Various Thoughts

First impression; the main characters’ eyes in the OP are so round. I mean goddamn. Some of the characters, particularly Kirino, are also somewhat remenescent of Higurashi.

The first episode of this series begins with the introduction of the kendo instructor (Kojiro) and both his laid-back attitude toward the kendo-club and his apparent utter poverty. Poverty so utter, that he goes out to dinner with his old teacher and has an internal monologue describing how he’s attempting to manipulate him into paying for it by getting him drunk and making excessive compliments. The scene ends with his old teacher making him a bet, a bet that gets him shockingly motivated to creating the perfect kendo team and getting them to the nationals. The one current member of the club, Kirino, is overjoyed by this development as she’s apparently been trying to get him to take the club more seriously for some time. Then, as Kirino and Kojiro are heading out to look for new club members, she remarks that one way to find them would to be to throw rocks at prospective members, and if they were really good they’d managed to whip out a sword and knock all the rocks down… just as a tennis ball, a rugby ball, a baseball, and the vice principal all come flying at them at high speeds out of nowhere and they’re saved by Tamaki, who whips out a broom and knocks them all away (the vice principal back through the second-story window he fell through), which causes Kojiro to develop a fixation on getting her to join the club. She doesn’t really want to join because she already has more than enough kendo-practice at home, since her father runs a dojo. Two new students end up joining the club, Yuji and Danjuro, and Kojiro takes Yuji aside after learning he went to the same dojo run by Tamaki’s father asking him if he knows a way to get her to join the club. After explaining that Tamaki views kendo more as a chore than a hobby, he asks why Kojiro’s so obsessed with her joining and learns that the payout for the bet he made was a year’s supply of sushi. Tama end up deciding to join the club temporarily after seeing one of the normally perennially absent members (Toyama) tormenting Danjuro just because he was stronger.

Episode two begins with a look into Tama’s past, when she was first captivated by a Power Ranger-esque animated series called Blade Braver. This show shaped her world-view, likely with help from her father’s profession. The fight between Tama and Toyama proceeds as planned with them seeming evenly matched at the beginning, but not for long once Tama begins to warm up. After she defeats him and he and his friend wander off, she pans to leave, only to be stopped by Kirino’s plea that she’s the only one that can save them if they happen to return some time. Kirino’s a shifty one. With Tama now a member, as well as Danjuro’s girlfriend Miya, Kojiro is just one girl (including the so far absent Sayako) short of the five-member team he needs for the bet.

The third episode has them newly formed team browsing the kendo shop for new equipment and starts giving hints that Miya might be something more than she first appears. The episode progresses to giving some background on the relationship between Kojiro and his teacher. Back in the day Kojiro managed to defeat him in a high school kendo tournament, and the victory put a strain on their relationship that has lasted all this time. Sayako now finally gets introduced, and she’s incredibly random. Later on in the episode Miya reveals some of her true personality, a sadistic sociopath, as she buys a wooden sword from the kendo dojo and lies in wait for Toyama and his friend in an attempt to seriously injure them both. She’s stopped by the sudden appearance of Sayako who basically runs her over with her bike after its headlight goes out. Miya proceeds to give her an evil stare, tosses her bike in the river, and then wanders off in a very black mood while Sayako wonders what the hell is going on.

Nightwalker, by Jocelynn Drake, is a somewhat interesting addition to the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance genres. It’s the first in a series whose main character is a six-hundred year old vampire (Mira) who, unlike all other vampires, has both control over and immunity to fire. The story begins with an encounter;  a hunter of mysterious origins (Danaus) has tracked her down in the hopes of getting information on a presumably dead race of beings called the Naturi (AKA: Fae). Mira seems to have had an extremely unpleasant experience at their hands in the distant past and continues to bear a strong grudge against them, which causes her to sort-of team up with Danaus when he informs her of their immanent return. The rest of the book consists of their journey to gather the other vampires who had originally sealed the Naturi away in the past in an attempt to stop them again, and ends with Mira making a slightly shocking, and a bit questionable, discovery about her origin.

