What an incredibly awesome cliff-hanger in this episode. Absolutely fantastic how I never saw this coming. It has been a long while since I’ve been this impressed and shocked by a sudden plot twist. Obviously, MAJOR SPOILERS coming up. This sentence is there to prevent those spoilers from showing up in the blog aggregators.

Because holy hell! Kuniko’s grandmother was the first CEO of Atlas?! Now that gives a totally different meaning to the entire story. I just kept thinking that she in her early days worked as some sort of idol or something, and while I did suspect that there was more going on with her, I never expected this. That figurine turns out to have a completely different meaning now. It wasn’t just one of grandmother’s escapades when she was younger, instead she had quite a following in those days because she was similar to Kuniko, and hence why her loyal fans started to make figurines of her (something which I suspect is going to happen with Kuniko as well at this rate).

This now also explains why she has one of the daggers, and this makes it a bit more plausible as to why Kuniko of all people turned into a Digma. Something must have happened, involving her decision to step down and leave Atlas. Now we also know why Kuniko’s mother is in Atlas: for some reason she decided to stay, while Kuniko’s grandmother took Kuniko along with her for some reason. But really, it still baffles me that her initial ideas were so much different from Kuniko’s.

But the rest of this episode also kicked ass. The whole mind games that involved the strange machines that can fully alter their environments (to a certain limit of course: sand remains solid floor) gave a really nice effect to the infiltration scene this episode. Because the metal-age has broken up into three different groups, this sense of Kuniko not exactly knowing what’s going on and still having to hand out orders worked really well.

And then to think that Sayoko was released by some mysterious member of Ryouko’s assistants. Who exactly was behind it, and why? And what’s in the future for Shion? His lifetime as Ryouko’s personal toy really seems about finished. And Ryouko too is starting to become really interesting now that she can’t move freely anymore.

For me, I think that the reason why I’m enjoying this series so much despite its flaws is that I tend to overlook flaws in series, as long as it has enough to make up for it. Personally, I’d rather watch something with a lot of flaws, but very ambitious, creative and daring, rather than something flawless without ambitions. Although flawless series are definitely worth the watch, they really need to do something extra for me to consider them a classic. For that, it becomes much easier to make mistakes, but that’s exactly where anime needs to go.

So what if this series has its flaws? It’s imaginative, ambitious and it attempts to be ground-breaking despite Gonzo’s financial issues. Is it really that much worse than those solidly produced series that don’t take any risk and just repeat a tried and true formula? Heck, this episode reinforced even more that this is my favourite show this season. Phantom is going to have to try hard to be able to beat it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Great cat and mouse game, followed by an awesome cliff-hanger at the end. The setting just keeps getting more intriguing by the minute.

Here’s a new TV-special that aired recently: Kawa no Hikari, or the light of the river. It’s not your average anime, because it tells the story about a bunch of rats who have to leave their old home because it’s destroyed by construction workers. With series as this, a major pitfall is to become all preachy and simply let it boil down to “save these poor rats from evil humans”, but thankfully this anime manages to avoid it. Instead, it’s here to bring awareness and break stereotypes. It’s still a shallow series, but it could have become much worse.

This definitely is a series for kids. If you show this to some young children of around six years old, they’re going to love it; it makes them aware of the environment without becoming all preachy, and also teaches them to think before placing judgement on someone. That part is very nicely done, but in the end it still just provides an overly simplistic view of the matter; the series is simply too short for any real depth and the themes just aren’t fleshed out well enough. The result is that another way this show can be interpreted as the following: all sewer rats are evil. Except for one perhaps who happens to be nice. All cats are evil. Oh, but there happens to be one who doesn’t like to eat mice and therefore treats the characters nicely. Oh, and all field rats are bastards too, but the lead characters happen to be nice ones. Feels kind-of elitist, don’t you think?

Aside from the environmentalist parts, Kawa no Hikari is also an adventure story. This part of the series is flawed, but engaging. The way the creators keep toying with these fragile lives of the three lead characters as they battle sewers, floods, angry sewer rats, cars and a lot more is bound to catch your attention. Despite this TV-special’s flaws, the lead characters are engaging and sympathetic, and they make you want to see the endings. Unfortunately, some of the action scenes are completely unnecessary: they’re just there for the sake of including some excitement. Near the ending the action also gets harder and harder to buy (especially that bus scene) and the ending itself really feels like a total cop-out and in no way satisfying. Overall though, this TV-special is nothing to write home about, but still nice enough if you need something simple and innocent.

Sora no Manimani

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins the local astronomy club and falls in love.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Nope)
Ah, dammit. Just when I thought that this Summer Season did so well in avoiding the biggest cliché in the book (the childhood friend), Sora no Manimani comes around, in which the lead character moves to his new high school and runs into the girl he hung out with when he was six, and the two of them nearly instantly fall in love again. So this episode definitely had its boring moments since I’ve seen so many first episodes with the EXACT SAME premise, but thankfully there are a bunch of twists here: for once the male is the tsundere, instead of the female, while the female has ADHD and feels a lot like Haruhi Suzumiya without the tsundere part. This episode had its amusing parts, but it lacked proper build-up: the crying scenes really came from out of nowhere and felt forced and with such an excellent season, I really doubt that I’m going to continue with this one.

Spice and Wolf II

Short Synopsis: Our lead character looks for his next dal to make him some money.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Too many great shows this season!)
Ah, it’s nice to see this one back. Spice and Wolf was the big surprise in the season in which it originally aired, because it came from absolutely nowhere, it had the most incompetent staff imaginable and yet it turned out to be such a solid series. What I’m expecting from the second season is much of the same subtle charms that made the first season so enjoyable. My big fear is that it’s going to let its success go too much to its head, go too much in the mainstream direction and become an unsubtle romantic comedy and moe fest. Ah well, we’ll see in which direction it’s going to go, and this episode was enjoyable as one that set up the upcoming arc. It was nothing special, but the first season also started out rather underwhelming, so it’s nothing to be surprised of. My one complaint of this episode is that even though it’s got a much more superior animation company (Brains Base, of all things), the animation cut a lot more corners: there were lots of pointless flashbacks just to recycle some of the used animation of the first season, so I do hope that the creators have saved the rest of the budget for later episodes.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Short Synopsis: Our lead character ends up in the middle of an earthquake.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Sounds very promising)
And so the next Noitamina series appears. It’s pretty similar to Eden of the East, actually: it’s set in the current day, it’s very realistic, it too criticizes Japanese society subtly and it too has high production-values. Both series have something that’s very rare in anime nowadays: a storyline that’s based on actual topics of today’s society. Production IG already did such a series with Real Drive, but for Bones it’s something totally new. Or should I say, for Studio Kinema Citrus, as they seem to be the main ones responsible for this series, much like Trans-Arts who like to slap the Production IG label on their work. In any case, this first episode was very promising. It’s easy to think that you’re never going to get hit by such a disaster, but what if it does happen? It doesn’t just go for Tokyo, but what if New York was suddenly flooded (which did happen in the past), or what if the oceans continue to rise, and half of The Netherlands ends up drowning? Great food for thought, and the creators chose a likable lead female to center this story around. Usually Noitamina is about adults, but in these days in which teenagers are growing up more and more spoiled by technology and conveniences, she is indeed more suited. I’ll stop rambling now, otherwise this entry is going to get too big.