Saturday 19 July 2008

Nabari no Ou - Episode 15

In all honesty Nabari no Ou has been a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to the quality of each individual episode, but I can't help noticing that it seems to work rather better when it descends into darker territory that during those more lightweight and humorous episodes - Thus, the end of episode fourteen held plenty of promise for this instalment.

While not proving to be as action packed as you may have expected, this particular episode throws some pretty big revelations at us regarding Aizawa, as well as seeing Miharu come close to unleashing the full power of the Shinrabanshou he carries with him. Eventually, all of this seems to play into the hands of Alya's headmaster, allowing him to give up the Kouga clan's kinjitsu scroll just as he wanted.


Overall, this proved to be a well paced and rather emotionally charged episode - Although the rather tepid relationship between Kairoushuu and Banten remains (far from the full-blown hatred between the factions you might expect), there's a fair amount to hold the viewer's interest here, and Aizawa's contribution both explains some of the happenings earlier in the series while also adding yet another intriguing angle to the series. Add to that Miharu's continued work with Kairoushuu, and you have yourself a pretty interesting episode.

In fairness, I built this series up so much as far as my own expectations were concerned early on that it was always going to struggle to match those expectations. Thus, with that in mind what we have here is a pretty decent series, that really does a rather good job when it manages to find its flow and not get too caught up in the minutiae of the plot. Things certainly seem to be picking up as the series progresses far as both pacing and plot development are concerned, so I just hope they can keep things up with the storyline that has enveloped the past two episodes now closed. Exceedingly slow episodes have plagued this series at times, so I really don't want to see any more 'wasted' instalments, but there now seems to be enough going on for the plot to continue to develop without too much concern regarding 'filler' or the like.

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