Xebek’s Blog

Everyone prepares to fight off the oncoming war from Albion, while Saito deals with what to do, as the solar eclipse is on the day of the attack.

Summary:

• We see Henrietta going over with some important people about the oncoming attack. She says how they will not surrender, that they will fight because surrendering is worse then death.
• The students are all informed of the war, and told that school will be closed. Louise storms off determined, and after going to her room where Saito is sleeping and saying goodbye, heads off.
• Saito wakes up the next morning to see a note from Louise saying that he is fired. Saito goes out and sees Kirche and asks if she knows what happened to Louise. Saito is informed about the war, which is news to him.
• Louise is before Henrietta, offering her service to her for the war. We see that over Siesta’s village, a huge war-airship flies overhead. Henrietta is informed and her, Louise and all the rest of the military go off to fight it.
• Back at school, Colbert arrives with barrels full of gasoline for Saito. After Saito fills up the plane, he takes off as it is the day of the solar eclipse, but after hearing how the war has already started, gets in the plane and takes off for the battlefield.
• The fight begins as Albion seems to be easily beating all of Torstein’s forces. Eventually, they all hear some roar and Saito appears in the plane and begins to shoot down all the enemy dragons.
• Eventually Ward and Fouquet depart to fight in their part, as Saito has finished all the rest of the dragons he now faces off against Ward, as Fouquet fights all the forces on the ground. Kirche and Tabitha arrive, who followed on Tabitha’s familiar, and Guiche who was there fighting teams up with Kirche and Tabitha, and a joint effort by them they are able to defeat Fouquet.
• Louise is taken up in the air by Tabitha and jumps down on Saito’s plane with some help being levitated by Tabitha. Saito grabs her saying how dangerous that was. Saito pulls her in the cockpit and faces off against ward saying how it doesn’t matter that he is Gundalfr, he is Zero no Tsukaima, Zero’s Familiar.
• Although Saito is out of ammo, this charge of energy causes his rune on his hand to activate, and it powers Louise up, awakening her void powers. Louise powers up a spell and eventually blows Ward away, and destroying him and the battle-airship.
• Because of damage sustained, Saito crash lands the plane. He sees the solar eclipse end above him and just smiles and looks down at Louise. The two of them sit in a field together, Louise saying how stupid he was for doing all that, that she said he was fired. She then kisses him and the two of them sit there and hold the kiss. Louise then says that that is just proof of their renewed contract.

Impressions:

I loved the ending. It was everything I expected and then more. Although I was a tad bit off on Saito having a choice after helping in the fight to go back to his own world, he still kind of decided on this world by helping out. That aside, I just thought the ending fit. They showed so much character advancement in Louise and Saito’s feelings that anything other then this would make the series no where near as good. The kiss at the end was great, as it was the first kiss Louise initiated that was because of love not because of the contract. Although to hide her feeling she said it was for the contract it obviously wasn’t.

I do think there is some hope for a second series. I know this is based off of novels and that means that there is likely some material left that they can animate. I can easily picture some scene in the next season of Louise accidentally doing something to temporarily bring herself, Saito and Kirche, Tabitha and Guiche to Saito’s world. I can just see them seeing all the things and thinking they are amazing or using magic. Not only that I just really loved this series o lets hope for another season!

One thing I have to say is go Henrietta! She was awesome in this episode, and not just her outfit was amazing…um…amazing, but the way she took charge like that saying how they won’t surrender and even taking charge of the military itself surprised me. I’m glad she wasn’t just some leader who sat back and ordered others; she took initiative and did things herself.

Another side note, I thought it was incredibly cool how Guiche, Kirche, and Tabitha all fought together against Fouquet. They actually showed teamwork and didn’t just attack her separately, but conjoined their efforts which were cool. I also thought for the first and only time in the whole series, Guiche was actually kind of cool. The look on his face and how serious he seemed when doing the rose petal thing and the oil part made him look cool, but then he went back to “him”

Final Words:

In a season full of mediocre to bad anime, which for the most part the summer season was, Zero no Tsukaima certainly was a fresh relief. Although I remember pretty much everyone ridiculing this show from the beginning, calling it a Harry Potter meets Shakugan no Shana anime, this show really has, I believe, rose above that. I can ho0nestly say the main thing I disliked about this show was that it wasn’t long enough, I wanted more. Not that I wasn’t satisfied with the ending, I loved the ending, it’s just that this show had charm to it that made it a truly great experience.

Overall, this show delivered what I expected, and then more. My one fear throughout this was that there would not be enough romantic advancement. I didn’t expect it to end with anything concrete, I just didn’t think they were going to show their feelings as much as they did and I’m more then glad they did. That’s the one thing that I found myself amazed with, especially in the last three episodes or so, was the huge advancement in feelings. Even though in the end they more or less returned to normal with the sporadic arguments, I think that is inevitable but they made more progress then I could have hoped for.

The comedy is defiantly something that stood out in this episode. Putting aside the overall advancement of feelings and such, this show had me laughing incredibly hard at so many times. Just looking back I can remember times such as when Saito basically frenched Henrietta when she was expecting a kiss on the hand. That among other stuff is also what made this show so enjoyable, the comedy was defiantly incorporated well throughout.