I’d like to call this episode a subtle foreshadowing one. It had so many hints about what we may expect in the future of this series, after the earthquake takes place. Basically, Christopher’s car repair shop has been moving well, when at one point he gets visited by a father who travels along in a truck, along with his daughter. His next job is going to be a bit dangerous, so he decides to leave his daughter with Porfy and Mina for half a day.

At the end of the episode, this girl called Alecia (I hope I spelled this one right) leaves again, but there are many things that should be noted:
1: She appears in the OP.
2: She travels along with her father in a truck. When Porfy starts travelling, he just HAS to run into her at some point.
3: Her mother died two years ago, which is why she’s travelling around with her father.
4: As she tells this to Porfy, the creators show an image of Christ, hanging on his cross, with the nails through his hands as well.
5: Right before she leaves, she kisses Porfy.

Point 3 and 4 confirm what I’ve suspected all along: this series won’t be afraid to show death and dark scenes. Point 1 and 5 also show that she made a huge impression on Porfy for this part. She developed quite fast for a series as this one. It’s only one episode, and she went from a potential tsundere to a versatile and three-dimensional character, and it’s pretty safe to assume that Porfy made a huge impression on her as well. Porfy and Mina are probably the first friends she’s had in years, considering how reluctant she was when her father announced that he’d leave her behind for a few hours.

Like expected, Porfy no Nagai Tabi has been by far the most realistic of all 2008 anime, and it doesn’t look like anything will be kicking it from its throne. There are so many moments that feel nostalgic to me, from when I was a kid myself and the world seemed so simple. Porfy also remains an idiot, but I couldn’t be more positive with that. You just have to love how he kept ringing the church-bell, hoping that it would reach Alecia’s mother in heaven.

Unbelievable. I don’t think that ten episodes ago, I would have expected to be glad when Setsuna showed up and acted on his own again, like he did at the end of this episode. It’s interesting how this guy has been fleshed out pretty well for the past eighteen episodes, and I hope that in the next episode, he’ll kick the Throne Gundams’ ass.

Basically in this episode we finally know why Saji and Louise have been included in this series in the first place. Louise turned out to be the victim of the first Gundam attack on civilians. She survived, but she lost her family and her hand, all at once. The culprit was basically Nena. It’s seriously been a while since I hated a character this much.

I realize how this of course is all of the creators’ intentions, but I have one major problem with the Throne Gundams, or the Trinities to be exact. In a way, they had it coming that they’d start attacking Civilians at one point, since there’s doesn’t seem to be any adult around them to keep them in check, unlike the original Gundam. Nena has basically the “dictator-syndrome”. My problem with this is that one of the reasons I came to like this series is how nearly everyone’s alignment is in sort-of a gray area. There’s nobody purely good, and nobody has been 100% evil so far.

But yeah, the Trinities are now basically portrayed as pure evil, and with this episode, they’ve also labelled the original Gundam Meisters as the good guys. This basically means that Gundam 00 is dangerously close to becoming a cheesy good vs evil-battle, instead of the political intrigue that made the previous episodes so enjoyable. I know that it’s only been three episodes since the Trinities have been introduced, but these guys seriously NEED some development! Why the heck did they end up piloting the Throne Gundams anyway?

A lot is going to depend on the next episode, and how the fight between Setsuna and the Throne Gundams will end. One major fight between them is okay, but I don’t want this series to end up with a long war between the original Gundams and the Throne ones. It’s annoying, this series was finally beginning to get developed, only to introduce some newly underdeveloped plot-devices who probably also need eight more episodes to fully unleash their potential.

Oh my god. This episode was absolutely amazing, and quite probably the best of the entire series yet. And with Shion no Ou, that has to say something! Obviously with that, there are major spoilers following, because this episode turned so many tables around. You don’t want to read this entry without having seen the episode, and I’m serious about this. This sentence is meant to fill up space on the blog aggregators.

Now, the biggest shock was definitely the very first sentence on the first scene. From out of NOWHERE, we just learn that Ayumi’s mother freaking DIED. I hardly could believe my ears when I heard this, and how it came so incredibly suddenly. The first sentence was the last place I’d ever expect a twist so major as that.

Unfortunately, the only thing that wasn’t freaking awesome about this episode was the animation. Something went terribly wrong with the outsourcing this time, and some shots looked really off, even more than usual for this series. Thankfully though, the rest of the episode MORE than made up for it. Shion’s face when she found out about Ayumi’s mother was heart-wrenching. And yes, I admit that I cried a lot during this episode.

The thing also remains that Ayumi has now lost his main reason to play Shougi. Hani-meijin then comes into the picture, when he basically offers to make Ayumi his successor. With his loss against Satoru this episode, the female Ayumi has also died, and the episode ends with Hani-meijin, actually cutting off Ayumi’s hair!

And on top of that, Satoru also receives a truckload full of development. We see him this time at the apartment of a newly introduced friend of his. We receive the first clue that perhaps he wasn’t the one who killed Shion’s parents. It turns out Kazumi was indeed his lover, whom he met in high-school. She died, however, at the same time that Shion’s parents got killed. In this episode, we see how Satoru has actually asked this friend of his to investigate on the real facts of the death of Shion’s parents. Now why would he do that if he was the murderer?

We also learn why Hani-meijin and Satoru split up. Hani-meijin basically forced Satoru to stop playing Shougi, while he himself would pursue a professional carreer in Shougi. This had a major impact on Satoru, and he secretly kept playing Shougi with himself. It turns out that his ultimate goal is to have a real match with his brother, which is probably why he organized the tournament in the first place. Where Shion fits in this isn’t clear yet. But Hani-meijin is indeed the weak point for Satoru. When he finds out that Hani-meijin was late for his own match, his own game against Ayumi got a lot weaker. When the guy showed up at last, he easily won.

Seriously, this episode was all kinds of awesomeness, and to think that the creators haven’t even begun to reveal all of their trump-cards. Right now, only Shion, Hisatani, Satoru and Hani-meijin are left in the tournament. Quite an interesting line-up, if you ask me. If I understood things correctly, then Hisatani will end up against Hani-meijin if he wins his next match. Shion then has also has a match against an unknown opponent (I suspect that this is going to be the guy who beat Saori), after which she yet again has to play against Satoru, who of course wants to go to the finale where he can play against his brother (who’ll likely beat Hisatani). It turns out that there will be 22 episodes for this series, just as with Ghost Hound, and this should provide enough time to close off this series.