That was another excellent episode, if I had to say so myself. It’s meant to develop the other character called “Yuuko”, or Yuuko II, as I’m going to refer to her from now on. This probably is one of the few anime that dares to feature two characters with the same name. Anyway, this episode still continued to introduce new things, how more extensive can this world get? Anyway, my favourite new feature was the phone, which you use by putting your thumb near your ear and your pinkie near your mouth. That really would be so cool if we had this in the real world. ^^;

Anyway, the chase which started in the previous episode comes to an abrupt halt when Mega-Baa’s back starts complaining. She gives Kyoko, who happened to be passing by the feature she displayed at the previous episode, but instead of catching the fur-balls, Kyoko starts zapping everything she runs into. ^^; The fur-balls then finally manage to catch Densuke. He’s quite a smart dog, by the way, outsmarting these fur-balls for so long. Him, crying in the trashcan does show that he’s got a few human traits.

With the help of Oyaji, Yuuko and Fumie are able to track down Densuke, though. But then two Sacchis appear, I think that they’re after both the illegal and the fur-balls Yuuko II set free. I’ve been wondering, though, what happens if you get seriously hit by a Sacchi? I mean, it is the virtual world after all, but the reactions of Fumie, Yuuko and Yuuko II seem to suggest that these huge moving child toys are actually very dangerous.

Anyway, eventually Yuuko II gets her hands on Densuke, by tricking Yuuko. She then gets the illegal out of the creature, and then sticks a key inside a keyhole that just appeared on this illegal. I first thought that she wanted to destroy it, but in the end, her goal doesn’t seem to be getting rid of all illegals in the world (but then again, we’ve got Sacchis for that). It seems that there was something inside of that illegal, but it blew up before she could get this out of the creature. The explosion did quite a bit of damage to the surroundings as well. Heck, it looked like a virtual earthquake had just occurred. Quite interesting.

It’s also quite interesting that Yuuko II doesn’t need any meta-tags. Instead, she just has to draw lines on the floor with chalk. The simple, Full Metal Alchemist-like ones create shrines, while the more complex (and very interesting-looking, by the way) ones are able to halt creatures like the Sacchi for a while. It’s interesting that unlike FMA, the drawings themselves actually have a lot in common with their functions. The four lines, symbolizing a shrine, with a closed circle drawn around it makes perfect sense for if you want to protect yourself, after all.

Bakuretsu Kagekidan Gamigami Shinkansen, DOSUKOI!!

*ahem*… now that that’s out, I’m really happy that the next instalments of Popolocrois have been released again. Many thanks to Wyrdwad for continuing to sub these wonderful series. The current episode for the 1998-anime was a typical “calm before the storm”-episode, before the finale really begins. Still, despite this, lots of things happened, and I couldn’t help but love the episode. :)

The major focus is for Hyuu, to finally sort her thoughts out. For nearly the entire anime, she’s been in doubts, but now that Gamigami has left her and she can’t return to him anymore, she can’t flee from Pietoro anymore. And with a bit of help from Kai and Narcia, she finally realizes that she wants to stay in Popolocrois.

The best moment of the episode, though, was when Pietoro saw his parents again. So cute. ^_^ He definitely is one of the more unique children to get featured in anime, and he probably really missed his parents while he was travelling. Gamigami also was as brilliant as always, for the short screen-time that he had.

It’s strange to think that this anime is nearly over. I’ve been blogging it ever since I started thIs blog, back in November 2005, and there are only two episodes left. It’s promising to be a huge treat, though. I’m really curious how Hyuu’s problems will be resolved, or whether the Anemoritos will cause another tragedy.

Whoa, this was such a lovely episode! Stories about the mothers and fathers of characters have always been excellent, and Kaze no Shoujo Emily makes no exception to this. The current episode was mostly about Emily’s mother, and it couldn’t have been better executed. It’s been a really heart-warming episode. :)

But first, the episode starts with Teddy, and probably gives us a few small hints of what’s to come in the future episodes. His mother continues to worry about him, and even comes to pick him up when he’s fishing, along with Emily and Ilse. Especially Ilse is getting more and more worried about this.

Anyway, I believe that Elizabeth has been really lucky to meet someone who has so many differences, but just as much similarity in morals and views. This episode really shows that, when it introduces Juliet, Emily’s mother. It seems that she has had a weak health since she was born, and was frequently forced to rest for long whiles. Elizabeth was really different back then, and she genuinely worried about her sister.

