Yeah I pretty much agree with the rest of you about Inori's tranformation. It was a lot more underwhelming than I was hoping for. I was thinking more along the lines of her walking calmly through the battlefield creating crystal lances and blades that ripped through the enemies like they were nothing, overwhelming them all easily until Gai shows up with something to take her down. The whole jumping around with spikes sticking out of her like she was a porcupine just wasn't that badass.
Well the one good thing I have to say about this one that it at least took it a lot easier on the angst angle compared to the last couple of episodes. Though in Arisa's case they went a little too easy. Considering how she spazzed out so much over just being attacked and injured by Inori, you'd think killing her own grandfather would totally unhige her. But she really did was grimace and then send out the endlaves. Her character is really starting to feel psychologically unbalanced. At least Shu looks like he's going to start acting like a protagonist again, instead of power-mad dictator convinced he has to be a merciless bastard or all the people he cares about are going to die just like Hare did.
As for that time Shu called Inori a monster, well if I remember right that flashback from this episode must have taken place before he did that, as they were at his home and getting along well. He didn't call her a monster until he started coming apart after failing to save Yahiro's brother and began having traumatic flashbacks to lost christmas, developed an aversion to using his powers and got thrown out of the undertakers. Sure, the way he treated her was terrible, but it seems likely that Inori understood that he was far from rational at the time. I kind of felt they were past that after the events episodes 11 and 12 when he comes to help her and gets over all that emo crap. And after that he was depending on her a lot, and made her his primary support after he goes off the rails and everyone turns against him. I admit it's a pretty one sided relationship with Inori supporting him and Shu depending on her, but I can at least understand if she cares for and sympathises with him, having seen how much he wanted to help everyone and how much he was suffering inside after watching Hare die and making himself the bad guy. I can understand if some people don't like it though.
And I think it's glaringly obvious how they intend for Shu to get his powers back, right? I'm sure it was mentioned all the way back when he first got the Void Genome, that there were
three of them in existence. I'm sure I remember that, even if I only watched each of them once. So we have Shu's Genome which was lost when Gai cut of his hand and took possession of the Genome himself. We also know that the blonde mystery guy has a Genome as well, even if we still no almost nothing about him yet. So the rest writes itself. Over the next episode or two, Shu will start taking action for the sake of rescuing Inori who's capture was practically obligatory and came as no surprise to anyone.
He'll prove that he can do something for himself even without having the Power of Kings, maybe reconcile with the Funeral Parlour despite having alienated them with his previous behaviour and convince them help him save Inori. And after some series of events he'll either stumble across the final Genome at the place they're trying to save Inori from, or our whimsical blonde mystery guy will pop out of thin air once again once he feels Shu's got what it takes and hand him the damned thing to bring him back into the game for the sake of his own unfathomable agenda which we probably won't discover until the climax of the series.
Call it a prophesy. If it doesn't play out more or less along these lines, I'll be very surprised and pleased at their originality. I'll be even happier if Gai actually has a convincing character development to explain his radical lurch to the dark side, rather than just going with being mind-controlled by the crystals after being reincorporated. Please! Otherwise I might as well be writing this stuff myself.
