Various Thoughts

This series takes place sometime after the ending of Persona 3. I’ve never played any of the Persona games before, as I suspect their apparent focus on micromanaging would be more trouble than it’s worth, so I’m going into this series mostly blind from a character and storyline perspective.

It begins on a ship. The ship has just pulled a submersible that has gone silent out of the water. The workers on-board are met by a police officer (Kanzato) as they open the hatch to discover that the sub is curiously empty, with only a few traces of its pilots’ former presence remaining. The scene switches to two brothers (Shin and Jun) who are traveling by air to meet up with, and possibly stay with, their police chief relative… at least I think they’re related… that they haven’t seen in ten years. Kanzato then leaves the ship and heads off to investigate the results of a recently finished autopsy on a previous case that he believes may be connected to the missing sub pilots. The victims of this incident have all been mysteriously turned inside-out, and so it’s refereed to as the Reverse case. It’s seems that Kanzato is related to Shin, and was very likely the person that he and Jun were waiting for at the airport earlier. They decided not to wait for him to show up and have just arrived at their old house… only to find that the locks have been changed. Kanzato seems oblivious to the fact that they were supposed to arrive today and continues on about his police work. It’s not long before another crime scene requires his attention; this time the victim was one of his subordinates who spoke to him while he was being attacked. He asks one of the detectives at the scene to make a call to confirm something, and when the recipient doesn’t answer gets noticeably agitated and rushes off somewhere. Meanwhile, Shin and Jun are having dinner at a restaurant while they wait for Kanzato to get home and let them into the house. Kanzato is quite busy engaged in a Persona battle with a guy who was trying to devour some girl’s Persona. I would hazard a guess that he might be the source of the Reverse murders, since it looks like having your Persona devoured might have the side-effect of turning you inside-out. He heads home afterward and finds Shin and Jun asleep on the doorstep, seeming nonplussed by their appearance he points out the spare key sitting to the side of the door and the fact that the keypad code is one they had all thought up earlier. Troubled by Kanzato’s apparent apathy and a strange dream he had, Shin decides to head out for a walk in the middle of the night. He comes across that guy that that Kanzato wounded in the fight earlier and he’s attacked by his Persona, which happens to awaken his own dormant Persona. Shin’s Persona destroys the other one in a single sword-stroke, and the guy who was hosting it seems to be shocked and/or relieved that it’s gone. Which implies that it was using him as a host rather than being a natural part of him.

Well… there are certainly quite a few things going on in this series. But, besides the questionably animated Persona fight scenes (which clash horribly with the series’ otherwise realistic setting), it looks like it could be interesting.

This OVA is allegedly the sequel to Kite. You’d never know it without being told though, as the two have little to nothing in common.

The movie opens in space with a shuttle docking at a space station orbiting Earth. The astronauts on the station are rambling on about unpalatable space-curry and the effects of zero-gravity on the human body. We’re introduced to Kōichi Doi, the creator of the current space food that they’re eating, as well as two astronauts who have abnormally high bone density levels (Noguchi and an unnamed other guy). Far below, a thug of some sort is being chased through the backalleys by a pair of plainclothes police officers. They chase him into a train station and he takes refuge in a strangely populated (as it’s the middle of the night) women’s restroom. He casually kills two of the inhabitants, chases the other three out, and takes a conveniently placed little girl hostage. The officers retreat to wait for backup while the newly revealed child molester prepares to molest the child he has taken hostage. And just as he’s about to… the lights go out. Turns out that someone else was conveniently waiting in this restroom for this exact child molester; a glassy eyed and somewhat robotic assassin (Monaka).

I’m barely eleven minutes in and already I want to shoot myself. Well, let’s see if it can get worse.

Okay… Monaka works, when she’s not assassinating people, at an incredibly run-down and seedy cosplay café where the customers continually grope the waitresses and who’s manager strongly resembles a fat homosexual pirate. Right. That’s enough for me.

