Poor Maka.

Summary:

A church bell rings and the crescent moon covers the sky, but high above the peaceful town there sits a witch on broom. She calmly conducts a person on the ground to eat the souls of its victim to become the strongest and most malevolent being.

Maka and Soul go off to Italy for an extracurricular class that involves hunting down a serial killer named Sonson J (he isn’t a real person like some of the last few). They go park the bike and decide to go by foot; Soul bumps into a guy and apologizes in his usual smug manner. This irritates the man who reveals that he’s a gangster and that the entire area belongs to the Madarati. They then are surrounded by a group of thugs. Maka, eager to gather information regarding the night time serial killer, walks on ahead. Three cheesy pow effects later, they both are walking on leaving the knocked out criminals behind.

Now it’s night time and the hooded witch floats over the city conducting another attack. The weapon and meister are being ordered by her to eat souls. But these are the souls of the Madarati gang, not Kishin souls. The meister knows that they aren’t Kishin so she quietly questions the with who is floating over the church that all the commotion is in. The witch casts a spell to give the nervous meister some confidence – as soon as the aura hits the girl she breaks out into maniacal laughter and comes to the conclusion that she is the kishin. This offends the gang and they claim ownership over the church too, but she says otherwise. She decides to reclaim the public place so her sword breaks out into a high pitched, grading screech attack.

Soul and Maka are hot on Sonson J’s trail now, as they have found him on a rooftop. With once slice they spring forward and claim Soul’s tasty treat. Now, mission over, Soul gets ready to go get the bike, but Maka notices something in the direction of the cathedral. Her senses have obviously increased because from the distance they are at she can feel the presence of the souls of a weapon, meister, and 50-60 humans. She knows something is up for such a situation like that to be at hand, so they go to investigate, but when they arrive in front of the cathedral all the human’s souls are gone, leaving just the weapon and meister. As a student of Shibusen, she knows this is wrong. She pushes the door open and the deranged Chrona stands alone in the middle of the room. There is no weapon present, but Maka can sense that it is there; it is just residing in the girl’s body.

Maka’s father is in the medical room waiting for the nurse’s arrival but at the same time wishing that he is with Maka. The door opens and he rushes to it, only to be disappointed by Doctor Frankenstein’s presence instead. The two share a conversation that involves Maka’s father’s divorce and the relationship between Maka and Soul. In the meantime at the church, Maka has Soul transform into the scythe and they prepare to fight Chrona since he killed the human souls. Chrona is confused at first because Medusa had told him that eating humans is okay. Just as Maka suspects that Chrona’s weapon is within him, Chrona screams in pain and Ragnarok materializes from out of her back.

The four break into battle and when Maka lands an attack on Chrona, black blood spills and she realizes in horror that Chrona’s blood is the weapon and that in order to destroy him she would have to use Black Star’s ability, soul wave. While this is happening, Chrona still wonders how she should treat Maka since he’s never talked with a girl before. Medusa sends another black spark to enter Chrona’s mind and tells him to simply kill Maka. The conflict becomes more serious where Soul gets badly wounded. After that, Maka refuses to use him and instead just dodge the attacks. She reaches the exit and tries to pry it open but Chrona reminds her that the door opens inwards and just as he swings the blade across, Soul appears in his human form and gets slashed.

Thoughts:

This episode turned out to be really brilliant, especially towards the end where the action pace started picking up again. I’m still confused as to what gender Chrona is because the subbers referred the character as a female first then all of a sudden changed it to a male. But apart from that little confusion, I really enjoyed watching the fight scene and the end definitely had me hanging, especially since Soul protected Maka by hurting himself. Chrona’s personality is really lovable too, mostly because he or she is so mentally retarded and insane, and when Maka couldn’t escape from the exit, I realized that that was why Chrona kept repeating that the door opened inwards. If I were in Maka’s position, I would’ve done the same thing because I wouldn’t be able to let my friend get hurt in my place.

Medusa is awesome too because I just dig characters with hoods. The next episode looks really action-packed and I’m really thrilled to see Frankenstein fight with Chrona. I’m not entirely certain that some hilarity will ensue (I mean, it is Doctor Frankenstein after all). Another bad thing I found about this episode was during Frankenstein’s conversation with Death Scythe or whatever his name was (Maka’s father). During the silent part I was just like: “This is bullshit!” and yeah … I guess I couldn’t understand the humour then. Ah well, I really liked this episode and next week looks like it’ll deliver even better action (hopefully)!

Okay, first off, the fact that they were in Italy was pretty cool, but when it actually showed the serial killer that they were after I laughed so hard. He looked more like a convenience store robbing drunk. I was certain that they had the wrong guy, seeing as how this man had a paper bag or something over his head. Oh, and I guess, it’s not really worth stating, but I will anyways: the Italian city is supposed to be Florence even though it doesn’t look it.

Possibly the coolest thing though would be Chrona’s fighting style. I always liked how Maka fought with the scythe, using it as a support pole a lot, but Chrona’s swordsmanship had me drooling; the way she holds on to her wielding arm is so cool! Whenever she revealed that the weapon’s name was Ragnarok, I was practically squealing because of the Norse mythology reference. Also Chrona is kinda similar to Chronos (Greek mythology), but it wasn’t close enough for me to be as excited. We didn’t find out Medusa’s name until the preview to the next episode I’m pretty sure, but her name pretty much verifies that this trio is supposed to have mythological references.

Oh and Stein looked mega awesome in the preview to the next episode. I am so excited cause… is that Death Scythe in his hand? Ooooh!