Girl Air Force is off to an action-packed start with a mysterious enemy Xi, who uses these ‘monster’ fighter jets wrecking havoc and causing death everywhere. These Xi fighter aircrafts possess dangerous technology and abilities such as HiMAT: Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology, lets them pilot beyond Human capabilities, and EPCM: Electronic Perceptory Countermeasures, is what screws over any ordinary fighter jet when try attempt manual close combat. To counter the Xi, Ministry of Defense Yashirodoori has been leading the research and development of the Daughters. They apply HiMAT, Anti-EPCM technology, and autonomous piloting device known as Anima to existing aircraft models, and tune them to fight the Xi.
Considering how action-packed this premiere was, I am satisfied with how the information dump didn’t feel overwhelming. I liked that they focused on what needed to be explained this week, and that is the basic explanation of what makes the Xi so powerful, and the status of their development of the Daughters to counter them.
Surprisingly, I found myself enjoying the humour of how Yashirodoori was trying to interrogate Kei, and how doesn’t understand why the guy was able to get the craft to boot up again, but because he’s apparently the Anima’s “Prince Charming”, they decide they need him to make sure JAS39 Gripen can fly properly. They are certainly not one to waste time now are they? Had Kei not come to the base, it sounds like they had planned to locate him anyways, ahahaha! So one way or another, he was bound to be dragged into this. Luckily for them, I suspect Kei does have some background in flying aircrafts, especially since he is very much interested in them and knows a lot about them.
But if there’s one thing about Kei’s character, he is quite naive. After witnessing the power of the enhanced JAS39 Gripen, it fuelled his motivation to look into applying into the JSDF Air Force Academy, with the hopes and dreams he will be able to pilot that craft and seek vengeance against the Xi for his mother’s death. I mean, had he not been ‘chosen’ by the JAS39 Gripen’s Anima, he probably end up as another body count like the other pilots who tried to defeat or were given orders to distract the Xi who were attacking the Shanghai Evacuation Fleet. Furthermore, Yashirodoori revealed that fight was JAS39 Gripen’s first battle. So while Kei is now be given the opportunity he dreamed, I suspect he is due to get a reality check. Regardless, it’s going to be interesting to see how he interacts with the Anima pilot.
As for Minghua, I wonder what she is going to do now that he has been dragged into the mess she wanted him to stay out of. Aside from what feels like the default “best friend unrequited love” set up, I understand her fears of losing him since as she says, she doesn’t know anyone else in the country other than him, and with her parents whereabouts and status unknown, without Kei, she is alone. So I wonder if she will end up getting herself involved in the military project as well.
In all, I thought this was a pretty exciting to watch. I love these type of fighter-crafts series, and I was quite pleased with the quality of the combat scenes, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it will play out. As for blogging, I’m just going to stick to my three episode rules to see how I feel about writing about this. If someone else is interested in covering this, I’m probably going to yield this title since I have a lot on my hands already. That being said, I’m looking forward to next week to hopefully get a better feel of the characters, as well as getting to know more about the Anima Kei is going to work with.
Possibility of Blogging: Moderate – Going to give it 3 episodes.
Possibility of Watching: High
