After defeating the Wanderer from the previous episode, Yuji feels a strange presence. He waives it off to tell Shana something, but at that moment the area erupts with existence energy. Yuji wakes up after being knocked unconscious by the sudden explosion. As he gets up, a sword flies straight into his chest destroying his contact bookmark in the process. It’s Sabrac holding the sword, and Yuji is shocked by his level of power. Wilhelmina calls out Sabrac and pulls Yuji out of harm’s way. Sabrac praises Wilhelmina’s improvement in fighting ability. The two begin fighting immediately. Wilhelmina incapacitates one of his swords, but he cuts his arm off and detonates the sword, while at the same time complaining that he’s lost another sword and that he needs to get another one back. He then regenerates his hand along with a new sword.

Hmm, a dual-wielding, assassin-like character. Reminds me of so many instances of this kind of archetype, such as my World of Warcraft Rogue or a Ragnarok Online Assassin. More so the assassin than my rogue, but whichever. Anyway, we finally get to see what makes Sabrac such a feared opponent. He is referred to as a Guze King, like Alastor, so he should be quite buffed up.

So the fight continues with the two dodging each other’s attacks. Sabrac points out that Wilhelmina is already injured, and is not happy that she’s still able to fight. Yuji notices that during the explosion, everyone has gotten separated. Turns out the explosion was Sabrac’s attack called Stigma, which opens up wounds more and more as time passes. Both Wilhelmina and Margery were hit by it. Elsewhere, Yoshida walks the streets clutching the Hougu that could summon Pheles if it came down to it. As she walks on, she finds Shana knocked out.

Now that’s one messed up attack. Of course, they always give these powerful (and cheesy, unblockable, unavoidable, un-fixable) attacks to the not so responsible bad guys. It builds the suspense as to how this whole situation will come to an end.

Wilhelmina and Yuji take cover, and as she explains, Sabrac has an ability to hide his presence. She has never been able to detect his presence, despite all the years. She also explains that he always starts off with surprise Stigma attack leaving his opponents at a disadvantage from the start. Back to Shana, she explains to Yoshida that Yuji’s attitude has returned to the way things are. She too also has been hit by Stigma. As Wilhelmina continues to run away from Sabrac, she explains that though he’s tough, he has his limitations, such as having enough energy capacity to pull off his opening attack, and then is limited to fighting opponents in front of him, and not multiple opponents from all angles.

Shana barely makes an appearance in this episode. She barely even says anything. I guess they’re saving her confrontation with Sabrac for the next episode. As for Sabrac’s weaknesses, I get the feeling that he’s an anal type of mentality where he must do certain things a certain way, and can’t focus if he has to deal with distractions. That’s probably how they’ll defeat him. That, or Yoshida kills herself to summon Pheles. Doesn’t matter either way.

Sabrac tries to chase them down, but Wilhelmina is able to counter his attack, which annoys Sabrac, and gives him a sense of regret of not having killed Wilhelmina before. The chase continues, with Wilhelmina putting in traps on Sabrac and throwing powerful spells against him. Unfortunately, all of her attacks are meaningless. Wilhelmina asks Sabrac if he was responsible for Zarovee and company. He admits that Bal Masque set everything up for him, but he knew they were probably wouldn’t get the job done. Sabrac throws another attack at the two and manages to capture Yuji. However, it turns out this Yuji was a fake, made up of Wilhelmina’s ribbons. The real Yuji is running inside a sewer tunnel that he noticed earlier. Most likely running to where Shana is. Wilhelmina, in the meantime, is showing signs of fatigue from her injuries. Sabrac takes the opportunity to finally get his chance to kill her.

Now that was a crazy episode. They sure raised the stakes against the good guys having to deal with Sabrac who Pheles herself couldn’t defeat. I doubt he’ll kill her. She’ll probably pull out some trump card to save everyone from fought Sabrac so many times. Looks like the next episode is going to be full of action too. I’m sure this battle is not going to end until someone gets killed. It would be a very shortlived moment for Sabrac if that’s the case.

