Mad bro?
A mysterious white Garuda delivers Haruto a new magic stone that is related to a "dud" ring Wajima made previously. Later in the episode, we meet the Gate, a kid who ran away from home that Haruto, Rinko and Shunpei met along the way. Meanwhile, Phoenix is bored as heck and wants to kill time and he decided to make the Gate go into despair. Can Haruto protect the kid from the potential threat known as Phoenix?
Unlike the previous episode that bored me, this episode really interest me since for starters, the Gate for this episode is a kid and second, the mother of the said kid is related to Haruto's past, something the series never bothered talking about. As it turns out Haruto's parents died in a vehicular accident and Haruto is the only survivor of that incident with the nurse, the Gate's mom being the witness to Haruto's loss. But what really struck me is how he got his motivation to bring hope to those who are in despair; it's his parents who gave Haruto hope. The scene between the kid Haruto and his parents is really touching, especially when they entrusted their son the hope they had is now on their son's hands.
The said scene gave me a better outlook on Haruto's character on why he is cheerful in most instances and why he survived the ceremony held during the solar eclipse months ago. He just clings onto the hope given by his parents. Because he is related to the boy's mother, she entrusted the safety of her son to Haruto after knowing that the man is capable enough to defend his son from the Phantoms.
As for how the heck Phoenix ended up becoming the Phantom responsible in bringing the kid into despair, to paraphrase Wiseman, Phoenix is just bored on watching his comrades getting beaten by the Wizard and wants to take part of the action. So yeah, aside that we have a shadowed image of the Wiseman in this episode, we had an idea on how this guy thinks. He just wants what is best for his subordinates. The only thing that disappoints me with Wiseman's brief appearance is that we never got a chance to take a glimpse of any of his body parts like any part of his face or any of his limbs. But I don't really mind since it adds up to the mystery of the character.
Speaking of which, according to some posts that I read online, Wiseman also sounds like Weiseman, a German word which means "white man". You never know if this guy is related to the White Wizard who is responsible in giving Haruto's Wizard powers. Back to the kid, he properly explained the reason why he doesn't want to live with his parents, it turns out that he is disappointed that his father never listens to him and his mother is just taking his father's side. I already expected this considering that he is still a kid and most plots involving some kid running away has something to do with disappointment.
As expected, Haruto gives us this good ol' speech that no parent is not worried sick for his or her child and showed the kid his mother's text messages. With that in mind, the kid decided that he wants to go home and Haruto will back him up just in case his mother will give that "he is your father and I must support him" excuse. The next day, much to my surprise, Phoenix attacked the kid's mom and then fights Wizard. The thing that surprised me the most is that Phoenix knows who the kid’s mother is and second, why he would attack the kid's mother considering that he sounds like the type of guy who can't do such a thing. This is when I finally understood what Wiseman said about the perfect method in bringing the kid into despair.
But since the plan is not yet showing its fruits, I guess I shall talk about it on my review for the next episode. Wizard and Phoenix's fight is quite good even if Haruto is quite dumb enough to transform into Flame Style first and not the Water Style, which is a good match up against Phoenix who is fire based. But since Haruto transformed first before Phoenix can do his move, I say he was just caught off guard when his attack against Phoenix is not super effective and it only caused Phoenix to show off that he can do better flames than Haruto.
This is when Wizard switched to Water Style and unexpectedly, it didn't do anything on Phoenix. Guess he needed a much stronger torrent of water to beat the guy. He then went with Land Style and went on defensive, which is the best solution thus far since his offensive attacks didn't scratch the guy. At the end, his array of Defend spells didn't work and was thrown on a river thanks to Phoenix by the end of the episode. Speaking of rivers, it's been a while since I saw a Rider being thrown on that body of water.
