Gunslinger Stratos Episode 5 [ Timekeepers ]

What do you get when both Tohru’s go to an information seminar on world destruction? Why, the rest of the idiots fighting of course. You’d think they’d have learned but all of them seem pretty content to duke it out as the Timekeepers want them to do. I have this feeling that’s gonna come back and bite them in the ass when they’re, inevitably, forced to join one another.

This time all the groups are basically just. . .fighting. For the most part the episode just threw them in to have epic gun fights while the Tohru’s make friendly with a timekeeper, who has taken the appearance of Sidune but in a far creepier way. Ultimately the result of that battle was black!Remy killing someone and the old man on side black dying, keeping in mind black side is the ‘protagonist’ side of the story. As was mentioned to me before it is interesting to see the dynamic of ‘white is bad and black is good’ that the show gives off aesthetically.

Meanwhile while the forces of black and white stay dead even in manpower, the Timekeepers don’t tell us who got the energy cubes and instead tell us some morbid truths: Yeah, in ten years your world gets time travel and you can travel between the two worlds. Then you kill each other. GG. As it stands, the time keepers just explain that they’re here to prevent each world from wiping the other out.

We kind of see a little more of White!Tohru’s angst this episode, and see someone he loves died. This isn’t someone Black!Tohru seems to have lost so at the very least there is a time difference. Perhaps White!Tohru joined the fight a lot earlier and that lost them someone? I genuinely have no clue. I suppose we’ll get to see sooner or later. Either way it’s made him jaded and when the timekeepers explain the future, he takes it far better than the black version of himself.

Yup, in truth, the timekeepers are saying they’re just trying to help one side wipe out the other side. This is to prevent all out annihilation and ensure at least one side lives through history. Black!Tohru is determined to believe that’s not simply fate, remembering Remy and the Ghost’s words that ‘the future hasn’t been determined yet’. Meanwhile this frustrates White!Tohru who opens fire, prompting the Timekeeper to take the two and warp them into the future.

It’s good to know the Timekeepers ‘supposed’ reasons, but I’m also weary. They say that degradation, or people turning into sand, is solely because the future of the world doesn’t exist. Yet there are also phantoms in the world that fade in and out of existence, and while they warn people about the disappearance of the people experiencing degradation, they outright reject the Ghosts and try to prevent them from communicating. I don’t know how much more blatant you can be in your ambiguously evil intentions.

For now, the show is now exceeding my initial expectations. I actually enjoy watching it enough to say things on it, though I am still slightly in ‘tentative enjoyment’ territory. Who knows what next episode will bring, and I’m hoping we get to see more of the ghosts. I have the suspicion with Tohru being sent forward in time we might run into her. We’ll have to see!

Oki