Akito is sitting on a ledge somewhere, reflecting on his meeting with Ikki. He moves his eye patch over to his left eye and becomes Agito. Meanwhile, the leader of the Skull Saders is still in action and still mad at Ikki. He’s attacked by Agito and another boy and easily defeated. Meanwhile. Ikki, Kazu and Onigiri are having a crisis. They only have four members for their team. Using Emily as bait, they’ve lured various guys toward them to try and find an ideal 5th member. Unfortunately nobody has been good enough. Ringo isn’t too happy about this either. She’s come to give Ikki a letter though, so she does just that. It turns out to be from Agito and is inviting him to witness an A-class A-T match against the Buls. Everyone comes along, piled into Ton-chan’s car. Ton-chan isn’t enjoying being so cramped. Thankfully, Buccha rides on the roof to save her a little space. The group eventually meets up with the Buls. They learn that their leader is a friend of Inuyama’s. Once Akito arrives, the game is announced. They’re going to be racing to get a floating balloon. Akito is made into Agito so he’s ready for action. As Ringo starts to explain Agito’s abilities, she’s disgusted to find Ikki going to the bathroom in public. After that little incident though, the match begins and Agito proceeds to beat the crud out of the Bul’s leader.

Akito-kun!!! I honestly wonder if any female fans of Air Gear don’t love Akito. While Agito can seriously give me the creeps, Akito is just too cute not to love. I’m surprised by just how girly his voice sounds. While he’s certainly lacking in the masculinity department, it was odd to hear that voice coming out of his mouth. He sounds much better as Agito. While this is working a bit differently from the manga, I’m fine so far with the way this storyline is being done. Of course, this is just the beginning. So long as a certain scene later on in this arc is left intact, I should be okay with it though. I worn all men who are watching this show to proceed with caution in any future episodes involving Akito. In case you haven’t been spoiled, I won’t get any further into my thought. I kind of wish they didn’t have the scene with Ikki taking a dump in public. It’s just so… gross. It was even grosser in the manga but… eww! Do not scar my poor innocent soul. Hopefully we’ll get lots of Akito next week to help me recover from that.

From the nearby country of Shikeripechimu, (what a mouthful!) three men arrive who ask Hakuoro to surrender. They leave, but it’s feared that they’ll attack. Of course, they do. Bennaui and Hakuoro are sent out to defend Tousukuru. Hakuoro buys something from the merchant whom they captured in a previous episode. According to Eruru, who’s been uber-worried lately, the thing Hakuoro bought in taboo. Her grandmother had told her not to mix the materials, but not the reason why. Hakuoro doesn’t want to explain to Eruru what he plans to do with his purchase. Before Hakuoro goes out on his own mission, he finds Aruru prepared to come with him. He makes her stay back though. Later, Eruru visits Yuzuha and they discuss the fact that Yuzuha’s been playing outside a lot. She likes the smell of the Earth though because it reminds her of Hakuoro. Meanwhile, Kurou and Bennaui fight the soldiers from Shikeripechimu. Oboro, Dori and Gura go and place two bottles in a building, so one is leaking into the other. This eventually causes an explosion and turns out to be the taboo material that Hakuoro bought. Eruru and Aruru surprise Hakuoro by showing up on Mukkuru. Eruru tells Hakuoro how worried she’s been about him and that since they’re a family, they should always be together even through suffering. Hakuoro lets them come with him. He soon meets with an old man with an evil laugh. He’s Niue, Shikeripechimu’s leader. They have a brief fight until they’re separated by falling debris but Niue says they’ll meet again.

