Well, so this episode was an aftermath to the previous onslaught of plot-twists.

Surprisingly, Wrath lets both Ed, Al and Roy Mustang go, threatening them with killing their loved ones if they dare to take action back. On one hand, it seems a bit stupid to let these dangerous people loose. But yeah, on the other hand if he’d just keep on killing people whenever they’d discover his secrets, people would eventually get suspicious.

Ed, Al and Roy now need to get as many people as possible on their side. They’re going to have to organize a good protection on their loved ones if they’re going to stand a chance against this guy. Roy in this episode makes the first step by recruiting Armstrong, but a whole lot more needs to happen.

The part I liked best about this episode was back at the doctors. It had a strange combination between a breath of fresh air, the elated and then disappointed Lan Fang as she discovered what happened to Lin, the tension between her and Mai Chang and the rather quirky antics of that doctor. It’s another great example of how well this series plays around with emotions.
Rating: * (Good)

Oh my god, No Longer Human just keeps getting better and better. This isn’t just a great adaptation, but also an adaptation that makes optimal use of the fact that it’s adapted in a media that also uses music and graphics. From the perspective of someone who hasn’t read the novel, setting aside some of the scenes that were cut, I think that this really was the best possible adaptation that it could have hoped for.

It’s also amazing how much stuff the creators managed to squeeze just into one episode. It feels like the creators got two episodes’ worth of content in just twenty minutes. This series just hopped from one tense situation to the next, with an eerie silence in between. This episode really was a roller-coaster ride.

The plot of this episode was also far more subtle than I imagined. I originally thought that this episode would see the beginning of a mass murderer, but instead it’s about someone who’s struggling with his own sense of humanity: he still blames himself for having survived that double suicide back then, and because of that he never really allows himself to bond with his new wife and daughter that he found, who were really nice enough to take him in.

While he’s got a great daughter, and a girlfriend who supports him all the way (she even managed to find him a job as a manga author), he instead hangs around in bars, visits prostitutes and gets drunk. Especially after the rumours start floating around that he’s a killer he starts to get out to drink even more. On top of that, his old friend keeps returning to remind him of the past he’s trying to leave behind.

And then comes that saleswoman, who meets him as he lies in the snow after a particular rough night. Here I thought that the entire setting was trying to be as dark and gritty as possible, and then she comes. She refuses to believe the words of a hopelessly drunk guy, and instead fully trusts in his kind nature. That his story about having failed a double suicide was just a story he made up because of his talents as a storyteller as a manga author. While on one hand, she;s obviously wrong, but what counts is that trust she has in him, at a time and place you’d normally suspect people to just turn a blind eye and walk away…

Anyway, long story short: awesome series; watch it. Especially now that subs are actually coming out fairly steadily, against all my expectations.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

This could very well be the best recap episode ever.

So basically, before the second half of this series starts, Aoba looks at Wakaba’s portrait and the episode then commences to recap pretty much the first episode. And oh my god, the nostalgia!

Because we now have gotten to know the characters, despite this being a near-exact copy of that first episode (if my memory doesn’t deceive me), it stands out as ten times better than what I remember it to be, and even then I already was impressed with that episode. It was so awesome to see Wakaba back, along with the younger versions of the cast. And of course, the point at which Wakaba eventually died hit even harder.

This episode was pretty much a filler, but I don’t care. It was awesome.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Yeah, this episode was meant as one big build-up for the thing that happened in its final 30 seconds. You definitely don’t want to read this entry if you have yet to see this episode.

The creators kept hinting, though I failed to notice that entirely. Erin basically gets summoned to the queen as a token of gratitude for using Lilan to save the royal family. Of course, Damya immediately proposes her to start working as the Queen’s bodyguard. They act really surprised when Erin declines, and so Erin tells the Queen (without Damya, and with Ialu) about the tragedy that happened when the queen was only one year old. Like expected, she didn’t know a thing about it, and everyone from her time has taken great care in order to never mention it again. I’m surprised if there are still people alive who remember it, aside from the Wind Tribe.

