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Sign of an engrossing anime: it goes by quick. Seriously, when it finished, it totally caught me off guard, since it only felt like five minutes.
So the plot is really taking off now, and an incredible lot happened, but I kinda feel as if this pick up in pace has come at a sacrifice to the characters. Other than one scene with Noe, (and arguably the scene with Nobuse, which I'm still not really sure what I think about) there wasn't anything in this ep that I'd call character development. I think this show may need to just slow down a notch, and actually show how the events around the characters are impacting them. Particularly since some of the characters are really ambigious, like Hiromi and Shinichiro. Shinichiro in particular is really weird. I never seem to find myself convinced by anything he says or does, even his internal monologues. For example, even during the stone scene, I was half expecting him to say to himself "I don't really like Noe in the same way she does, I'm just going along with this." I'm finding him really difficult to understand. Same goes for Hiromi, just not to the same extent.
I think this show needs to be a bit more careful with how it handles character development. It's in danger of falling into something plot-driven rather than character-driven and, in this genre, that's usually the first step towards degenerating into a soap opera.
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