Night Child, by Jes Battis, on the other hand, while also the start of a new series (OSI) isn’t particularly as interesting. It’s unique enough I suppose, but the twists weren’t particularly twisty and the majority of the characters felt like many I’ve already seen before. I attribute this feeling to the fact that the author is, shockingly enough (to me), male. I try to avoid male authors in this genre because they have an annoying tendency to slip into particular one-dimensional stereotypes with their female characters. While Battis sort-of managed to avoid doing it to the female characters, he did it to the male characters instead. Another thing that I found slightly odd were the particular traits that his main character (Tess Corday) had her attention drawn to. I’ve read quite a few paranormal romance books written by women and I do not ever recall a focus on lips and leg hair, so I ended up spending more time wondering if this was a fundamental difference between straight women and gay men, as well as what other such not-so-obvious differences might be lurking around to discover, rather than the plot or characters of the book itself.

The second season of Ikkitousen, and I liked it somewhat better than the first. Now, while it’s true that I don’t remember much of the first by this point in time, I do remember not liking Hakufu all that much. And since she was the main focus of the first season…. In any case, this series plays out roughly the same as the first one; brutal and bloody battles between scantily clad girls overlayed on a re-telling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms storyline with numerous upskirt shots thrown in for good measure. As shocking (or unbelievable) as this may sound, I actually watch this series for the storyline and violence and could really do without all the excessive ecchi. Not the battle-ecchi mind you, as that’s actually somewhat realistic (as much as such a term can be applied to a series like this one), but the aforementioned prevalent non-battle upskirt shots.

This installment has the storyline more or less evenly spread out among the principal characters with a slight focus on Kan’u and Ryomou. With the old despot defeated, a new one rises to take his place; Sousou Moutoku, the reincarnation of the demon emperor. The Seito and Nanyou school end up joining together in an attempt to recreate the Battle of Chibi with the help of the Crouching Dragon’s machinations and the Dragon Jade artifact that Ryomou recovered in the first episode. The storyline plays out well for the most part, with the main hiccup being Nanyou’s complete disinterest in finding out what happened to Kannei after they find out who posed as him to start the war between the Kyoshou and Nanyou schools.

Now these…. These are some very good books. Blood Angel and Lord of Bones, both by Justine Musk, tell the story of an impending demonic invasion from the point of view of several key characters; a washed up rock-star (Lucas Maddox), a mysterious hitch-hiker (Asha), a young painter (Jessamy Shepard), the boy she has dreams of (Ramsey), and the former prince of an ancient race of Summoners (Kai Youngblood).

Blood Angel begins and ends with Lucas Maddox, even though he’s technically not one of the main characters. It opens with him meeting Asha and forming a new band with her as the lead vocalist, then cuts to Jess as she prepares for her first art exhibition based around apocalyptic paintings of Ramsey (though she does not know who is is yet). Before long, Kai approaches her and reveals himself to be a Summoner, a race of long-lived magicians who once fought and bound the demons numerous centuries ago. He tells her that she will be the key to stopping Asha, who’s real name is Bakal Ashika, from opening the gateway to the demon realm. A race ensues to see who will reach Ramsey first, and he’s the vessel that holds the soul of the Warrior Angel that Jess’ ancestor summoned long ago to defeat Asha the first time. Kai needs him to stop her again, while Asha needs him to be the sacrifice that will allows the demons to inhabit human bodies, the Blood Angel.

The sequel, Lord of Bones, picks up a few months or so after the events in the desert. Jess and Ramsey work to hunt down the various demon-human hybrids that were created, while Kai is off on various mysterious errands and Lucas wanders from town to town in an attempt to find himself again. Things don’t stay so simple for long though, as Asha’s patron, the Lord of Bones, is making his way back toward this world intent on turning it into another hell-dimension. This time Lucas finds himself an unwilling captive of the demons, while Kai and Jess prepare for her summoner trials and Ramsey is sent off to train a group of resistance fighters lead by a hybrid (Zazou) who has no interest on seeing the Lord of Bones destroy this world just after she finally got there. The connection between Lucas and the demons, Lucas and Jess, and the Lord of Bones and Jess are all explained, and Kai is forced to take a rather drastic course of action in order to find them before time runs out.