The twenty-first episode continues where twenty left off. Sasha has confronted Xargin inside Zwölf castle, hoping that she can finally end things, as Amanda and Hermann continue their search for Malek. Xargin slowly approaches Sasha while daring her to try and shoot him, and Amanda and Hermann finally locate Malek thanks to a clue that Shido left behind. They leave the castle with him, and grab Joseph’s unconscious form on the way out as well. Xargin’s reunion with Sasha goes about as well as you would expect, but Shido’s interference cuts their confrontation short and Xargin decides continue toward the castle’s server room… presumably to take control of the Isis anti-nanomachines. Victor notices and decides to head to the server room himself and lock it down before he gets there. Mei Feng and Shido decide to try and head Xargin off at the pass in a pair of Paladins while Sasha stays behind and backs-up the Isis data files. Xargin sees them coming and actually transforms into his demoniac form to take them out. They fall quite easily since they can’t even scratch him in this form. Meanwhile, following the note Shido left behind, Amanda and Hermann have taken the comatose/unconscious Malek and Joseph to her aunt’s orphanage. Xargin eventually makes his way to the server room proper and reveals that his intention all along was merely to forcibly ‘evolve’ Victor, and he does so by merging him with the server system. Task completed, he heads off elsewhere and leaves the castle in Beatrice’s hands.

Twenty-two opens with Sasha meeting up with Amanda and Hermann and giving them the Isis design data for safekeeping before she and Shido return to the castle and attempt to try and produce it, since the castle is the only place with the equipment required to create it. Beatrice finds mention of the Isis program in Zwölf’s database, but does not know precisely what it is since Sasha has deleted the relevant files. She decides that she should try to find out where Sasha and Shido may have left the data and destroy it before it can harm Xargin. Hermann senses her coming, although he at first thinks it might be Wolf returned from the dead, and heads off alone to confront her. She seems rather amused by his appearance and casually mentions how Gerd, Malek, and Wolf’s situations were all her doing. This whips Hermann up into a righteous rage and he promptly attacks. They’re surprisingly well matched, but Beatrice manages to get the upper hand long enough to wound him and head after Amanda. He’s not finished yet though, and tries to slow her down while begging Amanda to escape while she still can. All this commotion outside finally penetrates Malek’s subconscious and he awakens long enough to pins Beatrice down while Hermann finishes her off. She, however, doesn’t go quietly and focuses the last of her power into an energy blast at Malek that Hermann intercepts at the last minute. The blast is too much for his weakened state to handle, and he dies shortly after she does. The episode ends with a shot of a pair of Stealth Bombers taking off.

Episode twenty-three has Mei Feng picking up the incoming bomber on Zwölf’s radar and deciding that the UN is apparently planning to simply bomb the demoniacs, and Germany, out of existence rather than risk the chance that the infection could spread to other countries. She and Shido go out to intercept while Sasha stays behind to continue developing Isis. Deeper inside the castle, Victor has awakened and gone just a bit insane from his newfound connection to the server system. While he’s having a nice little megalomaniacal rant and surfing the data waves, Elea pops up and asks him if he’s serious about becoming God, as his entire life was built around worshiping God. He says that he has transcend God and she just shrugs and disappears with a ‘Oh, really? Well, I wish you the best.’. Such an interesting character. She pops up in front of Sasha (who has just completed the Isis) next and mentions how she’s uploaded herself completely into the GARM bike’s systems since she doesn’t want to ‘live’ on the same server as the now corrupted Victor, and advises that she too get out of the castle before he takes complete control of all the systems. While that is going on, Shido is getting shot to pieces by fighter jets as he does his best to destroy all incoming cruise missiles and Malek has decided to face off against Xargin. Shido sacrifices himself to destroy all the incoming missiles, but this proves to be just the beginning as another wave of missiles is set to originate from a satellite in low-orbit. Elsewhere, Elea arrives at the orphanage to pick up Joseph and hand off the Isis. He heads off to where Malek and Xargin are, picks up and hands Malek off to Elea, and tells her to return to Amanda while he deals with matters here. The episode concludes with Joseph and Xargin set to face off against one another for the third time… or would that be fourth?

