Angel Heart – 14

Summary:
With the message board back up, Ryo gets his first client in the form of a girl named Nagisa who is being chased by yakuza. But it turns out that she incited them by drugging one of them and stealing his money. Ryo decides to assign Shanin to take Nagisa back to their apartment. Being the type of girl she is, Nagisa doesn’t really want to go in the straightforward manner Shanin does. Instead, she tries to have fun by stealing jewelry and picking up guys, but Shanin stops her at every turn by using her knife and scaring away the guy with a kick.
Fed up, Nagisa says that Shanin is weird and goes too far. But Shanin replies that her mission is to only take Nagisa to the apartment and that if Nagisa were attacked, Shanin wouldn’t save her because that’s not part of her mission. When Nagisa tries to run away, Shanin chases her, and the two end up in an alley. Unfortunately, the yakuza after Nagisa had spotted her from the earlier commotion, and now surround her in the alley. Shanin watches on as they slap Nagisa around and start to drag her off, but Shanin’s own conscience eventually kicks in, so she saves the girl. The next day, as Shanin is trying to grapple with why she did it, Nagisa arrives in her school uniform. Nagisa apologizes to Shanin and then gives her a love letter. It seems that Shanin has made a friend, and that makes her quite happy.

I get the vague feeling that this set of episodes will go something like “City Hunter picks up a case and then gives Shanin a task. In doing it, she learns something about being human and leading a normal life.” That’s certainly how this episode went, though I’m not really saying that it’s a bad thing (so far anyway). Shanin’s learning about herself, and Ryo gets to play the part of the wise father. What is a bit iffy is the animation quality, which fluctuates quite a bit this episode. But I imagine they’re not going to be putting in the big budget (good animation, insert songs) until we hit another major arc. As for next week, it looks like we’re going to see an episode about a little girl searching for her father.