After episode 6 spent a lot of effort talking up Van Helsing as a threat to fairly much diffuse him in moments this episode. But if viewers thought the tension was over for the episode (and I did) the rest becomes a pleasant surprise including giving us plenty of reason to keep watching.
While we might have been expecting an epic fight between Vlad and Van Helsing, the show chooses instead to focus this episode very much on Ton. The fight does occur but what we see of it isn’t epic, Van Helsing is dealt with fairly quickly, and any worry we may have had for the others was fairly wasted. Normally I would be annoyed when a show shot its own cliff-hanger in the foot, except that this anime fairly quickly established that Ton is the one in real trouble this week. By shifting the danger, rather than feeling cheated, I felt a sense of excitement at this unexpectedly interesting development. And while originally I thought Ton and Wayne teaming up was great, it was even more excellent when Wayne was swept away from her and she was left to try to rescue her friend on her own and we were able to see how far she’s grown with using her power since she first entered Cafe Forbidden.
Now I should probably go on the record as apologising to Ton for giving her such a hard time for being a boring protagonist dragged along by the plot earlier in the series. While she is most definitely still being kicked around by the plot, she is most definitely an active participant in the story at this point and quite a fun one at that. I don’t know when I switched from being indifferent to her and tolerating her to actually enjoying her presence, but this episode wouldn’t have worked unless I had a bit of a care about what was going to happen to her.
Fortunately we have finally resolved the endlessly kidnapped best friend saga but as I said before, the show masterfully turned us straight into another crisis so it doesn’t feel like we’re heading into down time. Phantom in the Twilight is definitely one of the surprisingly well put together shows of this season. It didn’t look like much at first, but it is definitely holding together and building itself up piece by piece as the season progresses.
Previous Reviews:
- Episode 1: This Season’s Hot Guy Cafe Brought To You By Vampires and Werewolves
- Episode 2: Old School Vampire Alert
- Episode 3: Two Wolves Meet Under a Ferris Wheel
- Episode 4: My Friend Was Taken As A Hostage, And I Don’t Seem To Care
- Episode 5: Love or Life?
- Episode 6: Well, That Got Serious
Thanks for reading.
Karandi James
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But… Pumpkin! Poor Pumpkin! 😭
I know. They managed to make the death of an unnamed character who never spoke an incredible tragedy (or at least made me sad when he disappeared).
It did call into question the whole “Umbra never die” thing they kept harping on, though.
I guess technically it disappeared rather than die, though that’s treading a very fine line.
Man oh man, oh man! I enjoyed this episode so much! Like you I was initially disappointed with the way the fight between Van Helsing and Vlad was resolved (honestly, I still would have liked to have seen more of that), but….everything else was just amazing! I’m really beginning to like Ton as a character myself (and wow seriously her magic is beginning to look cooler every time). But I can’t thank you enoough for recommending this series to me. I have been having a blast so far, and can’t wait to see next week’s episode 😀😀
They really did balance that twist well, taking away the fight from Vlad and Van Helsing to give us something even better we didn’t even know we wanted. It was very fun.
Haha…that is the best description ever! “ Give us something even better we didn’t even know we wanted” . If his continues to grow better with each episode (and so far it has) this might even turn into one of this season’s best shows 😊😊