We continue off from the previous episode where the Tomogara Collation Flux, Zarovee confronts Yuji. Looks like the Tomogara splits himself off into multiple copies, but together is considered as one. Yuji is surprised that he wasn’t able to detect his presence and reasons that Zarovee’s existence energy must be very small. Zarovee tells Yuji they’re not here to hurt him. Instead, they point out that they are holding the entire city at hostage as one of the clones are in the city as collateral to prevent Yuji from attacking them. Yuji identifies them as Jaegers (too weak to fight, and used for covert operations, but accompanied by Wanderers, Tomogaras specialized in combat) from reading Outlaw documents. However, he can’t detect the Wanderer either. Zarovee tells Yuji to come with him, er.. them. Back at Yuji’s house, Shana gives the medicine Wilhelmina prepared to Yuji’s mom. Shana thinks back about what she said to Yuji earlier that day about his attitude.

They sure made Yuji into some kind of Tomogara super nerd. He immediately picked up on what Zarovee was all about along with realizing that there is a clone in the heart of the city. I find it ridiculous he deducted all of that in a matter of minutes.

Out in the streets, Zarovee leads Yuji around the streets of the city. Yuji tries to call his bluff, by screaming loudly and making a scene and then walking off not caring if Zarovee starts eating people’s existence. It turned out to be a ruse to send a signal to Tanaka who Yuji noticed in the crowd as a way to tell Tanaka that something wrong is happening. Ogata, who’s with Tanaka wants to go after Yuji to make sure he’s safe. Tanaka is stuck in a dilemma and doesn’t know what to do. He wants to get away from the situation, but Ogata makes him realize what he must do. He takes her hand and they go running to Sato’s house to talk to Margery. After explaining the situation, Margery instructs him to take Ogata far away.

I guess this would be Tanaka’s final meeting with Margery. It feels like a sitcom or a drama series trying to kill off a character once their purpose has been served, although Tanaka hasn’t really had a meaningful purpose throughout the series. Just an extra person for Sato to bounce his opinions off of. Hopefully, they’ll spend less time on characters like Tanaka and more on the real story at hand.

At Yuji’s house again, Wilhelmina is cooking up a dark concoction to help Yuji’s mom. Alastor thinks it might worsen the condition. At that point, Shana gets news of what’s happening. At the Haridan building (refer to season 1), Margery stands at the rooftop waiting for the enemy to act. Still on the streets, Zarovee tells Yuji they’re almost there. Zarovee tells him it’s time for him to set the area for battle. Yuji slowly starts to realize what’s going on. He realizes that the clones are going to form a small Fuzetsu to lure the Flame Hazes inside, while keeping one clone outside to pull the other clones out of the Fuzetsu, and at the same time, the Wanderer will be outside the Fuzetsu to destroy the area with the Flame Hazes inside. And as things unravel, the scene cuts over to the Wanderer from the previous episode preparing his attack while waiting for Zarovee’s Fuzetsu.

Maybe I’m not giving Yuji enough credit, but it really feels like he’s figuring things out way too fast and actually getting all of his assumptions correctly. As for the Wanderer, I was wondering why he looked so bizarre in the previous episode. Now we see that he’s a big ass cannon. It all makes sense now, I guess.

At this point, Yuji stops following Zarovee and decides that he’s not going to let the idea of the city being held hostage to prevent him from trying to protect them. He casts his own Fuzetsu instead encasing the Wanderer inside as well. He then tosses a fireball at one of the clones. He then straight up chokes one to death with his bare hands and then eliminates two more with another fireball. With one left, he summons forth Blutsauger and spears the clone. He calls out for Shana who arrives with Wilhelmina. He explains there’s a Wanderer at a distance. They spot him ready to fire his attack, which Shana prematurely detonates the attack killing the Wanderer and leaving a big crater in the area. Yuji tries to say something to Shana, but then the crater starts reacting strangely. To be continued..

Damn you cliffhangers!! Good thing there are previews! And it turns out to be Sabrac. About time I say.

