10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 9

Blade and Soul - Episode 9

Yuu is dead. Jin Varrel is dead. But not for long? Elle Karen takes in Aruka, but only to take revenge for killing her lover.

Hmm.

For someone who keeps saying that revenge is foolish, Elle Karen is not foolish when it comes to revenge. With a well-planned setup, and ruthlessly killing one of her own employees, she takes revenge on the assassin who killed her lover. Karen saw that just killing Aruka wouldn't satisfy herself. Aruka also had no one left alive she cared for, so there could be no suffering of loss either. So Karen manufactured someone for Aruka to care for, one of the newer employees, and then made Aruka suffer that manufactured loss.

We saw that Karen was always ethically flexible since the episode with the village growing the blue flowers, but this episode puts her all the way into the evil category. It's apparent now that she was only keeping tabs on Aruka to look for an opening to exploit in exacting her revenge, and when she couldn't find one, she made one. She also knew that Aruka only killed as a contract assassin, so why didn't she go after the one who contracted Aruka? She took her revenge on the first available target. It's hard to look at her now and see a likeable character.

Feh.

After all the revelations of her lost love, and her cunning plot to make Aruka suffer, I was still going to let myself feel ambivalent over Elle Karen. Then she did this:

Good guys do not laugh evilly, "Muwahahaha!" That's not forgivable. Sorry, Elle. You are now a bad guy.

Heh.

Since Yuu really died, I wondered how the show would handle his little omake and preview. Easy: stick a halo on him! Aww.

And Jin Varrel really did die when Aruka stabbed her. However, it looks like Yu Lan and Gargante can raise her from the dead. You can't keep the real bad guy down until the last episode.

Hazuki let Aruka, and her bounty go, again. Dan Loan asks if she can really take her since she was able to kill Jin Varrel. Hazuki sulks, "Sure, I can." We believe you, Hazuki. Sure, we do.

And what does the Pleasure Gang do now? As far as they know, their whole reason for being together is gone with the death of Jin Varrel. So, just more grave robbing then?

With one of my favorite characters turned into a maniacal villain, I need to do what Hazuki is doing. MOAR DRINK!

They showed some good flashbacks of the inn being built, and how Elle Karen became the businesswoman we see now. But I would have like to have seen a couple of scenes where her soldier lover taught her how to fight. She should not be better than Aruka, no matter how distraught a no longer empty Sword Clansman is.