The problem came, though, when she met Emily’s father: Elizabeth didn’t approve of this. I think she didn’t find the guy trustworthy enough, and something tells me that she had been clinging to Juliet for a bit too long, so that she didn’t want to hand her over to someone else. Ever since she left, Elizabeth had closed off her room and didn’t open it for ten years. For these ten years, all went well, and she was able to forget about it a bit. That is, until Emily came to live with her. This forced her to stop running away from her memories with Juliet, as Emily would obviously want to see the room that her mother used to live in.

When she finally opened the door, after all these years, I think that both her and Emily both got healed a bit. They really form the perfect team together, and I nearly cried when Emily saw a picture of her mother on the fireplace. The two of them really look alike! Please, Kaze no Shoujo Emily, give us more awesomeness. :)

The current episode closes another chapter in the story. Shuurei is finally done with all her tasks that she set out to do in the capital. She collected the permissions to turn the Sa-province into the centre of intellect for the country, and she gathered enough doctors to cure the disease that’s been plaguing in the Sa-clan. All that’s left? Get Ryuuki’s permission. The largest part of the episode focused on this.

Yet again a huge dialogue, though fortunately this one was a bit easier to understand (emphasis on “bit”). Ryuuki was gathered along with all his advisors, and especially the advisors were angry at her for spending so much money (see previous episode) on the medics. Shuurei’s speech blew these guys away, though. At least, for a short while, they then started blaming Shuurei for the reason the disease spread.

Ryuuki then silences everyone, but who was that person he turned into for a short while? He had the same glow as Sho Taishi’s younger form and Sa Enjun’s spirit-form. We never see any trace of him again, though. The rest of the conversation was a bit fuzzy, though in the end, it came down to Ryuuki giving his permission.

The rest of the episode was more character-based, when Shuurei rests after her hard work, she says goodbye to Ryuuki and leaves towards the Sa-province again. Reishin and Kouyuu were hilarious as well, whey they stand besides a sleeping Shuurei and have to flee when she wakes up. ^^; Still, it seems that nearly everyone in the palace was worried about her, since she encounters lots of acquaintances who seem to have fallen asleep on their chairs in the library, where she was sleeping herself. Kouyuu found an interesting way to hide himself as well. ^^;

Also: what happened to Eigetsu? He wasn’t featured at all during the episode, even though he’s about to die. He should be getting some spotlights in the next episode, though. I really wonder whether Shuurei will be able to see him again. Like I said before, Eigetsu at one point had less than a month to live, while it’d take Shuurei at least a month to get to the Sa-province. But then again, right now she’s in a hurry to go there with the doctors as fast as possible, so I can imagine that the journey would only take half the time when she puts some speed in it.

Whoa… this probably was the hardest to understand episode yet! Anime like Seirei no Moribito and Saiunkoku, who already feature lots of talking, sometimes have a tendency to show entire episodes who just focus on a bunch of people talking, with nothing more. This was one of these episodes. Eighteen minutes just play inside a small blacksmith’s house, nothing else. No flashbacks, other characters, nothing.

Well then, there was one thing I did understand: Barsa’s spear had been quite damaged, so she goes to a famous blacksmith in order to get a new one. At the end of the episode, we see her happily practicing with her spear. What happened between these scenes was extremely different to grasp.

I do suspect that the blacksmith wasn’t keen on helping Barsa at first. This is probably because of her past, and judging by the fact that Tanda had to heal her quite often, she probably frequented his place as well. Either that or he’s seen her wanted-posters. Then, after a while, two of the hunters enter the shop, picking up some swords that they ordered.

What follows is a long discussion, between the blacksmith and the hunters, while Barsa and Chaggumu hide out in a different room. The blacksmith nearly betrays them when he tells the hunters that their swords are in the same room where they’re hiding out in. At the last moment, though, he changes his mind, and puts up a discussion, so that it’ll be natural for him to pick up the swords himself. At least, that’s what I suspect.

To find out the subject of this discussion, I’m probably going to have to wait till Wrex posts his summary, but I suspect he was telling them about Barsa’s history with her father. The way Barsa looked seems to suggest this. The hunters then compare this story with probably Chaggumu’s.

