Bee Train continues to move its pieces into place for some kind of complex mysterious story. First we have Madlax hired by a politician to assassinate him (like assisted suicide). Gwen McNichol is Gazth-Sonika’s army commander, but is tired of being a puppet for hidden mysterious forces. Madlax sneaks in by disguising herself as Maidlax (ahahahaha), then switches to an evening gown to have a talk with Gwen. The mission is carried out as planned, and Madlax shows Rimerda who the real numbah wan snypa is.
Naturally, episode 4 switches gears back to Margaret’s side of the story. A classmate has killed her own father before committing suicide and police can’t figure out why. Margaret has another pseudo-shared vision about yellow flowers with Madlax, and detective McRae Marini gets his existence erased for probing too deep into the investigation. It seems that some uber-spy organization known as Enfan (previously known as Soldats before the merger) has been pulling some strings, and that wacky masked guy reveals something about Elda Taluta being the gate to the bare truth. Then some confusing stuff happens and I think McRae shoots a random guy in an alley, loses his memory, and agrees to live on as Enfan. WTF?!
Watching a Bee Train series is a bit like playing against a computer in chess. A computer with its difficulty rating set to “PWN slowly and mysteriously”. You can tell something big is happening, and yet there are all these pieces flying about and before you know it, you’ve lost everything but a pawn or two and no matter what, you will lose in exactly 26 moves. Similarly, I know there must be some connection between all the information thrown out in these two episodes, but I can’t figure out what it is yet. This is why I have such a love-hate relationship with them; I want to hate Madlax so badly, but yet I keep watching it hoping that all will be revealed. You know how when you are tasting complex foods one after another, there is usually a palate cleanser (like sorbet)? I feel like I should watch an episode of Bakuretsu Tenshi or something in between every episode or two of Madlax.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1970 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
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Hey, isn’t Gwen the blonde guy from Mask? Where’s the Thunderbird? Fliday – especially due to his mask – could be a member of Venom. So maybe Madlax is a prequel to “Mask”?