Sigh… why do nearly all the good shows have to air at the same day!? To illustrate, here is my blogging-schedule for the coming season, if the shows I watch subbed get released regularly every week:
Monday:
none
Tuesday:
nada
Wednesday:
- Suteki Tantei Labyrinth
Thursday:
nope
Friday:
- Baccano! (will be ending in two weeks)
- Ghost Hound
Saturday:
- Shugo Chara
- Saiunkoku Monogatari
- Dennou Coil
- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
- Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji
- Shion no Ou
Sunday:
- Gundam 00
- Les Miserables

I think this shows enough. And I thought the five shows on Saturday for the previous season was a lot. In other words: expect this blog to be quiet during weekdays, and busy in the weekends. ^^;

Anyway, about the episode: something went terribly wrong with the outsourcing. There’s nothing wrong with the animation, the poses are as creative as you’d expect, with perhaps a low frame-rate, but the art style is completely different from last episode. The characters now look much more like an ordinary anime, unlike the rather unique first episode. Let’s hope the creators realize this.

Apart from that though, I liked this episode, even though it served mostly to build up. Shion has finally become a pro, it seems, despite her loss of the previous episode. Ayumi and Saori meanwhile develop a rival-relationship, so it could be interesting to see how the two of them are going to develop. Especially since Saori seems the most likely person to find out that Ayumi is actually a guy. I also liked how Ayumi, instead of being glad to have won, looked down on his opponent, who was clearly playing just for the fun. On the surface, you’d say that the guy was just playing for his mother, but something tells me that he also likes challenges and to take risks.

On other news, it’s going to have to play really weird if the stalker didn’t turn out to be the killer of Shion’s parents. Ayumi managed to save Shion at the end of the episode, and ever since, Shion’s been put under surveillance, though he does send a threat to the Shougi-club, that if she were to win, he’d kill her. Obviously, the owners didn’t show that note to Shion, but there’s more than just that stalker going on. Some suspicious undercover-journalists also get introduced in this episode.

Overall, this series is going to be short (only twelve episodes, if I recall correctly), but it’s going to be interesting to blog it. Despite this season being rather disappointing when compared to the other major series, it’s good to see that there are at least a handful of series that have the potential to become great later on. Let’s hope I chose to blog the right ones.

As if the end of the previous episode didn’t look hopeless enough, Kaiji, Furuhata and Andou get into even more trouble when the latter runs off on his own and throws away the last paper-card and one of the precious stars. It was interesting how the guy tried to talk himself out of things by using a fake story about wanting to bring back the total amount of stars to five, when it was clear that he was going to abandon the team if he won three stars. It’s been a while since an anime featured an in-depth look into betrayal (probably the first season of Higurashi was the last one), which is why I like this series so much: it really delves deep into human nature.

You can also really see that in the match that this episode focuses on, when Kaiji manages to gather two stars with only four paper-cards. The opponent was someone who has been praying on the weak. It’s a nice, but very fragile strategy: he’s screwed when he runs into an opponent that knows what he’s doing. Because he only goes after down-hearted people, he doesn’t expect much of a strategy. Because of this, he only has a counter for the most basic strategies, and doesn’t think about the whole picture, which is why he lost.

Still, something tells me that the real fun hasn’t even begun. At the moment, Kaiji has five stars, and he still needs to buy four more of them if he wants the entire group to survive. After all the matches are played, the people with more than three stars will turn into ruthless hyenas, and try to make as much money as possible. Even with 14 million yen, it’s going to be hard, and how on earth is Kaiji going to pay off such a debt if he actually does manage to pull it off?

Whoa… I expected a quiet episode to introduce the final arc of this series, and then it comes with this! The amount of development that Isako gets is astonishing, and while the production-values may have dropped a bit, this was one episode not to be missed. It all starts when the building for the school that Yasako and the others go to gets demolished, so all the students move to the other major school, in the middle of the city.

This is especially disadvantageous for Isako, as the guys from a few episodes back attend this school too, and quite easily they manage to turn the entire school against her. Things go much deeper than just that, though. Remember the orange cat? Its master is behind everything, and it ends up erasing 4423-s room in the hospital! It seems that Isako was just used, and 4423 never had a chance to live in the first place! That room in the hospital was just an old cyberspace!

