Darker Than Black Episodes 17 and 18: A Love Song Sung with a Trash Heap

Darker Than Black has fallen into a weird little pattern, and it's starting to bother me. The show will start getting better and better, until I'm totally psyched up for whatever's coming next, and then the show drops in quality a bit and doesn't do much with the awesome storylines they have set up. Even the animation in this arc wasn't anywhere near as good as the last few episodes.

I enjoyed these episodes in spite of that, but it's really frustrating to keep going from amazing episode to stuff like this. I wish the show had had more of a slow build to awesome instead of this constant back and forth. If this episode had taken place earlier in the series, I think I would've enjoyed in quite a bit more.

That said, there were still some wonderful scenes. Mao didn't play a huge role in this episode, but he absolutely shone in his limited time on screen. I liked the continued development of Yui's relationship with Li as well as her interactions with one of this arc's new characters. I hope that we'll learn more about dolls in an episode soon, but I suppose there's always manga and the next season for that.

Rating: 89/100