Iris runs off and not to long after returns with a bowl of freshly picked fruit. Dent, being a chef refuses to eat the food that way and somehow manages to pull a Brock and take out multiple kitchen supplies to prepare the food.   Ash, Pikachu and Iris chow down on the delicious lunch, while Dent tells them he made more if they wanted it.

Ash made his way over to the kitchen supply stand that came out of nowhere but the food was gone. We then move the episode onward to the point… Tsutarja. It seems that while they were eating, a wild Tsutarja stole the seconds and ran off. Ash for whatever reason is determined to capture the Tsutarja and begins to pretty much stalk the poor thing.  Ash later finds out that it wouldnt be so easy to capture this pokemon. After attempting to catch it by just throwing a pokeball.. once again fails, he sends out Pikachu. We then discover that this Tsutarja can use an attack called Attract, which works to harness the opposite sex. So yes, this particular bad-ass Tsutarja just happens to be female. Tsutarja attacks Pikachu, who is under the command of Attract, with vine whip but of course Ash steps in and takes the beating instead.

Tsutarja then runs off and what do you know? Ash follows her. He sends Mamapeto into the sky to look for her, and they finally do meet up again. This time Mijumaru came out of his pokeball wanting to try and challenge Tsutarja by himself. I just cant get enough of Mijumaru he is so damn cute. Anywho, he of course is attacked with Attract and has to return to the pokeball. Ash trys and throws another pokeball to catch her, but Tsutarja just comes right back out. Ash then sends in Pokabu, which Iris was finally happy that he was using the correct type difference for victory. However, once again Pokabu too fell under the spell of Attract and was returned.

After a few more scenes of running and trying to be George of the Jungle, Ash finally catches up to Tsutarja again but this time decides to attack with Mamapeto… who just happens to be a female. In the end, Tsutarja’s attack didn’t work and Mamapeto attacked her. Something finally snapped in her and she allowed Ash to capture her. This episode was mostly a filler, but I will have to say that it is amazing how fast Ash got the starters this season. So far the “Pokemon Coma Theory” about why Ash is still 10 is correct for this show up until this point. That meaning that it has almost directly mirrored events from Season 1. Anywho, I still love this season of Pokemon much better than DP and am looking forward to what adventures the trio will run into next.

Not only with people around him like Gotou, but with how he handles his relationship with Haruka. Especially since when she sports the red necklace is looks so much better on her neck than on Yakumo’s hand. The overarching mystery is also finally solved this week. Like a lot of you speculated – Kinoshita-Sensei was the doctor that was actually committing the murders. In a futile attempt to bring his daughter, Azusa, back to life he ended up taking the lives of numerous young girls. After failing so many times he goes crazy when he learns that Haruka would make the perfect container for Azusa’s soul. What I don’t understand is how Haruka is the perfect container for his daughter, especially since she is a college student and his daughter looks like she was in high school. Combined with the fact that all the previously murdered girls were in high school as well, I guess it shows you how far a person can succumb to when they want something badly enough. In the end, after a lengthy and action packed “save Haruka from drowning” scene, Yakumo confronts Kinoshita-sensei with the girl who was possessed last episode next to him. Somehow he manages to resolve both cases at the same time. After explaining to Kinoshita-sensei that each and every time he killed a girl in hopes of trying to being Azusa back, he was instead killing her over and over. Explaining how Azusa felt guilty and possessed them right before they died just to experience the pain and the fear of death that they felt. Just as Kinoshita-sensei begins to break down after realizing how horrible his deeds were, the possessed girl comes back to life. With Yakumo explaining that the spirit probably gave up after hearing the conversation between Yakumo and Kinoshita-sensei – understanding that possessing someone won’t bring you back to life.

