Oh my god. I really did not expect this. Let me say that this season features lots and lots of great and excellent series, and so I never considered Konnichiwa Anne as the top of this season.

But seriously, this episode was without a doubt the single most emotionally powerful episode of the entire Spring Season so far. I expected that the entire episode would deal with Elisa getting emo over and over about not wanting to leave Anne behind, and then it pulls this. I so did not expect that.

We start the episode with a little recap of what happened in the previous episode, and we see how the conversation between Elisa and her father goes on for a bit longer. Bert tells her that if Elisa’s going to stay, just because of Anne, she’s going to regret it every day, and blame Johanna and Anne for it, and hate him even more than she already does, and he tells her that her life is of her own, and that she should leave the house.

Elisa leaves, saying that she saw a side of her father that she never knew he had. Anne meanwhile is running away into the nearby forest, which is quite troubling for Johanna as she’s approaching the birth of her new child and wanted someone to rub her back. Elisa goes to look for her, and quickly finds her. When they get back home, Johanna again reminds Anne of how she’s not going to London. Anne then goes to her room and tries to pack her stuff along with that of Elisa, in the hope of getting to travel with Elisa, but the wedding ring on Elisa isn’t helping much.

The next couple of days, Anne doesn’t say anything and just quietly and angrily does her job, even scaring off Horace and Edward, no matter how Elisa asks her to start speaking. Roger then arrives at their home, and the two of them make up for the time in which Elisa ran away in the next episode. As Anne watches them, she promises herself not to fall in love (and that explains why sin the original series she never really was that interested in love).

Elisa tells Roger about Anne’s behavior, and roger tells her that he managed to get the ship’s tickets, and they’ll be leaving the next week. There’s no time left, so he figures that they’re going to have to rush the marriage, but Elise doesn’t want to get married without Anne being there. That’s why Roger proposes to delay the marriage, and simply go to London with the two of them.

At the day that Elisa is going to leave, she says goodbye to her mother, who comments on how the baby inside of her is remaining awfully quiet. Elisa then says goodbye to her little brothers and gives them a farewell hug. Anne still is nowhere to be found, so Elisa and Roger wait until there’s no time left, but Anne stubbornly remains hidden under Elisa’s desk. Bert gives his own subtle farewell gesture, and the two of them leave. Anne realizes too late that she still wants to say goodbye, tries to run after the carriage but is just too far behind. Horace then walks up to her with the message that the baby is coming.

Bert went to call the local midwife, so it’s up to Anne to take care of Anne. Anne immediately snaps out of her gloom and focuses on getting hot water and getting the boys out of the way, while commenting on how painful it looks. Anne helps massage Johanna’s back a bit, but it doesn’t really help ease the pain. Bert meanwhile is in bad luck because the midwife happened to be on a trip, and so she can’t make it in time for the baby to be born. This means that Anne has to be the one to help deliver the baby. When the baby is halfway out, Anne comments on how it has a blue colour, and so Johanna screams at her to get the baby out.

Bert arrives just too late, and Anne meanwhile is crying because of the things that she was forced to do. It’s a boy, by the way. The next morning, Bert gives Anne the opportunity to name the new baby, and so Anne walks away exhausted. She talks a bit to her reflection in one of the cupboards and then comes up with the new name: Maya (or however you spell it, it was really hard for me to make out how to actually spell it), and the episode ends.

So oh my god, where to start? I know that I talked down on this series when it first started, but with this episode it definitely earned its title as World Masterpiece Theatre. Sure, it was a bit convenient for Johanna to give birth right after Elisa left, but this really caught me unexpectedly. We’re all busy with the sadness that someone important is leaving Anne’s life, and then suddenly there are much more important things to worry about: delivering that damned baby. Especially considering how it so easily could have gone wrong. It really is such a task for such a young girl to just pull that baby out of a woman, and really it could have gone horribly wrong if she didn’t. That birth-scene and especially the aftermath was more emotionally powerful than anything I have seen thus far in this season.

And Bert! I know that the guy is a lazy bum. I know that he is a horrible father and husband and slacks off too much. And yet I love his character and how it’s getting fleshed out. Now that he’s found a job, we really can see a different side of his. That one of a cold, lazy and useless, but caring father. The way he completely lost his cool when he was waiting for the midwife to show up really shows that he cares about his family, even though he doesn’t often show this, and the way in which he understood that Elisa was off worse if she were to stay with him was really surprisingly mature for a guy who hits his wife.

What’s also interesting is that sudden parallel with Kaze no Shoujo Emily that popped up in this scene. That really was surprisingly similar to the time in which Teddy went away to London for a few years and Emily missed the chance to say goodbye to him because of her own stubbornness. But in this case, it’s pretty sad because with this, Anne has really lost her best friend and it really doesn’t look like they’re going to be living together again. Now, Anne really doesn’t have anyone to confide into and is just going to be taking care of the young boys until the inevitable happens and she’ll be forced to leave her aunt.

