TSR Episode 12:
"Burning Hong Kong"
I could probably have done without that scene of Gates making a phone call to the surviving twin. It felt like it was in poor taste.
According to the novel, "Kowloon" is pronounced "Gauron" in the Cantonese dialect. I wonder if many fans were surprised to see him still alive. It seems a little strange that he has to explain the message he used to lure in Sousuke
to Sousuke but I guess they felt they needed to make it obvious to the viewer and anime is a bit more limited in how it can explain things than a novel.
Am I being overly nitpicky if I think Sousuke should be keeping his finger off the trigger of his pistol?
I think I mentioned earlier how I wondered if the idea for this novel came from people pointing out issues with the series' premise. Here's another issue getting addressed -why is Amalgam after Kaname if they already have a whispered?
As I suspected, they didn't cut Tessa's confrontation with Mardukas after all, they just moved it. This is a pretty powerful scene, but what particularly stood out to me was what Mardukas did with that hat of his. It might seem like a minor gesture, but if you've read the short story where Mardukas actually got that hat and know
who he got it from it takes on much greater significance.
This may seem inconsistent given my disgust at the scene with Gates, but I'm a bit disappointed that they cut Gauron saying how he'd have liked to have killed Sousuke then screwed his corpse. The novel also has Gauron accuse Mithril of hypocrisy for spending so much on weaponry -he asks the question of how much aid could be delivered for that price. Not that I think Gauron actually cares much about that kind of thing...
I have to wonder if Gauron simply assumed that Kaname hadn't survived her encounter with his assassin or whether he lied just to screw with Sousuke. At any rate he got quite an effect. To quote/paraphrase something another fan wrote years ago "How often do you see a hero just go over to the darkside like that?"