Oh, how pleasantly wrong I was.

The background art of Sora no Woto is simply gorgeous.

If you have skipped the show in an attempt to escape another moeblob plague, I’ll run you through a synopsis. Sorami Kanata is a young recruit in the Helvetian army. She enlisted because she wanted to learn music and play the trumpet. Apparently, at the time, trumpets are still an effective means of communication between military units. The story begins with her transfer to Unit 1121 at The Time-telling Fortress, located in the quiet town of Seize. The plot progresses as Kanata learns music from her senior officers and lives her life as a dutiful soldier.

If the name sounds familiar, Helvetia is the Latin name of Switzerland (where the font Helvetica was born). Oddly enough, for a country with a European namesake, its currency is Yen. The era seems to be similar to the pre-WW2 era, with cobblestone roads, homes lit by oil lamps and motor vehicles at its early stages. That is, until we see a multi-legged tank sporting LCD screens in the cockpit displaying some kind of a Gundam-esque operating system – written in Engrish.

Sailor uniform is extinct by then. Gee.

It seems that the story is set in a somewhat post-apocalyptic time (reminds me of Scrapped Princess) where the land is scarred and the seas are without fish. As the show unfolds, we get to see ‘ruins’ and remnants of what seems to be a ‘lost era’. One of these ruins happen to resemble a Japanese school building. The multi-legged tank I mentioned uses precision instruments (such as a focusing lens) made using ‘lost era technology’, and apparently impossible to duplicate using ‘present day’ techniques.

Sora no Woto casually drops in pieces of its back story in a seemingly innocent slice-of-life fashion, cleverly revealing a small part of its history every time. The first episode begins with a festival to celebrate Fire Maidens who perished fighting a great winged Demon.

Legend has it that this Demon breathed fire and kidnapped all the Maidens of the fortress into its underground lair. With the help of a giant Spider, the Maidens managed to defeat the demon and decapitate it. However, intense fire kept pouring out from its severed head, threatening to burn the entire town.

The Maidens, each in turn held the severed head to contain the fire, burning themselves in the process. Every day, the villagers poured water over the Maidens, and after a year passed, the fire finally ran out. Ever since then, the villagers remember the Maidens and splash each other with water in gratitude.

Near the end of the episode, Kanata falls into a lake and discovers the gigantic skeleton of a winged creature – with its head missing.

Hey... haven't I seen this skeleton from a certain mecha anime somewhere? Hmm...

Another hint of the Lost Era is the recollection of a dead Japanese soldier (he scribbled his last words on a pillar in Japanese), where the multi-legged tanks climbed modern-day buildings fighting against an unknown enemy. The ‘enemy’ fired a huge beam that wiped out an entire city. Just so happens that at the edge of Kanata’s fort, there is a desert with the roof of buildings poking out of the sand, a region called No Man’s Land.

The story goes deeper and deeper into each character’s past, and before I realised it, 10 episodes flew past me. That’s what I really liked about Sora no Woto. The characters don’t just appear out of nowhere. Each one arrived at the fortress with a lot of baggage, and the story-telling was so moving, it simply left me thirsty for more. It doesn’t try to exploit the moe-aspects too much – the character design has already done enough of that.

Dead man drama. Totally got me sitting up straight.

In a way, Sora no Woto manages to get the best of both worlds. With its moeblob character designs, I’m confident that it can generate a good amount of merchandise sales. Well, not as much as K-ON would, but I think it would suffice. Its plot and story-telling makes it an excellent watch and it kept me glued to the seat with each episode.

For a show that features music as a major plot element, the soundtrack is composed by the ever-talented Michiru Oshima, the genius behind the epic music of Fullmetal Alchemist and Bounen no Xamdou. The melodious OP is performed by Kalafina, Yuki Kajiura’s latest talent project that debuted with the theme songs for Kara no Kyoukai.

Man, I totally wish Dragoons/Stalkers/Immortals could climb around buildings and cliffs like that.

The show is about to end at episode 12, but I dearly hope for a second season to see more story progression and learn more about what really happened during the Lost Era. I’m honestly surprised to say this myself, but I think Sora no Woto is really good. If you have doubts that it’s another moeblob fanservice show, you can be rest assured that it’s got more than meets the eye.

