Interesting, yet another episode without Jomie. This one basically is the calm-before-the-storm episode, and its major purpose is to bring Keith to Terra with an army that can beat the Myu. He’s turned into quite a celebrity, by the way, and he now really is one of the highest ranked officials out there.

What’s interesting is Grand Mother’s interference. Am I the only one who thinks that she’s a bit too keen on helping Keith? I mean, she basically used her power to overrule any objection against Keith’s proposal of wiping out the Moby Dick. The eye she shows while doing that suggests that she actually has a human form. Is that in the same way as Mother Eliza, or is she a real woman, who controls everything behind the scenes?

Anyway, people have managed to make a weapon that can break through the shields of the Myu, and they’ve been testing them throughout the episode. Tony and his companions are going to have to face them, so the odds are starting to move against them. And what about Matsuka? I mean, his secret will come out, that’s inevitable. What’ll happen to him and Keith after this?

An interesting twist came when the episode started focusing at the girl we saw in the previous episode. I first thought that she was Swena’s daughter, but she turns out to be the new child of Jomie’s parents. I loved it when they started to compare humans and Myu with wolves and rabbits. Interestingly enough, the girl yet again turned out to be a Myu. The question remains: how will they contribute in the finale?

This definitely is an unconventional and unique anime! Seriously, no other anime feels more like a novel than this one. Here I thought that the hunters would stir up trouble in this episode, and instead, they leave after hearing about Rarunga. They’ll return when spring comes, and Rarunga has been defeated.

It looks like it’s now just time to wait for Rarunga to come. It’s not the most complex and twisted storyline, but definitely the most realistic one. In the next episode, we’ll finally get to know about Barsa’s past, which will be something to look forward to. This episode basically shows us how the foursome reaches the secret place, where they plan to spend the winter. They spend the rest of the episode, stocking up food like moose and fish.

I’m really curious whether such a climax will work. Basically, at one point (I predict episode 23) Rarunga will come, try to kill Chaggumu and Barsa and Torogai will protect Chaggumu. How were they planning to do that? Will it benefit from the huge amount of time that was spent on building up the story and characters? Or would this series have been better off with only 13 episodes?

There’s one thing I do know, though: even though the episode wasn’t anything special, I really liked it.

Awesome; an Emly/Elizabeth episode, and quite an important one as well: Emily, Teddy, Perry and Ilse have finished their current school, and are ready to move towards the next one. Ilse and Perry’s parents are really enthusiastic, and happily allow them to go to Shrewsberry School in a nearby city. Emily and Teddy have problems, though. Teddy believes that his mother will never allow him to part with her, since they’ll be staying in dormitories at their new school. Surprisingly, though, she lets him go and study. :)

Emily’s problems are worse, though. Elizabeth still doesn’t approve of Emily, studying things like literature. She still believes that things like these are useless. To make thing even worse, she finds and reads Emily’s diary, where Emily liked to complain about how evil Elizabeth was. Of course, she wasn’t 100% serious when she wrote it, though Elizabeth does take it seriously, and the two of them get into a fight.

I must say, that seeing the two of them fighting, and eventually making up again was really adorable. And it shows exactly why I love this series so much. This series is in for an interesting finale, by the way. Now that Emily has gotten permission to go and study further as well, it really looks like the last six episodes will be taking place on Shrewsberry School, without Elizabeth, Jimmy and the other adults. I wonder how the creators will decide to go from there. I’m definitely hoping for more time for Emily, Ilse, Teddy and Perry to be together and develop.

Now this is a movie! Most of you probably figured out by now that I’m on a movie spree, but most of the movies tend to be lots of style and not a lot of substance. While these are perfectly fine to watch, I’d rather watch a movie that’s good in every aspect. Unfortunately, these are quite hard to find, though Metropolis definitely belongs in that category.

For those of you who don’t know about Osamu Tezuka, this link should give you a fairly good impression of why people call him the “God of Manga”. Without him, anime wouldn’t be what it is today, and even now remakes of his works are still being made, and his stories prove to be very good to age. First Hi no Tori baffled me, and now it’s the turn for Metropolis.

Due to the fact that this movie really received a great budget, it has been really detailed, up to the point where it can be seen as on par with Ghibli-movies. The sceneries we see throughout the movie are filled with life and people, who actually react to the things around them. On frequent occasions, you can find different things happening at once. Characters who stand in the background discussing things, for example. When compared to usual anime, where characters don’t move unless they really have to, it felt really refreshing.

Not only does this movie spend a great amount of effort on its details, they’re also used really well in combination with its story and characters. Both of them are really given the time to develop throughout the movie, and if you combine this with the details, you get some pretty interesting character-development, which comes together perfectly in the climaxes, later in the movie. Especially the ending must be one of the most brilliant ideas for an ending in a anime-movie ever; you’ll either absolutely love it, or you’ll absolutely hate it. ^_^;; (you’ll understand when you see it).

Like Hi no Tori, Metropolis also is quite thought-provoking. Even though the themes introduced are nothing I haven’t seen before (they may have been new when the story was first published, I’m not sure about that one), where the setting is a city, fully controlled by the government, where Robots take over most of the dirtier tasks, the movie uses its characters to ask enough interesting questions about morality.

It’s hard to point out any flaws in this one as well. The characters all fit well into the movie, and each of them has a good enough reason to be involved in the events. The main character and especially his father really start out like normal people, and yet it seems perfectly logical why they became the main characters. Each of the important characters is fleshed out well, and the story flows from one event to the other in quite a logical way. I guess the biggest flaw is that this remains a movie. I still like Hi no Tori better than this one, simply because it had 13 episodes. Metropolis used its time well, though there’s only so much you can do in an hour and a half. Because of this, the ending did turn into a collection of clichés, despite the brilliant part.