The final episode begins with Elea popping back into the Zwölf system to update Sasha on what’s going on with Joseph as well as convincing Victor that it would be in his best interests to help them shoot down the missiles, since, after all, it shouldn’t be too difficult a task for God. While they try to destroy the various nuclear threats aimed at the country, Joseph is busy fighting the demoniac threat to the country. While he has gotten quite a bit more powerful than he was before, Xargin still proves to be out of his reach. As he’s lying on the ground, seemingly defeated, the scene bafflingly switches to a spiritual realm of some sort where Gerd and Hermann are just kind-of hanging out. Seeing Joseph appear in the realm as well, they assume the worst and Gerd decides to lend what little power he has left to Joseph; merging with his body to attack Xargin. He also proves no match for Xargin and gets sent back to the spirit realm, so Hermann merges with Joseph next. Back with Zwölf; Sasha and Mei Feng follow Shido’s example and sacrifice themselves to destroy the nuclear threat. Watching them die causes Victor to shut himself and all the Zwölf systems down in despair, taking a large chunk of the power grid with him. The fight with Xargin has also reached its conclusion, as Gerd and Hermann’s spiritual interference has stalled Xargin long enough for the Isis to activate inside Joseph’s body and destroy all the demoniacs in the area. The timeline then skips five years into the future. Amanda has rebuilt XAT from the ground up, with the newfound mission of protecting demoniac-infected people from discrimination, and both she and Malek are members.

The seventeenth episode continues the Apocalypse Knights’ fight with Beatrice while Joseph undergoes an extremely painful transformation into his upgraded form. This new form is slightly bulkier and mostly red, as opposed to his previous blue form. The Knights manage to shake Beatrice long enough to launch an attack on the infected military base, but most of the bombs are shot down by the newly transformed Al and they’re forced to retreat to make repairs after doing only minor damage. On the other side of town, Amanda has caught up to Hermann and manages to convince him that he’s not a monster and to stop running from her. They both decide to go after Wolf. Back at Zwölf castle, the Knights have re-fueled and re-armed and head back out for a second attack on Wolf’s forces. While they engage in the air, Amanda and Hermann attack from the ground.

Things aren’t looking good for Zwölf’s forces at the beginning of episode eighteen, so Victor decides to send the newly powered-up Joseph to the front lines. He arrives and almost immediately steals control of most of Wolf’s demoniac underlings before ripping them apart. The few that Wolf keeps control of are easily dispatched and he’s forced to intervene personally before they’re all destroyed. He gets Joseph’s attention with one of his rocket-punches and leads him straight into Hermann, who still blames Joseph for what happened to Gerd and Malek. Hermann and Joseph fight each other while Wolf escapes with his remaining forces. Amanda tries to separate them, but only ends up the new target of Joseph’s blind rage brought about by the Blassreiter nanomachines. Soon, the Apocalypse Knights make it to the base and also engage Hermann, whom they still view as a threat for some reason. Hermann realizes his presence endangers Amanda and so quickly retreats. Before the Knights can follow him, they’re forced to deal with a completely enraged and insane Joseph who’s indiscriminately attacking everything in sight. Victor immediately orders the Knights to retreat and abandons Joseph at the base. The scene then switches to the United Nations, of all things, where a discussion about what to do about the rising global threat that the unchecked spread of demoniacs in Germany pose. Back at Zwölf castle, Victor has unfrozen development on anti-nanomachines; nanomachines that will seek out and completely destroy the Blassreiter and demoniac nanomachines. The episode concludes with Amanda stumbling across a strange girl called Snow, who is a demoniac and apparently knows Joseph, while trying to re-locate Hermann.

Episode nineteen begins directly where eighteen left off. Snow turns out to be the girl who was seen in an earlier flashback when Joseph first met Beatrice. While Hermann begins his assault on Wolf, who has returned to XAT former headquarters, Snow relates her past to Amanda. When she finishes, Amanda tells her that Joseph is still at the airbase, but that he has gone insane due to Zwölf’s strengthening process and can no longer tell friend from foe. Snow thanks her and heads off to meet him while Amanda resumes her search for Hermann. She finds him just as he’s confronting Wolf and they both proceed to engage him. Over at the destroyed base, Snow manages to break through to Joseph after he nearly kills her. Back at XAT, Amanda manages to trap Wolf and take him apart. Just as she’s about to finish him though, Al snipes the shit out of her and Hermann forcing them to fall back while Wolf recovers. Amanda makes another attempt on Wolf despite the incoming sniper fire, and just as Al is about to take her out, he remembers who he was and turns his rifle on Wolf instead; blowing half his head off.

