It was an anti-climatic ending.. Who the hell said that?!

In the previous episode, it ended with what seemed to be a premature anticlimatic ending. However, the very last scene after the outro hinted to the audience that the revival of The Blood Queen is still very much in play.

Recap & Reaction

It Just Can’t Be Anti-climatic, Right?!

As the dust settle after Shadow blows up bishounen vamp Crimson, Shadow feels a sense of emptiness. To him, the plot promised a big boss battle at the top of the Crimson Tower, but there doesn’t seem to be a worthy climax at all. To his mistake and with greed on his mind, he goes to find the real gold of the episode

This is where using the obliviousness Cid’s character works against Shadow. However, it’s the perfect motif to use to relocate Shadow at any point in the story. Honestly, an extremely self-aware OP protagonist just wouldn’t hit the same for these plots. Shadow feels this kind of emptiness about what happened at the end and he leaves to hopefully strike hold. Right as Shadow left, it only makes sense that the setup of the villain’s grand plan from the ending of the previous episode, actually becomes realized. The Blood Queen Elisabeth’s lies on the ground, waiting for its moment to be revived.

Who knew that Shadow mentioning in the previous episode of Claire being able to protect herself would foreshadowing for what’s going to immediately go down in the beginning of the episode. An incredible start, to an incredible misdirection.

This MOST PLOT TENSION in the ENTIRE SERIES, Thus Far!

Claire and Mary show up and laughably find a Cid lookalike, but find no Cid at hand. Unfortunately for our duo of heroes, Queen Elisabeth starts to revive and before she completely wakes up, it quickly turns for the worst for everyone that shows up. As the epic revival of Queen Elisabeth starts to take root, one of her vampire tentacles impales the young tasty Claire in the shoulder. Screaming in raging agony and with Mary witnessing another Queen Elisabeth massacre 2.0 starting to unfold, Claire gets reeled non-consensually. Just like Mary shockingly sucking the virgin blood out of Claire, once again another vampire takes full advantage of this violent sister complex of a character. From sucking the pleasure out of Claire’s mouth to a sadistic bite of Claire’s exposed neck, Queen Elisabeth takes her first feast from 1000 year slumber.

Mary pleads to Queen Elisabeth to stop her acts of violence. We all know that a maid’s opinion doesn’t matter, so the Queen proceeds with her act of bloody gluttony. As Mary’s words goes from one ear out to the other, Shadow Garden’s crew consisting of 664, 665 and Rose Oriana as 666, arrives to save their master’s beloved sister.

For the first time, we get to see Beta in combat action, different from her usual Natsume alter ego. This is where the humor of The Eminence in Shadow ‘s “obliviousness” motif is used once again, but from Beta’s perspective. Once Shadow leaves because he believes the plot of gold is elsewhere, Beta believes Shadow intentionally left this ginormous moment for her because he clearly has an even greater ordeal to take care of that doesn’t involve directly saving his dying sister.

Do not discount the contrast from leading viewers from an anti-climatic bummer kind of ending to s**t hits the fan, in a span of a few minutes—all the while, sliding that running joke of Claire finding another dead Cid look alike. This is incredible writing of creating misdirection and 180 degrees swinging of human emotions.

Mary drops to her knees without trying to help her new best pal out, Queen Elisabeth continues doing what a vamp does best. Before she could consume enough for Claire’s demisre, Beta and her crew of Shadow Garden members, slashes off the head of the queen saving a heavily wounded Claire. Beta tasks 664 with the protection of Claire, while the other two helps Beta take down the queen.

Beta and the other two Shadow Garden members have some nice action sequences of seemingly having the upper hand. However, Mary notes that while they are powerful in their own right, Queen Elisabeth is just in another class.

This is the first time seeing a villain actually stand a fighting chance against Shadow Garden members. Except this time, Shadow Garden is on the ropes. Mary steps in and hints to the audience that the Queen has yet to show her true prowess. Do to her low blood pressure as she awakes, she slowly increases her magical powers. Beta takes some damage and notes at the Queen having more magic than Alpha does.

Yukime stands near the battle as a forced spectator, as she believes that her exit from the queen’s grasps might be just a tad too tricky. Juggernaut finally makes his way back up the Crimson Tower in his tyrant’s delight.

Play close attention to these scenes of Mary and Beta giving an explanation of how powerful each character is. These scenes are anime tropes in itself as it always has characters on the sidelines explaining exactly how we should think about everyone’s strengths in relation to other characters. Goldy Gilded is the direct gag of the “power levels” trope that Dragon ball Z made so famous. In this instance, each anime uses scenes like with Mary and Beta to convey to the audience just exactly how powerful someone is versus someone else.

Juggernaut makes it back to the top of the Crimson Tower and quickly wants to make his redemption from getting kicked off the tower. He has a quick bout with the Queen, to only be quickly dismantled and pinned to the wall. With Queen Elisabeth’s power continuing to rise, she let’s out an all out attack that does damage to the whole radius of characters at the battle site.

