Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

The kid gloves are off and Nagi stops back at the library to let Alyssa and Miyu know that just before he teleports out again. The HiME team decides to create a diversion in order to allow the students escape; they then jet out on individual elevators (worst part of this episode, hands down). The operation goes as planned, but it turns out that Artemis does not travel at a constant velocity (oh gawd, gotta stop getting information from NASA) and so everyone at the academy is doomed. Except that they’re not really in any danger, as Mai and Kagutsuchi intercept the Golden Lightning beam and take no damage. By this point, Kagutsuchi is so mad at his lack of screentime, that he flies straight up, dodging missiles like a Gundam unit, and skewers Artemis. This de-HiME’s Alyssa and completely foils SEARRS’ plan, forcing them to wait another 300 years. They try to pass it off as no big deal, even though you know they’re pissed that they were just a sub-Boss. Just to be petty, they have Joseph Glear kill the weakened Alyssa, so Miyu takes revenge on him Shinsengumi-style. In a dramatic ending, we see nothing but wreckage and a shoe in space, but the preview completely ruins this feeling of sadness by having Mai interrupt Natsuki’s speech about taking over as the main character. I swear, the Mai Hime previews are worse than the Naruto manga-readers that post spoilers on David’s comments. As usual, if you don’t see the body, you know the HiME’s not dead. On the other hand, it looks like you can stick a fork in Alyssa, in what was actually a rather touching flashback and ending.

This episode’s wall of shame list is rather long. There’s Sister Yukariko doing absolutely nothing (well, somebody’s got to stay behind and pray), while everyone risks their lives. Then there’s Nagi threatening the SEARRS team then scampering away (although you do get the sense that he is rather powerful). But worst performance this time was turned in by pathetic Tate, who makes like a hurdler all the way to the battlefield and ends up being completely superfluous, while leaving Shiho open to ORPHAN attack. Way to go “cool” dude! Of course, the fact that Shiho survived lends fuel to the fire in speculation that she is also a HiME. Meanwhile, Akira’s non-involvement seems actually prudent as it turns out that SEARRS is not as big a player as originally implied. Just who is the secret ninja working for?

Poor Alyssa and Miyu really got the shaft in this episode, Akane-style. I was surprised that the old scientist, and not Miyu, was Alyssa’s most valued person, but I guess somebody had to program Miyu with that sweet neko-mimi mode chibi-snowman algorithm. Interestingly enough, after the whole de-HiME’ing of Alyssa, SEARRS’ sales dropped 3% and its stock closed 1% lower. One of the funniest parts of the episode (imho) was when Natsuki busted down the guards with her version of Chun Li’s Spinning Bird Kick!!! This scene, of course, only barely edged out Miyu skewering Joseph Glear with her Norse version of the Gatotsu (she even does it left handed)! Trailing in third was Alyssa’s Charlie Brown scream, but I couldn’t find any images of that. Google’s image search came in real handy this time ^^.

Yeah, so I kinda cheated on my self-imposed three caps and a chaser rule. Taking this many screenshots is rather tiring… I don’t know how Moyism does it…