Aw, what a heart-warming episode.

I’m really glad that Kobato managed to get exactly the time it needed in order to tell its full story. I’ve said this many times before, but there are too few series that try to go beyond 13 episodes, and it’s series like this that show the heights you can reach with a little character-development. This episode wasn’t exactly the most realistic… but hey. It’s not what I expected from the episode that would wrap up the kindergarten storyline.

So, if I understood things correctly, Okiura, unable to protect Sayaka instead tried to do the only thing he could: play the bad guy, in order to prevent other bad guys from causing even more trouble for her. I remember noting how the kindergarten would certainly get its happy end… and it didn’t. It closed off in this episode, and all of the kids are away now, at other schools. It’s the price Sayaka had to pay for her father’s debts, and while everyone tried to buy her time and money, it just wasn’t enough. At least, I’m glad that Kobato managed to help her move on from that. Meddling or not, but without Kobato there would have been no way in which the two would have made up with each other, and Kobato did what you’d expect her to do, without forcing everyone to go out of character just for the sake of a happy ending. Even Okiura stayed in character, simply because we hadn’t seen so much of him yet.

Now, three episodes left… I’m getting very curious as to what Kobato’s wish is. This episode right now closed off about half of the plot, so we can expect the final three episodes to really focus on Kobato herself. I personally love it when a series wraps up one of the main plots before the start of the major climax. It makes the series more dynamic than trying to end everything at the same time. It especially works well with inspired series as Kobato , which manage to make something heart-warming out of each conclusion.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Excellent, this episode did exactly what I hoped it would do. While the tongue-in-cheek storytelling of the first two episodes was fun, it was bound to get old after a while. this episode drops the comedy (aside from one scene, perhaps), and instead takes itself seriously. The result is my favourite episode of this series so far.

Unlike the first two episodes that made a bit of fun of the villains, we finally could explore this episode’s sword wielder to her full potential, and this episode did well in fleshing her out, and telling about her backstory. She wasn’t exactly rounded, but as a flat character she was pretty good. This of course amounted to a lot of exposition, but I felt like it was more balanced than in the first episode. It’s also good to see that this show intends to be varied.

I’m also surprised by the music in this episode. Taku Iwasaki isn’t someone I’d name amongst my favourite composers, but his scores definitely know how to hit the spot. I like the use of choirs in soundtracks (as long as they’re not overdone, obviously), O I quite liked the musical score at the end of this episode.

In any case, this episode showed that Katanagatari is another one of those shounen series that suffers from the “I’m about to attack you, but first let me tell you my life story”-syndrome. The reason why I like it here, compared to shows as Bleach, is that the dialogue adds something to the characters, and the fact that the action scenes themselves are short and sweet, and pretty much what action scenes involving deadly weapons should be: deadly. Battles here are very much built up with the dialogues, resulting in a short but sweet climax.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

The main reason why I wasn’t too happy with Rio during the past number of episodes is the lack of attention she got. I mean, from out of nowhere she suddenly turned out to be a princess and started angsting. It sounded so cliched. However now that she got an episode properly dedicated to it, my opinion of her turned to the complete opposite. This was an excellent episode that did several things at once, and surprisingly succeeded in all of them.

With this episode I very much understood why Rio was feeling down for the past number of episodes, since she has basically been running away from her duties as royalty (taking that owl along with her, for some reason). My guess is that she didn’t want to be forced into everything, especially because of Iliya’s death.

I as also surprised at how such a major plot-related episode also stuffed in the story of that old woman in it, and made it surprisingly good as well. It wold also have been perfectly fine to include that story a bit earlier, but this way it had an interesting effect on Rio. With the small character-development from Rio and Kanata, it turned out quite heart-warming.

Now, with only three episodes left, the climax has finally begun, though not exactly in the way that I expected, now that Rio is gone. I really wonder whether the final three episodes are going to her, over Kanata who’s supposed to be the main character. To be honest, I’d much rather that the focus would stay on Kanata and the town that we’ve been in. It’s too late at this point to suddenly introduce politics.
Rating: ** (Excellent)