This was definitely the best episode of Shigofumi yet. It consists out of just one episode this time (at least, that’s what I suspect), and it tells the story about three guys who live ordinary lives at school. At least, until one of them commits suicide. The rest of the episode is quite an interesting insight to suicides, and to how people often try to search the deepest meanings behind them, while they can also be committed with simple reasons.

The guy in this episode simply wanted to fly. His father though, not knowing about any of this, convinces himself that someone violently murdered his son. He then hijacks the guy’s classroom in order to find out whether the guy’s friends know anything about it. Turns out that they too didn’t, but the guy’s father doesn’t believe it. Thankfully, Fumika comes and delivers the Shigofumi, so things are cleared up. I liked how well this episode was written, and the three major characters (the father and two best friends) were nicely developed for one episode.

The creators are also surprisingly quick with the development for Fumiko. But then again, I’m comparing this show to the Jigoku Shoujo which took twenty episodes before any information about Ai was revealed. Fumiko indeed was a normal girl at one time, who was actually friends with one of the two guys from this episode. Apparently, she killed her father at one point, which resulted in her, becoming the deliverer of the Shigofumi. Obviously, pieces of the puzzle are still missing, but it’s quite a nice start.

I must say that this episode was pretty amusing. Okay, we now know that the third girl likes Shinichiro as well, but that was of course to be expected. Noe’s antics proved to be quite interesting for this series to work with. We also learn that Noe has a brother (whom Shinichiro mistakes for her boyfriend), and she also forces the guy to give her a piggy-back ride by faking an injury. I especially liked how everyone reacted when the two entered the gymnastics-room in that way.

It seems that in terms of romance, Shinichiro and Hiromi both like each other, though Hiromi doesn’t want to admit it. At the end of this episode, we see Shinichiro overhear Hiromi say this, which leads to the cliff-hanger. I can see where Noe fits into the picture, but I’m not sure what Aiko can add to the scene. It would be interesting for her to go after Miyokichi in the later episodes, though. I really must praise the guy. Most “best friends” in similar series make me want to punch their eyes out, though Miyokichi has been really enjoyable up till now.

We also see a small flashback. It turns out that Hiromi has been living with Shinichiro’s family for quite a few years now, and it seems that she once got lost during a festival, and got helped by the younger Shinichiro. We indeed seem to be dealing with yet another childhood crush, though this one is so much better than the standard protagonist who meets a bunch of random girls in his past, and these girls end up still loving the guy even ten years afterwards.

Romantic comedies and I haven’t had the best relationship. Sure, there have been a few gems among them (for example Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge and Code-E), but there is just so much crap amongst the genre. For me, the gags are often lazy, the characters uninspired and they rely way too much on moe stereotypes. The few series that do put a bit of effort into their storytelling also have a large chance of not knowing how to balance the romance and the comedy properly (Magikano, anyone?)

The cream of the crop in the romantic-comedy-genre has to be Mahou Tsukai Tai for me. The television-series made the mistake in going on and on about the major villain, but none of these problems return in the OVA. This is really what a romantic comedy should be. There is no minute wasted, every single character is meaningful and the story manages to fully utilize the format of six episodes. Basically, if you liked the television-series, you just have to check out the OVA.

The strength of Mahou Tsukai Tai is that it takes a cast of characters who would have been incredibly cliché on their own, and turns them into something memorable. Unlike series as Kanon and basically 90% of all other series, the characters don’t feel randomly thrown together. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they use their strengths to make up for the weaknesses of the others. The cast just fits perfectly. Unlike the television-series, this is also one OVA that keeps an excellent balance between comedy and drama. The final episode manages to close off the OVA very nicely due to the build-up of the first five ones.

I’ve seen a lot of movies and OVAs now that don’t know how to build up properly, but those who do understand this have turned into really memorable watches, and this is exactly what makes the difference between a memorable OVA and just a forgettable one. The time that movies and OVAs have to work with is considerably smaller than compared with television-series, but if it’s used well, then the results are awesome.

Now this is more like it! This episode was much better than the first one. I still have a lot of problems with it, but at least the music has become much better. The amount of new plot-twists is also baffling. In one episode, the plot has been pushed forward as much as the original TV-series did in 52 episodes. Still, I don’t yet consider the Tsubasa Chronicle OVA to be better than the series.

That doesn’t mean that the series didn’t have its problems, though. What was Bee-Train thinking, putting such a dark story in the NHK-channel? I now also finally understand the reason why so many fillers were added. Bee-Train knew that there was no way to put some key-moments in this arc on the air, so they decided to just go with their own story and do what they were good at.

