Short Synopsis: Thankfully, the hiatus “only” took two weeks. This week: Neiro’s background.
Highlights: Kaiba’s back! Kaiba’s back! Kaiba’s back!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, this time I didn’t care about the raws. I just wanted to watch Kaiba again as soon as possible, so I just settled for a horrible one. For this episode, we were promised Neiro’s background, and it doesn’t disappoint at all. This anime very cleverly wraps up about 50% of the questions that the previous episodes left hanging, while keeping the vital questions still a mystery, for the final two episodes to answer.

As it turns out, my theories were wrong. Kaiba is the real Warp, and he got the name Kaiba for no particularly important reason: Neiro gave it to him, because when the two met, he again had lost his memory when he met Neiro for the first time. Therefore, he didn’t know his name, so Neiro named him after the legendary plant, and only later he started to remember again. How this exactly works is unknown, but Kaiba possesses some sort of power that unconsciously erases and recovers his memory, which gets activated with either a huge mental of physical shock. Every time this power gets activated, the hole in his body increases in size.

Also, the fake Warp didn’t shoot Neiro at all, it was the real Kaiba, in order to protect her from that AI-manager who we’ve seen bothering the fake Warp a few episodes back. He properly revived her and brought her back afterwards. And as it turns out, Warp never killed Neiro’s parents in the first place. That too was just some alteration by Popo (or the memory guy, on request by Popo). That AI-manager also turned out to be one of the villains in this series. It used the fake warp to prevent Kaiba from finding out information about his parents, whom he thought he killed himself. Kaiba turns out to never have been evil, but this image was just spread by this AI-manager.

We now also know why Popo didn’t kill Kaiba when he had the hance. I can imagine how the guy needed to get a weapon strong enough to destroy Kaiba’s indestructible body, and failed to get there on time before Kaiba woke up. The shot he fired was indeed aimed at Kaiba, and not at the enemy. This gave the memory-guy the chance to escape with Kaiba, and with the help of that girl in dress (forgot her name), they managed to smuggle Kaiba away from Popo.

Now, the question remains: how did Kaiba get his first hole. Before he crashed in front of Neiro, he already had a hole inside of him, which suggests that he lost his memory due to some sort of shock before that. Also, what role is the plant Kaiba going to play in the end? And why did the memory-guy alter Neiro’s memory, if he was on her side? Was it to fool Popo?

Aagh, only two more episodes to go. I demand a second season. Or at least a series in the same style that goes on for longer than just 12 episodes! This series is too good for the treatment it’s getting.

I’m surprised that it’s taken me this long to realize, but a common theme of a Gonzo-series seems to be subtle jabs towards aristocracy. The best example of this is Trinity Blood: in that series, the Vatican is an important party, and yet the Pope is a shy and incapable 12-year old boy and women have been appointed at high-ranking functions. Or take Hellsing: a series about a bunch of blood-thirsty vampires who justify themselves through the queen of England.

But also some of their other series show similar themes. The shinsengumi in Peace Maker Kurogane aren’t necessarily royalty, but they were a high-ranked organization, back in those days; and infamous for their immoral acts, and there they’re portrayed as the good guys in that show. The less subtle attempts can be seen in anime as the Seven Samurai and Romeo x Juliet, where the enemies are basically the aristocrats. Now I also understand why the setting in Special A was so overblown, since that too was a way to mock the upper classes.

The series where these themes are the strongest is without a doubt Glass no Kantai. At heart, it’s a space opera and a satire of the aristocracy: the entire series plays throughout the eyes of the aristocrats, and shows how in a futuristic setting, the nobles have taken back control over the democracies. It shows how they dress up in ridiculous clothes and act on their own selfish ideals, without much consideration for others. The pope may not be a twelve year old boy, but the guy does have a daughter, the emperor is gay and a shotacon, and the series is full with those kinds of references to make the aristocrats look ridiculous. Of course, it never tries to be a comedy.

This is indeed all behind a serious story. Like mentioned above, it’s a space-opera and shows how one of these nobles leads a rebellion for the common people. Throughout the series, we get treated to a healthy combination between space-battles and large-scale politics. The interesting thing is that there’s hardly any attention for small-scale politics, and there’s hardly any focus at the common people (again, this has probably been done to show how little the lives of common people mattered to your average aristocrat).

The storyline is a pretty interesting one, and it evolves as the series goes on. The problems with this series lie in the storytelling, however. The entire series is full of small inconsistencies and left-out scenes that feel like riding over a bumpy road with broken suspensions. They break the flow that the storyline is trying to create. The best example of this is the concepts of “air”. This series has actually managed to create quite an ingenious galaxy, where there aren’t any planets, but rather small chunks of land on which everyone lives, and which can be linked together. I personally loved this idea, but it’s as if the creators didn’t spend enough time to flesh them out and think of how these chunks of land would retain their atmosphere. The result that some random places in space suddenly contain air, and while others don’t.

And there is of course the animation. The animation in this series is horribly inconsistent, and ranges from pretty to downright abysmal. This series is like Hatenkou Yuugi or Kiss Dum: there’s a project with potential, which gets held down by one or more very lazy staff-members. In the case of Glass no Kantai, I think that te producers are to blame. They didn’t realize that creating an anime takes this much of an effort, and as a result the rest of the staff had to rush through their work in order to get their work done in time. As a result, this series lacks polish, since there was no time to check for any bugs or inconsistencies, which resulted in beauties like this one. It’s not that Glass no Kantai was held down by a small budget, but rather the time-constraints that worked against it, and a good producer should be able to have known this.

Despite this mediocrity, though, I liked Glass no Kantai. It had a clear vision, which is something that can’t be said of, say, Dragonaut. And the storyline, how botched up it may be, does come together in the end. It’s interesting: the past two series I’ve watched definitely had their flaws, and were at times tedious to get through, but their final episodes did end the series with a great enough climax; something which definitely can’t be said for every other series.

Short Synopsis: Sora travels to Tokyo, has her first day at school and meets her classmates.
Highlights: Very detailed storytelling, but where did that truck come from?
Overall Enjoyment Value:7,5/10
Okay, so even though everybody and his dog will probably end up blogging this, I’ve decided to cover it. I haven’t seen the first season yet, but apparently you don’t need to have watched it in order to enjoy this one. It’s got a warm slice of life feeling, even though plenty of things are happening. Sora is quite a likable female lead, and I like how the creators gave everyone in Sora’s class his or her own identity. The backgrounds are also awesome: there were plenty of times where I couldn’t tell whether they were live-action or painted. It’s just going to be a bitch, trying to take screenshots of them, since there are hardly any good shots of the characters. The camera is either too far or too close the character’s faces. ^^;

This show does have its flaws, mostly in terms of coincidences. Out of all the houses in Tokyo, Sora ends up in the same as her potential love interest. But the really strange thing that was that accident that happened in front of Sora (where the SAME GUY was also present). First a car crashes, only for a truck to actually fly from a bridge somehow. I guess that the creators were trying to show Sora’s powers a bit, but this could really have been more subtle. Especially considering how solid the rest of the series is.

Sora’s classmates are an interesting bunch. Sora’s obviously talented, but this episode also showed that her magic is rather uncontrolled and not polished yet (especially when she lets her emotions take over, which I guess is a trait that 90% of all mahou shoujo leads have), but her classmates are either much more precise, or still need to learn how to use magic properly. In any case, this episode showed the beginning of good chemistry between them, which is always a plus.