Wow, the art quality of this episode has made quite a dive. While things looked okay here and there, there were quite a few oddities and utter ridiculousness that slipped in here, particularly near the end of the episode when Yuji showed up, that was just plain awful.

If you forget ignore the problem with the art, you might actually enjoy the episode. I know I did. I think the screenplay of this episode was particularly well done and the music selection of the various scenes were very appropriate.

I don’t know how they plan on wrapping up up the series here given the current events. Will we get a third season or will it just be concluded with an OVA or something some time later? We’ll probably get a third season but I can’t imagine it lasting for 24 episodes again. I mean, surely the series just has to end.

While this episode has a lot less action than the last episode, it was certainly no less impressive in terms of scale. I will admit that there were quite a few bad drawings in this episode. This is to be expected after what’s been happening recently. However, it still bothered me even though I had mentally prepared myself for this.

I read a lot of complaints about the usage of vocals during the insert song and I have to honestly disagree with those opinions. It didn’t even occur to me that it was even remotely out of place when I was watching the episode which made it even odder for me to read comments noting that the vocals should’ve been removed.

The series is very slowly beckoning towards its conclusion. There’s a lot of speculation about what’s going to happen at the end though I think that we can all agree that there’s pretty much no way they’re going to spin an anime original ending at this point given the events of the next episode.

As some of you may have saw, I made a very brief post about this episode a week ago when I watched the raw then. As you can tell, this episode was totally right up my alley in terms of plot development since things are finally going my way for once.

I’ll admit that there is still a danger though since there are still four episodes left. I mean, there’s still one third of the series that still has to unfold. It’s obvious that Noe still has a role to play here (I mean, she still has to collect tears, right?), but I think she’s officially out of the pairing loop after her conversation with Shinichirou by the shore.

From the previews, it looks like there’s going to be a confrontation between Jun and Hiromi in the next episode. It was obvious from episode 6 that Jun’s always known that Hiromi liked Shinichirou and not himself, so I don’t know what this is going to do, if anything.

This was one hell of an exciting episode. There was action going on throughout the whole episode leaving you with very little room to breath. It’s amazing how Wilhelmina was able to keep up with Sabrac’s attacks. She certainly is one experienced flame haze.

This fight has probably been the best fight so far across both seasons in my opinion. I really enjoyed the different forms of attacks that Wilhelmina pulled out of her hat to try to defeat Sabrac, very creative indeed. One minor complaint I had with this fight was that Wilhelmina wasn’t fighting with her mask on. Yes, I know she put it on when she threw that giant ball of energy at Sabrac, but I was hoping to see her with the mask on throughout the whole fight, ah well.

The next episode is likely going to remain on high gears like this one. On one hand, I have a feeling that Sabrac might live to see another episode but on the other hand, since episode 22 is named 「クリスマス・イヴ」, I’d like to kind of think otherwise. But since these episode names are rarely what you actually think they are, it’s really all up in the air. ;)

Hot off of today’s episode 9…

Hells yeah! I approve!

I don’t know how they do it but they sure know how to pace this series. There actually isn’t a lot of information to reveal (in my opinion). All we really “need” to know can be revealed by Shinichirou’s parents and all we really need to see is Shinichirou and Hiromi get together. All this can be taken care of within two episodes but they just twist things around in such clever ways that this gets dragged on without getting boring.

Of course, we shouldn’t forget about Miyokichi and Ai. It’s hard to say whether they’ll get back together although I would like to see that since I think they make a good couple. However, since it seems that Ai never really genuinely liked Miyokichi, I’m not sure if I’m going to accept a sudden change of heart so easily.

When Shinichirou finally gets together with Hiromi, what’s going to happen to Noe? Is she just going to have a change of heart like Ai? It’s certainly something that needs to be resolved properly. I suppose there are more things to take care of than I originally envisioned in my first paragraph.

Well, this was quite an episode to behold. The pacing was very good in my opinion and we had some very excellent scenes. One scene I particularly liked was Tanaka’s struggle with himself and his resolve to report what he saw to Satou and Margery. I guess this might really be the last time we’ll be seeing him for a while.

It was very exciting to see Yuji kicking major ass in this episode. This is undeniable proof that all those training sessions was not a horrible waste of time. We’ll be seeing some tough enemies in the coming episodes, so it’s hard to say as to whether we’ll see him kicking ass again, but at least we got our money’s worth this time around.

Well, at this point of the series, there really is no more time left for hitting the slow gears. It’s probably going to get pretty intense all the way through to the end of March. At least, that’s what they’d like you to think. Since episode 22 is called 「クリスマス・イヴ」, I guess we might get a little break there.

I already talked about this episode for a little bit a couple of days ago when I checked out the raw and I have to state once again that I still believe in the Shinichirou x Hiromi pairing. They will not rob me of this I say!

I was a little surprised that Noe’s brother actually tried to blackmail Shinichirou into going out with Noe by saying that he was going to stop going out with Hiromi himself. I don’t know, it’s just that it seemed to me as though he was just going to have one date with her and that was going to be it. I mean, we all know full well that Hiromi doesn’t actually like him anyway, so how long does she intend on keeping this charade going?

From the previews, we just might finally get some information about Hiromi’s past and the story of her mother…or we might not and it’d just end with Hiromi confronting Shinichirou’s mother as another cliffhanger episode. Speaking of which, we also had one of those this time around with Ai’s confession to Shinichirou. It’s a cruel world we live in.

This episode was alright. While it had more to do with the main plot than then the last one, I preferred that one over this one. While things did move along in this episode, I found it kind of lacking in the character development side of things.

This episode did make up for its setbacks by having excellent artwork along with a very moé Shana. The scene of her talking with Chigusa was simply an overload of moé. Speaking of Chigusa, I still can’t get over the fact that Shana calls her by her first name.

Things are starting to heat up once again. We’ll definitely be getting more setup work and plot advancement in the next episode but I don’t think we’ll be getting any action. With any luck, Yuji might draw out the Blutsauger, but that’s probably exactly where the episode is going to end. ;)

It seems that I have been mistaken as the story did not conclude with this episode. I don’t know how long they plan to drag this on for as there isn’t going to be a lot of time to talk about the aftermath of all of these incidents. Or do they actually not care about this at all?

It’s hard to believe that the Yamainu were defeated so easily by our young protagonists. I know they have a home court advantage and all, but you can’t seriously tell me that they are capable of outwitting trained professionals, right? I mean, shouldn’t these guys be familiar with the terrain as well?

I was surprised to find out that Satoshi was not actually dead. I would’ve thought that he had been dissected for research purposes or something or another. I’m sure they have sufficient funding to keep him alive, but what purpose does this act serve?