My friends and I watch it as a group. As such, we only watch it on either Thursdays or Saturdays since that is when we are all together. However, this Thursday we are going to see Godzilla, so we won't be watching it until Saturday. Same goes for Gaim.

Finally found time for the latest episode and, of course, I loved it. Garo really seems to be playing up the horror aspect this season. It works for me, even thought I love the show the most when its bringing in more of the overall mythology of its world.

I liked the flashback to Raiga's youth - it wasn't as mind-blowing as Kouga's flashbacks, but Raiga seems that have a pretty trauma-free childhood for a change. I can't say that it added a ton of depth to the wind chime maker, but it was a nice little touch of pathos and it helped justify the way they played the fight (which was very nicely done - it's cool to see the show go for something other than crazy over-the-top wire work or CGI sometimes).

I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of the stuff with Mayuri at the end, but the cinematography was quite nice. I still miss her giant hat from episode 1, though. :(

Maybe we're supposed to find Mayuri hot, because literally all she does is stand there in different outfits and that is about the limit of what she adds to the show.

I think we're supposed to be more invested in her trying to find her humanity, but we haven't really gotten enough about her or what she is to really sell that.

Yeah it isn't really until you think about it that like...wowza this show is paced poorly. Sure the original GARO was episodic too, but it had Kouga's character arc running through the middle of it and he had a great supporting cast of memorable characters.

This is just 19 minutes of bad acting and about ten seconds of fighting. End.

Episode 7
That's a nice way to say 'mom and dad are not available', and 'how I get my armor'.

Next week horror will be played by former lightweight boxing world champion, Guts Ishimatsu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guts_Ishimatsu

So we can probably hope for some excellent boxing style fight between him and Raiga.

Considering this picture, looks like we are in for a treat.
http://www.star-ch.jp/channel/upimages/22275/ph.jpg

As far as lengthy, noticeable CGI fights go, I think this week's was my favourite we've ever gotten in the Garo franchise.

Was that supposed to be Taiga watching over Raiga? I assumed that was the case from the brown eyes, but I don't know his voice well enough to recognise it.

Taiga is the representative of the collection.

This season hasn't clicked with me yet, but I'm still enjoying it.

Great episode. We got some vague explanation for what happened to Kouga and Kaoru, we got the return of Gouten, we got a cameo by Taiga (complete with Savior in the Dark instrumental), and we got some great fight scenes. The third one in the crazy Amemiya vortex was cool, but my favorite was that brutal fight where Raiga took down the first version of the monster unarmed.

I'm really loving how this season is turning out. It may go down as my second favorite at this rate.

I really like how they differentiate the fighting style of Raiga and Crow compare to the previous seasons. Both Raiga and Crow's style are more traditional martial arts style (especially their "default stance") compare to the more "modern" freestyle fighting of Kouga, Rei, etc.

I like how even though Amemiya-san said that Kouga and Kaoru won't "appear" he still gives chances for them to be a continuation of the storyline. <3 Episode 7 was epic because of that.

I really do wish that Kouga would appear again though. Konii already visits the filming so often!

Flowers 7.

I actually thought this episode was pretty awful. Let's stage a wonderful action sequence and do it entirely with bad CG, woo! Sure the nods to continuity were nice, but usually when it involved building on those things it just wasn't very interesting. Who knew the passing of the GARO torch would be such an unengaging sequence?

Likewise I just really don't like Raiga. No matter how hard they try to convince us through fight scenes, his actor is just so goofy and lacks any sense of presence. He is so miscast.

Wow, just like the seventh episodes to Season 1 and 2 this had a great satisfying physics defying battle. I love it!!

I don't know if it's the actor or the writing on the character, but I just cannot get invested in Raiga. To be fair, I didn't like Kouga for the first few episodes either as I thought the actor always looked like something smelled funny just slightly off camera, but I warmed up to him by episode 3 or 4. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening with Raiga. I've really been enjoying everything else though.