But yeah, that came as an utter shock to the queen. I’m not sure what exactly did it: that shock at such an old age, or whether the Psi Gamuls finally succeeded in poisoning her, but whatever it is her death came as an utter surprise to me. This of course has huge implications. I already thought that Damya would cause trouble eventually, but what kept him back was his genuine loyalty to the queen. Now that that’s gone, he’s probably going to pick a fight with the Grand Duke, using that attack as an excuse, and in order to win he’s probably going to do whatever it takes in order to get Erin to cooperate.

If there are indeed only 2 novels, then this marks the beginning of the end. There are nine episodes left, and in those, the story is going to have to come to an end, and I’m very curious to how the creators are going to do it.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Like expected, this episode was somewhat hampered by the stereotypical and badly acted evil circus directors. What I didn’t expect was that this episode would make up for it with the “Forest of Broccoli”. How awesome is that?

In all seriousness though, I didn’t expect much of this episode because of those circus directors. I really feared for some clichéd storyline in which Lag has to save his damsel in distress from these evil people. Nevertheless, the creators seemed to realize this as well, so they quickly abandoned the circus-plot, in favour of focusing on the growing relationship between Lag and Nichi, along with their newly acquired friend, a small animal called “Steak” (yeah, Nichi named him that way; it really seems like names in this series are quite a bit different from normal ones. Both their sound, their meaning and their symbolism).

The thing with this episode was that it was a very mixed bag, but I actually found lots of stuff that I liked. It was a bit messy for the creators to suddenly abandon two story-lines (the circus and we also never see the people whose camel Lag blatantly stole), but the scene in which Nichi sat next to Lag just shot up his memory in order to protect her was definitely charming. She’s a damsel in distress, but a very un-typical damsel in distress at that: she didn’t really need to be saved, but nevertheless, when Lag who is completely useless in fights aside from that godmode beam of his, tried to save her, this wasn’t meant to show how weak she was, but rather how she never has been treated kindly due to her powers. It is cliché, but also well enough executed to work.

Also, it took me a while in noticing this, but Letter Bee has a surprisingly good soundtrack. It’s not exactly the best of this season, but nevertheless it’s varied, simple and yet effective and powerful when it needs to. The composer up till now did the soundtracks for… Saiunkoku Monogatari, Juuni Kokuki and Victorian Romance Emma. Talk about difference…
Rating: * (Good)

It’s amazing: Touya only had five scenes in this episode in which he appeared. In three of them, he did nothing, so he only had about one minute of serious airtime. And yet he still manages to come across as an inconsiderate asshole in that time.

But let’s look at the other characters first. A majority of the episode was spent on Yuki’s grief after she found out that Rina would leave her. Can I fault this series for overdoing that? Not really. Yuki always was a crybaby who always sought protection from Rina. She sees Rina as a very dear friend, and thus I can see how she would not accept Rina’s choice of leaving her brother, especially if she was the indirect reason for it. The scene they had together was very nicely done, actually.

And you know, Eiji with his painting, which apparently originally belonged to Mana’s mother. Since he didn’t know it was a very pricey painting, I can see how he in his delusions would have had no reason not to paint over it. I’m now beginning to see the part that that new singer girl is going to play in the whole story. The thing with Yuki always was that she’s weak and can’t protect herself. If Eiji ends up abandoning her, she only has Yayoi left, and we all know what a reliable woman she turned out to be…

Speaking of the devil, she’s getting love-sick. When Touya stood her up, you could really see that she’s not screwing him just out of business anymore. Could it be that she was left by her previous boyfriend and has therefore been looking for someone to fill that void?

A lot more questionable was the bar scene, in which Mana and Haruka both started crying while talking about Touya. I know that Haruka is sad for the loss of her brother, and that Mana longs for her mother, but whether that would result in both of them crying… that scene was a bit too much perhaps, but I know too little about psychology to really say for sure.

But yeah, Touya. He makes an appointment with Yayoi, but goes to his father instead. His studying turns out to have been a preparation for his student tuition work for Mana. He finally puts in some work for something, but to me it’s just a way to escape his relationships with Yuki and Yayoi. On top of that, not knowing what happened between Yuki and Rina, he simply brushes off her tears on television as something that she does to ask for attention. When he finds out that Haruka cried about him, he starts laughing. Oh boy.