Not only was this mystery awesome, but there was some great action scenes that accompanied the detective work. Yakumo notices some strangebooks on Kinoshita-sensei’s bookshelf – most of them pertaining to resurrection and bringing the dead back to life. I wouldn’t want my doctor to be interested in the occult, and I thought that this should have raised a huge red flag. Of course Yakumo and Gotou don’t think anything of it until Haruka’s life is in danger. As Gotou and Yakumo race to where Haruka is being held captive, they arrive just as she’s about to be tossed into the river. Both Gotou and Yakumo really show what they’re really made of. As Gotou tries to prevent Haruka from falling for as long as possible, struggling to keep a hold on the rope that’s tied to a cinderblock as he’s getting wailed on by a Kinoshita with a metal pipe (props to Gotou’s manliness). As Gotou finally succumbs from getting the crap beat out of him, Yakumo immediately leaps straight into the river without any hesitation to save Haruka’s life. Among all the action, Gotou finally figures out that his new partner isn’t gay, but just overly zealous. Seeing how Gotou’s partner is a HUGE fan of the occult, he literally almost wet himself when he learned he was going to work with someone (Gotou) who was a “psychic detective”. It’s pretty funny to see him all sad and depressed after learning that his idol was a fake. At least Gotou can stand to be within a few feet of his partner now, instead of trying to get him to back off all the time.

In the end, the guy with the two red eyes was the real antagonist – pulling all the strings from the shadow, manipulating people to kill others, just to lure out Yakumo. Like I guessed a few weeks ago, HE IS Yakumo’s father. Now in my head about twenty questions just appeared. What the hell did his father do this mom that made her want to kill her own son? Where the hell has he been this entire time? Why is he trying to destroy his own son?! I don’t know if any of these will be answered in the next seven episodes but I know that the series itself has finally grown on me.

By that, I’m not referring to her willingness to flash her underwear to Haru and not make a scene about it either, but how she uses that spirited front to hide the sadness she’s bottling inside. She exhibits all the traits of a girl who I wouldn’t be able to leave alone upon discovering that, especially given how she’s genuinely a good person who doesn’t deserve the cold shoulder that Kazuha’s mother (Murai Kazusa) gives her. She’s also ridiculously cute when she’s in love, which this episode really opened my eyes to when Haru finally remembered that he played with her when they were younger. As such, I could definitely see why Haru would search aimlessly to find the pendant she lost then, as I can picture myself doing something similar if it meant there was a chance of putting a smile back on Akira’s face. I can’t imagine everyone feeling the same way, but it wouldn’t sit well with me if the world was so messed up that a nice girl like her can’t be happy. I don’t know how many people will take me sincerely in light of the nude scenes shown subsequently; however, the sight of her tears flowing out just for such a minor gesture on Haru’s part made it clear in my mind that Akira was worth going out on a limb for any day of the week.

Now before people get ahead of themselves and deem these impressions another dairy entry of mine, the reason why I was so happy to see Haru try to help Akira out the way he did is because I have a soft spot for acts of chivalry. He didn’t do it because of any intimate feelings towards her at the time, but simply the feeling of wanting to do something for her after seeing the sad expression she had on while staring out the classroom window. Much like Haru, I was captivated by that look to a certain degree, but still wouldn’t have been expecting anything to come from reaching out to her. Be that as it may, I wouldn’t have been foolish enough to up an opportunity either if it presented itself either. This of course is in reference to Akira’s feelings towards her childhood love pouring uncontrollably out of her to the point that she’d boldly enter the bath with him. Aside from Haru’sinteresting way of entering the bathtub to hide himself and divert his eyes from Akira’s naked body, I actually found that the scene played out pretty believably. Yes, that includes the nudity itself, which I felt wasn’t done in poor taste whatsoever given the prior build up surrounding Akira. In fact, I found it a lot less awkward to watch than the screen captures probably indicate, which includes how she felt Haru’s erection poking against her, and went on to place his hands over her breasts. Understandably, most people would be focused on the her body than anything else, but as fairly sentimental person, I was more fixated on Akira’s actions and what was probably going through her mind.