Another good episode this week. Properly creepy in spots, even if it was usually obvious what was going on with this week's Horror. It's true form was kind of goofy, but I think it worked. I also really liked Raifa's confrontation with it in human form; I think this was one of Raiga's strongest scenes yet as a character. Still, I think that we really need more time with Raiga and Mayuri and less with the weekly Horror. We've really gotten to know several of the monsters, but our main characters are relatively quite blank.

Flowers 8. This was probably the strongest episode for Raiga, he was actually pretty cool in this episode.

There were lots of creepy ideas at play here, but what was on screen felt relatively tame and at some points kinda silly. I dunno, something is just missing in this series. I remember all the fucked up stuff from the first and second seasons, and this just feels so neutered by comparison. The suits in this series though, damn.

Agreed. Great horror this week too. Loved this episode. Probably my favorite of the new series so far.

Absolutely brilliant episode this week, another that will go down as one of my favourites from the entire franchise so far.

The twist was great because of all the little visual hints that were going on throughout the episode. I knew there was something up the minute Garo had censorship :lol

Flowers 09. That twist.

Minus some shoddy camera work, this is probably one of the best episodes of GARO ever made. It's weird because I've found this season largely forgettable but when it's good it's the best the franchise has ever been. This episode combined all of the best bits of this season, and the first season, into one utterly terrifying but weirdly beautiful package. This is right up there with the mermaid episode and the movie episode.

The only real negative was the Horrors true form, it was so ambitious and over designed that it actually made itself look especially fake and goofy. I mean the actual fight was awesome, it's just our bug rapist looked like a bad xenomorph knock off. And this is especially disappointing as all the other suits in this show have been incredible.

We share exactly the same taste in favourites :cool:

Loved this episode.

They're really nailing the Horror of the Week in this series. I didn't even mind the somewhat lackluster design of this guy as everything up to that point was pure awesome. Heck, the fight scene was just gravy compared to the rest of the episode lol.

Man, that was a good one. I was really creeped out at first, waiting for the moment the girl did something scary, but it never came. I figured there was something up with the dude - the recurring scratching was weird, especially with the corresponding sound effect. Did not see that particular twist coming, though.

Loved the credits mini-scene this week; the bit with passed out Mayuri was legitimately hilarious. :lol

Great episode this week, very creepy and I loved the twist. It does feel like for most of the episode the director was trying to subvert a trope in Garo which I found a bit distracting. The end sequence was great, Gonza drinks the strong stuff XD

While next week looks good I really hope we start getting more into the plot and less one offs soon.

Episode 10: Gon-chan no monogatari

Ha ! That bit with the red straw hat was a blatant shootout to Kimagure Orange Road :) They even found a similar stairway !

http://rubberslug.s3.amazonaws.com/u...htgzigzc_o.jpg
http://madoka.ayukawa.free.fr/temoig...go/jingo09.jpghttp://madoka.ayukawa.free.fr/koref16/koref16f.jpg

All the budget this week went to magic seahorses and a Pokemon expy, so no armor this time :(

Didn't really care for this one, mostly because of the "resolution" which was really forced and awkward and didn't really work for me. Overall, I think this was a great concept for an episode but the execution just couldn't quite get it there. Probably my least favorite episode this season.

I'm guessing this is going to be one that a lot of people don't like, but I thought it was great. An entire episode based primarily around Gonza was long overdue and I think this is the first time I've really gotten into the whole "make Mayuri feel" subplot, although I'd still like to know more about exactly what the hell she is.

Flowers 10. Gonza is one dapper dude, haha.

I didn't even realise we'd fought three plot relevant Horrors already - four now - guess that shows how much attention I am paying. To be fair I'm not hating this series but I wouldn't say I'm enjoying it really either.

Love it or hate it, TOWSITD was a very story focused series and going back to something standalone like the first GARO season without the strong character focus makes for a pretty dull show in places. Especially for a show that tells us it's about so much more, but would rather waste time than actually deliver. And it's especially odd because when this show is good, it's the best GARO has ever been.