My name is A'isha. I am an Indian from Rome and I only speak German. Sieg Zeon!

Her assertive loli voice is quite awesome.

I started to notice her voice after hearing two similar sounding characters, Aruru (Utawarerumono) and Maria Taro (Zetsubou Sensei). Both characters had a strong childish persistence in their speech. It was then I started paying attention to her voice and the characters she voiced.

She continued to voice a lot of major side characters, but rarely ever got the leading role. It came as a shock to me when I discovered that she put on a male voice for Shinkurou, the titular character of Kurenai. There’s a certain inflection and fluster in her voice that I felt made the character felt… real. Like, that’s how a normal person would speak in real life.

The chemistry she had with Maaya Sakamoto was simply fantastic.

After that, whenever I hear Sawashiro’s voice in any new anime, I get extremely excited. I absolutely enjoyed her work as Sasada (Natsume Yuujinchou), Tsugumi (Kannagi), Warden aka God (Maria Holic) and then finally a leading role as Canaan (Canaan). All this while, it seemed to me that not enough people were giving her the attention she deserves, especially when there are seiyu like Aya Hirano and Kugimiya Rie who seem to monopoly the spotlight all the time.

So this award she received, I think, is totally appropriate. So, Miyuki-chan, congratulations and I hope you’ll continue to get more major roles in future series. If you’re not sure how she sounds like, her more recent roles include Kanbaru (Bakemonogatari), Ayane (Kimi ni Todoke) and the very sexy Celty Sturluson (Durarara!!) – her voice made me go moe over a headless character!

I love me some cool-dere. Nekomimi and latex, yeah.

Simple: because it’s fucking AWESOME.

I’ve been craving for more Gundam anime ever since the last series, Gundam 00. When I heard of the existence of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, I was so overjoyed that I got overthrilled. While I love the design of the mecha itself, I have no idea what’s the story was going to be.

I’m not really a fan of light novels.

Why is it good?

Finally, I get to see a scene where the mad skillz of the pilot matters. Ever since SEED, they’ve been throwing a shit load of IMBA (imbalanced) Gundam just to prove that “overpowered Gundam” = WIN”. But Universal Century Gundams are all about skill and strategy, and I’m happy to know that they actually kept this in check. Phew.

Hmm… I’m not going to cover much about the story because I’m more impressed with the awesome fight scenes.

O Hai. Meet 'Kshatriya'

There was a scene where a protoype Kshatriya mobile suit went against a mass-produced Z Type Variable Fighter. The fight choreography was awesome, as they show both pilots trying their best to beat their opponent. Of course, the mass-produced mobile suit lost, but it wasn’t an easy fight. The pilot died battling with all his might, unlike the anon pilots in Gundam SEED that die cheap meaningless deaths while shouting “KISAMA!” (“Damn you!” – Ed.)

Oh, the Kshatriya pilot is a girl btw.

'I nearly jizzed in my pants' scene

Seriously, all the pilots have SKILLZ. MAD SKILLZ.

Face it: it’s supposed to be that way. Mobile suits aren’t exactly cheap to build, and only people with exceptional skills should be allowed to pilot them. Not everyone in the US military gets to fly the F-22, right?

There are a lot of good moments in the show. One of my favourite was mentioned moments before. Another good scene was one where a random soldier temporarily disabled Kshatriya with only a rocket launcher… which tells us that the Kshatriya is not that all IMBA now, although it has wrecked nearly every single mobile suit it encountered.

Also, I noticed that when Kshatriya met Gundam Unicorn for the first time, the pilot didn’t waste time gawking over the new machine. Instead, she tried to immediately disable it. That would be the realistic thing to do; it’s still the middle of battle. But of course, she was too shocked to do anything when Gundam Unicorn’s NewType Drive kicked in.

Yes. Do that. Don't wait. Yes.

Reminds me of the good ol’ Zeta, and I love Gundam Zeta.

AARGGH… I’m having a hard time trying to describe how much I LOVE this show. This… is a like a mecha porn for me. (Omigod, ew. – Ed.) Hard core mechas fighting in space with GOD-LIKE music in the background.

