An actual fight!!

Really sorry for the late post guys, school’s been picking up and I’ve been left behind ;_; But alas, you’re not here for my life story, you’re here for some Shana goodness… which unfortunately has been lacking lately. Epi 07 and 08 are being combined since 07 was such a waste of an episode. Oh well, at least all this useless stuff is finally over.

Summary:

07: Ike plans a trip for himself, Yoshida, Yuuji, Shana, Konoe, Satou, Ogata, and Tanaka at an amusement park. Much uselessness ensues. Throughout the day, Ike tries to impress Yoshida with his superior organizational and preparational skills, but fails horribly. Honestly, there’s nothing much to summarize because nothing happens. They go to shops that are closed, Ike lines up for a rollercoaster he doesn’t want to go on, Yoshida waits in line with him as they get some time alone, Ike becomes pathetic, they run through a maze together, they ride a ferris wheel together, Ike throws up. That just about sums it up.

Continuing straight over to episode 08, stuff actually starts to happen. But not really. Now instead of wasting time and not advancing the story, we flashback to times long past and neglect to truly advance the story. We’re beginning to see Margery’s past when she was living in NY, and the people she encountered there.

Sporting a nice dress and letting her hair down and untied, Margery battles some sort of Tomogara that can control the advancement of civilizations. During her battle, Metamorphosis appears and defends the Tomogara, as he apparently was contracted to do so. After being beaten heavily by the duo, Margery collects herself, when she meets the Hauler of Prevailing Ghouls, Yuri Chvojka. He’s a new flame haze that seems to have no sense of how a flame haze should act. However useless, he works as an Outlaw, which seems to be a not so useless position.

Over at Eastedge, Margery arrives at a bar and delivers a message, the reason for her coming to NY. The message is about Revolution, a group of Tomogara that need to be fought off. Margery is given the job, as well as the duty to train little Yuri. However, due to the simple fact that Yuri just doesn’t have what it takes to be a flame haze, Margery gives up on the idea of training him and goes to battle without him. Having an idea of where the Tomogara they fought earlier is, Margery heads to the Empire State Building and forms a fuzetsu to start their fight.

Back over at the current time, and not Margery’s past, we have Yuuji training against Wilhelmina and he has quite some progress. He’s able to use his power of existence to go head to head with large rinne [namely the one that Marian and Friagne used against him at the beginning of the series], and his usefulness is starting to show. Shana sees the promise in Yuuji and wants to teach him unrestricted spells next, including the coveted fuzetsu.

Thoughts:

Episode 07 was another waste of an episode. Much like the previous recent episodes, I struggled to get through the entire thing without quitting halfway through. At least now it isn’t about Shana and Yoshida being stupid about their feelings towards Yuuji. Now it’s… Ike being stupid about his feelings towards Yoshida. On second thought, I’m not too sure that’s much of an improvement, given there’s really no benefit of furthering the relationship between the two. Ike is and will probably always be a minor character, and his relationship with Yoshida will never interfere with how she feels for Yuuji. Even if the unlikely event happened and they DID get together, what would happen next? There needs to be a love triangle somewhere, so with Yoshida gone, who will fill in the gap? Konoe? Unlikely. If she’s Hecate, then “Konoe” as a role that Hecate plays will disappear. If she’s not Hecate but still part of Balle Masque, then there’s no way she’ll stick around for long. Finally, if she’s not Hecate and is completely unrelated to Balle Masque, then she’d quickly be relegated to a minor character and we’d never hear of her again. Unless she’s like Ike and comes back next season to try to steal Yuuji away, but now things are getting wayyy too unlikely.

I don’t even know why we’re wasting time on Ike anyways. The past few episodes were centered around Konoe’s introduction and the impact it had on the love triangle. Having finally gotten over it, now we’ve changed gears to Ike and Yoshida, which basically completely ignores all the “development” we’ve suffered through. Is this the reward to Yoshida for getting through all that jealousy stuff? It just makes the flow of the story seem so random and meaningless. If say, they jumped from getting over the jealousy to a fight with a Tomogara, you would be able to see the fruits of their labor, as they would probably be cooperative with each other and further bonding would develop. However, instead we have a story that has no relevance to the plot and is seriously useless. Why do you do this to us? ;__; On this note, episode 08 isn’t providing a wealth of help either on that issue. Again, the story is stagnant and doesn’t deal with the previous jealousy arc. Instead we watch a story of Margery’s past, which by no means is a bad thing, but there could’ve been a better flow of events.

Now changing from complaining about the uselessness of the episode, I’ll talk of how useless Ike is. I’ll give him slack for telling off Yuuji when Yuuji was being stupid with his three ladies, but this episode I had a huge urge to slap him across the face. Hard. His need for everything to go JUST AS PLANNED and his bawwing when things weren’t perfect were less than desired. And his little victory that eventually ends up being messed up at the last moment? He deserves that. But that just makes the episode more useless, seeing how absolutely nothing really advanced.

But I think I’m complaining too much about this episode, so I’ll move on.

Episode 8 was a very welcome change. We get a rare glimpse into Margery’s past in her younger days back over at NY. Her experiences with Yuri will probably be the reason why she’s so against having Satou and Tanaka follow her. I suspect Yuri’s lack of a real fighting spirit will lead to his eventual demise, and Margery will take the blame upon herself. Not wanting to lose another person like that, Margery’ll refuse to train Satou. I guess that’s fair enough. Margery probably has seen plenty of deaths in her time, and a life of a flame haze must be lonely. She probably adopts the reasoning that she will outlive any mere human, so she shouldn’t get too involved with them. Kind of a sad story, really.

I hope to see more of Margery’s other past. Since I haven’t watched the first season in such a long time, I forget what exactly the reason for her fighting was. Her hunting for the silver… wolf, was it? I just hope they go back and eventually explain that one fully though. Originally, I suspected that the silver wolf [or whatever it was] was actually Metamorphosis in a wolf’s form, but seeing how the NY fight was the first time they ever faced off, I figure that’s unlikely now. If it turns out to be someone like Hecate, then that would really blow my mind, but I think that’s the least likely yet.

Yuuji’s recent developments really boosted up his usefulness. In the previous season, all he could do was be a huge talking target with an anti-flame hougu as his only means of defense. Now, not only has he been trained in battle, he can defend himself with physical reinforcement as well as launch powerful physical attacks. With the promise of unrestricted spells in the future and his huge capacity for power of existence, he’ll really become a Mistes to be feared. I really look forward to future battles with Yuuji, since he’ll be able to do something now. Too much uselessness, needs more people who can actually fight!

But am I the only one who thinks giving a mere Torch who wishes to remain human the powers of summoning a fuzetsu is a bad idea? Just think of how Yuuji will abuse that power. He’ll be able to ace any test at school by just fuzetsuing and whipping out his textbooks while everybody else is frozen. Or maybe he’ll just waltz into a bank and waltz out a million dollars richer.

Or maybe he’s just not evil like that.

…maybe.

//Soda