His and Her Circumstances (Vol. 3)
Soichiro is away at kendo camp, so Yukino has time to devote to her friends  and their problems. Tsubasa, Soichiro's old friend, is upset at the prospect  of her widowed father's remarrying. She's won over by his fiancée's son Kazuma,  who conceals a warm heart beneath his punk-rocker exterior. Kazuma wants  his mother to be happy and is delighted at the prospect of having a sister.  Director Hideaki Anno (Evangelion) never allows these situations to  sink into soap opera bathos, and his unflagging visual imagination keeps  things lively. He uses solarized photographs as backgrounds to suggest  Tsubasa's alienation as she wanders through the city, and effectively  juxtaposes animated sequences with still drawings--techniques other directors  have used far less skillfully. However, as the titles suggest, episodes 14  and 15 are fillers that just recap previous developments. (Rated 13 and  older: minor profanity, cartoon violence)--Charles Solomon