Short Synopsis: Natsume takes care of a strange kind of egg he finds in his garden.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
just when I thought that this series couldn’t get any more adorable after the fox-kid. This episode showed me that the creators have not lost their touch, like I originally feared, and they could actually surpass the first season one of these days.

This episode shows how Natsume takes care of an egg he finds in a nest in his garden, after the mother abandoned it. It probably was because the mother couldn’t see the egg, and therefore Natsume decides to take care of it, and eventually it hatches the cutest little youkai you could imagine. this episode was really good in displaying the strange mother-child relationship (and in Nyanko-sensei’s case it would probably be something like an uncle-child relationship) with this youkai, which they later name Tama.

And since this is a show about Youkai, the ending is a bit different from what happens in nature. When the time comes from Tama (a bird Youkai, after all) to spread his (her? After the fox-kid I’m not sure anymore) wings, s/he simply refuses to eat in order to avoid saying goodbye to Natsume, who did so many kind things to her.

One thing where the first and two seasons sort-of differ from each other is Nyanko-sensei: his banter is much more extreme than what it was in the first season, and he wasn’t exactly tight-lipped in the first season either. I guess it’s his way of warming up to living with Natsume (either that, or the writers are getting more confident and creative :P).

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.

Short Synopsis: Senkawa&co visit a refugee camp for a school project.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
ZOMG, is this really the same Birdy the Mighty as the first season? That first season was a nice series and all, but the teen-aged romances got into the way, with especially Senkawa being annoying. And here the second season comes and it’s been consistently awesome so far, with still no signs that the series has hit its height!

This episode may not have been as dark as the previous one (there was quite a bit of comedy there), but nevertheless it was a very important one: it showed where the people who lost their homes thanks to Nakasugi ended up, and with such detail! It’s awesome to see that the creators take their time to show these things: it shows that this isn’t a show where buildings are simply made out of cardboard: if you destroy a building once, it’s simply happens to be a building where no people live and magically disappear by the next episode. It’s simple, but I see many series forgetting this. It really adds more believability to the setting.

And yet again, this episode featured some gorgeous animation. Especially the scene where Natoru got beaten up by those punks was downright brutal, but also the quiet scenes were full of life (and really reminded me of Noein’s animation, which is ALWAYS a good thing ^^;). It’s also amazing how much depth the relationship between Natoru and Birdy already has. As it turns out, Birdy always used to save him when they were kids, and it looks like this still hasn’t changed a bit now that they’ve grown up, even though Natoru changed so incredibly.

This really reminds me of Escaflowne (again directed by the same guy, and again one of my absolute favourites): the first half of the series was good, but didn’t exactly catch my attention, but the second half showed an incredible increase in quality. Here too: the first season was nice and all, but the second season seems to be improving on it significantly in every single way!

Short Synopsis: Space battles? What space battles?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This series really is something different. Here we have Fan Hulic, he’s wanted by the entire country of Tytania, he’s just won a big battle against the empire, he’s seen as a hero now even more, so what does he do? He spends an entire episode staying at the house of a little girl and doing silly dances. Don’t get me wrong, this series is awesome, but SO NOT in the way I thought it’d be. XD

Because yeah, the fact remains that this would have been a pretty boring episode otherwise: Fan is depressed over the death of Lyra and sees the light at the end of this episode. It’s really one of these typical episodes that you see everywhere, just like the beach-episode or the “defeat the big bad guy”-finale-episode: they appear so often that they really get predictable and boring unless something special or extraordinary spices it up. In this episode this was Kallen and her strange yet energetic personality. And that mother of hers who doesn’t find it strange for her teenaged daughter to bring a strange man who’s about twice her age home of course. ^^;

And Bertrand! The poor bugger actually survived! The creators of this series really love to bring people back from the dead, only to let them struggle like a fish on dry land for an episode before fileting them for real. In this episode he’s given a final chance to find Fan Hulic, but instead of immediately arresting the guy, Idris commands him to wait things out for a bit longer. This allows Fan to escape before the forces to defeat him can even properly arrive. And that’s saying a lot, since Fan really wasn’t that focused on fleeing this episode.

Oh, and to close off. I don’t often praise this series for its gorgeous visuals, but I do have to say that this episode featured some pretty backgrounds. Could it actually be that the creators saved the biggest part of the budget for this series for the second half? Now that’s a new one.

Short Synopsis: Geni tries to conquer his next target.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
I really have no idea why I always tend to blog the shows with the most difficult dialogues. Especially with this series, it’s going to be really hard for me to try and figure out what the heck is going on, since not only is the dialogue incredibly complex, the show also hardly uses any concrete visual storytelling, and instead it uses its visuals mostly as emotions and symbolism. It’s the same with White Album in a way: you really need to pay attention, otherwise the episodes get an entirely different meaning.

Noitamina is a very interesting timeslot indeed. While usually most major anime air either in the spring or autumn-season, for this timeslot the best series have nearly always premiered in the winter- and summer-seasons, and with the exception of Moyashimon and Hataraki Man the shows that premiered in the timeslot during the spring and autumn seasons so far have been disappointments (mostly due to the fact that they tried to stuff too much source material into only 11 episodes).

