天下制覇

Why do they even bother having these duels at all?

Impressions:

Another pretty irritating episode. I'd be a little more sympathetic to all of the keeping secrets for The Greater Good if all these characters weren't such gormless imbeciles, completely incapable of ever thinking that anything might be afoot as personalities suddenly turn on a dime, or even if all the secret plots weren't so plainly idiotic. The duel once again has obvious outside interference, and everybody's totally fine with it. Miorine literally presses a button that completely shuts down one side and oops, there goes the you-lose hat while the other mech is sitting on the floor completely dismembered, and everybody just cheers "Wow! He really did it! Uh, somehow!" There must be rigid adherence to the school rules, but also, every single person is going to blatantly cheat and it's not even that nobody cares, it's that every one of these oh so serious melodramatic meat popsicles is too thick to notice.

That's the crown of the episode. A replay of Guel cheating to win. Same as every single one of his other duels past the opening one. Refer back to my comments any of the other times this happened for how much I love his hypocrisy, and no, having had bad things happen to him has not redeemed him. Especially not if he just runs with this because it benefits him, same as he always does. I have more sympathy for the clone becoming increasingly desperate just to survive than any other character in the show, to be perfectly honest. The antagonists continue to either babble incomprehensibly about sociopolitical logistics or just steeple their fingers and insist that all is Just As Planned, while the protagonists are self-destructive ninnies, either by being serial learned helplessness, by being self-centered dicks, or both. Every character in this show just makes me mad lately, and that's not a good place to be.