A lot of stuff going on in this episode, from alchemy to the story of Princess Kaguya to magic and more.
In fact, there was so much going on that it was hard to take it all seriously. The first half had so much overacting that I thought that it was a ploy to cover something else up. When the magician arrived, I was expecting someone (probably Dalian) to call him a fake and expose his magic as a bunch of cleverly concealed wires, but apparently he was legit. Part of that feeling came from the animation this episode; there were some beautiful still shots, and I've mentioned before that the animation of hair and clothing in this series is second to none, but the scene where everyone was shooting at the magician only to have all the bullets bounce off him reminded me of animation that I've seen in more comical Gainax series, which greatly contributed to the feeling that everything was a farce. On the better side of things, Huey and Dalian contributed to the plot this time around instead of acting as bystanders like in the last couple of episodes. However, that's still not enough.
While I have been greatly enjoying the show so far, the characters in the OP that haven't showed up yet make me wonder if there will be some kind of plot aside from the one-shot episodes we've seen so far, or if we'll just get some stand-in villains and continue business as usual. I think that the next episode would be a good place to start, since this episode played with my suspension of disbelief a little too much. And it seems like there is plenty to cover judging by the hints that the show has dropped so far; Huey never taking off his glove, the girl inside the library, the possibility of multiple key-bearers as shown by the OP... I guess that my point is that I'm getting a little bored of the episodic nature of the show so far when I see the potential for something better in its storytelling.
Images from NicoNico.com.
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