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Rating: 8/10

Impressions:

The most disappointing part of this episode is the preview, which reveals that Evening Primrose will yet to come into the spotlight and begin the finale of the show. Well, there’ll still be five episodes remaining for that arc after this next one, which seems to be about Huang. If they’re going to do a character-focused arc at all, they should do it on Mao, since aside from knowing he’s lost his original body, not much else has been revealed. I personally like Mao a lot more than Huang. Even so though, I hope they don’t delay the finale even more with another arc after Huang’s, leaving a lame three episodes to cover everything, which will hardly be satisfying at all.

My favourite part of this episode is the interaction between Hei and Misaki, as it shows the light and cuter side of both, though once again you can never tell how much of Hei’s demeanour is genuine. I was hoping Misaki would realise Hei’s identity, as a relationship between the two will probably never happen. In fact, judging by the nature of this show, it is unlikely there will be any definite ending, nor will Hei end up settled with anyone at all. If there’s going to be an adequate ending at all, there needs to be something big, such as Hei breaking free from his contract, or something similar.

Anyway, while this episode was pretty cheery and all with the pretty-much happy ending, I fail to see its significance, as well as the reasoning behind placing such an arc this late in the show. It doesn’t develop any characters (much), nor does it reveal the much needed information about Dolls and everything else that remains a mystery. If anything, it does show that Yin having some emotion is not all that special. Hitotsubashi at least gets a bit of a background, which gives some depth to this arc, though what does he have to do with anything anyway? Does he even have any relationship with any of the main, significant characters?

The same goes with Kenji, as I find now to be an inappropriate time to incorporate characters for the sake of telling a story, and not taking it further. Of course, there’s a chance that he’ll become useful in the future, though I’d say such an occurrence will seem to be a forced and unnatural one. In fact, this whole arc is somewhat hectic and messy with the background information and such, as well as the actual story, since I find it highly unbelievable that a relatively normal person like Kenji would fall for a girl who he’s never heard speak. The Doll had shown no personality either, so if Kenji had any reason to fall for her, it would be looks, which would not be a good reason at all.

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