Bleach ep. 86: “Rangiku, dances! Slice the invisible enemy!”
Review
After the past six very average episodes “Rangiku, dances! Slice the invisible enemy!” was a very good episode. While I still do not like most of the Bounts the Bount, Sawatari, that Chad, Nova, and Rangiku are fighting works really well for this episode since the power of his Doll works similarly to Nova’s power. And just as I have been hoping since the some of the Soul Reapers were sent to Earth the addition of Rangiku help make the fight a lot more fun to watch. It was also nice to see Chad show more emotion in this episode than he has in the past. Chad calm demeaner works well when to balance out the extreme emotions of Ichigo, Renji, and Uryu but it is nice to see Chad become angry everyonce and a while.
But the real star of this episode had to be Nova who shows a lot more personality in this episode than he has have in the past. Out of the three modsouls introduced in this filler arc Nova is the most interesting and it is no so small part for his powers. Also along with his powers Nova proved that he is a good strategist and perceptive. And the ending of this episode made for a nice set up for the next episode that makes me wonder how Chad and Rangiku will be able beat Sawatari with Nova and Ururu out of action. I just hope it does not take the fight isn’t streched out to last more than the next episode.
Episode Rating – 8.1/10
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 ep. 1: “The Day a Demon Awakens”
Review
What a difference a year makes. At the end the first season Lelouch and Suzaku pulled out there guns on one another with the scene going black and one shot heard. Instead of showing what happend when the scene went black we see that Lelouch is back in Ashford Academy with no memory of his actions as Zero, who is considered dead, and now has a brother, Kallen is working undercover as a bunny waitress in a casino, CC is now the leader of Black Knights who are down to five members since the rest of the members of the Black Knights are either captured or missing, and Suzaku is working directly under the Emporer. And just like the last few episodes of the first season this episode leaves the viewer asking more question than getting answers.
Usually when a show does a time skip it feels like the show is jumping the shark but as has been the norm with Code Geass this skip does not feel forced and feels like it was planned from the start. This first episode of the second seasond, retitled to add R2 at the end of the title, draws many parrallels to the first episode of the first season. The only real difference between the two first episode is that here Kallen is an undercover as a bunny waitress and the Black Knights are already running . This episode still has Lelouch playing and beating some sort of rich noble and then getting in the middle of a battle. But still even with it being very similar to the first episode of the first season this episode has a lot more energy to it with the use of some great new music and the animation is still at top form since it looks like Sunrise gave this show a bigger anime budget.
Unlike the last season were the writers were using forms from all the different gernes in anime I get the feeling that this season will focus much more on the war and we will be getting a lot more mecha fighting than we did before. Still if the final scene of this episode with Lelouch having all his memories return and having the Britanian soldiers kill themselves is any indication of what we are in store for than it looks like R2 is going to be a wild ride especially since it looks like CC is not the only person who knows Lelouch is Zero.
Episode Rating – 8.8/10