[Locke]

Faiz 04 - now with more spoiler tags! Which are a real pain in the ass, to be honest with you, why don't we have a button for this?

Anyway, for a show so unrelenting brutal and dark - to the shows detriment honestly - it's amazing just how much fun this show has with its own concepts. From seeing two Orphenoch's working together to Faiz dropping into enemy hands, quite literally - I'm pretty sure I also have already had this twist spoiled for me, when I looked up Faiz toys. Only Orphenoch's can use the belt, right? to "Hurry and Change!" in reference to changing into your gym clothes, being a catalyst for a girl to transform into an Orphenoch and start a massacre to the fact that Faiz's bike is a fucking transformer!. The second half of this episode was just wonderful, it's a real shame then, that the first half is so bad.

It wasn't even bad, so much as meandering. Faiz has this weird tendency to let unnecessary scenes play out, while having the most important ones clipped to the point of near meaninglessness. We really didn't need an almost ten minute scene of Takumi, Mari and dry cleaning dude sat in the park insulting one another. None of the characters know one another so we came out of this scene learning nothing, everything crucial characterwise also happens in the stronger second half of the episode.

Plus the sort of back up story of Yuka and her sister falls flat, because Yuka's sister, and subsequently her parents, are such complete and utter bastards that it feels like we've fallen into cartoonworld and all the intended poignancy of the drama is lost.

I'm actually not sure how I feel about the Orphenoch's any more either. I know it's only been four episodes and I was just praising them but I dunno when you see multiple Orphenoch's standing side by side, you start to realise how boring the all grey design is.