Saturday 24 August 2013

il sole penetra le illusioni ~ Day Break Illusion - Episode 8

This week in Madoka Illusion... sorry, Day Break Illusion, another spanner has been thrown into the works for our team of magical girls.

That spanner comes in the form of a phenomenon known as "pair annihilation", and put succinctly it means that meeting a Daemonia which shares the same Tarot Card as a magical girl means that regardless of the outcome of the battle said magical girl will be (as the name suggests) annihilated.  With no escape from this fate, the advice in such a scenario is simple - run.


Meanwhile, Cerebrum's plan seems to be accelerating apace, removing political opposition to his master with one hand while taking more than a passing interest in Akari for some reason with the other.  It isn't Akari but Ginka who is the focus of the next Daemonia attack however, and you can probably guess where this is going as she meets her "clone" - after running from their first battle, Ginka decides that she has no choice but to face this enemy despite it sealing her doom.

So, we can now add another item to the list of "things this series does to try and be as edgy as Madoka Magica", that being a requirement to start killing off its main cast.  This isn't necessarily a bad decision by any stretch of the imagination, but again this week's Day Break Illusion is lacking in its execution - as soon as it invokes the idea of pair annihilation we know exactly where the episode is headed, and given the way other character dynamics are set up there's no huge shock to find where the focus of this concept is.  Given that we still have no concrete idea as to what the forces of evil want or hope to achieve with their plans, even eight episodes in this series still feels like a case of stuff happening with no concrete reason as to why, and it's perhaps this above all else that is making it tough to actually care about anything going on within the show or regarding its cast.

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