Awesome episode! With all of the small hints to Alice’s past and all, the actual revelation of how deep it actually is really amazed me. This episode was full of awesomeness that further developed the mystery that’s going on, instead of just answering some of the lingering questions. After a small dip in the middle, this series sure as hell picked itself back up again.

And I really have to say, that with this episode Xebec has shown that they very well know how to animate an anime. Especially in the first half of the episode, there was lots of movement, and the entire episode was full of really good and creative camera-angles. Xebec really is a strange production company: a lot of their shows just aren’t good, with especially disasters like Kanokon and To Love-Ru going nowhere, and yet there are some of their series that are nothing like their usual series, or any other series for that matter. Hitohira had a unique chemistry between its main characters; I’m still looking for a series that managed to attain the same feel as The Third, and now Pandora Hearts does it again, with this really dark gothic fairy-tale like style that again I’ve never seen before.

The big revelation in this episode was that Alice erased her own past. She didn’t want to remember it, so she tore it up and had Cheshire Cat guard it, she just didn’t make sure to prevent Alice from trying to find out her own past. A hundred years apparently, something huge happened that somehow involved her getting betrayed by the one she loved (Jack Bezarius, to be exact), and blowing up an entire city. But still, where is B-Rabbit’s place in this? What does the white Alice have to do with all of this? How exactly is Jack Bezarius tied in with the rest of the Bezarius family?

And really, what the heck is Vincent Nightray up to? All this build-up was put into making him a huge villain, and yet this episode showed that he regards his relationship with Gil above anything. At the same time, he really seems to hate Vincent, as this episode showed Echo doing… something to Sharon while she was investigating what happened 100 years ago.

I also have to praise the amazing voice acting in this series. Especially Cheshire Cat’s actor was really good.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Lots of juicy revelations, gorgeous visuals, plus an awesome performance from Cheshire Cat.

Oh, it’s only been two episodes since her introduction, and I’m already a big fan of Cal (apparently not Drei, who has yet to show up). This episode really reminded me why I’m such a big fan of Bee-Train. This episode was mostly building-up, but the superb characterization made it all worth it. With an already excellent game that this series is based on, they really managed to get the best out of it. It’s a shame that this episode got the short end of the budget for this series, but apart from that I loved it.

Cal’s surprisingly sharp wit really has the ability to open up Reiji who has closed himself ever since Helen’s death. She may look like an innocent girl, but time and time again she proves to be observant, curious and direct, and yet she is full of weaknesses, like how she hates how she isn’t able to do anything on her own, and how she’s deeply affected by the death of her caretaker. That’s why it surprised me when she suddenly popped up with five million dollars in stolen cash from Inferno, asking Reiji to kill every single one of the bastards that killed off Judy.

The plot for this arc is again promising to be really interesting, with multiple sides, none of them being completely good or evil. We have Reiji and Cal, who are after the mysterious people who killed off Judy, at the same time they have to try and hide the fact that Cal just stole five million dollars from an angry Isaac, and something tells me that the mysterious Drei is part of the people who killed off Judy.

Oh, and on a side-note: one detail I also loved was that Reiji still bears the scars of the gunshots that struck him six months earlier. That really is a detail that many anime simply forget to include, but big wounds like that obviously take ages to heal properly. Like expected, he was mostly hit in the shoulder, and not in his heart, so that explains why he managed to survive that day.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Very intriguing build-up with an increasingly awesome Cal.

Nice. After the previous episode, I was expecting another rather silly episode, but this installment instead took itself entirely serious. Instead of going for the usual fun basketball matches that this series became known for, instead the focus fell to Dan and Rouge, and the romance between them. As it turns out, the idols had to take medications in order to e able to keep up with the basketball matches and not to disappoint their fans, but Roughe took this way too far, collapsed, and the episode ended with her returning to the moon without her having the chance to say goodbye to Dan.

This episode was really solid and well done, but it does have me worried about this series’ future a lot. When this series first started out, it managed to so well avoid some of the clichés and tropes of similar series, but for the past few episodes the clichés have really been heaping up, with this episode probably being the worst.

For example, it’s great to see that Dan now has more reasons to go to the moon than just for his sister: his motivations are changing, and that’s pretty interesting. HOWEVER, at the same time it reduces Idol Rouge as a simple damsel in distress. The romance so far worked so well because Rouge really was someone who fitted Dan: impulsive, strong and not afraid to speak her mind. The two filled in for each other’s weaknesses and that was fun to watch, but having her talents explained by an overdose of medication, bringing her back to the moon beyond her will so that Dan can save her. That was a bit of a disappointment, and the creators had better know how to handle this properly.

And yeah, I guess I could have seen this coming, but I’m still really disappointed by this: Miyuki. She was really fresh as Dan’s childhood friend, exactly BECAUSE she wasn’t in love with him. The two of them really were friends: they hung out together and had the same purpose: she worked as a mechanic, while he was doing his basketball. But unfortunately, this episode showed some really big hints that she is indeed in love with him. I mean, seriously! That’s about the biggest cliché in the book that you can think of!

While I still like this series at this point, something really has to happen in its second half to make it surpass the brilliance of the first third of the show. I really hope that the change of directors after episode 17 (at least, I assume that the changes are going to be noticeable from that point) aren’t going to make this even more difficult than it already is.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
Solid episode, but lacked the creativity that made me a fan of the rest of the series.