The climax of the Shiroe-arc! And boy, is it a great one. The OP is actually very misleading, as with this episode, two characters who I thought would be major side-characters were already written out of the show.

There’s actually nothing much to say about this episode. It was incredibly emotional, especially the last part, and it worked out really well. Shiroe meets a tragic end, I first believed that Mother Eliza would let him go, though Keith is actually ordered to shoot him down. This again shows how much of a robot Keith is, when he kills the guy, just because Mother Eliza tells him to. What kind of influence does she have on him? We also see her claim that she’ll be Keith’s past and memories, if he desires them.

There’s definitely much hope for this series if all of its climaxes continue to be of this quality. In the next episode, we should probably see Jomie back for real, while Keith will probably go to the location where Shiroe told him the answer to his past lies.

Episode four continues to introduce new things, most importantly a few new side-characters and Dennou-style warfare. The newly introduced characters are basically classmates of Yasako and Fumie. We’ve got the henchmen of Daichi, who consist out of a few geeks and one wimpy boy who follows them everywhere, but basically is too scared to do anything. There’s also this girl that lunches along with the two of Yasako and Fumie.

We also get our first clues on Yasako’s past as well. She tries to befriend Isako, but the latter declines. When Yasako keeps asking, Isako reveals that she knows that caused some kind of trouble in her old school. What she actually caused is either never said, or I didn’t pick this up. But the fact remains that this can become very interesting for the future. I could have sworn that Yasako also said that she likes to be friends with everyone, perhaps she acts like this because of her past experience. She also seemed troubled when “Michiko-san” was mentioned.

Most of the episode focuses on Daiichi&co trying to attack Isako, Isako getting back at them, and Fumie taking advantage of the situation to launch a surprise attack on Isako. The boys use another new kind of weapon to attack: teleportation holes, by lack of better names. The shoot cyber-bullets in them and these teleportation holes then shoot these bullets to wherever they’re pointing at. In this case: Isako. The latter, though, proves to be way too skilled for Daichi to handle.

By the way, you have to love the visuals. Certain scenes in particular looked really beautiful, despite the simple character-designs. While Daichi and his friends tried to attack Isako, Fumie meanwhile hasn’t been standing still herself, and once the former have been knocked out, it’s Fumie’s turn to take action, and she actually provides a challenge to Isako, collecting a small piece of information. I’m not sure what kind of information that was, but neither has Fumie, since Fumie, since it turned out unreadable.

Yasako, however, notices one word which rather startles her: Michiko. Who is Michiko-san, and could she be related to the boy that called out Yasako, a few episodes ago? She’s in an interesting position in this anime, by the way. I mean, she’s surrounded by people who are extremely good with the cyber-world, and compared to them, she knows nearly nothing about this, yet she is the main character. Will she get some special role in the future?

This episode also showed how dangerous the virtual world can actually be. It seems that if you overload the glasses, you get hurt yourself as well. Is this some kind of weak point in the whole cyber-world? It’s kind-of freaky that these “toys” can actually become dangerous when used in the wrong hands.

Ah well, this episode was mostly meant to show some stunning visuals and flesh out the characters a bit. It’ll be interesting to see how the characters will react to each other after this episode, and there’s also this matter of why Isako came to the school in the first place. Is the case just as simple as “parent moved”, or is there something in the school she’s looking for?

Before I start with the usual review, I first have to say that this is the 100th review I’ve written for my site!

Okay, I’m finally back with my reviews of the interesting-looking 12/13-episode series. For the past few months, I’ve either been too busy, the series I downloaded turned out to suck (Gun Frontier), or the bittorrent files got stuck in the middle due to lack of seeders. Bittorent really isn’t the best way to get your hands on the rare series out there. Luckily, after a bit of searching, I found out that Vision-Anime still had this series on IRC-bots. Anyway, onto the review.

Rumiko Takahashi is a great writer, in my opinion. She just has one huge bad point: she doesn’t know when to stop. The first season of Ranma 1/2 was just classic, though I quickly lost interest with the second season, and to think that the entire series was seven seasons long! Inu Yasha also spawns lots of people bashing it, though based on the things I’ve heard, it would have been a great 26-episode series, and I can imagine something similar being the case with Urusai Yatsura. So what about her short stories? Well, they rock. :)

Mermaid Forest already showed this once, but the stories in Rumic Theater also were really entertaining. While not as good as Mermaid Forest, it’s a real recommendation to any slice-of-life fan.