Taking that into consideration, I was actually relieved to know that Haru didn’t take advantage of her troubled state, as going any further definitely wouldn’t have been for the right reasons. Some may argue that “comfort sex” would’ve done Akira wonders, but I personally like a more respectable approach. For the most part, Akira’s story has been very agreeable in my eyes, so it’s nice to see it working towards just that. Akira is clearly still troubled over something, which is likely linked to the truth surrounding her mother’s identity. She’s taken the notebook containing birth records from Haru’s grandparents’ clinic after all, suggesting that her mother will be the focus next time when Haru talks to her about it. Akira’s final episode next week should be good. In addition to all the emotions and tasteful nude scenes, I’m finally starting to get a good taste of the drama side of things in this series and I like it!

For one of the heads of Kiraboshi, Okamoto Midori (Kuwashima Houko), certainly wasn’t what I was expecting, especially since she looked completely serious in the few cameos we saw of her in episodes 2 and 3, although after getting some first hand experience with Watanabe in the last two episodes I suppose I should have been prepared to be surprised. That said, I can’t say I was disappointed by this turn of events, as I was highly amused by her constant fantasies of bishounens, going as far as having several posters of them on the wall of the school clinic. It doesn’t help that her First Phase ability as a Star Driver apparently allows her to role back time and become the age of ateenager again, allowing her to seduce nearly all the male populace of the academy and even perform the now infamous “glass kiss”. Speaking of seducing, I love how Takuto actually smirked when he found the letter from Okamoto in his desk, as if he was actually going to do something; now that I think about it, the subject of whether Takuto is a virgin or not hasn’t been brought up yet, any bets?

Comedy aside, I wasn’t as impressed with this week’s fighting scene as I was with previous ones, probably because this one felt like the most rehashed so far. Takuto didn’t show any new abilities at all and we didn’t have an epic change art style like was the case with episode 3, the one-shot that resulted from Okamoto being distracted by her “Otanoshimi Mode” didn’t help either. The one interesting thing about this week’s battle was the new“Precognition System”, which we didn’t end up seeing a lot of and probably won’t play much of a role until later on, as it did seem to give Okamoto an advantage over Takuto that wouldn’t have been overcome if not for her ero tendencies. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the Precognition system when it’s put into the hands of a more competent Star Driver, preferably Keito who has been playing a consistently bigger role in the past few episodes and appears to be the most cunning of the Star Driver heads shown thus far. At the very least, she’s shaping up to be my personal favorite Kiraboshi head thanks to her calm and calculating personality; it helps that she appears to be the only girl that’s not a slut as well.

Now onto my complaints about the return to the formula, which seems like it’s going to be a weekly rant. As I said in a previous write up, while the formula itself is not a bad one, it’s extremely irritating to see it over and over again for the past five weeks. It makes the plot extremely predictable and causes the initial excitement of seeing Takuto enter Zero Time and battle against the robots to corrode. Every time I see a repeat of the same thing from last episode I think “why aren’t they using this time to actually explain what’s going on”? The only reason I know what “First Phase”, Cybodies, Kiraboshi, and Zero Time are is because of an interview with the director that circulated the internet a couple weeks before the anime aired. It’s simply not good storytelling to assume that your viewers read extra information on the series before it aired and thus leaves you at liberty to skip over vital information concerning the plot of the series. Frankly, it’s lazy. That said, I’m still looking forward to the rest of the series, and after having one of the heads of Kiraboshi defeated in the first 5 episodes it’ll be interesting to see how the story develops from here. From what I can tell so far, it seems that the current Kiraboshi crop won’t be the antagonists for the entire series and may only be red herrings for the true villains. Also, it seems that we’ll finally get to see Sugata in action next episode, which has me pumped to see whether he’s indeed more powerful than Takuto.

