Short Synopsis: Turandia is screwed, since they practically declared war against Tytania in the previous episode.
Highlights: The very first space-battle in five episodes… was rather underwhelming…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
I’m really getting curious about the second half of this series. I mean, so far the series has been much brighter than I originally suspected when I watched the first episodes, so what will this series be like once it really gets fired off? The fact remains that the director and original writer once came up with Legend of Galactic Heroes, so they should be able to deliver something worthwhile. But then again, Ryoko’s Case Files was also written by the writer of LOGH, and I dropped that one after only two episodes…

In any case, this episode was solid, nothing more, nothing less. Idris gets a sneaky plan to have Ariabart fight again against Turandia, because a loss would mean a definite degradation of his, and one less annoyance to be bothered about. Ariabart, however, blows the enemy forces away with a very simple tactic. The battle really was the least interesting part of this episode. I mean, it was over before you knew it. In fact, it’s hard to call it a fight, and it just felt like another political action that happened to involve a bunch of spaceships.

In any case, Tytania is one of the few series this Autumn season that I’m watching and not yet sold on in some way or another, but that was sort-of to be expected. With all the build-up that’s required for the setting, I’m not going to expect anything amazing for this series during its first half. What it needs to pay attention to is just flesh out the setting and characters, so that it can have a second half that makes up for the first half.

Short Synopsis: An old classmate of one of Ouri’s classmates turns into a shikabane.
Highlights: Wonderful animation.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Really, at this point you can consider me a fan of this series. I’m not often impressed by Gainax (at least, not as much as most people seem to), but I can’t deny that they’re a very unique production-company, and they can make some real hits when they get a concept right.

What was so awesome about this episode was the animation, in the way that it EXACTLY showed what happens if you combine the Gainax that likes bombastic visual effects with the down-to-earth and subtle director of Gilgamesh: it takes the best out of both worlds. This episode was really nicely animated, but the animation never forgot to remain realistic. There were so many subtle touches added that added a really raw feeling to the different fight scenes. there were no cheap visual effects used.

I’m also still surprised at how much I’ve come to like Ouri. He’s a whiny teenager who involves himself with the others against their will. Normally I’d hate his character, and yet I hardly ever feel annoyed at the guy, and he’s perfect to shed light at the strange nature of the Shikabane Himes.

In terms of the plot, since Keisei still is out of the count, this episode gave a proper introduction to another Shikabane-pair, who’ve taken over his duties while he remains out cold and unable to heal Makina’s arm. It seems that he and Keisei were introduced to the concept of Shikabane Himes by last week’s bad guy. Whatever he did with his own Shikabane Hime still remains a mystery, I guess.

Short Synopsis: Casshern meets a woman who wants to create a bell for her church.
Highlights: Interesting twist on religious themes.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
The thing I like best about this series is not the main storyline, of how Casshern has supposedly killed the unkillable Luna, but rather the random stories that shape the world around it. At this point, I really don’t care how Casshern killed that Luna, all I want to see is those excellent stories, where Casshern walks around and meets random people, who each have found their own way of living after the apocalypse he caused. The fact that it happened is at this point just necessary backstory.

This episode is about a robot-woman, who wants to be create a bell in order to proof that she can bring something new to the world. I personally loved the architecture of the factory that she planned to put it on, and the one who came up with it deserves a lot of credit. She actually tries to turn Casshern into that bell, but that one obviously fails.

In any case, I really love what the creators tried to tell with this episode, how the girl tried to create faith by sounding the bell to lonesome travellers in the area, and how the robots alongside her just want to play games and not care about anything.

And well, I guess that Ringo and Ouji are this series’ Ricardo and Lilio (from El Cazador). There’s no reason for them to go the same path as the lead characters, but they just do. Just like El Cazador: it was annoying at first, but after a while it just became part of the series’ premise, and I got bothered by it less and less, and the same thing applies to Casshern Sins. In fact, I found it a nice touch to see them meet up with the woman after Casshern left her, so that we could exactly see how she developed.

Short Synopsis: Michiko meets a local party-girl with a few problems of her own.
Highlights: Drunk Hatchin was awesome.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
With this episode, I’m convinced: Michiko e Hatchin is going to be an excellent series. The big question was of course whether the creators would make the random stories that will form the large part of this series well enough, and this episode proved that the creators are excellent at even that. This was one of these episodes where everything felt right, just like every single episode of this series since the second one.

I’m especially a big fan of how this episode progressed, and we got to know more and more about Pepe: she started off as a cocky whore, but then it turns out that she didn’t chose for that life of hers. She once was a rich lady, but lost everything when her parents died. It sounds really cheesy on paper, but the way the episode presented it made it really exciting.

I also really like Hatchin, even though she just had a supporting role in this episode. Seeing her getting drunk on what she thought was orange juice was hilarious, and I was also really surprised to see her still working at that restaurant, and how he hasn’t been sacked yet for just running off after the previous episode.