Dantalian no Shoka – 07

There is no such thing as an ordinary book here.

To college with me in less than a week! Yaaaaaaay *sarcasm*! Ugh, I can’t believe it. It’s less than a week and I’m still not 100% sure where the place even is. I feel extremely unprepared. Orientation is in a couple days though, so maybe I’ll figure out wtf I’m doing then. ANYWAYS, on to Dantalian.

Well we know that Huey and Dalian will actually be in this episode, because it starts off in the Dantalian with little Huey and albino Dalian. Albino Dalian tells Huey to leave pretty much as soon as he gets there because she’s afraid that his soul will get stuck or something, but little Huey says that albino Dalian should come with him. While he adorably rambles about how he’ll take her on an airplane someday, albino Dalian ignores him and thinks about how if he hadn’t shown up, she would have never felt hope and etc. again.

Shotas visit her and she doesn’t have to worry about door to door salesmen. I see no down side.

We haven’t seen any dead people for a while, so the episode starts off with a whole alleyway full of them. Man wearing a top hat #1 stands there holding a bloody knife, while Man wearing a top hat #2 calls Man wearing a top hat #1 ‘Noth’ and says that he might have gone too far this time. Then Man wearing a top hat #2 drops his cigarette, causing the alleyway to light on fire and tells Noth that they’re going to go find the ingredients to make ‘that thing he loves’.

Dead people aside, Dalian and Huey stand in a ridiculously long line to buy bread. After they make it through, a blonde woman runs into the shop and after she sniffs Huey, she says he must be a good person. Apparently there are bad people chasing her, and when they show up, she just goes and takes the bread Huey just waited lord knows how long to buy and runs off. Wtf woman.

She also says that she knew he was a good person and that she’ll give back the bread if they manage to shake her pursuers before she runs off. However, she trips over a bag and the buns go flying. Way to go. It’s so idiotic that Huey facepalms and Dalian has a mental breakdown over the loss of her buns.

I agree Huey, I agree.

Later, Fiona (the blond woman from before)’s father apologizes for the trouble his daughter caused them. Huey is bro over the whole thing though and says that it’s fine because they were compensated for the bread. Apparently her father is the famous president of the Famenias of London, a company that makes cosmetics and specializes in perfume. Also, the daughter is actually a perfume designer and made the company’s best perfume called ‘Blue Trance’.

Huey notices that there’s a book on the bottle of Blue Trance and the president explains that there’s a story that the first president had a book that inspired him to make perfume. However, the president wasn’t that talented of a perfumer, so he gave the book to Fiona and never read it himself.

The only time it’s ever okay for a man to have/openly display a perfume collection.

Just then, a man shows up saying that a representative from Padauk Firm is there to talk to the president. Huey reacts to the name but doesn’t say anything to the president and instead asks to talk to Fiona again. It’s not until they’re outside that Huey explains to Dalian that Padauk is a company that poses as a firm, but is a crime organization that smuggles opium and such. It’s just not London without opium trade.

They head over to Fiona’s place, where she lives alone. She says that she doesn’t like being around people (which TOTALLY explains why she ran into a bakery full of them earlier), because she knows what they’re really thinking. Apparently she can smell emotions and proves her point by finding a hidden bun on Dalian, causing her to freak out and start calling Fiona ‘dog woman’. A weird looking cat suddenly crawls from underneath Dalian’s skirt and causes her to flee. Apparently cat is a perfume ingredient.

Huey asks why Fiona ran away and she answers it was to fight against her father because she doesn’t like how he’s been doing things lately. As if we couldn’t tell already because he’s been associating with opium dealers, her father has recently become money obsessed and he even put Blue Trance onto the market when Fiona told him not to because it was unfinished (how dare he!).

Cat musk and whale vomit. Remind me never to wear perfume again.

However, Fiona’s true goal isn’t just making things that smell good, but instead making a perfume that causes happiness. Since smell is a sense that brings back memories, she figures that she can make a perfume that brings back happy memories. Huey asks if he can see the Phantom Book she uses, but just then someone starts violently knocking on the door.

Some man missing half of his teeth staggers around drunkenly demanding something called Relic and Fiona is surprised that he even knows about it. The man says that the guy guarding the house ran back because Padauk is trying to kill the president. Fiona runs off and Huey and Dalian follow.

When they arrive, her father’s already dead and Man with a top hat #1 aka Noth is sitting on the couch waiting for them. He thanks Fiona for making Relic and she says that it was actually a mistake made when she created Blue Trance. Apparently Relic is something that stimulates the limbic system or something (gah if only I remembered more from Bio). So basically, she created a drug-like perfume that makes people high from smelling it.

