Roper stew AND emo facial contortions. Yum.

Summary:

This episode begins with Neeba’s party easily killing all the Spiders with a very organized attack, while somewhere else, Jil’s party is running away from a group of pursuing Spiders (bickering as to who should of done what along the way). In the end though, Ahmee comes up with a plan, takes control of the party and they are able to overcome this… uhh little bug problem of theirs (ok fine, bad joke).

We find out that the only one with some actual Tower climbing experience is Ahmee and Jil. Ahmee, now aware that her party lacks the experience, takes the opportunity to teach them about the basic layout of the tower. The tower is divided into eight sections (or Shrines as they call it): Shines of Tin, Lead, Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Emery and the Shrine of Sky, where the shrine of Tin is situated at the bottom of the Tower and the Shrine of Sky is at the top.

Later that night, Neema’s party stops for a meal so Fatina goes for a swim bath (I can’t really tell.. I guess the purpose of it was to clean herself so I’m going to say bath) in a nearby lake. She is suddenly approached by a mysterious woman and when the woman doesn’t adhere to Fatina’s warning to stay away, Fatina attempts to kill her with her Katon Goukakyuu no Jutsu flamethrower attack but only to realize that the woman had disappeared. Apparently, this mysterious woman knows Neeba although no one else in his party knows this as yet.

Somewhere else in the Tower, Pazuz, the assassin hired by Marf to kill the king, seems bent on getting other climbers killed and uses a spell on a large group of Kusarakks to get them to attack Jil’s party. Although they were quite ready to give up and flee at first, Jill convinces them all to pull together and fight. With some teamwork, Jil and his party defeat the Kusarakks, much to Neeba and Fatina’s surprise.

Thoughts:

This episode was mainly spent on developing some team mechanics for Jil and his party so the fights were not all that interesting, nor were they the main focus of the story. Still we were treated to some half decent action scenes I guess.

Spiders! Spiders! and compact mode spiders!

I must comment on the design of these Spiders though, they are super cool (lacking words to describe them at the moment). Now from what I can tell, the Kusarakks and Spiders are original creations (whereas the ropers, slimes, power ranger Knights and even the Succubus are from the original game). Of course I maybe wrong since I didn’t check the expansions/sequels to the original game. GONZO should just stick to the super cool mecha-comedy genre. And I’m not being sarcastic (though FMP is overrated IMO, but I digress).

This episode raises more questions, and two big ones are:
- What is Pazuz up to? He obviously isn’t there to kill Druaga, and the way he’s going around killing other climbers tells me he’s not there for just any ‘ol treasure.
- Who is the mysterious woman? Actually, she’s the first thing you see in the ending credits, so she (hopefully) has an important role. The credits have her listed as “Succubus” which, in the original game, was a monster found on the top floors of the tower. She’s also voiced by CC (though its really not that hard to tell).

I also enjoyed the scene with Jil and Kaaya keeping watch at night, since it was pretty apparent in the OP that there will be some JilxKaaya eventually, this was a nice place to start. Of course in their little chat, Kaaya was lying through her teeth; she tells him she’s trying to cure her sick brother, then tells him shes lying and then she tells him shes not lying.

It’s like one of those dating sim games.

And lookie! Emo facial contortions! Jason must be giddy with excitement (although Jil and Ahmee are not Pantheon quality yet).

Edit: I forgot, episode 4 can be watched here. I also tried the crunchyroll HD and crunchyroll iPod versions. I’ll comment on those when I can get a raw to compare to.