There is no doubt that Touya is one annoying SOB. However, is he a bad character? I’m still not sure, to be honest. In technical terms, he is well developed: he’s been inside a downward spiral ever since the start of the series, and the end of this episode only makes this worse. White Album asks an interesting question: if a character isn’t likable, does it make this character automatically bad? School Days did this before but it failed horribly with its badly executed development and script that just seemed geared to getting to that bad end. White Album however is much more subtle, and while we have to wait a few more episodes to find out whether or not it actually paid off, I’m still having problems to determine whether this series is bad, or simply annoying.

I think that the first season had its obvious flaws, but those were in its set-up: as an adaptation of an eroge, the creators had to create a scenario in which all of the five girls would have feelings for the lead characters in a certain way. But accepting this set-up, I’m still not sure what to think of this series.
Rating: * (Good)

Every single episode, this series continues to remind me why I consider it among the top of this season along Darker than Black and Aoi Bungaku. Unlike those two however, it looks like Armed Librarians is going to cover up 26 episodes. And it’s already this good. The question of course is going to be whether the creators can keep this up. I’ve seen a lot of series that started out awesome but disappointed near the end, but oh, if the creators can keep this kind of quality up for the rest of the season we could be dealing with a potential classic here.

Okay, so what the hell happened here in this episode? On the foreground, it mainly told about the battle between Hamyuts Meseta and Segal. Segal prepared well: with divination he predicted when the next typhoon would hit. He’d then poison Hamyuts with a deadly disease, and got his hands on Shlamuffen, a sword that automatically parries all attacks thrown at it. To make matters worse, Hamyuts eventually disarms Segal, but Schlamuffen then takes on a mind of its own as if it really wants to kill Hamyuts. Eventually, she gets saved by Colio who was warned by Shiron that this was going to happen because it was the very first divination she had. So in the end, Hamyuts is saved… and Colio dies anyway?

That’s something that wasn’t expected, and it also gave a bit of an extra dimension to the books when you combine them with Shiron’s divination: at the end of her life, she knew that Colio would read her books, and therefore warned him about what he needed to do through divination, in order to recreate the vision she had. Now, the question remains why it was so important for Colio to do this, or was this just a symbolic event? And are we ever going to see both of them back? I mean, their books still exist, but what? They were really built up to be the main characters for the past four episodes…

Also, David Production may not be the best at eye-candy, but these people sure know how to choreograph a good action-scene. The fight scenes in this episode really rocked, and really weren’t what you’d expect after the mediocre animation quality of the first episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Well, so I don’t think it’s much of a surprise that this is going to be the final series I’m going to blog this season, making my blogging schedule:
Monday: Konnichiwa Anne
Tuesday: none
Wednesday: Kimi ni Todoke
Thursday: Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Friday: Darker than Black, Kuchuu Buranko, Armed Librarians
Saturday: Letter Bee, White Album, Kemono no Souja Erin
Sunday: Full Metal Alchemist, Cross Game, Aoi Bungaku
In other words, I’m going to have busy weekends.

In any case, I’m a pretty big fan of Kuchuu Buranko. Not necessarily because of the depth (we’ve got Aoi Bungaku for that), but rather for the entertainment value. The cases in this series are often easily solved: the protagonist just needs to realize something and his troubles are over. However, the fun comes with the presentation, and the majority of the episode which explores all of the problems that are generated from the ailment that he has.

The weird graphics may seem quite random, but I’ve discovered that there’s at least a shred of logic in them: the calendars for example signify that a day has passed. The nurse-injection scene seems to be there in order to change the lead character in a weirdly coloured animal (this time, a rhino). Also notice how there are now two syringes in the waste-basket (nice reference to the previous episode), and how the guy’s horn got smaller, right before he got healed.

This time, if I understood correctly we have a guy who injures his penis, and therefore can’t stand straight and cringes down in pain whenever he gets turned on. Yeah, you just have to think about it. Cue an episode full of awkward moments of intimidation in which the lead character in this episode fails completely and gets increasingly stressed out by the women around him.

