Woo! Jomie is back! And surprisingly, we skip another six years in time, since the previous episode. The biggest surprise has to be Swena, who turned into a journalist (no sign of her husband yet, did she divorce from him?), looking for the origin of the Myu. Finally I understand why she left, back in episode six, and I must say that it indeed was a better decision for her to leave Keith. After all, now she can act on her own, which will become much more interesting than just one of Keith’s henchmen. I really like what I saw from her in this episode, and she’s showing some great promise for the future! :)

Speaking of which, I wonder what happened to Sam. For the entire episode, we don’t see both of them. Keith has probably become the most elite of elite, though I do reckon that this wasn’t possible for Sam. Does this mean that Sam has left him, or do the two of them still have contact?

In any case, this episode also explains what the Myu have been doing for the past few years: wander around aimlessly. Jomie at one point suggested trying to contact the planet earth by sending various peace-messages. These messages just didn’t work at all, and when Jomie found out that they caused the death of a Myu (Shiroe), he stopped doing this. Now, ten years later, there still isn’t a sign of Earth. The interesting thing is that Physis seems to have abandoned the idea of going to earth, and predicted a red planet to be their saviour. Near the end of the episode, they reach it.

I’m not sure what it is, but this episode greatly increased my interest for this series. Especially after rewatching it, I realize how good this episode really was. There isn’t really much tension, but many interesting things happen. Seeing that Jomie still has contact with the youngest people on the “Moby Dick” (aka, the children we saw in the first episodes) also was really interesting. They’re still treated as children, even though they grew up, simply because there’s nobody younger than them.

These “children” actually come up with the idea to make children the “natural way”, instead of what has been the custom. It seems strange for him, to only think of such a thing after ten years, but it does make sense. After all, if you’ve grown up, knowing nothing about the subject, it’s not like you’re able to take the initiative on these issues. Near the end of the episode, we also see two of the children confess to each other.

To be honest, during this episode I kept comparing Toward the Terra with Heroic Age, and then I really realized how truly crap the latter is. Both anime feature exiles who struggle to survive, though Heroic Age had to come up with an unbelievably strong Age who keeps on fighting until there is peace, and that’s about all there is to the storyline. Compare that to Toward the Terra and its complex storytelling from three different parties.

Overall, the climax was just great. The next episode will probably focus on the exploration of the new red planet, and I honestly can’t wait. I do wonder, though, when we’ll see Keith getting in contact with the Myu. I originally believed that the previous episode would cause him to question Mother Eliza, but that seems to be not true at all, since he still remains an elite. When I first saw his picture on the OP, I thought that he’d also be some king of Myu, though I was totally wrong on that one, it seems.

Heh, and here I thought that Isako would soon befriend Yasako. This episode again showed that she’s got enough plans of her own. She really came to the city for a specific reason, and spent this episode recruiting Daiichi and his four comrades to help her do the dirty work.

This episode also introduces another character: Haraken. He seems to be the president of the biology-club, but he also is really knowledgeable about illegals, something that has rather interested Yasako after her own experiences with them. He joins Yasako and Fumie as they go after Isako, who might be after a huge ore of meta-bugs. They’re not the best trackers, though, and I believe that Isako knew about their plans, ever since she saw Oyaji spy on her.

In any case, Haraken’s skills are a big mystery, since he’s incredibly shy and never uses them. Even though he’s the leader of the biology club, his leadership capabilities are zero, and Fumie keeps saving him from things like Daichi’s pranks. Fumie also explains that Daichi has grown up like a reach brat. It first started when he found out that lifting skirts was fun. When he then got introduced to hacking, he kept bugging others with his pranks.

I also finally realized how people can actually get hurt. It’s probably already explained by now, but I finally realize that the cyber-world heavily uses radio-waves. Whenever Sacchi cleans up dirt, it also uses radio-waves, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the cyber-world entirely consists out of these radio-waves. I can indeed imagine that a long exposure to these radio-waves can get harmful. That’s why Daichi clinged to his friend when his body was affected by too much of these radio-waves, in order to turn back to normal a bit.

