Boy, this series surely is on fire. After the climax of the previous episode, you’d expect a quiet episode as an aftermath, but this series wastes no time to head to its next target. It’s been only one episode and Jomie is already on Artemesia at the end of it. There’s also no time-leap, surprisingly. Toni and the others just grow up incredibly fast.

The episode starts with the return of Swena. She’s been tracking the sightings of the “Moby Dick”, which seem to suggest that it’s heading back to Artemesia. Meanwhile, she sees Keith on television, and the fangirls’ reactions to him. We then cut to a scene where the children ruthlessly kill off an enemy fleet, with the biggest of ease. The crewmembers are shocked by the amount of destruction they cause.

We then see Swena, who went to visit Sam, who now has the mentality of a 8-year old child. This seems to be a progress on what it was before. Keith has also come, and Swena starts asking him questions. Naturally, she doesn’t get much out of him, though she does give him Shiroe’s Peter Pan-book, and she tells him that Station E1077 has been destroyed, ten years ago. I’m surprised that Keith didn’t know that.

The elder members of the ship then complain to Jomie (who now has the title of “Soldier”) about the behaviour of the children. He simply says that they’re the best way to achieve their goals, while one of them notes how Jomie has changed. We then see some crewmembers talk about how scary the children have become, after which the children themselves appear with confident and cocky smiles on their faces. They basically make fun of the others.

We then see the same older embers complain to Physis, but she is in too much doubts to give a good answer, and tells them to trust Soldier. We then see Toni report to Jomie. Toni is clearly impressed by Jomie, but Jomie replies emotionlessly. We then cut to Swena, as she visits the guy who spotted the Moby Dick, and delivered her Peter Pan. When she tells him that it’s going to head for Artemesia, he gets enthusiastic and agrees to go with her.

Keith meanwhile reads Peter Pan, and suddenly finds a microchip, hidden in one of the pages. He plays it, and finally Shiroe’s message gets revealed. He’s inside of floor 001, where he shows Keith the place he’s been born. We then switch back to Physis again, when she has flashbacks of Blue. How he rescued her, and took care of her.

The next scene features the children, who come back from another mission, and the crewmembers are getting ruder and ruder in their comments, when they try to speak behind the children’s backs, which misfires because they somehow can hear everything that’s being said. When they’re alone, Artella suggests taking over the ship, for Toni to become Soldier, but Toni is the only one who opposes this plan. He then ends up being made fun of.

We then switch to the time where the Myu arrive on Artemesia. People are evacuated to safe spots, and Swena arrives on the planet as well, after being early blown up by Toni. The defence system of the planet is easily blasted to smithereens, which makes for some nice fireworks for the people on the ground. It’s also interesting to see that Shiroe’s parents have a new daughter.

The Myu then land, and a group of five people exits the Moby Dick: Jomie, Toni, Artella, Rio, and the commander-guy whose name I forgot. Swena is the only one who dares to greet them, and the two of them finally see each other again. We then turn to Keith, who is travelling with Matsuka to E1077, and the episode ends.

I must say, I LOVE the new dimension that the children have given. They may have great powers, and they may have grown up incredibly fast, they form a great problem for the Myu in the future. Simply because they don’t have a clear raison d’être, and yet have enough power to easily retaliate. The original Myu all were exiled, looked down upon and generally treated badly, after they were saved by Blue. Even the youngest ones knew the feeling, and they were grateful to the people like Blue, and later Jomie who were willing to lead them to happiness.

The children, however, have never known suffering, apart from Toni. Because he lost his parents early, and he was alone for a time, he wasn’t influenced by his own power, and grew up like a normal boy for his first years, he developed a huge respect for Jomie, through his parents. We even saw him claim that his “grandfather” was his raison d’être at one point. Artella is clearly in love with Toni, and she will go wherever he goes, he’s his raison d’être. The same doesn’t go for the other five, though. The only thing that holds them together is Toni’s authority. If you threw them a knife, they’d kill.