The tenth episode have Jil’s party on the second to last floor of the tower, which happens to be filled with a raging blizzard. Ki makes a quick appearance to warn Jil to ‘be careful’ thus saving him from falling victim to a sinkhole that was a few steps ahead. The Uruk army, albeit in greatly reduced size, and Neeba’s group have also made it to this level. Fatina has an attack of nerves brought on by Kally’s death and threatens to leave the group and head back to town forcing Neeba to play the ‘but I need you and love you’ card to win back her undying devotion. The blue-haired girl appears once again to taunt Neeba a bit about his total lack of morals and continuous deceptions as well as warn him that the Summer of Anu is nearly over. Pazuz makes his appearance partway through and sets his sights on destroying Neeba’s group. The scene cuts back over to Jil’s team, where Melt is informing Jil that the Crystal Rod can allegedly once grant one wish, and so a patchwork group with different goals like theirs will have some serious difficulty once they reach the top. This is followed by a surprisingly well-done battle between Neeba and Pazuz. The episode finishes with Neeba hammering the point about everyone’s different goals into Jil head in a somewhat cruel manner in another attempt to convince him to leave the tower, and the end of the Summer of Anu.

With the final climbers having reached the top of the tower, Druaga makes his long awaited appearance. Utu and Fatina seem to finally begin to realize that Neeba is not climbing this tower for treasure, like they and Kally were, but he manages to deflect enough suspicion to get them to continue following him. Though the blue-haired girl’s running commentary is starting to wear on his composure. Neeba’s group is the first to assault Druaga; Fatina and Utu attempt to distract his attention while Neeba himself snipes its head from behind with three Arrows of the Void. The first shot takes down Druaga’s forcefield and the second shot is thrown off-course by Pazuz, only taking out one of the creature’s ’wings’. Jil heads off to back up Fatina and Utu with the others of the group following along because they don’t seem to have any better ideas. Neeba’s arrows did bring down the barrier though, and their attacks finally cause visible damage to Druaga. Even so, the creature is just so massive that the damage they do seems insignificant. Ahmey decides to go straight for its head and manages to plant her spear directly in the weak-spot Neeba’s first shot exposed, but Druaga manages to hit her before she can pull the drill-cord and end it. The remains of the Uruk army appear just in time to drag them to safety before Druaga retaliates, and they have an impromptu meeting to try to figure out a viable battle plan to defeat him. Then Pazuz makes his attempt on Druaga, only to get sniped and killed by Neeba from behind. Back with the survivors, Jil is brooding in a corner now that Neeba’s earlier warnings are finally hitting home. Not for long though, as Ki appears once more to give him a much needed pep-talk and set him on the path to take up the reins of leadership for the next attack.

The final episode starts out, sadly enough, without that great opening. Ah well. Druaga is busy wandering the halls of the top floor of the tower searching for the survivors and roaring ineffectually. Jil outlines his plan, and the others end up agreeing to it. Cut to Neeba, who’s brooding off in an alleyway. The blue-haired girl, who is now revealed to have been the original Druaga’s lover, appears and returns his last Arrow of the Void. The connection between her and Neeba is also revealed; he was the one who broke the seal on the tomb she was trapped in after Gilgamesh defeated Druaga. As a result of that, she decided to help guide him up to the top and now gives him a similar (though darker) pep-talk to the one Ki gave Jil. As preparations near their completion, Kaaya breaks down for a bit and gives an emotional apology to Jil in advance for things she cannot name. And just as he’s all busy being in shock… Druaga attacks! There’s some mind-bogglingly well-done CG-effect integration in the following fight between Jil and Druaga. Normally, when an animated series attempt to incorporate CGI, it ends up looking either incredibly fake or extremely out of place. They manage to pull off near-seamless integration of the two styles here though. Jil succeeds in luring Druaga to the enclosed upper part of the level and the rest of the group unleash their attacks, destroying many of Druaga’s limbs and causing massive damage. Ki and the blue-haired girl watch the battle from the sidelines while making idle commentary about the nature of heroes and climbers. Druaga still almost wins even after all the damage done to him, until Neeba’s final Arrow of the Void gives Jil the opening to use the spear stuck in Druaga’s neck to finish the creature off. The other monsters of the tower disappear once Druaga falls, and a blue crystal orb begins to form in the center of the area they defeat him in. Both Kaaya and Jil head toward it until Jil is stopped by a stun-arrow to the back. Neeba picks up the sphere and reveals that it’s actually a key to unlock the ‘true’ tower. Fatina and Utu are none too happy by this revelation and confront Neeba only to get told straight away that obviously he deceived them, as well as warned that he’ll kill them if they try to get in his way. Jil derides him for his deception, only to have Neeba point out that he’s not the only one who tricked his friends… as Kaaya joins him to ascend the new staircase that the blue sphere has unlocked. The remaining nine or so people on the top floor of the tower get washed away in a flood of water that rains down from the ‘true’ tower. The series ends with the blue-haired girl looking on as Kaaya and Neeba ascend to the new tower, a scene of a mysteriously shadowed girl standing over the remains of Pazuz, Gilgamesh claiming that things are not over and that he has the real blue crystal rod, and Jil emerging from a lake near the starting city with Fatina in his arms.

