High School DxD BorN – 11
Oh Asia, you just don’t know what you’re getting yourself into there…
As we continue with this anime original storyline to finish up the season, can Issei find a way to save Rias?
Political Problems
Somebody has a plan
The Dimensional Gap is not a place to be trifled with. And so far only one group seems to be able to traverse it. So it’s only natural that Issei and crew would think of looking to Vali for help in getting there, if that’s where Rias is. That’s… gonna cause some problems, tho. Just like I mentioned that Issei killing Diadora would have been bad for Rias and Sirzechs, Issei going to Vali, who is the face of the Chaos Brigade to the Underworld (even if I barely consider him as part of the Chaos Brigade even at this point in the story arc), would have really bad optics, and so Sirzechs puts the veto on it.
Sirzechs gets the cover he needs
Or at least tries to, only to get the end run by Azazel. He (rightly) argues that it only matters if they get caught, and even if they do, he’ll give them an out by accepting everyone as a Fallen Angel. Or maybe he’d make up something new, like a Fallen Devil (since the actual difference between an Angel and a Fallen Angel seems to be limited to color of wings and amount of moralistic baggage to carry around, it shouldn’t be very hard to make a new group of Fallen Devils). But with Azazel covering their back politically, Sirzechs really doesn’t have an objection. I gotta say that this is exactly like the kind of thinking that Azazel would come up with.
The scene with Vali is the kind of thing that lends credence to my thoughts that even if he’s ‘in’ the Chaos Brigade, he’s not really ‘with’ the Chaos Brigade. The fact that he’s interested in Issei, and would tag along with Kuroka (I don’t really buy the ‘not trusting Kuroka’ line, either) to see what happens is indicative of his and his team’s renegade nature. He doesn’t want to fight Issei, at least not for a long time (plus, then he probably wouldn’t get to fight Great Red). So we get a bunch of posturing between him and Issei about fighting, when neither one wants to, and to be honest, they’re both starting to like each other a bit more.
Girlfriend Trouble
Nifty colors and the visual cues work pretty well
I don’t know how much insight there is to be gained by the second half of the episode (and there you go for the Rossweisse eyecatch, belatkuro 🙂 ). It’s interesting, but not particularly earth-shattering, to find out that the Dimensional Gap, or at least the field that Arthur makes for them, responds to the feelings of the people in it. And while it makes it convenient for the group of devils here, since that essentially pulls Rias to them, it also raises an interesting question for me as to how Arthur, Bikou, and Vali found Asia. Was it really just ‘passing by’? Or was it something about that group’s feelings toward the Gremory Group that caused them to encounter her?
She *does want to be saved, but maybe by a different way than Nanoha would…
I was a little disappointed that it comes down to just a fight between Rias and Issei. The false hope part wasn’t particularly great either, in that “Hey, Rias is snapping out of it… oh, no, she’s just moving to a different form”. I don’t think there was any deeper significance in the use of her Issei kinda-look-alike armor, except that it wasn’t cute or sexy at all, and didn’t look very cool. Just kinda… lame. And I was also disappointed that Akeno didn’t push the issue with Issei anymore: The reason of “Rias definitely wants you to save her” is ok, but I was kind of hoping that it would be more “Because you love her and she loves you.” But that would be mentioning out loud the elephant in the room, wouldn’t it.
Not exactly the most inspired look
I don’t know if I’m a big fan of this “let’s fight it out” ending, although I guess you can’t really expect anything different. We’ll see how the results of the fight go, although I think it’s pretty certain that the good guys will prevail. Loki really isn’t a factor here at all, so at least they didn’t come up with another fight for him, although why did he have a bunch of guys clearing through the rubble of the last fight?
About Highway
Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 33 comments
I don’t have many complaints about this episode, it just felt kinda dragged and slower than it should/could have been. It was a nice touch having Ajuka doing something to Ise though. Shows they are definitely willing to do v9 and 10.
Rias’s armor seems to be the same case as Loki’s and Fenrir’s design. Kind of cool concept but due to a low budget it doesn’t look good. Maybe next ep it’ll be better since the Finale normally has more attention to details, though I doubt it will look much better since it’s pretty much a metallic Kamui. lol
I think those guys excavating the rubble was to show the curse from Loki was using the fragment of the armor as a medium, so it was what enable Road to use a pseudo-BG.
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 33 comments
I meant Rias. Stupid phone.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Go Go Hentai Rangers~~~
She looks like Red Ranger.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
Also something has gone wrong with your RSS feed.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 110 comments
for the record we all say this all both loki & tom hiddleston faults for doing on s3 DxD.
indeed now giving dark side of rias her own iron man’s armor to fight issei.
yet all this trigger ragnarok got wonder did they put up missing posters sign for thor in it?
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
I Thor you!
HULK SMASH PUNY GOD!
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
As much as I LOVEEEE DxD I have to say this season wasn’t nearly as good as the previous two! They spent too much time dealing with Koneko and Asia and barely did anything for the whole Issei x Rias pairing or was that not the intention of this third season? IDK but yeah this season really had no WOW factor for me and became a giant mixture of mythologies mashed together just to make it “cool”
Yeah we got one more episode to go, but I don’t think they can do anything amazing or are they just going to set up a fourth season? From my experience that rarely happens with anime today and makes me think of the familiar of Zero and Shana since they both had four damn seasons or will we get some kind of DxD movie? Probably…I guess this would have been a better comment for the finale episode LOL
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 33 comments
Most of the development for Rias was extra content that wasn’t in the LNs at this point and the author thought it was needed. And they actually cut some of Akeno’s arc by dealing with it faster than it should.
