Haha, I’m glad to see that in the end, Ophelia did turn into a memorable character. During episode 12 and 13, she didn’t really impress me much, and her background story felt too incomplete for me to care about her, but luckily this episode changed this. The fact remains that she already had the personality of an awakened being, and now that she has realy become one of them, her insanity didn’t increase, it decreased, and she spends the final minutes of her life in a surprisingly human state, after she realizes this.

It seems that Priscilla hasn’t been standing still, ever since she killed Teresa. We have still no clue about what she’s been up to, but we now know that she did kill Ophelia’s brother. Because of that, Ophelia began to develop her obsession for killing awakened beings. And now I finally realize what’s going to make Claire so special: she’s basically a combination of lots of great Claymore. She first had Teresa inside of her, and in this episode, Irene’s arm and Ophelia’s goal get added. Something tells me that she’ll take something from every major opponent she runs into to add this to her arsenal. I quite like this, in fact.

Still, that is no reason for me to like the immense power-up that Claire got after merging with Irene’s arm. I mean, Ophelia already was immensely powerful, and now that she has awakened, this power has only increased. The power-boost that Claire got from it could really have been more subtle, especially since it’s the first time she uses it. After all, the arm may be one thing, but what really makes it work the way it does is the link to your brain. It takes a while to get used to the power, and Claire, who couldn’t even come close to one tenth of the speed of Irene, should have had more trouble dealing with it.

Oh, and Irene dies in this episode, by the hands of number five, Rafaela. We also learn that of the top-five, Ophelia was actually the weakest. Next up, Claire is probably going to have to fight the remaining four, after which Priscilla comes. That’s one of the things I dislike about shounen-series, no matter how good the rest, they always follow the pattern of a great power that needs to be defeated, only to move on to the next, even stronger power, until the big boss is reached. The great shounen-series are the ones that manage to add more than just that, like the comedy and tactical battles in the Law of Ueki. For Claymore, this is going to be its explanation and characters. If it wants to be better than the other shounen-anime, the future enemies had better have the same level development of Ophelia, or even more.

Oh. My. God.

That was more shocking than I ever imagined. This episode introduces the second half of Bokura no, and holy god…. that was awesome, disturbing, touching, exciting and I couldn’t help but love it. Bokura no already was my favourite show of the spring-season, and here it comes and turns even better!!

I knew that the other robots were piloted by other children as well, but actually seeing these people, who were about to be killed by our group of kids made a huge impact on me. Fighting against other robots and planets is easy, but once you know who’s inside them, things go a whole lot different.

Apparently, judging by the fact that this episode featured a new ED, Bokura no will be 24-episodes long, and that with only five pilots left (seven, if you count the adults). I really wonder about the surprises that the second half of this show will bring us, and the next episode is promising to be awesome as well, since it’ll be focusing on Yosuki, whose case I’m really looking forward to. Also, what was up with the guys that tried to kidnap the females? They looked a bit different from your usual drunk guys assaulters.

Oh, and Maki! Her ending was so sweet, even though her case was relatively simple. In the end, she died, right after seeing her new brother.

School Days

I must praise this anime for being the first harem-anime that actually “gets on with it” so fast. Just watch the episode, and you’ll understand. I’ve seen quite a few first episodes of harem-shows during the overcrowded fall-season, but none went as far as the first episode of School Days. Unfortunately, that’s the only good and actually average point about this anime. Everything else is either sub-par or horrible. The dialogue was boring, and the male main character looks even worse than your average harem-lead. The animation was again nothing special, and the music was almost non-existent. And why must every school-based bishoujo harem, with no exception, have an energetic best friend who is a pervert and will never have a girl of his own and merely exists to be annoying and “comic” relief? So, basically what will happen is that we’ll be following a standard dating-sim, until the end where everyone kills each other? There’d better be enough serious scenes to keep me interested.

Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho

Okay… I think we’ve found our fanservice-series of the season. For an anime about swimming, there was bound to be some nudity, but this series carries this to a very next level. Basically, the story is about a mermaid who attacks a young boy while he’s swimming in the ocean, giving a fear of water for the rest of his life and visits his town a bunch of years later to make his life even more “miserable”. Oh, did I mention that this girl likes to swim around naked? Still, it does have a few good point, most importantly: the male lead actually looks different from all other male leads of series of the same genre. In comparison to, say School Days, this anime actually has some nice production-values, and it just looks good. The characters also were interesting enough, when fanservice wasn’t involved. Still, I’m worried about the excessive amount of fanservice, and I hope it’s not a bad sign of things to come.

Zombie Loan

Whoa, this one turned out good! I was a bit scared due to the cheesy title, the concept of zombies and the mediocre promo-art, but these worries were not needed at all. Zombie Loan actually is a freaky shoujo-anime, and it’s one of the few cases where the promo-art looks worse than the art of the actual anime. The art, background sounds, music and dialogue manage to create a really captivating atmosphere, and the characters have already managed to set themselves apart from the stereotypes in only the first episode. Let’s hope now that the series won’t degenerate into fillers at some point, but this episode already showed that it can deliver some great drama. I’d definitely recommend this one.