Short Synopsis: This episode starts a two-episode arc, centred in the jungle, far away from the civilized and cyberized world.
Highlights: Holon.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Too… many… shows… air on Tuesday…

In any case, this series continues to surprise me. It’s probably because the cast of characters is the best out of all the series that aired during Spring and Summer (just about the only thing at which Kaiba wasn’t number one). It’s strange, but the characters as Minamo, Souta and Haru feel like real people and Holon feels like a real advanced android, instead of just a bunch of characters. The amount of series that has characters that are this likable is really small, but every series with characters like this is absolutely worth it, even though hardly anything may happen.

While looking at the preview, at some forgotten ruins, I forgot for a moment that this is Real Drive we’re talking about, and expected some epic mystery plot or something similar. In the end, this turned out completely different, and much more focused at Minamo, as she explored the wonders of the jungle. But more importantly, this episode showed an interesting flaw of the technology in this series. In deserted places without much electronics, there’s something called “noise”, which upsets both cyberified humans and especially androids. Poor Holon even collapsed at the end of the series.

Seriously, this episode was just awesome, even if it was only about Minamo, giving her plant too much water, or freaking out over a bunch of large bugs. Seriously, this episode was hardly about anything and yet every minute of it was captivating somehow. Now that Kaiba has ended, Real Drive is well on its way to becoming my favourite series at the moment.

Short Synopsis: 044 and Garcia manage to flee to a mining planet as Luka returns to consciousness.
Highlights: Fillers? This series? Hah!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Ah, screw popular opinion, this series rocks. I’m not sure what exactly it is, but it’s simple, yet effective. When looking at the plot in the big picture, it’s nothing special, nor anything pretentious, and yet the storyline keeps flowing smoothly throughout the episodes, with hardly any time to take a break. It’s the type of series you can just sit and watch, and at the same time it’s full of passion and manliness. The soundtrack is among the best of the season, I love Osamu Dezaki’s style of directing and the art style is a treat for any Osamu Tezuka fan, to see his style in a more serious and cyberpunk setting. In other words, I’m pretty much sold on this series.

This episode introduces a new character, another clone who seems to have returned to a mining planet that harvests a new sort of energy. The guy is quite an eccentric, but he seems to have chosen the side of 044, and I think that he’s had his problems with Daxus II as well, or else he probably wouldn’t have left him. He’s a bit stupid (beating up those goons will only make Daxus send stronger goons).

My favourite part of this episode was Luka’s bit, though. The guy has been unconscious for episodes, has no idea what went on and when he gets back to his comrades he gets accused of high treason because his biggest enemy turns out to have saved his life. I’m eager to see the moment where he sees 044 again: 044 should still be in love with him, and I have no doubts that the guy is curious as to why the heck he was saved.

Short Synopsis: This case is divided over two episodes, and it’s about a serial murderer who has been killing people near train tracks.
Highlights: A new interesting character from Maki’s past.
Overall Enjoyment Value:8/10
Hmm, let’s see what this two-episode arc can deliver for this series. It’s been a strange episode so far, and I’m having a bit of trouble understanding it. At first sight, it seems like a simple case: a guy kills someone on the train and then kills all eye-witnesses. But then the episode pulls out all sorts of weird stuff like the culprit looking at fingernails and an old acquaintance of Maki. Seriously, this episode kept changing focus: you first thing it’s about a high school getting murdered, then it’s about Aoki’s wedding, then it’s about the serial murderer, then the stabbing on the train… Plus… there were much more people on that train who watched it, and the killer suddenly disappears and a bald young man with a hat shows up.

This episode was surprisingly more complex than it appeared at first… if I understood correctly, Miyoshi (Maki’s old friend) is the head of the autopsy department and she often sleeps right next to the corpses. Somehow, her fingers are related to the case… At one point, she also mistook Aoki for the real culprit of the case, but why would she think that the culprit would visit her at the police, of all places? Does that mean that she’s related to the case or something?