Twenty opens with a ridiculously large demoniac army (‘over 30,000′ according to the subs… pity, a missed joke opportunity there) led by Xargin and Beatrice marching through the streets of the destroyed town while Amanda and Hermann look on from the hilltop above. Amanda decides to head back to Zwölf castle and extract Malek before it’s overrun by Xargin’s army, and Hermann decides to come along as her ‘captive’. Meanwhile, Victor plans to send Joseph out against Xargin in the hopes that they’ll keep each other busy long enough for the anti-nanomachines to be completed and he can destroy them all. When Amanda and Hermann get back to the castle, he quickly ‘escapes’ from custody and distracts the defense forces while she attempts to track down Malek’s location. Outside, Joseph engages Beatrice while Xargin watches from the sidelines. At first they seem evenly matched, but Joseph quickly manages to overpower her and Xargin is forced to intervene just before he kills her. Xargin simply reaches out and shatters the Blassreiter collar, destroying Joseph’s new form and leaving him a twitching heap on the ground. Leaving his army and the wounded Beatrice behind, Xargin enters the castle alone on foot and runs directly into Sasha.

Episode thirteen has Amanda meeting up with Joseph and delves into his past. It explains his childhood and how he first met Xargin, before the demoniacs appeared.

Fourteen continues the flashback and introduces Sasha, who turns out to be Joseph’s sister, as well as explains the source of the demoniacs. It was Sasha’s research into nanomachines that was taken and re-purposed toward creating a super-weapon. After a series of racist attacks on the various immigrants and those that try to support them, Sasha ends up brutally beaten and dies. This sends Xargin into a despair that Victor takes advantage of to infect him with the demoniac nanomachines in the hopes that Xargin will use the power to bring the world in-line with his ideals. Xargin is too far gone though, and instead decides to use his newfound power to completely destroy mankind and rebuild the world with only demoniacs. Joseph’s timely interference prevents him from killing Victor, and he instead infects Joseph before disappearing. Joseph awakes to find Victor there to direct him after Xargin, and he gives him the GARM motorbike to help in this task. The scene abruptly switches back to the present, where Joseph and Amanda are suddenly joined by Mei Feng and what appears to be a revived Sasha.

Episode fifteen begins with Joseph and Amanda being taken to Zwölf castle, the apparent headquarters of the true organization behind XAT. Amanda is conscripted into their ranks while Joseph is undergoing an experimental process that will allegedly allow him to fight at the same level as Xargin. Victor eventually explains that Zwölf is simply the most recent name for the Knights Templar. He soon sends the three Apocalypse Knights (Mei Feng, Sasha, and Shido) out to take care of the city-wide infection that Beatrice left behind while Amanda looks on from the castle. She soon asks him why, if he had this technology all along, didn’t he just wipe out the demoniacs immediately instead of allowing XAT to die. He responds that until a city-wide crisis of immense magnitude occurred, there would be no way that civilians would accept the methods needed (human experimentation) to create such weaponry. Basically admitting, when viewed in light of Joseph’s story, that demoniacs would never had existed if he had never tried to develop the Apocalypse Knight technology in the first place. Elsewhere, Wolf is trying to resurrect his old team by infusing them with his blood, but only succeeds in bringing Al back to life after Brad and Lene choose to reject the blood and disintegrate.

The sixteenth episode shows that Hermann is, inexplicably, still alive. He has made his way to Zwölf castle to find Amanda. He finds her and tries to get her to escape with him, but she declines because Malek is somewhere in the castle and this might be the only place with a means to bring him out of his coma. She asks him how he survived and how he even knows about Zwölf… but he can’t answer since his memories appear to be blocked. After some effort he manages to remember being saved from the crash by Beatrice, who told him about Zwölf being their enemy and that Amanda was being held captive there. Their reunion is interrupted by an alarm regarding an army of demoniacs lead by Wolf that have begun to attack a military base. Victor sends the Apocalypse Knights out to take care of them just as Hermann realizes he’s been turned into a demoniac and goes on a mini-rampage inside the castle, stealing one of their prototype motorbikes (the 666)  in the process. Victor orders his Paladin forces to stop the bike at any cost, but they prove no match for Hermann’s demoniac form and he easily destroys or avoids them on his path out of the castle. Beatrice is not happy by this turn of events, as Hermann was supposed to attack the castle and serve as a distraction that would cause the Knights to get called back. Seeing no alternative, she decides to tie-up the Knights herself by personally attacking them from behind. The episode concludes with Hermann escaping the castle grounds with Amanda following not far behind.