So after thinking about this episode, I think this episode and maybe the last two were completely useless. All of this just to show Yuji’s resolve to care for people instead of thinking about just leaving them behind. Could they not just cut to Sabrac’s entry into the show right off the bat? Why such an elaborate thing with Zarovee and the cannon guy just to pave the way for Sabrac to show up? It doesn’t matter now. Episode 20 is going to be all out chaos at this point.

Episode starts out with a person on the phone who looks like one of the people that Yuji is fighting in the opening sequence. He’s on the phone with someone named Bifrons and not happy about a sudden change in plans. The person he’s on the phone with appears behind him, which reveals a number of things. It shows Bifrons as this giant pillar of a monster and he identifies the other person to be Zarovee. Zarovee also has a bunch of duplicates all around him too. Finally, Bifrons identifies Zarovee as a Jaeger, while Zarovee identifies Bifrons as a Wanderer. Whatever that means.

I guess with the appearance of these guys, it’s almost time to see Yuji fighting them with the Blutsauger. Not sure what that big totem pole guy is all about, but he’s probably something that Shana’s going to have to handle, while Yuji handles Zarovee and company.

Elsewhere, within a Fuzetsu, Yuji is being trained by Margery Daw as Shana and Wilhelmina agree that Yuji has enough power of existence to become a spellcaster. She teaches him how to collect energy, form it into a fireball, and throw it against targets. Yuji shows a large compassion to training himself to get stronger. The Flame Hazes notice his unusual obsession of it as well. His impatience pisses off Margery, who ends the training session for the night, but leaves behind Blutsauger for him. She instructs him to transform it into a bookmark so he can carry it around conveniently. Afterward, Shana tries to find out what’s happening to Yuji. Yuji explains he finally understands that he can’t pretend to be a human, and he eventually will have to leave his life here to travel with Shana, which means he must become stronger.

For some reason, I still think Bal Masque is pulling some mind tricks on Yuji to make him more aggressive in his training. It’s probably far from the case, but it’s always fun to make presumptions. Yuji does seem even more annoying now than ever though. Him wanting to get stronger is making him look like a cocky SOB, especially when, comparatively, he’s not even close to the level of fighting ability of the Flame Hazes.

Yuji returns home to find his mother unwell. He skips school the next day, and Shana and Yoshida find out about it while at school. After school, Shana rushes over to Yuji’s house. Yoshida is reluctant to visit as she thinks she’s using it as an excuse to get closer to Yuji, but Ike tells her that’s not the case. She makes the resolve to make food for Yuji and his mother. Shana makes it to Yuji’s place in record time to make sure Yuji’s mom is alright. Wilhelmina learns of the matter and starts preparing to make some remedies for her. Yoshida that night drops off food for Yuji. All this time, Yuji feels that all of this is pointless as he wants to separate himself from his family and from friends he knows that can’t come with him in the end.

I take it this whole thing with his mom being sick is just a way to move the character development along to show that Yuji’s state of mind is slowly changing. In this scene, he’s listening in on Shana and it gives off the sense that he’s made the tough decision that one day he’ll have to leave and all of these things happening to this “normal” life is starting to become pointless.

The next day, Yuji is unwilling to accept Yoshida’s contributions as he explains to her that he doesn’t belong in the normal world of things anymore. Yoshida fires back telling him she’s doing all of this out of love, and has nothing to do with him being a Mystes and whatnot. She drops off the food and runs off with Yuji chasing, but he stops quickly as he sees Shana standing by. She’s mad at Yuji too with his current mindset that he no longer fits in the normal world and not caring about the people he will leave behind. Yuji walks around the city wodering why everyone’s mad at him when he encounters Zarovee and his “clones” (?). I guess they’re clones. Anyway, he’s surprised that he wasn’t able to detect Zarovee.

I really don’t understand what Yoshida said because I don’t like this character to begin with. I tried my best to paraphrase her message, though. Anyway, it looks like the attitude thing that Yuji has developed is most likely going to come to an end due to Shana’s ultimatum to him. Looks like the next episode is going to be interesting considering none of the Flame Hazes have been able to detect Zarovee. It’s probably going to be Yuji to rise to the occasion to do battle.