Episode 6 was a bit of a disappointment. Don't get me wrong here, the show was good, but easy to predict. I made a few assumptions as to what this episode would be like after episode 5, it turns out I was completely right. This episode was, in a nutshell, Kaito feeling depressed; he has a few flashbacks to his days of old, and finally he breaks free of his mental state and returns to normal. He only returns back to normal when placed in a position where his friend's lives are counting on him to solve a puzzle. Those were my assumptions, and I was unhappy that there wasn't much else going on in the episode that strayed from my guesses.
Too many times have I seen a protagonist follow in Kaito's steps as they become depressed, and end up returning to normal with some help from friends, as well as facing a challenge in the presence of danger. I suppose we can't re-write the book every time and come up with new ways to go about doing this, but at least throw some new material in there to keep it fresh.
About the only thing that came as a surprise was the thorough explanation as to why Kaito couldn't solve puzzles. Because Orpheus can cause 100% of the brain to focus on puzzles, it can utilize Kaito's emotions to solve puzzles. When Kaito is in such an emotional state, it can backfire and could end up killing him. At least that's what I understood from explanation during the episode.
Once again we had plenty of Nonoha scenes where she shows how caring she is for Kaito. Even Gammon appears upset that his rival won't be his rival if he breaks down. Kaito slowly comes around to socialize with his friends, but he is far from being able to solve puzzles. The trio attend the newest challenge from POG, but before they know it, Gammon has fallen into a trap with Nonoha trying to hold on to him. Kaito is left wondering what he can do to save his friends.
With Kaito overwhelmed with emotions, Orpheus activates, causing another Reverse Berserk. Just before Kaito is about to break, he decides not to run away from his emotions any more, and stands strong to save his friends and solve the puzzle.
Looking at this week's puzzle, it was a new and fresh puzzle that we haven't seen yet. I think I've given up on expecting super awesome puzzles, since this week's puzzle wasn't much different than matching elements to the given icons.
We did get to see how clever Rook can be, since he devised a scenario for Kaito's friends to be endangered, forcing Kaito to solve the puzzle if he wanted to rescue his friends while under such emotional stress. It will be interesting to see how Rook will continue to play a role in developing Kaito's puzzle solving skills in preparation for the Divine Puzzle. Next week it appears it will be an all Nonoha episode, filled with kindergarten kids as the possible Givers. I suppose the POG is already looking to it's future by gathering members at such a young age, and I bet these kids could do better than some of the Givers we've seen already. It's just an assumption so don't hold me to it.
