天下制覇

Case closed!

Impressions:

If there’s one thing that’s really starting to annoy me about this series, it’s the insert song in every single episode. A lot of the time, it’s just 30 seconds while Kaoru blows stuff up. Fine, whatever, it’s no worse than any other overused song (Mai HiME comes to mind) only with lyrics so it’s really noticeable. This time though, the insert kicked in while Shiho was just wandering around touching things. What on earth was that all about? We’re absolutely lovely! That’s why we can’t lose! At… wandering around the city in broad daylight. Yeah, whatever.

As expected, the Shiho-centric episode with her father, who really does seem like a nice enough bloke. Probably treating Shiho a little too much like an adult, but then again, she is an immensely powerful psychometer (my first instinct was to type psychopath), so it’s not like you can really keep her from seeing all the terrible things in the world. She’s a policeman’s daughter too, that’s a double whammy. I also like that they’re again showing how even very weak psychics can be extremely dangerous by very focused use of their power. The Children are like the howitzers of the esper world, but a bb to the eye is still going to mess you up immensely.

Let’s see… the Conmericans are back next week, for better or worse. There’s some kind of guy in a cape that looks like he escaped from Transylvania too. It’s not Kyousuke and PANDRA, but I’m hoping it’s close.

Oh right… new ED this week too, thankfully. I was getting a bit sick of the old one, truth be told.

Brief Summary:

A man is getting beat up in the park by some muggers. He finally snaps, and uses his psychic powers to make one of them choke to death. He then gets a little touched in the head and starts ranting about justice, even going to far as to dress up like a superhero, call himself Masked Justice and attack random ruffians from his car with his psychic abilities.

He’s all the talk at school because he’s beating up ‘the bad guys,’ but Shiho’s not a fan of the vigilante justice. She actually gets called in to do some investigation on various clues from murder scenes. Minamoto thinks it’s totally inappropriate for her to look at stuff like that and protests a ton. A man comes in supervising it, so Minamoto yells at him a bit, but he says that they have to do what they can to help, right Shiho? She agrees with her father. Shiho gets excused to get some juice, but the police attendant recoils instead of taking her hand. Minamoto rants in general for a bit longer before grabbing Shiho’s hand and storming out.

As Minamoto looks over the documents at home though, it looks like Shiho’s the only one who can solve it, so the next day, the girls get a crash course in the mechanics of choking from Sakaki before they join their police escort to go to the various crime scenes, including a Kaoru fantasy about sexy policewoman Shiho and hardboiled detective Minamoto. Unfortunately, Shiho can’t turn up much aside from a personal image of a crazy man, and after Kaoru shoves the two of them into a narrow alley, Minamoto drops them off at BABEL’s bath to get cleaned up.

All the girls of BABEL hang around inside. The receptionists let Shiho know that Minamoto was trying to protect her, prompting girlish blushing. They thought Shiho knew since… you know… mind reading, but Shiho says that she doesn’t try to invade Minamoto’s heart. After they leave, Shiho senses something and trots off. The police escort sends Minamoto and the other two elsewhere and takes Shiho on his own back to one of the crime scenes. As she’s checking things out, she reads his car and figures out that he’s the crazy guy and triggers an alert on her ring. Minamoto and the others realize that they were lied to when they were sent off at around the same time.

The guy starts ranting about justice as he chokes Shiho until Kaoru lands on the car and pulls him out of it. While she’s checking on Shiho, the guy grabs a pipe and charges them. He swings it at Shiho, but her father jumps on her to protect her and takes the blow instead. Kaoru crushes the guy and then Aoi drops a car seat on him. Her father’s more or less alright though and Shiho happily hugs him.

On the drive home, Shiho’s the only one awake while talking to Minamoto. She loves her father, but at the same time, Minamoto and the others are her precious family now too.

Preview:

Conmericans and BABEL vs Baron von EvilLooking