This episode can be summarized with one word: AWESOMEness.

I’d like to go in a bit more detail, though. It’s strange, but after watching, it does feel that the most logical course of events had taken place, and yet it still surprised me. Especially Thenardier, who again showed that he does have brains, despite his looks, and the fact that Marius screwed up after all his worries.

Basically, Marius was ordered to give Javert a sign when things got out of hand inside. And then he suddenly finds out Thenardier’s name, the one who “saved” his father. Obviously, he’d not want that guy to prison, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to harm his “Ursulle”. I can imagine how hard it must be to think clearly at such a moment. The solution he finds is to warn Thenardier that the police is coming. This plan, however, backfires because Thenardier and his henchmen were just way too loud when they tried to escape, resulting in everyone but Jean and Eponine getting arrested! Even Azelma gets caught!

Jean, meanwhile, decided to play for dumb. He tries to use his huge strength to escape when Thenardier attempts to hit him, though he’s against too many and gets overpowered. By this, Thenardier figures out that Jean himself is on the wrong terms with the police, since he never cried for help at all, in the hope that neighbours would call the police. Since Jean didn’t really bring a large amount of money with him, Thenardier decides to use Cosette. I didn’t fully catch his plan, but it was probably to make Jean send a letter to Cosette, luring her towards Thenardier, so she could get kidnapped. Afterwards, if Jean made any wrong moves afterwards, or Thenardier would end up in jail, he’d order his henchmen to kill Cosette.

He didn’t take into account, however, that Jean would never tell him where Cosette lived. ^^; The nice gentleman-look indeed hides the fact that he used to lead a horrible life before he became major, and that he’s at the point where he cares more about Cosette’s life than his own. He afterwards manages to escape in the confusion, created by Marius, after Thenardier threatened him with a knife.

The question now remains: will the Thenardiers go to jail, and if yes: for how long. I’m not really familiar with the French system of law and order around that age, but I think they’ll get off relatively light due to lack of evidence. It will become awesome if they indeed do have to serve jail for a few years, though. The fact also remains that we’re nowhere near the end of this anime, and something tells me that this already awesome mini-arc was just the beginning.

With this episode, I’m beginning to understand this arc a bit. It’s one of these cases where the disease isn’t really triggered for anyone, so the turn of events are just what would go on if nobody did anything unpredictable. Meanwhile, the time is filled with random games, and Rika’s despair. Satoko seems to be the only one who acts differently because of it.

Tis episode yet again didn’t give us any new information, it just confirmed things more. Irie indeed is doomed to die. The real villain is indeed controlling the Sonozaki-family from the shadows, and Tomitake indeed clawed himself to death, because of the disease. One interesting thing to note is that Rika said he would be killed, instead of suicide, which makes me suspect that the killer forcibly awakened the diseases in them. Something also tells me that these guys in uniforms were messing with the electricity house as a step to set off the great Hinamizawa-disaster.

Still, I finally know the answer to one of the smaller questions raised in the first season: Remember when Keiichi and Shion felt that they were being watched? It turns out that they were the henchmen of the Sonozaki-family after all. It seems that they’ve been collecting information for the real killer all along. We already know that they’ve received training, so I imagine that you can only spot them if you really pay attention, which is what Satoko has been doing in this episode.

Rika is also way too caught up in her own despair. Keiichi didn’t remember everything without any reason. I think that for the past arcs, she’s been trying to manipulate the wrong things. While she tried to cure the individual victims, she also could have gone after Tomitake, Takano and Irie in order to protect them. Somehow, she didn’t do that.

While typing this entry, I’ve also been wondering something. Why did Irie have the cure for the disease in the third arc, and why did Rena and Mion have it in the first arc? It’s been a long while since we saw these arcs, but I can very well imagine that the culprit killed Irie because he formed too much of a threat. I also finally remembered that Irie didn’t die in every arc: he lived in the first one.