But of course, it’s not all apeshit-mental action scenes. There were some ‘inevitable and necessary’ boring moments too, but hey, that what gives it a good story line.

Presentation

I was nailed to my chair for the entire show and my jaws on the floor during the fighting scenes. The animation quality throughout the entire show is good, and at certain scenes, it was extremely fluid.

Epic background music really played a strong role to spice up the “atmosphere”. The powerful soundtrack composed by Hiroyuki Sawano made my hair stand. If you’re soft, it’s can induce tears… (honestly, I almost cried tears of joy!)

NewType Drive just kicked in yo!

Gundam Unicorn’s startup sequence was so epic that I actually looped to it over and over and over again. Call me lifeless, but damn, it was really good. Three thumbs up to Sunrise for that scene alone!

The Bad

I need to wait for months for the next episode. Damn you, Sunrise. Damn you.

Conclusion

If you’re a Gundam fanboy, you’re most probably roaming the internets looking for reviews and discussions of Episode 1 after watching it five times. If you haven’t watched it, then I suggest you to stop reading this rant and go get it.

Now.

I’m serious.

It’s fucking good.

Really.

The past few years, though, have been very good times for the Malaysian otaku. Internet speed has improved by leaps and bounds (still crappy, but we can never have enough, right?), hard disks have become cheaper, more channels have been opened that made purchasing and owning imported anime goods so much easier. Events have been growing in quantity, quality and scale as well.

Five years ago, getting 500 visitors to an event is considered an achievement. Recent trends however see major fan-organised ACG events clocking up 3000, 5000, and in the case of Comic Fiesta 2009, it even went past the 7000 visitors mark. If that’s not a sign of growth, I don’t know what is.

For the folks behind the scenes, in order to open the doors of opportunity, and to continue to open new ones, they knew that the first step was first to create awareness. After there’s awareness, there’s building the hype. Once there’s a sizable crowd of well-informed fans, a bulk of whom are financially capable consumers and are excited to spend on the things they love, the anime business here begins its ascent.

A big sign of that ascent is the upcoming May’n concert here in KL. Seeing how it’s being organized by the guys at Sozo – the people who brought us AFA – I was genuinely surprised. Putting some thought into it, I realised what was really going on here. Let’s look at this from the perspective of a Japanese record label.

Let’s say I’m the CEO of Flying Dog (lol), and I look at a paltry group of Southeast Asians with their measly market share of roughly around 5 million potential consumers (compared to the market share in Japan). I receive a proposal to send in one of my artists there for a concert, supposedly seeing a chance to pierce the SEA market.

Without having any past concerts to base from, or any idea what the SEA market is like, I can’t afford to send in one of my top artists and waste their time. If I can send them to Fukuoka and generate 3 million yen from a concert there, is there a chance that a concert in SEA can generate a higher figure?

So, let me just send a fresh, upcoming artist and test the waters. If I send in one of my assets and the sales don’t look very impressive, why should I bother wasting my talents’ time when they can generate a much bigger profit elsewhere? It doesn’t sound very nice, but hey, that’s the reality of business for you.

That’s where you, me and all the ACG fans in Southeast Asia come in. I’m sure you’d love to watch your favourite singers perform live, here in Malaysia instead of Singapore or Indonesia, right? I sure as hell want to watch Maaya Sakamoto, Yoko Kanno or even Utada Hikaru perform here, but all that has to start somewhere.

Here’s where the ball starts rolling. It’s a big heavy ball to roll, but if we join hands and make it happen, trust me, we can start seeing things we never dreamed possible just 5 years ago. Things are a-changing, a lot of people are doing all they can, yet ultimately, it can’t happen without you.

So do your part, join the excitement and let’s show the Japs that we’re no small fry to sniff at!

Yeah, I guess he didn’t really thought it through lol.

Erst Kerf

Main Menu

First up would be Erst Kerf, which is a Shmup…now wait a minute, did I say I don’t do Shmups? Well, Erst Kerf is a Shmup, but with Dungeon Crawler elements incorporated into its gameplay. Although what really pulled me in was the rather impressive artwork of the main character. The game is rather small by today’s Doujin Game standards, which can come in gigabytes, but sometimes the smaller the better right? Not exactly in this case. But more info about that after I explain a bit about the gameplay.

