A Cyclops Who Likes Anime. A Shameful Cyclops

I know, they’re huge images. What can I say, the groups who release sensibly-sized releases are taking their sweet time. So you’ll have to put up with GIGANTIC PICS for some time. But this episode is worth it, if anything is. Right before Maka and Soul eat the big one, Frankenstein and Maka’s dad show up and just wreck the place. Like 80% of the episode is them just fucking shit up. It’s awesome!

Oh, and Medusa, a teacher at Shibusen, is the evil witch controlling the kid and Ragnarok. I saw it coming but it’s not a bad development.

Another Kohane episode. Seems she’s come under fire for being fake, and job opportunities are starting to drop while harassment from wackjobs increases. She doesn’t really care about it all that much, but her mom is going off the deep end. And since her mom is abusive and crazy, that means she’s even more abusive and crazy. Which Watanuki discovers when he goes to see her at home and has hot tea thrown at him. He doesn’t seem able to escape danger very often; this series must take place in Hong Kong, Connecticut.

They then reaffirm their great friendship and she goes on a program as the idiot who all the ‘real’ psychics can make fun of. When she disagrees with their GHOST SENSING she’s mocked and called a liar.

BOTTOM LINE: It was okay but the Kohane episodes have never been super great, mostly because they focus on Kohane instead of Watanuki getting screwed over by some kind of monster or spirit.

While on an extracurricular assignment (eliminating some demonic serial killer in Italy) Maka notices something funny going on inside a church. Inside, her and Soul find another Technician and his/her weapon (I can’t tell whether it’s a dude or not, sorry). And a bunch of slaughtered humans. Uh oh, it’s big trouble! The kid doesn’t seem so bad, if it weren’t for the witch floating outside constantly sending dark energy into him to convince him to kill.

Then there’s a fight. A great fight that initially gives Maka the upper-hand until Ragnarok (the kid’s weapon) starts slicing through Soul, and they get pounded into the ground.

BOTTOM LINE: Another totally sweet episode.

The crew heads off to Hawaii for vacation. Hats off to global travel! While there Ryuu learns that he has to babysit an important client’s kid. Oh the trials of rich kids. A tear. He makes them all play a pretend family, with Hikari as the dog. Owned. But she eventually wins the kid’s trust and love through Love and Understanding, the two primary weapons for any shoujo heroine.

Then at the end of the episode she realizes (wow what a surprise) that the kid is actually Yahiro’s brother. He’s the doofus who had the party earlier on. This would have been a decent twist if it wasn’t apparent two minutes into the episode. Oh well, I don’t expect anything in anime to have the intended effect. That would be foolish.

BOTTOM LINE: The dog part was surprisingly funny, and the end of the episode made me interested to see the next one. Which for this series is pretty shocking.

Kid (Death the, that is) comes to the school today. Soul and Black Star want to see this guy who’s been taking all the really dangerous jobs and completing them though, so they wait for him outside.

And keep waiting, because his rampant OCD makes him three hours later. By the time he shows up they’re really pissed, and they go after ‘em. Only Soul and Black Star are not a very good pair, despite what great buddies they are, and the fight is more to showcase their extreme ineptitude than Kid’s supreme abilities. Although those are on display as well, and yes, they are awesome.

BOTTOM LINE: For a throw-away, no story episode it was incredibly awesome!

Bad guy spotted! There’s some mega 80 year old psychic who’s kept in a room covered with ECMs, making it strongest single ECM area on the planet. I think that’s what they said, anyway. But they don’t work on him and he just freely teleports around whenever he wants! Which raises a question as to why they’d even bother, but whatev. He has his eye on Kaoru, and tries to get her to focus her power to be used as a stronger weapon. But she goes crazy, and they all have to band together to get her under control.

There’s also something about an escaping psychic from the maximum-security psychic prison and etc. but really if you’re not watching the show this whole episode would make little sense. And it’s not worth explaining it, trust me.

BOTTOM LINE: I’m thinking of developing a few phrases to put here which correspond to some kind of scale. I mean, I don’t like summing up an episode with a fairly arbitrary grade but there’s really only so many ways I can say “hey this episode was pretty good” and it’s depressing the hell out of me.

The best part was probably Muscle Okama’s reappearance

The gang finally comes face to face with Dr. Stein (Frankenstein, get it), who is probably the best character in the series so far. He keeps trying to wheel out and meet them on his rolling chair, but the wheel gets stuck on the door frame and falls over. Repeatedly. So he comes out and there’s some fighting and he absolutely kicks the shit out of everyone with crazy attacks and super powers and when Maka sees his soul it’s fucking gigantic and has a bolt through it. Death the Kid sees them getting thrashed on his dad’s screen and decides to go help them out, but soon after leaving develops an obsession with toilet paper and is unable to move.

So they fight Dr. Stein a whole bunch, eventually Maka and Soul use their super attack which is totally defeated because he’s just that powerful. Then it turns out - hey, he’s really a good guy and Shinigami just asked him to test the group for their extra lessons. Along with Sid, although I think Sid’s still dead. Regardless, he’s their new teacher and speeds through the school hallways on his chair.

BOTTOM LINE: Not only is he super powerful and borderline crazy, he travels around on his rolling chair. A man after my own heart.

A girl comes to Yuko saying she keeps hearing things and seeing things move out of the corner of her eye when she’s in her room. So she wants her house to be less frightening. Yuko gives her a bell and sends her on her way. The next day she comes back, saying the bell didn’t help and might have made it a little worse. So Yuko gives her something new - two bells. This continues for a very long time. Then comes the twist. Blammo.

BOTTOM LINE: A strange episode, and not the best or anything but it was okay. I didn’t regret watching it.

The fish girl spirit comes around to Yuko’s and asks for some well water. Only the water is in someone else’s property, and it’s Watanuki’s job to get it. After sneaking in and lifting a jar of it, Yuko tells him that he has to get a lot more. Sucks. So he’s forced to enlist Domeki’s help. Every time he goes there he notices a woman looking out into the yard, but she never appears to see him. On the last day, the cloth they use to carry the jars is blown up into the room with the woman, and the two go up to discover something SHOCKING. I won’t reveal what it was, the answer is simply too SHOCKING. IT’S SHOCKING!

But it heavily hints that there’s something off about Himawari.

BOTTOM LINE: This was a good episode; I feel sorry for that poor kitty in the well

Maka and Soul’s previous teacher, Sid, was a 3 Star Dagger Technician. Which means that he used daggers and he was pretty great. Maka and Black Star are both One Star technicians. But someone killed him, and rumor is that his zombie body is now targeting students of the school and beating the hell out of them. As supplementary lessons, Maka/Soul and Black Star/Tsubaki are tasked with capturing him and discovering who’s behind this zombification.

Substantial amounts of fighting later, it turns out that it’s the best technician who ever graduated from the academy, Dr. Frankenstein. Even his house is all stitched together. It’s pretty outrageous.

BOTTOM LINE: There’s a lot of fighting. This series does fighting very well. Ergo,