Short Synopsis: The fight against the evil car continues, and Ouri gets more insight into the bond between Makina and Keisei.
Highlights: Nice fight!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Now THIS is exactly why I’m watching this series! Best episode so far, and the fight this episode was among the best of the season so far. My idea of a god fight might be different from usual, but my favourite fights nearly always contain the three following ingredients:
- Good music
- Good choreography/direction
- And most importantly: character-development. Obviously about characters I care about. ^^;

This episode had all three of them, and so it’s no surprise that I loved this episode, and it totally made up for my.. er… tantrum after the previous episode.

I really expected Ouri’s whining to get in the way of the fight scene this episode, but instead he actually contributed to it. Okay, the middle of a fight may have not been the perfect time to start questioning Makina about why she’s fighting, but it sure made everything a whole lot more exciting. I think that with this episode, he fully understands the strange bond that has developed between Makina and Keisei, how the two of them swore to protect each other while they both worked towards their selfish wishes.

I also really liked how the creators made use of the fact that this is a Gainax-series, and how it would have been inevitable for people to compare this to Gurren Lagann. This episode laid a lot of parallels between Keisei and a certain character from Gurren Lagann. The creators kept hinting at how he was going to die. At the end of the episode, we’re still not sure if he lived or not (I think he lived, otherwise the episode would have gone off with a bigger bang), but even if he did live, this can just be one big build-up for the guy’s real demise, which still could very easily happen in this series. In any case, it’s a great way to make the viewer care about the characters. That’s also the big problem I had with Gurren Lagann at this point: it was nice and all, but I just couldn’t find myself to care about the characters, and consequently about the big plot twist of that series.

Short Synopsis: Michiko looks for Hana’s father while Hatchin finds a job.
Highlights: Number of episodes Hana’s hair lasted: 2,5.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Three episodes in, and I’m finally beginning to see the huge strength of this series. I originally went into this series, expecting this series to be some sort of cross between Samurai Champloo and El Cazador, with fun characters in fun and exciting fight scenes. The OP seemed to suggest the same, and that’s why the first episode disappointed somewhat because it was so damn serious.

I now see that the direction this series chose might be even better than just a fun-filled adventure. There still is some enjoyable banter here and there, but what this series really is about is the really colourful characterization, and the immense attention to detail that’s put into the dialogue to make it seem as realistic as possible, while keeping a solid pace. This series has the potential to become one of the hidden gems of the Autumn-season, but that all depends on how it decides to fill in the rest of the series. There’s no end goal in sight, so who knows?

In any case, in this episode Hatchin (who officially changes her name to Hatchin and cuts off her hair in this episode) and Michiko clash again when Michiko buys (read: steals) Hatchin a pair of shoes. Hatchin then tries to work off the shoes at a local restaurant. I think that she just thought that she’d be handing out plates and dishes, but an unexpected part of her job is trying to stop everyone who’s out for a free meal. At one point she gets carried away and chases a bunch of kids far into the city. Before she can deal with them, they reach their gang, and Hana has to stand in front of a guy with a gun.

I found it typical of Michiko that she refused to acknowledge the guy she slept with because he found another woman and got married. At least, that’s what I think happened, we never see this actually confirmed, it could be that she indeed got the wrong guy, but I think that if that was the case then Michiko wouldn’t be as gloomy as she was gloomy as she was here.

Short Synopsis: Dio is also out to kill Casshern, but it turns out that he knows quite a bit about him.
Highlights: The strange sort of sympathy from Casshern.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This episode gives a proper introduction to what are probably going to be the main antagonists of this series. Dio claims that Cashern was actually made by someone, in order to destroy all life within the world. There seems to be a guy named Briking Boss, who once saved the world as well, and Dio hopes to follow that guy’s footsteps.

The interesting part of this episode was how everyone around Casshern seems to view him in a different way: Lyuze bears a grudge against him, and yet this episode showed how she doesn’t want other to kill him, Dio wants to be the one to save the world, so he wants to kill him, the weaker robots want to be saved, so they beg for his death, the big robots simply accepted that they’re going to die anyway, so why not die with a small percentage of living, Ringo, even though Casshern scared the heck out of her in episode one, starts feeling a variation of the Stockholm-syndrome for him, and Ringo’s caretaker seems to not care, or he knows that it’s impossible to defeat Casshern no matter how he tries. So many different ways to look at Casshern, and that’s what makes this series so interesting.

What’s also interesting is that even though Dio claims to know all about Casshern, he doesn’t seem to know that he’s impossible to kill. Ringo’s caretaker (god, I need to know the name of that guy) claims that Luna was the same as he was once: she too didn’t die, and yet Casshern killed her, so he probably inherited whatever powers she had.