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The highlights of this episode:

• After the basketball game, the Choir Club proposes that they share an advisor with the Theater Club. However, the Student Council shoots the idea down as clubs cannot share advisors. In addition, all the recent stress causes Nagisa to collapse, resulting in her missing school for a while.
• The next day, Sakagami comes to Okazaki’s house to wake him up, to his great surprise. However, Okazaki decides that if he gets the pleasure of being suddenly awakened by a girl, Sunohara could be granted the same pleasure.
• Kyou continues to try to set Ryou and Okazaki together, though Ryou hesitates over it, feeling that she would be taking advantage of Nagisa being out sick.
• Sakagami decides to walk home with Okazaki (and by extension Sunohara) after school, but Sunohara leads them into a bad part of town with a lot of gangs which apparently like to beat him up, using Sakagami as a potential bodyguard. However, sensing that Sakagami was uncomfortable there, Okazaki is able to find an excuse to get out of the area.
• Okazaki visits Yukine’s library to pass the time, where she has Okazaki perform a spell that involves balancing two coins on top of each other. The result of this spell being that he’ll get locked in a gym supply room with a girl.
• Afterwards, Kyou asks Okazaki to help her carry volley balls to the gym supply room, and get locked inside. Ryou accuses Okazaki of setting the situation up and thinks that he wants to sleep with her, but Okazaki tells her about the spell. Suddenly, Okazaki remembers a way to break the spell, which involves him stripping to his waste. Of course, Okazaki suddenly starting to strip makes Ryou think all the more than Okazaki wants to get it on, but Okazaki’s counter-spell works and someone opens the doors to the gym supply room.
• After school, Sakagami wants to walk home with Okazaki again, but all the gang members from before show up to gang up on her. Sakagami starts to fend them off, but teachers from the school show up and the thugs run away. The teachers accuse Okazaki of starting the fight, but just as Sakagami is about to say that it was her, Okazaki confirms their accusations to protect Sakagami, leading to him getting suspended.

It looks like we’re still plowing through both Kyou and Sakagami’s arc. I doubt that the gym supply room situation was the conclusion to the Kyou arc, so I expect to still see more of her. Meanwhile, it looks like we’re nearing the end of Sakagami’s arc, even though it still seems there isn’t a heck of a lot going on there.

Nagisa being gone means that her arc will probably be put on hold, at least for the time being, though I’m wondering what all will get accomplished with Okazaki probably being suspended now. Not that him not going to school has stalled the story before, though, I guess.

I’m not sure how the Sakagami arc will end, but I still think that the Kyou arc could get messy as I think it’s clear that Kyou has a thing for Okazaki, and whether that will end up becoming a conflict between her and Ryou or her and Nagisa. I guess I’ll find out.

Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review
The highlights of this episode:

• Sydonay suddenly attacks a warehouse, destroying it and killing the Flame Haze and humans inside and destroying one of the Flame Haze’s Outlaws.
• At school, Ogata and Ike remark how everyone else seems to be acting strangely recently. However, Ike notes that Ogata and Tanaka appear to be getting along well and Ike suggests and Ogata ask Tanaka out to her next volleyball game.
• Wilhelmina reports to Margery Daw that the information she’s gotten recently from Outlaw has largely been a mess and included many things that weren’t relevant. Satou asks Shana about Outlaw after being given an evil eye by Margery when brining up the topic.
• Shana and Yuji continue to train, but Yuji demands that Shana increase the level of his training even beyond what she would like to do, saying that he has to get stronger as fast as possible given the situation.
• Tanaka and Ogata both “forget” their boxed lunches the next day at school, where Ogata intends to ask Tanaka out to the volleyball game, but Tanaka goes out of it thinking of what happened to Ogata in the Fuzetsu during the first battle with Pheles. Ogata thinks he’s ignoring her and storms off.
• While sorting through the latest reports from Outlaw, Wilhelmina tells Yuji and Shana about how Sabrac, the denizen who placed a spell on the Midnight Lost Child , is a freelance assassin who almost killed her, if it wasn’t for Pheles saving her.
• Meanwhile, Satou asks Margery to allow him to work at Outlaw. However, Margery tells him about reports of recent attacks on Outlaws where everyone – including humans – were killed.
• After school the next day, Ike notices that Tanaka isn’t leaving to go to the volleyball game and tells him about it. Tanaka then goes to watch. Ogata notices him and is motivated enough that it helps lead to their team winning the match.
• That night in training, Yuji is able to feel Shana’s killing blow and is able to hit her sword away. Meanwhile, Satou meets up with Tanaka, who tells him that he won’t see Margery anymore and gives Satou the talisman Margery gave him because he wants to spend his future with Ogata.

It seems that Tanaka’s, and probably by extension, Ogata’s roll in the story are probably about wrapping up now that Tanaka has chosen to stop following Margery and to go back to being a normal student. We may see them again, but I’m guessing in a more limited role.