Although action light, as a film geek, I was absolutely blown away by how the Makai Fish thing could be seen moving in a very slight reflection Gonza's glasses even when the fish wasn't visible to us. The attention to detail in this season is a good lesson to certain other, bigger, toku shows if nothing else.

Loved this week's episode. The fight scene at the end with all of the two-dimensional drawings was really cool and inventive. I'm intrigued by what was happening to Mayuri during the end credits, though - that wasn't just her being cute this time.

Flowers 11.

The look and sound of this show is fantastic, I just wish the characters had some meat and there was actually a plot. I mean "monster hunter killing monsters" is enough, but for a show where a lot of big things are happening it still somehow has zero urgency. The whole thing feels more like a film students project where they are just testing and experimenting than a coherent show.

Even the shots of Crow looking out at the vast expanse of the city felt almost like a plothole, as surely there are thousands of Horrors out there? So why are there only two Knights? You think every city would need hundreds of Knights to keep the citizens safe.

Episode 9
TV Tokyo's censored version is slightly different from Family Gekijou and Star Channel's Director's Cut.

Episode 12
According to Amemiya there will be no action scene, no Garo, no Horror, no CGI.
Plain J-drama.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BqmHT13CYAASPix.jpg

Silhouette of the 'I can't see clearly who the hell he is' knight is actually done by Mizuishi Atom (or Crow in the show). The 'I can't see clearly who the hell she is' motherly figure is actually Ishibashi Natsumi (or Mayuri in the show).

I didn't really care for this week's episode. Not due to the lack of action, the story just didn't grab me for some reason. I hate to say it but this has been my least favorite Garo series so far.

Well, that sure happened.

I don't know. On the one hand, it wasn't a bad episode. It reminded me a lot of the Leo/Kaoru walk episode of Makai Senki, just with even less Garo. It didn't work nearly as well here, though, and that's mostly because we didn't learn anything new about any of our main cast or the show's mythology. I really like some of the individual stories and the visuals this season, but the show needs to start actually using the main cast. Raiga rarely appears in even half of each episode, Crow is barely present, and after twelve episodes we still don't know what Mayuri actually is and what it means. An episode like this is kinda lovely, but it's also a total waste of time since we are never going to see this girl again and her story has added nothing to the show.

That said, I hope this episode's obvious lack of a budget means we're saving that money for later on (and maybe we even got this instead of a damn clip show).

It's not a lack of budget episode.
It plays a very important part in Raiga's character in the second half of the series.

I finally watched episode 12 and it was pretty... dumb. My least favorite episode of the season (not as gad as S3 though) as nothing happened at all. The story was not all that interesting. The girl was annoying. The hair ball just looked cheap and stupid. So far, the Horror movie episode and the Manga episodes are the best ones.

Let's hope that the money they saved from this episode goes to making episode 13 down right amazing.

This was not a high budget episode. I'm not saying the show is out of money, I'm saying they spent significantly less money on this episode. The cinematography is really nice in some places, but the special effects are just post-production filters and a puffball on a string. This was definitely an episode designed to save a lot of money.

And if Raiga's character arc in the rest of the series has something to do with this episode then that's cool. If Raiga has a character arc at some point, that would actually be really cool.

Don't get me wrong, I freaking love this show, but it's spending so much time developing the story of each Horror of the week that it's largely ignoring the core cast. The show really needs a Kaoru; someone who provides an ongoing storyline that involves the regular characters. There have been some cool standalone stories this year, but the closest we've got to anything recurring is Mayuri's struggle with humanity, which doesn't work because the show hasn't explained how or why she is the way she is.

Flowers 12. Aw this was really sweet, a real change of pace for GARO too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyxC5eVO2GE when Karina and Raiga got high as shit, this is all I could think of. Was waiting Mama to shoot at Raiga with a mounted gatling gun.

Anyway I quote myself in my last review "The whole thing feels more like a film students project where they are just testing and experimenting than a coherent show."