Dantalian no Shoka – 06

Demon libraries: No longer just for tsunderes.

Ugh, summer. Where did you go~? Anyways, finally back to more serious stuff after the joke of an episode last week. It was pretty epic despite the extreme lack of Huey and Dalian.

A new character (with a cowlick from hell) appears who is neither Huey nor blonde. He and a white haired loli wearing a straitjacket verbally abuse each other for a while before they head for a nearby town on a motorcycle.

Cowlick. From. Hell.

They drive around for a bit until female police officer stops them. She introduces herself as Mabel and says she heard a rumour about a guy in town on a motorcycle with a loli. Only then does she notice that the loli is wearing a straitjacket. The man says that the loli chooses to wear it herself and the loli says she does it to match his tastes (lol).

Mabel just kind of ignores this conversation and finally asks who they are. They finally introduce themselves as Hal and Flamberge (Flam for short). It turns out that Hal is looking for another lolicon person with a loli like him. He also explains that he’s a Libricide Officer (whatever that is) and he needs gasoline. Mabel invites the two complete strangers to stay at her house because the person who provides gas doesn’t come for two days.

Before that though, Mabel goes to pick up a few things at the pub first and the entire town seems to depend on her to do shit for them even though they’re capable of doing it themselves. Outside, she asks the loli with her arms bound to hold her bag for her (does this even make sense?) while Hal stares off into space. Flam notes that the town is strange while Hal comments on the amount of brothels around. Mabel explains that there were a lot of soldiers around during the war thanks to a nearby weapons factory, so that attracted prostitutes.

Hal then says that over 80 people have disappeared in this town since 2 years ago. Mabel denies that anyone has gone missing because she’s a cop but Hal mentions that the missing people are all outsiders of the town. Apparently Hal came to figure out if the man and loli he’s looking for are involved in any way.

They finally arrive at Mabel’s bigass house where they meet her grandparents and loli sister live. However, Patty-imouto freaks out when she sees Hal and Flam and tells them to go away. Flam jokes that Patty’s lolicon senses must have gone off and Hal says that he’s not a lolicon, but he’s taken an interest in her because them being there made her uncomfortable.

That night, Hal goes off on his own to investigate. After wandering through the forest for a while, he comes across a ‘DO NOT ENTER’ sign and ignores it only to find a ruined town. After noting that it looks like the town was destroyed in a fire, a female voice asks him what he’s doing there.

Hal turns around to find a prostitute, who then suggests they spend the night together.  However, Hal is immune to womanly charms (I’m bit hesitant to call him a kuudere though) and asks her why she’s out whoring in the middle of nowhere. She tries to ignore his question, but he asks again and says it’s suspicious because there are no men around there for her to earn money off of. Stunned that he figured this out (derp. It doesn’t take a genius.), she tries to poke out his eyes… Or something. Hal dodges easily enough but gets his neck cut in the process. Oh and the whore is a robot… doll… thing… yeah.

He uses martial arts to rip her arm out, but it continues attacking. The battle ends after he smashes the thing’s head into the ground causing it to shatter.

Daaaaaaaaaaaamn. Hal kicks ass.

When he returns in the morning, the grandparents greet him by saying “welcome home Mabel” and he finds Flam with Patty, who is shocked to see him alive. She tells him that the people who stayed there before never came back. Hal grabs his staff and Flam follows.

The head to the factory only to find it producing dolls instead of weapons. After kicking over a bunch of boxes, Hal explains that there’s a technique from Asia called ‘shikigami’ that allows dolls to move. He figures that Mabel was right about no one in town dying because any dead residents would be replaced by dolls that acted like they did in life.

They find Mabel, who asks when they figured this all out. Hal says after she approached them yesterday because they were purposely trying to attract attention to find anyone who had encountered a Biblioprincess before.

Mabel has a flashback to her and her unconscious sister watching the city being bombed. At that time, a man in a lab coat and a loli gave her a Phantom Book and told her to just rebuild what she lost.

Back in the present, Mabel says that the book that she received allowed the dolls to do whatever she wanted them to. Since so many people died in the bombing thanks to a gunpowder warehouse being blown up, she ordered the dolls to take the place of dead villagers. Everyone was happy with the dolls, so they just decided to rebuild the city next to the burnt down one and pretend that no one had died in the first place.

The one downside to this though was that the dolls could only deal with what they were programmed to do. If they faced a situation they didn’t know how to handle (like an outsider), they would try to get rid of it. Thus, all the missing people. Hal tells Mabel that she’s just clinging to a shadow of the past and that the town can never move on with her dolls everywhere.

Mabel says that she intends on protecting the village and the dolls start attacking Hal and Flam. They fight for a bit, but Flam says that fighting them all will take forever. Hal then has an unlocking scene with Flam which is only about half as awkward as Dalian’s (and that’s only because her clothing disappeared and she started screaming when he pulled a book out of her stomach). Mabel says that he’ll never have time to read it (….Then where does Huey get the time from?).

If your stomach starts emitting blue lighting, you should probably see a doctor.

 Hal just inserts into his staff though and it starts glowing. Yes, why read a book when you can get your talking staff that was blatantly ripped off from a popular magical girl series to do the work for you? The staff then shoots fire, burning the dolls away. Mabel notes that he’s using the Phantom Book as fuel and asks if he’s going to burn her book as well.

She also mentions that his staff of Surtr is an ancient on used by the titans or something and that one day it will engulf him in flames as well (how the hell does she know this?). Hal just says that it’s his fate as a Libricide Officer and hits her with flames as well.

Raising Heart’s less pink younger sibling.

The dolls all stop moving and Hal returns to Patty holding Mabel. She asks if she’s dead and Hal says that he only burned the part of her mind corrupted by the Phantom Book, so she’ll have no memories of the past 2 years. Also, apparently it’s his job to destroy Phantom Books. Before he leaves, Patty thanks him for bringing the town back to reality and the episode ends with them driving off into the sunset.

“…. It’s not what it looks like.”

Final Thoughts:

Do you know what the greatest thing about this episode was? LIMBS WERE RIPPED OFF BUT THERE WAS NO CENSORSHIP! Mind you they weren’t actually human, but still. YAY FOR NO STREAKS OF LIGHT! Oh, Hal and Flam are pretty badass too. It’s only been one episode, but I love both of their characters already. Are all Biblioprincess-keykeeper pairs this awesome? I mean, both team Huey-Dalian and team Hal-Flam (names non-canon. I can’t think of what else to call them) fit together so well, I just can’t see them being paired with anyone else. For example: Hal and Dalian working together would probably be a disaster. Speaking of, it seems that all of the Biblioprincesses have attitude XD. Flam was hilarious. She has a manlier image than Dalian, so it’s a nice contrast between the two. I wonder how they would all get along when put in the same room…

….I facepalmed through the whole talking magical staff thing though. Nanoha did it first guys (and she was just as badass). I seriously thought Hal was going to shout out “Divine Buster!” or something stupidly similar. But holy crap! He burns the books?! You mean they don’t even return to the library? What happens when Flam runs out? ….And just why does he burn them in the first place? Anyways, questions aside, I’m kind of disappointed that there was no inner Flam and Hal scene like albino Dalian always does. Maybe it’s just something Dalian has? I dunno. The storyline for this episode was kind of bland, but Hal and Flam made up for it (they also made up for the lack of Huey). I’m pretty curious about the red Biblioprincess and that other lolicon guy. It looks like they’re the ones starting shit everywhere so I wonder how this all ties in together.

Preview:

….Was that Hanazawa I heard speak there?

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.