I just hope they conclude this is the style of the ending of NEW, with something ridiculous, hilarious and oppai-related that happened in v6 or v7. Or both if I’m lucky. Too much seriousness isn’t good for D×D.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Honestly, IsseixRias is something that happens later after they get Koneko and Akeno and Asia over their problems. That said, there is a lot of IsseixRias development in the books in volumes 5,6, and 7 that they left out probably because it was more exposition and studying, and it’s not that obvious. Things like Issei being diverted from his training with Tannin to go spend a day with Lady Venerana learning Devil writing and history with Milicas. And a lot more “you need to learn this or do this to adequately be with Rias” which Issei continually misunderstands (idiot ball style) to be just because he’s uncouth compared to Kiba, not because Issei is going to be Rias’ husband. Everybody knows they’re going to end up married, but they’re also kind of “Wait, what? You haven’t confessed to her? She hasn’t confessed to you? You guys haven’t done it yet? What’s taking you so long?”
If they keep selling, I think they’ll keep making series. Remember that even if they get a fourth series, they’ll still be only up to the same amount of episodes that, say, Railgun or Index have had, and way fewer than Shanaseries?). There’s also material to adapt, although I think I might like it better if they stuck with the LN material more than they have this series.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Yeah that makes me a little mad because Railgun and Index have more light novel material to work with, but I always hear that chances for any third season is highly unlikely unless the real issue comes back to poor DVD sales? Then again I have no idea on that…
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
AFAIK, sales on the LNs for Index reached it’s peak, enough so that more animated series wouldn’t boost sales as much as they would like. I don’t know about the Railgun manga,that might be under a different structure, but I can’t imagine it being any different. From what I’ve seen the Accelerator manga hasn’t sold as well as they want either. So, the Index film was probably the last hurrah, barring OVA or something.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Railgun manga just wrapped up a great arc, but it updates once a month so it is a little hard to keep people interested.
Accelerator manga I haven’t read past chapter three so I dunno, yeah the Index movie is the last real content were going to get for a while, but the original creator is working on Heavy Object.
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
I feel cheated on the Ross eyecatch. She’s not fully naked on the second one while everyone else is. There’s also a severe lack of Ross cards on the mobage game while Kuroka gets quite a lot. Along with her misfortune this season by being left behind and it’s just not a good season for Ross.
Speaking of not a good season, this episode was just terrible. A lot of talking which just feels empty and repetitive. Even the action feels terrible. And not to mention the ton of plot holes this brought. The whole deal with the Dimension Gap wishing bullshit just contradicts everything that will happen in volume 12. Show ▼
Don’t get me started on the retarded BB Scale Mail of Rias.
Even with this, I still wish for a season 4. They bit off more than they can chew with trying to adapt 3 volumes in a season instead of the usual two. But I think that it’s so they can adapt 2 volumes, vols9 and 10, properly for the next season. The only relevant chapter in vol8 is the last one and they can fit that in one episode.
At least that’s what I think they want to do. It was a miracle to get a season 3 so season 4 is not impossible. Though the early sales predictions indicate that it will sell less than the previous seasons. The adaptation butchering seems to have hurt it after all.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I think they would have done better to keep it as a straight adaptation of the 3 LNs, maybe with the change of how they got Issei down from the Juggernaut Drive (rather than the corny Oppai Dragon song). I would rather have seen the Rating Game between Sitri and Gremory than this anime original “save Rias” Loki plot.
I don’t know if I agree that there’s a contradiction with volume 12, since the circumstances are much different. I agree that this episode was fairly weak, but we’ll see how they finish it out. I do agree that Volume 10 would be a great way to end a season, and would probably go with something like 3 episodes just for the final rating game.
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
If there’s still more LN material, why are they using anime-original stuff this season?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
For some reason, they just didn’t want to adapt the Sitri rating game. That took the main action part out of LN 5, which I don’t think would have been bad to have. As others have mentioned, they’ve apparently wanted to make Loki more of a villain, rather than the transient mook he was in LN 7, showing up, getting beaten, and then the rest of us move on with life. LN 7 is actually a good stopping point, so they didn’t want to get into 9 (8 is a side-story compilation), but they cut other stuff out and ended up with this.
It’s not the worst story in the world, but this episode kinda was flat due to too much talking.
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 33 comments
I heard Ishibumi regrets putting [Reverse] in the story so maybe that’s the reason. It never appeared again after the Diodora arc, so I think it’s possibly true.
I agree they put unnecessary dialogue into this, they could have cut this whole episode into half, use the other to conclude it, and then use the Extra Life from v8 as a finale.
At least this is not as bad as the Beelzebub or the Toriko adaptations. *shivers*
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
[Reverse] was a bit of an OP power (especially since it reversed whatever the will of the user was, rather than a consistent literal reversal), and he even tried to walk it back in the novel itself, using the excuse that it was too powerful and dangerous. Besides, in the same fight he introduced something similar with Tsubaki’s Mirror Alice, which is a much better (storywise) version of the ability.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…hmm, characters floating around in a vague nothingness…it seems indicative of the original story…