That was a pain to watch, not because it was a bad episode (it was quite good) but because the video quality on the raw I got was awful. The sound was ahead of the images, since the images kept freezing up. It was quite annoying to me, but taking screenshots was even more difficult like this. I hope Hakuoro permanently stops pretending he’s Emiya Shirou. Really, he’s being sexist. To an extent, I can understand him not letting Eruru come with him because as far as I know, she has no experience in combat. Neither does Aruru, actually, so he’s not being as idiotic as Shirou with his whole “Saber shouldn’t fight” thing, but Aruru pretty much owned Inkara’s troops thanks to Mukkuru. Maybe after he sees the talent of the girl on the preview for next weeks episode he’ll want to have Aruru fighting on his side. Joking aside, it drives me crazy when characters keep other characters out of their affairs to “protect them.” Even if they need protection, I can sympathize with characters like Eruru. Obviously she’d be worried if the person she loves is out fighting in wars and won’t even tell her what he plans to do. Niue’s voice sounds very familiar. If anyone can tell me who his seiyuu is, it would be appreciated.

It’s just about that time of year when the regents exams (major New York State tests required to get out of high school) occur. Because of those, I’ve been particularly busy and will be busy still until late June. I don’t want to go on a complete hiatus like last year since I’m having too much fun doing this, but I will have to limit post length for the time being.

Also, for some reason my file transfer program refuses to open. I’ve tried everything I can think of to make it work. Until I can fix it, I’ll have to use my Photobucket account for image hosting, but I don’t know how long that arrangement will work out for.

Celleria has captured Shuhei and is taunting him. On her way to find Shuhei and Shin, Yu fights a Sukyura. She wins, but is attacked by several more. Meanwhile, Nanami uses the computer and searches for “shiawase.” Happiness. Morimoto shows up and tries to cheer her up. Nanami calls Nao mother, as Nao allowed her to do last week. Morimoto is quite surprised to hear this though, so Nao has to explain. Getting back to Yu, she finally makes it in and finds Shuhei. She shoots Celleria several times, but being a Sukyura, she recovers. Yu is attacked by a large amount of people at once and screams. Of course the scene has to change to Aki and Kazuhiko’s bitter-fest. Aki winds up leaving the room and going to take a shower, but Ryota’s already in the shower reflecting on his feelings for Sayaka. Aki sees him naked when he gets out. Gale and Aya continue wandering the ship. Aya freaks out when she gets wet by a drip of water, but than a liquefied Sukyura drips down. Gale starts to fire at it. Finally at our main point again, Yu somehow survived but Celleria was able to capture her as well. Shin sees another girl when he looks at Yu and decides to attack Celleria, freeing Yu. Yu rescues Shuhei. Shin tried to hold back Celleria’s men but winds up getting shot. Rather than being killed, he’s turned into a Sukyura. Shuhei attacks, giving Yu time to escape with Shin but getting himself captured again. Yu resents leaving him behind. In a flashback of Shin’s it’s revealed that the girl he saw in Yu was actually his sister. Suring the war she was badly hurt. Celleria was a doctor who came in to take care of his sister and she lived. As Yu and Shin continue running, Celleria has more men sent to ambush them. Luckily, Nanami happens to have some mysterious powers. She sees that her “father” is in danger and shows everyone the image of Yu and Shin running, using the computer. Yu and Shin are surrounded and plan to use a grenade, but Karen, Kazuhiko and Ryota come to their rescue. Nanami touches Shin’s wound and it changes color. Shin seems to know that there’s something unnatural about her and says “You are…”

And then the episode ends. We won’t get to see what exactly Nanami is until at least next Sunday (earlier if you live in Japan or use one of those nifty Japanese P2Ps. I wonder if I should get myself one of them.) Darn it I want to know what Nanami is! It makes sense that there’s something unnatural about her. They wouldn’t just introduce a normal girl in the middle of the series. Now that we’ve finally learned that she’s abnormal, I can say that this show is at least doing something right. Actually, the animation was pretty good this week. Besides that, there’s plenty of good things about this series. Shin’s back story was rather interesting. Celleria seemed like such a nice person back then. What caused her to snap? Hopefully, that will be answered soon. I also wonder if she was able to heal Shin’s sister due to her Sukyura powers. Maybe she didn’t even have them then. Shin’s betrayal of Celleria was easy to predict. I expected that he’d probably be killed in doing so, so him being turned into a Sukyura surprised me. Poor Shuhei is still captured. Nao’s not going to be happy about that. Seeing that Yu actually cared about that pretty much confirms the fact that she is trustworthy. Good!