Especially the last of the episode has me puzzled… her fingers seem to be the same as the ones, seen from the brains of one of the victims, but what would that have to do with anything? Then at the same time, the guy who committed the first murder shows up dead in a train cabin, having killed himself.

Argh, I need to watch that next episode in order to get what the heck is going on here… my money right now is on the bald guy with the hat being the culprit, but don’t ask me why.

Short Synopsis: Will Porfy be able to find Mina in Rome?
Highlights: World Masterpiece Theatre: masters at delaying the inevitable.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10
Holy crap! Mark, you were absolutely right: the creators had no intention to reunite Porfy and Mina so easily whatsoever, but they made this so god damn close, it’s annoying, and yet it’s exactly episodes like this that show the huge strength of the World Masterpiece Theatre series. This episode restored my faith back into this series entirely.

The episode starts as Mina stands at the market square, and advertises for Isabella. It works, and Isabella gets more customers than ever. Porfy meanwhile still has no clue where to look for Mina (apparently Apollo never managed to convince him of Mina’s whereabouts), and Olga continues to steal the bags of innocent tourists with an interesting smirk on her face.

Isabella compliments Mina on how well business went that day, so she takes her out for a bit of dinner. Her husband and father, unfortunately, weren’t as lucky and just lost nearly all of their money from a bunch of talented card-players. That evening, Porfy gets treated especially well by Bruno, the innkeeper. Olga then arrives and gives him an overly large sweater that she managed to steal.

When Isabella and the others are having dinner, Carlos is obviously angry, as his father mentions that in such a large city, there’s bound to be other talented card players. Isabella then apologizes to Mina, at how the restaurant they’ve chosen is too crowded, but Mina just shrugs it off and Carlos gets annoyed at Mina again.

The next day, Porfy gets a BIG clue from one of the guys who stands at the market. He’s seen Mina along with Isabella that day, and he reckons that they’ll be back in the next one. Porfy rushes home, happy that he’s about to find Mina. As he and Olga eat their dinner, one of the other guests gets annoyed by the poor quality of the soup that got served. Olga secretly makes fun of her behind her back. Carlos and his father meanwhile return back from another day of work, and this time they made big bucks. They reckon that they’ll still remain in Rome for one day (!!), and then travel further.

The next day, Porfy gets woken up loudly by the hotelkeeper, and gets falsely accused of having stolen the bag of the above-mentioned woman. He tries to explain that he hasn’t stolen anything (obviously, Olga was behind this). The attitude of the hotelkeeper changes entirely, and he locks him way into his basement, telling him to stay there until he tells the truth. The woman tells the hotelkeeper to call the police, but the hotelkeeper thinks that Porfy’s a bit too young for that. Olga meanwhile acts like nothing happened…

Porfy tries to escape, but fails. At the same time, Mina and Isabella get ready to work that day as Carlos flirts with Isabella a bit and tells Mina to make sure to work properly. They work throughout the day, as Porfy is still locked up. He tries to escape at one time by pushing the hotelkeeper aside, but gets caught very quickly by a very angry Bruno.

One of the market salesmen (the one who told Porfy about Mina and Isabella) was about to tell Isabella about a “guy who was looking for them”, but he gets interrupted by a customer. Carlos meanwhile, gets a visit from the two guys from two days back, who took away all their money. They beat them up and take away all their money. Carlos then suggests leaving Rome immediately, so they go to Isabella to pick her up.

Back at the hotel, Olga is about to leave as the angry woman comes down to complain again, and she accidentally opens Olga’s bag. Lots of stuff then pop up, and Olga flees, while Bruno goes to Porfy and tries to apologize. Porfy rushes to the market square, though, without paying attention to him, but Mina is already gone. When he talks to the market salesman of the day before, he tells them that Isabella and Mina were picked up by two people and boarded a bus, probably to continue their journey to a nearby city, but he doesn’t know what kind of bus, since they all look like each other. The episode ends with a shot of that very same bus, as it leaves the city of Rome.

