Heh, and I thought that Satoru would be out of the picture now that he lost. Heh, it’s far from that. Basically in this episode, he confirms the suspicions that were raised in the previous episode, and it’s now pretty clear who the murderer is. Really, only now that this information is revealed, I realize how much sense it makes.

Why did I never question why Shion and Satoru had the same kind of necklace? I just assumed that it was chance, but that was FAR FROM THE CASE. In fact, these two necklaces belonged to Satoru and Hani’s mother! Each of them took one of the necklaces, and I think that this is the first thing that raised Satoru’s suspicions. It must’ve been quite a shock when he first saw it. I also now realize why he was toying with Shion so much: he was trying to figure out how she got the necklace, and because of that, she reminded him of Kasumi. Still, why was Hani-Meijin stupid enough to leave his necklace at such a place?

Also, Shion’s style of playing shougi turns out to be the same style as that of Hani-meijin, according to Satoru. Of course that’s the case! From what I gathered, Shion and Hani spent quite a bit of time together between the time of the murder and the arrival of the police. We already know that he was the reason why she continued to play shougi, so he might as well have given her a few pointers on how to improve her game. The interesting thing is that ever since, Shion did try to change from her usual tactics. I wonder whether the creators will use that in the final episodes.

And thank god Ayumi didn’t turn into a helpless pawn of Hani-meijin. He really shines when he does something for Shion and yet again there are so many possibilities at how the creators can use him against Hani-meijin for the final episodes. Three episodes is just enough to give Hani-meijin some more development (now that we finally know that he did it, it’s time to delve into the reasons as to why he did it). Satoru has already proved to be an extremely versatile character, and it would be a shame to see this series end without Hani-meijin getting the same treatment.

Seriously, this series keeps moving forward like a seismograph that’s about to detect a big earthquake: Hiromi - Noe - Hiromi - Noe - Hiromi - Noe - et cetera. One moment, you’d think that Shinichiro goes for Noe, but then another plot-twists makes his interests waver to Hiromi again. In this episode, this plot-twist is Hiromi and Noe’s brother eloping and crashing their motorbike on a slippery road afterwards.

Nobody was hurt, but the bike’s gone now, which is quite a big hit for Noe’s brother. In any case, their little adventure did make both Noe and Shinichiro incredibly worried. Because of this, Shinichiro and Hiromi forget how they avoided each other in the past, and become much closer. Noe of course doesn’t like this, but she decides to let Shinichiro go to be with Hiromi. The episode ends, however, with Noe being incredibly love-sick.

What’s also interesting is how the story that Shinichiro and Hiromi are siblings isn’t true at all. Shinichiro’s mother just made that up. I do wonder why she hated Hiromi, though. Was this because she never got asked permission for Hiromi to come and live with her, or something? The degree of realism overall was quite good in this episode, from Hiromi and Noe’s brother who drove slowly because of the frost so they didn’t end up getting hurt to the rumours that escalated on school the day afterwards and Shinichiro getting into fights because of it.

It really seems like the creators want to keep the way they want to end this series a surprise for as long as possible. At this episode, it seemed that Hiromi would be “the one” for him, but the fact does remain that Noe’s still incredibly lovesick and there are four episodes left.

Thank you pgal, for pointing out that the first of three Baccano! DVD-only episodes has arrived. The length has been increased to half an hour, and this episode basically spends its time fleshing out some of the characters of the series, and introducing one new guy. I’m not sure what the point was behind some scenes, though. At one point, we see Isaac and Miria laying down some kind of domino-course in front of a baffled Firo. It was also a bit hard when the new guy used a wrench to deflect a bullet.
In any case, this episode featured a lot of good stuff. The new guy (I couldn’t pick up his name, unfortunately) met Ladd in the past and he’s about to go after Jacuzzi. Huey also gets a bit more development, and we see some time he spent with Chane (who was too cute when she was young, by the way). Apart from that and Rachel sees Chezlaw (who seems to hang out with Ennis now) again.

I obviously missed a lot of dialogue because I watched this raw, but I think that even with some kind of translation it’ll be rather impossible to figure out where the creators plan to be going. The only way to find out is to wait for episode 15 and 16.

I’m not exactly sure why… this episode was a clear aftermath and yet I found it was one of the most enjoyable ones of the third arc so far. I originally thought that seeing Shuuei and Ryuuki develop would be the best thing about the final episodes of the second season, but seeing them actually use this development turned out much more interesting.

Overall, the Kouki-arc just didn’t match up to the Government-Official-arc and the Sa-Province-arc, but that’s only logical. I now see that this arc is far from over, and all that the episodes have been doing is building up. Even the past few mini-arcs were just meant to develop the cast, and to make them ready for the real meat of this arc. It’s just like the Sa-province arc. The first twenty-or-so episodes also were a bit disappointing at times, and Sakujun took a lot of episodes to become likable, but the second half of that arc, with the disease and all simply rocked.

I really hope that Madhouse will continue next year with the third season for Saiunkoku Monogatari. There are just too many interesting plot-points unresolved to not let it happen: there’s Ouki, who’ll be trying more and more to take over the throne, which will bring Kouki, Seiga, Shuurei and Suou more to the foreground as they will definitely be asked to investigate and prevent this takeover. Then there’s the Bara-hime storyline with the big Riou and of course the big mystery about Sakujun’s whereabouts. Furthermore, we still haven’t seen anything of the plans to marry Kouyuu out to Shuurei. Then there’s also Seiga, who majorly lacks in development, considering how important his character is. Overall, that’s more than enough to fill a third season and close this story off properly. Please, Madhouse, don’t abandon this series just yet!

On other news, I was pretty surprised that Shouka didn’t prepare any explanation whatsoever to Shuurei about what the heck he was doing when Ryuuki wandered off on his own. I doubt that he would never make such a mistake to anyone other than Shuurei and Bara-hime. I think that that’s one of the reasons why he originally fell in love with Bara-hime. Somehow, he just couldn’t get his assassin-act together in front of her. ^^;