I’ll be going out for the day, but I figured I’d get this up first. Briefly, a few notes. No Nana this week (Edit: But I will mention that it was the best episode yet). We’ll see about Fate/Stay Night. For now, check out what Garten and Omni wrote. Both have long, detailed summaries. Next, I’ve still been unable to find a torrent for Disgaea 08, so if anyone wants to point one out to me, it would be much appreciated. I haven’t checked Tokyo Tosho today yet, but hopefully it’ll be out by now.

I procrastinated watching this series for quite a while, simply because it was meant to be comedic and I didn’t want it to ruin my perspective of the serious and dramatic Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. Thankfully it didn’t. It in fact made me like it more and now I plan on re-watching the original. Gouda was an incredibly interesting character. The fact that he was essentially an even stupider version of the Domon from G-Gundam (they even share Tomokazu Seki as a seiyuu) was a very fun thing for me. Actually, If you like G-Gundam I recommend you see this for the parodies. Gouda’s imaginary robot is even capable of doing a Sekiha Love Love Tenkyouken knockoff. The imaginary robot was probably my favorite element of the series. Some of the sequences involving it made me laugh so hard. One amusing thing about it is that Gouda’s opponent is actually a discolored Takayuki whose harem includes discolored versions of Mitsuki and Haruka. I actually didn’t realize this at first. I knew they were supposed to be symbolic of the three original stars, but the color changes fooled me into thinking they were someone else. Back on the subject of Gouda, I was actually a big fan of his relationship with Akane. While the two don’t wind up together, I was happy that Gouda was able to get Akane out of her depression. Someone with a crazy personality like his was exactly what Akane needed, seeing that Gouda’s extreme openness of his feelings was the polar opposite of Takayuki’s extreme indecisiveness. Now I must say, if you haven’t watched this, I highly recommend doing so but you should see the original first. The references will make a whole lot more sense. There’s also a lot of references to MuvLuv though, which I haven’t played. Hopefully, all the cameos were hinting the rumored upcoming Muvluv anime, because I’d really get a kick out of seeing that. I wonder if Funimation has the license to this or plans on getting it, since they’re releasing KimiNozo. I sure hope so.

Okay, I’m a bit busy but I’ll try and cover the basic points for a few shows from this week.

Air Gear 08:
-Ikki, Kazu and Onigiri are arguing over what to name their team
-Buccha’s girl friend broke up with him for an even fatter guy, so he’s made up with Onigiri
-Ton-chan gets Ikki to help her with a crisis from her childhood. She used to always be late for school when she was a student. One day, she did everything possible to make sure she was on time but wound up spending the whole day chasing a cat. The teacher froze the clock at the time school would normally start. He did actually teach her though. The clock has been stuck at that time since then.
-Ikki helps fix the clock, but winds up needing help from Buccha
-It turns out that there was an A-T wheel stuck between the hands

Yes! Ton-chan’s back story. Due to the sheer stupidity of this chapter, it became a personal favorite of mine. Ton-chan is really one of the most unique characters ever. She’s doing something ecchi 90% of the time, but I question whether it’s intentional or not. Either way, it’s good for a few laughs. Probably the funniest part this week is when she took out the ice cream and randomly started sucking it, so the censoring bird flew in front of her. XD Utter crack!

