Short Synopsis: Fan gets captured for real this time, and meets two punks with really weird haircuts.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Okay, so next week there’s going to be another hiatus, and after that it’s finally time for this series to get fired off: double episodes until the end of its run! This episode built things up pretty nicely: the bomb is about to go off, and it’s promising to be a really interesting finale.

This episode really showed how Miranda and Fan managed to get so far in the first place: the bad organization of Tytania, and in a way it does make a lot of sense: Tytania is a mighty empire which has had a huge power and influence for centuries, and that’s the thing: when Tytania grew to its power, it would surely have been impossible to defeat it, but through the years, the corruption has increased more and more, and right now we’re at the point where the leaders are too used to being the supreme power: they have an incredible lack of experience in actual battles where they face a threat.

The biggest symbol of this of course is Ajman: the guy is the head of Tytania, but the bugger hasn’t done absolutely anything for himself. He’s just watching from a distance and tells others what to do. He lacks the experience to properly run a country, probably because he’s never had to face any challenges. History has shown the same thing: the only reason why the French revolution succeeded, for example, was because the French royalty at the time consisted out of a bunch of incompetent narcissistic idiots. Alexander The Great in his time conquered more than half of the known world, and yet this empire fell apart completely once he died. All of this is simply due to the lack of quality leadership.

this episode shows this really well: Zalish wants to get his hands on Fan Hulic, but the Estar administration refuses to let the Tytania control them completely, even though they’re part of the Tytanian territory. So of course Zalish rushes in with a city’s worth of soldiers in order to teach Estar a lesson, but this chaos is of course going to be perfect for Fan and the others in order to escape. I must say that I’m impressed: during the first ten episodes or so, I really thought that this series lacked substance, but right now it’s proving to be quite a thought-provoking series.

In fact, It also makes me wonder why all of the evil empires in anime don’t suffer from the same problem: internal strife and crappy organizations. For some reason, 90% of every evil empire (and this usually also goes for the good empires) are functioning like perfectly oiled machines with perhaps only a bunch of incompetent idiots who are tasked with the low-level jobs.

Short Synopsis: Hatchin goes after a TV-star who looks like Hiroshi.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Haha, as if Hatchin hadn’t already proven her awesomeness! In this episode, she manages to break into the house of a famous TV-star, breaking his window in the process because she thought he had something to do with Hiroshi. The episode was a bit hard to understand (Kansai-ben in Brazil?! What the…?), but if I understood correctly then this guy was scouted along with Hiroshi, but then Hiroshi left again. At this point, I’m really not sure what’s up with the guy: on one hand he’s running away all the time, but on the other hand he does find the time to appear on TV and in the newspaper, and yet at the same time he takes on a small job as a truck driver. Is this really the same guy?

And on a completely different note: Hatchin’s outfit in this episode rocked! Not only did it look even more awesome than usual, but for the first time she’s not afraid to hide the tattoo on her belly, even though we’ve only seen it like what… one time before? I must say that she gets more adorable with every single episode: her big motive in this episode for finding Hiroshi isn’t for her to find her own father, but instead she wanted to see Michiko’s smile back, who finally showed some signs of happiness when Hiroshi finally seemed within her reach (including a very strange blood-nose). That’s just too damn cute.

At this point, I’m pretty sure of my top 3 shows from the past Fall Season: 1) Mouryou no Hako, 2) Casshern, 3) Michiko e Hatchin. While these three are without a doubt my favourites of the shows that started airing in that season, their order is still debatable, depending on how they chose to end themselves. Michiko e Hatchin has pretty much labelled me as a Manglobe fan, and along with Bee-Train, they’re the only studio of which I’m pretty much guaranteed to blog every one of their TV-Series that come out. I so hope that this series is going to be more than 22 episodes. Not because the finale isn’t going to fit there (it’s actually the perfect length for such a series), but I just don’t want the goodness of this series to end. This show could ave gone on for twenty more episodes if it wanted to without ever getting dull.

Short Synopsis: Another one of the emperor’s wives falls in love with Genji.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Yeah, now I’m sure: aside from Birdy 2, Genji Monogatari is my favourite show of the series that premiered in the winter-season so far. The Don Juan of anime; it sounded like a pretty strange formula, but it worked out really well. This really has been a consistently excellent series so far, with hardly any moments or signs of weakness. It’s a shame that the subs have been virtually non-existent, but then again that was to be expected.

In this episode, Genji performs a piece of a Noh Theatre play (at least, that’s what it looked like), and there he gets noticed by what looks like one of the lower wives of the emperor. The two of them start flirting and before you know it they end up together in bed, even though for a woman of her position, it would probably be very bad if she were found out.

And yet again, Osamu Dezaki worked his visual magic again: some of the visual effects in this episode looked really nice. It’s always great to see someone with the attitude of “screw conventions, I’m going with my own style!”, because it’s here where the most interesting art in anime comes from. I’m a huge sucker for anime whose art style doesn’t try to want to be like other anime, but instead tries to go with its own.