In this episode we’re introduced to the Sylphs, another occupation in Aqua. I wasn’t expecting to see this kind of story in “ARIA”. Seeing something supernatural was one of the last things I would have expected from this series. Although I must say I really liked this episode. It was just an all around nice story. We get a bit of new information on Aqua’s history and this was just a nice way to present that information.

We finally get to the last episode of this mind-numbingly boring filler arc. When Lee got drunk I thought we would get to see him pull off some impressive moves like before. Unfortunately this time around it’s just borderline silly and it was a pretty short scene. Naruto seriously needs some new moves. Seeing his kagebunshin and its variations are only entertaining for so long. It’s not a surprise that we’re starting yet another filler story. Upon first impression it doesn’t look all that interesting.

To be quite honest I was expecting more action in this episode, considering the rate at which they tell the story. Overall it wasn’t a bad episode, it was just entirely spent on setting up the 3 separate fights. Now that most of the chitchat is over with (with the exception of Yoruichi and Soi Fong’s fight) I hope we’ll get around to some good action scenes in the next episode. They seem to be catching up to the manga quite quickly, so I do wonder what they intend on doing when they get too close. If they end up giving us lots of filler episodes I hope they don’t suck like “Naruto” ones.

This episode is probably as close to a fan service episode as we’ll get for the series. I thought there were some pretty funny moments in this episode. Two instances that come to mind. One of them is when Joshua runs towards Van and Wendy, Van randomly knees him in the stomach. The other scene was using the yoroi arrival BGM and its “transformation” sound effect for Wendy’s turtle. The censorship donkey was funny the first time, but after a while it just become a distraction. Although this is pretty much nothing but a filler episode, it was nice to see all the characters finally meet up.

So Tazusa finds one good use out of Peet in this episode. At this point Peet is still pretty much just a “ghost that inhabits her body”. This is probably the turning point for Tazusa. At least from the way they put it she’s going to nail the triple flip next time. Things will probably get more interesting from now on. I hope they go on to showing more of the other top skaters. It would be nice to learn more about them, just so we get a better feel of what Tazusa is up against.

We got brand new opening and ending songs this week. I don’t like the new opening song at all. Simply put, it sucks. The ending song isn’t anywhere as good as “Fly Away”. Luckily the rest of the episode was good. The biggest surprise for me was seeing Charles die so soon. I didn’t expect him to die so early, if at all. We end up with more questions than answers by the end of the episode. For instance, we don’t know why or how Nirvash moved on its own.

I was expecting to learn some more about the new characters in this episode. We don’t really get any new information this week. The key part of this episode didn’t happen until the very end. Fate and Nanoha got their upgraded weapons, Bardiche Assault and Raging Heart Excellion respectively. I thought we would get to see some action in this episode. Unfortunately they’re saving all the excitement for next week.

Once again we have an interesting episode. In this episode we learn how George came to adopt Saya. You can’t help but admire the guy’s resilience. We’re also told that David works for an organization called the Red Shield. Now that George is seriously wounded, possibly fatal, Saya will probably choose to fight the vampires. I hope he isn’t dead though. I think George is a good character. Of course there are still quite a few unanswered questions at this point. If we’re lucky we’ll get some of those questions answered over the next few weeks.

We meet a couple of new characters in this episode. From the looks of it at least 2 of them will be recurring characters. Uto looks like he’ll play a decently big part in the series. Using Shimono Hiro as the seiyuu for Uto was a good idea. The guy does a good job. But then again I may be biased since I thought he was awesome in “RahXephon”. The episode itself was pretty fun to watch. None of the parts really stood out for me, but it was fairly enjoyable the whole way through.

I’m glad to see that the series is getting more entertaining now. It seems like the mechanical-sounding guy who first appeared in the incident in the past is Reito from “Mai-HiME”. At this point we don’t really know what the real plot of the story is yet. I was looking forward to seeing the Nina and Arika fight, but it had to be cut short. It was going pretty well until Shizuru’s fight got in the way. But if this is a taste of the kind of action to come, then I think I’ll enjoy what this series has to offer.