That was absolutely amazing. Oh my god, Aoi Bungaku was already my favourite series of this season… and this episode just blew every of its episodes so far out of the water. What a roller-coaster of emotions this turned out to be! Ryosuke Nakamura. That’s one name to remember, because this guy is destined for greatness.

Unfortunately, he’s also destined for unexposure in the western anime fandom because his series are just so damn hard to translate. Why are there still no subs of episode 9 out at this point, even though the previous episodes were subbed without any problems (in fact, even the double-episoded feature of episode 7 and 8 got out faster than this). It’s the same with Mouryou no Hako: we’ve got ourselves an absolutely fantastic director here, and yet because his dialogue is so damn complex it takes much longer for the subs to come out!

In any case, enough ranting and onto this episode. Just when I already thought that the previous episode was full of emotions, it was nothing when compared to this one. The whole story by Osamu Dazai came together wonderfully. Thoughout a majority of the episode, you keep wondering why his friend abandoned him. When the answer finally comes, the shock hits hard, and yet it makes complete sense: the guy was about to die from heart failure. Especially after all of the things that the lead character called this guy for betraying him.

But the visual direction was absolutely amazing. The animation was just incredible, and especially the part where Melos is fighting on the desk, as the main character is writing his story is nothing short of gorgeous. Anime animation cuts corners?! Hah, this episode has so much emotionally powerful movement in it. THIS really shows what you can do with the animation medium.

And to think that Aoi Bungaku still isn’t finished. The wait is going to take two whole weeks, but after that we’re going to see two stories adapted at the same time. I have no idea what to expect from that. The director is going to be someone completely new, and I have no idea what to expect from this guy. Again, this is a great gamble by Madhouse by putting a new guy in front of such a big project, but who knows? Perhaps they found themselves yet another talent here.
Rating: **** (Fantastic)

Quite out of the blue, this episode comes and delivers answers to some of the more burning questions that the early episodes have asked. I was prepared for the worst in terms of this show, but damn. It still amazed me to what extend this series is willing to go.

Being epic is of course easy to do: just create some sort of deus ex machina bomb that has the power to destroy the world and voila: you’ve involved the entire world in your story. Making it count is of course an entirely different story. This episode finally revealed what the homunculi were doing in Lior, and why Hughes had to die, among others. I at first thought that they were simply trying to make as many philosopher’s stones as possible, but these people are actually turning the entire COUNTRY into a transmutation circle! Bloody hell.

To think that Father didn’t take over a country in order to create his plans. He instead created a country, in order to carry them out. This explains the country’s round shape, why the capital is right in the middle of it and much more. The next big question is of course going to be: why? What could this guy possibly want even more? He possesses eternal life, is the most powerful man in the entire country, nobody can harm him in any way in the way this is going. What could he possibly want so badly that he’d create a 500-year long plan that involves so much preparation and such a hassle to carry out?

And where does Hohenheim fit into this, really? He must have had something to do with it, but what? My speculation at this point is that Hohenheim is indeed an immortal, and created Father as some sort of clone of his, which then got a mind of its own and then started that incredibly elaborate plan of his.

It’s also interesting how this episode explained the first episode as well. Wasn’t that supposed to be a filler? Interesting choice, especially considering the lack of original material in the rest of this series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

I must say, this episode caught me off hand. With the tons of random characterizations that never really progressed neither the story nor the characters forward, I was expecting this episode to be again one of those episodes that’s just there to flesh out the characters, without any real substance. But here this episode came and proved me wrong, it looks like things are finally getting a bit more interesting.

Seeing Gauche’s backstory animated was definitely the best part of Letter Bee so far since Gauche himself left. We’re finally getting to a bit of intrigue here: what was up with the government airship that crashed, and why of all things did Gauche’s memories of his mother get erased just like that? It was pretty sad seeing Aria in the middle of it, who couldn’t believe that Gauche just forgot the most important person in his life.

As for the rest of the episode… yeah, it was pretty typical. Sylvette turns out to be a terrible cook (like we haven’t seen those people enough in anime), Lag in true shounen fashion actually shoots with too much power (you can never have too much power in a shounen-series), and Nichi still refuses to listen to anyone but Lag. Still, I’m happy. That Gauche flashback was exactly what I was waiting for. What I’m hoping for right now is that the creators put such a thing in every single episode from now on, rather than creating very long build-up arcs, just for a few episodes of climax.
Rating: * (Good)

This episode: the try-out for the girls’ team that Aoba has finally decided to get into. Even though it had it coming, it was still fun to see Aoba pwn that arrogant female batter. I know that such a trick should get old pretty fast, but I still loved it. It was also very refreshing to see Aoba among other girls again. You can see that she’s a totally different person when she’s not amongst Kou and the others, . This was a well directed episode overall.

But yeah, Aoba’s talent has been well built up. Azuma played a big role in this: after trying to get past his brilliant hits, there’s hardly anything anymore that can surprise her. And yet, the creators made sure to hint that there are other talented players around.

But yeah: then there was that thing at the end of the episode… with Aoba collapsing and all. While it looks to me that it’s a simple sports injury that she’ll probably get over after a few months’ rest, let’s not forget that this is Adachi. He’s been known to kill off people before, and I don’t think that I remember any time in either Cross Game or Touch in which an injury did not have a major lasting effect. At this point, I’m very worried about Aoba because of this, especially because it happened so sudden: it was nothing like Adachi to pull such a thing so directly, so I have absolutely no idea what he’s aiming for.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Very interesting. While you would expect an action-packed finale, the creators instead decided to end this series through words and dialogue. The past two episodes were far less dramatic than some of the other moments in this series, and yet they used these moments very well in developing the plot solely through dialogue.

This was another very focused episode, in which Erin attempts to convince the new queen to stop listening to Damya. Erin had the luck that the new queen is still young and naive, so she easily believed her words, but nevertheless this was a pretty powerful episode. Even an idiot doesn’t believe any random Joe who claims that one of his closest relatives has been betraying him. Erin built up her story very well, up to the eventual revelations that the country was about to head into a disastrous path.

My prediction is that the final three episodes will be a lot more action-packed than this, although I do suspect that it’s going to be more than “Seimiya’s Troops versus Damya’s troops”. Still, Damya is pretty much guaranteed to die or something similar in the final episode. With that though, I’ll be content with how this series ends, despite that only half of the novels were adapted. Throughout the past fifty episodes, this show was able to show what it wanted to show, and for me this is now a well rounded series. There are plenty of other anime who deserve a sequel more than this one (Guin Saga!? Tytania!?).

Trans Arts… yeah. I’ve had a lot to complain about them. They’re another production company that is lead by one particular director, but this guy really is very inflexible. His original stories (Sisters of Wellber) are just too cheesy, his adaptations (Library Wars, Chocolate Underground) try to do way too much in way too little time. This series however was a great opportunity for him to really take his time and carefully adapt a well written story, and with this you can see that he really knows how to direct a series. I think that his main problem is that while he’s good at writing and directing single scenes and episodes, he doesn’t know how to look at the big picture. I hope that this series provided him with some valuable lessons as to what he’s good at and what he’s bad at. Because really: I like this guy’s creativity. In this day and age in which a majority of the anime try to rip off each other, he comes with interesting ideas and creative concepts, and finally with Kemono no Souja Erin, he actually managed to adapt one of these concepts right.
Rating: ** (Excellent)