Wow, this was overall a pretty strong episode. I expected a bit more from the first part, though...
Spoiler for part A:
For one, I thought the akki's entrance lacked punch. It started out well with the flying body parts, but then it was just... boy shows up (Saki has the obligatory "omg Maria" moment, Mamoru who? but at least the kid resembles him a little), oh hey, Satoru, you're back, bam, Shisei is dead, whoa we're already in the tunnel.
I thought they'd make it more dramatic, visually and all. But at least Shisei got to be badass before he died. *sniff* That outfit was really cool.
Also, it's kind of meh how the kid just screams all the time. He's supposed to be speaking bakenezumi. :/ I understand why they didn't do that (it would be too funny after a while
) but he could at least make some other noises every now and then, like growling or hissing or whatever. At least he didn't get Hanazawa Kana as a seiyuu, though, I was worried they'd do that...
But I did like this little shot with him and the bakenezumi:
Come to think of it, isn't he too big for his age?
The second part, though, made up for everything, it was really good.
Spoiler for part B:
Well, except for the bakenezumi speaking, that was super lame. Like they didn't even try. x_x) Poor Namikawa Daisuke ruins his throat trying to sound as raspy as possible, and here we have this guy who just speaks normally and they put some really cheap effect over it. No, guys, no.
I hope they fix it for the DVD/BD release...
Anyway, that aside, poor Niimi-san, his death was so sad. :/ And props to the director for avoiding showing dead bodies and such while the song played, that would've been painfully cliché. (People trampling on the flower in the opening part was cliché enough.)
And just when I thought there would be no Kiroumaru in the temple for some reason, he's right there in the preview! YAY!
By the way, is it just me or is someone else also bothered by Shisei's smoke writings being in present day kanji/kana? I mean, they made a show of how the writing has mutated over 1000 years in the previous episodes, and I thought it was really neat. So the appearance of present day style writing already bothered me a little in Maria's letter but I thought whatever, just one slip-up. But by now it's been many slip-ups. Oh well, I'm just nitpicking.