Short Synopsis: A-Laws launches its counterattack after last episode’s coup.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
The more I watch this series, the more insignificant Gundam Wing becomes. It really was one of the first series I watched, before I discovered fansubs, so its always going to remain something special for me, but the more I watch this series, the more I’m reminded at the huge obvious flaws of this series. Take the coup for example: it was there, it came from out of nowhere and the Rockefeller Foundation vanished completely into thin air when it was done: we never saw any of is characters back. No retaliation whatsoever.

This episode however showed that A-Laws isn’t giving up so easily, and even Pang Hercule’s fraction isn’t on the good side of the moral scale either: he simply wants to get rid of A-Laws, but does reckon that sacrifices have to be made. This episode overall was a unique one for this series in the way that it didn’t focus on close combat, but instead of high-scale political warfare between the two parties. A-Laws for example sends in a squad of robots that kill civilians, and then edit the image footage of this battle, to make it look like Hercule’s forces are the bastards. And at the end of the episode, they reveal yet another Memento Mori, about to wipe out the enemy forces.

It’s going to be interesting once the Innovators start involving themselves with this political polygon, but unfortunately it seems that they’re just going to sit by and watch everyone kill each other.

Short Synopsis: Yuzuki continues to try and prevent people from pulling the string… without much success.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Haha! Another excellent episode this time. This series’ finale promises to become better than the two previous seasons, if it’s already this busy with building up. It’s great to see Ai as the bad guy again, rather than the protagonist as the second season portrayed her. In this episode, Yuzuki really was just caught up in her own paranoia when she saw people fiddling with their mobile phones. She actually could have done something if it wasn’t for Ai who got in her way, which pretty much is a first in this season: normally she’d just use her dolls in order to get rid of any annoying people (i.e. Hajime in the first season and Kikuri in the second).

The story this episode was also quite interesting. A guy who genuinely likes a little girl sent a possible potential paedophile to hell: the guy hadn’t done anything yet, and if he wasn’t sent to hell, there’s no telling as to whether he would or would not have done something to that girl. I also have to admit: I didn’t see the ending coming until the lead character of this episode knocked over the picture frame: the potential paedophile had a girlfriend, and this girlfriend is now taking revenge on the one who sent her boyfriend to hell. Not only was it a great plot twist, but it also showed Yuzuki that preventing revenges really isn’t going to be that easy.

Now that this series is about to enter its final third, I’m really curious to see what the creators have planned for it. The first season featured some really creative cases that tested the differences between Hajime and Tsugumi to the limits, the second season revealed the background of the dolls, and in the same pattern, the third season should be about the war between Ai and Yuzuki. The question is of course going to be how far the creators are going to carry this: with already such an extreme first half of this season, what exactly are the creators planning? The past few episodes have been much more focused than the first ten episodes, but it has already focused at building up Ai vs. Yuzuki, so at this point there’s no telling what the creators are up to.

Short Synopsis: Rina arranges a date for Touya and Yuki but the two keep running past each other.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Well, this series continues on the same thread that it’s been setting for the past few episodes: very unpredictable, complex, hard to understand and full of subtle emotions. I’ve seen this series compared to School Days a few times, and I guess that the two are similar at their basic premises, though the big difference was that School Days was really badly written: characters went out of character just as the plot saw fit, there was hardly any attention to detail or attempt to flesh out the characters beyond their basic stereotypes.

And that’s indeed why I’m liking this series so much. The basic premise is a pretty simple one of a boy who interacts with a bunch of cute girls, but the creators really made the cast come alive, and avoid lumping their characters along with all of the thousand stereotypes that are already there. Okay, so what if they don’t know how to spell “north”, the backgrounds overall are pretty basic in this series, but in order to make up for it the foreground animation is really well done.

So, if I understood it correctly, Rina arranges a date between Touya and Yuki. However, since she calls Touya at five am he’s half awake when he hears the appointment and fails to correctly remember the time and place of arrival. At first I found it a bit strange why the guy didn’t have her cell phone number, but then I remembered that this series is set in 1986… not 2009. ^^; In any case, at the station he accidentally bumps into a middle school girl who mistakes him as a molester, so he also wastes precious time trying to get that misunderstanding straight, and at the meantime she also helps his indecisiveness at the moment.

What made this episode so hard to understand was the huge amount of small flashbacks that the creators threw in. Especially when watching raw, it is a bit confusing when suddenly characters start looking back at past events. I like this however a lot. Those flashbacks really feel like memories: they’re there, and before you know it they’re gone again. This series isn’t of long ten-minute flashbacks, but instead it presents these flashbacks as how a person would remember them. Very nice touch.

Another complex part is Rina again: what the heck is she up to? Why couldn’t Yuki arrange the date herself, and why did Rina have to phone Touya about it, at such a nonsensical time of five o’clock in the morning? What was she planning to do at the beginning of the episode, disguised and all? And how about Yayoi? I originally thought that she was simply taking on the role of the very strict manager, but her mood was completely different this time.