Irene finally finishes teaching Clare the fundamentals of recognizing the limits of the Flash Sword, but unfortunately Clare’s Flash Sword can only last one minute, and is only 10% as fast and powerful as Irene’s. Rather than bust out some time-slowing chamber, Irene just cuts off her right arm and gives it to Clare. Life isn’t worth living if you can’t make your armpit fart, and so the powerful Raphaela shows up afterwards to execute Irene.
Clare finds Ophelia, but still hasn’t gotten used to Irene’s arm. At first Ophelia is unaware that she has Awakened, but when she finds out she wails in agony. Ophelia plays yet another game, putting all her human bits (yes, included the b00bs) on one end of the tail, and telling Clare to chop through the entire Yoma portion without Awakening. Recognizing Clare’s shounen stupidity, Ophelia cheers Clare on, and Clare kills Ophelia. With the bits of 2 other Claymores in her body, Clare has officially achieved gattai status.
This was an amazing episode with some very misleading foreshadowing. I especially enjoyed how Ophelia mentions the one-horned AO who killed her brother, and makes it sound like it was Priscilla. Both Ophelia and Irene seemed tired of living this episode, although Raphaela is not explicitly shown killing Irene. Also, there were some subtle, but important hints about Raphaela’s backstory given this episode.
There were a lot of amusing moments in this episode. For instance, we find that Ophelia doesn’t really prefer white meat over wings and thighs. They were also kind enough to show a be-legged naked Ophelia (in her mind) right at the end. Finally, I liked when Irene told Clare that all that work learning the Flash Sword was kinda pointless, because Clare is too dumb and shounen to use the Flash Sword properly anyway. I laughed when Clare said she would return the arm one day.
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This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1940 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.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
What a rip-off!
Well, only one arm was ripped off…
great episodes and I don’t think Irene is dead
So far it’s been inconclusive, but almost every character that really dies is shown being killed, so the implied death is not as convincing.
Isn’t Irene a one-woman Guerilla army? You could say, the mother of all distributed resistance?
Besides, now I really wonder who she got those ears from.
Who will carry on the elf-eared legacy?
Dunno. Certainly not Patchwork Clare.
The manga isn’t very clear, either, on Irene’s fate. But I do tend to think Irene is dead; she certainly seemed resigned to it, her purpose in helping Claire done.
Raphaela, we’ll see, isn’t the sort that can be escaped.
At least Irene fans will have Jean, beginning next episode. Equally heroic, and with an even more amusing special attack.
Yeah. I doubt Raphaela spared Irene. Even if she managed to live by some miracle, she’d still have no arms. D:
She has an arm, it’s just out on loan =/. Maybe if Irene watched enough One Piece she could emulate Sanji’s fighting style. That or perhaps she could emulate Guile’s aptly named Flash Kick.
Mega(wo)man Clare has these upgrades so far:
T-Helmet: +9 to Yoki perception
I-Saber: rapidly tap the special move button to perform flash sword
O-Soul: +5 to will saves. Chance of surviving fatal blows with 1 HP remaining
@Kabitzin: LOL, flash kick. I don’t think that’d help much against Raphaela’s mad skillz though. DX
Jean’s no Irene, sorry. ^^; The ears, the hair…that rawr outfit. Jean doesn’t come close to that.
Come to think of it, this would make a rather hawt action game Devil May Cry style. And you can go either way – can go for the half-awakened or just fully awakened and change the entire state of the game.
Instead of health packs, you would just find limbs scattered around the levels, and if you hadn’t lost the correct limb, you couldn’t reattach them. Also, different limbs would give you different power-ups, just like in those scrolling plane-shooter games.
I would play it =).
I suspect the final episode will evolve some thriller-esque dance scenes and Clare doing the Moonwalk. Hell, isn’t Lucky underage anyway?
Irene is definitly dead =P
She even said that even with both arms she only maybe would stand a chance against Raphaela (as she is much higher than just rank 5 as Irene said) and what possibly could she do vs Raphaela with no arms? -_- I really dont think Raphaela would spare her…
Nope, definitly dead =P
Just read the manga the anime is too slow XD
I’m watching these on DVD (yes, well behind the power curve) and when I finished this episode I found myself wondering why Clare didn’t just trade arms with Irene. I mean, Irene went to all the trouble of giving her the powered-up arm and all Clare really does is go “ggkthxbye.” Maybe she was still pissed at Irene for trying to kill Theresa, but she should have at least offered to swap. After I got past my indignation at Clare’s share fail, it reminded me of that joke about the girl with no arms and legs on the beach… “Well, you know, I’ve never been hugged before….”
Clare uses the spare arm as a back-scratcher.