With this episode, I knew: El Cazador is at its best when its themes centre around death. The past few episodes with background on Nadie and the fight between LA and Ricardo may have been nice, I now finally realize that the best stories are the ones in which death takes a central theme, finally, after four episodes of absence, we have another episode like this (the death used in episode 6 was more of a plot device than a focus, in fact).

Also, is it me, or are the creators really trying to save their best songs for the later half of the anime? For the past few episodes, I nearly forgot that this series has the brilliant Yuki Kajiura behind its music. So far, after the first three episodes, all we’ve heard were her standard tunes, but the fact remains that there are some great musical pieces among the soundtrack of El Cazador (for example, the track that was played during the climax of the first episode). The track that we heard when Nadie lied in the hospital in the middle of this episode also was a pure delight! I want more!

El Cazador’s episodes have always had one character who gets most of the screen-time and development. Episode 6 had Nadie, episode 7 had Lilio, while the current episode has Ellis as its main focus when Nadie gets shot down and put in the hospital. It’s nothing serious, as she’s able to walk again just a few hours later, but it does enable Ellis’s character to develop, as a mafia-boss sees her remove the bullet from Nadie’s wound and therefore thinks that she can heal his bed-ridden superior, whose health is in bad shape.

The guy is nothing like the stereotypical maffia-boss that you’d expect to see. He’s actually pretty worried about his superior. Ellis, however, can’t heal the guy. All she can do is melt metal, which doesn’t really help with a weak old guy. A large focus of this episode was for Ellis to understand the difference between good lying and evil lying. It’s interesting how nobody told her to do so, she actually figured it out herself, which is quite interesting if you consider her personality, and the fact that she claimed that she doesn’t like even the slightest lie because the professor told her that lying is bad. When the old man was about to die, though, mistaking Ellis for his dead daughter, she indeed tells him that she’s Paulina (the daughter’s name).

The side-characters also were once again very interesting. Heck, each of them has some kind of very small but important role in this episode. LA is now indeed captured, and instead of trying to escape, he keeps freaking out over Ellis’s pictures. Rozenberg meanwhile made a little trip to the desert in order to question the guy personally. And I still wonder: HOW THE HECK did he get the footage in LA’s camera!?

Blue-eyes meanwhile uses this opportunity to spy on Rozenberg’s office, by dropping herself down from an air-shaft above his desk. At least, that was the plan; she first needs to lose a few pounds before she’ll be able to do it. xD Ricardo meanwhile sends Lilio to give Ellis’s whereabouts to Nadie… why? I mean, there was not really a need for her to go there, was there? Or was he worried about Ellis, being taken away by a strange man?

Ah, I’ve been dying for the next instalment of Deltora Quest, and once again I must say: whoa!

The Yurunai have really gotten more depth than you’d expect at first sight. At first, I believed that they were just the citizens of a city who were a bit too enthusiastic about their hygiene, but once again this anime surprises me to actually give them a reason to. I mean, when you live right next to a cave, covered with highly poisonous mushrooms that can kill you just by touching, it’d be perfectly plausible for these people to live cleaner than usual, to protect their people. There was just a huge need for this. I can imagine this fear for contamination lapsing into obsession over time. The origins of this obsession has never had anything to do with the shadow lord at all, though I do suspect that he did help a bit in making it worse.

That’s the thing I love about Deltora Quest, unlike other brainless shounen series like Gurren Lagann, this one actually makes you and it characters think about the situations and settings. Not even one event doesn’t get backed up or explained by others. Heck, even the Deus ex Machina make sense! You just know that Tira would come back after leaving Lief, Barda and Jasmine, simply because she forgot their swords. For once you can see a deus ex machina come because it makes sense, instead because of blatantly obvious storytelling. The same with Fillie, the Yurunai said that they sent Fillie into the tunnel, though the creature would be smart enough to actually hide and wait for Jasmine to come and pick him up. When he saw her in danger, he obviously wanted to defend her. And regarding the Dai-Master sneaking up in the tunnel, obviously a smack by Tira hurts, but she remains a little girl, and when she smacks you on the head with a frying pan, I can see that you’d only lose consciousness for a short while, when compared to a punch from Barda, for example.

There’s also one thing that makes Deltora Quest really unique among the shounen genre: the fact that killing off the big boss doesn’t mean the end of his subordinates as well. We already saw this when Thaegan was temporarily dead, but now we see this for real, as the Dai-Master won’t be getting up soon in the state he’s in. And still, the Yurunai are perfectly fine.

And also the food! I never expected to be such a deep meaning to it, when it gets sold back to Tom’s shop like that. And the strange thing is, I don’t recall Tom actually selling food at all. Also, how did the Yurunai get so much food to begin with? These questions will probably get answered in the next episode. It’s a shame you almost hear nobody about this series, but I’m glad that it’s actually being subbed.