Oh my goodness, that was one hell of an amazing episode! The music and fight scenes intertwining together presented a superbly fulfilling experience. Beyond the fighting, we also had some great scenes of Shana screaming and charging towards Yuji out of desperation. Of course, one can’t forget about the hug, ah, that was a nice touch and gave me a very fuzzy feeling inside. ;)

This episode has managed to force me to eat my words since Konoe Fumina really did end up being aligned with the bad guys. It just seemed way too obvious to be true (kind of like what they were saying in episode 12 of 「さよなら絶望先生」, when I think about it). Oh well, you win some, you lose some, right?

We’ll be shifting back into low gears for the next couple of episodes but I’m still expecting some good plot advancement since we only have so many episodes left on our hands. Perhaps the question we should be asking ourselves is when is the 17th light novel going to be released? And, are we going to get a season III?

Yoshida was pretty damn lame in this episode with all that chit-chat about time and love. It’s weird that Pheles even bothered to play along. I mean, what did she gain from walking around with them all day? Was her speech at the end of the episode just an attempt to put everyone’s guard down?

The art quality dropped quite a bit in this episode but I’m going to let it slide given what happened last episode and what’s going to happen in the coming episodes. They’ll probably fix up most of the crap for the DVD releases anyway, so I’m not all that concerned at the end of the day.

Episode 15 should be one awesome ride since there’s probably going to be a fair bit of fighting and plot advancement. It really should be all uphill from here. And when you consider that they only have ten more episodes left starting with the next, they really don’t have any time to screw around with things that don’t actually advance the plot.

Well, this episode was extremely fast-paced. Maybe even a little too fast-paced? The battle was pretty much over as soon as it started and it seemed kind of chaotic visually. I mean, I know that the battle itself was chaotic, but I felt that the presentation itself wasn’t very good. At least they replayed that battle theme that they introduced in episode nine, that’s a sick theme.

Satou was surprisingly awesome in this episode during his confrontation with Margery. That was some pretty good script work there in my opinion. It’s a shame that we don’t see Yuji do anything of that sort often. When he does it usually ends up making me crack up a little since it’s hard for me to take him seriously.

The ending’s quick shot at Konoe has made us all ask ourselves once again just what role she will be playing exactly in the show. Since she’s an original character to the animation, not even the people that have read the light novels knows what’s going on over here. There is nothing for anybody to do but to speculate.

I really enjoyed this episode. It balanced everything well and the pacing was simply excellent. The art was pretty good and the music was timed quite nicely. I look forward to more episodes like this one in the future. I hope this great momentum wasn’t lost in the midst of the brief hiatus over winter break. ;)

As I predicted from the last episode, Pheles hit the scene and quickly concluded the episode. I was eager to hear Shana’s confession to Yuji although I was pretty sure that things weren’t going to work out. It’s probably not going to be resolved until the end of the series, and that’s really just a maybe in my opinion.

Tomorrow’s episode should be jam packed with a lot of exciting scenes. It’d be hard pressed for them to make anything as exciting as the movie but I think it should still be enough to impress me. I’m not really sure how long this arc is going to span, but I’m going to take a stab here and guess that it’ll wrap up on episode 15 or 16.

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.

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.

It looks like we’re going to be moving forward with the main plot from this episode onward. Pheles’s name being dropped and the mention of Yuji moving on to manipulating his vast storage of power of existence for a fuzetsu are telltale signs that we’re stepping into material from the original light novels.

Of course, it would be rude of me to completely comment on the future episodes and not talk about this one at all. The brief fight that we had was pretty good although it’s difficult to rank anything too high after you’ve seen the movie. I rather liked the music that they played at the end of the episode and I’m hoping that that one’s going to be in the soundtrack.

I actually went into this episode thinking that the flashback was only going to last one episode, but I guess I was proven wrong. I was worried the whole time over how they were planning to conclude this episode properly with the limited amount of time remaining. At the end, I got the ending credits instead of a real conclusion, it really kind of took me by surprise. In hindsight, I guess I should’ve expected it all, but whatever.

Please note that I’m working with this based on the raw since a subtitled version hasn’t been released yet. I’m noting this since I had said that I’d only write reviews after a subtitled version has been released. However, since the raw for episode 8 has been released and I’m going to watch that once it’s done, I wanted to get my thoughts of this episode down before then. Note that I have no plans on rewriting a review for this episode after the subtitled version gets released.

To put it quite simply, this episode was absolutely hilarious. I think that even people that don’t know any Japanese would be able to get some good laughs out of this one. The dialog was great and while the scenes that were in this episode was what you’d expect from a typical “amusement park trip gone wrong” scenario, the execution of the content was just absolutely brilliant.

The art quality was very nice and consistent in this episode and the music selection was very smart. It was appropriate for the scene in a way but it also made it even funnier once you recall what other scenes they had used that particular music track for in the past as you then realize that the two don’t actually align.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend this episode to anyone out there that wants to laugh some hearty laughs. There were practically no flaws with this one, simply a complete episode of non-stop awesomeness. We’ll be having a flashback episode with Margery next episode. I don’t know anything about this backstory, so it should be a good watch.

This episode has been a huge improvement over the ones we’ve had in the past. I hope we can keep this going and I don’t really see it as a problem now that the jealousy issue has been resolved. The way Margery advised the girls was really quite surprising. It’s amazing how mature she can be as you really wouldn’t expect it from a drunkard like her.

The art really hit the gutter this episode, I don’t know what was going on. The scene with Margery talking to Ogata and Kazumi was particularly notorious. It’s as if they just skipped the “Quality Control” step completely. In terms of music though, I really liked the part when Satou was talking about treasuring the moment they had together now. Playing Ce qui fût suavé then was a great touch.

From the previews, it seems like we’re going to be getting an Ike episode next round. I’m not going to be expecting any tomogaras to jump out of nowhere but I’m going to be hoping for some decent humour. This episode was pretty good about it and it was a rather serious episode, so I’m hoping that the next will be better. That’s not to say that an Ike episode can’t be serious, but come on, let’s not kid ourselves, we all know he doesn’t have a chance.