Last week I got sick so I had to delay the episode until I could do a double post and now this one is late due to connection issues. I apologize! These last two episodes were quite exciting to watch, so I’m pretty stoked to start writing about them.
Episode 3
In that cliffhanger at the end of episode 2 where Soya is suddenly surrounded by all the paladin members, I was frustrated that it ended there, but also pretty excited about starting this episode and the wait didn’t disappoint! I must say I’m quite surprised that there are fights happening left and right between these two factions.
As soon as the back-up arrives, Soya is adviced to surrender by Ginko, but then we find out a bit more about Soya’s personal motivations! He says he’s an avenger and he wants to destroy the ones who use the power of the dragon who destroyed his planet. Mind, blown!
The worldbuilding of the show got expanded in just a couple lines of dialogue and I am even more interested in seeing where all this is going. Eventually Soya tries to attack the leader of the opposite group and he gets handed back a finisher move called Thor’s Hammer that looked super amazing.
To make things even crazier, suddenly Sensei summons something out of thin air and a giant cat appears and swallows Soya, Ginko and Sensei. Afer this the battle cools off and the assembled heroes leave as well.
After Soya was swallowed and all this, we get a little peek at a scene that looks like a small theater and two characters speak, one is sensei, who this time around doesn’t need translation from Ginko and another one is what seems to be a plush dog? Either way, their conversation is slightly puzzling, but quite intriguing. As they argue they mention some of their own motivations and goals as well as talk about Kigurumians and Siriusian, so races from other planets, I shall assume.
Soya is sitting as a member of the audience while the conversation goes on, but he seems more interested in the bucket of fried chicken on his lap that on the argument. As he’s about to take a bite, the conversation ends and he wakes up from a dream. Aww, poor Soya.
It turns out he’s slept for three days. He learns that the giant cat that appeared is actually a spaceship with a warp system to the house and it’s still sitting on that mountain. It looks pretty cute, in my opinion. After seeing his classmate on the news, Soya decides it’s time to go back to school.
After class ends, Nozomi asks him to go somewhere with her and she takes him to the Occult club, which she’s a part of. Once the club president arrives, Soya formally becomes a member of the club against his will, but he decides to go along after a senpai arrives and they hit it off some.
The senpai turns out to be one of the warriors and man, is it weird or what? He’s really funny though and I really like his character design. I tend to really dig these otaku-type characters which chunnibyou tendencies and grandiose personalities that are super uncool, but have zero shame about it.
Either way, Nezuya calls Soya his friend and Soya is touched by it, but we as audience know that this will create conflict at some point since they’re in opposing factions.
Later that night another Nebula Weapon appears and I must say this one was incredibly more creepy looking than the previous ones. All those babies upside down, ew.
Both Nezuya and Harumi end up finding the weak spot and enter the core to destroy it. I really liked that as they entered, the world seemed to divide in half to show illusions to both of them at the same time.
We get to see Harumi’s illusion right away and in it, we get even more information about her relationship to Miu. It seems they really admire the other and walk to become more like them. Both want to protect the other and become their image. As Haru is tall and strong, Miu wants to become strong and as Miu is cute and princess-like, Haru would like to have more of this image because she’s afraid of people becoming scared of her due to her strength, judo ability and size. Heh, she ain’t even that big…
Either way, in the end she confronts this and shatters the illusion successfully, but as she comes down from the fight, everyone notices that something is wrong! Nezuya is falling too and he seems to be unconscious. Just at that moment, Soya sees him too and recognizes him as the senpai from the club. Quite and ending for the episode!
Episode 4
Soya finding out about Nezuya and the panic on the Paladin side from not knowing what happened with Nezuya made the ending of episode 3 quite tense, but all that tension was released when we find out what were the illusions he was seeing. Having a glimpse of all these teen male otaku fantasies was just hilarious to me and it seemed quite fitting to his behavior and a nice comedic relief.
The comedic tone doesn’t last for long though as soon enough the old man takes care of Nezuya and three other members of the Paladin go off to follow Soya. Harumi still wants a one-on-one fight with him, so she goes to find him and challenges him to a duel.
This episode includes a lot of action scenes which I rarely have much to say about unless it’s martial arts or something, so I won’t really comment much on that, except maybe that the CGI isn’t as eye-intrusive to me as it was on the first episode.
The core of this episode is two different things, first off is the fact that eventually during the fight, Harumi abuses her power to an extent where her armor becomes a dragon and starts overpowering her psyche. It’s quite an interesting phenomenon and I hope they explain at length later on why it happens and if it can be avoided and so on.
This was hinted at during the conversation at the theater in episode 3, but they made it seem like it was impossible for it to happen again, so I’m puzzled.
The other thing that was really interesting was the fact that during this troublesome fight, the Paladin asked Soya for help and they temporarily teamed up in order to subdue the dragon. I really like these kind of temporary alliances that blur the lines between enemies in stories, so I hope more of those are included in the future.
The last very important thing to mention is the fact that after the conversation at the end where Benika asks the director what his goal is. Now it’s hard to say who the good guys and the bad guys are! I also think this true peace he talks about is a sort of dystopian utopia where they just control people’s minds… well, they haven’t given out any real details, but that ‘psychic violence’ mention was kind of terrifying.
Either way, it seems the Great Paladin faction is in danger of dying out! Let’s see what happens next week.