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Rating: 8.3/10

Impressions:

I guess dedicated manga lovers would be howling at this filler, but I personally enjoyed it quite a bit. I must admit the quality is rather low, and the episode is not nearly dynamic enough. The events just seem too normal and shot types and angle remain constant too much. How about a close up of a character, then a behind shot to see his silhouette and hair blowing in the wind or something? I don’t like seeing the same, medium shot of the characters the whole time. The fight is decent, but like I’ve said, I don’t watch/read D.Gray-man for the action, as to be honest, the action sucks. The Akuma are just too ridiculous and Exorcists’ weapons aren’t too special. Speaking of the fight, Allen and Lavi losing to Kanda in terms of who defeats the Akuma first make them seem far weaker than they should be. Allen’s weapon is in its second stage of awakening, and he should be able to take on level 2 Akuma, making him stronger than Kanda and Lavi. I’m not exactly sure what level the Akuma in this episode are though. They seem to be level 2’s, but I know that Kanda definitely cannot handle level 2 Akuma at the moment. A lot later on though, Kanda becomes unusually strong and has his epic battle with one of the Noahs…

I was quite certain that this mini filler arc would be a tribute to Kanda, since he gets like no screen time from the first arc to a long time later. However, he STILL gets like no screen time this episode. It would have been much better if Lavi ended up going off by himself; Kanda needs some more development. Next episode seems more fight than story, so I guess it will do Kanda justice by showing his skill off. It also seems to be the conclusion of this two-ep mini arc, though I’m not sure. I’m not quite familiar with the next few episode titles, so I don’t know whether there will be more fillers or not. I just hope that they don’t go overboard with the fillers (and especially the quality needs to stay at an acceptable level). And other random little things I should say; Road is delicious (she’s just too cute, shame she doesn’t stay in her human form too long); Elda is cute, yeah well like all the girls are cute, but hey; also the new ED is freaking awesome. It’s a lot better than the OP and first ED, as well as the ED June did for Bleach. I still have the TV version on loop right now. I watched the ED like 6 times before deciding to rip the song.

New ED:

[Pride of Tomorrow] by JUNE
Download TV size mp3 – 2.05mb: Mirror 1 | Mirror 2

Wow this song rocks! This is a must get for me when the single comes out.

Preview:

Next episode – #15
End of this mini-arc?

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