What They Say:
Angelise is the first princess of the Empire of Misurugi. She is the celebrated ruler of the Empire until one day she finds out the shocking truth that she is a “Norma” – an irregular being who cannot use “Mana”, and are treated as “things” rather than people. Having her name taken from her, Ange isolates herself on a remote island. There, she finds a group of Norma women who spend their days hunting dragons that have come to invade.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Cross Ange had a lot of fun the last time around as you kept expecting the whole thing to be a dream sequence based on how it started with Ange getting shot, but I rather liked that it was all just part of Embryo’s larger motivations and he easily found ways to draw most of those to his side while narrowing his focus on Ange herself. As the catalyst for just about everything in the series, Ange certainly is the obvious and expected standout player, but it’s fun seeing how Embryo is intent on winning her over and the ways he does so. There were distractions along the way, silly things that keeps the show to its silly side that it established early on, but for the most part it continues to just hit the ground running each time and does its own thing.
With this episode, things again start with some place setting, such as Tusk getting threatened pretty well by Jill for his actions with Ange and the Vilkiss that now has threatened Libertus in a big way. There’s some mild silliness with Salia as well as she continues to be within her new position and a little more. The real fun early on starts with Embryo talking about how he wants to manipulate things because of how humanity works in order to build something different through a purge and unification of two worlds that can bring about something better. Amusingly, while he regales her with all of this, Ange dutifully listens until she gets a chance to stab him several times. But as we saw before, he’s not easy to kill and it just reinforces his position of superiority over her, both in his calm and control over it but also the way he sends pain through her to reinforce it all. His abilities seem to be pretty much open to anything, especially when he shifts her from feeling intense pain to intense pleasure with a craving for more. And all poor Momoka can do is watch.
With Tusk and all the women he’s with, there’s some movement there as Alektra is trying to set thigns right herself, but is struggling with the impact of recent events and isn’t being allowed to really move on simply because of the physical condition she’s in, but it helps to rally those around her when she tries to leave on her own to deal with Embryo over what he’s done. Playing that out as we see glimpses of how Embryo is manipulating just about all of Ange’s sensations is certainly well played, particularly as it even makes an impact on Salia in a small way. The tensions and issues are flaring up nicely and seeing how various people are reacting, as the two main thrusts forward now seem to be Ange and Alektra from different points of perspective, and it works well. While Ange doesn’t get to be a character much here, there’s good stuff just in seeing her being worked over and tortured which highlights Embryo’s own type of cruelty, which is done with a playfulness.
In Summary:
Cross Ange plays fairy well here with what it needs to do in giving us two different things going on. For Alektra and those with Libertus, it works through the disconnected nature they have before giving them a minor rallying and refocus point that has them ready to move forward as active participants together. For Ange, it’s another shot at trying to kill Embryo only to realize that her most basic moves simply aren’t going to do anything to someone like him. That in turn lets him spend the episode torturing her in the kinds of ways that a child might think of torture, which makes for some amusing visuals at times and reactions from others. It also naturally plays to the more sexual side of the series, so it keeps fans who are on board because of that pretty pleased.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
