iz dat sum caramelldansen?

Sabrac’s battle was fantastic. Best one so far in Shana.

Whenever Wilhelmina was fighting Sabrac and dodging, I kept thinking, “Iz dat sum caramelldansen?” I know, I know, lame pun. I also can’t believe I’m writing a whole post because I can’t get this out of my head now.

image
image
image
image

When she deployed her magical bandages, not a half-bad chill moment. But what makes it great is that it combines a chill moment with the meido and bandages moe modes. Banzai!

(Bandages as a moe mode! How I missed you! For people who remember my old site (when I was using Movable Type and not b2/WP), bandages was one of the original moe modes. Wilhelmina wears them so nicely.)

image

Yuji not only summoned his inner gar, he turns into a master tactician in taking down Sabrac. Lulu and Sumeragi only wish they have his skills. Mmm… out of all the recent Sunrise anime, Lulu, Sumeragi, Nagi, and Keroro are the tacticians. My gosh, what an epic grouping.

image

Shana’s looking kinda cool. Periodic outfit changes are a great idea. Though, I did want to see her fight more as Dorothy.

image

Shana refusing to tell Yuji something before a major battle is getting old. Do they still do this in like volume 38 of the light novel? Are they worse than Keiichi and Belldandy?

image

Yoshida being useful… I think my head is going to explode.

image

I saw this eye-catch and thought… Shana looks like a boy. OTL.

19 Responses to “iz dat sum caramelldansen?”

  1. Yuji working out Sabrac so easily is kinda dubious, though. His precedecessor, Johann the genius, Wilhemina- who’s no slacker in terms of brains- and Pheles- who admittedly probably is- were chased by this guy for however long without working him out. Am I really supposed to believe Yuji the nub can come to a revelation that somehow eluded them?

    It feels like Yuji’s usefulness is being forced, rather than being sincere. Him kicking the ass of weak, crappy Tomagora was the same.

  2. I’ll restate the obvous and say that I wish there wasn’t 10 eps of bullshit so I could look forward to more than just 3 more eps of this good stuff.

  3. Yay for caramelldansen! I nearly fell out of my chair when chibi-Maria did it in Hayate.

    It’s these kind of episodes that make watching the previous ones at 2x speed when I’m half asleep worth it.

  4. I just got back from SXSW/Texas, and boy am I behind in my anime consumption. Plus the girls are looking REALLY good now. (i’m now in a “master of my domain” competition.)

    In that eyecatch, Shana totally looks like she’s in DBZ mode.

    Yeah. Wilhelmina looks REALLY good right now.

    ::camera pans to just above forehead::

    I can has Carmel-san?

  5. Best battle in SnS yet? Agree.
    Fantastic? Disagree.

    Pacing was poor, constantly broken up by flashbacks to the planning session. It sorta worked, but was anything but epic. Would have been better done in chronological order.

    Animation was horrible, horrible, mind-bendingly horrible. Who did they farm this out to, the Rosario + Vampire team from Gonzo? The eyecatch wasn’t the only time Shana looked like a boy; it happened again during her final attack. Naruto is not a moe mode. The rest of it was first-season SnS-level.

    Logic holes. If Jo-hands worked out the bandages, why the hell didn’t Willhelmina have them when Johannes was killed? Oh wait, that does kind of overlook the fact that she wasn’t there when it happened… yet she’d been traveling with them earlier (guess she left to shop for a new maid outfit) and referred to Sabrac as HER arch-nemisis — yet it was Johannes he was out to kill. Um…and why was that? It was explained somewhere, right?

    Exactly what was Yoshida doing? I thought at first that she was tracking down “concentrations of Sabrac” or nodes that the singular “brain” drew its power through. Marjorie was putting spell insignia over each node Yoshida saw and they’d activate them all at once to cut the connection. Ok, fine. I can barely credit that, since Yoshida is magically attuned to the city in some weird way. But instead they used the spell to physically rip a whole section of the city up? WTF?

    The music when they sprung the trap… Given that we have only five episodes (if that ) to go, and they’re swinging back to the angst for next episode with two major plot elements unresolved, did we just see the BIG PAYOFF? If so, the bad animation was only exceeded by the bad pacing. (Hey, after ten insanely painful freaking episodes of angst, I am not willing to bet against it.)

    And that huge fireball that killed Sabrac… did Shana let Alistor out again? That’s sure what it looked like.

    Oh whatever. I wanted so bad to go “Yeah, finally, an episode that rocked!” but the harder I looked at it, the crappier it looked. Much h8 for JCS.