The tenth episode begins with Malek and Joseph both in XAT custody. Joseph has fully healed from his wounds while Malek is brain-dead. The Director of XAT (Victor) is also shown talking with Elea, the AI of Joseph’s bike, meaning that he knows far more about the Demoniacs and Joseph than he tells the strike-force under him. He contacts XAT and explains that some new weaponry (Paladins) is on its way and also arranges for Joseph to be transfered out of the XAT headquarters, which pisses Hermann off to no end. He and Amanda convince one of the scientists to run as many tests on Joseph as possible, under the radar, before he’s transfered so that they can hopefully find a cure for Malek’s condition. It’s not long before Victor himself makes an appearance and takes both Hermann and Amanda into custody. Elsewhere; Wolf continues his fall into madness.

Episode eleven has Wolf’s second in command (Mei Feng) expressing her concerns about Wolf’s health to Victor, and mentioning that his symptoms appears to be spreading throughout the other members of XAT. He doesn’t seem particularly alarmed by this and just tells her to keep an eye on him and directly report any changes. This turns out to be a too little, too late scenario though, as one of the infected members loses control and transforms in the middle of the headquarters just as the majority of the uninfected members are busy with a large-scale distraction orchestrated by Beatrice. Joseph is awakened by Elea, who hacked into the XAT computer system to warn him about the demoniac infestation. Two of the external strike force members (Lene and Kurz) decide to head back to the command center to find out why they lost communication, only to walk right into an ambush in the parking lot. Joseph bursts out onto the scene and leads the demoniacs away while deciding to confront Beatrice directly. Inside the XAT command center, Wolf finally reveals himself as a demoniac and begins the final assault on the last few surviving members of XAT.

Episode twelve has the partially infected members doing their best to shield Amanda and Hermann (who have not been infected) and get them to the helipad so that they can escape. Elsewhere, Joseph and Beatrice are fighting one another. She’s easily able to avoid his attacks, but after he gets a lucky hit in decides to transform into her demoniac form and just utterly decimate him. The scene then switches back to XAT. Amanda, Hermann, and Brad make it to the helipad only to be confronted by Lene and Kurz. Kurz refuses to believe that any of them can still be human and opens fire, only to be killed by Wolf shortly after. Lene and Brad stay behind to hold off Wolf while Amanda and Hermann escape in the remaining helicopter. It’s severely damaged in the process however, and Hermann is forced to eject Amanda in the lone remain Paladin before it crash lands and explodes.

Episode seven serves mostly as a transition episode as the characters fall into new grooves now that Gerd is gone. Hermann is not in very good graces since he left XAT confinement to meet Gerd last episode and is tasked with cross-referencing all known information about Joseph. Joseph, meanwhile, is brooding in an alleyway somewhere while thinking about Gerd and Malek. Malek returned to the warehouse to think about current events, while Amanda wonders what she can possibly do to help him with the bullying problem he has at school. She ends up reading the letter his sole friend (Johann) left him earlier when he doesn’t come home yet again and realizes it’s both an apology and suicide note. She rushes off to stop him, but arrives to find him already hanging from the ceiling. Malek is understandably quite devastated by this turn of events and ends up in the perfect mindset to accept Beatrice’s form of ‘help’. She seems quite intent on messing with Joseph any way she can, and turning Malek into a demoniac will certainly mess with him.

The eighth episode begins with XAT doing a city-wide search for Joseph using the image acquired from the surveillance footage Beatrice sent them earlier. Interestingly, it seems that the leader of the XAT strike force (Wolf) is turning into a demoniac. I don’t remember him getting splashed with blood, but whatever. Beatrice then pops up right in the middle of the XAT command center and begins to shepherd Wolf through his change. She explains that the transformation happens due to nanomachines in the bloodstream, not the blood itself, and Wolf was apparently infected through the wound he got while fighting Jill. Beatrice then goes on a lengthy monologue explaining what the demoniacs really are (fully evolved humans) and brainwashes Wolf into thinking Joseph is indiscriminately killing any demoniacs he comes across and so he has to be eliminated… which is rather ironic considering that Wolf’s team were the ones who were actually doing that. While that is going on, Malek confronts the kids who were bullying him with his new demoniac strength and rips them to pieces. Joseph feels his transformation and rushes off to try and stop him from completely losing his mind. XAT follow him and stumble across Malek in his transformed state and decide to engage him as well. Joseph eventually makes his appearance and stops him from killing any of the XAT members, but Amanda’s group arrives shortly after. Her appearance causes Malek to freeze, giving the sniper on the roof a free shot at him. Joseph sees the shot coming and takes the bullet for him. This act causes Amanda to really look at the second demoniac and realize that it’s Malek, and so she shields him from the following shots while he grabs Joseph and retreats.

