Ah, why did I wake up before 0600 when I’m on break?

Oh well, I do have a lot of stuff I’d like to get done anyway…

With any luck (as in, assuming I passed all my courses), I’ll be back in Waterloo again next term for another school term. Peace. :)

It seems like my predictions from the previous episode was half correct. They condensed the story about Pheles and Johan “quite a bit” which almost made the title of the episode inconsequential, per se. Still, that’s not to say I didn’t like that part of the episode, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The whole episode was really good, actually, in my opinion. The episode moved along with a good pacing, the art was really good compared to the last episode, the dialogue was nice, and there were some funny moments to boot. I don’t think there was anything that was really lacking from this episode, to be honest.

There are a lot of things that are hinting at Pheles’s arrival in the next episode but I’m not so sure if I believe in that or not. At best, I think she might pop up at the end of the next episode…but that’s really going to be about it.

Not much really happened in this episode, I have to say. I was hoping for more interactions between Yuji’s father and Shana although Yoshida got in the way here. I guess one just can’t really stand having Yoshida screen when one’s a Shana fan. Oh, and before I forget, the art sucked hard in this episode, good grief.

Anyway, I guess I will just continue to take comfort in the fact that we’re finally going to delve into the material from the novels. I don’t really see the lack of action over these last ten episodes as being a real problem but I just wish they’d stick to the source material. Anyway, a lot of people are speculating that the novels aren’t going to end when the second season ends, but I’m going to stand firm in my predictions that it’ll all be over “around the same time”.

The previews hinted at some interesting things next episode but I have a feeling that it won’t happen until episode 12. I don’t think you can really tell the story of Pheles and Johan in “half an episode” or however much time there will be left when Wilhelmina finally shows up (which could very well be at the end of the episode). The episode’s title seems to imply that it’ll be all the episode is about, but I’m not going to fall for that. I mean, just think back at what happened with episode 6 and its episode name.

Anyone played Luminous Arc for the Nintendo DS before? How is it? I’m currently thinking about picking it or Heroes of Mana up in the near future. Now I was going to suck it up and go for the North American version (which I usually don’t unless I “have” to), but after seeing the cast list with names like Sayaka Ohara (Layla Hamilton), Aya Hirano (Suzumiya Haruhi), Chiwa Saito (Subaru Nakajima), Shizuka Itou (Hinagiku Katsura), and Akira Ishida (Athrun Zala), I am having second thoughts (as if it wasn’t obvious enough).

Oh, and Yasunori Mitsuda collaborated on the music composition, this game can’t possibly be bad, can it?

Today, Sam, Kitty, and I went to Zehr’s to do some grocery shopping. Sam and I spotted a $5 combo deal for two packs of 12 cans of Pepsi. Sam suggested that we split the deal in two wherein he gets a pack and I get a pack. I hesitated upon hearing this offer despite being a huge Pepsi fan due to the problem of consumption.

It wasn’t that 12 cans of Pepsi is a lot (and it is, but I do drink a lot of it), but it was the issue of the quantity per “package”. If I bought a 2L bottle, I would be able to pour as much as I would like to drink. But with a can, if I pop one open, I’m “forced” to drink all of it, say, within the next hour or two. I don’t know if it’s really bad or not or not to leave the drink lying around (it probably isn’t), but I’d really just rather not leave a half empty can of Pepsi lying around on the table. I mean, I do have two ThinkPad notebooks, a Dell monitor, three external hard drives, and three Logitech speakers sitting on my desk (my other two are behind me of course), so it’s definitely not a wise idea to leave fluids lying around.

In the end, I gave in because I’m a sucker for deals, but I can see myself going through these 12 cans real fast.

This was another great episode. It looks like we might be on a roll here. There were some solid fight scenes in this one and they also played some awesome music like the track that was heard at the end of the last episode. It was also nice to see that the main plot is now in motion since they revealed that the colour of Yuji’s flame is silver.

Yuri died as we all expected but he was certainly a lot more useful than I thought he was going to be. For someone that only became a flame haze not too long ago, he certainly had quite a fair amount of firepower and experience in dodging hits. Could he really have gotten so good in such a short amount of time?

The preview for the next episode showed some disturbing art which is probably the studio’s attempt to make up for the money they burned on the recent episodes. There’s nothing to worry about though, because from what I’ve read online, nothing major is going to happen for the next three episodes. Word on the street is that Pheles is going to show up on the 13th episode, so that’s going to be one episode to look out for.

Wow, Kei is one evil lady, deleting all of those messages that Miyako left for Hirono. Now I really have to play the game to see this scene unfold in its original form. We’re starting to run out of episodes here though, so it’s still a little unclear as to how she’ll suddenly drop Hirono and go for Kyosuke.

So, what is Renji going to do now? How many times has Chihiro gone through a reset thus far? Is there a cure at all? How will their tale end? So many questions that we all want answers to. It’d be kind of stupid if he just gave up, so that’s probably not going to happen. Will the same thing happen again? It’s quite likely. Chihiro did tell Himura that she wasn’t going to forget, so if the same thing happens again, will she feel a déjàvu down her spine?

Next episode, will Miyako find Hirono or will Hirono find Miyako? Or will it be something totally different like what happened with the last episode? Who knows, I sure don’t, hell, I didn’t even watch the previews for episode 9. What I do know is that I want to see Hirono and Miyako on screen together. ;)

Wow, this episode was amazing. It’s set a pretty high bar for the rest of the series but I think it can only get more awesome as it goes. It’s times like these that makes me feel reassured that there are still people out there that are capable of weaving words together into a magnificent tale.

So we see that Renji has pretty much started to break down himself, kind of going back to Himura’s warning to him. I didn’t quite realize it until they started talking about the ending. Then once I saw that scene being replayed from Renji’s memory, it all just kind of clicked together. It’s going to be interesting to see how he’s going to get back on his feet with this one because he’s really hurt Chihiro’s feelings here.

And of course, I haven’t forgotten about Miyako. That half of the episode just made the episode even more awesome than I could have ever imagined. I didn’t get the confrontation that I wanted while watching the last episode but that’s really no big deal compared to what we got instead. I was literally on my seat, staring at the scene, watching the scene unfold, as soon as I remembered that Hirono had mentioned that he had dropped his cellphone somewhere and that Miyako’s calls were never going to get through to him. And what a great scene it was, let me tell you. I have to give a big kudos to SHAFT due to its brilliant execution, truly a work of art.

As we all expected, Kei turned Kyosuke down on his offer for a role in his film, but she’ll surely have a change of heart in the future if the conversation at the infirmary was supposed to imply anything. I really liked the argument that Hirono and Kyosuke had and I’m now rather interested in what Kyosuke’s final product is going to be like.

Once again, we see Himura warning Renji not to get too close to Chihiro. Is she going to die? They haven’t mentioned anything about her health weakening or anything of that nature (if I recall correctly) and she seems to be doing pretty well right now, so a death in the end would be a little odd if you ask me.

The next episode should be really good since Miyako will likely be confronting Kei. We’ve seen a glimpse of their confrontation in the prologue’s DVD and I’m very anxious about seeing the conversation in its entirety. I don’t know how she’s going to win Hirono over but it can’t be as extreme as what Kaede did in Shuffle! when she tried to pry Rin away from Asa, will it?