Shmup + Dungeon Crawler

This game is played from a top down perspective, ala dungeon crawler style, where you go from point A to point B through a maze, ala dungeon crawler, and you control your character using both the mouse and keyboard, ala dungeon crawler. The mouse is used to change the direction your character is facing and to target the enemy and shoot, while the standard WASD keys control your character’s movement. At the end of each stage, you’ll encounter and face off a boss. You can set both your mouse buttons for alternate types of attacks, where each attack requires a different amout of magic force to use.

Now back to the bad part about the game being small. Based on the options menu of the game, it takes advantage of Pixel Shader 2.0 with Motion Blur and Light Bloom, which sounds impressive. However, the game’s size says otherwise, meaning it uses a texture resolution that is quite small by today’s standards. In other words, if you have a big, high resolution monitor, its not gonna be easy to play this game too long. Because in windowed mode, the game would be too small to play on screen, requiring you to look closer to really dodge all the danmaku while shooting your enemy. Setting it to fullscreen on the other hand, blur’s out the image too much, which can give you a headache and motion sickness especially if you are prone to these things while gaming. In other words, while this game has an interesting gameplay and nice looking graphics, the low resolution makes it hard to play for people with big screens, which is quite the norm these days.

Densou Tenshi Valforce

The second game I’ll be reviewing would be Densou Tenshi Valforce, which I’m just gonna refer to as Valforce throughout this review. Now I’m sure many of you have seen and played an arcade machine than can be played in Versus mode and each person has two joysticks to control. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, head down to your closest game center and look for the arcade machine called Virtual On, and don’t forget to bring a friend to fight against. By the way, I never played the arcade before myself, since I’m really not interested in arcade games at all.

Main Menu

Valforce is based on Virtual On, where there are 8 girls to pick from, each of them with their own abilities or mecha suits, and battle each other til one side wins. The reason why I mentioned Virtual On is because this game supports the Twin Stick system that you veteran players are all familiar with. Yes, which means I suck horribly at this game in Twin Stick mode. We have the usual Arcade mode and Practice mode here, but in addition to those, you also have a Network Mode, where if you don’t feel like sharing a screen while fighting a human opponent, can network with another computer and versus the other player.

Character Selection

Yes, this is probably the only reason I downloaded this game first out of all the C77 games, coz I spotted a blonde loli (moe?). Don’t be fooled though, although they don’t show it here, her mecha suit packs quite a punch, although the huge size of it makes it hard to maneuver.

In Game

Yeap, that’s the same loli you saw just now, facing another character in arcade mode. As you can see I lost quite a bit of HP really early in the game, and at the same time did not do any damage at all. I’m sure veteran players will feel right at home, assuming you have one of those Dual-Shock imitation controllers, or a USB converter for the PS2 Controller. Graphics are pleasant, while nothing spectacular, its quite good by doujin game standards. And yes this game supports some of the highest resolutions I’ve ever seen for a doujin game. BGM is pretty generic and repetitive, and adds little to the battle atmosphere. All-in-all, a rather fun game, if you know how to control, or practice if you don’t, especially when you go up against a friend through a network.

And that’s all for now, I might post a second one soon if I find any more games, while waiting for’em big ones.

Maids who are actually maids.

However, upon reading Emma, I began to have a change in that perception of that. Maids in Kaoru Mori’s world are portray in a realistic way, but she’s able to make it enjoyable and fun to watch / read. Most of anime maids took the fashion references from French Maids, but for Kaoru she focuses on English maids who actually does her job as a maid. Okay, she doesn’t show everything a maid does because that would be boring, but at least the maid in her story ACTS like a maid.

Generic maids in anime I.

Ever since then, I began to despise characters or story who have characters who are maids but just for fanservice sake. This series is one of the examples. Yoshitaka the main character let’s the girls wear these kind of outfits because he likes it.

Yeah, I know these certainly catches people attention...

...but these are not maids.