Nine opens with Amanda having been taken off the case due to her divided loyalties. Hermann just gets the news that Malek has turned into a demoniac and races off to find him while thinking it was a result of his short contact with Gerd three episodes earlier. The majority of the episode deals with both Malek’s internal struggle with what he should do with this new power and Amanda’s internal struggle with her own past actions toward Malek. She decides that to make up for her selfishness in the past she’s going to do all she can to stop XAT from killing Malek, and so joins up with Hermann to go behind the organization’s back. Speaking of Malek, he’s visited by a man dressed all in white (Xargin) who apparently knows Joseph from the past and is quite upset by his current state. Malek tries to stop him from interfering with Joseph but is easily defeated without Xargin ever even having to leave his human form. Joseph forces himself upright to try and confront Xargin, but he too is easily defeated and left severely wounded on the floor with Xargin’s parting word being; “If you can recover from this and stand before me once again, there’s the possibility of you becoming the chosen one.”.

I had a nice pace built up and was finally blazing through these series I’ve been meaning to watch for months on end… and then I got caught up in SoZ modding and just kind of died. I think that having Blassreiter turn out to be basically the total opposite of what I expected is the main cause. Hopefully the next three episodes are particularly interesting, if they aren’t I’ll probably just move on to some other series (I still have a good twenty lying around) rather than force my way through it.

Episode four begins with XAT having instituted a curfew and blocked off several streets in an attempt to catch Joseph. Just as Amanda finds him, she gets a report that a demoniac was just sighted. Thinking that the sighting is of Joseph, as she never got a good look at his human form before, she stops questioning the real Joseph and heads off to combat it. Soon, two more demoniacs appear and engage the XAT forces as well. It would seem that Beatrice spontaneously created these three in an attempt to lure Joseph out herself. The lure succeeds and Joseph ends up taking the blame for the actions of one of the psychotic demoniacs after XAT arrives to find him in the midst of a squad of murdered police officers. Amanda, however, begins to see a strange series of coincidences that point to him not being a mindless murderer. Joseph manages to escape them but suffers a debilitating injury in the process and ends up collapsing in front of Amanda’s brother (Malek), of all people. The episode ends with a shot of Gerd, who apparently survived the earlier suicide attempt, confronting the one remaining feral demoniac.

The fifth episode has Gerd sort-of confronting Igor, the new ‘star’ player on his former racing team. He pops up on the track while Igor is practicing and just completely devastates him. This scene is particularly notable for it’s background music, which is quite good and sounds (oddly enough) somewhat like t.A.T.u.. I’m pretty sure it’s not them since the series is German-themed, but I’m certainly going to try to find out who it is and the song’s name (EDIT: It’s DD by Kanako Itō, there are french and english versions). The scene switches to Joseph, who has been brought to an abandoned warehouse of some sort by Malek and is in quite a bit of pain from the bullet wound. They begin to bond over a shared sense of being outcasts while XAT busies itself with fiddling around with the soon-to-be-demoniac Jill. Gerd eventually gets around to tracking Jill down, and his proximity seems to trigger her transformation early; causing quite a bit of havoc in the XAT van she was being transported in. Gerd engages and systematically dismantles her in the best use of CG animation in the series so far. After she’s dead and disintegrated, he transfers his assault to the news crew and the couple of XAT personnel who have appeared on the scene, calling them monsters, until Hermann manages to break through to him. It would seem he’s slowly losing his ability to differentiate between demoniacs and humans.