Anyway, basically Isako takes Daiichi and four of his friends to a bus-graveyard. In one of these buses, they find a number of explosive meta-bugs. At that point, Yasako and Fumie, who still were spying on them were surprised by a Sacchi and gave themselves away. In the confusion, one of the kids gets separated from the others: Akira, Fumie’s little brother. She doesn’t like it when she finds him, though, and tries to frame him into spying on Daichi. I’m not sure whether he’ll actually do this. :P

We also see two or three scenes which feature a mysterious motorcyclist. I’m not sure what her role is, but she seems to be spying on Isako, and Isako doesn’t like it. We’ll probably know more about her in the future. The episode ends with something quite interesting: Haraken is able to manipulate the Sacchi. The question: how and why?

Overall, the episode was quite good. I especially like Yasako in this series, even though her role has been small up till now. I also love how Isako keeps messing with the others. Like how she knew that Yasako and Fumie were trailing her, causing her to throw some explosives in their direction. ^^

Very interesting, a Teddy/Emily episode. Finally a side-character is put alongside Emily on the spotlight again. This mostly is because of a new teacher that arrives on the Blair Water School, who has especially influence on the two of them. He’s a rather middle-aged man who encourages everyone to work on their potential. That’s something that Teddy’s mother opposes with all her power. Here again we see how overprotective she is.

Emily, again, shows how overly poetic she is when she doesn’t like the new teacher because he jokingly insults her and her poetry when he first sees her (based on information he got from the previous teacher). It takes her nearly half an episode to forgive him. ^^; I also couldn’t help but notice that Emily and Teddy were quite close in this episode. :)

Perry, meanwhile, continues to slowly develop each episode. We only see him for a limited amount of time in each episode, but he’s definitely growing. This time, we see him participate in a class play to illustrate the battle of Waterloo, even though he’s not supposed to be in the class. We also see him envy Emily, Ilse and Teddy for actually having education. The best he has is Jimmy, who is more of a gardening-expert than a teacher. Ilse, meanwhile spent her time in the background. She never really was that important in the episode, but she was really fun to watch, with all her different antics. :)

I’m not sure how many others are still watching this anime, but that isn’t stopping me from really enjoying the current arc. This one might indeed have a very good chance of rivalling the second arc, and also for the first time since that arc, I’ve got absolutely no idea who the heck the culprit is. My best guess would be that Tsukiko is faking about losing her memories, but she sounded awfully genuine in the time we saw her.

It’s like everyone’s hiding something. Apart from Hoshie, everyone has at least one thing that doesn’t make any sense. Why kept Kobayashi visiting Numata’s sister? Was he the actual culprit? What is his father’s role, and why did he look worried? Why was Numata killed off in the first place? Did Tsukiko really survive such a fall and lost her memories? And why the heck did the culprit tape his victim and was stupid enough to lose this tape?

The background music also was truly excellent. If there was anything that could contribute to the already creepy mood, even though it just consists out of piano-tunes, it would be this one. I also laughed quite a bit when Sakon managed to sneak past a large number of police-agents, and Ukon was talking about Tachibana behind her back. ^^;

Luckily, The Ayatsuri-Sakon Project has the tendency to release the different arcs quite fast after each other, while the periods between the releases of the different arcs take up a few months. With a bit of hope, the final episode of the arc should arrive quite soon, as I’m really eager to find out whether it really is as good as I hope it to be. The past two episodes have already been excellent, now let’s hope for a good finish!

Those horrible bastards! Seriously, they’re taking the rumours about Shuurei being the source of the epidemic way too seriously, shooting her with arrows like that!

Anyway, when I guessed last time that this episode would be awesome, I was wrong. The next episode is going to be awesome, this one merely built up for it. Next time, it seems that Kourin will meet up with Eigetsu, and something tells me that the arrows we saw at the cliff-hanger DID hit someone.

Still, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t love this episode, the past two episodes have been building up perfectly, after the dialogue-heavy previous arc. It’s interesting that there wasn’t really a main focus or anything. The entire episode just consists out of the different storylines which get developed further, and one new storyline to be introduced: the attempts of the bad guys to kill Shuurei. I didn’t pick up whether they were the ones behind the rumours or not, but the fact remains that we’ve got ourselves a group of warriors, and their leader has decided to kill off Shuurei. This really shows how easily people can be manipulated when stroke by something dangerous and unknown.

The biggest theme of the episode would probably be the villagers being moved in to the capital of the Sa-province. Remember the two kids from the previous episode? Well it seems that they encouraged their fellow villagers to move out, and after a while, they run into a group of soldiers, who offer them protection. It’s interesting how one of these soldiers actually doesn’t agree, and still thinks that the disease is contagious (which it obviously is not).

