MAJOR spoiler ahead. This episode comes with the single biggest revelation of the entire series, so DO NOT read this entry if you haven’t seen it! Unfortunately, I was spoiled beforehand, but I do want to prevent others from this. This is a random sentence to fill up all the space in the blog-aggregators. This is another one. So, this should be enough.

SO, Takano is indeed the big culprit. Obviously, the revelation didn’t have the impact because I’ve already been spoiled, but I’m glad that it comes relatively early in the series, and now it’s about to get really interesting. Not only that, but I can talk a bit more freely, without having fears of spoiling everyone.

I also must praise Cos. He basically figured out most of the mysteries after only episode ten, and he even predicted that Takano was behind everything. Quite amazing, if you ask me.

In any case, here’s a quick rundown on all the new information:
- Takano was indeed the one who killed Tomitake by injecting him with an overdose of the disease, causing him to go in level 5. She indeed was getting rid of Tomitake’s body in the third arc, when Keiichi met her.
- Takano never died. She just used a fake body that was found somewhere to cover up her death.
- The Yamainu has been under Takano’s orders all along.
- The sight of the dead Tomitake probably drove Irie himself insane (probably due to the disease).
- Takano’s ultimate objective is awakening the Hinamizawa-disease within everyone. Strangely, she never mentions the use of Rika’s intestines.

I’ve got lots of questions, though, after this. What was up with Irie in the first arc? What was different there, that didn’t cause him to kill himself? What were Tomitake and Takano doing in the festival shrine anyway? Why did Takano give Rena her scrapbooks?

Actually, I think I can answer that last one: it was used as a cover-up. She’d just have to leak it to someone and the fake information about the aliens, it would distract from the theories about the disease, which only a few people knew about anyway. The thing I wonder about, though is what happened to these scrapbooks in the other arcs?

The thing also is: Takano doesn’t seem to know about Hanyuu. If that’s the case, then why does every arc turn out different? Who causes the subtle changes for each world? Rika does have some influence in this, but definitely not all of it.

I’m also interested in where this arc will go afterwards. Remember that we’re only at the end of the Watanagashi, which often is just the half-way point. In most arcs, it’s the second half that really got interesting.

There’s another thing I wondered: will we ever get an answer about a question that was raised in the first arc? I’m referring to the letter Keiichi wrote. Why did Takano find it necessary remove parts from it? What exactly did Keiichi write? Will we also ever know how Rika’s parents and Satoko’s family died? And who removed Satoko’s uncle’s body in the third arc? There are so many questions that still need to be answered.

Oh, and yes. Seeing Satoko get saved was so awesome. :)

This episode was meant to push the plot forward even more, and things are getting more interesting by the minute, with as highlight of course the conversation between Marius and his uncle. With the news that Cosette is about to move to England, he desperately tries to find a way to do something, even if this means pushing his pride away and asking help from his uncle to marry Cosette within one week. The latter refuses, though he regrets it immediately, since Marius has been on his mind ever since he left his uncle. Right now, it looks like Marius will officially never meet the guy again.

Thenardier also surprised me: he got kicked out of his own gang. I originally predicted that all hell woud break loose for Cosette after the guy escaped, but I didn’t take into account that his henchmen weren’t so keen on taking revenge as he was. Especially not after their daughter made them almost end up in jail yet again.

There’s one thing I didn’t like, though: no Eponne. There wasn’t even a tiny scene about her. But then again, it doesn’t look like she’ll have a big role in the upcoming climax for this arc, as it seems that it’ll focus on Les Amis and Cosette, Marius and Jean. I really wonder what the role of Gavroche will be, though. I’m interested in how he’d react when he found out that a bunch of people are trying to start a revolution. He’d be quite helpful for them, after all.

Few anime combine both shounen- as shoujo-roots in their premises. I’m not sure why there are so few of them, because Zombie Loan shows that this can become pretty successful, as it combines the good points of both styles. The personalities of the characters are those typical in shoujo-anime. A female is surrounded by two bickering guys, there’s one guy who has a lot of similarities with Ensei from Saiunkoku Monogatari (they also share the same voice-actor, and you can recognize Shuurei in the main female character as well), and the dialogue is written in a very shoujo-esque way. And yet, the entire premise of the show revolves around busting zombies and there are a few Yuri and shoujo-ai scenes once in a while.