Looking from a broader perspective, this OVA seems to be a part of a media blitz for Index related merchandise, with the 22nd light novel being released earlier this month and the first airing of the second season of Index, Toaru Majutsu no Index II, coinciding with its release. PSP games for both Index and Railgun have also been announced, although they won’t be officially released until January 27 and April 28, 2011, respectively. As a Raildex is this a newfag thing? fanboy myself, I love seeing the franchise get so much attention, and is it ever deserved. With the total novel and manga sales of Index and Railgun shooting through 15 million copies recently (10 million for Index novels, 3.5 million for Railgun manga, and 1.5 million for Index manga), Index BD/DVD sales averaging around 10,000 copies sold per volume, and Railgun BD/DVD sales absolutely crushing with around 20,000 BD/DVD copies being sold per volume, the franchise deserves every bit of attention it gets.

The thing that stands out about Railgun is that, as far as I can remember, there’s never been any series quite like it. By that I mean, it takes the basic principles of a slice-of-life moe series and injects them into an interesting sci-fi setting with a semblance of plot. For lack of a better analogy, it’s a bit like K-ON! meets Index. As such, there’s a lot of strife between Index purists and Railgun fans, at least for the anime adaptations; while one side accuses the other of bringing in moe, filler, and simplified plot into the Index franchise, the other fires back with complaints that the parent series is too convoluted in its plot and character development, and the episodic format of the series ruins the experience. While both arguments are true to a certain extent, I find myself in the middle, enjoying both Index and Railgun for what they do. I like Railgun’s straightforward and character oriented plot, and I also like Index’s complex and somewhat episodic plot. Individually, the series are meant to accomplish different things and appeal to different demographics, and in my opinion both portray what they’re meant to well. That said, seeing Mikoto’s uber moe faces on a regular basis and Kuroko’s hilarious voice work courtesy of Arai Satomi does make Railgun a better watch on a weekly basis for me. As for why Railgun got an OVA adaptation and Index didn’t, my theory is that as J.C.Staff is more liberal with Railgun’s adaptation than Index’s, they decided to just go ahead and release an OVA with an original story, as half of the Railgun anime was filler anyway.* The more obvious reason is that the aforementioned sales difference played a role in the decision as well. That said, I can see J.C.Staff adapting the Index SS novel into an OVA series after Index II concludes its run next year, much in the same vein as Shakugan no Shana S.

As for the OVA itself, I felt it was just the usual Railgun fair, with the girls teaming up and going “Judgement desu no” to solve a random rumor in Academy City. In fact, if you were to watch this without ever having gone through the entire first season, you would probably even mistake this OVA for just another episode in the series. That being the case, I still enjoyed it, and the fact that it’s true to Railgun form and is really nothing extravagant can probably be attributed to this. It was great seeing Saten do her usual rumor gossip, this time concerning the urban legend of “Someone is watching”, and Uiharu and Kuroko doing some detective work on the net. Of course, dealing with the science side of Academy City comes with the plans of a mad scientist, this time in the form of Sensory scientist Jounan Asako, who has been causing Electromaster espers like Mikoto to feel as if someone is watching them in order to further her research. Again, it’s the usual Railgun plot of mad scientist causing trouble for the cast, but it still works well and will never get old for me as long as new ideas continue to be introduced along with them. And of course, what would a Railgun OVA be without some Saten skirt flipping and Kuroko onee-sama stalking? We even got a Touma sighting, which of course brought about the great moe Mikoto scene mentioned earlier.

So overall, it was refreshing to see Railgun again after seven months, although in hindsight that really isn’t that long. Even though some people were hoping this OVA would be more relevant than it turned out, I’m personally happy they decided to stick with the usual Railgun form and didn’t try to go for anything extravagant. Railgun is, for the most part, just a relaxed series meant to flesh out some side characters on the science side from Index, and I’m not really interested in seeing it try to develop a true overarching plot of its own. I’m perfectly content with watching the little bits of action we get from the series and the random little adventures that the girls get themselves into in between them. In a way, it’s true that this OVA and Railgun itself is just a gigantic piece of fanservice for Mikoto and to a lesser extent Kuroko, but even so, it’s fanservice done well with interesting and straightforward stories compounded by a great slice-of-life atmosphere, and I thoroughly enjoy every bit of extra screen time the two of them get, as their dynamic is hilarious. With Index II airing this fall and Shana III most likely set for next fall, this will probably be the last bit of Railgun anime we’ll get for a while. So with that being the case, I’ll be waiting for the next Railgun!