Rumic Theater really fits perfectly along with three other series I’ve seen recently: Human Crossing, Seraphim Call and Sentimental Journey. If you liked any of these four, you’ll like the other three as well. Yet again we have a random story about a random person for every episode, unrelated to each other apart from a few references here and there. While Sentimental Journey showed how twelve girls deal with their past crushes, Human Crossing shows the problems and the worries of various adults and Seraphim Call centres around eleven rather unique girls in a futuristic setting, Rumic Theater features thirteen ordinary people or families, with extraordinary things happening to them.

These people really couldn’t be more normal, they actually could be your neighbour if you lived in Japan. If you’d ever like to see how normal families live, and what their problems are, Rumic Theatre is the perfect show for this, as it really takes a step away from all the usual stereotypes you see in anime that deal with modern Japan. The extraordinary things can be anything. Some of these events can happen to anyone, like being invited to a school reunion, after 25 years of absence. Others deal with supernatural elements, like a salaryman who keeps getting bothered by the ghost of his deceased wife, while some of them could happen in real life, but are just really improbable, like a housewife, having to take care of a penguin.

Enough blabbering about the contents. How does it deliver? Well, to be honest, Rumic Theatre has the best entertainment value out of all four series mentioned above. For starters it doesn’t really have any clear bad points, unlike Human Crossing, which had the nasty tendency to end its episodes forced and unnatural, or Seraphim Call, which was really inconsistent and a bit too unpredictable, or Sentimental Journey, which had a few boring cases.

And Rumic Theatre still manages to come up with thirteen individual, well developed and varied cases. Two or three episodes were really sad ones, while others really cracked me up at times, others were heart-warming and plain sweet, and all of them had some kind of hidden message. Each of the episodes, the better and lesser ones, were some great character studies, accompanied by a nice atmosphere.

Another interesting thing was that actually quite a few cases centre on a misunderstanding. While this was sort-of annoying in Sentimental Journey, they didn’t really mind me with Rumic Theatre, and some of these cases actually were brilliant, even though you knew beforehand that the main character’s view was completely wrong. Out of the four series mentioned above, it really felt the most natural, the stories fit the episode-format perfectly, and rarely was there a rushed episode.

In terms of graphics something needs to be said, though. Don’t expect any beautiful girls with bright hair and crisp and detailed character-designs. The character-designs are done in a typical Rumiko Takahashi-style, but they do look rather outdated. They by no means look bad, though if you need detailed and mainstream character-designs in your anime, you probably will get annoyed with Rumic Theater.

Overall, even though I’ve seen four series with almost the same premise, I still can’t get enough of them. If you want thought-provoking cases, then go and check out Sentimental Journey. If you want a thick atmosphere, go for Human Crossing. For lots of creativity Sentimental Journey is best, and if you want a bit of everything and a good dose of humour here and there, Rumic Theatre is the best. A few highlights were:
Sentimental Journey: Episode 6 and 10
Human Crossing: Episode 4 and 13
Seraphim Call: Episode 2 and 7
Rumic Theatre: Episode 6 and 12
Each of them are well worth watching. ^_^

This episode was definitely more fast-paced than the previous ones. Lots of things happened, and I really loved it. It basically consisted out of two parts: one focused on Eigetsu and one on Shuurei.

It’s quite surprising, I expected Shuurei to take a long time to get back to the Sa-province, but due to the fact that everyone is racing to reach the Sa-province as fast as possible, they move considerable faster than they did before, when they had to watch out not to get caught. What also surprised me was Seiran: he actually stayed in the capital. Instead, he sent Ensei his sword, and that’s all we hear of him during this episode.

The best part of the Shuure-part was when people started to refuse to let Shuurei pass because of the rumours that she might be the cause of the disease. The bad part is that Shuurei is actually starting to believe this. After all, if Li Senya really is THAT Li Senya, he’d indeed be causing trouble because of her, which means that she indirectly is the cause of so many people dying.