Which does bring us to a potential problem with this series: the original story consisted out of 54(!) novels. How the heck is Osamu Dezaki planning to stuff that into just eleven episodes? The first episode covered the first novel, which still leaves 53 left. However, I have heard that the guy is very good at summarizing with his adaptations of Air and Clannad into movies (I’ve yet to see them, though), so who knows what he can to with this story?

And don’t get me wrong, so long as I’m not seeing any signs of a rushed storyline, then this series is among my favourites of the shows, premiered at the past Winter-Season, along with Birdy the Mighty Decode 2. While not rushed, it also doesn’t waste any time to get to the development of Genji, and the first two episodes so far have been very powerful romance. Osamu Dezaki is also really in his element again with his visual effects. While the animation is again not that impressive, the amount of filters and camera-shots really work.

Short Synopsis: We learn what happened to Atsuko after episode 10.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Good to finally see a bit of quality airtime devoted to Atsuko. Most of her airtime so far has simply been a few minutes here and there, but this time she has an entire episode for herself, and she uses it quite well. It’s a shame that there wasn’t even a second of Hatchin, but nevertheless I really enjoyed this episode.

What I especially loved is how much Atsuko hates her new job. She never actually mentions it, but her expression says a thousand words. The once proud police woman who climbed her way up from a mere street-punk is now cleaning cans at a local Aztec ruin and chasing runaway pet monkeys. This episode was mostly about her getting her motivation back, and that’s mostly done by her, meeting a child who strangely resembles a younger Michiko. (And her, finding a newspaper article about Hiroshi’s newest movie, of course).

I do hope that Satoshi is also going to get an episode like this one. Like most people in this series, he’s been a very interesting character, but only appeared in one episode for as far as my memory doesn’t deceive me. Imagine the potential when he gets even more time devoted to fleshing out his character. But then again, that’s probably going to come along with Hiroshi’s development, who also is about to get into the spotlights. What is the guy doing on the silver screen, and if he’s that rich, then why did he abandon his daughter to some random evil pastor family?

Short Synopsis: Sougi and Itsuki tell about their background.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Now this is more like it! This is exactly the reason why I came to like the first season so much, and I’m glad to see that the second season is going to be more than a weak sequel of the first. Sure, this episode was much about a side-plot of this series, but a bit of background never hurts, and this episode definitely shows that the creators haven’t lost their touch, after the rather disastrous fanservice-problem of the previous three episodes.

This episode was all about Sougi and Itsuki, who in their early days looked suspiciously like your average shounen-lead-pair: a dorky male lead gets contacted by a female with power, in this case because Itsuki hit a truck and happened to form a contract with Sougi before she turned into a berserking Shikabane, complete with the introduction-scene at school (again…).

But thankfully there was much more to that episode than just that. While Itsuki wasn’t as tormented as Makina by revenge, the two of them had their own problem. Itsuki was practically a corpse, and yet Sougi saw her as a regular girl, without any special powers. This caused him the huge scars that he has on his body, simply because he wanted to protect Itsuki from getting hurt, even though she could simply regenerate her wounds, while he couldn’t.

So, yes. The fanservice was definitely a problem, but this series does know what it is: entertainment. As much as I’ve ranted on these past three episodes, they never failed to entertain me, and especially this episode was full of adrenaline, even though there were plenty of quiet parts. If the creators can keep the same mood for the rest of the series, with Makina’s storyline and all, then I’ll call this second season a success.

The next episode should be either fun or a complete disaster: Makina is being transported by a group of monks, without Ouri, and suddenly one of the seven stars attacks, impersonating Keisei. Let’s see where that one goes.

Short Synopsis: This episode is all about Midori
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
This episode was quite an interesting take on the “calm before the storm”-trope. The big climax of this series has definitely still to happen: the Zanbani and Kujireika have yet to even arrive at the village of the Quickening Chamber, and yet this episode formed an excellent conclusion for the Midori-storyline. We’ve already seen that Xam’ds can be pulled out of despair with the right catalysts, so of course the same would happen with Midori. The past few episodes have been a bit too generous on the death count, so it’s good to see that people actually survive, despite the predictability.

It really seemed that Midori never really got to say a proper goodbye with her mother, and it also seems that the communication between the two wasn’t going well. Because of that, Midori always felt a big gap between the two of them, since she didn’t know what to say at the right time and her mother was an impatient person.

I´m really curious as to whether this series can pull off a worthy finale. It might seem obvious that series that are slow and focus a lot on build-up will automatically feature excellent climaxes, but as series as Ghost Hound showed, this isn’t always trivial. It’s all going to depend on how the creators are going to interpret the fight between Akiyuki and the Hiruken Emperor, and whether they can throw in some juicy plot twist that fit within the series and make the ending rushed.

In any case, the animation in this episode was so awesome. I’m not sure where Bones got the budget for this series, but it’s one heck of a budget well spent.