This week’s Bakuman was AMAZING. Between Takagi and Moritaka, the brotherly feeling has grown immensely. Like I said earlier, it takes a really good friend to do the fusion dance with you. It takes your best friend to start insulting the way you did your dance. From the intricate steps to the pitch of your “FUSION”, it has the power to make or break friendships. The friendship between our dynamic duo continues to amaze me with how much it’s grown in such a small period of time. For the everyone out there, back when you were little, I’m sure you remember what it was like to sleep over at a friend’s house. Freezing your butt off since you’d argue over who would sleep on the bed, eventually leading to no one using it. Talking through the night since neither of you can sleep. Doing stupid things instead of sleeping even though you’re both tired. Trying coffee for the first time to try to stay awake longer.

Besides the fusion dance (a sign of awesomeness) both Takagi and Moritaka bust out their skills this episode. Takagi, the man in charge of creating the “name”, actually has some pretty amazing ideas. From the two ideas he pitched, I personally thought the story of a second world was only mildly interesting. Having a second earth to fix the problems of the original one, it really makes you think about how different the world could be. But I didn’t feel the same rush of excitement Moritaka did. While I’m glad they went this idea for their name, I must admit the baseball “name” would have been pretty funny. Gurasan Pitcher – The blind pitcher who wears sunglasses! Moritaka on the other hand has set some pretty high standards for his work. In charge of actually bringing the ideas to life on paper, it was really awesome to see the different steps artwork goes through before it’s finalized. From name, to rough sketch, clean sketch, to ink. It’s pretty hard work – especially when your hand ends up like that. While Takagi manages to finish his work a lot quicker then Moritaka I think it’s pretty thoughtful with what he decides to do with his extra time. After Moritaka decides to start art from scratch after they see their rival, Niizuma Eiji’s work in Shonen Jump Jack, Takagi attempts to try what Moritaka does. Seeing how he can’t draw or ink worth crap, he teaches himself how to cut out the tones and has the battle scars to prove it. In the end, both Takagi and Moritaka finish their name together – unsure of their work but feeling damn proud and finishing with a glorious handshake.

On the relationship forefront it looks like Takagi will finally get some action. Whether it’s wanted or not, it looks like he doesn’t have a choice. By not thinking before he spoke to Miyoshia Kaya (Yahagi Sayuri), Azuki’s best friend, it looks like Takagi is going to end up in an awkward situation whenever they get close to each other. Somehow Takagi manages to phrase his words to sound like he wanted to talk to Kaya. Leading Kaya to think that he’s hitting on her. With this kind of behavior coming from Takagi, it really surprised me. I’d expect him to be better than Moritaka with relationship type things, not the other way around. Then again, it’s hard to tell if Takagi actually likes her or not. Especially when you add in the fact that Kaya competed nationally in some sort form of martial arts – maybe Takagi will “begin” to like her. Moritaka on the other hand still does NOT have Azuki’s phone number. I refuse to accept any of his deluded fantasies until he mans up and actually gets Azuki’s number. Especially when he shows such skill in understanding how relationships work, except when it comes to his own.

However, it looks like his new-found opportunity to finally act like an older brother knows no bounds, as he not only goes out of his way to get them to make up, but takes another bullet for Kirino by degrading his image further. First his father, and now the one girl who seemed to have an actual interest in him. At some point, Kyousuke’s really got to start asking him why he keeps covering for Kirino and won’t let her learn from her own mistakes. If it’s to get her to show some appreciation towards him as an older brother again, I’m not so sure the “return in investment” is worth it with our violent closet otaku.