I’m often not into sex-jokes. Not because I’m that allergic to them, but 95% of them are so uninspired, cheap, unsubtle and corny that they stopped being funny for me ages ago. This episode however was a nice exception. This was a pretty funny episode, and especially the loser of a lead character was pretty likable and fun to watch.

Also, I already thought that the OP and ED sounded familiar: they’re done by Denki Groove, who also did Hakaba Kitarou’s awesome OP. They’re a bit less impressive, but still among the best OPs and EDs this season.
Rating: * (Good)

Holy crap, this episode was better than I could have expected. Bones really is on fire in 2009. Seriously, this was probably one of the best orchestrated action-scenes of the entire series so far. While that might just be my memory playing tricks on me, but I really like how the new series has gone into a completely new direction when compared to the first season: it really shows that this is more than just an attempt to milk out the franchise,

Darker than Black has always been known for its absolutely brutal fight scenes that spared nobody. That’s one thing so unlike 90% of all other anime, and it returns so well during the slaughter in this episode. There seem to be three parties after Shion: the organization that employed Hei, those old guys who turned Tanya into a contractor, and that other group of contractors. Because of that, there were so many things that happened at the same time : from Suou getting chased by a group of armed men to Nika getting killed off by Tanya, to that golem-guy suddenly launching a train at Hei.

This episode was also full of new plot twists. I’m not exactly what’s up with Suou going Utena, but her alternative personality really fits this series. It was also a big surprise to see July suddenly appear again, and basically provide the right coordinates for her to fire at. Mao indeed turns out to be the flying squirrel, like some people suspected already.

Also, the new soundtrack is very impressive, and it might even surpass the old one if this goes on!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

It’s perhaps taken a long while for this series to really get fired off. Especially how the first two arcs were merely introduction and build-up with hardly any conclusion, wrap-up or answers, But seriously, for me this is a show that just gets more intriguing with every episode. This episode didn’t necessarily contain any new plot twists, but it excellently continued building further upon the plot twists of the previous episode.

We also learn what was up with Beatrice’s sudden change of character in this episode. It wasn’t just that Battler’s words hit her so deeply back then, but while that definitely had its effect, a lot of the blame also seems to lie at the title of “endless witch”. Since for an Endless Witch, the concepts of time really don’t mean anything, and this gets reflected in her personality, turning her into a homicidal maniac. This then brings us back to the element of risk in magic: Beatrice wanted to become a real witch. It seems to me that in order to become the Golden Witch, she needed to make Battler accept her, however it felt to me that if she also wanted to continue being the Endless Witch, she had to give up her personality and become a psycho killer. That makes me wonder about Lambdadelta and Bernkastel.

The thing I liked most about this episode was the powerful dialogues, though. I think that this was the episode most focused on dialogues, as it portrayed a lot of characters, symbolizing their change through this dialogue: Eva rejecting her younger self, Krauss on how he stopped treating his siblings like trash, Beatrice as she tried to make up with Battler by reviving Shannon for George, Battler as he grew up and used his mind much more, instead of his emotions, and Jessica as she lost her parents and her mind. That’s really a lot of development!

And through all these red herrings, you’d almost forget that there’s an actual human killer on the loose, who’s operating under the guise of Beatrice and Evatrice. Why did the killer bother moving Shannon’s corpse? Since it’s also very likely that there are two killers (to match the six locked doors mystery). Right now, it seems very unlikely for any of the eighteen suspects to really have been able to pull off these murders, unless you start to look a bit further.

MAJOR HIGURASHI SPOILERS in the paragraph below.

Remember how in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, one major culprit behind the murders was a simple disease that drove people to insanity. While I doubt that Ryukishi07 is going to use the same thing in both his stories, I do think that we need to look in that kind of a direction. Up till now I’ve simply thought this story to have the simple formula of your average detective novel (you know, “the butler did it!”, and things like that), but what if the real killer never even touched the corpses, and simply poisoned the victims with a strange kind of potion that would make one mentally delusional? I mean, for one thing, it is common for mentally delusional people to see conspiracies everywhere, which could explain the presence of the magical circles drawn in blood.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Again, do note that I reserve the right to delete any comment that spoils what happens after this point in the visual novel.