Now THIS arc is exactly why I love this series so much. The arc was very short for this series, it only lasted three episodes, of which one was a recap. And yet it was chockfull of cross-references, flashbacks, foreshadowing and symbolism. I should have known that it wasn’t a coincidence that Porfy made friends with a thief. Especially since Olga was portrayed as someone who may do things against the law, but she minded her own business and was portrayed as a friendly and rather witty woman. The former arcs also always made Porfy make friends with genuine and honest people, so you wouldn’t expect this arc to be any different, and yet she does get Porfy is so much trouble, because he trusted the wrong person.

And really, now that I’m getting to know this series, I’m getting really worried about Mina. I mean, how many times has it been that Carlos has looked down upon or criticized Mina? If that isn’t building up, then I don’t know anymore. Nothing really happened between them in this episode, but there still are 21 episodes left for this series, so there’s plenty of time for them to get on each other’s nerves. Ultimately, Isabella is seeing Mina as a replacement for her daughter, and at one point this really has to go wrong, and the question is: can Porfy really find her before that happens?

Next up should be random travel-arcs again, so I’m not sure what the creators have planned. I really hope that they’re going to be more interesting than the Sicily-arc. It’s strange… there was hardly any build-up there, and it felt much more ad-hoc than the rest of this series.

Short Synopsis: Natsume goes after a promise that Reiko once made but never fulfilled.
Highlights: How does this series manage to stay so heart-warming and relaxing?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
This episode showed yet again that this series has enough inspiration for its stories, even though the main premise of Natsume, returning the names of the youkai only takes about five seconds. This time, we see that Reiko did more than just take a bunch of names when she was young, and this episode shows that she also was a blatant liar. It’s frustrating: we hardly know anything about her. All that was revealed was that she’s basically being portrayed as the antagonist of this series, and how forcefully collected the names of many different youkai. But we never get to see her intention behind it, why did she do these things in the first place? What did she look like when she grew up?

This episode was all about good friends, getting into fights, symbolized by Natsume’s two classmates who got into a fight, and just as easily made up again. The youkai in this episode also got into a fight with his best friend (because he let his name get taken away by Reiko), but the difference here is that they never bothered to look for each other, and just stayed at the same place, which yet again shows that the sense of time for Youkai is considerably different from that of humans. They seem to have no problem with waiting for decades at the same spot, and talk about things that happened fifty years ago like they happened yesterday.

I’m really not sure about that black-haired classmate of Natsume… he appeared (and disappeared) a bit too coincidentally in front of Natsume when he was needed the most, and at the same time he can’t be another youkai, as Natsume’s other classmate was perfectly able to see him. Unless, of course, said classmate (I believe she was the class president) can also see them occasionally.

Short Synopsis: This time, a woman with a Kansai-ben accent is being chased by the foundation.
Highlights: Fun chase scenes.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Definitely the best episode of Mission-E so far. It really was one of these episodes that was fun to watch, and ended with a powerful cliff-hanger. It was interesting, seeing how Maori at the beginning of the episode got talked to by one of her classmates, and she got invited to spend time together, which she only hastily declined because a sudden mission popped up. That is indeed the perfect way to get yourself separated from the rest of the class.

And god… it really took me a while to figure out that the shades-guy from the foundation was actually Adol Brinberg, simply because his personality probably made the biggest shift out of all the members of the cast of Mission-E. There’s absolutely nothing of his playfulness that was seen in Code-E. This is probably because he lost his sister: because of her, he could goof off, because she’d keep him in line so that they could still finish their missions.

I’m not sure whether the woman in this episode was Mils Brinberg or not, but the signs point towards yes. She wasn’t just a regular woman, being able to outrun the foundation for so long, she had a suspicious mole that I could have sworn Mils had as well, and she could have died her hair. I’m just not sure why she was speaking in Kansai-ben, but I can imagine how she could have received Type E when the resort went haywire, back at the end of the first season. What’s also interesting is that she doesn’t seem to work for the foundation, or at the very least Adol doesn’t know about her, and yet she kidnapped Maori at the end of the episode.