Seeing as Kirino hasn’t given Kyousuke any further indication that she’s grateful for everything he’s doing for her, I get the feeling that the story’s saving that up for a much bigger moment in a later episode. I can just picture it now. Kirino will be all teary-eyed in Kyousuke’s arms and thanking him for everything he’s done for her and finally start respecting him as an older brother. Okay maybe not quite, but at least to the point that Kyousuke feels like he hasn’t completely wasted his time by trying to improve his sibling relationship. As for Ayase, she’s probably a prime example of what happens when someone gets too absorbed into everything the mass media feeds them and allows it to dictate her lifestyle more than she realizes. It’s kind of ironic how she was scrutinizing Kirino’s games as the cause of a lot of heinous crimes, when she looked pretty psychotic herself based on what she heard on the news about them being a bad influence.

Granted, Ayase looks like she has a more fundamental problem with her mindset that caused her to lose it upon discovering Kirino’s secret hobby, possibly some level of insecurity over losing her friend to the “evil” world of eroge. The park scene at the end where she admitted that she wanted to make up with Kirino yet couldn’t overlook her love for cute little girls seemed to suggest as much, which I probably would’ve been more understanding towards if she had some sort of traumatic experience where another friend or a family member degenerated before her very eyes. Of course, the other possibility is that she’s more upset about how Kirino lied and kept it a secret from her all this time, which works for me since it’s a page right out of Densha Otoko, albeit the yuri version.

Whatever the case, it was interesting hearing how Hayama Saori voiced that other side to Ayase, as well as seeing Kirino weep a few tears of frustration when Kyousuke wouldn’t let his “little sister personality improvement project” go to waste. I gather that was supposed to be a moment where viewers were supposed to feel the urge to reach out and help Kirino, but I was still on the fence about it when the kick to the groin was followed up by a lot of pillow whacks over Kyousuke’s head. Aside from that, the humor was less prominent, but came through pretty nicely when Kyousuke went to his father for advice and pulled out another last resort to salvage the situation when Kirino gave him the evil eye to do something. The rational side of me says that Kyousuke really needs to get some more friends and stop hanging out with his sister, but the anime viewer side of me feels he should keep going out on a limb for her to self-degrading results. In the latter case, the next “Thanks Bro” is still long overdue.

I definitely wasn’t expecting this type of randomness, which is more akin to Sora no Otoshimono, from this series. To be honest, I didn’t find the comedy this time around very entertaining, mostly due to the fact that its pure outlandishness felt very out of place here. The one responsible for all this craziness, Hiiragi Noa (Yahagi Sayuri), is certainly not what I was expecting after seeing the preview for this episode, turning out to be a mad scientist rather than a crazy exorcist wannabe, which is what I predicted she would be. Another thing I honestly was not expecting was for Noa to actually develop feelings for Tarou. It seems like every time he helps to solve a girl’s problem they end up falling for him, a bit like a certain spiky haired protagonist.

Speaking of that, it seems that slowly but surely Tarou is building a harem, which currently consists of Yuno, Mio, and now Noa. When I first started this series, I didn’t ping it to be a harem, believing that the only love interests Tarou would have would be Mio and Yuno. That said, I’m not against the idea of a harem, but you’d be hard pressed to convince me that the other members of Tarou’s harem (assuming he triggers more flags) will actually end up being more than comedy relief in comparison to Mio and Yuno, although it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong about this series. I don’t have anything against harems in general, but it doesn’t seem like on would fit this series well, so I’m hoping that Noa will be the last flag Tarou manages to raise for a while.

Overall, I didn’t find this episode as entertaining as the past three and after watching it I came off feeling dry. The super hero antics really impeded upon my willingness to take Noa’s troubled past seriously, and furthermore they just weren’t very funny to me. I think if the writers had taken a more realistic approach, like they did with Yuno and Mio, I probably would’ve enjoyed Noa’s introduction a lot more. By realistic, of course I mean drama within the confines of an anime. Although, if Noa isn’t meant to be a serious character and actually won’t play a bigger role in the plot, I suppose it’s somewhat acceptable for her introduction to have been this silly.

