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You sometimes just have to love Brave10 for being a straight up battle anime with a lot of comedy, well an abundance of comedy for at least this episode. Unfortunately as far as story progression goes, this episode was a complete flop but there were some interesting aspects since character development is still in its early stages at this point in the anime.

It's actually quite unfortunate that this episode wasn't really great to watch for the action or the story itself- the bloody killing scenes seem to lose their charm and rather than becoming something cool and fun to watch, this week it just seemed to make the story more boring . The story itself seemed to be one of the most overplayed clich s in the action anime handbook; the sick, twisted enemy with a great bloodlust who seeks out an opponent like him to fight til a messy death is bestowed on of them. I'm all for a twisted enemy appearing but this time it didn't feel natural enough and kind of rushed since this type of thing usually occurs much later on when the main character starts to find enemies whom he can't defeat.

The most the story probably got out of this enemy would be the strengthening in bonds between Isanami and Saizo, especially after she stops him from brutally murdering the enemy in this episode. More than anything you get out of this episode is how hard the production company is trying to emphasize the love and trust Isanami has for the very much indifferent Saizo (well for the time being he's indifferent), probably a very subtle way to get through to the intended demographic of this series with the message "Come on, who doesn't want a hot naive girl following you around with nothing but faith in you."

 

As I mentioned earlier the comedy in the episode was quite good. I loved all the references to sex made by Isanami herself, which made her character even funnier and likeable just for the reason that she's no longer a 100% naive moron but rather a funnier character with a little bit of Yamada thing going on in this episode. The sleeping bag scene in particular was just pure comedy for boys regardless of gender and needles to say, I did chuckle.

Well that was about it for the episode. It didn't do greatly and I hope that the next one will be better since I still consider this series to be my favourite one of the winter season.