The seventh episode introduces the dragon that gave Neeba his ‘dragon-slayer’ title. It’s lair is directly in the path of the way to the next level, and the Uruk army is attempting to kill it. Neeba decides to wait until the Army has been decimated before attempting to finish it off, a course of action that Jil refuses to accept even though he admits it’s probably the correct one. He manages to gather several groups of climbers together to attack the dragon from the side with the help of the others on his team. Though even with the combined help of the climbers the dragon isn’t defeated, and Neeba appears just as it looks like it will finish them all to give Jil and Kelb the opening and information needed to kill it.

In the next episode Kaaya pretends to have a terminal illness in order to convince Jil to search out some sort of mysterious stone slab. The exchange goes something like this; “Kaaya! What’s wrong?”, “I have an incurable illness called {insert gibberish name here}.”, “I’ve never heard of that illness.”, “That’s because it’s incurable.”, “What was it called again?”, “{insert slightly different gibberish}.”, “That sounds different that the first time you said it…”, “It is such a terrible illness it cannot even be pronounced twice”. I’m not quite sure why Jil goes alone, but whatever. The place she sends him to is none other than the old 60-floor original Tower of Druaga, which is conveniently situated behind a hidden door a few feet over to the side of the path. The entire old tower turns out to be an in-Anime version of the original game, with Jil as Gilgamesh and Kaaya able to control him from the outside via an arcade-like machine. Eventually, many of the people from the last episode wander by and start taking turns controlling Jil inside the mini-tower… though most of them seem to be far worse at it that Kaaya is and Jil ends up ‘dieing’ numerous times. Eventually the rest leave, and Neeba makes a parting comment that indicates he also knows the real purpose of the stone tablet Kaaya’s that seeking. Upon finally reaching the top of the mini-tower, Ki materializes and warns Jil about three betrayals he will face in the future.

Episode nine begins with the various groups fighting a large group of monsters that look something like a cross between a slime and a roper. After a short time, all the monsters self-destruct; collapsing the various walkways the climbers are fighting on and sending them plummeting down to places unknown. Jil wakes up and finds himself with Fatina, as the fall ended up separating the various groups from one another. They set off to find the other members of their groups. Kally and Utu end up with Coopa, the Uruk army gets separated from Kelb and Ethana, Kelb ends up with Ahmey, Ethana ends up with Melt, and Kaaya ends up with Neeba. There’s quite a bit of foreshadowing going on here. Most of the groups decide to head for a nearby settlement so that they can hopefully meet up with one another, but when Jil and Fatina reach the settlement they find it upside-down and abandoned. Elsewhere, Kally stumbles across the evil mage Pazuz’s dropped coffin and seems to understand what he plans to do with it. Pazuz attacks him while Uta and Coopa retreat. As everyone else finally makes it to the settlement, Neeba and Kaaya have a poignant discussion before they part and the mysterious blue-haired girl appears to her shortly after and warns her that this is her last chance to turn back before she’ll be forced to betray someone.

