This episode begins with English lessons, Pastel Ink is teaching Nao-kun, and Ruriko teaching Sumi, Nao’s lessons are going well, while Sumi’s lessons are going poorly, so poorly in fact that Ruriko tells her that if she doesn’t improve college might be out of the question. At the start of the episode Ink has gotten a cold from the night before and it’s getting worse, the next day at school Ink passes out on top of Sumi and has to be taken to the school’s infirmary.
The school nurse tells Ink that she has a fever and she must go home early to rest, Sumi happens to overhear this and feels that it’s her chance to go on a date with Nao. When Ink gets home she sees that her mother is out, and Ah-kun asks Ink if it’s all right if he goes out for a while, he tells Ink to rest and take care of her body. Later, Sumi decides to check on Ink and while she’s talking to her, Ink passes out again.
Sumi has to transform in order to carry Ink inside the house and Sumi struggles to care for Ink. Sumi changes Ink’s clothes and she wonders why she has to care for Ink, while walking around Ink’s room she spots a key chain that reminds her of something from the past.
Then Sumi remembers a time in the distant past when she was ill and Ink came to visit her and keep her company. Ink spent time talking with her and even read a book to her, later Ink gives Sumi her stuffed cat to keep her company, but Sumi was afraid to accept the gift for Ink, but Ink tells her to keep the black cat because she has the small white cat and they are close friends just like them.
Later that night Sumi has fallen asleep at Ink’s bedside, Ink wakes up and finds Sumi asleep by her, and Ink wakes Sumi up. Sumi tries to deny that she cares for Ink, but Ink thanks her for her help anyways, and Sumi tells Ink that she has to be going home now and leaves.
As Sumi is trying to sneak away from Ink’s house (she doesn’t want anyone to know that they are friends) she runs right into Remi, so Remi and Rina drag her with them to visit Ink. Ka-kun confronts Ah-kun at a park about Ah-kun searching for Alice-chan, and while they are talking Alice-chan’s partner (Na-kun) the rabbit stumbles up to them injured saying that the magical kingdom has collapsed, time is messed up and that they have to save Alice-chan. When Sumi returns home she falls ill with the same cold that Ink had, she curses Ink for giving her the cold. Well, that’s all for this episode.
Well, episode nine was a slight change of pace for our magic girls, no magical battles this time. This story focused on the relationship between Ink and Sumi, while Sumi seems hostile to Ink but in reality she still cares for Ink due to their relationship from the past.
Also, it looks like Moetan is preparing to start it’s final storyline, at the start of the series Ah-kun is forced to flee the magical kingdom or face imprisonment, so with the magical kingdom in collapse he can be a hero and be forgiven for his past transgressions.
This episode also has less fan-service than the last couple of episodes, so it looks like they have some plot other than fan-service to work with.
Below are two fan-service eye-catches from this episode.
At the beginning of this series I felt that Sumi-chan’s ever changing ahoge was pretty silly, but as the series has progressed I have become quite fond by her mood reflecting hair. If only in real life all women had the same ahoge, I can only wonder how many arguments with old girlfriends this would have saved me. “Honey, are you still mad at me from yesterday?”, “No, why do you ask?”, then I could look at her ahoge to see her true mood, oh-well, one can only wish.
Below are some shot’s of Sumi’s ahoge reflecting her moods.
I just updated my Candy Candy manga page with a few new links, plus a link to a special treat for all the Candy fans out there.
This episode begins with the ship stopping at a new planet called Abipa the Utopian Planet, the place where it is advertised that you can get the body of your dreams. Once on Abipa, Vanilla and Kaiba who is still in Chroniko’s body take in all the weird sights and the free food (all the food is free on Abipa). Kaiba soon ditches Vanilla and goes wandering around with Hyo-Hyo in tow, it seems that he is searching for the girl from his memories.
After a while Kaiba decides to transfer into the Hippo’s body but a junk collector snatches the Hippo up as soon as Kaiba turns his/her back. As Kaiba is chasing after the junk collector she gets a lift from someone, and they follow the junk collector to the factory where all the designer bodies are made.
