[Thessair]

13: Makito and Kai get the awards for being stupid and a tool, respectively this episode. Urara, at least, seems to be developing some sort of reasonable sense of real world responsibility, but I'm not sure how long any character development will last since Kai seems to revert back every episode or so. I'm not sure about Urara beating herself up about not trusting the rest of them because, let's face it, most of them are kind of useless from a non-monster fighting perspective. The lottery thing would have been a more logical thing to castigate herself over, but Tsubasa silver lined that cloud. Another point in Tsubasa's favor, methinks. Ogre was eminently forgettable, but at least we've started a recognizable multi-episode arc.

14: Houka's still pretty obnoxious about butting in whenever anyone tries to have a relationship outside of the family. Makito's actor is still hamming it up every scene. This family really tends to go overboard, as the training scene shows. The villain's training scene seemed less dangerous in comparison. Tsubasa may make a bad decision sometimes, but he and Urara have seemed the least selfish characters these last few episodes. Although Kai looks to grow up again a little bit, I have little faith he won't roll back into his old self next episode. Ghoul's turn is a little more memorable than Ogre's if only because he seems to get more story focus. The Old West town seemed out of place and MagiPunch was pretty silly, but I can see how that whole sequence would have appealed to kids. Also, Mare seemed to be more independent this episode and less of a parrot. A taste of things to come or an inconsistency in the writing? I guess we'll see.

15: We're continuing to move into the bigger picture of the series story here, I think. The whole wedding thing seemed kind of pointless. I suppose it was there to provide insight in Houka's character and if I didn't find her terribly grating, it might have been more enjoyable. As it is, the episode focused on my two least favorite characters but at least Makito managed to be a little amusing when he was blowing his stack. The best part of this episode, I think, was the monster design. I liked it better than the previous two, although that may have just been the nifty red skull element.

In summary: We're finally getting into a longer range story and we're finally really getting some decent insight into who the characters are, even if their character growth rarely seems to last.

One thing I've been meaning to ask since I started watching this: is there some reason the two females are the only ones with white legs on their costumes? It just seems odd.