What They Say:
Galilei Donna follows the three Ferrari sisters who are descendents of the astronomer, Galileo Galilei. The year is 2061 and the world is in the grips of another ice age. With a mysterious organization hunting them down and searching for the “Galilei Donna”, the three sisters must work together to fight against the organization and discover their true destinies.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Well, Hozuki is conscious again, and that means it’s all about her again. I guess the fact that at least the rest of the main characters are all shown to be operating the Galileo pretty competently and without Hozuki trying to help is an indicator that they’ve all found opportunities to be useful to the group, so that’s good. But overall, this is still most definitely the Hozuki Show, with its supporting cast primarily being the actual guest stars of the episode rather than the other main characters.
The next stop on the Ferraris’ treasure hunt is the Netherlands, where they meet a group of notorious thieves who are quite welcoming to their criminals in arms (a designation that the law student Hazuki strongly objects to), despite greeting them with an army of guns to the face. Their leader Ludgar spends most of his screen time talking about how evil Adni Moon is and sharing his people’s hardships at their hands. For Hozuki, though, the one thing that matters more than that, and more than their actual objective to locate the next piece of Galileo loot, is Theo, the cute boy about her age who ends up having as much in common with her as she could ever dream of.
And since that’s on the forefront of Hozuki’s mind for this visit, it’s also the focus of the episode, as the two share their passions and ideas and Hozuki unintentionally makes Theo’s token childhood friend Karen as jealous as she unintentionally made her sister. As is in Hozuki’s character, she wants everyone around her to be happy and takes action to try to get Karen the love that she never meant to swoop in and snatch up. Everything plays out pretty normally, until it gets to be time for the episode to have some real weight.
And while the ending is definitely very terrible for all but the most unambiguous villains of the series, it appears to go to a level that’s far beyond what I’d expect from this series. If the intention of the episode was to build itself up as being cute and fun and then pull a fast one with getting as horribly dark as it could within a few seconds, it succeeded. Cutting it off where they did definitely serves to keep us guessing as to what really happened and what this might lead to for the series as a whole, but it also feels too abrupt and discordant given the way the episode was structured. Ultimately the value of the episode will depend on what happens immediately after it, due to this choice.
In Summary:
It’s a cute little love story for our adorable lead Hozuki, until some potential major tragedy strikes. The episode was predictable but enjoyable, returning to focusing on Hozuki so much that the other leads are hardly in it at all but still giving a few indications that they’ve all become relatively comfortable with their current place in the group. The ending was abrupt and severe, seemingly far darker than the series has ever been. It comes across as poorly structured especially in its final moments, but for the purpose of shock value and keeping the audience wondering what happened, it works quite well.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Toshiba Satellite L655-S5191 PSK2CU-1C301U Notebook PC.