Soon the old man who gave Kaiba the lift tells him/her about the designer (Patch) and his stuffed dog (Quilt) who run the factory and design all the custom bodies. Once inside the factory Kaiba meets Patch and he tells him he’s not happy about the way that people abandon their real bodies, disrespecting life, and take up artificial bodies, he swears he’ll get his revenge someday. He melts down and soon Quilt takes his body body away, then someone offers to take Kaiba to the body collection site which is also the food factory to find his missing body (Hippo).
It turns out that the man who offered Kaiba the ride runs the show, on this planet they give the bodies away for free but make enough money off other ventures elsewhere, also the old bodies are ground up and remade into the free food that everyone eats. Later it’s raining very hard and Kaiba finds her/his way back to Vanilla who has gotten ill waiting for her to return. The next day Kaiba returns to the body factory and runs into Patch and Quilt again and it’s almost like a groundhog day experience.
Patch tells Kaiba that Quilt is made from body parts of abandoned dogs from this planet, people here toss away perfectly good dogs for new designer dogs, so Patch made Quilt and gave him an unknown brain and he also gave Quilt his eyes, but when Quilt is nearby he can see just fine because they also share minds. This time when Patch melts down Kaiba goes along for the ride with Quilt, and they go to a house in the countryside where Quilt plugs in Patch to recharge him. Then Kaiba uses the memory gun to search through Quilt’s past memories but he finds nothing of interest, but Kaiba sees a stationary camera pointing at the workbench and wonders if it’s been recording of hundreds of years.
Kaiba watches the playback from the stationary camera and watches Patch going about his work as a female assistant appears from time to time, aging from a young girl to an old lady, and eventually her memories are used inside Quilt without his knowledge. Later, while Kaiba is looking around, some men come to the workshop to steal things and Quilt gets injured before Kaiba can intervene. Kaiba takes Quilt to be repaired but that body is now useless, but the smoking man says he make a new body for Quilt because Patch has made him rich and it’s partly his fault for leaving Patch’s house unprotected.
As Quilt is being repaired/ a new body is being made, Patch is lost without her, her wanders outside searching for her and gets assaulted and severely damaged by thugs. Later, we see Patch’s old lab assistant (Quilt) back in girl form offering to make the repairs herself. Kaiba goes to fetch Vanilla who is still sick and sees a statue of his former body, and asks the man who is that? He tells Kaiba that is Prince warp, who lives in a palace on LaLa, he invented the memory chamber and control everything. Well, that all for this episode.
With every new episode of Kaiba I’m continually amazed by the ability Kaiba’s creators, directors, and producers to come up with new and totally engrossing story-lines. While the animation styles and color palettes may change every episode or every couple of episodes, but their ability to create a new and unique world each week leaves me totally enthralled with this series. The traveling to new and unique places that Kaiba travels to is almost like the situation in Kino’s Travels, but it’s more than that.
I find myself stopping and re-watching certain scenes over and over again to extract every last visual detail, some of them only last for a few frames. On of the scenes I’m talking about is when Patch’s office assistant flashes the camera the peace sign, it’s only a quick scene but it enlightened my understanding of her character. Kaiba with it’s detailed and unique worlds, killer storyline, and changing animation styles, stands alone on top of the quality pyramid so far this year, I’m tired of giant robots being piloted by angst filled teens, Moe is getting over played and a little old, and I’m almost though with wishy washy teens pinning away for love, “Oh, I love him but I can’t tell him, or I’m really attracted to her but I don’t have the balls to say anything”.
Real story and plot is what separates the wheat from the chafe, in movie terms, while Transformers was fun to watch It leaves you with an empty stomach when compared with more tasty and substantial items like No Country for Old Men, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, as far as I’m concerned this is the best new series of the year.
Oh, I loved the scene where Kaiba shows great revulsion upon learning that all the free food comes from discarded and recycled bodies, I was waiting for him to run through the streets shouting Soylent Green is people.
