Ikoku Meiro no Croisée + Sacred Seven – Episode 02

Every once in awhile I figure they’ll be a disjoint in these blogs. Today was supposed to include Kamisama no Memochou is were following what we did last week but when I went to grab the episode it was not out yet, so we get Ikoku Meiro no Croisee instead. No complaining

Ikoku Meiro no Croisee – Week Two

Ahhhhhh I am enjoying this series. It’s like eating freshly baked bread with a slight layer of butter. Not too crunchy, not too soft, just nice and delicious warmth. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

This episode continues on Yune’s plight to be helpful in whatever way she can. We still are not aware of the reasoning behind her coming to Paris, all that we do know is that she wants to fit in and be useful. So she does what she can, and as considerately as possible. That’s also a trait about Yune that I find enjoyable to watch is just how awfully considerate she it towards life, a trait you rarely see in anyone nowadays. She handed over a family heirloom as an apology in the previous episode, and now we see her attempt to enjoy cheese and coffee, while keeping an eye on everything that Claude and Oscar do so that she, most likely, will be able to copy eventually.

The episode also brings to light a plot point that will most likely come about as something really big later on and that is the introduction of Wal-Mart. Although it’s not called that, it’s just referred to as the “Department Store” where they have everything in stock and everything is cheap, both in price and in quality, though they would never advertise the latter half of that statement.

The reason I believe this to be an obvious antagonist later on in the show is that the existence of something like a department store largely hinders the profit and sales from smaller more specialized stores, such as the very metal-works shop that our characters live and work in. I cannot fathom a guess at how any conflict with said department store would be resolved as, if you try to be historically accurate, the store wins and the smaller shops close down, which is an ending that is by and large extremely depressing.

What I think is far more interesting though however, is the second appearance of the little Paris street urchin. He hasn’t had much screen time, only around less than half a minute in the past two episodes, but each time he appears, the camera stops and makes notice of him. As possible romantic interest for Yune? Maybe, though I think they are more likely to focus on the fact that he is a street urchin, and thus is poor and can barely feed himself. Then the logical course of direction for the show is to have the characters invite him to live in the shop. But then you have to question how much money they would have to support four people, especially with the aforementioned department store closing in on their hard earned profits.

The last thing I want to know is, when are the characters Alice and Camille going to be properly introduced? I only know of their existence because of their listing on ANN, plus they are in the picture that ANN has displayed for the show. Hopefully they will become interesting characters (Note: If you DO know who and what these characters are, and you do because you read the manga or novel or what have you, please do not spoil it in the comments.) because otherwise they would only be bringing down a show that is so far, very very good.

Sacred Seven – Week Two

Maybe it’s just me, but I doubt that the sudden change of pace I have while watching these episodes in order to blog about them is something in Sacred Seven’s favour. I go from nice and warm freshly made bread to a full-blown sugar rush, complete with both the wonderful sugar high but quickly followed by a crash.

So Sacred Seven continues on with the wonderful monster of the week tradition, this time with a giant stone monster that lives inside of a typhoon just off the coast of Japan! Great, now that we’ve mentioned that, we get to ignore it for a moment as I talk about the rest of the episode, as the show basically does the same thing.

The majority of today’s episode lies in backstory. Very thinly spread amounts of backstory, but backstory nonetheless. We find out that the giant ass crystal that Aiba used in the previous episode to make Tandoji transform was a one hit wonder, meaning that it no longer seems to exist and that they used it up. Which means that A) Tandoji now feels guilty for being the thing that Aiba spent her family heirloom on, regardless of the fact that he saved her life and the life of basically everyone in the city with it and B) that from the technical standpoint, they are going to need a crap ton more giant crystals to do this transformation thing every week.
So now that Tandoji is given a reason to fight (well ok, maybe the sight of Aiba’s crystallized sister helped too, but they haven’t explained the circumstances behind that yet, which is why it’s only getting mentioned in brackets), he gets thrown out of a plane and one-shots the giant demonic egg thing. Huzzah!

If anything, the best parts of these episodes so far have been the actual fights themselves. Unfortunately they spend so much time with everything that happens BEFORE the fights, that the battles themselves are only a little over a minute long. Sure they are extremely well executed and good-looking fights, but short fights nonetheless.
Unfortunately this marks it a step below a popcorn show, because the popcorn part of the show is so short, and I have yet to get interested in everything that comes before it. They keep HINTING that there is something there in the show’s meagre amounts of plot, but nothing truly exciting has surfaced just yet.

The opening is awesome though, thank you Yuki Kajira and FictionJunction!