The shoujo-roots become even more welcome when they provide good and well-defined reasons for out characters to be involved in the story. Unlike shounen-series, none of the characters are plot-devices to become the best X in the world. The two main guys are just zombies that try to pay off their debts by killing other zombies (the anime explains this better), and the main female, while she does have hidden powers, they’re not some strange hidden powers to kill off zombies in an instant at the last possible moment. She’s just got a talent to spot zombies, something the two main characters can’t do for themselves, so the three of them come together.

In addition to this, Zombie Loan manages to deliver some powerful character-studies throughout its episodes. Shito, Michiru and Chika’s characters have all their unique and well-written problems that make you think for once. On top of that, it knows exactly when to be funny and when to be serious, resulting in some hilarious banter between the different characters.

I wish I could keep raving about this series, but unfortunately it’s got its flaws. It’s too damn short!! The length is only 11 episodes, and a dvd-only episode will be released in a few months (I may edit this review after seeing that one), and that’s all there is to this series. This series could have been so much more, and it would have easily had enough material for 26 episodes. Right now, Chika, Shito and Michiru may have had enough background, but there are so many threads left open and worst of all: nearly none of the side-characters gets any decent form of screen-time, while they’ve all got really interesting personalities and so much potential. I would have loved some in-depth look at their own cases. Isn’t there really going to be some kind of second season?

Then there’s a second flaw, which is more on the technical side. Zombie Loan has awesome-looking art, but the animation has issues on so many levels. The entire series looks so stylish, but the pictures we see are often still frames or unnatural-looking movements. Even somebody like me who knows almost nothing of animation can see that a lot of corners were cut in this department.

You could say that if I want to see the rest of the story, I should just go and read the manga. But when I watch an anime, I want to watch an anime; not promotion-material for a manga. Here’s hoping that a second season will be arriving someday.

Ah, the second Patlabor Movie. After seeing the first one, I just had to watch the second one at some point. There’s a lot that stayed the same, it still features a realistic setting and plot, aimed at adults, creative uses for mechas and down-to-earth characters. There are also some major differences, though: the storyline features way and way more political influences, there is less time for quirky characters (although they do get three or four scenes), the main character has switched to Captain Goto and the female lead became Shinobu and most importantly: the storyline has become significantly more complex.

This just isn’t a movie you can watch when bored or sleepy; you just have to keep paying attention if you want to follow what’s going on. You see, the plan of the villain is to throw an entire country off-balance, and you need a lot of development to pull that one off right. Somehow, Patlabor II manages to do this, but it has to thunder through all of the developments to get all of them within the two-hour limit of the movie. I’d almost think that another half an hour of screen-time would have been useful to give each single development a bit more time, and make the entire movie a bit easier to understand.

Still, despite this, Patlabor II remains the anime movie with the most complex story I’ve seen up till now, and it actually pulls this off quite nicely. If you manage to pay attention, it’ll reward you with a great story and a thought-provoking villain, even though he does lack the charm of the villain of the first movie, and I’m still not sure why Shinobu was acquainted with the guy. Goto also proves to be quite an interesting main character with his intelligent, down-to-earth, stoic and yet caring attitude.

And yes, the second movie also suffers from the same flaw as the first one. The characters are there, they’re fun to watch, but they lack most sorts of background and fleshing out. For that, you’re going to have to watch the OVAs or the series first, but especially the series with its fifty episodes isn’t something you just watch in an afternoon, and it takes commitment. I’m not sure whether I’m going to try them out, it depends on how easy they are to find.

Still, if you like politics and a realistic setting for mechas, Patlabor is a very good recommendation. It’s a pity that most movies nowadays don’t have such an ambitious plot as this one, but perhaps the upcoming Votoms-OVA will fix this. Overall, I liked this movie better than the first instalment, despite the slightly-too-fast storytelling.