Summary:

Knowing that he’s running out of time, Stein wants to defeat Medusa quickly, but she’s hard to catch off guard. Medusa is simply fighting to buy time, and in order to beat her, Stein has to refocus himself. She tries to tempt him again to join her, but Stein lets himself go wild and explains the madness and fear inside of himself – what he needs is the order granted by an ego-less god. Medusa eventually stabs Stein in the gut, and from that, he counterattacks with his signature Kon-i attack. Though greatly injured, Medusa thinks she has won because she’s in position to cut off Stein’s head with her Tail Snake. She is thus surprised when she suddenly freezes in place, unable to move at all. The reason is because Stein had used one of his suture techniques on her entire body. Unfortunately, Stein can’t do anything else until he releases those strings, and Medusa knows that once that happens, her Tail Snake would behead Stein faster than he can kill her.

Meanwhile, Eruka prepares the black blood for the Kishin, and when she gets interrupted by Kid, Free protects her. Both Kid and Free come under the effect of the madness of Ashura, but both are able to get out of it, and Kid ends up keeping Free occupied while Black*Star arrives and goes after Eruka. After a brief struggle, Eruka manages to stick the syringe needle into Ashura’s bag, however Black*Star uses everything he’s got to break the syringe, spilling the black blood everywhere. Back in the tunnel, Stein knows that his chances of success are very low, and right as he decides to take a gamble, the entire place starts shaking. He and Maka’s father both can sense that the Kishin has been revived, and as it turns out, Black*Star hadn’t succeeded in breaking the syringe – he had merely hallucinated that he did. The success of Ashura’s revival causes Medusa to laugh and declare this as her victory, but Stein uses this very moment to release everything and strike. He succeeds in slicing her in half, and as the lower half of her body explodes into a rain of blood, Stein comments on how he got his chance when she felt a sense of achievement from the Kishin’s revival. He grimly notes the irony in how he won because of the Kishin, yet in the end, the Kishin’s revival is his defeat. Having said that though, he’s then laughs over how refreshing this is. Over at the shrine, nothing Kid does can stop the revival. Ashura soon begins to emerge and wears the bag as his skin, smiling in the process.

Preview

For an episode that I thought was a bit slow in the middle (particularly during some of the Stein vs. Medusa parts), I liked how the two battles ended up being tied together, with the result of one affecting that of the other. The BONES staff also did a pretty good job handling the scene where Stein slices Medusa apart. It managed to be quite bloody, yet the arrow/snake shape of the blood took off some of the edge to it, and I suspect that’s a much better option than just animating less blood or even censoring. In any case, now that Ashura is revived, I’m looking forward to some more heated battles, and from the preview, it appears that I’ll get my wish of seeing Shinigami-sama in action.

Oh and on a semi-random side-note, I didn’t realize how cute Eruka could be sometimes – she’s a fun character to watch, especially her facial expressions.

32 Comments

  1. Well with Medusa biting it I guess this will let Eruka survive. Though being in the room with the revived Kishin may end up getting her killed anyways so not much of a trade off :).

    Was just an insane episode. The fight with Stein and Medusa was a mess and they did a good job with it. Plus the struggle to try and stop the Kishin from being revived was pretty intense.

    FlareKnight
  2. Oho! Medusa’s decapitation was very… err… artistic to say the least, but the wriggling snake/vector/blood thingy made me think of health class all of a sudden, :).
    Looks like the cat’s out of the bag. Ashura is one creepy Playdoh, and i can’t wait for next Ep’s fight scenes.

    Shinn Agami
  3. wasn’t medusa’s body cut into two by stein because she let go of her guard when ashura awakened?

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Ungas
  4. >>“It managed to be bloody, yet the arrow/snake shape of the blood took off some of the edge to it, and I suspect that’s a much better option than just animating less blood or even censoring.”

    Actually, I think they did animate less blood. It was pretty nasty in the manga, although the arrow/vector blood was the same. And I guess they did “censor”
    it in one respect, in that there is a nice two-page spread right as Stein slices through her that shows that the cut slices through not only her, but also the vector threatening to behead him. In the anime the cut is always just out of frame, except for the “lower body fountain” part.

    Nice to see animated blood that’s actually blood colored, though. Guess black blood was never really an option, though, huh… ^_^

    quigonkenny
  5. damn Skippy the frog girls cute GECKO!! but she still needs to get hers for betraying the mouse clan’s kin. otherwise cant wait to see “what was a satisfying fatality” animated. evil rarely wins BIATCH!!!

    BROOKLYN otaku
  6. Stein remains my forever favorite character in this series… I really love the deadly intimated relationship between him and Medusa.

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Kaitune
  7. I don’t get why Kid doesn’t just dominate the people he fights. I understand that it is a plot contrivance that he remains fairly weak, but he is a shinigami. He’s used his executioner mode once, to fight Chrona to a stand-still. Just because he doesn’t have black blood or assassin’s techniques doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a ton more soul wavelength than the others and two nearly-perfectly synchronized weapons.

    Eirias
  8. you fools!! have you only realized how cute Eruka is O_O!!! anyways…. hmm i hope they follow manga exactly… especially when they

    Show Spoiler ▼

    . and the amazingly cheesy but dramatic scene happens in which you’ll feel like pulling your hair out and go gyah at the same time… Show Spoiler ▼

    Putang
  9. I wanted to hit someone when I saw Medusa die. She was my favorite character. 🙁
    Though her voice said after the show ended that she has to withdraw from the anime right now and she wanted to talk with ashura & fight some more with Stein.

    Shin
  10. NO! if they do another plot…. stuff will be ruined! they can’t, if anything they should follow all the way through, and if it doesnt end properly they should do a movie or ova to wrap things up! the mangas not far from finishing anyway.
    On a side note, medusas death in the manga was alot bloodier, and creepier imo, but bones did a great job anyway. i hope they do the thing with medusa that happened in the manga, Show Spoiler ▼

    Grinn
  11. Is the manga close to ending? Show Spoiler ▼

    I really don’t want Bones to do their own thing with it. The pace is nice right now and even if it meant taking a season off I’d rather it stick with the manga the go off or onto fillers.

    Ally

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