Hello everyone,
Here we to talk about the fifth episode of the mystery anime series named Dantalian no Shoka that is continuing to give us convoluted plots, great action and precarious animation...
This episode, like all the others, focus on a different type of mystery (many of them are actually stories based on legends of the past re-adapted for the situation) related to the creation of a human being by a powerful magician for research purpose.
The basis of this story is likely given by the various novels and references on the Homunculus genre present in the Faust and in the Frankenstein, but also in many other contemporaneous novels less famous.
This Homunculus, Viola, has the look of a beautiful lady and the magician decide to use her to test her capabilities to charm hundreds of males. She succeed in this endeavour, but grow attached to the real world and decide to ask these guys to protect her from her "father" by collecting five magical books specialized in defense and here the story begins with one of these mans asking Huey to find a magical book for him...
It was honestly an absurd request that is pretty much impossible to grant. Magical books are very rare and five random guys without any experience or knowledge are powerless to find them, but with Dalian intromission (she looked really annoyed by the mere presence of this magician), the five guys manage to repel the magician and save Viola once and for all. Unfortunately for them, Viola forget about the promise with the five guys and go with a random new character leaving the "heroes" really in a we-are-idiots position.
The story isn't the most original, but the execution was quite nice for being a Gainax produced anime. I liked the whole atmosphere surrounding the villa of Viola with all the gangsters, soldiers and random guys that grouped together to save her from the clutches of the magician. The short Huey "i'm cool" moment was also very good with him saving the life of his friend and "repelling" one of the harpies created by the magician.
It was also interesting how they made very clear the difference between a book-reader and a real magician. The first just loan the power of the book to make the magic happen (like Huey for example), the magician through hard study and focus manages to create magic without any supporting book. This particular magician was one of the most powerful that exist on the earth judging from what Dalian said...
The real problem I can see with this episode is the animation. I can't really stand the crappy animation they used to animate the fight scene. I seriously hope they'll improve it on the DVD/BD otherwise they won't be racking much sales this time around.
Ah, by the way, Dalian and the library girl are both growing a rather interesting personality that will probably be useful for narrating in a future arc revolving them. (that hopefully will come sooner or later)
Dalian isn't the most cute girl of this season (due also to the bad Gainax design), but she's still great with her blushing! Especially if combined with her particular voice accent! I can't get enough of her "Yes". 
What will be the next short story they'll be airing next week? Let's hope they'll finally introduce some of the other yomihime/kagimori pair that we saw in the OP.
See you soon,
feal87