Short Synopsis: Cosette and Gavroche find a small puppy and decide to take it home, where it causes quite a bit of trouble. Jean meanwhile gets visited by someone from his past.
Good: Already extremely touching, this early in the series.
Bad: No bad points so far. Let’s hope it stays this way.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10

So far, the winter-season has been excellent. My two favourite series of the season so far have to be Les Miserables and Master of Epic. While the latter is more than enough for my weekly comedy-fix, the former so far has delivered an extremely toughing tale about Cosette. I SO like her character right now. Even though she’s being bullied by almost everyone, she still shows that she can be strong. I love strong characters like her. ^_^

Still, I’m surprised at the lack of interest about this series. I expected lots of people to talk about this one, but only one other blogger has picked it up. Apart from that, two others talked about the first episode, and that’s it! The fansubbers also are surprisingly slow, despite the Japanese being not very hard (seeing as we mostly hear children talk). I’m really hoping that this show is going to get a bit more attention when the subs start to arrive, as it doesn’t deserve this much negligence.

This show has also proved to draw me in its atmosphere faster than almost every other show. I’m not sure what it is, but each episode has such an incredible atmosphere from start to finish. This episode was definitely no exception, it probably was the best episode yet. Especially the ending was amazing, when Cosette got beaten by Thénadier for messing up her sheets, right in front of her children.

Also, who’s that guy who’s after Jean Valjean? It would seem that he’s someone from the police, who’s chasing him even now. Still, is there really this much need to hunt down a simple bread thief? I can understand why he wants to hide his identity, as you wouldn’t get far with everyone knowing that you’re a former thief, but I don’t see why people would still be looking for him.

This will be the first show I’ll be blogging from the Winter-season. I’m still pending about the others. Master of Epic will also probably get blogged, perhaps even Venus Versus Virus, and Deltora Quest and Himawari!! depend on whether I can find enough inspiration to write about their second episodes, which were excellent by the way.

First, before I start, I might want to put up a small disclaimer. I’ve never seen, read or heard anything about the original work. This is the first time I’ll be experiencing the story. Therefore, you won’t hear things like “the book was better at X”, “the anime omitted Y” or “the anime omitted Z”. Feel free to comment about this, though.

Well then, about the episode. I was surprised about how Cosette evolved, only from the first episode, same with Ebonie and Azele (I think their names are spelled that way, not sure though). At the end of the previous episode, Cosette really looked like a helpless girl, now that her mother had left her and she was put in the care of that evil woman. But this episode, she really showed that she can be strong if she wants to. I like how she doesn’t care about the things that are done to her. It’s probably because she’s clinging to the hope that her mother will come back to her some day. Ebonie and Azele also were quite interesting. Where they wanted to play with Cosette in the first episode, this episode makes them resemble to the two evil stepsisters from Cinderella.

Jean Valjean continues to play with Aran in this episode, by playing in on his conscience. He asks him to deliver a bit of cash to the local hospital. I’m not sure what his motives are. He might have done it in order to prevent him from going into the wrong direction, it may have been because he needed a loyal assistant, or it may have been because he could relate to him. I think it’s for a personal reason, though, as he goes all out of the way to hint about his own past to Aran.

It seems that Jean committed a sin at a time (stealing bread, if I recall correctly), after which he fled, and kept running for nineteen(?) years. In the end, he got caught, but the one he stole from forgave him, and gave him two silver chandeliers (that part was a bit vague on me). We aren’t told what happened after that, but I can guess that these chandeliers helped Jean get the position of major he’s currently at.

I also liked how the twosome of Ebonie and Azele also get what they deserve at times. The two of them get some cakes, and pretend that Cosette stole them from them, in order to get even more cakes the next day. If it weren’t for Gavroche (okay, I know I spelled that one wrong), who overheard the two of them, and took the cakes back. ^^ Still, this also means that they are going to take revenge, and they’re going to do something even worse. Should be interesting.

I’m also not sure what to find of Gavroche yet. It may be his lack of development, but of all the main characters, I like him the least. I’d love to see how he and Cosette got acquainted in the first place. Apart from him, I really like this series so far. I’m really hoping that the huge length of this anime won’t ruin it, seeing as there’s lots of potential in this one, which doesn’t deserve to be ruined.