Impression
Given Raishin’s previous displays of tenacity, I half expected him to withstand that hit from Cherubim last episode and get back up afterwards, but evidently not! Loki was (and still is) a merciless opponent – I don’t think his battle with Frey was wildly influenced by any sort of personal grudge, it’s just in his nature to be an arrogant bastard. Frey knew she was hopelessly outmatched (she was getting crushed like a grape right from the start), but still kept pouring mana into Ravi until he overloaded. I immediately thought of Charl and Sigmund when I saw Ravi get bigger – that it was Frey’s trump card or something. Until the screaming started, of course. Then it became evident that something was really, really wrong, especially when all that blood started rising.
It looks like Divine Works is doing some pretty nasty stuff. Fitting man with machine is essentially the opposite of creating a Ban Doll – you’re putting magic circuits into humans with a “natural” abundance of mana, mechanising their hearts and creating an artificial mana flow in their bodies. While Frey and Loki are already exhibiting physical side effects, I don’t imagine they’d have very long lifespans – and even less so, if they were experiments. Well, I suppose they actually had a chance at life, something the rest of the guinea pigs didn’t get to experience. Imagine how many must have died if only two survived the experimentation – and those embryos back in the orphanage weren’t growing after all, they were dead.
I’m still not sure where Loki stands in all this. Clearly he didn’t spare Raishin out of the goodness of his heart – if he’d kept going, Yaya would have attacked, sucking more mana out of Raishin and bringing him closer to death, upon which Loki would have been disqualified. There was personal gain in it for him, is all. However, I’m getting the feeling he isn’t as antagonistic as he seems – for one, he seems to disagree with his father a lot, who has enough power over him to threaten to stop his heart (that guy’s probably Bronson, the former Wiseman mentioned by Shouko). While Loki isn’t against smashing Ravi to pieces, during that fight he seemed to genuinely think that doing so would save Frey. At this point, I’m not even sure why they want to compare the Garm and Angel series. While the Garm automatons may be easier to control, it’s clear that the Angel series is far superior, as long as you can find someone to handle it.
Will Loki be an ally? Or will he attempt to defeat Raishin in his injured state? I’d actually prefer the former, because Raishin has bigger problems to deal with (in the form of the Divine Works chairman, who is most likely “Sword Angel”). To save the other automatons at the orphanage and end this whole human experimentation stuff, he’s got quite a few hurdles to cross. His sense of justice was never an easy thing to uphold in the first place.