Wait, wait… what? WTF, they actually did it? If you’ve not seen the episode yet: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

This is a bit of random text to prevent spoilers from showing up on the blog aggregators, but seriously this episode has got to be the biggest surprise of the entire season. I know that I more often pull these sorts of conclusions and they don’t turn out to be true and all, but damn: Ellen was shot right through the heart and got dumped in the ocean! Bloody hell! There’s no way that she could have survived that!

Seriously, if this really is what I think it is, then this really has been the first time since ages than the creators of a show had the guts to kill off one of their lead character. I really thought that Reiji was just going to save Ellen, kill Scythe and just happily live together with her in Japan for a couple of episodes, but THIS. I never saw that coming.

I’m now sure of my favourite shows this season: Konnichiwa Anne and this series both continue to leave me stunned after nearly every single episode. Just when I think I can’t get more impressed, they pull yet another one of their surprises. Now THAT’s the sign of a good anime! It’s so sad that in the end, Ellen did choose to be Ein, and didn’t abandon her master’s trust. Reiji showed a totally different side of his this episode: we now really get to see his dark side, which is absolutely nothing like his composed, usual self.

This series sure as hell pulls no punches. Every single battle so far has ended with either one or both sides heavily beaten, whereas most series simply choose to let each side retreat with perhaps a small casualty or two. As an example, especially Gundam 00 had a nasty habit of doing this in its second season over and over again. I loved how this episode was dancing around Reiji, singing “no, you can’t get your happily ever after just yet, muaha!”
Rating: *** (Awesome)
An amazing conclusion to an already amazing arc of an already amazing series. And we’ve yet to even reached the halfway point!

Muaha! Now this is more like it! I urge those who were unimpressed by the past few episodes to at least stick around until episode 10, because this episode really was heaps of times better. This episode really showed the power of this show’s scriptwriters, who really understand the characters they’re working with. I’m really glad to see that the building up is coming together!

This episode really was about Oz and his memories about his father, who clearly left a deep-seeded trauma on the guy. In this episode he in vain attempts to save the father of the little kid, even going against Alice and Gil in order to give the kid a good father, and yelling at the father for the horrible mistakes he made. The father tries to justify himself by saying that he killed all of those people for his son, in order to get his house and wife back, but OZ understands like no other that at this time, it simply would have been enough to spend time with him.

The animation also looked better than ever for this series. I especially loved Break’s evil grin at the end of this episode, where Vincent has made his formal introduction after shooting said father and Break lets him know that he doesn’t really like this in his own way. Still, everything in this episode was just pure goodness. It’s nothing like the cheese of a few episodes back: this was genuine drama that really came from the heart of OZ and Alice.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Such a genuine episode, where the build-up really comes together.

Very, very solid episode. My favourite part of this show has always been the Dan vs. Coco storyline, and this episode was entirely about that. On top of that, the romance between Dan and Rouge remains surprisingly enjoyable because of this. This episode was all about Dan, seeing Coco’s image in Rouge (probably because Rouge is the first female he sees as more than just a friend), and because of that he started remembering his past again, starts yelling and running around the baseball field like an idiot.

I also love how we see Coco in the background, carrying out her own agenda. She may show no emotions, but this episode really showed that she’s doing something that she likes doing. As it turns out she is much less scared of the past (probably because she learned to live with her disability, as opposed to Dan who still refuses to give up on her. Slash also made a good point in this episode: she could easily be playing a bigfoot with a few modifications made, and yet she chooses not to.

Overall that Slash intrigues me as well. HE (she?) was introduced as your typical evil overlord, but yet again she turned out to be someone completely different when s/he visited Coco for the information on Dan and the others.

One thing I do hope is that Dan’s going to stop yelling from now on. Especially in this episode, his screams were rather obnoxious to watch.

Rating: * (Good)
Very nice development for Dan, although the animation wasn’t that impressive.

Okay, so now that this series is nearly at its end (2 episodes left), I unfortunately have to admit that Eden of the East was a disappointment. It’s obviously nowhere near bad, but with its awesome first episode, I really expected something better from this series. Unfortunately, after nine episodes my favourite episode still remains that first one: it never really managed to surpass the creativity and intrigue of Akira and Saki, meeting each other in America, and to be honest, it never even came close to that.

My guess would be that it’s the lack of focus that’s working against this series. The pacing has simply been too slow for such a series, and during the quiet moments I don’t think that the creators really made optimal use of it to flesh out the cast. I once praised this show for how it involved its side-characters with the main-storyline, but for the past two episodes I’m really beginning to wonder what their purpose is. What really is the point of Oosugi, showing the Akira-hate messages? What can that really add to the story, other than making the side characters hate Akira with passion?

The thing with mystery-series is that creating intrigue is one thing, but making the revelations worth it is really the difficult part. Now that the revelations have finally come in, I unfortunately have to say that they… don’t really live up to my expectations. So yeah, the rockets were launched by one of the other Selecao who is out to destroy Japan and start anew. Should have seen that coming. Every Selecao is trying to destroy Japan, it seems, aside from Akira of course, who along with Number 5 was probably the only one who was doing the right thing. My big worry is also that Mr. Outside. I know that there are two hours of movie left for him, but my big fear with him is that the creators aren’t going to have any time to flesh this guy out, making him dangerously close to your typical evil overlord.

Compare this to shows as 07-Ghost: even though its plot is nowhere near as interesting as that of Eden, it did put lots of time into building up and fleshing out, and actually looks like it’s going to get away with it. Eden though… something just feels to have gone wrong during its build-up. I really hope that these hunches are wrong, because I really want this show to work.

Rating: (Enjoyable)
Predictable, Pantsu wasn’t really that interesting, but at least the plot moved forward a lot.