Claire decide to become a claymore herself? I’m also curious about what happened even before this arc. Why did Teresa become a Claymore, and how did she become the strongest? Has Claire been travelling with that Youma ever since she was born, or does she have one or two childhood memories with her parents before the youma killed them? These last questions will probably not get answered, though.

It’s also interesting, in the previous episode, I saw Raki similar to the younger Claire, but this episode showed that the two of them are entirely different. Raki didn’t really stay with Claire because she looked in pain. He just found it unfair for people to shun her like that, despite her caring personality. Teresa also took Claire in because of pity, while Claire probably let Raki stay because Teresa did the same to her in the past.

I don’t know about others, but I greatly enjoyed this episode. It was definitely the best one in this series so far, when it focuses on Galahad and Rita, instead of a random case. I’m so glad that this episode avoided the pitfalls that strike so many other anime when they attempt an episode like this one. The graphics also just looked stunning in this one. The combination of fire, snow and some excellent animation made this episode really worthwhile to see. :)

The episode starts, though, with the guard we saw in the first episode arriving on an island, introducing yet another character: the female knight. If I had to guess, then she too is from Sangatras. Then the episode starts when Rita and Tina are in the middle of a snowy mountain, they talk about how the area is infamous for housing a rather poisonous spider, and then it seems that Tina has been afraid of spiders since she was young, after one unfortunate incident. ^^

One small detail I loved is how Rita’s fears aren’t used in this episode. Another thing is that this means that Sherry has known Tina for a very long time now. I still wonder how the two of them met each other. In any case, a blizzard shows up, and Rita first gets separated from Tina, and then runs into none other than Galahad. She manages to get away from him when she falls off a cliff. Apparently, this cliff wasn’t very large, and due to the snow, she had a soft landing, after which she fled into a convenient wooden shed.

Galahad, however, sees the wooden shed as well, and what follows is some considerable development between the two of them. One of the spiders mentioned above managed to get hold of Galahad, and Rita just isn’t someone to leave someone like him just to die. Then an interesting discussion follows, where it seems that Guernia acted really strange in the night when Rita murdered him. I’m glad to see that she finally reveals what really happened to her.

I didn’t understand this part too well, but it seems that Guernia wanted to kill Rita for his own gain. If I had to guess, then he first wanted to kill her, in order to blame others afterwards. It was probably so that he could get both Sangatras and Wellber for himself in the future. That’s why he kept bothering Rita with marriage requests. Strangely enough, though, he was extremely nice to Galahad. The two of them grew up together, and Galahad never noticed anything strange with him.

Still, the best part of the episode comes when Galahad actually poisons Rita’s drink when she’s not looking, with the venom of the same spider when she’s not looking. I hate it when episodes like these bring rivals together, only for the two of them to make friends and act like nothing happened. That definitely wasn’t the case here, when even after hearing Rita’s story, Galahad still wants to kill her.

Luckily, she managed to hit over an oil lamp in her struggles, so that the house catches fire and Tina would be able to find her. It’s quite interesting to see what the creators have already put Rita through. I’d love to know what’s going to happen in the rest of this series.