Natasha Rhodes‘ Kayla Steele series is a bit odd. It’s set in Los Angeles and deals with the conflict between Vampires, Werewolves, and Hunters. A conflict that’s not as black and white as it first appears.

Dante’s Girl starts the series off with the death of Kayla’s boyfriend Karrel at the hands of a vampire named Cyan X (whom he apparently has a history with) and a group of werewolves working for her. It should probably be noted early-on that the book’s description is a total and complete lie; the term ‘Dark Arts’ is mentioned a whole once in the book itself, a cabal is not responsible for Karrel’s death, and he’s quite dead and their relationship is very past-tense. So what is the book actually about? Well, for some unknown reason, Cyan and the werewolves that killed Karrel seem to think that he told Kayla something important before he died, and so send assassins after her. She gets saved by the Hunters, and a strangely helpful werewolf, and learns that Karrel did not in fact work at the Humane Society, but was instead a Hunter. After much running around and death, the book ends with the friendly werewolf captured by the vampire-controlled police, Kayla training to become a Hunter, Karrel ending up in hell as a suicide, and the head werewolf of the group that formerly followed Cyan somehow in possession of the greatly feared vampire known as Harlequin. How did Harlem catch Harlequin? It is a mystery.

The first book, while strange, was not confusing. The Last Angel is a totally different story, as Rhodes doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the term ‘continuity’. The book opens with the death of an angel, followed by Kayla having a dream about Karrel’s fateful meeting with Cyan back in Prague… and for some unknown reason her one and only friend shared the exact same dream. That’s completely dropped a few pages later though as Kayla is informed by Ninette, her Hunter team leader, that they need to go after the angel body before it triggers Armageddon. Then that is dropped as things switch to the the friendly werewolf from the first book, Mutt (a horrible name I might add), who’s being held in an underground illegal fighting ring type place… and where Cyan refers to him as Mathias on one line for no apparent reason. The action, so to speak, jumps back to Kayla who ends up in a briefing some interminable time later about what the angel-body could mean and what the Hunters have to do about it. The scene is notable only because it actually shows some of the fabled ‘Dark Arts’ that were only mentioned on the book-cover until this point. Shockingly, Ninette and Paul are allegedly the two Hunters with the most knowledge of this magic, and yet they showed no sign of it during the first book when they were repeatedly almost killed. That continuity hiccup is compounded by the one just before it; Ninette claimed that the Hunter base has never had a breach… yet there was a very large breach due to an angry werewolf hunting down Kayla in the first book that allowed her to escape the compound with Mutt. Then, things get worse. The next scene is of Cyan and Mutt in the bowls of wherever it is this fighting ring is. After a somewhat lengthy exchange Cyan gets the better of him and demands to know why everyone was after Karrel and the scene ends. The next time we see Mutt, he’s in a crate in a random storeroom seemingly waiting for Kayla’s arrival. Why? It is a mystery. To top off everything; the secret that Karrel’s apparently been keeping allegedly has to do with with the two last angels, how the Hunters are really an evil organization, and nothing at all to do with with traitor from the first book… despite the fact that the traitor in question (who’s mysteriously absent from this book) said that he killed him because he knew about the vampire’s plan to make a mutant army.

There are so many mysteries, dead-ends, about-faces, continuity breaches, mythology breaks, and questionable characterizations present in the second book that it may very well invalidate the existence of the first. The first was decent, if a bit strange, but the second throws the first into such total confusion that I’m just not sure where the series stands. I seriously thought for a time that I was missing a book, and that this was really the third book in the series… but that’s not the case. The one issue that really stands out in my mind the most though is the way the werewolves go from being human-intelligent in their wolfman forms, to mindless killers in their wolfman forms, and then back again to intelligent depending on the current demands of the plot.