And another thing I really liked about this episode is that Anne really behaved like a little girl in it, especially during the first half in which she does nothing but pouting because she’s unhappy, and how she refuses to listen to anyone. The whole thing with Elisa leaving was done surprisingly subtle, with just the right amount of angst in it.

Rating: **** (Fantastic)
So many things come together in this episode; an incredible emotional ride from start to finish.

Oh boy, this series is sure promising some great things. In the next episode, we’re going to see Guin along with an army of ape-men try to take on 15000 Mongols. I really can’t think of any fantasy series that correctly pulled off battles between entire armies a la Lord of the Rings, but if there’s any series that can do it, then it’s going to be this one.

And yeah, I’ve been trying to think of something to compare this series with, and this really has a lot in common with Lord of the Rings, the anime, especially when you look at the presentation of the movies: beautiful landscapes, different races, majestic architecture and battles on a very large scale. The big difference is that the enemies this time aren’t a bunch of dumb orcs, but human beings themselves. That’s one thing I dislike of a lot of western fantasy: its “humans good orcs bad” mentality. I mean come on, break the boundaries between good and evil a bit.

In any case, the next episode is probably going to be make or break for this series, and we’ll see if it can pull off such a huge battle (of which we probably will see much more in this series) correctly. I’m not asking for much, just as long as it doesn’t screw up as badly as Valkyria Chronicles did in its first episodes. But I’m confident: so far, the only flaw in the combat of Guin Saga was that at times the mood gets ruined by bad animation, which really stands out like no other in this series amidst the otherwise beautiful drawings.

As for the rest of this episode, it mostly built up for that next episode, but I’m glad to see that the graphics looked much better than the past episodes. The fact that Satelight ended up animating this series really has its good and bad sides: on one hand, the best shots look really good, but at the same time the lesser shots really visibly lack polish. It’s about the opposite of companies as Production IG and Kyoani, who hardly ever seem bothered corner-cutting.

Rating: * (Good)
Building up, but that battle in the beginning was pretty good.

Having a flawed character as Kuniko is always a bit of a double edged sword, since she often ca get on people’s nerves, but I find her to be surprisingly solid as a lead character. This episode was mostly meant to build up and shed more light into what kind of powers she has, as she seems to be able to track down Medusa when it’s manipulating the carbon industry. It’s already been hinted that there is some kind of connection between Kuniko and Karin, and the two of them might have some similarity that allowed Karin to so easily take over the carbon industry.

I’m personally a big fan of mystery-series, and that part is getting pretty well developed in this series. Kunihito for example: we learn that there’s more to this guy than meets the eye, which when you think about it makes sense: why else would Atlas send a rookie out to such an important mission? We know that he is in some way important to Naruse Ryouko, and important enough for her to consider his record as secret.

And where does Kuniko’s grandmother fit in all of this. She clearly plays a role, since she’s able to follow the world carbon markets, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she played some part in getting Karin to the place she is now. With her daughter highly placed in Atlas, and her granddaughter having someone related to Mikuni as her mentor, she sounds like one of the key persons in this whole mystery.

It’s obvious that this series is still building up, but what makes the difference between this show and Valkyria Chronicles, which is doing the same, is that with Shangri-La, I can really see some potential for the future: there are lots of things going on and built up that can promise to be so interesting for the future, while Valkyria Chronicles is just stuck in stereotyped side-characters and formulaic battles. I’m not sure how many others still like this series, but I’m pretty much sold and eager to watch the second half of this series.

Rating: * (Good)
The animation turned buggy again but it’s still much better than the first four episodes. This pretty much was an episode of building up, and it did this well.

Okay, that’s it. With this, you can consider Valkyria Chronicles dropped and Natsu no Arashi picked back up. Not only was the past episode of VC incredibly bad, but the current episode of NnA was also incredibly good. We’re really talking about a wolf in sheep’s clothing here: after the silly first episode, did anyone expect that five episodes later, we’d see the characters in the midst of a sea of fire after a bombing in the second world war? Thought so.

And seriously, before this season started I really didn’t expect that I’d like the next series by Shinbo this much. After Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, Maria Holic and watching Tsukuyomi Moon Phase, I really was through with the guy, and especially that announcement of him trying to regurgitate yet another season of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, which really hit its expiration date long ago made me worried. And yet here he comes, picks out a great manga and adapts it really well so far. The storyline has been getting really interesting in its focus of past vs present, and the filler episodes are a lot of fun to watch (like last episode’s cross-dressing bit).

This episode was much more serious, in which we for the first time see Jun and Kaja go back in time for the first time (making interesting use of the fact that Jun’s actually a girl), and we turn to the place in which she herself grew up, and we get to know her first love right before he died in a bombing. Since Kaja is less confident than Arashi, a large par of this episode is spent on her wondering whether or not to change history.

And poor Jun gets dragged around all the way, but we really get more insight into ‘her’ character in this episode as well as she sees Kaja struggle with her past love. I also like the reason she has for cross-dressing, how she holds some sort of grudge against the average female.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Wonderful art style, a really dark and deep episode for such a seemingly innocent series.