“I’ll protect everyone, no matter what the enemy is.” -Chloe McCaffery
Summary: Everyone’s up late working at the Generation Bleu headquarters. Ivica, Rebecka, and Georg (the A.I for Gen. Bleu) talk about the signals being sent out from the Secrets that have been getting stronger as the Secrets become more humanoid in shape. Hannah schedules a city wide health check for H.Q, but is really only after Ao. Han and Pippo are at a Japanese presentation of the head of the Secret that they dragged up from the ocean last episode, where it’s shown that the Secret’s can actually communicate with humans. The Secret says that it is not the enemy, but instead a kind of antibody produced by the earth to fight off the Scub Coral. Ao has been having trouble sleeping so he buys some sleeping pills from Gazelle but before he has a chance to use them, Scub Coral all over the world mysteriously start to reactivate.
Team Pied Piper goes out to fight another humanoid Secret that has appeared, but when Ao gets too close, it shoots him down. Team Goldilocks is sent in as back up, and through their powers combined, Team Pied Piper and Team Goldilocks are able to defeat the Secret. Ao wakes up in the hospital next to Chloe in a nice reversal of events from a couple of episodes ago. They talk about Chloe’s childhood and her resolve to fight the Secrets or whatever else is thrown at her in order to protect the people she cares about. Secrets start appearing all over the world at places where the Scub has reactivated, but before Gen. Bleu can act, Christophe reveals his plan to lure all the Secrets to one place using all the Quartz they’ve gathered and then destroy them.
Impressions: It’s good to have a breather episode every now and then, and we certainly needed it after the last couple of episodes. While there’s still a lot going on here, it’s a little more controlled and connected to some of the things that were only briefly mentioned last episode. Let’s take all the stuff involving the Secrets. In episode 14, we see the Japanese military salvaging the head from the Secret (that Ao and Eureka destroyed) for some unknown reason. This episode we see that the reason they took it was to try and communicate with the Secrets and to find out what their purpose is.
According to the Secret, it’s not an enemy, it only pursues the Quartz inside the Scub in order to protect the earth in much the same way that a white blood cell protects the human body from diseases. But if they’re really attracted to the Quartz, wouldn’t they have noticed the MASSIVE stockpile that Generation Bleu have up in space? I don’t know why everyone is so quick to trust everything that the Secret is saying. It’s not like the Secret’s have only ever gone after the Scub/Quartz. If you think back to episode 10, that frog Secret specifically targeted humans and human-like shapes. So really, they should be taking what these guys say with just a pinch of salt.
The question of whether or not the Secrets are enemies is really taking a toll on the team and on Ao specifically. It’s good to see that Ao, the hero, has his moments of weakness and doubt. He’s not had an easy last couple of episodes, what with his mom reappearing, then having to let her go, and his best friend running off with his worst enemy plus all the other crazy stuff that’s going on. No wonder the poor boy can’t sleep! I hope things start to look up for him soon, otherwise I fear for his sanity. We’ll have to wait to see in the next episode what exactly Christophe’s plan to destroy all the Secrets is and if Ao finally gets to take at least a nap or something.
Final thought: I didn’t get to talk about this last episode (with all the ranting I did, whoops) but NEW OP and ED! Yay! I like the new opening alright, although not as much as I liked the fist one (don’t kill me please). Although I will grant that the new one has a shadowy figure that looks like it might (!) be Renton. I like the new ending a lot. The song is pretty catchy and I like the comic book like visuals as well as the color palette.