Well technically, this doesn’t cover the first episodes, but it is the first week I’m doing this. Anyway, on this week list is Bleach Episode 103, as well as Death Note Episode 7. Woohoo! Onwards!

NB: I won’t be writing in such length on episode summaries, should I write one, from now on. Takes too long, but does make the episode quite exciting. Anyway …

Bleach 103

The episode opens with the Bounto Yoshi parrying Ishida’s energy arrow, which at the end of last episode, was heading straight towards her. Well that was predictable. The majority of the episode is taken up by this battle. It’s faily entertaining, but I’ve developed a habit recently and skipping sections of Bleach Filler out of sheer boredom, so there’s not really much to report on that. The finish is sheer error on the part of the writers. It seems, that when Yoshi has to switch between her offensive form and defensive form, she must revert to normal first. In typical Bleach style, which is why I love this series, this is exploited by Ishida as he fires a shot straight through her. Now, the fact that this would kill her would normally seem acceptable, but, as we are reminded by a later scene, the Bounto can in fact use spirit particles to heal themselves. And where are they? In Seretei, in the Spirit Dimension. Oops.

Besides this fight, there is plenty of discussion concerning the Bounto, and particularly Kariya’s discovery and threat of using Joukaishou, the giant energy source situated under the Technological Research facility. With only two Bounto left, it looks like it’s up to Hitsugaya and Rangiku to take care of Koga. Speaking of that Barret-clone (okay, okay, maybe not), there’s a great scene with him a Kariya in this episode, where is seems that the old Koga does have some good in him as he expresses his concern of the death of his comrades and the length to which Kariya is going to achieve his goal. Kariya promptly ‘punctures’ good old Koga, meh. Night falls and we come across Koga lying in the alley healing himself (the scene I spoke about earlier), and the episode finishes with Koga bringing out Daruka against some low-level shinigami as Hitsugaya and Rangiku approach.

Overall, not a great episode by any standards, and the animation is really lacking when compared to the detail that went into the Soul Society arc, but at least we can take heart that there are only two Bounto left, so probably no more than 3-4 episodes. I’m dying for that manga arc. It’s gonna be incredible, as long as they improve the animation!

Rating: 5/10

Death Note 7

The episode begins where it left off, with Light following Maki, the fiancée of the recently deceased Ray Penbar, down the street. He asks for the details of the bus jacking incident and appears to be writing them down, when he is in fact writing down details of her death by suicide. Yet, strangely during this, Ryuk is laughing over his shoulder in an odd manner with unsettles Light. The scene cuts to L, or Ryuuzaki, who has now finished his interrogation of the 5 members of his Kira catching team, and explains how he is now sure that Kira is not among them. He then receives a phone call, and finally the identity of Watari is revealed: bit of a butler type look if you ask me.

Back to Light and Maki now, and Light has realised that she has been using an alias. Now this is getting dangerous, she may have caught on. Either that, or she is being very cautious of revealing her identity, probably due to what happened to Ray when he revealed his. Maki suggests that they return to the Police Headquarters, and Light begins to fret and panic, clouding his better judgement, as he attempts to come up with a plan to stop his whole world falling to pieces. Ryuk again offers him the Shinigami Eyes as he ponders, and but he replies by saying ‘I will never make that deal in my whole lifetime’. Scene cuts to L and his team again, and they have all been presented with fake IDs, based on Ryuuzaki’s assumption that L needs both a face and a name to kill. They are also presented with quite James Bond-ish belts, with all sorts of gizmo’s built in. I suppose Watari does look a bit like the old Mr. J Cleese. Back to Light again, and he says good bye to Maki, and soon realizes, after being the usual human super-computer, that his only has 5 minutes to come up with a way of finding out her name. And we’re at the middle.

Ooh and it looks like Light has a plan. He stalls Maki for a while, explaining why he thinks there is no-one at HQ, which is right on the money as usual. Oh and ever the sharp one, she asks how he knows so much. The little fibber explains that he is part of the investigation, what a retort! And after it seems like she’s taking it all in, she says she wants to go to HQ anyway and meet L in person. Damn she is sharp. Light tries to explain to her that there is not chance she can meet L, but she says she has worked under him before, in a case in America from two years prior. She reveals that she used to be an FBI agent, and Light gets his snag on her. She explains how she feels that Light reminds her of L, and Light, ever the sneaky bugger, ‘invites’ her onto the investigation team, and it looks like she needs an identity check to get onto the team. Uh oh. She’s hooked now, and has ‘nothing else to lose’. This is followed little clip of a very animated Ryuk cackling away like a witch. She hands over her driving license and she’s a goner!

The ending is fantastic. He writes down the details of her suicide and checks his watch, and she asks why he’s so interested in his watch. He replies “It’s because … I’m Kira”. Wow.

Overall, this is a really great episode that reminds me of the feelings I experienced reading the manga which seems like oh so long ago now. The animation was a bit jumpy at the beginning, but improved throughout the episode. Can’t wait for next weeks.

Rating: 8/10

This entry was posted on Monday, November 20th, 2006 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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