This really was a discussion you’d expect in a novel, not in an anime like that. But still, I liked it, even though I didn’t understand a word of it. The music also was amazing, near the end of the episode. I was surprised we saw nothing of Shuga. You’d suspect that this episode would show him talk to various people, to convince them that the drought isn’t over, but we saw nothing of him. Torogai-shi also was absent.

Finally, after blogging for eighteen months, I finally hit the 1k-posts milestone! As usual: a few statistics.

- The total amount of commenters: 2198.
- The person with the most amount of comments so far is Cos (65), Anga (61, too bad he lost interest in anime, I liked reading his blog) is second, and all variations of asdf(51) come in third, with Kite (49) fourth.
- The total amount of visitors up till now: 258867 (I can’t believe how much the site has grown over the past few months, it took me13 months to reach the first 100k visitors, and the 250k milestone was already reached in less than half that time)
- Highest amount of pageviews on one day: April 15th (4339, I have no idea what I did back then to make that number so high).
- Amount of series and ovas finished blogging: 26.
- Series with the highest amount of posts: Jigoku Shoujo (51, but Saiunkoku Monogatari will be overtaking that one pretty soon).
- Longest episode-post: I still haven’t written anything longer than with Higurashi 19, with a massive 3973 words. Boy, that post was too long. ^^;

When I first learned about Mihael and Near, I feared that the two of them would be the only two new characters for the anime. The past episodes have really surprised me with Takada and Mikami, two new major characters. So far, I like them better than the two of Mihael and Near. It’s probably because they really do what they believe in, and they stand for that. M and N are just playing a treasure hunt, trying to beat each other while using finding Kira as a goal. They don’t really have ideals that they stand for, unlike L, for instance. But then again, they are just children.

Perhaps that’s why I liked this episode so much. Mihael only appeared for two seconds, and Near was entirely gone. Instead, it focused on flashing out Mikami and Takama. It’s interesting, Light may have found an ally with Mikami, who is completely on his side, the fact does remain that the guy is obsessed with justice. The scenes where he wrote down his victims’ names showed this, and his background, which got shown at the beginning of the episode, does explain the source for his behaviour.

Takama also turned out very interesting, it’s a clever trick for the first half to have shown a bit of her, only to really use her in the later half. I wonder what turned her to side with Kira so easily. We know Mikami’s background now, but I’d like to know a bit more of her as well. I do hope, though, that she won’t turn into a damsel-in-distress. Remember that Near is currently suspecting Light Yagami. He’ll probably rejoice when he finds out the guy has a girlfriend. It’ll be quite easy to get information out of her, unless she somehow proves that she knows what she’s doing in the future episodes.

This episode did an excellent job in building up. Even though it wasn’t anything exciting, it set a good base for the finale to begin. It’s hard to imagine that there are only five episodes left. I’ve already been spoiled about the ending, though I do wonder how it’ll happen. If I had to guess, then this was the last of the slow episodes, and the pace should really start kicking in, in all shounen-series fashion.

Heh, for the first time, I actually managed to pick up a word pun in anime while watching raw, At the beginning of the episode. It’s indeed the best if you’re able to pick them up yourself, instead of having fansubbers do this for you. ^^; Anyway, the current episode was more of a serious one, and unlike the disappointing episode 7, this one was well worth the watch!

Akai turns into an even more pitiful character than he already was. He really is a loswer with just a high position, and I still like him, despite the things he’s done. I mean, he’s killed a bunch of females so that he can please the human form of the blue monster, he indeed nearly drools over her when she gives him attention, but at the same time, she just loathes him, unlike any other tsundere I’ve seen so far. She just knows that he’ll collect women’s blood for him, and that’s all. Heck, Akai even realizes this, and he still continues the killing.

Ginjiro and Sora also get quite a bit of development this time, especially Sora. She must probably be struggling with her feelings and all, since she’s asking such a request from Seikichi, because of this, she tries to help in some interesting ways, to provide the parts of her spaceship.

The best part, though, was Ginjiro finding out that Sora is the white monster. Sora, meanwhile, manages to kill off the second blue monster, who’s been residing in the first one since a few episodes. Overall, the episode was quite good. Not the best yet, but definitely one of the better episodes of the series. It’s quite obvious now that the series will consist out of twelve or thirteen episodes, and I’m interested to see how this anime plans to end its story. Especially Akai should prove to get even more interesting in the future episodes.

