Zetsuen no Tempest - Episode 6

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We're at the halfway point now and I can say that I'm actually disappointed with the way things have went with this series. The direction of the story has gotten somewhat blurred; it's unclear whether the main focus is to identify Aika's murderer or to stop Samon from awakening the Zetsuen no Ki. Right now, the latter seems to be the topic at hand, but flashes of Aika in this episode beg to differ. Personally, I'd prefer it if Aika herself didn't show up this often. Then again, it's essentially only because of her that Yoshino and Mahiro continue to work together—the former for the sake of his girlfriend and the latter for the sake of his sister.

While part of my dislike for Aika stems from my personal discontent with the amount of flashbacks that she's given—I mean, she's dead. Why is she still showing up so much?—most of it has to do with what her character is like (or at least what the flashbacks make her out to be). It appears to me that she's one of those sadistic characters who like to take advantage of the people around them—Yoshino and Mahiro in this case. I wouldn't be surprised if, in reality, she didn't really love Yoshino and just dated him for her own personal gain. Yes, I realize jumping to negative conclusions like this is not a good practice, but with a character that rarely shows any emotion, there's not really much information to work with. That said, we might get to see more of her in the next episode via even more flashbacks.

And like I had suspected before, Junichirō is far from weak. While Mahiro put up a good fight against Natsumura in their fight, it merely took a split second for Junichirō to take down the spear-wielding mage. Seeing this makes me even more excited to see how much of an impact Junichirō will make in the upcoming battle. And as he currently has a neutral stance, who he chooses to side with will undoubtedly have the upper hand when that time comes. After what unfortunately looks to be an Aika-centered episode next week, I hope the story will begin to move forward once again.