I mean, maid outfits have been abuse lately in my opinion. Any girl can just snag a maid outfit, put it on and call it cosplay as a maid. I mean, even in anime / manga sometimes characters will wear maid outfits, for fanservice sake.

But what about this one ?

…Okay I admit, sometimes I make some exceptions whenever I see my favorite character wearing a maid outfit. *shoots self.*

Generic maids in anime II

Generic maids in anime III

*Ahem* Anyway, most people don’t really realize that wearing outfit of a maid actually its a huge responsibility, because a maid is a worker who does work, not just for the sake of acting cute and blushing, stalking it’s owner ( or you anime fans prefer to call it ‘Master’ ) or clumsy falling down and showing off their panties ( real maids wear bloomers ). Of course most important not just for the sake of saying ‘Welcome home goshujinsama’ ! while wearing “cute” cat ears ( honestly, I have no idea whats the appeal of cat ears, really. )

Yeah Maria, you tell'em !

A maid job basically depends on which household she’s admitted too, but the one that everyone knows is the household maintenance, include cooking, doing laundry and ironing, food shopping and other household errands.

While surfing, I happen to stumble upon a comic strip about maids, which apparently was drawn by Kaoru Mori herself !

Yesh, I hate stalkers type and doing no work.

LOL at case 2, hard.

Double LOL at case 5.

Awww, that's a sweet ending heh.

Yeah, I would bury that maid deep in the ocean.

Seriously, who wouldn't freak out if someone suddenly comes to your door and pull this ?

Jokes aside, these are exactly the kind of maids I hate now ! I wish there were many kinds of maids manga which are fun and enjoyable like Emma.

Yup, maids are awesome.

Despite all my rant, I’ll always have a soft spot for characters who are maids, mainly because; like Shirou said; Maids are awesome.

Episode 11

I wasn’t particularly happy about Nyan Koi direction. I was more focusing on love triangle between Kanako, Junpei and Mizuno. The problem is, the pattern is the same over and over again, especially the interaction between Kanako and Junpei. I was wondering why near the end they decided to give another episode show development for Kanako, and it was kinda pointless and draggy for me.

The only worth thing was Junpei suddenly pop out cat ears, mainly because Keade overheard him talking to cats. Then again, she only THOUGHT that he can speak with cats, then she dismissed the whole thought, so why did the curse happen so quickly ?

Episode 12

So in the anime, we finally get to see Junpei becoming a cat, thanks to the previous incident in last episode. Despite that, there was particularly nothing interesting or funny about that. As I mention earlier, the jokes are becoming less funny and they rely on generic comedy which I’ve seen over and over again.

Though the part where Junpei transform back to a human naked was amusing though, heh. Other than that however, this episode wasn’t entertaining at all.

So they decided to leave the ending open for a second season, ending it with a New Year chapter from the manga. I guess this is understandable since the manga is on-going, and I think its better this way than to add unnecessary fillers.

Final Thoughts

In the beginning, although not spectacular, Nyan Koi started out very decent. However as the episode progress, it become more generic like the typical love comedy, ignoring and abandoning the cat jokes. Sometimes it tries to implement the cat jokes, but it seems out of place or not connecting very well. Overall, I was rate this series as average. You can give it a try, but expect it to lose steam as the series nears the end. It’s not a particularly bad idea to watch it since its short.

Not official, but its certainly heart warming and touching to read. It really might fit well if they decide to do a DVD bonus.

Enough with the pointless chatter, let’s get down and review the final 3 episodes of this series !

Episode 10 summary

As from last episode, Suou’s mother claims that she is dead, which truly shocks her. Suou tries to suggest to her mother going to the aquarium to relive the happy memories, but her mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about. This cause Suou to run out of the car along with July, but they forgot about Mao and leaving him behind in the process.

Yup Misaki, the series is almost over. You can take it easy and drink up.

Lost and confuse, Suou wonders around, until she feels asleep with July near a vending machine where Misaki finds them. Misaki then feeds them and brings them to the aquarium, but it turns out it was closed down for the last 13 years. Misaki then decides to take them to Suou’s mother’s apartment.

Mao, the ankles man.

