A very powerful episode. I’m glad to see that the creators aren’t rushing things, and if they are then I sure as heck am not noticing anything yet. This episode was mostly about Ed, Al and Winry arriving back in Central City and finding out that Hughes died. It was well built up and made for a number of very gripping scenes, not just when the two of them found out about the death, but also when they apologized to Hughes wife for getting her involved, and the aftermath in which all three of them had their own ways of distracting themselves.

As for the Xing people, they didn’t really play a big role in this episode. May Chang didn’t appear at all, and Ling basically spent the episode missing and dehydrated, apparently. The rest of this episode pushed the Homunculus plot further. You can see Envy still spying around in different disguises and when he finds out which people are investigating the cause of Hughes’ death he sends a Lust in disguise to go after them, and she introduces herself as Jean Havoc’s new date. This could go horribly wrong for either of the parties: either Lust succeeds and continues the Homunculus’ killing spree, or she gets discovered and Ed and Al finally get themselves a valuable link to who the Homunculi are.

On top of that, I wonder why Lieutenant Ross had to be arrested, of all people. I didn’t quite pick up whether the Homunculi were behind that, or whether there’s another reason for her arrest, but it’s definitely an interesting plot twist. Especially after she basically went against Mustang who wanted to keep Hughes’ death a bit more secret.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Do not ask me why this episode started with that strange drawing of the Tsukishima cat. I’ve seen them before in Kodomo no Omocha and Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, and never really understood what they were about… They were kind of charming in Kodocha, but here in Cross Game, I’m not so sure.

But nevertheless, this was one awesome episode. After the first baseball match of this series, I was really fearing for this episode, but it was over within just one episode, and that really made sure for an exciting episode, even though you could see the ending coming from miles away. It’s episodes like this where everything really comes together in terms of character-development, with some awesome results.

The evil coach was indeed your typical evil coach, and yet he struck me as an ambitious character who probably once loved to play baseball, but over the years became too obsessed over going to Koushien, so that he failed to see past the plans of Kou and the others that made them seem like a bunch of weaklings (the five games they lost were all against teams that previously ranked among the top 8, and they didn’t really lose that badly anyway). The final nail in the coffin for him was the identity of the mysterious old guy with the hat, as he turned out to be the actual principal of the school.

I have to wonder why this principal decided to disguise himself in the first place, though. If he was around the area, why didn’t he just come and show himself instead of being all sneaky? He definitely had his reasons for it, so I’m curious to find out about them.

This episode also brought Kou and Aoba a bit closer together. Despite their bickering, they really work together as a team. I loved how Aoba kept scolding him at the beginning of the game, because she knew that he could do much better. The next thing that’s going to need to happen is for Kou to stop trying to look mature in front of her, and instead start treating her normally. Due to Wakaba, the two of them have grown into an awkward relationship together, in which it nearly seems that they purposefully close each other off whenever they get too close to each other.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Around four years ago, I watched the first three episodes of Scrapped Princess, but I dropped it soon afterwards because it didn’t interest me enough. Based on some recommendations from several people I decided to watch the entire series and I must say that Scrapped Princess definitely has its merits.

This really is a typical Bones series. For nearly every single one of their anime, you can be sure to expect a very imaginative setting, and Scrapped Princess is no different. While it starts with a story about a princess that the entire country wants dead, it soon develops into an interesting mix between fantasy and science fiction. It’s a thought-provoking series that questions whether or not one should allow the deaths of thousands, simply to protect one insignificant life. This really was my highlight for this series.

This series’ flaws lie in the cast of characters: they really are a mixed bag. Some are interesting (Fulle, Yuhma, Senes), but a lot of them are insufficiently developed or just plain dull. Pacifica really starts out as an interesting character, but around the middle of the story she suddenly gets amnesia out of nowhere, which doesn’t really contribute or influence anything in the story except for slowing it down. Winia and Leopold never really were interesting characters, but this series just keeps coming back to them in favour of the more interesting characters. Christopher is a walking mystery: we never get to see any of his background or development, and yet his change of character and motivation are really hard to buy.

The same goes for the series’ antagonists: they start off really good and this series really manages to show us that these people are dangerous and are not to be fooled around with. This sense of despair is another one of the true highlights of this series when you realize all the horrible things that the lead characters are put against. It really helps to sympathize with not just the main characters of Pacifica, Shannon and Raquel, but also the villains themselves. Unfortunately, in the final third of this series this is abandoned completely, and they turn into your average bunch of incompetent fools who keep changing sides and never seem to get anything right.

And yeah, this series is typical Bones, and that also means that it has a typical Bones ending. In the end, everything is just solved too easily (as in, “why the hell didn’t you just do that in the first episode?!”), characters are randomly brought back from the dead and everyone just lives happily ever after in the now ideal world. It’s a real shame: I would really have been much more positive about this series if only that ending didn’t leave such a bad taste in my mouth. This really is my big problem with Bones: I really want to like them. I really appreciate how much time and effort they put in their series to make them look unique. But why the heck do they keep screwing up with their endings over and over?!

Nevertheless, this series does make some good points; especially in its first two thirds, it really is a nice look at humanity. It’s not a perfect series, and Bones has made much better series as well, but nevertheless it makes for a nice watch.