There was more talk and less action in this episode than I expected, but I found that to be alright, because the talk brought back that very important issue that had been ignored for the last many episodes: Akira’s continued amnesia. And it ties it together with Telomere; what Akira still doesn’t remember is what Telomere wants. And Telomere comes back in this episode to get it from him. With just 1 more episode left, all the loose story ends have come together, for one last Dance… in the Vampire Bund (sorry, hate me if you want to for that).

The plot thickens! It seems that the 1st assassin was with Telomere, which means that one of the 3 clans, or all of them, are in bed with Telomere. It did put her in an awkward position, as it was her job to kill Akira for her master, but she also needed to get information out of him before doing so (explains why she didn’t kill Akira outright when she ambushed him at the border to the Bund). It really saved Akira’s butt a few times, as he got repeatedly stabbed due to his inability to transform. That was a nice little plot point, as it showed how much he really loved and was in love with Mina, despite him being in denial about it.

Speaking of impossible love and saving Akira’s butt, Meiren was pretty phenomenal in this episode. I found it humorous that she came in with a shotgun, and it had predictably little effect on the 2nd Assassin, managing just to knock him away for a little bit. But she took care of him using melee in the end, which gave us a chance to see that she was a wolfman – or rather, wolfwoman – as well. Her confessing to Akira – for serious this time instead of her usual playful flirting – was very sweet. I wonder how much of her emotions were driven by the fact that she’s supposedly the last of her kind, though. She’ll have to come to terms with her feelings just like Yuki did halfway into the show.

This had me d'aaawwwwwing

I enjoyed most of the action, seeing the 1st assassin’s true powers, her ability to shapeshift to really insane proportions. She was really the star of the episode, and I liked how some of her personality shone through, through her speech, her facial expressions, and her choice of attacks, making her a more complete character than just another enemy. Which is kinda what the 2nd assassin ended up being. Given his awesome weapons from the previous episode (naginata and claws), I was hoping for some good fight scenes involving him, but he was taken out very quickly by Meiren. Pretty disappointing, though it did emphasize what a badass Meiren is.

Without Transforming, Akira doesn't stand a chance

Both of the 1st 2 assassins were dispatched in this episode, which leaves the 3rd as the only obstacle lying between Akira and a happy ending. I wonder if Meiren is indeed the 3rd assassin, as joker76 posited in his comment on my post on the previous episode. Would make for a very interesting fight, especially with Akira finally having regained the ability to transform due to his anger at seeing Mina’s image dirtied by the 1st assassin.

But once he does... watch out!

And Mina has put everything on the line now. It puts an even greater weight to the outcome of the finale, but at the same time, it pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of whatever doubt you might have had that Akira wouldn’t pull through. I mean, I think it was pretty clear from the previous episode, but they won’t really have Mina lose everything in one fell swoop at the end… will they?

As for the creepiness factor, they showed again the final scene of the previous episode, and also some short clips from the actual verification ceremony itself. We also learn that Mina knew Akira since his birth 17 years ago, which puts a whole new twist in the creepiness factor of their relationship. She’s the one who’s “robbing the cradle” – almost literally. It reminded me a lot of the very unhealthy relationship between Buster and Lucille 2 in Arrested Development (“She changed him as a baby!”).

I’m looking forward to seeing what Akira’s still hidden memory is, and why Telomere wants it so badly. There were some hints that he was starting to regain this memory towards the end, but I found the flashbacks to be confusing. They brought back imagery from the nightmare at the beginning of the previous episode, and the flashbacks did seem to imply that Mina might be dead or something. And what Alphonse said to Akira implies that this was a piece of information that could change Akira’s behavior drastically, to the point of making him an enemy. It would be great if Akira’s remembrance forces him to make a Sophie’s choice in the next episode. But at this point, I just have no idea, and my approach is just to let it come to me, let the director tell me the story without theorizing needlessly. And so it’s with great anticipation that I await the finale of this show. There’s a lot that has to happen, but this show’s pacing has proven to me that 23 minutes is more than enough.

An aside:

I went to Pax East today for the final day. There wasn’t much in terms of cosplay, but I’ve added what I took to the Picasa album. I attended a panel by members of OverClocked ReMix, a site in which people upload their own remixes of video game music. I was a big fan of the remix “Save Me,” a remix of the save-point theme from Ico (the only parts in the game that actually had background music), which is why I attended. But that whole community reminded me of the microcultures that were mentioned in the Memes talk yesterday.