Spider Riders 08
-Hunter and Shadow accidentally fall into a place called Mayoui no Mori (Lost Forest ) Edit: officially forest of bewilderment, which makes sense.
-The manacles don’t work properly in the forest, so Hunter can’t contact Corona
-Hunter meets with a man called Magma, who doesn’t beleive that he’s a Spider Rider at first
-The Insectors attack and Magma reveals that he’s a Spider Rider. He saves Hunter.
-Magma’s Spider is named Brutus. It’s his friend and also like a replacement for his sister, who died when his village was attacked by Insectors. Brutus is also looking for his sister.
-Magma promises to fight with Hunter, who is eventually reunited with Corona

Interesting. I like Magma a lot more then I thought he would. He’s pretty broody yet he also seems self-reliant. Brutus is such a stupid name for a Spider. I laughed when he first was summoned from the utter stupidity. The best part was, the mysterious purple-haired girl made an appearance again. Her name is also revealed as Aqune. They said it before, but I didn’t pick up on it. Finally I can stop calling her purple-haired girl. Apparently, she’s been in the dreaded Mayoui no Mori before.

I’ll update this post once I get this week’s Disgaea

Most of the villagers leave, but Hakuoro and his dysfunctional family stay at Inkara’s castle. The winged people send a message in hopes of creating a friendly relationship between their two countries. Hakuoro and Bennaui meet up with the princess Urutori and a man named Munto. Eruru comes to bring them tea and Urutori mistakes her for Hakuoro’s wife. Much to Eruru’s disappointment, Hakuoro replies that she’s more like a little sister to him. Since Hakuoro has to work, Eruru is given the job of showing Urutori and Munot around. Eventually, she takes Urutori to her room. Urutori is surprised by all the medicine. She’s interested in becoming a medicine woman to help others. Eruru wants to be one too to be like her grandmother. Meanwhile, Hakuoro goes out and sees a winged girl playing. He loses sight of her though and goes back in. He finds the girl in his bed. The girl pretends to be invisible, but that doesn’t work so she runs off. She’s stopped by Mukkuru. Urutori shows up to apologize for her little sister, Kamyu. Aruru was also awake, but was scared of Kamyu. The next day. Kamyu tries to make friends with Aruru, who keeps running away. Neglecting his work, Hakuoro gives Kamyu some advice. As a peace offering, Kamyu gives Aruru a honeycomb. Aruru accepts and decides to share it. The two get Yuzuha to play with them and all become friends. Oboro notices that Kamyu is playing with Aruru and Mukkuru, which gets Munto upset. When Bennaui points out that Yuzuha is there too, however, Oboro flips out and tries to chase them, but is unsuccessful at stopping them. Urutori spends more time with Eruru and points out that her room is reminiscent because it smells like Tousukuru. Hearing Tousukuru’s name upsets Eruru, so Urutori tries to comfort her. One day, Hakuoro finds the three girls and Mukkuru sleeping together. He wishes they could live this way forever. The winged delegates have to leave though, so Kamyu says farewell to her friends.

Despite the fact that very little happened this week, I loved the episode. I’m just more used to the fast pace of the last few episodes. More episodes like this are always welcome though. It was just an excuse for cuteness. I’m definitely a Kamyu fan. She’s an overall cute character who still doesn’t win over Aruru but is a nice addition to the cast. Urutori is by no means a bad character, but just hasn’t done anything to interest me yet. Munto only gets points from me because I found it funny when he was getting teased by Oboro. Of course, Oboro’s reaction to Yuzuha being out was the best. I find him to be such an amusing character. It was also funny when he was fighting with Kurou for the attention of their bosses. Next week, Hakuoro is not getting his wish by any means. The war seems to be back in full swing. I wonder if the new villain comes from the same village as Bennaui and Kurou or is from an entirely new faction. The mood of the preview just seemed so sad. I can’t help but think somebody’s going to die. It did show a building getting blown up, so I hope nobody significant was inside it. On the other hand, it would be interesting if someone died, just to create more drama.

