What They Say:
The National Federation of Ingelmia has declared war on the United Kingdom of Arandas in its conquest of expanding its borders. Susumu Tokimune is a new pilot for the Arandas army and during a mission he encounters an armored vehicle containing a robot called Argevollen as well as a young girl named Jamie Hazaford. After saving Jamie’s life, Susumu becomes the pilot for the Argevollen and uses it to battle against the Ingelmian forces.
The Review:
Content: (please note that portions of this review may contain spoilers)
Kicking off from last week’s minor cliffhanger, this episode brings us back into the main swing of things with Captain Samonji meeting with that mysterious commanding officer from a few episodes ago. The commander discusses his opinion on the war at the moment, and is actually pretty much convinced that Arandas has no hope of winning, though the way he casually talks about it suggests he’s not particularly concerned about the outcome. What does catch his attention though is Susumu’s background, as the Argevollen was originally supposed to be delivered to him and it didn’t take long for him to figure about Susumu’s sister. Surprisingly however is that Captain Samonji didn’t know Susumu was related to her, and while the news doesn’t visibly disturb him much (as does anything for that matter) he prepares to deal with it.
While Captain Samonji makes his return, Jamie gets a promotion her company, and prepares Susumu to go through another one of Argevollen’s upgrades. She also has to test his mental link to Argevollen which involves a series of hilariously awkward questions about his preferences, and one about how he feels about the Argevollen where he states that the Argevollen is necessary to him in order to achieve his goals, which catches Captain Samonji’s attention. Afterwards the group gets together to celebrate Okui’s success on last week’s filler mission and the medals of honor he received.
The party itself is mostly good times and typical drunken anime humor but things take a turn for the serious when Captain Samonji arrives to the party. He questions Susumu about his sister and confirming their connection before finally revealing that he was present when she died. She was apparently involved in some kind of unsuccessful military experiment that ended in her death, and at first Susumu takes things pretty well. However when he learns that Samonji knew the experiment was more or less doomed to fail and never made any attempt to save her, he explodes and starts to dish out a pretty massive beatdown to the Captain before finally getting restrained. After the sub-captain learns about the connection she decides to tell Susumu exactly what happened with his sister.
In Summary:
After last week’s slow burn, this week’s episode finally delivers on the much needed confrontation between Susumu and Captain Samonji. Though the payoff isn’t quite what it could have been the episode does provide some good setup in other areas regarding what the exact agendas of some of the higher ups are, and why they don’t seem to be too concerned about potentially losing the war. With next week’s episode focusing on the backstory of Susumu’s sister, hopefully we’ll get a lot more interesting material as things keep going forward.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
