It’s Phantom episode 19, and it’s Endless Ein!  OK, not really. This episode is mostly a recap, though we do learn that Scythe Master’s scheming is even deeper than previously revealed.

This episode starts with a flashback with Cal taking Judy home after a night of drinking on the night that Judy gets killed. The scene makes clear that Cal has no clue who shot her, but the situation suggests that she was caught in the crossfire when the Godoh men were firing back at Ein/Ellen.

Most of the rest of the episode is spent recapping Cal’s time with Reiji, though we do get a few new scenes thrown in, such as of Cal cleaning. We also get a scene with Scythe Master planning his scheme to get back at Claudia, including having some plan for using Cal.

We then get to see what happened at Reiji’s apartment from Cal’s point of view. Cal is successfully able to fix the VCR and decides to run out to the video store, where the camera focuses on a poster of the movie Backdraft just as we see an explosion reflected in the store’s windows. Cal runs back to the apartment after Reiji’s already been there and left, and is afraid that he’s been killed in the explosion.

When it comes apparent that he wasn’t there, Cal waits in the destroyed apartment, waiting for Reiji to return when Scythe Master shows up. He tells Cal that Reiji has been lying to her the whole time.

We then see a shot of Ellen and Reiji crossing the border into Mexico with one city behind them, and another in front of them.

Well, this was mostly a recap episode, so probably 90% of the material is literally stuff we had seen before. However, there were a few new nuggets of information.

First, it seems pretty clear, as I noted above, that Ellen didn’t kill Judy, but it Godoh group who killed her when a stray bullet hit her when they were firing back at Ellen. In that sense, her killers were already taken care of by Ein.

Second, we get confirmation, as expected, that Cal was out of the apartment when the explosion occurred, though it was really only by chance (perhaps), or maybe Scythe Master intentionally blew it up while she was away? In any case, Cal wasn’t killed. Reiji also never really had a good chance to meet up with Cal again either, since he would have had to have gotten away by the time Cal got back to the apartment, and by the time Cal was in the apartment waiting for him, he was already escaping with Ellen, which would have made it difficult to go back to the apartment.

The biggest news, perhaps, though was that Scythe Master has had his eyes on Cal since before he executed his most recent plan, and he clearly intends on trying to manipulate her to turn her into another one of his puppets. Scythe Master told Cal that Reiji had been lying to her, though we don’t see what he means, though I suspect he’s going to tell her that Reiji was the one responsible for killing Judy, among other things.

Next episode might be a good chance for another time jump, which we’re eventually going to need for Cal to become older. There is also, supposedly, a second OP coming…sometime. Starting a new OP with only 7 episodes left seems kind of like a waste, but there is a CD that says “new Phantom OP’ or whatever, and the current OP is kind of…stale (as far as what it teases), so the next episode might be a good chance for us to finally get a new opening (and maybe ending too).