For me, the biggest problem with this episode is that it was really far-fetched. The battle underwater was already pushing my suspense of disbelief (how long can people hold in their breath anyway? And how can these guys flawlessly fight each other, just as easily as if they were on land), but that turned out to be just the tip of the ice-berg.

So, basically Syaoran was already as a kid a very talented magician. In there, he created a clone and gave this clone his eye. The task of this clone was to collect the feathers that would come out of Sakura in about ten years. In order to prepare for that, the clone-Syaoran got his eye sealed and moved to the clow-country where he made friends with Sakura, and later fell in love with her. For some reason beyond me, the original Syaoran was sealed away by Fei Wong, but he could see everything that the clone-Syaoran did.

To make things even more complicated, Syaoran is supposed to be a descendant of Clow Reed. Sakura is also the daughter of some king of the Clow-country, which gives us many hints that she too is a descendant of Clow Reed. It’s strange to think that I spent more than 52 episodes watching some very strange kind of incest-relationship… Also, Fei Wong turned out to be yet another descendant of Clow Reed, hinting that he’s either Syaoran’s father or some kind of uncle.

In any case, while clone-Syaoran is fighting under water, Fye jumps in and just starts using his magic from out of nowhere, even though he vowed not to use magic without his tattoo. Clone Syaoran then BITES the guy’s eye out, which turn out to be the source of his power. Strangely enough, Syaoran gains Fye’s powers by eating Fye’s eye. Syaoran’s powers, by the way, also increased greatly with this. Apparently, the seal on his eye was broken at this point (don’t ask me how or why), and now he’s strong enough to even pwn Kurogane.

In the meantime, the real Syaoran was helped by Xing-Huo (who was punished by Fei Wong afterwards (read: killed)), goes to Yuuko and is teleported to the Clone Syaoran. The two fight, but Clone-Syaoran is now much stronger than the real one due to Fye’s magic.

The feather turned out to be in the middle of a cocoon, in the middle of the pool. Apparently, this was the thing that kept the clean water flowing. Somehow, Sakura’s soul ended up in that cocoon. When Sakura’s body got near the cocoon, it disappeared, and I guess it ended up in the cocoon as well. She then prevents the real Syaoran from killing the clone-one. Clone Syaoran then cuts up yet another cocoon and the feather comes out. He gives it to Sakura and then walks off on his own, leaving her. Kamui, who I guess was unconscious for this time, magically reappears and pulls a person out of this cocoon. Apparently, this person was the reason why he was so protective of the water, and he’s glad that this person is okay. Seriously, the next episode has some real explanation to do, because both subplots need a lot of explanation to make sense to me. The more I think about it, the more questions I have. You can say a lot of Bee-Train, but at least they managed to make sure that everything in the tv-series made sense. Was the manga also so incredibly confusing at this point?

Oh, and there’s one character that I’ve really disliked in the new OVA: Sakura. Oh, how deep did she fall. First, she sleeps for more than an entire episode, then she wakes up, goes “Syaoran! Syaoran!”, gets overwhelmed by the new Syaoran, and falls asleep again. I seriously liked the lovable heroine from the TV-series much better.

So, in case you’ve been wondering: Ghost Hound and Saiunkoku Monogatari are both in a hiatus this week. Instead we have the new episode of the Tsubasa Chronicle-OVA and another episode of Kaiji. The current episode of Kaiji concludes the steel-beam-arc.

But really, I feel a bit cheated. The creators used a well-known plot-device in these kinds of situations: a huge amount of money is at stake, but some hidden twist somewhere in the middle makes the protagonist unable to cash in the money, whether he won or not doesn’t matter. It feels a bit cheap to use such a twist, just to keep the story going. I mean, the guys could just as well have tempted Kaiji to put his 20 million yet at stake for an even bigger amount, and knowing Kaiji I think that he would have obliged with the right words.

Still, that was about the only thing that I didn’t like about this episode. It’s indeed quite plausible to have some kind of loophole at the end, and Sahara was the perfect person to fall for it. He’s always eager and wants to show off to others. We also finally get to see a proper introduction of the guy who’s behind everything, and I must say that I like the guy.

The next game is going to be E-Card. We still don’t know the exact rules, but it involves ten cards with either a king, a citizen or a slave on it, and I think that the talk about kings and citizens by the big boss also has something to do with it. It looks quite simple, but I trust the creators to make something interesting out of it.