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「アオイの記憶」 (Aoi no Kioku)
“Memories of Aoi”
Ten episodes later, it finally feels like we’re reaching the climax of the series. The ultimate antagonist may have been a tad predictable, but the flashback to six years ago puts everything in a slightly different light. Learning that Kenmi had Ruri’s parents killed definitely adds to the twisted experiments that we’ve come to know him for and sets the stage for a final confrontation against him where both Alma and Night will likely be involved. At the moment, the key to unraveling the truth lies in Aoi (Yahagi Sayuri), who did break free from her crystallized prison after resonating with Alma’s sacred powers last time.
All we really need now is for her to regain consciousness and reveal to Ruri and Makoto what she overheard on Christmas Eve six years ago. Namely, Ruri’s father deciding to cut off the Aiba Foundation’s funding of Kenmi’s research since he didn’t agree with his methods, giving the latter a motive for killing the Aiba family using one of his experiments. I imagine that Aoi overheard her father mentioning Kenmi’s name before he was killed, so that should be most damning evidence against him. She’ll probably be too traumatized to remember it right away though, seeing as visions of her parents’ death were the last thing she saw before imprisoning herself in a crystal to save her life.
From Ruri’s standpoint, it’s easy to see how her fight with Aoi left her with a sense of regret all these years and drove her to do everything in her power to try and save her sister. It may have only been over accidentally wrecking the clay angel on the wreath for their parents, but she was young and it clearly meant a lot to her. More importantly, their fight is what ultimately saved both Ruri and Makoto’s lives, delaying their arrival at the Aiba villa. Knowing that, it feels like Ruri’s fated to avenge their parents’ deaths, the death of Makoto’s father (Miyake Kenta), and save Aoi to bring some justice to the world, hence what I said above about how this episode put the story in a different light. The only minor qualm I have with this narrowed focus is how it leaves something to be desired on the Ashi side of things. It became fairly evident that the random monsters were only going to a plot device when no ultimate threat came up, so I’m not too surprised that we’ll never get any sort of resolution about them. However, I can’t quite shake the feeling that it oversimplifies the plot, which probably could’ve been told in half the number of episodes without skipping a beat.
For now, I’ll reserve judgement until I see how things wrap up. I still see potential in Night and Fei’s subplots, particularly Fei’s because her older brother is likely going to be the “last boss” of the series. Saving him would provide a somewhat fulfilling conclusion for them, as well as seeing Ruri and Makoto avenge their parents. Makoto’s father was pretty badass, holding his own against a monster before ultimately sacrificing himself to take it out, so it would be nice to see Makoto live up to his expectations. Judging from the preview, it looks like I’ll find out soon enough if that’s the case.
* Full-length images: 02, 16, 17, 27.
Preview
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Wow. a twist in things. Neat
Did Kagami Senior get a hole blasted through him!?
That was a melted metal plate most likely.
I feel like this show its kinda short and empty… not that I didn’t like it but… There just isn’t enough plot and development.
i agree it feels like the show just really jumps around. the progression doesn’t feel too natural at all, it seems like maybe they wanted to do a 2 season show but got cut down to one.
To me it seemed like they just wanted to do a short story. Maybe it would have been more enjoyable for some as a movie or something, but I found it enjoyable enough. I enjoyed this one more than some other 20+ episode anime this season that had more plot and twists mainly because in my view this had less annoying and pointless characters :p . Straight forward story with some nostalgia thrown in if you use to watch sentai style shows XD
I thought they would elaborate more on what the hell the Sacred Seven power is and introduce some more Seven users other than Squall/Razma/Arma and that emo Knight person. Give it some nice fight episodes or something. Like Kamen Rider.
Well, even the original Kamen Rider didn’t have that many characters until the sequels and remakes. It would be more interesting of course if they had more stuff in this anime, but I get the impression that it was not intended to be anything more than a simple one season anime. Maybe if there was enough interest, a sequel might have more stuff. I doubt it though.
lol… Ruri got captured again and in a similar pose as last time… and we still haven’t seen all 7 of Alma’s power just yet…
hopefully this show will wrap up nicely, and I am keeping my hope up that night will have a different form just like Alma.
Makoto’s dad was so much more bad-ass in this one episode than Makoto himself ever was.
Two more episodes to go, I think… Simple storyline for this episode. Nothing really unexpected. I’m guessing that the next episode is where everything goes wrong, and the final episode will be where they fight back. Hope we get more action scenes in the last two episodes.
What I found amusing about the whole flashback sequence (which really does make up the majority of this episode) is how several scenes they shown could NOT have been seen by Ruri, especially with her not being at the villa, which makes her telling Alam anything, well, at least shorter than it should have been.
And, uh, what’s the deal with Knight at this point? His talk with Alma just felt random as hell in the end.
Well, it was more of a flashback for viewers. They took some shortcuts, but given that there’s only two episodes left (I think), I don’t blame them. As for the Knight thing, they are just forcing the plot to move forward I guess. It’s almost the end, my only complain about this episode is that we don’t get Alma in action. Though that can’t be helped for a flashback episode.
Kenmi captured Fey for experimentation because she (or he, welp) is a Light Stone; Aoi and Ruri are, as well, which is why the Aiba Corp is researching this. However, Ruri’s parents did not like Kenmi experimenting on another light Stone such as Fey, so they decided to cut off the funding.
However, judging from previous episodes, Kenmi must have secured more funding elsewhere: this is because when Makoto tried to investigate Kenmi, his informant said Kenmi was too powerful. So who secured Kenmi’s funding? Was it the Aiba Corp led by Ruri? I somewhat doubt that.
I’d also add that this episode is so out of place from the other one that I can’t help but to think whoever wrote the script was either too drunk or too lazy to develop the story properly.
Finally, an episode that tells WTH is really going on, now all Kenmi has to do is die in a blaze of glory. Bloody Alma is still hiding half of his power wheel…
I think Vegeta from DBZ abridged put it best:
“How’d you know about the parts you weren’t there for?”
I mean, I know they had to do that for the backstory, but it’s still a huge pet peeve of mine.
It’s such a sad trade-off between time and exposition quality of story. This series could have been so good, maybe just a notch and a half lower than Code Geass. But because they’re rushing, it just makes me *cringe*. They could flesh out a lot of viable plot material (though maybe already overused) if they extend or maybe even remake this show.
There is no way this show can match Code Geass since episode 1. Code Geass had an epic opening and a huge universe. This show is narrow.
(that’s me above, just typed my email wrong)
I agree with you. But I think that if they make a remake of this series, it could go in the same direction as Code Geass. I guess it has Sunrise epicness written all over it and with the right ingredients. IMO, this has/could have had a huge universe if they flesh it all out. The meteorite event alone widens the horizon. Who else in the world could be some meteorite freak?
They just rushed this, causing it to fail on many levels.
I get the impression that they were just trying this out without intending to make it big. Probably had other anime they were doing at the same time and was not willing to put as much resources to this one. Hopefully, they might do a proper remake. Will be interesting to watch if they do.
There nothing in the anime that interest me at all. The only reason I watch it because I already give so many chances to it until episode 10. *sigh* At least there is only 2 more episode to go.
lol, well that happens sometimes. At least it didn’t make you drop it right on the first episode, that counts for something right? :p. For me this was mostly just nostalgia from more than a decade ago when I used to watch shows like Ultraman, Kamen Rider … etc. Other than that, the characters are not as annoying as many characters from a number of other anime this season. Two more to go, and we can prepare for a new season.