A great week for anime it seems! Bleach Episode 105 and Death Note Episode 9 are the exciting prospects this week.

Bleach 105

This is probably the first Bleach episode I’ve watched every minute of since about Episode 90. I’m not saying it was brilliant, but it certainly recaptured some of the essence of what made Bleach such a fantastic series to begin with. The episode opens without a fight scene for once, as Hitsayuga returns from his defeat of Koga to his squad’s based. A quite interesting piece of dialogue ensues, before cutting to the first squad captain, and then finally, for the remainder of the episode to Kariya, and … Ran Tao!

Now I knew it had potential to be quite interesting from this point onwards, but that potential has emerged a number of times this arc and been thrown to waste a mere second later. Thankfully, that did not happen this time. Ran Tao begins to fire at Kariya with a Kidou (?) gun, which promptly dissipates part of his clothes, revealing his Doll-controlling quest. A flashback ensues, which includes great parts such as how Ran Tao attempts to gain protection for the Bounto, the consequences of her mistake as it were, via Soul Society. But the big-wigs in Central Room 46 turn her down and order they’re destruction, even though she warns them that the Bounto will survive and fight back one day (ho ho ho). The best bit is when she helps a small child Bounto to escape a cave while being chased by Shinigami. She gives him this item which allows the Bounto to control their Dolls before she sets him on his merry way. This is great for two reasons. Firstly, we know now a little bit more about the Doll-Bounto relationship, and secondly, that kid was Kariya!

Overall, a pretty good episode. Once the main factors that aided this was the animation seriously picking up at the 10 minute mark (after an awkward swelling incident involving Yamamoto). Back to it’s crisp, detailed self, this helped the narrative to gain momentum, and my focus was on the story as opposed to the pulsating characters in the show. Anyway, almost looking forward to next week’s now.

Rating: 7/10

Death Note 9

One thing that absolutely rocks about the Death Note anime is how much happens in each episode. I love it, it always means that I can’t wait until the next episode comes out.

Anyway, this weeks episode opens with the issue with the camera’s in Light’s room. Light is walking out and about, as Ryuk, who, through apple withdrawal, has actually begun to uncomfortably contort, persuades him to buy an apple. This is a very strange scene, but funny as well. During this episode, L concludes that there is no-one exhibiting suspicious Yagami family, yet still seems to think that one of them is Kira, and is simply outwitting the cameras. Because of this, he sees that the cameras are of now use, and removes them.

It’s examination time for Light! He goes into his exam room, and sits down to his ‘Civics’ exam (very interesting), and the invigilator begins to moan at someone behind him to sit properly. Light turns around and … it’s L! But of course Light doesn’t know this. Such a great twist. Later on in the episode, Light meets L, known as ‘Ryuga Hideki’ actually explains to Light that he is L. Of course, Light does not suspect such an aggressive manner from the L he has thought of, and this completely throws him off track. He doesn’t know the real name of this person, so he can’t kill him, and how can he be sure this person is actually L? Argh!

Great episode, the storyline is again unrivalled in my experience of this genre. The animation does suffer a bit in the final quarter, but overall, worth the week’s wait.

Rating: 9/10

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 10:01 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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