Taking out your childhood problems on Hotori is just plain cruel too. Not everyone in the world sees everything logically. There are people out there who just like to think outside of the box! Just because she might look a little like your second grade homeroom teacher who attempted to destroy your mind – it doesn’t necessarily make Hotori your natural enemy. Then again, I will give you the benefit of the doubt when you enjoy circling the correct answers on test; only to go crazy when the only circles you write on Hotori’s paper are the “zero” for her grade. From a teacher standpoint it looks like you care a lot. Especially with all the work that you do to help her improve her horrible math skills. But deep down insideI know that you’ll do certain unforgivable things (at least in your mind) just to get your revenge on her. I hope that you never take life less seriously then you already do – it’s things like your horrible math jokes that really make me laugh. Seriously though, what appeal does Mr. Moriaka have too all these different girls? His hair? His looks? His Sugita Tomokazu like voice? I still don’t understand what Hotori, or in fact anyone, can see in him. Romantically he seems like he’d be a horrible boyfriend/husband.

Besides the ever continuing one sided love Hotori has for Mr. Moriaka, Sore Machi never fails to showcase how air-headed our loveable Hotori is. Be it from using hair toner instead of lotion on her face to telling amazingly bad jokes, Hotori will always make me laugh with her stupid humor. For some reason she also takes her horoscopes seriously – but only the horoscopes that are positive for her. Meaning she goes through horoscope after horoscope looking for something positive. I kind of get the feeling that it doesn’t work like that though. And, I also thought that each sign only got one horoscope a day? There’s also more Futaba this week! In an episode that seems solely focused on Moriaka, Futaba manages to squeeze in few minutes in-between the jokes. This is only the second episode she’s appeared in but I’m starting to like her a LOT. I don’t know if it’s her slightly deeper voice, her attitude (especially with Hotori), the way she loosely wears that uniform of hers, or her sexy ear piercings but I know that something about her really gets me. I want more Futaba!

Next week’s episode looks like it will focus on Tatsuno (and not Futaba). I hope that maybe, just maybe next week’s episode will finally be able to shine some better light on Tatsuno. Seeming to appear only as a selfish, egotistic person, she doesn’t even seem like Hotori’s good friend! I can personally say I’m not too fond of her character, so I hope that she has something to round her out. Also did anyone feel like they were watching Bakemonogatari whenever the chalk was slowly falling to the ground?

Whether coincidental or not, it’s worth noting that Caribs Garrard (Inoue Kazuhiko) once set his sights on becoming a Head Bee just like Gauche is now in a similar occupation after finding out that the whole Bee thing wasn’t for him. The same goes for his former dingo Hazel Valentine (Tachiki Fumihiko), who has a way with handling both Wasiolka and Niche.

The rest of the episode outlined how Reverse members have been attacking Bees and stealing letters in the southern Yuusari region, and revealed how Garrard and Valentine were there to perform a Spirit Amber experiment of their own, but felt like there was still some sort of untold truth going on. The fact that Garrard didn’t seem to care about the well-being a young boy made him out to be an antagonist, but the way he purposely let Lag’s shindanjuu expose the memories contained in the Spirit Amber bottle suggested otherwise. In light of that, I find it hard to get a read on Garrard’s motives and if he was truly trying to break Lag’s resolve as a Bee, or if he had confidence in him overcoming the challenge. Then there’s Valentine himself, who seems to enjoy teasing Niche about being a second-rate dingo, yet doesn’t come off as a person with any real ill intent. As such, I’m curious as to whether part of this is an act, meaning they used their supposed defection to infiltrate the Reverse organization.

The prospect of the government thinking that far ahead is definitely more intriguing than things proceeded exactly as they’ve been laid out, though I can’t say this series has every been that roundabout in its storytelling. Whatever the case, I’ll be sure to have my eye on these two when Lag and company cross paths with them again.