The fourth episode has the newly formed climbing group beginning their journey to the top of the tower. Shortly after their first enemy encounter, where does markedly better than in his first battle with Neeba’s group, Ahmey realizes that she’s the only one in the group who has any experience with the tower and proceeds to fill the others in on its makeup and geography. The scene eventually shifts over to Neeba’s group where Fatina has a strange encounter with an apparition of a blue-haired girl. Neeba seems to recognize who she’s talking about and wanders off alone to meet the apparition who’s seemingly working under Druaga and on very familiar terms with him. Elsewhere, Gilgamesh’s almost-assassin is making his way through the tower with a delivery of some sort and sends a group of minotaurs right at Jill’s party for no apparent reason other than that he can. While Ahmey insists that she should stay behind and give the others a chance to escape, Jil sees fighting this group as a way to make up for his utter failure against the minotaurs back in the first episode.

The fifth episode has the groups traversing a stretch of land filled with magical traps that drastically change the appearance of anyone that trips them. Jil’s group first gets turned into a bunch of 2D sprites, and then Melt steps on a gender-changing trap which turns him and Jil into women and Ahmey, Kaaya, and Coopa into men. The Uruk army gets turned into a group of mice, which both Kaaya and Ahmey find extremely cute, while Neeba’s group gets turned into furries. And at the end of the path lies a… hidden talent contest. Melt, Ahmey, Coopa, and Kaaya all fail miserably and repeatedly at convincing the door-judge to let them through, and when Jil finally thinks of something to do, he’s rejected as well because the judge had already seen his act; Neeba used it to get through the door just before they arrived.

Episode six has Jil’s group reach a gathering place that doubles as a town some distance up the tower. They get embroiled in the plight of a retired climber and his grandson after Melt fires Coopa and she ends up somewhat involved with the grandson in question and he searches for his dead father’s lost spear.

I didn’t mentioned this earlier, but I really like the opening scenes for this series. When I first saw it I was somewhat confused and thought that the series was about modern-day kids who played a virtual reality version of the game. After having watched a few episodes it made more sense and works fantastically well.

This three-book series, by C. E. Murphy, explores a modern day world hiding the continued existence of five ‘Old Races’; Dragons, Djinn, Gargoyles, Selkie, and Vampires. It chronicles a three to four month period of time wherein the few laws governing them are shaken to their very foundations by the introduction of single human lawyer.

Heart of Stone introduces Margaret Knight, a lawyer working for a Legal Aid company in New York and living with her two friends. Every night she goes running in Central Park, in spite of the danger doing so puts her in. On the night the book begins, her silent watcher for the past several years makes his presence known for the first time; and sets off a chain of events that will deeply embroil Margaret in the secret world of the Old Races. Since this watcher is Alban Korund, a Gargoyle who has purposely cut himself off from the others of his kind, and ends up being forced to go to Margaret for aid after he’s implicated in the murder of a young woman the same night he chose to reveal himself to her.

House of Cards deals with the repercussions of the bargains Margaret made to free Alban from the murder investigation, as well as the actions Alban was forced to take in order to keep her safe from the real murderer. Still owing two favors to Janx, a Dragon crimelord, she ends up making a separate deal with Daisani, his Vampiric rival. Her complicated relationship with both of them ends up being used by the newly returned Selkie in a bid to once again be acknowledged as a valid member of the Old Races.

Hands of Fire begins a few weeks after the disastrous end of the second installment. Biali has decided to take revenge on Alban for his choice at the end of Heart of Stone, and his actions prompt a Gargoyle Tribunal to convene to decide the matter. Elsewhere, full-scale war is about to break out between the Selkies, Djinn, and Janx over the loss of the Dragon’s former territory. Margaret, finding herself in the middle of events once more, is forced to both negotiate a peace accord between the various factions and act as Alban’s defense in the Tribunal. All of that only takes up the first two-thirds of the book though, and the rest deals with the lengths she’s forced to go to in order to repay Janx’s final favor.

This series, which appears to be based off of classic Hack & Slash dungeon-delving games, follows the path of five companions as they climb Druaga’s newly re-built tower in the hopes of defeating him and destroying the tower once more.