And god, Eigetsu looked horrible! Like I mentioned above, I’m so looking forward to when Kourin sees him again.

Yay! It’s finally here! Let me first say that it was well worth the wait!

Lloyd somehow turned less stubborn than in the game. He’s also way closer with Collette as well, which is quite interesting. Genius turned a bit clumsier, though, and in the game he was quite a bit smarter and down-to-earth. I liked the changes with Rain, she really looks like an evil teacher now. I can’t wait to see her go in her infamous “Ruin-mode”. ^^; Kratos was a bit disappointing, though. The creators dropped a few way too obvious hints about his real identity, something which came as a shock when he finally revealed it.

Anyway, about the anime. I had to get used a bit to the new character-designs, as they’re a bit different from the ones used in the game. After a bit, this turned out all-right. Seeing actual locations from the game return really accurate was really nice, though. Locations like the school, Lloyd’s and Genuis’s house really brought back memories.

One thing that I wasn’t enthusiastic about, though, was that Marble was left out. Right now, it seems that Lloyd’s decision to start his journey really has been dumbed down a bit. Originally, the Desians never attacked Collette in the first place, but this was done by people who dress like Desians. The people from the village of Iselia have made a treaty with the Desians: if they stay away from the human ranch, owned by the Desians, the Desians would stay away from the village. When it seems that a friend of Genius (Marble), who lived in the Desian-human ranch was getting into trouble there, Lloyd decided that the treaty was already broken and he interfered with these Desians to protect her. Because of this, the Desians set fire on the village, since they never broke the treaty in the first place. To make things even worse, they turn Marble into a monster, causing Lloyd and Genius to kill her. Heck, that’s why Genius gets his own exphere. It could have easily been included if less time was spent on introduction, and it would have been so much better than Lloyd’s mother interfering.

Still, overall, I loved it, mostly for nostalgic purposes. It’s been a while since I played the game, but I loved seeing everyone back again. Still, I do have to say that its predecessor was better. Tales of Phantasia was so great because it just skipped the introductions, and still remained understandable. Cless saying: “you had to burn our village, just for this?!”, combined with the context in which she said it, was enough to make us understand the grievances and motivations of the characters. I was secretly hoping for Tales of Symphonia to do the same, but they really decided to start with the beginning.

The next episodes, though, should promise to become even better, since now that episode one covered such a relative small part of the game, they really have to fasten up the pacing in order to be able to finish in time. I think the most plausible way for the episodes would be the following:
Episode 2: the journey through Sylvarant
Episode 3: the journey through Tethe’Alla, until the giant tree gets saved.
Episode 4: the conclusion, up till the destruction of Yggdrasil.
That means that in two episodes, my favourite characters will arrive: Presea and Regal. I can’t wait! For the next episode, it’s probably impossible to include every major event, though I do hope that the issues of the city of Palmacosta are addressed. For the later episodes, I really do hope we get to see Rain’s mother. Even though she just was in a side-quest, it really made clear why she and her brother lived their lives the way they did.

Remember any anime in which a member of royalty suddenly becomes a commoner? Well, all of them have the obligatory episode in which this royal person ends up in a crowded place, and has to get accustomed to the customs of the normal people, and often ends up doing something completely reckless. This was exactly such an episode. I kept wondering where it went.

While it was a bit disappointing to see nothing of Shuga, the episode itself focuses on Tooya, who finally managed to find Barsa, Tanda and Chaggumu. Barsa then asks him to take Chaggumu and explore the shopping areas of the city a bit, while Barsa would keep an eye on them from afar.

The two of them eventually end up near a group of entertainers who are hosting a local gambling game. Basically, you spin three coins in a round bowl, and try to guess how many coins fall with their shiny side up. Chaggumu manages to see that the entire game is just being manipulated, though initially he doesn’t do anything about it. Only when Tooya takes the initiative, but fails he gets in action and unmasks the guys.

While the plot progression in this episode was ridiculously close to zero, I quite liked the last quarter of it, when Chaggumu unmasked the plan, and people started to cheer on him. We’re only three episodes removed from episode thirteen, a point at which most anime insert some kind of climax to mark their halfway point. I wonder if Seirei no Moribito will be doing the same, or will it really be waiting till a random point until it takes off? Looking at the pacing of the past ten episodes, there really is no way to be able to predict this.