| Title: | Busou Renkin |
| Episode: | 12: Carnival |
| Synopsis | |
| From Shuusui, Oka, and Gozen-sama Captain Bravo has learned the location of the hideout of the League of Extraordinary Elects (LXE), and he tells Tokiko and Kazuki that they'll storm the place tommorrow morning. Kazuki is nervous but Bravo is confident of his "warrior potential". Kazuki runs into his friends and agrees to go to the beach with them during summer break. Papillon overhears Dr. Butterfly describe him as "just a laggard who used my research to become an incomplete homunculus". He attempts to activate his kakugane to prove his worth, but the experience is excruciatingly painful. Bravo, Tokiko, Kazuki and Gozen-sama approach the remote forest villa, and, after fooling around with the entry code, burst inside. The place seems abandoned; Gozen-sama leads them to the lab, but realizes that the crucial recovery flask has been removed. Moonface steps out of the shadows, and reveals that the Doctor and the others have gone for a feeding frenzy back at the school. Bravo stays to deal with Moonface while the others race back to the school. A strange fog has enveloped the town; cell phones won't work and nobody can find their way out of the building. Then freakish creatures are spotted in the schoolyard... | |
| Comments | |
| Stretch: Every now and then I fervently praise a show, only to have an episode come along which is so unlike the previous ones, and leaves me with so many doubts, that I wonder if I've been a fool all along. This would be just such an episode. The plot to this one just doesn't make anywhere near as much sense as usual. If the alchemic warriors have an entire hospital to treat their wounded, wouldn't you think they could scrape together a few reinforcements to help storm the headquarters of the LXE? Most importantly, I'm very uncomfortable with this full scale attack on the school by a small army of monsters; how can the war between the homunculi and alchemic warriors remain secret now? Being a secretive, cloak and dagger sort of thing made it fairly plausible, but where will the story go from here? I fear that the overall quality of the series might be taking a dive; the balanced mix of comedy and weirdness which has worked so well up until now seems to have been discarded in favor of a more simplistic and unexceptional tactic. I guess this one could have been worse; at one point I was thinking that it was looking like it would use the sorry gimmick of the heroes/heroines' secret identities remaining unknown simply because everybody is indescribably stupid, but in fact a number of people figure out that it's Kazuki and Tokiko fighting the homunculi. Also neat was several characters regaining their blocked memories of earlier encounters with the homunculi--it's nice to see that what seemed like insignificant incidents at the time in fact play a part in the long-term plotline. Anyway, I hope the next episode salvages things... | |