Mao, who have been hiding notice that he meet with Suou’s mother years ago by identifying her ankles. Who, her mum must have a special ankles that even Mao could remember. Lucky for Mao he meet up back with Suou and July when Misaki decided to visit Suou’s mother.

It's human Mao !

Well, it turns out that Mao when Mao was working for the Syndicate, he had a mission to go to a Moscow university to look into Suou’s father’s secret research, and to do so he had transferred himself into the body of a cat. Unfortunately for Mao, there was an explosion, destroying Mao’s human body and killing Suou who had been there with her mother and brother. Suou’s mother and Shion survived. When her mother tried to look for her, she found that her husband had Suou’s corpse on the ME. Suou’s father want to make Suou live for all eternity, but Suou’s mother snatch Suou’s corpse and run away. Shion had stayed behind with their father, so Suou’s mother had cremated Suou’s remains and returned to Japan with the ashes. Suou’s mother now believes that the current Suou is an impostor and a copy created by Shion’s special ability. This shocks Suou, who decides to run away again, but not that far where Misaki was able to catch up with her.

Hei : I promise I'll be gentle.

Hei lied. He was so rough that she said Izanami.

As for our Dark Knight Hei, he was busy interrogating Youko and learns of the supposed disaster that will happen if both Izanami and Izanagi meets. He also learns about Izanami killing Contractors and the 18th Research Building. After learning all those from Youke, Hei sedates her and departs. Hei meets up with Madame Oreille outside, who then tells Hei that Suou’s been captured.

No Hei, you don't do that to your waifu !.

Hei then finds Suou with Misaki in front of Suou’s mother’s apartment, and attacks Misaki, thinking that Misaki is the capture. As he was about to deliver the final blow, Suou’s stops him and they leave. Suou stops him from killing Misaki though, and they leave her.

I guess Hazuki caught Youko on a bad period day.

Back in the place where Hei interrogated Youko, Hazuki arrives only to find Youko tortured to death. Believing it to be Hei’s work, she vowed to kill BK-201.

Ouch. That's got to hurt Hei.

As Hei and gang makes their way to another safe house, and Suou feels lost and confused upon hearing the truth about her existence, so she asks him to call out to her like he did when he didn’t want her to shoot previously. Hei tells her that he only knows Suou as she is. This causes Suou to cry, and she tells him her conflicted feelings about him, including how lonely she was away from him. Later that night, Mao and Hei looks upon the sky to see a orange moon in the sky, and high above the sky is who seems to be Yin, smiling and ready to kick some ass.

Yin, ready to kick ass.

Episode 11 summary

This is every man's dream; making breakfast while a hot loli acting all shy around you.

In the morning, Hei cooks up breakfast for the gang, with Suou helping him out. After that, Hei decides to leave to settle some business. Before he left, Suou made him promise her that he’ll come back. Mao then explains to Suou that Hei actually wants to find Yin, because he felt responsible for changing Yin into something different that she was before.

Reunion.

Suou and July then decide to go to the aquarium, because she felt she had to do something as well. When they got there, they meet with Dr. Pavlichenko who decides to tell her the truth; about how did Shion’s power brought her back to life. He also explains that the Dr. Pavlichenko back in Russia was a copy.

Before that, Duke Tougou Golgo 13 Kobayashi informs Misaki and Genma about BK-201 and Youko’s death, but then he keeps them on the mission of looking for Shion. As Misaki recites what she read from the Mitaka documents, Kobayashi seems familiar about it. He then reveals that they’re in the final stage of the prophecy, and since they can’t stop the awakening of Izanami, their only option is to take care of Izanagi before he meets Izanami.

Back at Suou, Dr. Pavlichenko explains that the memory that Suou have is actually a false memory, implanted to her by Shion. The real truth is Shion is actually a contractor since birth, and Suou wasn’t with him or their father during the meteor incident two years ago. After that incident, Shion made a copy of himself, but because his copies were always different in some way from the original, this one had been female – Suou. The aquarium memory was a present from Shion. Upon hearing this, Suou decides that she wants Shion. As they were leaving, July receive a message from Madame Oreille 2 twin dolls that Genma and company are coming, so July takes Suou’s hand and run.