The first episode begins with a short scene five adventurers in action. This scene is followed by a flashback that seems to explain Jil’s past. He’s allegedly the leader of the group and has been labeled as the fabled ‘hero’ who will destroy Druaga. The scenes leading up to their journey to the tower are filled with purposeful fantasy clichés that are capped off by the sole female of the group (Fatina) being attacked by a ‘roper’, or in other words; a tentacle monster. Neeba (who looks quite a bit like Sasuke from Naruto) tells Jil to hold off saving her and the watch for a while as it molests her in various softcore ways. They continue the path up the tower, living clichés and being reduced in number as they go, only to meet Druaga; a smallish glowing imp-like thing that claims to be Jil’s father. Jil attacks anyway and after nearly being defeated, recovers to destroy him and the tower… and then he wakes up. It turns out the entire flashback (and the second half of the opening battle) is a hallucination he dreamed up after being knocked out by the first impact in the opening battle.

The ’second’ episode is the events of the first episode as seen by the rest of the party’s point of view, after Jil gets knocked out… kind-of making it the real first episode. Neeba ends up having to blast a path through them so that they can attempt to escape after being thrown so horribly off-balance. The scene then shifts to the town surrounding the tower, where a new character (Kaaya) is introduced. It seems she has recently arrived at the tower and plans to set out to find an adventuring party to help her get to the top of the tower. The scene shifts back to the tower as Neeba’s party continues their escape. They manage to find a safe place to rest for a time, only to have Jil’s delirious sleep-talk nearly lead the enemies right back to them. Neeba decides to go with Fatina’s suggestion to leave him behind, and so they cover him with a camouflage sack, sprinkle a few leaves on him, and continue their escape. Jil ends up rolling off a ledge and falling onto another adventuring party. His untimely unconscious interference causes the newcomer mage of the group (Melt) to misfire his spell and roast his own party members, resulting in them firing him. Jil then gets abducted by a hoard of green tentacle blobs who carry him off to some nest-like thing, only to have him fall off while sleepwalking and land right on the head of the boss-minotaur that had cornered Neeba’s group. Uta grabs him as they run past the remaining foes and he wakes up just in time to find that they’ve been cornered in a dead-end passage up against a hole in the tower’s wall.

The real second episode begins right where the first left off. The group is saved from an untimely death by the appearance of the Uruk army’s patrol unit. Neeba fires Jil once they make it outside, telling him that he’s just not cut out for the task of climbing the tower. Seems that something called the ‘Summer of Anu’ is on the way, and everyone around town seems to be in high spirits at its approach. Jil heads off to find a new climbing party after getting his armor fixed. No one seems to want to have anything to do with him since he’s new in town, and some even try to attack him… only to fail (spectacularly) to hurt him. How someone as seemingly preternaturally strong and resilient as Jil could be knocked out so very easily in the first episode is a mystery that brings to mind the beginning of Solty Rei. His performance does not go completely unnoticed though; Kaaya ends up taking an interest in him after seeing that he was hurt far worse in earlier encounter than it at first appeared. After healing him, she asks him to join her climbing party which consists of herself and Ahmey, a lancer. Later that day Jil overhears Neeba talking about an assassination attempt being planned on King Gilgamesh, and decides that he has to do something to help stop it from succeeding… only to get there just in time to take the blame for the murder.

The third episode begins with a flashback to the events of the Tower of Druaga game, when Gilgamesh defeated Druaga in order to save a girl named Ki (Druaga and Ki looks astonishingly like Jil and Kaaya). The flashback shows that Gilgamesh gained a ‘get out of death free’ card for defeating Druaga as well, and so the assassin’s blade does not end up killing him. Even so, Neeba appears just in time to lead Jil away from the crime-scene before too many guards arrive. After noticing Kaaya and Ahmey, he again tells Jil that it would be in his best interests to go back home and stop thinking about climbing the tower. The next day the King appears, healthy as ever, while Neeba meets with the assassin from the night before. After that meeting, a giant slime attacks the town and ends up nearly consuming both Jil and Melt’s assistant (Coopa) from the alternate first episode. After Ahmey saves them both, Coopa leads Kaaya and the rest to Melt in the hopes that they’ll let them him join their party. The whole party promptly gets captured by the the Uruk army and Kaaya is brought to see Gilgamesh, who entrusts her a sword to give to Jil. The five then set out to climb the tower.