Man with a top hat #2 (whose name is revealed to be Vance) shows up with the recipe for Relic and says that once they kill Fiona, they’ll be the only ones who know how to produce it. Huey pulls out his gun and has a fight with Noth. He manages to shoot Noth in the leg, but Relic also dulls pain apparently, so Huey shoots the bottle of Relic instead. Noth (with chunks of glass protruding from his face no less) gets pissed off and rushes at Huey, who shoots him in the arms and legs. However, nothing slows this guy down and Fiona gets stabbed while protecting Huey.

She throws a bottle of perfume at Noth that increases one’s sense of pain and one at Vance that hypnotizes people, putting both of them out of commission. Dalian them grants Huey permission to access the Dantalian and there’s a sped up unlocking scene. Huey reads a book that heals Fiona’s injures (and mends clothing too apparently) while Fiona says that she finally understands what her grandfather said about books having to return to their owners someday.

They try to explain that they weren’t there to make her return the book (I’m pretty sure they were only there to buy bread), but Fiona says that she’ll return it and then sprays something into Huey’s face that makes him pass out. When he comes to, Dalian is tied up and Fiona is gone with Vance (who’s still under hypnosis) to the Padauk Firm. However, she left them the key to her study so they can get the Phantom Book back.

When they get to the mansion, everyone is dead and it looks like they were fighting amongst themselves under the influence of perfume. They find Fiona in the middle of it, who says that she didn’t want them to see her like this, because this is her way of atoning for making Relic. She knew that Relic was dangerous, but she gave the recipe to her father anyways, so she feels guilty. Fiona then collapses and Huey notices that she’s been shot.

She says that this is her punishment for using the perfume for her own gain (she gave her father Relic so her could keep the company and she would have a place in it). Also she says that she knows that Phantom Books can’t save a person’s life more than once, but Dalian says that they’ll get her to a hospital soon. Fiona smells a lie however and passes away shortly after thanking Dalian for her concern.

Afterwards, Fiona’s place is set on fire and Dalian says that maybe it’s for the best because Fiona was the only one who could read the book lent out because it chose her as its owner. Also, the smell from the fire apparently makes everyone happy. The episode ends with an image of the Phantom Book burning away in the fire.

Another day, another house of dead people to run away from and pretend never happened.

End Thoughts: At first, I totally thought they were watching the mansion of dead people burn down and people were feeling happy over the smell of burnt flesh, but thank god that wasn’t the case. AND WHAT A WASTE OF THE BOOK! How could they just sit back and let it burn? They had to have gone over there to start the damn fire, why would they destroy the book as well??? From my understanding, the books can have more than one owner they choose in their lifetime, so the excuse saying that it chose Fiona doesn’t even make sense. As for Fiona’s character, I could care less that she died. Admittedly, her character got less annoying as the episode went on, but I hated her in the beginning. You don’t just take someone’s bread for no reason and just run off. She didn’t even apologize and then stole Dalian’s bread later on again. How is this acceptable?! Do I even have to mention the large amount of blonde people in this show?

Compared to last episode, this one just wasn’t as good. I just don’t like Huey as much as I like Hal (don’t get me wrong, I like Huey a lot too, but Hal is a kuudere and has glasses appeals to me more as a character). However, in terms of the anime so far, this episode was pretty awesome. The fight scene between Noth and Huey was excellent and the fact that the female character WASN’T a yandere for once is refreshing in itself. I love yanderes and all, but if you have one per episode, it starts getting a bit dull. One problem I had with this whole thing was that smell travels. You’d think that Huey would have been hit by the pain increasing perfume too. Anyways, other highlights of the episode included little Huey being ADORABLE and Vance. What a waste of a bishie though. Shame he had 0 character development and just kind of died.

So I’ve started reading the light novel, and from the looks of it, they’re just animating the chapters at random. They’ve skipped over a bunch of them and  also, the Book of Wisdom chapter came before the Turn up Book chapter in the novels. But I guess the chapters can be read in any order, so it doesn’t really affect the storyline that much (though that just means that there will be like, very little to no character development. Sigh.). Another thing that’s different from the novels is that where in the anime, it seems like no one except for Huey and Dalian (and while we’re at it, Hal and Flam) can handle the books, while in the novel, Dalian goes about lending them out to whoever (half of the plot is her going around collecting them back) and as long as they’re the rightful owner, the book doesn’t kill them. This makes the random sentai book rangers from a couple episodes before make A LOT more sense and makes Hal more of an antihero because he’s going around destroying anyone who’s been in contact with the books. Another random thing the anime never got into is that apparently Dalian’s dress is supposed to be some weird armor-dress hybrid (think Yuu from Kore wa Zombie), so there’s actually an explanation as to why her feet look so weird. Those are metal boots she’s wearing.

Preview: So from the sounds of it, Camilla (who by the way, is far superior in the novels than she is in the anime even if she is a Mamiko Noto character) is making a return. Tsundere Dalian mode is go!

But whatever happened to book 8?

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.