What They Say:
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The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After a major cliffhanger and a two-week break, the last episode of Blast of Tempest ended up being mostly a recap episode. It was a lot better than a lot of full-on recap episodes, but I’m ready for some fully new material. This episode gives us that and, like the previous episode implied, things are looking better than they have been for a while.
While there wasn’t much new last time, there was a new cliffhanger to leave us wondering about things for a week, and this episode picks up right from that point. Samon wants Mahiro to kill Yoshino, and now we get plenty of time to find out why. The episode consists largely of cutting back and forth between Mahiro and Samon’s group, now including Evangeline, and the pair of Yoshino and Hakaze, then joined by a character we got a brief glimpse of last time, Hanemura. While Samon explains the situation and his group’s thoughts on what may be going on, Yoshino and Hakaze run into this new character, a boy who thinks he may be the “mage of Exodus” but isn’t sure of anything that’s going on. Samon’s theories involve the possibility of Yoshino serving the same role, which makes for some major uncertainty when he learns that this new person has emerged to fill that hole. This should force Samon to reevaluate the situation and come up with some new objectives, which would then change the course of this second half of the series from the direction that it seemed like it may have been heading toward.
One major development in character dynamics, beyond the obvious factors of Mahiro and Yoshino possibly becoming antagonistic toward each other, is that Hakaze is apparently in love with Yoshino, although she doesn’t know exactly how to deal with her own feelings, and Yoshino seems to be enough of an oblivious anime guy to not pick up on them at all, at least for right now. The way Hakaze becomes flustered over Yoshino stuck me the wrong way a little because of how much of a strong character she’s felt like for the entire series until now, but that’s made up for pretty quickly, when she challenges Hanemura to a sparring match to test his abilities and determine whether or not he is in fact the mage he suspects. This gives her a chance to shine like never before, and my fears are largely put to rest for the time being.
In Summary:
We finally move on to the main story progressing without looking back on the past too much, and things are moving along very nicely. I felt more interested in the motives, interactions, and inner thoughts of each character than I have in quite a while for this series. Things are back in a sort of setup phase as expected after such a huge event, but there are definitely big things happening within those constraints. Samon’s plans could lead to a major rift between the two allies we’ve been following at any point, and the battle between Hakaze and Hanemura actually allows the most important of the other characters to impress the audience in a more major way than even in the entire first half of the series. I’m definitely looking forward to see things continue to move along this track.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Toshiba Satellite L655-S5191 PSK2CU-1C301U Notebook PC.
