This episode was hard to write about because it was hard to watch. From the beginning I had hopes that the show would redeem one, maybe two, of the characters that it portrayed as terrible. For as awful as Ange or the other girls were to each other, I never anticipated to care about each and every single one of them. I thought I’d hate Hilda the most as she was the most loud, annoying, and seemed to cling to a woman who was nothing but an abuser. This episode is noteworthy because it took a character I hated two episodes ago and made me cry over them.
We see some important memories to Hilda from the beginning. Hilda’s mother loved her very much and she managed to keep the truth of her Norma nature from her until she was a decent age. As she was taken from her she sobbed. Hilda had memories from the very beginning of remembering what it was to be loved, and because of that she was willing to even sell her own body to get back to her mother. Ange is facing a trial of another kind: people genuinely believe she is a monster despite having known her. She runs into one of her old Iaria friends and finds they believe her to be nothing but a monster.
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The scene is different for Hilda. . .as her mother doesn’t seem to recognize her. I felt such a poignant amount of pain as I saw this episode from that moment I just knew the rest of the episode would tear me apart. How do I talk about this show other than to praise it for growing from what it once was to what it is now? Easily, this is my favorite show of the season. The first few episodes establish Ange and Hilda as unlikable and painfully ignorant characters, and episode 9 paints them in their true colors: Girls who remember what it is like to be loved in a world where no one loves them. How can someone walk away from being loved when they remember it so fondly?
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I’ll say this right away: The concept that Norma are monsters has to be a cover up. You know why? Because how can society control it’s people if there is a group of resilient people born into it that without effort can break their powers. Norma ruin their lives of convenience, and I secretly suspect that perhaps it is the mana users who are the evil ones. I know many people share my sentiments but seeing mana in use once again it seems to be little more than a luxury when used against Norma.
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What happens to both of these girls in this episode just sickens me. Normally I watch anime in a marathon in order to avoid feeling exactly like I do now. Hilda’s mother went into such a blatant form of denial she outright rejected the reality, had another daughter, and named her Hilda. When Hilda reminds her who she is, she goes into a fury and demands she leave. Hilda’s heart breaks on screen and mine breaks with her. What has society become in this show that they can treat people this way? The show keeps telling them to accept reality but I as a viewer cannot accept this reality. What is done to these girls is not only disgusting and cruel, but outright makes me want the DRAGONs to take them.
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The revelation this episode? Sylvia is an asshole. Hideki often made fun of her for being like Nunnaly from Code Geass and I believe that’s why I cut her slack: I believed she had a capacity for good based solely on her appearance. No, she and Julio lured Ange out from her new life solely to torment her and put her on some faux trial to punish her for her misdeeds. Well, Hideki can’t call her Nunally now. I’ll be too busy calling her an insufferable bitch. Is there no humanity in HUMANITY? Is this what they deem as humans?
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Hilda is beaten by police officers despite her mother saying she ‘wouldn’t tell anyone’. I’m so disgusted by everyone involved. Sylvia, I’m glad that you fell off the horse you waste of space. I’m trying not to pepper this post with copious expletives because I’m so outraged and upset. Tusk showed up in this episode and I think he, Ange, Hilda, and Momoka will be working together to escape next episode. I both want it to be next Sunday and have no fondness for what they’ll be pulling: As far as I’m concerned the monsters in Cross Ange are the humans.
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Kudos to this show for making unlovable uninteresting cliches into interesting and heartbreaking people.
Oki
Well I expected betrayal, still I wasn’t prepared, at least for the Hilda 2.0. Even when I thought that the act of Sylvia was a trap, she made herself worthy of the Slaine Troyard Medal of Severe Dishonor.
It seems that they’re going to escape in the next episode and that Ange will sing, so we can have “Cross Ange, the Musical”. But I keep asking me if the three of them will be able to escape.
Bless this post.
Now excuse me I am just going to throw myself into the sea of emotions. *GROSS SOBBING*
We need a DRAGON to blow those “humans” to bits. The Norma should just stop fighting them and let them have lunch on the mana-country
ALL IN FAVOR TO TAME THE DRAGONS TO TAKE OVER THE MANA SOCIETIES!!!!!
20 bucks says dragons cant be fought with mana
The smart money’s on the dragons. Please dragons come in. It’s an all you can eat buffet.
What if mana is produced from the dragons, and they are attracted to their world by mana. The only problem I have with Normas letting the dragons kill the non-normas is that dragons can’t distinguish normas and non normas before killing them, so a lot of normas would die if they let the dragons pass without a plan.
This idea is actually similar to a discussion Oki and I had a couple of weeks ago. But another possibility could be that instead of being attracted to the mana, the Dragons might be hunting the Humans down because they are killing off their comrades (for the mana they possess), or warping mana from their realm into the Human Realm (the later though was something that just crossed my mind now).
I think what would be a game changer, if they could figure out how to tame the dragons. I feel like that is definitely a possibility (especially with how Tusk behaved around the Dragons. I get the feeling he might know a bit more about them than we or anyone might think). Not to mention, that would be totally badass. = v =
I just caught up to the anime, and what happened in this episode was just horrible. I keep trying to remind myself that the Mana-users have basically been brainwashed into believing that Norma are monsters, yet the people who knew Hilda and Ange from the past don’t have that excuse! They knew Hilda and Ange, and the only thing that changed was a label. I thought for sure Hilda’s mother would be overjoyed to see her, but now I understand the unease I felt the entire time. And like Hideki, I subconsciously compared Sylvia to Nunally just based on appearance. I can’t believe with she and Julia did. It was so hard to watch the ending, to see what happened to Ange and Hilda. :/