Gunslinger Stratos Episode 3 [ HOLY FU- WHAT ]

My thoughts before the final few minutes before the end of this episode were pretty much straightforward: This show can be extraordinarily boring and things don’t really get interesting until everyone is fighting. You had a pretty simple ‘let’s train everyone’ montage and it was very dull. It took a lot of slogging to get to the action and ultimately I was still going, of course they’re going on a mission and someone’s going to get hurt and it will be very predictable and they’ll all get out okay and-

They didn’t all get out okay. Holy crap. I have to give this show some major props, I just got freaking Mami’d. I figured this would be your typical shounen esque gunslinger show where only one person ever died to show that death still happened and then in the end it’d turn out they were all unlikely allies to stop the TimeKeepers- while that can probably still happen it ain’t gonna be friendly because THEY JUST KILLED PEOPLE GUYS?

This wasn’t even someone random, this was someone in the opening! If you don’t want spoilers just stop reading because I can’t really talk about this episode without talking about who died.

So Sidune died to save Kyoma. Unless this is Bleach and people with holes in their chests can somehow magically survive, she seems solidly dead. Cue me freaking out and scaring everyone in the room as I loudly shouted ‘WHAT?’ Unlike most people I can usually understand everything going on in this show and it all makes a fair amount of sense, but I never got the vibe that anyone would die in this show. Even worse, if someone died I didn’t expect it to be anyone showcased in the opening. Granted that this is a show with literal doubles which means the actor and half of the design, goodbye black motifs, are still sticking around- it doesn’t change the impact on the characters or that one timeline side is dead.

I mean, holy fuck. Blood. Blood and being shot through the chest. I actually respect this show right now for killing someone because it’s . .   .it’s what this show needed? It needed a distinction instead of just being a generic pretty shooter. If the show can keep us genuinely afraid for who will die and what will happen I will actually really enjoy what comes next. That being said the other most important thing was the introduction of ‘ghosts’ and that they might be phantoms from the future. There’s also some heavy implication that they might be the true good guys and the timekeepers are dicks. Woops.

I’m interested. They might cop out from here on out and keep everything the same and have no one die, or something else might occur. Personally I’m excited and I have theories, my favorite being the ghost girl is Tohru’s daughter from the future who comes and goes from existence as her mother and Tohru’s lives are in danger. We shall see. For once, I’m cautiously interested Gunslinger.

Cautiously.

Oki