The First Circle

As soon as the episode started you could feel how different it was from the other 5 previous. Let me just say it was simply beautiful. The raw emotion and atmosphere that was shown and delivered was breathtaking and inspiring to a point. Not only did the art style improve and used color to enhance the overall aesthetic and emotion, but it also took a different approach and changed art-style for certain scenes and characters. The story really shows that there's no right or wrong against demons and humans and their both evil in their on way. Eventually showing the viewer that we reap what we sow.

No spoilers - just sharing how this episode made me feel ,This anime moved me deeply. I haven't watched any anime in a long time, but this episode made me feel truly sad. The art style-there are two distinct styles-was really impressive. The emotional weight of the story and the atmosphere completely pulled me in. The antagonist was written in such a way that I found myself understanding his actions. Everything from the pacing to the dialogue felt purposeful. It's rare to find an episode that leaves this kind of impact. Honestly, this was a beautiful and powerful experience that reminded me why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place.

Simultaneously the worst and most important episode of the whole series. I am all four alternative forms of story telling and experimenting with art styles and visual story telling, but this is like a 30 minute anime AMV in the dumbest way possible. This is one of those YouTube videos your little cousin would watch in 2011 and be like "wow it's so cool it's so deep it's so edgy". It is 30 minutes of dramatic techno/dubstep music mixed with two kids being like "wow my life sure is rough".

Conceptually I can see how this would've been been cool on paper but it was genuinely cringe inducing to watch. I literally wanted to skip it more and more as the entire thing went on. The episode then ends by explaining the main villains entire motivation and goal, which is insane that they make you sit through a 30 minute dubstep music video to get to. It's almost insulting.

"We'll tell you what his goal is, but you have to listen to our playlist first".

This episode changed the whole way I was watching the series. The Alluring visuals perfectly achieved the point of the whole story.

From the sudden shift of animation style to the back & forth between the backgrounds of characters at play really starts to make you question the point until, you reach the end. Then you sense a bit of uneasiness because the summery starts to creep in on our real world dilemmas. And the soundtracks, those hit hard especially the 'Afterlife'.

Not everything is black & white and I believe the director knew exactly how to bring the rabbit out of the hat (No pun intended).

Amazing visuals just like every other episode. But this should have been a 5 minute story, cue title screen, and get on with it. I cannot stand the trend of TV shows dedicating an entire episode of there limited run to these side stories. This is an episode I wish I could have watched on 2x speed as there is hardly anything of consequence beyond some wick flashbacks. In fact, this could have been like a preview they uploaded on YouTube in between seasons to keep people excited. But this is not an episode worthy of an entire 20+ minute runtime as it relates to the story, and maybe I don't know, DANTE.