Makoto Shinkai is a very strange director. With this, I’ve seen all of his major works now, She and her Cat included, but only The Place Promised in our Early Days gave me enough inspiration to write a review about it. It doesn’t happen often, but some movies just aren’t fit for my review-system, and She and Her Cat, Byousoku 5cm/second and Voices of a Distant Star are examples of this. I could be nitpicky, and pick out lots of flaws, like where did these aliens come from, or the lack of a proper aftermath, but that’s not what this movie’s about. All Makoto Shinkai is interested in is pretty graphics and romance, and he definitely delivers on these points.

While this isn’t going to be a fully fledged review, I do want to grab this chance to say a few things about it. Makoto Shinkai is a master in creating subtle feelings, mostly about loneliness, and being away from your loved one. All his works share this similarity. The setting he places it in often doesn’t really matter, and often only is used as a means of creating this feeling.

The Place Promised in our Early Days is, in my opinion, his weakest production. I think that this is because 1) it was too long, 2) it tried too much to be a standard movie and 3) the ending was his only happy end, in which everything was unrealistically resolved in the end (this is because of 2) as well).

My main gripe with Makoto is the following. It’s not really a problem, it’s not really a flaw, but it seems that he’s only good at one specific style. Am I the only one who noticed that his male leads are practically the same everywhere? Okay, the cat may be different, but the male leads in Voices, Place and Byousoku could very well have been the exact same person. Nevertheless, his particular style can be watched over and over, and I’m looking forward to his next movie. He’s also going to be involved in ef in the next Season, isn’t he? Is this as the writer, or is he just going to do the backgrounds?

Now THAT was an awesome episode! I thought that the previous episode could very hardly be toped, but I think the creators actually did it! It’s almost like everything about this episode is perfect: both Genzo and Tetsuju get a minute to be as hilarious as usual, Sora and Seikichi weren’t the focus of the episode, but they were incredibly fun to watch, the windows and Youtube-parodies were utterly brilliant, the love potion was hilarious and most of all: Shunpei and Onui were so awesome together!

Basically, the main plot is about Shunpei, accidentally using another one of Hiraga’s inventions: a love potion. Any woman who sees him, falls in love with him. This leads to hilarious results, as O-Ise calling him “Onii-chan”, Tenten trying to dress him up into various outfits, and Kagiya, trying to woo him with a pair of trousers. ^^;

This, however, was just a way to develop his relation with Onui, since she’s the only one who isn’t affected by the potion, being a dog and all. Even Sora falls for it in the end. I like how this anime already assumes that the viewer has understood that Onui is a dog. Anyway, we also finally get to see the reason why she turned into a human: she used to often play with Shunpei, hence her crush on him. To make things even better, it seemed that Shunpei had already figured out that that dog and Onui were the same person.

I just wonder… why the heck did Tetsuju recognize Onui when she was in her dog-form, trying to save Shumpei from his fate?

And regarding the main plot, Genzo discovers that the building-time of the rocket might take a bit longer than expected, and that at this rate, it’ll only get finished when Seikichi and Sora have become way too old. For that, Hiraga assembles an army of cats to help them. In the meantime, there is still no sign of Akai anywhere, so I’m really wondering what that guy has been up to.

I wish that episodes like these could continue forever, but I’m afraid that the plot is about to kick in again. I really wonder what the creators have in mind for the climax, as they must want to try and surpass the climax in episode 20. The best thing would be to not lse the humour in the process. There haven’t been many comedies with a good ending, and even though Ooedo Rocket spent more time than average on its plot-development, the fact still remains that it’s much more fun to see the characters just interacting.

Oh, and about the download link for this episode: it’ll come up soon, but Megaupload is currently being a bitch and refuses to upload it.

I’ve got mixed feelings about this episode. It’s all about one plot-twist that is loved by all kinds of shounen-series as an easy plot device. A character is about to be killed, everything sounds hopeless, but then, at the last possible moment, a character (usually the main one) unlocks some hidden powers to kick the bad guy’s ass. Especially Dragonball Z loved using them.

But on the other hand, at least Claire made sense when she awakened. The sudden power didn’t come from nowhere, and the fight that lead to it was a gripping one. But then again, this fight could have easily been moved into half an episode and it did drag on at times.

In the same way, Raki was a lot less annoying in this episode, and he was actually nice to watch. But then again, I just can’t help but think that the next episode will be incredibly predictable. Claire has finished off Rigardo with her new powers, and Raki arrives just at the right moment to pull her back from being completely awakened.

To be honest, I’m not sure what to think of Claymore at the moment. Sure, the fight was great, but I keep fearing that there won’t be a second season, and that a huge amount of questions and plot-holes will be left unanswered. I mean, there is no way for the creators to stuff enough development about Alicia, Beth, and the three dwellers of the deep in the final four episodes.

There’s one thing about this episode that I’ve been wondering about, though: what the heck happened to everyone? All Rigardo did was kill the four weakest captains. There should be enough other Claymore left without them, besides, Claire, Deneve, Helen and Miria. Why didn’t we even see one single flash of them? Have they fled the battlefield? And if they did, where did they flee to? It’s a bit disappointing, as i actually hoped to see some of the unknown Claymores to stand up and help as well, but it seems that the creators had the intention to let the final end up between the major characters. I admit that I expected something better, with the huge hype that surrounded this arc.

The best part about this episode was Deneve, though. I love her internal struggles, and the fact that she wasn’t able to do anything about Undine’s death, after speaking so confident towards her that they’ll protect each other. Now she also has been badly injured, which will probably take a while to regenerate. I’d actually love it if she ends up saving Claire in the next episode.