Things were moving along pretty slowly in this episode although one can’t expect too much given how much has happened in the past couple of episodes. We also got a new opening and ending theme for this episode. They both sound quite good but I’m more partial to the opening myself. I’ve heard some talk about the ending being more suitable as the opening and vice versa although I’m not so sure about that myself.

There was some decent “tragedy” setup work with the hougu that Pheles gave Yoshida in this episode. She hasn’t used the hougu yet in the novels, but I imagine that she will at some point in the future. It just seems a little useless otherwise as it doesn’t really advance the plot. Maybe she’ll die and Yuji and Shana will survive at the end, but given the circumstances, they can’t bring themselves together because of the sacrifice that Yoshida made? This kind of setup gives me a little bit of School Days and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon vibe.

I’m very excited about seeing Yuji train and am hoping to see him do some hard core fighting later in the series. From my research, we should be able to see something around episode 19 or 20. We’ll be in the 14th novel at that point.

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