Beta tasks the other Shadow Garden crew members to continue protecting Claire at all costs, as she tries to deter the queen’s vicious attack. After the queen unleashes her wide scale attack, it heavily damaged a bloodied up Juggernaut, who shows how mangled leg has become. Yukime teases him as he was absolutely a bafoon for taking the attack directly for no reason.

A battle damaged Beta recognizes how their situation has gotten dire. The queen is using their blood to perpetually get stronger. Then, she commands Rose to leave with Claire. Before everyone can get away with Beta taking the lead, the Queen does something inexplicable. From the previous episode’s foreshadowing, Beta’s study of the connection between the progenitor vampire and the demon’s ancestral background becomes fact as the Blood Queen unleashes a terrible power that causes the demon possessed blood to start taking over Shadow Garden’s bodies—causing Beta’s trauma to surface from such a horrific event. This has effected everyone, including Claire whom Cid had helped fix the demon possessed within her.

As the demon possession starts to overtake Claire’s body in screaming agony, her consciousness get teleported into what looks like a hospital bed with a character that looks like Aurora in a doctor or nurse’s outfit.

Claire Will Never Be the Same Again!

The scene begins with Claire waking up in a nurse’s office, which looks to be in a school building. In the prior episode, it was about the pursuit of this idealistic world, this “haven.” This scene sets up the idea of “evolution.” The nurse starts this long monologue about evolution and how it relates to her situation.

The nurse reveals Claire’s situation regarding the demon possessed within her. Cid had healed her, but the demon possessed has actually started to “evolve.” This demon possessed blood had adapted between the progenitor vampire and the demon. In Claire’s case, she has both the demon possessed blood and progenitor vampire blood in her body and it’s getting quite out of hand, likely because she got bit by Queen Elizabeth or somehow she originally had both types of blood in her all along. No matter the reasoning, it’s not something that she can control just yet.

The silver lining seems to be that it would be controllable for her at some point. However, not without some trials and tribulations.

Claire continues questioning the doctor about what’s going on, who she is and why she’s helping her. Eventually, she reveals herself to actually be none other than Aurora, the Witch of Calamity. She continuously refers to Cid as “he” or as “him” as a reasoning to everything that has been going on with the demon possessed and why she is helping Claire. Then, she outright says that Shadow is the one that’s helped her. Aurora starts to walk outside the door of the room after telling Claire essentially, that there is no time. Claire will have to figure out how to control her power herself.

A Witch’s Grand Return!

Suddenly, Claire’s body from the real world starts to rise again. Only this time, Claire isn’t present. It’s Aurora! Beta questions why Aurora is present and where Claire is. Aurora hints at them being the same or she is just borrowing her body, as she showed Beta that she can return back into Claire’s form.

Like most of these body takeover tropes, we all know that the “body” has to be able to take the power that is emanating from Aurora. Think of a young Naruto going berserk or having his body break down because of the Nine-Tail’s Chakra. It’s the same concept here with Aurora.

Aurora flexes her own strength and parries an attack that the Blood Queen shoots at her with the Blood. Aurora reveals that attacks like that doesn’t work against the “original,” since controlling blood is easy for her. Juggernaut and Yukime watches on as they mention that Aurora’s attack is “overkill.” Aurora then launches her own special attack that covers the same massive radius that Queen Elisabeth launched earlier.

The fight continues on a little longer and Aurora starts to do the unthinkable to Beta’s startled amazement.

“I..”

“am..”

“the all..”

Then, her hand goes limp and her body starts to break down due to Claire’s body not being able to handle the power just yet. Aurora isn’t too worried since she was just “buying time,” until “he” arrived.

Give Me the Loot!

Before Queen Elisabeth can complete her counter attack, the one and only master NPC not NPC arrives in stylish ruffian fashion—letting everyone know in amazingly cool guy fashion that the time for him to arrive has in-fact “came.”

覚醒の刻は.. 来た！

In the end, Shadow still ends up with another epically grand entry with one of the coolest lines! At some point, these tropes can end up being a bit corny. However, with the knowledge that he’s literally just playing himself as Shadow, I just can’t help but laugh when he does something like this to purposefully to look cool.

He stands there, absorbing all the attacks that she’s launch on him and the others. Beta is wondering why he doesn’t just end it, since he is even stronger than Aurora. However, she deduced and becomes extremely moved by her master’s dedication to protection them with his slime.

The scene builds to this crescendo moment of Beta cheering Shadow on because of her assumption that Shadow is doing everything in his power to protect her, while Shadow gives it his all in his dialogue to “not lose a single one.” All the while since Shadow has arrived, sparkling gold debris has been floating everywhere making the crucial joke that he is indeed trying to just save his loot.

A truly epic battle commences between Shadow and Queen Elisabeth as Shadow Garden and the others watch on. The crescendo continues to the climatic moment that the previous episode took away from us. As with every epic fight, there is epic music, epic animation and of course, epic last words of dialogue. Shadow tells the queen that “playtime’s over.” In what looks to be the finish line, the queen speaks for the first time and asks Shadow for his name. And Shadow can only end it, the only way he knows how.

“I..”

“am..”

“Recovery Atomic..”