Episode six has Amanda starting to finally catch on to the fact that all is not well with Malek while Gerd begins to descend into complete madness. Joseph was waiting fro this and manages to pull him back from the brink for the time being. He leaves a coded message at the scene of their short fight and Hermann recognizes it as an address of sorts. He stops by Amanda’s apartment to pick up Malek and the two of them head out to meet him. The reunion is short-lived as the madness finally takes over and Joseph is forced to eliminate him before he mistakenly kills Hermann or Malek.

The series starts off with a very strange opening scene, particularly since I had no clue that this show had a sports theme of any sort. It begins with a somewhat badly rendered CG bike race that gets interrupted by a dead woman melding metal scalpels to her hand to become a mech-like thing of some sort which then proceeds to highjack an ambulance and crash it into the pit area of the racetrack. The mech-thing emerges from the wreckage and is referred to as a ‘Demoniac’, shortly before it opens fire on the remaining racers with a pistol it stole from a security guard. Another mech-like thing wielding an energy whip soon appears and cuts the Demoniac in half, though that doesn’t stop it and only allows it to merge it’s upper body with a discarded bike. It seems to be after one racer in particular; Gerd. While it’s chasing him, various military personnel appear on the scene and try to engage it to no avail. The whip-wielder eventually manages to kill it, causing Gerd to fall off his bike in the process. The fall ended up paralyzing him from the waste down, effectively ending his career as a racer. He’s eventually given a pill by a mysterious doctor (Beatrice) that will allegedly restore his body… but may have some drastic side effects. These ‘side effects’ become quite apparent a bit later, when Gerd shows up as a Demoniac himself during a confrontation between the military organization from earlier (XAT) and a new Demoniac who had taken one of the officers (Amanda) hostage.

The second episode begins with XAT wanting to quarantine Gerd as just another Demoniac and his one friend in the organization (Hermann) arguing against it since Gerd is clearly no ordinary Demoniac. After he ends up destroying another Demoniac that XAT couldn’t catch, the public latches hold to the idea of having a savior and rallies around him essentially forcing XAT to take a more neutral stance. While things seem to be going quite well for Gerd now, there’s a thundercloud on the horizon in the form of discovering that his former girlfriend and the manager of his former racing team were conspiring with one another behind his back the entire time. He, understandably, flips out when he sees this and nearly kills them both before Hermann and Amanda pop up and engage him. While fleeing from them he runs back into the whip-wielder from before, who asks him if he’ll fall like the others. Lost in his grief, Gerd purposely crashes head-first into a truck and is presumed dead.

Episode three mainly concerns itself with the aftershocks of Gerd’s attack on his former girlfriend (Jill) and manager (Matthew). XAT quarantines them both for possible Demoniac contamination, but only the manager seems to be adversely affected and undergo the transformation and so Jill is allowed to return home. The whip-wielder (Joseph) seems to already have been expecting him to transform and is waiting some distance outside the lab to take him out when he inevitably escapes from XAT. A chase scene ensues where Joseph is going after Matthew while XAT is going after them both. Matthew eventually makes it to Jill despite the XAT team around her house and ends up having to be stopped by Joseph, who is again pursued by XAT. What is it with military organizations lacking any and all forms of logical reasoning? I mean seriously, who in their right mind goes attacking someone who has done nothing but repeatedly help them and solve problem that they were too outclassed to handle?

Vampire Knight Guilty picks up the story more or less immediately after the last episode of the first season. It unfolds at the same pace as the first season and has the same episodic milestones so to speak. In the first season we had Zero’s awakening along with a Pureblood enemy, and in this season we have Yuki’s awakening and a different Pureblood enemy. Even though the general structure is the same, the seasons do not feel overly similar since earlier themes are expanded upon and previously shallow characters are given greater depth. All in all a seamless continuation of the series.

The second season of Rosario + Vampire, on the other hand, plays out noticeably differently than the first. While as the first has a formula of sorts where Moka would awaken to destroy some Villain of the Week every episode, the second focuses more on the series’ Harem theme while adding a repeatable antagonist in the form of Moka’s younger sister. The token plot that the first season had is also nowhere in evidence, with events just sort of happening as they will without any overarching connection. The fanservice is at basically the same level as before (sadly), but so is the comedic style (thankfully). I would not advise watching this for anything other than cheap laughs, as it offers nothing in the way of character depth or storyline. As a fun time waster though, it works well.