What also surprises me: Keith is opening up more and more, while Jomie is turning more and more stoic. I’m surprised, but Keith will not be playing a major role against Jomie in this arc, as he’ll be busy to figure out what happened in E1077. Matsuka is one big reason for this, I believe. Jomie is also going the wrong way, after Blue died. Before, he had to prove himself worthy as a leader to Blue, whenever he might have woken up. Now that that is gone, I fear that he’s turned a bit too unbalanced, and he doesn’t have anyone to look up to anymore. We don’t see him socializing with the crew anymore, which may turn out bad, in combination with the children.

Now that Makoto has started subbing this series, I’m not sure for how long I’m going to continue with the extensive summaries, but I’ll continue for now, since the previous entry got a lot of positive comments for this. Besides, this series is just way too awesome to neglect.

This episode continued to flesh out the Illegals. While the previous was a comedy, this one was a tragedy. There’s no Daichi this time, or Kyoko. This episode was all about Denpa, and it turned out really sad and overall an incredible episode. Only a heartless bastard would not be moved at the end of the episode.

The episode starts with Haraken’s aunt, who is using the Kyuu-chans to get rid of the white fogs that surround the old buildings. And this couldn’t have been a better introduction, as it really shows that the Illegals are in trouble, people see them as viruses, which need to be exterminated. This episode introduces an illegal you just have to feel pity for.

It seems that Denpa has been taking care of it, at an old football-field where the Sacchi’s can’t come. It’s based on the stories of the Loch Ness monster. He ran into it among its friends. They disappeared very soon afterwards, though, and only that particular illegal stayed, because Denpa fed him some metabugs. It’s interesting as it can only move on the muddy parts of the field, and it gets hurt by the grass, like it’s water. It also hates direct sunlight.

Yasako and Haraken discover Denpa at one point, and they comment on how sad it is for such a creature to be there without its friends. When Fumie sees it, though, isn’t enthusiastic about it, and she reckons that Kunbinaga (as Denpa seems to call him) will die soon anyway, and leaves. Later, however, Denpa discovers that the soccer-field is about to be turned into a new building by construction-workers. Therefore, in order to save Nessie, they have to find a new home for him. Yasako manages to find a nice spot in the end, though there’s one problem: getting Kunbinaga there. They decide to ask help from Haraken’s aunt.

And finally I know her name! Harakawa Tamako. Finally I can address her as something other than just “Haraken’s aunt”. Another interesting thing to note is that she is in fact seventeen years old, and she does attend a high-school (god, she looks strange in a school uniform).

In any case, there won’t be help from Tamako, since she started asking strange questions. Yasako, Haraken and Denpa then decide to just try to move Kunbinaga themselves. The first attempt fails when the Kyuu-chans and Sacchis arrive. Fumie then arrives and decides to help them. They spend the rest of the day, trying to find the best route, while Fumie stalls the construction-workers as much as possible (quite funny, actually ^^;). In the end, the best way turns out to be to use the local river at the time of dawn, when the sun hasn’t reached it yet.

That morning, the move can begin, and Kunbinaga has to try and survive beams from the Sacchi, beams of light, coming from the streetlights, the white stripes on the asphalt, and the atmosphere of the new buildings. The children try to help him as much as possible with darkness spray, though he suffers much damage from them.

Becuase of this, they run out of time, and reach the river after the dawn had reached the river. Kunbinaga then sees a couple of industrious towers, and thinks that they’re his family; he tries to swim to them, but is overwhelmed by the incoming sunlight, and dies. It’s interesting how Fumie ends up crying along with everyone, even though she once said that Kunbinaga would die soon anyway. Anyway, that scene in particular was awesome, and an excellent closure to the first half of Dennou Coil.

Isako is beginning to look like a villain more and more. Not only does she have a huge amount of power, and does she make use of everyone she runs into, she also got her powers from taking them from Illegals, who turned out to be intelligent creatures, just like humans and animals. It’s a miracle that she didn’t run into Kunbinaga. I also believe that the current episodes are not only awesome to watch, but also vital for the final part of this series, as they illustrate that Illegals themselves definitely do have their own problems, and right now we’re really sympathizing with them.

The Illegals sometimes remind me of the mushi from Mushishi. They’re all just trying to survive. The Illegals are just taking control of the pets because they really don’t have anywhere to go, and the amount of white fog is decreasing drastically. I believe that the creators are using this as a parallel with our world, where countless of animal species are about to get extinct by the hands of humans.

