First, the good stuff:

The episode immediately begins with Kanji’s fight. There’s only one thing he did between his selection and his time to pilot: ask Tamotsu to kill his mother. Kanji’s case is similar to Kirie’s in a way: they both didn’t have any friends outside of the group of twelve, and they both had problems with their mothers. They were both struggling with a reason to fight. Kanji resolves this quite differently from Kirie, though, when the fight happens right besides the building his mother is currently in. Yet again, this episode was totally different from the previous episodes and fights somehow. Kanji is one of the few members of the cast who doesn’t like doubting (by lack of better description).

This time, the enemy also is an inexperienced one. They probably haven’t figured out yet that the other side is being piloted by real people as well. They go all out, but Kanji manages to easily beat them, protecting his mother in the process. He’s given quite an interesting reason for it: his mother may be an idiot, her research is top-notch. He’s actually fighting, so that he can give Seki and Jun a chance to survive! He probably knew that Tamotsu would never kill his mother, but he did want to make her aware that he’s fighting for her, and Tamotsu is of couse, the perfect person for this.

Then, when Kanji destroyed the enemy’s control-chamber, something strange happens. The enemy robot uses Kanji’s mother’s research to pull power from the entire city to get back to life. If this continues, it could suck up the energy of the entire planet, at least that’s what I understood.

What follows was a part I didn’t quite understand. From what I could get, along with an online-translator, it seems that even though the enemy’s children had been killed, Kanji still needed to immobalize the enemy robot to prevent the earth from being destroyed. The scene we see in the OP also reappears, and it turns out to be the links to the pilots of the enemy earth. Either that, or I just missed a huge plot-twist.

Kanji’s life-force is meanwhile depleting, but he manages to finish off the enemy robot, and places the power-source on top of the building where his mother works, in order to restore the power. I think that Zearth’s program really is linked with the earth itself, and when the enemy robot made contact with the research that Kanji’s mother had been conducting, it managed to pull out every bit of energy from the planet itself. All in all, it’s been quite an interesting explanation, and this really strengthens the theory behind the different Zearths and how they work. Seriously, other anime should really take an example from this series, and the way it so carefully explains its dynamics.

That was the good stuff. Now comes the GREAT stuff. :)

After the battle, Jun and Koemushi remain in the cockpit and have a little talk, and it’s indeed exactly like I feared: Koemushi plans to turn Jun into the next Kokopelli by making KANA the next pilot. If I understood things correctly, there will be two pilots left on the current earth: Kana and Seki. Jun will then go to yet another earth to get members, and he’ll stay alive. I’m not sure if this was in the Kokopelli-way, as in do it once and you’re fine, or in the Koemushi way, making him destined to become Koemushi’s successor.

Koemushi really believes that Jun is willing to throw his sister’s life away in order to live. What follows is the most amazing scene between Jun and Kana, where it becomes clear that Kana is indeed willing to die for her brother, if it was only because she didn’t want to live without him. Jun then makes a phone-call to his father, asking him to pick up Kana. In other words, he’s going to beg Koemushi to switch places with Kana, so that she can live, after she probably rounded up fourteen new pilots on a different earth.

And I think he’s actually going to pull this through, unlike Kokopelli, who at the last moment became afraid for his own life. I think the biggest difference between the two was that Kokopelli only seemed to care about his daughter. It’s just a guess, but I don’t think that the different pilots on Kokopelli’s world formed such a unity as in the current world. Every world has different pilots, some have the entire planet backing them (Takami’s opponents), others are afraid (Moji’s opponent), and others want to save the people from different earths instead (Kirie’s opponent).

Because the group here was more closely knit than with Kokopelli, who probably never cared about the other children, Jun, who started out like a jackass slowly came to understand why his different opponents fought. He probably understood this when Kirie started living with him, and he suddenly had to take care of him and became involved with his problems.

Still, the thing is: is Koemushi just going to let Kana and Jun swap places? He’s proved himself to be sneaky and a total idiot, and he loves to see others suffering. Is he really going to be content with such a happy ending?

Also, with this episode, I became convinced: Bokura no is THE most thought-provoking anime of 2007. At this point, this series goes much further than Seirei no Moribito, Jigoku Shoujo, Death Note and all the others combined. Also, in terms of realism it’s one of the best of this year. I really love this series because of this, and I just hope that the creators saved the best for last. :)

Today, it’s time for the final pieces of development before the finale starts. Blue-Eyes explains everything she knows, after which she leaves the stage as a major side-character, LA finds out that Rozenberg has been controlling him, destroys it and ends up as a nervous wreck, Ellis learns that Nadie would go through fire for her, and at the end of the episode, we see the encounter the entire series has been building-up to: Rozenberg and Ellis finally meet again.

I’m not sure if I understood everything Blue-eyes said. It seems that she was a witch herself, though she lacked any power. She went after Ellis, because she finally wanted to see the powers of a real witch. There seems to be some godly power that Rozenberg is after, and Ellis seems to be the key for this. I’m still not sure why Ellis and Nadie have to go forward anyway, though.

Anyway, Ellis, Nadie and LA were as awesome as ever. I loved how Ellis tried to leave Nadie, to keep her from getting hurt, and went to LA instead. She then got freaked out by his obsessive fears of Rozenberg and left. Poor LA; his confidence of the first half of the series is entirely gone now.

Anyway, next episode, we’ll probably find out why Rozenberg has acted the way he did throughout the series, and most importantly: the role of Ricardo and Lilio. There are still three episodes left, so Rozenberg is actually faster than his counterpart in Noir, and this also means that something still is about to happen. The question is: what? And will it be natural?

For Spring 2007, Bee-Train came with two new productions: El Cazador and Murder Princess. It was clear that El Cazador would be their main anime, with Murder Princess staying mostly in the backgrounds in the format of a 6-episode-OVA. Still, how did it go?

Well, for starters, the plot isn’t that impressive. The creators went with a fantasy-kingdom, under the attack of supernatural monsters. In the end, some of the superpowers were explained, but the story remains incredibly basic. The bad guys with connections to the main characters have to be beaten, and that’s about it. There are a few plot-holes here and there, the bad guys have rather bad reasons for their actions, and overall it’s not really that good.

The reasons why you’d want to watch this: the good guys and the music. Where the plot falters, the main characters are the ones who manage to save it. They almost never feel annoying, they’ve all got interesting and varying personalities, and the relationship that develops throughout the six episodes between the two main characters is quite charming to watch. I’ve got no real criticism for them, and while they aren’t the best, they were really fun to watch and never even once bored me.

But the real highlight of Murder Princess is the soundtrack that came accompanied with it. Bee-Train always had a knack for soundtracks, and they et again prove this here when the entire soundtrack consists of fast-paced rock and punk-tunes. The music especially shines during the major action-scenes, which would have become horribly dull without the music and addictive characters mentioned above.

While it doesn’t hit any heights, it’s not particularly innovative, nor is it an OVA that will be remembered by many, it’s perfect as light entertainment. If you’re a rock/metal-fan and like fantasy, you should definitely check this one out, because this OVA manages to become both tense, fun to watch and charming.