Of course, a lot of things still have to happen, chief among them a victory in the final duel. Indeed, this episode, in which the Phoenix Festa’s fianl match is about to begin with five episodes left, got me thinking: If Julis and Ayato can pull out a win against the Arlequint robots in the next week or two and Saya, Kirin, et al, can secure Flora, there’s definitely potential for a third season. The four characters form a fresh dynamic, adding variety to the season. Yabuki contributes one more trump card by bringing in Lester MacPhail to keep the clones busy so the girls can advance to the next stage of the dungeon. Surprisingly, Yabuki joins the two girls and helps break them into the vacant casino, while they have his back when the shadow clone army attacks. Once Ayato gets Flora’s location (on the condition he doesn’t tell anyone Sylvie helped him) he and Julis trust Saya and Kirin to carry out the retrieval operation, as they have to rest for the final that’s only hours away. Second: the second-stringers finally get to DO something other than fight in Festa battles. She’s just a nice, pleasant girl helping out another gifted person who needed help, and someone who could prove a valuable friend to Ayato in the near future. Sylvie comes in at a great time when he’s got so many eyes on him, and yet she’s portrayed as not only more powerful than him, but a more popular celebrity as well.Īnd yet, unlike nearly all the other students outside his immediate circle of friends, she’s neither arrogant nor combative, even friendily so. Moreover, it’s nice to see Ayato taken aback by a girl for once instead of the other way ’round.

Her mouth also matches her singing, and the music, while accompanied by English-ish lyrics, is another fine Rasmus Faber earworm. Sylvie is so much more appealing and less cliche-laden, as the idol in Hundred. Then Sylvie, AKA Sylvia Lyyneheym, shows off some more of her apparent omnipotence by helping Ayato locate Flora, using her song to do so. She can handle herself, and doesn’t need Ayato to protect her quite the opposite takes place, as she dispatches a nasty far faster than he could have, especially without Ser=Veresta. Sure, she comes literally out of nowhere last week to bail Ayato out, but the more we see her in action, the more she makes sense. It introduced an immediately likable new girl, was packed with underutilized characters finally getting cool stuff to do, and still managed to re-focus on the main couple of Julis and Ayato, whose final against the robots remains paramount.įirst up, the new girl, Sylvie. Not just in the action category, either-though that certainly helped. Whereas last week seemed to be taking up space, Asterisk War’s eighteenth episode kicked some serious ass.

Gakusen toshi asterisk characters