天下制覇

Is it just me, or did the opening riffs to Margot/Malga’s fight sound straight from Star Fox?

Impressions:

Had me worried for a little while there with the first 8 minutes or so, Sunrise. CG soldiers, boring exposition, tactical displays, etc. About the only thing I could really be bothered to pay attention to was Kimi lounging around, and at least 50% of that was because she never bothered to put her clothes back on. Then Toori ran out and the ground troops spent pretty much the entire rest of the episode cowering behind Adele in her armor since she’s apparently the only one who remembered to bring anything anti-artillery. Kind of amusing, yes, but I’m not hoping for slapstick when the show’s finally actually in motion.

Thankfully, things kicked into high gear about a third of the way through the episode, and while not nearly as impressive of any of the action from the Mikawa invasion episodes, was still constant and didn’t let up despite a few somewhat weird cutaways and direction things. The bunch of villagers having a direct line to Margot for example and using it to give her a pep talk while unconscious… not really sure what that was all about and would have worked much better if it was just between Margot and Malga, or even coming from Toori since all he was doing at that point was clinging to a tree. Those are minor quibbles though. I’m thrilled to see the entire cast actually finally doing things again for the first time since episode 1. Tomo firing a torpedo with her bow, Adele tanking entire armies, lesbians blowing up the heads of mecha, etc. If only every episode could be like this. It’s taken a long time to get here, so I really hope they can stay at this level or even improve it (Neit and Futayo are apparently paradropping in) for the rest of the season.