Speaking of which, I also saw Alex Leavitt, the researcher from that Memes talk, cosplaying as Ash from Pokemon attending a panel on geeks. He also made a comment on my post from yesterday!

Besides the panels, I spent a lot of time on the show floor. I got to play The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and talked with its sole developer. Turns out he was a big fan of DMC3 and Bayonetta, which I figured from playing his game. I also got to play some DeathSmiles for the XBox360, and that game just might get me into shmups like Touhou.

Well, Penny Arcade kicked off their first PAX East here in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center, so I had to attend. I didn’t make it in time on Friday because I had to stay late for work, but today, Saturday, I spent the whole day there, from 10am to 10:30pm.

Went to a few panels, missed a few due to overly long lines. My favorite panel by far was Memes, Microcultures, and 2D Chicks: Our Future in the Otaku Gamer by Alex Leavitt, a researcher from the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT. He broke down how memes start and propagate, what kind of “grammar” is within them. He showed and explained the Hitler meme.

He went in length about the different way niche cultures develop in Japan (he called it microculture). Touhou was a main example, where the gameplay doesn’t matter, but rather the characters, about whom very little is revealed within the original games. But fans took that and built a world of their own, using Nico Nico Douga, doujin comics, animations. He showed some of Bad Apple as a very high production example, but not the insane stop-motion one, which itself is a great example of the meme propagating.

They refused to be photographed apart.

He also compared it to the Vocaloid phenomenon, which really interested me, because I’m a huge fan of Supercell, which got its start uploading Vocaloid vids on Nico Nico Douga. The use of Vocaloid really blew up after the company added characters, because the works became not just about the music, but mainly about the character. Showed parts of some of Supercell’s vids but didn’t mention them by name. Could’ve been a great example, as they became professionals due to it, even getting a real anime produced based on one of their their videos (Black Rock Shooter, which was recently revealed to have Miyuki Sawashiro and Kana Hanzawa as main roles). And their fame and success came precisely because others on Nico Nico Douga took their music and did their own things with them (e.g. Nagi, also known as Gazelle, their current singer, got her start by posting videos onto Nico Nico Douga of her singing Supercell’s songs – most famously Melt – and to this day ppl continue to post themselves playing them, including their professional releases, with real instruments), thus extending the phenomenon seen in Touhou and Vocaloid. He showed bits of the PSP game Project Diva, a rhythm game starring Hatsune Miku. It made me want to get a PSP and import that game, as it seems to have at least a few of Supercell’s songs.

I was surprised he didn’t talk about 4chan too much, as that’s where so many memes, at least in the US, started. Did mention visual novels and particularly Katawa Shoujo, an American amateur production from the folks on 4chan. And like the other examples he mentioned, it had its genesis in fans taking someone’s work and applying their own twist on it.

Besides that talk, most notable for me was the concert. I stuck around for just the first part, featuring the Video Game Orchestra (VGO). I’m a big fan of classical music, so I had to see it. The highlights for me: a wonderful rendition of the Super Mario theme; the Chocobo theme from Final Fantasy, which had a great light mood with highlights from the saxophone and flute; a very embellished and metal-ish arrangement of the Final Fantasy VII battle theme; a surprise vocal appearance, as a singer from the local Berklee music school sang Snake Eater, which was sandwiched by a very dramatic performance of the MGS theme. Overall, they had a great mix of classical music with their orchestral instruments and more modern rock/metal music with electric guitar, keyboard, and drums.

I’ve got some videos from the concert that I’ll upload to YouTube, but tomorrow, as it’s way past my bedtime already, and I need to wake up early for the final day of PAX East tomorrow.

But what of the cosplay? That’s probably what you really care about. Well, I was a bit underwhelmed by the amount. I saw more video game cosplay in Anime Boston last year (which is being held next weekend, same place, Hynes Convention Center). Seriously, I saw 1 Snake, whereas at Anime Boston, there were at least a dozen. Still, there were enough to make a nice album – I’ve interspersed this post with some of them. But I don’t want to deal with WordPress’s slow file upload system, so I’m providing a link to my Picasa album of most the cosplay photos I took today. Some unexpected ones are Green Man (Charlie) from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and C.C. from Code Geass.