Again an episode in which two chapters cropped in order to get to the new material as soon as possible. It was to be expected, but for once I have to say that the original series handled it better. Especially the return to Resembool-arc needs a full episode in order to have its full impact. Half an episode is just too little to make the most out of Armstrong gradually understanding the situation that Ed and Al are in.

In the first half of the episode, Marco suddenly turns up. It’s an interesting decision of the creators to introduce him like this: he simply was at the wrong time at the wrong place and Armstrong happened to see him. While chances of this happening are of course very slim, it could happen, since the guy seems to be travelling by train often. It’s obviously flawed, but somehow, I’m buying it. The short length and early death of Basque Gran also had also an extra advantage, since we didn’t have to watch endless scenes of Marco getting emo when Basque Gran discovers him.

But the interesting news is that we should be getting to the really new material in three or four episodes with a bit of luck, if my memory doesn’t fail me. The next episode is probably going to be about the research in the library, then the next episode is probably going to deal with Laboratory five, and after that it’s going to get interesting, since that bugger of a Shou Tucker is dead so someone else needs to guide Ed into trying to make that Philosopher’s stone (or whatever it was that they did in the manga).

Bones has been a strange production company in terms of adaptations. Ignoring that their endings usually fall short, they often try to add things to their adaptations to make them better. The original season did the same, and it really did some scenes well: some of the quiet scenes that were added really added more life to the characters, but yeah: the problem was that huge string of filler episodes that just wasn’t interesting at all. Arcs like the Phantom Thief, the Fake Brothers or that one in which the broken Al gets lost and they spend an entire episode chasing him just to return the status quo: what really was the point of that? They really were a pain to get through.

But looking back, it’s amazing how much the creators managed to cut: at this point, we’re eleven episodes ahead of the original series already, and the result is already looking pretty competent. The question is of course going to be: will the creators slow down once they reach the new stuff?

Rating: (Enjoyable)
A light and laid-back episode and still it’s rushed, but it’s pretty solid so far and Marco’s story was much better than in the original.

And so it’s finally time for the characters to enter high-school, and this show still is as solid as a rock. As it turns out, there are two teams at the baseball club. The best one consists out of most of the older members and Azuma Yuuhei, it has as coach the daughter of the vice principal and a great coach with the potential to make it to Koushien. Oh, and also for some reason Useless Guy also got a spot in it. The second one has all of the new users, including Kou and Akaishi and some of the worst players of the higher years. They’ve got the old coach and an non-popular yet dedicated manager. I didn’t quite pick up what happened to Aoba, but my guess is that she ended up as the captain of some sort of third team, while she also practices with the lower boys team.

What’s also interesting is Azuma’s habit of not remembering the names and faces of people without talent, and there are four of them whose name he can remember. Of course Kou is one of them, but I wonder about the other three. My guess would be the guy who was yawning in class, Aoba, but apart from that I haven’t seen any hints yet at that fourth one. That’s the sneaky bit of this series: it keeps giving hints here and there but half of the time there is no way to tell what they exactly mean when you see them, and it’s always going to take a while before their meaning becomes really clear. The only reason why Aoba and Yawn-guy stood out to me was because Yawn-guy’s yawn-scene was pretty much parallel to Azuma arriving late, and my guess of Aoba is only because she caught Azuma’s eye when she walked past, possibly hinting at how she’s still sticking to his mind.

What I also like is how Akaishi, Kou and the other one whose name I forgot are pretty much trying to fool everyone with their secret weapon Kou. They even deliberately ended up in the lower team, in order to make as much of an impact as possible and I like how both Azuma and the new coach are starting to suspect that something is going on, but still can’t exactly put their fingers on what.

I’d just wish that there was somewhere a list with characters and their names. Even the official sites lacks it. While all characters are unique, it does remain pretty hard to keep track of all of the names of the side-characters.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
First episode at high-school with lots of things building up at the same time. Still no signs of weaknesses at all.

This post is going to contain slight spoilers of Kurokami 16, but I want to use that as an example of something that I fear that Valkyria Chronicles is going to turn into, since it was a good wake-up call for myself as well. The thing is, that a series may be spending lots of time building up, but it still needs to do this skillfully, and that’s what’s making me more and more worried. We’re six episodes in, and I’m not going to be able to maintain my suspense of disbelief much longer.

In the case with Kurokami, while it had an unimpressive first half I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt just like this series, in the hope that it was going to get better in its second half. And sure enough, the second half featured some juicy plot twists and character-development, but what I failed to notice (or rather refused to notice) was the fact that the battles were too orchestrated in order to make the lead characters win. The result popped up in episode sixteen, which pulled just about every Deus ex Machina imaginable and pretty much ruined all of the suspense of disbelief I had built up when it resurrected the lead character out of nowhere with no possibly explicable reason whatsoever. Even for Sunrise, it was one very blatant character-resurrection.

And that’s what I’m fearing is going to happen with Valkyria Chronicles: six episodes in, and I still haven’t been impressed with anything, and the strategical combat is unfortunately flawed. While I didn’t mention it last week, it just is too hard to belief that this battle-hardened commander of the enemy troops would be fooled by a simple tactic to split up an army into two halves. I can’t see how he couldn’t have done something to that tank. I hoped that this general stupidity would fade, but it’s still there, and even gotten more out of hand in the current episode. It’s got me very worried that this series isn’t going to be able to pull off a good fight when the second half arrives and it needs to deliver. Right now the only solid part of this show is its cast of characters, but when the creators are just going to dumb down their opponents so that they can win, then I don’t think that the character-development is going to be able to save this show.

At the moment, I’m really starting to regret continuing to blog this show in favour of Natsu no Arashi, which really has been getting better and better, unlike what I’ve seen in Valkyria Chronicles so far. If I recall correctly, this was mostly because of the large amount of people who didn’t want me to stop blogging it, but at the moment I still can’t see whether the commitment is going to be worth it. It may have been that this episode was just plain dull, but if this goes on I’m probably going to drop this series at the end of this season, in favour for one of the new shows of the Summer Season.

And yeah, this episode was pretty much a disaster. We already knew that Alicia wasn’t too bright, but this episode established just about everyone as an idiot. Especially Brigitte and Largo seemed completely different characters this time: their change is way too sudden. And I also was really disappointed to see that some support members of squad seven were just a bunch of stereotypes: finally there’s the chance to show a bit more of them, and the creators then use it to transform them into a bunch of paper bags. The only one I even remotely liked was the gay guy.

Rating: — (Dull)
It’s one thing to have a filler episode now and then. It’s another thing to completely change character-personalities and make everyone behave like complete morons.