In this episode, Cosette and Jean move in to a neat apartment somewhere in Paris, but who cares! Eponine is back!!

Seriously though, for Jean and Cosette, the entire episode was just an introduction with nothing special. What happened when the two of them were out of the picture was interesting. Marius is really having trouble surviving on his own, and his job as a translator isn’t earning enough to pay for his current room. His friend then shows him to the cheapest area of the city, and he finds a room for only two franc a month/week.

Doesn’t that ring a bell somewhere? ^^;

Of course, it makes perfect sense for the Thenardiers to also be in the same place, since their money is gone and they do have a knack for finding the cheapest way possible. We finally get to see Eponine and Azelma grown up, and I have to say that Eponine was awesome. I never really stood still by it, but the fact remains that Cosette has been gone for nine years now, and someone had to take over her role. I guess that that someone was Eponine. Especially now that she’s grown up, and the Thenardiers don’t have the money to treat her like a princess anymore, she suddenly gets treated extremely harsh.

It also seems that the future episodes are going to work on a love-triangle between Cosette, Eponine and Marius. While most love-triangle are rather obnoxious, due to the fact that they just are horribly developed, I’m pretty much confident that this’ll actually be pulled off right in Les Miserables, due to the large amount of attention it spends on developing its characters. It also makes perfect sense for Eponine to fall in love with Marius. After all, she’s treated harshly, she lives in poverty while she was used to living without too much money-worries, and here a guy lives right next to her, in a tidy suit. Obviously, she’d cling to some signs of wealth, even though Marius is extremely poor as well.

Oh, now that I think of it, there was one interesting event regarding Jean: he’s as scared of policemen as ever. Even though it’s been nine years, it would be a miracle for someone to recognize him. But indeed, for the same matter it could be Javert.

Here we have the latecomers of the spring-season, and the early birds of the summer-season. They’re all rather dark and gritty series, interestingly enough.

The Skull Man

You know, this one started out well. Okay, it wasn’t as interesting as some of the other series that have appeared in the spring-season, but it was definitely a solid start, in which a journalist is investigating the murders by a guy, calling himself “the skeleton man” and runs into a girl who has ran away from home or something similar. The concept definitely had potential. That is, until the creators decided that it was a good moment for a friggin’ naked shower-scene. That really took a lot of credibility away from this series. Anyway, apart from this, the series is off to a good start, and it’s different from what I expected it to be. I imagined this being a dark and gritty show, but for the most part, most of its scenes were light-hearted. The characters introduced so far have potential, especially the side-characters. We’ll see where this one will bring us.

Devil May Cry

Now this one turned out interesting! Finally another actually good action-series appears that contains a great balance between action and dialogue. The action-scenes look terrific, and I absolutely loved the fight in the theatre. Another remarkable feature was that about 50% of the dialogue happens off-screen. While I can imagine some people getting turned off by this, it actually felt very refreshing and interesting to me. Anyway, Devil May Cry features Dante, a half-demon/half-human or something similar who acts as a bodyguard to protect people from ferocious demons… with his favourite food being a Strawberry Sundae. Nice touch. Overall, the animation is excellent, and the soundtrack features some interesting tunes. Okay, it will never match itself to the great names with its format, but for its genre, it’s doing a very fine job.

Wangan Midnight

Wangan Midnight, an anime about a guy who likes to speed-race on the highway. I can appreciate how he didn’t just find out about his passion for cars in this episode, like so many other anime of its kind do. What we’ve got here is just a guy who likes being reckless, gets defeated and runs into a really fast but dangerous blue car on the scrapheap. After watching this first episode, I realized that the action-scenes are mostly for the car-lovers out there, as they didn’t do anything to me. There were too many close-ups and too little real action. What did interest me, though, were the human aspects in the episode, most notably the main character’s recklessness. A lot of people are worrying about him, and I do hope that this anime will be realistic enough to show what happens if this continues. Another notable aspect is the really diverse soundtrack. It’s got anything: hip-hop, rock, j-pop. All it misses is some German folklore.