Before I start with the usual episode review, I’d like to make a prediction about the rest of this series.

Saiunkoku Monogatari is going to have three major arcs. All of these three arcs can be divided into two sub-arcs. The first arc is about the rise of Shuurei. The two sub-arcs are Shuurei’s time as a concubine, and her struggles in the palace, to be accepted as a good government official. The second arc is Shuurei’s reign as a government official, and it’s by far the largest arc of the series, with more than forty episodes dedicated to it. The first sub-arc is about freeing the Sa-province from the clutches of the Sa-clan, the second sub-arc was about the disease and the cult.

With this, some interesting things can be concluded. For example, that the mood of the first arc and the second arc was quite different. The first arc was relatively fast paced, due to its short length. Its strength came mainly from encouraging Shuurei not to give up, no matter how hard her trials were. In the second arc, she had to prove herself to be worthy of her position, and she did this quite nicely, though the strength of that arc lied in the immense amount of time it spent building up, and how the different relationships between the different characters evolved. The most notable were Shuurei vs Sakujun, and Kourin vs Eigetsu.

Humour also played a major part in the first arc, where it was flawlessly integrated with the dramatic scenes, turning every episode in a real joy to watch. The second episode didn’t need the humour, and mostly used it in the more light-hearted moments, away from the drama, so that the drama could really focus on being as touching as possible.

With this episode, the second arc has been closed and the building up for the third arc will start in the next episode. The third arc will be 20 episodes again, if the second season of Saiunkoku Monogatari will indeed take up 39 episodes, which means that it’s about the same size as the first arc. With two major sub-arcs, the pacing should increase a bit more with this.

Eigetsu may live, I suspect that his role as a main character ends here. Same with Ensei, Kourin, and all others who remain in the Sa-province. We’ll probably see them a few times after this, but Shuurei’s now officially done in the Sa-province. Ryuuki, Ran, Seiran and Shouka will probably return as the main characters again, and Kouyuu will probably get a lot of screentime as well, as his story of marrying Shuurei will take the spotlights again.

The next arc will probably focus around Shuurei and Shouka, as they deal with Riou, and his plans to go after the soul of Bara-hime. Sakujun will also officially return. If I had to guess, then the first sub-arc will explain Riou’s background, and why he’s doing what he’s doing, while the second sub-arc will try to resolve his case. About the atmosphere of the arc, I think that the scene in which Shuurei ran into Riou is the best indicator for this. I hope it will, actually, because I loved that episode to bits.

Shurei has now been stripped of all her authority until further notice. I think that her next step will take place inside the Kou-family. About a year ago, wontaek hinted that Shuurei was indeed going to take over the position as head of the Kou-clan as the rightful successor, and I think that this is going to happen in the third arc, especially considering that she’s got Kouyuu after her.

At least, these are just some speculations. It will be fun to see how many of them turned out to be true.

Anyway, about the episode: it’s another one of those nostalgic ones. Nothing much happens, but we see Shuurei saying goodbye to the Sa-province. Even though there’s nothing worth noting, I really recommend this episode, as it’s a really light-hearted, heart-warming one.

i think I now understand why Barsa refused to let Chaggumu go back. It’s not only because she promised to take care of him as a mother,but the fact also remains that he’s going to die once Rarunga arrives. She couldn’t let Chaggumu know this, which is why she’s been acting so cold to him. In this episode, he finds out about his fate when during their travels, he, Barsa, Tanda and Torogai run into the village where Tanda grew up. In there, a local girl tells the true legend of the Seirei no Moribito, including the pat of Chaggumu dying.

I definitely need to rewatch this series subbed, though. for once, I did manage to pick up all of the big lines of the story, but what happened in between, so the motives were surrounded in too much dialogue to make some sense to me. This episode was definitely a building-up one, though. We see the hunters tail them, and near the end of the episode they’ve moved quite close to Chaggumu’s location. Chaggumu now knows that he’s doomed to die, and now has to come up with a way to deal with it. Meanwhile, we get a bit of information about the place in which Tanda grew up. Not really an exciting episode, but a nice enough watch.