Nothing exciting happened in this episode, but it’s a vital one for the love-triangle between Alto, Sheryl and Ranka. With this, I don’t think there’s much chance of Ranka and Alto getting back together, now that the guy just stood up on her and went to fool around with Sheryl. Especially since the creators have been “subtly” hinting that Sterne will get involved with her somehow. I’ll eat my hat if that fluffy animal won’t make the two of them hook up in one way or another.

The rest of the episode was filled with the usual stuff, including lots and lots of fanservice (I knew that it was only a matter of time before the creators decided to stuff Sheryl into a school swimsuit…). Still, I’m surprised at how sneaky Sheryl turned out to be. At first I thought that she’d just let Ranka do with Alto as she pleased, but this episode made very clear that she’s trying to keep Alto away from Ranka. That’s what you get when you start dating a pop idol who’s used to get what she wants. ^^;

I also liked the small bit of politics that was introduced in this episode, with the 33rd fleet and all. It’s good to know a bit more about the Macross universe, especially since I haven’t seen the other series yet. At the same time, Alto also got some more background. So while it was a bit of a boring episode, it certainly wasn’t a waste.

Now this was an awesome episode! I’m glad to see that the creators were able to play with the manga chapters in such a way to save the best story for last. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if the Himawari-arc would close off the xxxHolic anime, because in this way, the series would leave you in the best way possible, instead of how the first season ended with a random side-story. It’s just like Mushishi: that one stayed episodic until the end, but it did save one of its best stories for last, with great effects.

I really expected this final arc to be even darker than the spider-arc, and what I got was an incredibly heart-warming episode. The bond between Watanuki, Himawari and Doumeki is really something special, and its wonderful to see everything the past thirty-five episodes have been building up for come together.

At this point, I really can say for sure that without taking the manga into account, xxxHolic has been Clamp’s best work for me. Clamp is far from perfect, Tsubasa Chronicle seems to be getting more ridiculous with every plot-twist, Chobits had a lot of boring moments and the character designs of Code Geass are more aimed to attract fangirls and fanboys than some creative masterpieces, but in a series like this one and Cardcaptor Sakura, you can see that they’ve shown their best sides.

Kurenai is quite possibly the most solid of the series that came out during the past spring season. It’s a well-written series. If you liked True Tears and want to see how it would have been with a bit less romance and a bit more action, then it’s likely that you’ll like Kurenai. This series is not going to hit any heights, but it’s perfect for a quick watch.

Aside from the solid writing, Kurenai has another thing it can boast about: its voice-acting. It joins Mahou Shoujotai and Red Garden in the very short list of series that have their voices recorded before the animation-process. The result is that the voice-actors are less restrained, and have more freedom in portraying their characters, which leads to a number of excellent dialogues, with the highlight being episode six.

Unfortunately, because the writing is so solid, the inconsistencies tend to stick out like a sore thumb. There are two or three points in this series that make you wonder what the creators have been smoking, because they don’t make any sense at all in the light of the involved characters, especially around the second half of this series.

With Brains Base, you can of course expect gorgeously animated fight-scenes, and indeed, whenever characters start fighting, the animation shines. Overall, Kurenai is probably too short for the story to make any real impact, but it’s got a likable cast of characters, great dialogue, excellent animation and terrific voice-acting.

Ah, glad to see a solid ending for this series. It’s not anything special, but it closed off this series very solidly, without leaving any threads open and with a satisfying conclusion that goes beyond the “save the girl and return home”. The final fight was also really nicely animated, the car-chase was pretty nice. About the only thing that didn’t feel right was Yayoi recovering so easily, and beating Lin so easily when she should have been heavily bruised, even if she did somehow regain her consciousness in time.

Overall, I can’t really say that this has been the best work for either the director and Brains Base: both Red Garden and Baccano were better than this series, but still it’s been an interesting ride, and like True Tears a very solidly written series, apart from a few inconsistencies here and there. Overall, it was a good series for a quick watch that doesn’t hit heights or lows.