There’s no sign of Shuhei, but Kazuhiko, Yu and Ryota do find Karen. They take her back with them and Karen gets to try some of Nanami’s newly cooked hamburgers along with the others. Nao wants to know where Shuhei is and asks if he’s alright. Karen doesn’t know but gives them the information she does have. She did meet up with Shuhei while on his mission and they briefly fought. When she learned that Shuhei was looking for Celleria she told him that Celleria attacked them. This also explains why Gale and Aya were running away last week. Learning that Shuhei is trying to protect his brother and comrades, Karen gives him her gun before they part ways. Back in the present, Sayaka asks Karen if she’s seen Aya. She replies that she has and Aya escaped with Gale. Aki comes in the room and immediately gets into a fight with Kazuhiko. Nanami wants them to make up, so they do, unable to turn her cute pleading down. ^_^; Before Nanami intervenes though, Sayaka gets upset and leaves. Ryota follows her. Meanwhile, Aya finds a very small passage way that she tries to go through, but gets stuck. Gale has to help her out. Ryota tries to comfort Sayaka, but she shuns him and leaves. Ryota then meets up with Yu and Karen. When Karen brings up Shin, Yu is surprised to hear his name and leaves. She flashes back to a time where she and Shin were in some war-zone and Shin told her to run, heading in the opposite direction. She called out for him but he didn’t answer or return. When Ryota now tries to comfort her, he gets shunned again. In the mean time, Nao and Nanami are talking and Nanami wants to call Nao “mother.” Nao is fine with that. Sayaka is in angst mode, realizing that she promised to meet Aya again, but she still hasn’t. She wants to protect her friend. Ryota is looking at the bugs and Morimoto comes to speak to him about them. Nao and Nanami show up and they all have a discussion on the science of the bugs and on the joy of life. Karen takes a shower and sees Yu when she comes out, who’s going somewhere. Kazuhiko and Aki get into another fight. Sayaka decides to take one of the mechs to go and save Aya, but Ryota and Morimoto stop her. Yu winds up taking the mech in search of Shin.

This would’ve been up earlier, but I had to do some cleaning since I’m getting an Air Conditioner in my room. Anyway, this week’s installment, despite animation problems, was pretty interesting. We’re getting back to episode one territory, where everyone seems to know each other. There were no new friends of Sayaka or Ryota, but I didn’t expect for Yu and Shin to know each other. Actually, I didn’t even know Shin’s name until today. If they didn’t show his face, I wouldn’t have known who they were talking about. He looks rather different in the flashback too. Considering the fact that Yu looks near identical to her current age, I wonder how long ago it was that they were friends. Probably not too much time passed by. I felt bad for Ryota this week. He was just trying to be helpful, but everyone was pretty rude to him. I also feel bad for Sayaka, even though Aya is in good hands. Characters like that always get to me emotionally, because they have a big burden on their hands with nothing they can do about it. Hopefully, she’ll still get to play a part in saving her friend… if Aya even wants to be saved. She and Gale are very cute together. Next week, more evil Celleria! She’s so awesome as evil, so I look forward to it.

The recap continues on for a little but before any new content. Afterwards, Junko learns about the two Nana’s living together and isn’t particularly happy about it. After all, Hachi doesn’t know Nana well. She could be a serial killer. Junko also thinks that Shouji should hear about this. Hachi hasn’t told him yet because he’s working. Junko gets mad that Hachi interrupted her when she was working and kicks her out. Hachi goes to Shouji’s apartment but he’s not there yet. She comes up with the idea that maybe Shouji is cheating on her with somebody named Sachiko. Shouji eventually comes home after working late. He tells Hachi that he sent her a text message, but Hachi never got it. Shouji realizes that he actually sent it to Junko. When Junko discovers the text message, she gets mad. She worries that Shouji never asked Hachi to move in with him. Kyousuke says that Shouji is also worried because he wants to marry Hachi. If he goes to college, it’ll be longer before he can support her. Meanwhile, Shouji also objects to Hachi moving in with Nana. He asks her to move in but Hachi denies. She is happy that he chose her over Sachiko. Shouji wonders who Sachiko is. Hachi decides to introduce Shouji to Nana but is afraid he’ll fall in love with him. He says he can’t though because he’s torn between Hachi and Sachiko even though he doesn’t know who Sachiko is. The next day, Hachi takes Shouji, Junko and Kyousuke to her apartment to help her move in. Junko is impressed the place but not by her friend’s apartment number, since in Japan, 7 is associated with death and thus an unlucky number. Everyone is freaked when they open the door and discover a bald man, Yasu. Hachi hears Nana complaining about the water temperature and realizes that they are at the right place. Yasu introduces himself and says that he’s a lawyer and will take care of things when they need it. Nana has him call the water company to get hot water. When Nana and Hachi decide to make tea for their guests, unbeknownst to the fact that there isn’t any gas, Yasu realizes that they know nothing about living in an apartment. He’ll take care of things for now, but they’ll be without heat the first night. Junko is content with Hachi’s situation since Yasu will be helping and leaves with Shouji and Kyousuke. Hachi offers Nana some warm clothes for the night.

