Well I'm caught up on the story now and that was fucking weird how they did the Ziz battle, in the story it seemed like even though she was about to fight then got interrupted, but then in the gameplay they just went ahead and had a battle anyway. It almost feels like they went through all the effort of designing a battle before they decided they weren't actually going to have you fight Ziz here, but they didn't want their work to go to waste. Which unfortunately further confirms my theory that they've been dragging this plotline out specifically because they wanted to have a boss fight against each of the Four Beasts. Good music though. It's a shame because other than that I thought 39 and 40 were a significant improvement over 37 and 38, so this time it doesn't bother me so much because at least a bunch of interesting stuff has been happening. I'm also really starting to dislike Leviathan because it's becoming clear that Ziz and Behemoth would be happy to talk and she's the only one holding them back. I wonder what Bahamut is gonna be like and if she will firmly establish Leviathan as the worst of the four. But I did appreciate the Anis subplot being moved to the end of the chapters so that it didn't interrupt the flow of the story, that was a good move and I liked how they somehow managed to bring back almost every dangling plot thread. Though I can't help but wonder if they actually planned it out this way from the start, or if this was a Togashi-style "I've got way too many plates spinning, I've got to find a way to condense all this, let's just make it so it's all connected somehow." Still, it made it a lot more interesting than it was in 37/38.
And here's Viper pusy so that you glance at my blog. Hello. I don't mind if nobody reads my wall of text, I just wanted to type out my thoughts somewhere.