November 18, 2007

Les Miserables - Shoujo Cosette - 46

Filed under: Finished Series:/Les Miserables - Shoujo Cosette


Okay, I don’t care about the cheesy parts. This episode was absolutely magnificent! Just when I thought that this series had passed its best part, it comes and delivers such an incredibly awesome episode. Obviously, spoilers are going to follow.

If this was a regular anime, this would be about the time where the adults step back and let the youngsters take over. In this episode, it’s the ENTIRE OPPOSITE, as it features the final epic conflict between Jean and Javert, and the younger members of the cast take a step back and only get a few small minutes of airtime. At the end of the previous episode, Jean had a badly wounded Marius with him, and indeed, Jean finally stops running away and agrees to go with Javert if he brings Marius to a hospital.

We then switch to Javert’s carriage, where I absolutely loved the conversation Jean and Javert had, and to make things even better, Jean explains what exactly made him change so much. It turns out that the words of the bishop brought him in a huge confusion, and he lived a miserable life of a drifter at that point. Then he got accidentally mistaken for a thief, and scared a child away because of it, and that’s what made him see the light.

Javert finally has this moment when he realizes that Jean still has Fantine’s last wishes in his mind, after all these nine years. Marius is dropped off at the hospital, and Javert leaves Jean behind when the latter wants to say his final goodbye to Cosette! Later, when Javert realizes what exactly he had done, he really sees the light. Literally and figuratively, and I adored the amount of depth that he got with his little monologue.

Immediate changes in personality are often hard to do, and they often feel forced, but for me, this episode was awesome, both for Jean and Javert and more than half of the scenes had me crying at the screen. I’m not sure whether it was done this way in the book, but one way or the other, this episode was outstanding.

And right now, I’m wondering what the creators have been planning for the final six episodes. Will it be one long aftermath, or will Thenardier return one final time? The latter would be awesome.

Shion no Ou - 06

Filed under: Finished Series:/Shion no Ou


Now that the first half of the series is nearly over, it’s time for an intermezzo. Shion no Ou spends it giving Shion and the ones around her a bit more background in the form of a friend who died eight years ago, develop Ayumi’s case even more and introduce the final half of the series. Next episode, we’ll see the match between Shion and Saori.

The friend who died was basically a good comrade of both Shion’s foster-parents, Shion herself (who seems to be quite close with them, even before she lost her parents) and Hani-meji as well. His name seems to be Kyotarou, and he was the one who taught Shion shougi when she got interested when she saw a shougi-board. I also love how this little piece of background brought Shion and her foster-family even closer together. Kyotarou seems to have caught a deadly sickness afterwards, and his condition went worse quite quickly, and if I understood things correctly, he wanted to play Hani-meji (who already was a terrific shougi-player back then) one final time, and died before he could finish the match.

Meanwhile, we know what happened to Ayumi’s father: he’s an incredible idiot who just leaves his ex-wife to die, while stealing money from his son and beating him viciously. While it is a bit stereotypical, I guess it does feel in place in this series. It would be awesome if said father would receive a small bit of development himself in one of the final episodes, but I have no idea what to expect from the second half of this series.

Well, apart from one thing, perhaps. This is just one big hunch, but the yellow-haired guy, who finally gets a proper introduction in this episode as Hani-meji’s brother, is on the top of my list of “people most likely to have killed Shion’s parents”. Remember, we know that the silhouette of the guy must be one with short hair. In this episode, Shion also claims that the killer had clean and pretty hands, and the guy seems to fit these requirements as well. But most importantly, there has to be a reason why both he and Shion have a necklace with the exact same gem on it.