[Switchblade]

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.

[Locke]

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.

[DrillBIT]

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.

[DrillBIT]

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).

[Barricade64]

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.

[Switchblade]

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).

[DrillBIT]

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.

[Dr Kain]

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.

[Switchblade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrillBIT

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.

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.

[Locke]

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

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."