Genma: You're a girl !? But I'm into shota's !

Misaki, Genma and their forces arrived at the scene. Genma pursue Suou and gang and finds them trying to escape down a stairwell. Dr. Pavlichenko shots Genma to distract him to escape with the gang to a different direction, but was attacked by energy-spear-wielding Contractor standing on a nearby building. Dr. Pavlichenko gets hit in the leg while protecting Suou, so Suou tries to patch him up with her shirt.

Honestly, this scene really felt OUT OF PLACE, thanks to Madame Oreille.

Somewhere else in the plaza, Misaki runs into Madame Oreille, who is dressed up in a…plugsuit. I’m not particular sure why the hell she’s dress up like that. As a Contractor came to take her down, she fires an anti-Contractor shots; similar to what trapped Hei in Russia. Madame Oreille then leads Misaki away from the place.

I'll kill you.

Meanwhile, Suou and company can’t move proceed further because of her father’s injury, as well with Genma pursuing them. Suou decides to face battle Genma. After a fierce battle, she finally manages to knock him out with a headshot. Then funny part for me is that her shot wasn’t able to kill Genma, and she was quite close to him when she fired the shot.

Rest in Peace Dr. Pavlichenko.

By the time she returns to her father however, he was nearly dead. In his last moments, he tells her that she will always be his Suou. Despite feeling despair and sad, she had to move on and leave her father behind. Later Genma came to find Dr. Pavlichenko corpse. As he was about to destroy his corpse, John Smith stopped him, saying that Dr. Pavlichenko’s brain still can be used.

Japanese Ninja Jedi VS Chinese Batman; FINAL ROUND.

Meanwhile, Hei ( FINALLY ! ) has located Izanami inside the Hell’s Gate complex, but only to find the box is empty. Turns out that Hazuki has been waiting for him, and she attacks him. As for July, Mao, and Suou, they are heading towards the Hell’s Gate now via the secret tunnel, and they run into Madame Oreille, her twin Dolls, and Misaki. Madame Oreille recognizes Mao as Ricardo, but Mao isn’t too happy to hear that name since they’re not lovers anymore. They soon realize though that Suou has disappeared, and it turns out that Suou has gone to where Shion is.

Are you ready ? Let’s go for the FINAL ROUND EPISODE !

Episode 12 summary

You were to rough Suou.

From last episode, Suou meets up with Shion, only to find him collapsed. Shion explains that is part of his remuneration. He then tell Suou’s to take him outside to see the moon. By the time Misaki and company arrives, they were gone.

The Jedi seems to be at advantage here.

Too bad for Hei that his first kiss was taken away by a lesbian.

Meanwhile, Hei and Hazuki are lock in a very fierce battle, but in the end it’s Hazuki who prevails by tie him up with her grappling gun wire. Since she used much of her powers during the battle, she decides to kiss him as part of remuneration. I wasn’t particularly happy seeing Hei lose, but oh well. Anyway, as she was about to deliver the final blow, Kobayashi stops her, revelaing that it wasn’t Hei who killed Youko, but Genma who has betrayed them for the CIA. It appears that the CIA also have taken over the organization inside and outside Japan. Hearing all this, Hazuki decide to let Kobayashi and Hei go on ahead, while she takes on the CIA troops who are invading Hell’s gate, and of course eventually finding and taking care of Genma.

Hei : No...I didn't get to do Yin yet.

Kobayashi then brings Hei to Yin, however she’s now an empty doll as her spirit has awakened and has gone to the center of the Gate. Meanwhile, Madam Oreille has brought Misaki and Mao to building, where inside the building contains a super-computer created by Dr. Pavlichenko. In addition, there were rows of bodies that look like Shion. Madam Oreille then explains to Misaki and Mao that the computer has all records of the world, observed by the Doll Network and all memories of mankind gathered by the ME Network, which was all Shion’s plan. Madam Oreille also revealed that the moon isn’t really a moon, its actually another earth created by Shion’s ability.