First off, the Sachiko thing was very funny. It amused me that Shouji was playing along, despite not having a clue who he was talking about. I wonder if she’ll come up again. There were some other mildly amusing things too, but nothing really noteworthy. It was nice to see Yasu again. I wonder if Nobu will make an appearance in the future. Due to being slightly spoiled, I know we’ll be seeing Ren again. That’s not much of a spoiler though, because now that Nana is in Tokyo, she’ll be living near him. I’ve been having a hard time keeping respect for Shouji. Despite the fact that he wants to marry Hachi and is concerned for her well being, something about him just seems so fake. He was that way in Hachi’s flashback and he seems to be the same in the present time. Hopefully I’m wrong and the relationship between the two will turn out okay, because I’m sure Hachi would really suffer again. I’d probably just wind of laughing if he really did cheat on her with someone named Sachiko though. Thinking of the romances in general, I wonder if Nana will try and get back together with Ren. The preview this week was ridiculously vague, so I have no clue what will occur next week. If I were to make a prediction it would be totally random so I won’t.

After his conversation with Kirei, Shirou displays his angst all the way home. Once there, he has a serious discussion with Rin until he mentions that he wants to go on a date with Saber. Rin starts laughing. When Shirou goes to ask Saber out, she doesn’t even know what a date is. Shirou’s not particularly good at explaining it, so Rin helps him out. Ilya shows up to express her love for Shirou, so to get her out of the way, Rin knocks her out. Afterwards, Shirou and Saber go out. First they go clothes shopping and Saber rips something, so Shirou has to pay for it. Next they go to the movies and watch a Star Wars clone. Afterwards is the aquarium, followed by a restaurant where they get some tea. Next they visit a toy shop where, to Shirou’s amusement, Saber falls in love with a stuffed lion that she insists he buy for her. Finally, they go see a half sunken ship and have a conversation about how Saber has to fight to get the Holy Grail and how Shirou doesn’t want her to have to. Saber gets angry at Shirou because she though he understood that she wants to get the Holy Grail more than anything. Shirou runs home and goes to sleep. He’s eventually woken up by Rin, who tells him that Saber never came home. Shirou is surprised by this but runs out after her. She’s still at the place they were last. At first, Shirou uses the excuse that he came back because Rin was worried, but then they make up. As they’re about to leave holding hands, Gilgamesh shows up.

Okay, that wasn’t as filler-ish as I thought it would be. It helped develop Shirou and Saber’s relationship at least. Maybe it wasn’t a vital episode, but it was still enjoyable. It had a lot of particularly cute moments, such as the scene in the toy shop. Saber’s lion is adorable. They have to make a plushie of it. I’m kind of surprised that Saber likes stuffed animals myself, but it’s amusing so I’ll go along with it. Interestingly, this episode was mostly just Shirou and Saber. Granted, much of the cast is dead, but Rin and Ilya got very little screen time while Sakura and Taiga didn’t show up at all. The ending this week was particularly suspenseful. I didn’t expect Goldie to show up there. The preview for next week’s episode was particularly intriguing. Saber gets quite a blood bath, but I doubt she’ll die. It’s still a jarring thing to see. I hope this week goes by quickly so I can find out what happens. That, and the fact that it’ll be closer to the end of the school year.