Dantalian no Shoka – 02

Normally, reaching for a loli’s chest would only serve to get you arrested

I just learned that Hiroshi Kamiya and Miyuki Sawashiro are going to be in Black Rock Shooter the Game. …Now I’m torn. Do I wait for the English version by Nis and hope that they retain the Japanese voices, or do I buy the Japanese version and attempt to play with my limited knowledge of Japanese…? Sigh. Well, either way, they’re making money off of me. So yeah, on to Ono Daisuke and books.

Just like the last episode, we see shota Hugh and (someone who I assume to be) albino Dalian inside the hole in Dalian’s chest. Albino Dalian gives shota Hugh two books (well, a book and a stone slab) and tells him to leave before the Bibliotheca closes. She looks a little sad, but Hugh says that he’ll be back.

Seriously. The visuals here are stunning.

We get to see the opening for the first time and the music is absolutely beautiful. The animation even features the lyrics in Japanese on the bottom just in case you’re not fluent in Latin or whatever language the song is (I’m pretty sure the song title translates to ‘The unknown tomorrow’ or something similar in Latin anyways).

Afterwards, Dalian and Hugh are in a different house talking to a woman named Estella Lilburn about some job she wanted his grandfather to do. Hugh explains that he took over his grandfather’s line of work (whatever he did) and says that Dalian was interested in seeing the (now deceased) Colonel’s library anyways. During all this, Dalian acts like a massive tsundere.

She even looks like a tsundere.

Estella leads them to the library and asks for Hugh to determine the value of the books (lord that sounds tedious) there.  Hugh hears music and Estella explains that her grandfather made music boxes, so the clock incorporates some of his work. She leaves and as Hugh works, he expresses his concern for her having to live in the middle of nowhere. It turns out that Dalian has a problem with Estella because she has bigger boobs then her or something and complains that Hugh likes her because of her hair.  Oh Dalian, everyone knows that tsunderes are usually flat. You were screwed from the start.

Estella’s uncle, Mr. Geese (which sounds strange when said in a Japanese accent) comes in and Hugh immediately starts complaining about Estella’s living conditions. However, she is not living in the mountains because she wants to, but instead because of some curse. Everyone who has tried to take her away from the mansion has been murdered including several fiancés and her parents.

So since they can’t find the killer, they decided to do the next best thing: Blame the murders on an inanimate object. Geese says that a hidden cursed book of the Colonel’s is the cause of all the death around there.

Hugh does a bit of research and turns out that the first murders happened 50 years ago, stopped mysteriously, and then started again around Estella. Dalian says that there’s no way for a book to curse someone, but Hugh remains unconvinced. He then sees Estella and Geese outside but Dalian just brushes it off as incest.

Dalian then reinforces her position as the tsundere character by obviously being afraid of the curse, but not wanting to admit it and refusing to leave Hugh’s room. This doesn’t last long however, because the clock music starts playing and they hear the sounds of someone dying.

They rush outside to see Geese being carried by some rock golem thing and Estella just kind of standing there covered in his blood. Hugh tries to get rid of it the same way he solves all of his magic related problems- by shooting at it. However, the bullets are deflected and the golem carries the body off. Hugh asks if Stella is okay, but she’s more concerned about the blood on her clothing and turns around calls out to nowhere for her grandmother to forgive her.  Also, Hugh notices that she’s smiling like a yandere, but thinks NOTHING of it.

The next day, Hugh suits up to go look for a way to remove the curse. Dalian tells him that he’s just wasting his time though. She explains that there is no such thing as a cursed book and that while the golem was created by a Phantom Book, it has no will of its own and that the master of the book is telling it to kill people.

Dalian begins to run off to find the Phantom Book, but Hugh stops her and asks her what something she put in his coat is. She doesn’t answer him though and he just follows her to look for the book.

They check the library first and Hugh finds nothing while Dalian sits in a chair reading. When asked about it, she learns that Lilburn’s wife was descended from illegal immigrants who were later banished to another country when it was found that their passports were fake a bunch of mysterious serial murders happened on their property.

Estella then comes in with a random thing of meat asking if they’re hungry. She seems unfazed by her uncle’s death and calmly states that all of the servants who came with her uncle vanished because they thought they wouldn’t be paid with their employer dead.

She then asks that Hugh call her by her first name and asks if he’ll stay with her forever. He still doesn’t call her by her first name though, so she breaks a plate and stabs him. She admits that she killed her uncle because he was going to stop visiting her and then the golem then breaks through the library wall.

Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever…

Hugh has a knife sticking out of his side and sees the employee’s corpses on the ground, but still doesn’t seem to understand that Estella is behind all the murders. Dalian has to explain that Estella was born from a family with natural homicidal tendencies and that her grandfather created the golem to hide evidence like any good family member would do. Also, Hugh survives the stabbing because Dalian put a book inside his jacket pocket. Smart girl!

“It’s only a flesh wound.”

They recycle the scene with Hugh reaching inside Dalian’s chest, but this time he pulls out the two books from the beginning instead of one. He reads the first one to create a barrier so the golem can’t touch him. Dalian tells him to read the second and it creates lighting that strikes the golem, destroying an arm.

While we get some sexy heavy breathing from Ono, the golem gets up again. Dalian explains that in order to stop it, they need to figure out the 72 sacred notes controlling it. Hugh has a flash of inspiration and asks Dalian if the notes need to be written as words. She explains that they don’t and Hugh reads the second book again to destroy the clock tower that her grandfather made.

“Thank god I took hieroglyphics in school, or else we would have been screwed”

Thanks to blowing up the building twice, it begins to collapse and Hugh and Dalian once again decide to leave a building full of dead people. They tell Estella to come with them, but she stays behind so that she can ‘be with everyone’ (forever and ever and ever). Silly yandere. Later, Hugh reads an article in the paper about the serial murders and wonders about the curse. Dalian speculates that they became homicidal because of having strict and unusual upbringings and that the curse was man made. Also, Dalian has put her hair up to make her look more like Estella. Derederedere~

Final Thoughts:

Oh lord, don’t tell me that they’re going to recycle that whole ‘unlocking’ scene every episode. It was hard enough to watch the first time, let alone once a week. Anyways, that was probably the most annoying part of the episode for me aside from Dalian’s bitching and Hugh being oblivious. SHE HAD A FRIGGING YANDERE SMILE, BUT HE IGNORED IT COMPLETELY. Men. Sigh. Dalian was both endearing and annoying this episode. The beginning tsundere was pretty annoying, but some of her comments while she was tsundereing in the middle and end were extremely amusing. She’s either being a bitch or she’s being awesome. There doesn’t seem to be an in between point. I’m wondering about the albino Dalian, but that could just be her inner self. The color scheme between the two seems to be the negatives for each other so I’m thinking that’s it.

Hooray for yanderes! I could totally see who the killer was from a mile away, but it didn’t make this episode any less entertaining. I’m wondering about future episodes though. Is this series going to continue blaming magical books for all of their problems? That might get annoying. The atmosphere was really impressive, like the first episode though and the animation was pretty smooth again too. Really, the only thing I didn’t like were the choices the characters made, but there’s nothing that Gainax can do about that, so I’ll stop complaining. For now.

Preview:

A shot of a green house and more random pictures of somewhere in Europe. An evil plant book? More houses of dead people?