During the last episode, I saw people commenting on how the series lacked focus. Now guess what? Everything in the past arc is really starting to come together wonderfully. This episode connected all of the seemingly random stories with each other, and it’s not even got to the meat of this arc! What an incredibly well written series!

You’ve also got to love the attention that this series puts in its concept of magic. This season is a true gem for well-developed magic systems, with this series, Full Metal Alchemist and Darker than Black II: all of them have their own concepts and don’t take anything for granted. And most importantly: people really do die when they’re hit by a fireball.

There are more similarities though: all of them have characters with very strong beliefs against killing, while not overdoing this theme at the same time by featuring enough characters who don’t think anything of deaths, which provide a great contrast. All three have gorgeous production-values and a truly excellent soundtrack.

And yet, while all of them belong around the top of the current season, I really like the Armed Librarians best, even though we’re only seven episodes in. The show just hardly has any moment of weakness, or in which it’s dull, compared to Full Metal Alchemist, which does need to take a step back once in a while for aftermaths and building up.

at this point, I’m really curious to see how the next episode is going to tie everything together. Why did Zatoh kill that meat, and why was this book so important? Volken will probably not be involved in this arc, but there is plenty of other stuff going on. Noloty’s wishes to refrain from killing were anything but cheesy, and rather they were detailed and contrasted well with the rest of this setting.

It’s at times hard to explain why I like this series so much, but for me this series has what I’d like to call the “X-Factor”. There’s one other series this season which has that one as well for me (Aoi Bungaku, of course). What’s also interesting is that the past Spring and Summer Season, while featuring a lot of truly excellent series, none of these series really had this “X-Factor”, not even my favourites, surprisingly enough. That really makes me look at those series in a different way, especially because I still have no idea why some shows do have the X-factor for me, while others don’t.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Definitely the best episode of Kuchuu Buranko yet. It’s the kind of episode that for me made up for all of the annoying and depth-less parts of this series. It’s one of those episodes that’s awesome to watch in the way that it played around with its lead characters.

I’m not sure whether the rest of the series can do the same, because this episode did also give Irabu an actual life. I mean, that’s something I never saw coming: I thought that he was like the medicine seller. A guy without any past, background or identity, whose only purpose seemed to be solving mysteries. This episode however shows Irabu during a college reunion, and some of his earlier friends, who all went to become doctors or other medical staff. Pretty interesting to see what this guy’s friends were like.

Anyway, the patient in this episode is one of these former friends. He’s a doctor who also knows a thing or two about psychology. He’s got another form of OCD. When I found out about this, I feared that this would be much of the same again, but I was proven wrong: this guy keeps imagining how he’s going to cause trouble. What follows is a crazy episodes as he tries to give in to his urges by actually carrying them out. His stepfather (who seems to be the cause of his frustrations)’s wig was utterly hilarious.

Oh, and the Banto references also rocked. This is what I mean by connecting the characters of the different stories: the lead character is a huge baseball fan, and Banto is his favourite player. Nice touch.

Setting aside the depth, I also kind-of like the realistic portrayal of the characters in this series: all characters featured so far are adults just plucked from society: they’ve got lives, careers and a family. It’s strangely refreshing in anime in which 95% of all characters are either students or warriors (or involved in some other kind of job that involves fighting).
Rating: *** (Awesome)

It’s episodes like this that really show how good this series’ soundtrack is. The soundtrack of the first season was of course great, but this one is completely original and doesn’t try to rip it off in the slightest. This time we also have insert songs. Nice touch.

Anyway, this episode is probably going to be hard to buy for the people who were turned off by the new direction that the second season went in: a lot of emphasis is yet again put on whether or not it’s right to kill others. Don’t worry though: Suou doesn’t revert back to her old whiny self. Instead, the goofball’s mother gets killed in front of his eyes, and Suou nearly kills Yin (yeah).

Still, let’s take a look at the concept of death in this series in terms of storytelling. The problem with a lot of series that jump the shark is not the fact that they’re jumping the shark, but instead that they’re just jumping the shark for the sake of jumping the shark: they don’t put enough thought in how to make it work well and it’s indeed just seen as a cheap rip-off.

I believe however that Darker than Black avoided this. The pacing has been quick and varied: no episode looks like the other, and the action-scenes are imaginative, detailed and have a great sense of location, and the story has really been well-crafted so far. The themes of life and death are very new indeed. However, as long as they’re well explored, I’m not going to complain. At first they indeed seemed half-assed, but they’re getting quite a bit of depth at this point, and this episode really shows different sides and views.

Goofball isn’t a contractor, and therefore the loss of his mother forms a sharp contrast with this series habit of “one-hit kill”-attacks. Call this a series that kills off characters too fast, but I actually applaud this series for it: in so many fantasy-series, I keep wondering how the heck characters can stay alive and even survive without any sort of serious scratch after they’re hit by a wave of fire, struck by a very sharp sword, fall in the middle of an explosion, plummet hundreds of meters off a cliff, get hit by lightning, et cetera. I’ve gotten tired from those bad guys with their “well, I could kill you but I don’t feel like it today”-speeches.

In fact, while the themes of life and death are one point, I think that that’s just a part of one of the main themes of this series: contractors versus humans. In this episode, the only ones who acted with morals are the ones who aren’t contractors: goofball (yeah, I forgot his name) and Hei. Suou meanwhile remains a contractor, but you can see that she’s still very young. Contractors can make decisions regardless of their emotions, but Suou remains a typical teenager beyond that: still struggling with her identity.

And yeah, the fanservice returns again. It’s annoying, but in a way I can understand why it’s used. The first season aired in a time of economic prosperity. The second season was produced in the middle of a recession. Sex sells, and I guess that even Bones would run out of money, trying to keep up with these amazingly looking series they’ve been producing.

Of course, this also means that the conclusion is going to be very important for this series. I agree that when it’s simply going down to the message of “thou shalt not kill”, it will be really lame. But at this point, there’s no telling whether this is going to happen or not.
Rating: ** (Excellent)