Meanwhile, Suou is pushing Shion in his wheelchair somewhere inside the Gate. While discussing about Suou’s memories, Shion reveals that he only imagined human-like memories and put them into Suou, and that his dream isn’t a reflection of those memories. As they came across a dead Contractor, Shion explains that he committed suicide because the power of Izanami. As Suou recalls the same incident that happened with Michiru ( the water Contractor in episode 5 – 6 ) , Shion disappears in that instant.

As Suou searches for Shion, she came across one of July’s observer spirits. While she’s following it to him, July meets up with August 7 ( WTH ? I thought he’s dead ), who tells him that their operation is over and he can come home. To August 7 surprise, July refuse to go with him and choose to stay with Suou instead. August 7 decides to let him do what July wants and disappears. Moments later, Suou arrives at July location. After hugging her, July leads to where Shion and Yin is. Suou however finds Shion almost dead.

Rest in Peace Shion.

With his last strength, he tell Suou that that the deal is done, and he wants to see the world that he created. His spirit then goes to Yin, who is floating above them. This angers Suou, as she demands to know what did Yin do with Shion. Yin explains that Suou that she granted Shion’s wish. At this point, July also dies as well. Suou, who doesn’t really understand what is going on, decides to take on Yin, but suddenly Yin raise both of her arms, and the meteor core than Suou’s was carrying broke.

Madame Oreille explains that when they copy a person and implant memories, they can’t establish it for long without the meteor core. Thus Suou and her journey was as an experiment to make sure that Suou’s memories had set. However, since the meory core is destoryed, her memories are leaving her and loses her strength. Realizing what’s happening, Suou tries to resist the loss of memories by aiming her gun at Yin again, however Hei shows up and stops her from shooting.

Hold me tightly baby...

He tells her that she won’t be needing her gun where she’s going next, and he promises that he’ll always be with her as he holds her.

Sob, I didn't get to do it even with Suou...

ZOMG, 2 Yin's ??

Translator note : Kill means Rape.

Hei's response ? Yeaaaahhh, let's do it.

Hei then lay Suou beside July after she dies. Another Yin, who appears to be white this time, touches Hei’s shoulder and tells him that its still not to late to kill her.

Misaki get's to watch free pedophile porno, while floating on air !

By the time Misaki arrives on the scene, she sees BK-201’s star lighting up in the sky, and a bright light envelops Yin as she’s raped touched by Hei.

Blushing Suou is always welcome.

Yeah Suou, you keep searching for that star.*sobs*

In the copied world, Suou lives a normal life with her parents and friends. However, she sense that something is missing and lacking. However, she doesn’t feel lonley, as she feels she knows a certain person very well, and believes that she will meet with him someday.

This looks AWFULLY FAMILIAR.

OH GOD MISAKI IS SO HOT.

Good night sweet princess.

Back on the real Earth, Kobayashi believes that it’s all over, but Misaki objects by believing that things are just beginning. Madame Oreille picks them both up and they leave the Gate. They then start to operate independently, America and other countries now control Tokyo. They become known as the Syndicate. Misaki notes that she never heard about Hei again, but believes that he’s still alive.

Final Thoughts

Okay, I’m not really sure what can I about the ending, because its the same feeling I got during the first season ending; unsatisfying, like so many things they tried to put it in but it felt rushed. The series started out nicely, then slow, then suddenly near the end it tosses so many things for us. The ending is like Evangelion ending, leading still many questions unanswered. The battle scenes were too short, and they left out Genma and Hazuki’s battle scene ! Although it appears that her kendo stick pierce through Genma’s head, its still unconfirmed whether she still lives or not. Also, I thought August 7 died, so how he was there ? I don’t really get what’s with Shion creating a whole new world purpose is for. So that all Contractors who died can live there ? If its a gift merely for Suou, than I think its ridiculous. How did Yin transform to her current was not explain, which means we’re gonna have to check the OVA. Hei attacking Misaki totally destroy my hope for MisakiXHei, but I guess it was never going to happen to begin with.

By a long shot this series wasn’t bad, but the ending could have make more sense, and they should have spent more time in the plot rather than slowing it down during previous episode. Although its sad that the series is over, overall, I would say I still enjoyed the series, and I recommend anyone to give it a try.