What They Say:
Sometimes, even the best laid plans fail to work out. Earth’s forces learn that the hard way when two Wulgaru fleets leave the gate right when they get there! Now Team Rabbits has to fight their way to the gate… without Izuru’s help!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The Heaven’s Gate operation finally got started at the end of the previous episode, though that was more just saying they were going to do it than actually doing it. A lot of the last episode was a variety of character material for characters I have absolutely no care for and will admit thta even after all these episodes, can barely name. They’re so paper thin, pointless and inconsequential for the most part that it hasn’t been worth remembering, especially since they have almost no personality. With the plan set and the idea to get Team Rabbits to go hard against Heaven’s Gate and to throw a ton of support behind them, it’s all barreling forward well at this point as the team is ready for some serious action against the enemy. An enemy that can bring in more reinforces through the gate until it’s actually destroyed.
This works out to be a good thing at least in terms of watching the episode as the first half has a wide variety of action sequences as the team deals with the array of ships thrown at them. The Wulgaru do make things easy to discern with color coded ships and a few waves of them coming through for Team Rabbits to go against and a whole lot of beams firing in from the Earth fleet that’s slowly advancing alongside them. It’s not a massive battle that makes you draw your breath as you see it unfold, but it plays big and does it well enough to make it engaging and fun to watch, even as it gets some minor Wulgaru character material interspersed throughout it.
In Summary:
Though there is some minor changes as it progresses as the reveal comes that, surprise and shock, the Wulgaru have grown and changed some with their technology since the defectors left years ago, and now we’re seeing that they’re not quite the pushover they thought they would be in dealing with them at the gate. The episode is largely focused on the action and that is its strong suit here, so it’s enjoyable enough from that perspective. The character material is minimal, as it should be at this stage, but the attempts to flesh out the Wulgaru a bit more is just weak and the approach as a whole doesn’t offer anything meaningful or memorable in the long run.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