Satou, meanwhile, seems determined to work at an Outlaw, and I’m wondering whether he’ll actually get to or not, and whether he’ll end up running into Sydonay along the way. Speaking of Sydonay, this is the first time in a long time that we’ve seen him. If he keeps taking out Outlaws, you would think that a group of Flame Hazes would eventually feel like they need to take him out.

We also finally learn why Wilhelmina and Pheles seemed so close, as they were running away from Sabrac for several years together, with Pheles saving Wilhelmina’s life along the way.

Otherwise, it seems to be generally the same. Yuji’s training has progressed, but nothing really major seemed to happen in that regards.

The number of denizens that Yuji and the Flame Hazes are facing seems to be constantly increasing with Sabrac almost certainly showing his face eventually. Will that be when Yoshida uses her treasure from Pheles as well? It would seem to be a logical place for that to happen. If she does, what will happen to her?

In any case, we’ve now had several solid episodes in a row for this series as we seem to fully be back to what Shana is supposed to be.

Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review
The highlights of this episode:

• In a flashback, Patricia, Marco’s old flame, runs into the hospital and finds Marco there with an injured eye from a training accident. Marco ends up losing his job as a patrolman, but wants to get a job with someone big to see “how far he can go.”
• At the training ground, the girls are training, but Angelica and Triela are still having problems – Angelica because she’s still unstable and Triela because she’s still obsessing over losing to Pinocchio. Hilshire tries to cheer her up by giving her a new gun – and the same type gun he carries.
• In Rome, Leo, and old news reporter acquaintance of Patricia meets up with her telling her that he’s looking into the Social Welfare Agency and asks if she’ll join him. After hesitating, she eventually goes along since she’s curious as to what Marco is up to.
• The pair start investigating to see if a rumor about the Social Welfare Agency using child assassins is true or not. Eventually, the SWA gets wind of this and plants information with Leo that there is a SWA secret hideout just outside of Rome that he can investigate. However, the “hideout” ends up just being an abandoned shack with Marco there waiting.
• When Leo arrives, Marco tells him that he’s under arrest when Patricia shows up. Patricia asks what’s going on and Marco tells her that Leo is a terrorist, which causes Leo to pull out his gun and use Patricia as a hostage. Angelica then arrives with a super-bright light attached to her gun and takes out Leo. However, Patricia is crushed by the knowledge that Marco is part of a secret organization that uses children assassins.

This seemed to be a filler episode, of sorts, I think. It explores the relationship between Patricia and Marco, which we saw some in the first series, but is also the first time that an outsider has really learned about the Agency as well, so I’m not sure if anything will come of that in the future.

Otherwise, Angelica seems to be doing better in this episode and is acting normally, though it is noted that the “old” Angelica is pretty gone due to the conditioning she’s had to go through to keep her operational. Also, Triela is still having issues with having lost, but is determined not to lose again. I’m eagerly awaiting Triela vs. Pinocchio II.

ADV Senior Vice-President of Sales and Marketing Mike Bailiff has made comments about the situation, including explaining the lack of comments from ADV about the situation:

There are a lot of parties involved in any anime production, and that can complicate even the best of negotiations. Frankly we had to keep quiet in the interest of resolving this situation as quickly as possible.

Which is basically what I suspected the situation was, even if it was frustrating. While Bailiff didn’t really say what the ultimate problem was which caused ADV to pull it’s products, the fact that all of ADV’s products have gotten new release dates suggests that the situation is either resolved, or resolved enough that titles can continue their releases.

Up until now, 9 ADV Films titles have passed their original release dates: Gurren-Lagann Volume 1, Kanon Volume 2, Kurau: Phantom Memory Volume 6, Moonlight Mile Volume 1, Project Blue Earth SOS Volume 1, Pumpkin Scissors Volume 3, The Wallflower Volume 2, Tokyo Majin Volume 2, and Welcome to the NHK Volume 3.

All of those except Gurren-Lagann Volume 1, will be released February 26th (but, as Robert’s Anime Store Blog notes, due to shipping time from ADV to online retailers, the shipping date in reality will more likely be around March 4th). No release dates for Gurren-Lagann or Devil May Cry have been made, but it was made known that further announcements about those titles would be made later.

All other release dates appear to be the same as they were before (if not pushed up a little) and all titles that had been released previously and had stopped shipping will ship once again.

To see all of my posts on this situation, see posts with the tag ADV Films.

In that time I’ve added a podcast and added the episode reviews. I’ve made a total of 643 posts (including this one) and, if my 1 year post is correct, 483 of those have been in the past year (so I’m averaging over 1 a day over that time).

Time seems to fly by (especially when you’re busy!) so now it’s onto Year 3 of the blog. Hopefully the growth from Year 1 to Year 2 continues on and that the blog will be better for it. It’s pretty bad that I’ve been running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off so much recently that I nearly forgot about the blog’s birthday.