Zetsuen no Tempest - Episode 11

Whee~

In hindsight, I find it amusing how I was quite close to dropping this series early on because of how boring it was. At this point, I'm really glad I didn't. Despite two consecutive dialogue-filled episodes, I was thoroughly immersed in the debate between Yoshino and Samon. To me, the whole scene reminded me of a courtroom, with Mahiro as the judge who has the final say on who he thought was "right". As a viewer, the exchange forced me to think about it myself too, analyzing each party's claims and determining if they were logical or not, which I found to be quite enjoyable. Right now, I wouldn't mind if next week's episode was more or less the same format given how much I liked this one.

The thing I enjoyed most about the episode was how the level of suspense continued to rise, with no signs of letting up just yet. Early on, I was sure Yoshino would be able to think of a way to bring Hakaze back after hearing his reasonable explanation about using her bones as the medium for time travel. But then, Samon started to ramble and I knew it was to buy time for his men to find out about the killer, although I didn't think it'd be enough. However, when Tetsuma informed him that the search was complete, I quickly jumped ships and predicted a Kusaribe clan (minus Hakaze) victory... that is, until the slightly predictable but still surprising revelation that Aika's killer is not in the Kusaribe clan. At that moment, three possibilities came to mind: Hakaze killed her (She could easily use magic to cover her tracks. But then the question becomes, why would she do it?), Junichirō killed her (He's not in the Kusaribe clan and he's shown that his powers rival, and possibly even exceed, that of mages. The same question of "Why?" also applies here, however.), Aika committed suicide, with the last the one I leaned towards the most. But as expected, none of these appear to be the case and it seems it's actually a new character—possibly the antithesis of Hakaze—who's responsible. To top of these twists and turns, the episode ends right there, leaving me with an unwanted cliffhanger.

While this might sound crazy, there's a part of me that thinks Aika is the mage of the Zetsuen no Ki, assuming she "killed herself" and somehow ended up reviving along with the tree itself. If that does end up being the case, the possibilities for moving the story forward will almost be endless. Among others, the two notable conflicts that could occur as a result of this would be: One, Hakaze vs. Aika to determine the fate of the world, and two, Yoshino vs. Mahiro, assuming Mahiro finds out about Yoshino's relationship with Aika somehow. It'll be hard to wait one week to find out about the real identity of Aika's killer and the mystery mage.