The best part of the episode, though, definitely was the Eigetsu-part. To start, some more parts of his past get revealed: the parts that tie everything together. Yougetsu turns out to be a spirit, who saved Eigetsu when Doushu found him, killed by his own parents. This makes me wonder: is Yougetsu one of the sages who helped the first king? Anyway, Yougetsu’s condition for saving him was that he could only remain alive for twenty more years. When Yougetsu saved Doushu, these years probably not only got divided, but also considerably reduced. Otherwise Eigetsu would have lived till his sixteenth, while he’s around twelve years old right now.

The reason Yougetsu saved Doushu probably also was because of the way Doushu treated him when he appeared. He never even once got angry or surprised with him.

Anyway, in the present time, a lot of things also happen: most notably Eigetsu being kidnapped and tortured (O_o) by a Doushu-lookalike. If I had to guess, then he’s on Riou’s side. As for the reason? Yougetsu? Do they want him? In any case, I definitely do NOT want to miss the next episode, as something tells me that something incredible is going to happen.

Meanwhile, elsewhere Kourin is coming after Eigetsu (another reason why the next episode is promising to be really good), Ryuuren realizes that Eigetsu is in danger (ditto), and we see the introduction of two new side-characters: Shuuran and Riou. Their family was struck by the disease. Shuuran finds her support in Riou, while Riou thinks he abandoned them. Even though it was the first episode I saw them, the discussion the two of them had was already quite touching, and I already like them A LOT. Shuuran already shows that she is really strong.

…

And why the HECK did Riou have the same name as the other Riou!?!

A Shuga-episode. After episode seven, I thought he’d immediately conclude that Chaggumu is still alive, but in the end, it wasn’t that simple. Chaggumu meanwhile makes a few friends. After an absence of an episode, Shuga returns. We first see him talk with Chaggumu’s mother. She believes that Chaggumu is still alive at that point. Call it a mother’s intuition. A bunch of children meanwhile comes to visit the house Chaggumu and Barsa are staying in, thinking the old guy still lives in it. Chaggumu of course doesn’t know what to say to them, and remains silent. Barsa then arrives and let them in.

People are meanwhile very busy finding out why the drought is still being predicted. Shuga gets rather angry at them, as they seem to act like Chaggumu never had anything to do with it. It does make sense, though. I originally believed that they’d question the reports of Chaggumu’s death, but instead the machine who did the prediction is re-investigated. Because of this, people have forgotten all about Chaggumu. Then why did he have to be sacrificed in the first place for all this?

He then sees Gakai with some servants search his room, and take away his research, or something similar. They intend to deliver it to Saggumu, who requested it, though somehow Shuga doesn’t approve to this. He then forcibly tries to take it back, but fails, knocking over Gakai in the process.

Saggumu then calls him for a visit. He then tells him about how Chaggumu used to love animals, and we saw a flashback of the two of them while they were younger. Chaggumu accidentally knocked a rare bird out of the sky with a rock, and then he begged his brother to somehow save it. If I’m not mistaken, then that same bird resides now in Saggumu’s office. He then returns the papers with Shuga’s research. If I had to guess, then he did this because they’d otherwise be destroyed because of Chaggumu’s death. Shuga, however, refuses to accept them, saying that he doesn’t need them anymore. I’m not sure what was up with that, though.

Chaggumu, meanwhile gets forced by Barsa to make a few friends. Clearly, the two of them really have it easy now, and they’re able to relax a bit. I really wonder how long this will last.

The final part of the episode focuses on Shuga, who probably abandoned looking after the prediction-machine and went out to the country in order to find the true cause of the drought. Eventually, he runs into Tanda, collecting food for probably the night’s dinner. They talk a bit, and eventually Tanda shows him the egg of a praying mantis. I’m not sure how that could lead to him thinking that Chaggumu is still alive, but it does. We’ll have to wait till the next episode till we find out what he does with this.

It’s good to see that this anime has been doing a lot of building up, but I hope that the second half will be a bit more exciting. The past few episodes have been interesting, but the sense of conflict has just disappeared. If I had to guess, then Shuga will continue to investigate on Chaggumu and then he’ll find out that he’s still alive. Starting from that point, Seirei no Moribito could get very interesting. But until then, I’m going to enjoy the quiet moods of the episodes.