What They Say:
“We’ll beat you! In our next battle, Sei and I will beat you for sure!” Aila’s heart is pierced by Reiji’s angry outburst, and she wonders what she is doing here. She remembers meeting Barthes, being scouted, being forced to battle, and endlessly training. Now she has no option other than fighting, even if Reiji is her opponent. Suppressing her emotions, Aila begins her confrontation with Reiji. With her Qubeley Papillon, and her own special abilities, she assaults the Star Build Strike.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a stronger focus on Aila in the previous episode, we had some really interesting things happen when it came down to how she was being manipulated and controlled in different ways to achieve the goal of victory. That was something that made for some interesting fight sequence as it went on, but as the fallout hits here, we see how Reiji has totally flipped out over what happened and the nature of it, going so far as to reveal his Airan heritage, which confirms for some of those that are watching from the sidelines with more knowledge that he definitely is the prince of Airan. And that further fuels speculation about the truth of this series that is still largely playing in the shadows in order to let the competition itself stand out as the big piece of the puzzle here.
For Aila, the way that Reiji rails at her is pretty intense and that causes her to somewhat shutdown with what’s going on with the competition, refusing to play in her heart now which makes the whole situation more complex for her and her handlers. That allows us to get some time into her past where we see how she was recruited at a young(er) age and how those that did so have invested so much that they’re intent on getting a return on it. We get a decent handle on Aila at this stage of her life, which makes her coming into contact with Sei and Reiji previously important since it allowed her to experience new things and start down the path of actually making friends, something that she hadn’t done before which now puts her into a really complicated situation.
This pushes us into the second half where we get the action as Aila gets to go up against Sei and Reiji which is done in a forest kind of setting with some really huge trees. It makes for an interesting locale to use since it’s different from what we’ve had so far and is more close combat based. But the real focus is obviously on the emotional side as Aila is being pushed harder and harder to action she doesn’t want to do and it’s causing her to break. It does end up going about as you’d expect though, for better or worse, where Aila breaks free of her training and actually enjoys the battle and realizes what a true Gunpla fight is all about. It’s standard fare stuff in this regard but it’s also just a lot of fun to watch the fight itself unfold.
In Summary:
The fallout from the previous episode with Aila’s battle and tactics takes center stage here and it works fairly well for what it has to do, though it is entirely predictable when you get down to it. Getting more of her past definitely helps to flesh her out a bit more which illustrates her somewhat distant attitude at times and why she’s like that. It also factors into how she starts to make a stand for herself, which you expect to happen since it’s unlikely she’d go right to the dark side and savor it all. We get a solid fight in a decent locale but it this time around it’s about the character drama and angst more than anything else.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Official Gundam YouTube Channel
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.
