Zetsuen no Tempest - Episode 2

Here, have a random dead girl.

The pacing for this episode was much slower in comparison to the first. Most of the episode was spent emphasizing the fact that Mahiro is a revenge-crazed psycho who's a bit too full of himself, while Yoshino is a depressed teenager who has seemingly lost his direction in life right now due to the current happenings; the overall feel was quite melancholic. One thing that bothered me a lot was how both Mahiro and Yoshino seemed to know about the latter's relationship with Aika. It's so heavily implied by the tone of their conversation that it's almost as if their understanding of the situation is mutual yet they don't want to be the one who brings the topic up. To further go out on a limb here, I really feel that Yoshino is somehow responsible for (or at least involved in) Aika's death. It wouldn't surprise me if, in the end, once everything involving the Kusaribe clan has been dealt with, that Mahiro gets his chance to avenge his sister's death by killing her murderer, who turns out to be Yoshino; it'd be a nice plot twist, that's for sure.

Another random theory of mine is that Aika's not actually dead. Yeah, it's probably really unlikely, but given her seemingly deceptive personality (how she kept her relationship with Yoshino a secret from her brother), it's definitely not impossible. Who knows, she might just be a mage who used magic to fake her death? I mean, seeing as how regular humans can use magic with the help of talismans, one would wonder the extent of a real mage's powers.

As for Samon's plans, I'm interested in seeing how everything will fall into place. Will he actually succeed in awakening the Tree or will the protagonists be able to stop him beforehand? He hasn't had much screentime yet so it's difficult to predict his chances of succeeding with barely information on him. But as someone who seems like "final boss" material, he shouldn't go down that easily. Anyways, looking forward to the next episode.

Oh, it's HanaKana singing the ED. This should be good, right?

ED: It's a typical HanaKana song—light and fluffy with soft vocals. However, given that it's sung from Aika's perspective (or at least that's how it seems, judging from the ED animation), it really doesn't fit; Aika's character is way more dark. But in the end, it's HanaKana so I can still say I liked it.