PS. These black knights, or however they may be called, have got some awesome fighting-moves. ^^;

And suddenly, the entire concept of Claymore has become clear. Finally, the identity of the main antagonist has been revealed, and I must say that while it had it coming, the element of surprise in this episode was excellent. Teresa’s death was a sad one, but it perfectly explains why Claire turned into a Claymore herself.

However, that doesn’t mean I’m 100% happy, though. This episode really reminded me that Claymore remains a shounen anime, where the fights are supposed to be the highlights, and the enemy is the strongest enemy you could possibly think of. In the last episode, I already voiced my disappointment about how easily Priscilla got her powers, and now it becomes clear why she had to be so powerful: it’s to become as strong as possible this early on. I really would have preferred to see her actually grow a bit more, it would have increased the credibility tenfold.

This also automatically creates a new flaw: how the heck is Claire going to beat Priscilla in the end? Unlike Teresa, Claire is just an ordinary Claymore of a normal power-level. The awakened Priscilla, meanwhile, was even easily able to beat the strongest claymore: Teresa, someone who couldn’t even be defeated by the combination of Claymores 2 till 5. She also easily killed off her companions in the process.

I definitely do not hope that this anime will fall into the pits that plague so many other shounen-anime at this point: where its characters become an unbelievable amount stronger. Right now, we’ve seen the five strongest Claymores in action for the past two episodes. I hope that the new top Claymores will around the same level of strength in the current timeline. The next episodes are probably going to show whether this anime will focus on character-development or action. Let’s pray that the character-development will take priority!

One thing I do like, though, is that Priscilla isn’t after any kind of world conquest or anything. After all, if she was, she would’ve done this already. She also revealed why she hates Youma so much: she was the same as Raki. Her father was actually a disguised Youma, and he killed her family in front of her eyes. Another reason why Claire decided to take Raki in, because she feared that he’d end up like Priscilla if she didn’t help him. I wonder, though, how could a little girl be able to kill of an entire Youma? Did she already know how to fight even before she became a Claymore? That could explain why she turned out so strong as a Claymore, even though it doesn’t explain how that made her unique like that.

The doubts I had about this series, I take them all back after this episode. For three episodes in a row, Wellber no Monogatari has continuously pushed forward excellent episodes, one after another. While that by itself already is a feat that only few other anime from the current spring-season have accomplished, Wellber no Monogatari goes even further, by making each of these three episodes unique, and very different from the other. The title for “most diverse series” definitely goes to Wellber no Monogatari at this point.

Wellber no Monogatari and Kaze no Shoujo Emily really prove that the underdogs rock yet again! The current episode definitely was the best yet, when it features a huge amount of plot and character-development, with some great effects! With that, though, comes probably the only lesser part of the episode: some parts featured lots of dialogue, and were very hard to understand. xD

Anyway, most of the developments were focused on Galahad. We learn that Jamill is actually his girlfriend, and *gasp* Guernia is still alive!! For a moment, I was afraid that Galahad would turn good just because of the sixth episode, but I had no reason to worry. Near the end of the episode, he did betray his comrades, but he had every reason to, after Guernia told him that he’d been killing his own people (to test out his sword skills?), and that he indeed was the culprit, instead of the victim back in the first episode.

Still, that Guernia is quite a bastard, he really seems to be after Rita’s head, so that he’d be able to get the throne of both Wellber and Sangatras. It’s interesting to see that Galahad just betrayed the guy like that, and I’d love to see what he’s going to do next. (Jamill’s reaction to his betrayal, by the way, was excellent!). I had my doubts about his character at first, but during this episode, I really started to like the guy.

Tina, meanwhile, also reveals quite some interesting information about herself: she can’t write! It would be perfectly plausible for a thief like her, though. And I’m surprised that similar characters like her don’t show the same problems. She turns rather cute when she has to spell out a letter to send back home so that Rita can write it down. ^^;

I really, really, really hope that I can continue to praise Wellber no Monogatari for the rest of the series. Production I.G. is really showing its best side in the current season, with Seirei no Moribito as well. Now all that’s left is to hope that this won’t pull a .Hack//Roots, so that my enthusiasm has been for naught, but for now, I’m quite confident.

It’s a shame, really. A series like Claymore, who had a mediocre start as well has enough people watching it, because the manga turns better and better as it progresses. For an original story like Wellber no Monogatari, though, you can’t know whether it’ll turn out good or bad, just from first impressions.