One thing I love about Toward the Terra is how it manages to keep every single episode high-paced for the plot. There are no silent episodes, there are no episodes which are solely meant for building up, like you see in so many other good. Instead, it builds up its characters more logically, instead of the forced episodes which leave out any major plot-elements for the climax-filled episodes, the characters here get developed between the different climaxes and revelations of the episodes. While there have been really good anime who attempted the former, the latter approach really remains the better one, and towards the Terra shows it. Its pacing really reminds me of a crossing between Red Garden and Visions of Escaflowne somehow.

In any case, I think we all know that the next episode is going to be a special one: Blue is going to die. There is no way he won’t, based on the cliff-hanger. He kept giving hints that his time was over, and that the Myu should be lead by Jomie, and the episode ended with a planet-destroying beam fired at the poor guy. I wonder what role Toni will have in this, as his awakening must mean something, otherwise the creators wouldn’t have shown it along with Blue getting hit.

And we finally know the link between Keith and Physis: they were both raised in the test-tubes for the first years of their lives. Physis probably got out of them when she was around five or six, when she was rescued by Blue. Keith probably left them when he entered the school we saw in episode six. I suspect that Keith and Physis at one point were linked to each other, which is why his Mother Eliza looks so much like her.

This episode also surprisingly gives a proper introduction of the different babies that have been born on Nazca, now that the Myu have been forced to leave Shangri-la: Twellen, Pestazio, Cobb, Tardyon, Artella, Takio and Tony (surprisingly, only one girl among six boys). Does this mean that the journey will now be continued in the space-shuttles we’ve been seeing throughout the episode? I’m anxious to find out. :)

Remember the very first piece of promo-art that got released for Dennou Coil? The one where we saw Yasako, underwater with strange beasts swimming around her? This episode tries to shed some light on that by showing a new kind of Illegal: a fish who feeds on scenery. This fish has its own surrounding of cyber-water, and the more it eats, the more both it and its environment grow. While the issue was resolved at the end of the episodes, I really hope that we get to see more of these cases, since it was this that originally made me a fan of this series.

The story didn’t develop much in this episode, though. Most of it was meant to show a lot of creativity and develop Daichi. Oh, and we learn something interesting about Mega-baa and Tamako (I finally know her name!): they knew each other, and Tamako is member number 2 of the Coil Investigation Agency. I originally thought that all members were children, but now it seems that Mega-baa has been doing business for a considerable amount of years. Something also happened between the two of them in the past, based on the way they talk to each other.

The cyber-water also raised an interesting question: to what extend can these glasses manipulate sound? This episode showed (quite humorously, by the way) that you can’t communicate to someone outside of the water when you’re inside the water yourself. The cyber-world keeps surprising me. I also suspect that the metabugs may be more important to the story than they look now. For some reason, Isako doesn’t need the illegals that feed on just scenery.

This episode also again showed what a perfect team Daichi and Fumie form. They just aren’t afraid to exploit any of each other’s weaknesses, and I’d love to see the two of them work together. Fumie was downright mean to the poor guy in this episode, but it’s safe to bet that Daichi pulled stunts like that with her in the past as well. I’m just wondering whether they might go too far with their pranks at one time, though.

Words can’t describe the awesomeness of this episode. Basically, it concludes the Cult-arc, but it’s so much more than just that. We finally learn why the leader looks so much like Doushu: it’s because he’s small Riou’s brother, and used magic and Doushu’s head to change his appearance. It seems that everything was a plan of revenge by big Riou to do something nasty and magical with Shuurei, though why did he make small Riou intervere with this plan?

It also seemsthat his and Riou’s mother also needs to fit in the picture somehow, as she was the one who told him to get Yougetsu and Shuurei. Still, what do they hope to gain with them? Why does Riou want Shuurei’s spirit (at least, I assume that that spell-circle was meant to separate her spirit from her body). And why did Riou contact Shuuran, out of all possible people? And where the heck does Sakujun fit in with all this?

Still, these events with the cult and all, they were just minor, when compared to the other major event in this episode. Eigetsu finally dies, and it was so sad to see Yougetsu run off with his body. Still, I’m glad to see that he did get the chance to say goodbye to Doushu in the end.

I’ve wondered about this ever since Chaggumu “died”, but why did it take this long for people to pick up Chaggumu’s body from the canyon? Wouldn’t people need his body, because it’s holy, royal, important and inhabited by the egg of the water-spirit? Why on earth would people leave it there, when this episode showed that covering your mouth is enough to avoid getting suffocated by the fog?

Anyway, this episode finally shoed me what the previous eight episodes had been missing: the four warriors that Barsa battled in episode three. Without them, this anime just isn’t complete, and only they make the best out of the huge amount of detail that went into the scriptwriting. The slice-of-life elements were nice and all, but their only role was to flesh out the different characters and develop Chaggumu. The political elements were interesting, but they’ll never beat those of Saiunkoku Monogatari, and the fight of episode 13 was great, but it never had any relation to the main story, making it feel a bit empty. But these four warriors all change this when they show how carefully they carry out their work. I’m glad to see that Seirei no Moribito is finally moving forward again. :)

It’s a shame that WRex has stopped doing his summaries for this series, as I rather relied on him to fill in the blanks I didn’t understand. It’s going to be tricky now to find out the new intentions of the four warriors. They’re still after Chaggumu, but do they want to capture him and take him in alive, or does he need to get killed?