Please! Do not discount how well this show parodies these classic scenes! This is the kind of scene that ends a Demon Slayer arc. It truly mimics that kind of epic ending. In order to make fun of it, the creators have to recreate what they are making fun of. To masterfully craft the tone, atmosphere and depth of the moment—guiding us every step of the way there, while effortlessly maintaining the epicness of it. All the while, making you laugh at the same time. This ability to seamlessly balance between homage and humor is truly remarkable, a feat that very few anime series can achieve.

Right after Shadow uses his attack to heal everyone of their ghoul virus infection & demon possessed energy going awry, we are now left with Beta and the rest of Shadow Garden cleaning up the aftermath. Claire remains passed out. Rose ends the arc reiterating wanting to create that “haven.” It’s the perfect way to end the scene to what the characters in this arc wanted to achieve. It’s this pursuit of this idealistic world of creating the “haven,” where “you can live peacefully with the people you love.”

Once again, the show finds ways to make fun of a lot of anime themes that involve this “quest for an ideal.” Having Rose be the one to say it, makes it just that much more amusing because of her relationship that’s a non-relationship to Cid.

Aftermath

Interestingly enough, the scene time skips to a drunken Juggernaut thinking about how he wants to get into a rumble with Shadow Garden because it’ll be fun to tangle with strong characters. Po & Skel and Goldy & Quinton provide that “Bulk and Skull” Power Rangers trope of a pair of doe doe heads providing comedic relief. Goldy and Quinton couldn’t get the loot from defeating the Blood Queen at the Crimson Tower and Skel & Po couldn’t get any girl action.

Claire and Mary say their goodbyes outside the train and Cid begins his narration to wind down the episode.

After Shadow used his “I am Recovery Atomic” technique, to literally heal everyone of their vamp and demon possessed issues blood going chaotic—Cid explains simply that healing everyone was an easy task for him because it was just “magical energy overload.” Apparently, magic is something easy for Cid to control as evidenced even further back when he healed Claire and Alpha of their demon possession.

If there was a character that had it the worst, it was definitely Claire. Not only did she get punched in the face, she got impaled in the shoulder and bit by a vampire. After that, her body got hijacked by Aurora. Then, it turns out that she has both demon possesion blood and the progenitor vampire blood in her. Now, this foreshadows her massive trial and tribulations she must face, especially with the reminder of that red symbol on her arm. Aurora hinted that those red lines on her arm are supposed to help her control this rampaging magical power that’s within her. With Cid by her side, it looks like these two will be a duo for as long as Claire goes through her new character arc involving being able to control her powers.

In the end, Cid was only able to walk away with a fraction of the amount he took from the Crimson Tower. It’s not the kind of money that would allow him to retire, but you know.. the Lawless City is always within reach, providing an infinite money hack for Cid.

For brief moments, Juggernaut and Yukime had their fair share of screen time. For Yukime, it was all from the sideline view as she watched enamored by Shadow fighting the entire time. The episode ends with another cliff hanger after the outro, as Cid enters a train and turns into Shadow. Who did he meet up with? It was none other than Yukime. Expect sparks to fly between the Red Light District puns and Shadow almost getting some.

Last Thoughts

Massive Win for Claire’ Development

Brilliant? Masterpiece? This episode and arc has been all that and a bag of chips! After a whole season under its belt, there is a plethora of depth built in after so many establishing so many characters. Not only that, the stories built around these characters feel a lot more meaningful. The Blood Queen Elisabeth ended up just like many of the last bosses before her: Viscount Grase, Zenon Griffey, Nelson the Avaricious, etc. The key cog here is Claire’s development, as she looks to have the most meaningful relationship that could negatively impact the main character. There is a lot of unwind here, but this is a massive ‘W’ for Claire’s development as a character and how it could potentially effect Shadow, resulting in effecting everyone else as well.

Massive Setup, Real Questions

How did Aurora save Claire? How did she take over Claire’s body? Why is she in Claire’s body? There are so many questions concerning the main plot of the story that might end up putting our OP protagonist from the shadows in a dire situation. Even though the episode ended with Shadow saving everyone, like any other typical anime arc, having a real concern over what can potentially happen to a character that Cid actually cares about creates a more interesting dilemma for the show, keeping some level of tension and keeping the viewers on their toes.

Massive Plot Development

Arcs build crescendos into epic moments. They call these moments a climax. But arcs in themselves are crescendos and the payoff for the arcs before blessed us with one of the most, if not the best episode of the entire show up to this point. From what appeared to be an anti-climatic premature end, was only a brief misdirection before it swung into full “oh s**t” mode! Peppered in with the usual expected motif of the obliviousness of Shadow Garden, we have received one of the first major plot twists from a major character in the connection between Claire and Aurora.

This is the way guys and gals! To create a story based on satirical humor, you still must execute upon telling a story that includes a plot that actually creates meaningful dilemma for the characters. This is total perfection for me. An amazing 3 episode stretch and end to this mini Blood Queen Elizabeth Arc. Just like Cid did in a prior episode, I had a mental burst of orgasm from watching this entire arc. I loved every moment and nothing seems wasted. Cheers anime fans!