Oh, you think El Dorado’s cool? Wait until you see El Dorado’s true form!

— The only interesting bit in the cold opening is that King’s own henchmen have no clue why he wants Sophie so badly.

— So GarEden merged with the company that is related to Sword’s sister’s death. Eh. I mean, it’s new news, but it’s not exactly earth-shattering news.

— Sword and Luke plan to infiltrate GarEden at night, but shouldn’t they wait for what’s-her-face? Gina. That’s right. Ah, these characters are so memorable. In any case, our heroes are heavily outnumbered. They may as well get all the help they can get. If time is of the essence, i.e. the enemy would eventually find them if they don’t move now, then why didn’t they wait for her to return before heading into El Dorado in the first place?

— Well, this pretty much says it all: “You can’t get much done if you worry about every little thing.” As a result, Sophie starts ordering a ton of food… with what money, though? Ah right, don’t worry about every little thing. Uh-huh.

— Sophie’s hyping up her brother reeeeeeeal good. He’s so nice and perfect! He’s amazing! Man, I sure hope he hasn’t been corrupted and turned to evil.

— This is such an important mission; in fact, the fate of the world hinges upon the success of this mission. Nevertheless, the Makai Order can only spare three of their own to take care of everything. If there had been a subplot about Garo Knights and Alchemists being assassinated, I’d understand why we’re so short-handed, but we don’t have anything like that in this series.

— When our heroes finally infiltrate GarEden, they find Queen’s plants all over the building. All of the programmers have also been killed. What a coincidence — the bad guys complete their project as soon as our heroes arrive.

— Why do our heroes even trust this “random” programmer? Why even take the random programmer with them? “Duh, he might know a thing or two about the place.” Uh-huh. Sure. You guys will defend anything.

— God, the character designs for the women suck so much this time. Gina looks terrible. Queen looks terrible. The waitress looks terrible. Sophie’s lucky that she’s still a child, so they can’t fuck her up either with ridiculously large anime titties.

— See? Our heroes charge forward recklessly to fight Queen, so they can’t help but leave Sophie behind with a stranger.

— Queen doesn’t have any backstory. Neither does Bishop. And they’re really being coy about King’s identity. After nineteen episodes, we still have no clue what this guy looks like. The only reason to do this is if King’s identity is a plot twist, but it’d be so dumb if he’s actually someone we know. God, it’d be so dumb if he’s actually Sophie’s brother. Anyways, as I was saying… watching Queen jump headfirst into battle, all I can think is how I don’t know anything about her. Blah blah blah, we don’t need to know that. Pfft, speak for yourself.

— Oh hey, what do you know! Called it by a mile. Stupid… just stupid.

— Apparently, this creepster is a Garo Alchemist, which is why he didn’t set off their Horror radar. Doesn’t matter. You never should’ve taken your eyes off a defenseless child. In any case, his backstory is simple: he was exiled for experimenting on humans, but then Bishop took him in. Ho-hum.

— This is apparently the Holy Land, but I have no clue what I’m looking at. Looks like melonpan connected by wires. Then we got some reddish cauliflower thingie over here.

— Sophie runs away and eventually finds her brother’s office. His diary is also just sitting conveniently on his desk in case anyone ever wants to read it. Last minute tear-jerking never works, though. She then finds a box of letters signed by her, but she never wrote any of them.

— Look at these tubes. I think they’re supposed to look freaky or something, but it’s kinda silly. Sophie keeps asking about her brother, but the baddies refuse to answer her. Hmm.

— Going to the true El Dorado is apparently a one-way trip. So, um, we could just lock all the bad guys in there, right?

— Out of nowhere, Sword and Luke crash the party. Apparently, the latter had placed a tracking device on Sophie’s neck. So back to more fighting.

— Oh, would you look at that… the creepster was really just some tiny thing.

— Bishop sets off an explosion that consumes everything in fire. Sword has no choice but to don his armor in order to protect the girl, but this apparently makes him pass out. Luke was in the middle of fighting Queen, but she manages to disappear into a portal. How come they can keep doing that? You can’t just say magic. It’s lazy writing through and through.

— Bishop ends up throwing Sophie into the pink thing just as Sword somehow magically recovers. Naturally, he doesn’t get to the girl in time. He dives after her, but that just means they both enter true El Dorado. As we’ve been told, this is a place where dreams come true. Sophie sees her brother, and Sword stares at someone who might be his sister.

— Tune in next week to find out all about magical dream world!

— Garo – Vanishing Line didn’t need to be a 2-cour series. The narrative would’ve been so much tighter with half as many episodes. We wouldn’t be so fed up with the show’s storytelling if we didn’t have to spend so much time with it.