Apparently, there was something that happened in the last episode that made Isako lose her importance, so the decision was made to terminate her. My best guess would be that Nekome was behind everything, as he refuses to answer Isako’s calls. I don’t however think that he’s alone in this (after all, he’d never know which children beared a grudge against Isako), and there’s quite a large possibility that Takeru is his ally.

Then there’s also the question of why Nekome is doing everything. What are his true goals? And why did he approach Haraken in episode fourteen?

It’s episodes like this that make me regret switching back to the raws for this series. I’ve often noticed that I’m usually able to follow an episode without subtitles if it’s around the middle or end of an arc, since you do somehow know what to expect. With introductions, the story is entirely different, though. I doubt that there was any episode in Saiunkoku Monogatari that introduced more new characters than this one, apart from episode 1, perhaps. I’m really reminded back to when I first started this series, and was virtually the only one who was following it. Back then, I really had no clue what was going on. ^^;

In any case, the previous arc was really there to introduce Suou, who seems to be a major character for the rest of the series. I think it’s because of him that Shuurei ended up back in the palace, to help him work off the punishment for what his father did, though I could be wrong. One of the few things I did understand of this episode was when Shuurei got fed up by all the males surrounding her and discovered that her supervisors were into pornography.

The truth indeed is that Shuurei is a bit uptight, and she definitely had an idealistic image of males, due to being together with Seiran and Eigetsu so often. It’s nice to see her witness some more… average males when they’re together. It’s a good thing Suou was with her, otherwise she would have lost it. ^^;

And here ends the second and final half of Takano’s background. Like expected, it was a bit bland, and not that interesting, but it was necessary to give Takano some kind of background. I’m just a bit disappointed that we still don’t know why she’s doing everything. I mean, professor Takano never talked about using the Hinamizawa-syndrome as a biological weapon. What caused Takano to create that vision? Did she stumble on it on her research?

I also didn’t like the head of the orphanage. The guy was just pure evil without any reasons at all, and seriously lacked development. It’s hard to take him seriously when you hardly know anything about him. Also, where did he get so many henchmen from? Didn’t they find the things he did to the children strange? It would also have been interesting to see a bit more about what happened to the other children who ran away. If I understood things correctly, at least one of them got caught back, but did they really all die?

Still, I’m looking forward to the next episode, and how Keiichi and the others will try to outsmart Takano. One thing I did like about the past two episodes is how they showed that Takano has an iron will. That is the reason why everything turned out the same way for every arc, apart from the second and the fifth, perhaps. The strange thing is that even though Rika died, Rena and Keiichi were still fine. I think that this is because Takano really needed to create some kind of fear within the residents, and I think that at that point, Keiichi and Rena unconsciously trusted each other, and didn’t hold any harsh feelings against Shion and the things she did. It would have been interesting to see Takano’s reaction to this.

The Chara-Changes are awesome. Not only are they hilarious (in this episode, we get to see the Chara-changes of Nadeshiko and Hotari), they also do reflect on the hidden and real desires of the different characters, albeit exaggerated a bit. Amu wants to be acknowledged because of her talents and not her reputation (hence the blue and green Shugo Chara), and she wants to be able to act beyond the facade she puts up every day (hence the red Shugo Chara). Nadeshiko wants to be seen as a strong girl, so with a Chara-Change, she turns into a hyperactive swordswoman. I can actually see her, jealous of Amu, who is known for her tough character. Hotari meanwhile has unconscious desires for power, which is why his Chara-Change turns him into a maniacal overlord who wishes to rule the world. That does make me curious about the Chara-change of neko-guy. I think it’s more than just growing cat-ears. ^^;

This episode also revealed the ultimate goal of both the god guys and bad guys: Embryo, an egg that allows you to fulfil any wish. We also see the first sparks of romance between Amu and neko-guy, in typical shoujo-fashion, while Amu also spends a part of the episode baking cookies for Hotari. I wonder whether the creators can turn this into a good love-triangle. This can be especially good for neko-guy, as it seems that Amu and Hotari are pretty much destined for each other.

Still, I like the relationship between the two of them so far. In this episode, Amu learned that she’s not the only one who’s ashamed of his or her Shugo Chara. I’d also love to see the Chara-Change of the final female guardian-member, by the way. Will that turn her ten years younger or something?