Xebek’s Blog

Kanade is captured and the SSS must fight to rescue her.

Impressions:

This series keeps throwing me off. I thought for a moment that the duplicate Tenshi would remain an opponent for a bit longer than this. Instead she just became another one episode villain that is now gone. I suppose she could only remain a threat for a certain period of time. With the ability to continue using harmonics over and over it would have meant an army that the SSS would have no hope of even surviving against. Kanade alone is a pretty tough opponent and if you just add a couple it would be completely one-sided. Still that girl did show a pretty dangerous and sadistic side. I mean there were plenty of grins when she stabbed and injured various members of the SSS during the episode. It’s a good thing that Kanade acts based on defense since otherwise things would end badly.

I think the episode did manage to give a sense of danger that can sometimes be lacking in the series. Even if the characters can’t die from serious injuries the consequences of losing this battle would be a kind of death. They could easily be restrained and forced to behave and thus vanish. The other option would be getting killed over and over again. While the SSS can recover from injuries they do feel pain. It would be a nightmare to constantly feel mortal injuries with the only break being some recovery time.

At least Otonashi making it to the end this time didn’t feel like a fluke. It was recognized that Kanade would react the best to him and so he had to be one of those who survived. Yuri being the leader obviously had to get to a certain point and she put up an amazing fight against that Tenshi duplicate. The key to victory was tactics and counting on that new move being used eventually. One could say Yuri was pretty merciless at the end, but with someone who can recover there wasn’t much of an option. The worst situation would be having that duplicate get past her and attacking Otonashi. If he went down then the mission would have failed and they all would eventually vanish.

Still some comedy moments that filled up the episode. For some reason do have fun with Hinata and Yui’s antics. She kicks the guy’s ass and then acts so sad about his great sacrifice. That girl can really flip the switch from energetic to just plain rude.

Theories:

Virtual Reality – The instruction manual does make this theory a little interesting. I mean we know that Kanade makes her abilities, but that manual brings up some possibilities. If she was supposed to keep the peace then being given instructions on how to adjust the world might make some sense. Although if it was a virtual world you’d think the information would just be on a file on her computer.

Purgatory – Really the instruction manual doesn’t hurt this theory too badly. It wouldn’t be the first time God left instructions. Leaving it in that book form might just be a way God would choose to do that.