  6. @ ubu

    Animation wasn’t really horrible to me but I have to admit I’m not one to notice things like that unless its extremely horrible.
    And about those plotholes: Sabrac and Multiple Fetish Maid have fought constantly and had mutual respect for each other. Yeh maybe his main target wasn’t always her but I have to admit to me when you take the whole Mutual respect and old violent history together calling each other arch-nemesis isn’t TOO far off.

    While probably the best fight in the series I still think the best moment was when THE Big Bad Knight came out to play….from Yuji’s stomach.

  7. I was wondering why I hadn’t found a Minami-ke caramelldansen yet. Less that two minutes later …

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHPTZsfyiM0

  8. Ubu: Too much hate, to start thinking logically, hmm? Wilhelmina actually mentioned that the spell insignia were just RECENTLY finished, meaning that, although Johann had most of the idea done before the ambush, the actual completion came many years later — which would have been too late to save him, in either case. As for Yoshida, she was actually helping Wilhemina guide Sabrac AWAY from where Margery was making those spell insignias — which, if you didn’t notice before, were actually in a circular fashion; ripping out the city was actually par for practice, as technically Sabrac WAS the city, or rather he was using it as an anchor for his PoE. And Shana’s fireball, well, she did say she was conserving her energy. Conveniently ignored? I think so.

  9. Jason: There are only 18 novels planned, and we’re at novel 16 right now with Seirei no Hebi Sakai Yuuji defeating Shana — along with everyone else — and bringing her to Seirei-den. It’s a sort of a defeat for Yoshida as well, since she was told flatly that Yuuji didn’t like her, and is sort of deep shock. That means only two more novels until it ends.

  10. And after seeing spoilers for ep22 (on dl now), I stand by my conclusions. WTF? Oh, I exaggerated a bit on the animation quality; it wasn’t quite R+V level, but I’m still hung over from that ten episodes of dreary, drenched-in-angst kill-me-now pain, thank you very little. The needed to recover to Gurren Lagen or Kannon 2006 levels to salvage the series, but instead they’ve almost reached Simoun.

    That’s not a compliment, btw.

  11. Sabrac’s battle was indeed the best one yet. My favorite part was when Margery set everything off with, “It’s your mother who showed up!” Ah, priceless. I just finished episode 22 btw, and it looks like they’re setting everything up for the grand finale just like the first season. In addition to finding out that a certain someone isn’t dead yet, I got to hear the most fantastic line in anime to date: “Kazumi, teach me how to make babies”. I almost died, but managed to pull myself back somehow.

  12. Looks like the end of Book 14 for this season, so this is the home stretch. Still, how they’ll handle the climax of that volume, uh, needs to be seen, what with the Reiji Maigo being ripped out of Yuuji to be given to Silver, the ‘new’ vessel for the Snake of the Festival.

  13. Ah, and the “How are babies made?” line of questioning from Shana was really priceless, especially since everyone seemed to dance around the question.

  14. >> Are they worse than Keiichi and Belldandy?

    Yes, they’re worse – at least Keiichi and Belldandy have admitted their love, and are secure in it… even if they choose not to take it a few more steps beyond where they have; they made that choice consciously.

    Yuuji, on the other hand, has about as much perceptiveness as one of Keiichi’s wrenches, and is almost as blind AND dumb.

    Now, Wilhemina isn’t exactly MOE in those bandages… but her figure made them work, sorta like Abiru’s in SZS/ZSZS. Mmm…. vimmin with melonpan wearing fetish bandages… ;)

  15. Was this the episode with all those pantsu shots… I think so, but yes, Wilhelmina + bandage mode = GLORY

  16. In that last eyecatch, Shana reminded me of Lina with the ragna blade. She has the right haircolor, expression, lacking melonpan and all, just needs a headband and a different costume.

  17. Yuuji finally redeemed himself, but somehow him turning into Sumeragi or Lelouch is rather weird. I expected him to be a fighter, yes. But a strategist? That’s really something that came out of the blue. How can he be such a strategist yet still so uber clueless!??

  18. It’s funny, since Yuuji has always been perceptive, but only with regards to the world that Flame Hazes and Tomogara; with relationships, he’s completely clueless.

  19. An episode so good I creamed my pants. Twice.
    Too bad there really are only 3 episodes left to the season. From what I’ve been skimming over in the comments, if they have a 3rd season, it will be the last? Wow. 3rd season better be non-stop action, otherwise it wouldn’t do the Shana franchise justice :(

    Very good episode. Looking forward to shitty boring Christmas Eve episode LOL OH NO.

Leave a Reply