You know, the plot of this series is good and for the most part, the characters are pretty good too. So why do we have to suffer through awkward fanservice and massively uncomfortable scenes? The entire first half of episode ten is downright uncomfortable as Ringo tries to ask for dating tips from the other girls and we realize quickly that Aoi and Kaine should NEVER be allowed near men. Thank goodness that Shinobu seems to have a good head on her shoulders and managed to give her real, non-creepy, non-criminal dating advice.
Thus, she heads out on her date with Tsukasa and honestly, it’s adorable. Ringo is too cute and too pure for this series, in this mess of fanservice she is the bright star. Too shy to even do an indirect kiss before passing out from embarrassment.
The first part of the episode is garbage and should be forgotten, the date is cute enough but really not worth thinking about. The meat of episode ten came from the flashback after Ringo passes out from the indirect kiss. We dive back to when she was a born, a miracle of modern science. A super-genius from the moment she was born, created by her mother. Of course, she developed as such and in the beginning, it seems like her mother is immensely proud of her so Ringo keeps doing her best to make her mother happy.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for her mother to become jealous, bitter and sour at Ringo for constantly winning awards for her advancements and genius intellect.
Her mother was a horrible bitch who told her that she regretted making her. I hate this woman more then you could imagine. There is no reason to become jealous of a child, to say something like that to a child to abandon a CHILD. It was after her mother left that she began attending middle school and it was there that she met Tsukasa.
Their relationship is honestly really cute. He knew she was and saw that she was down, so he gave her a purpose. He helped her find herself again in her darkest time and he’s really sweet for that. I honestly can’t tell sometimes what to think of Tsukasa. It’s obvious that he’s kind deep down, but he’s also highly driven and is always to try to take the route that saves the most people even if it isn’t the most ethical route.
That being said, he does ask her to build something immensely problematic. They had already built missiles, so when the music at the end of the episode turned dark and he asked her to build something there was a sense that everyone knew what it would be.
We haven’t even said the name despite seeing it in episode eleven. We have, however, questioned the morality of building such and thing and introducing it to this world. Honestly, that is a kind of morality that I am unsure of. A bomb, a nuke, a weapon of mass destruction made and implemented into a world outside our own. Yes, you need to fight to remain powerful and maintain your own nation without being bullied out of existence but is it right to use the level of force that we have in this modern world?
I don’t know, I can’t say.
Still, if they are going to use dangerous magical spells that can wipe half a city such as the spear from before some kind of retaliation weapon should be in place.
Aside from this pressing idea, episode eleven is broken up into two parts which I shall label. ‘Kaine scares the hell out of me’ and ‘Shinobu is best girl, don’t @ me.’
In which the medicine guild tries to shove themselves into Kaine’s territory and try to give the peasants opium as a drug to get better. She first, with Lyrules magic to assist her pulls a Senku from Dr. Stone and makes a Sulfa drug to heal her ailing patients and prove to the medicine guild that she is an Angel of the Seven-Light faith. After this is obtained, she sees them lurking around and follows them back to their hideout where she overhears them talking about bullying Lyrule into making the medication into poison.
She doesn’t take kindly to this and knocks them out when the leader of the medicine guild wakes up he wakes up to the most unpleasant surprise of Kaine going full Yandere on him. I like her speech, i like her ideals but dear lord we could go without the yandere moments and sketchy brain surgery to change a man’s ideals.
In short, not a huge fan of Kaine but I think her philosophy on God and mankind has some merit too it and would like to spend some time properly picking it apart.
The second half of the episode focuses on the Azure Brigade. They are dealing with the Empire and everything is not right among them and the bomb that the Seven-Light faith has made is most likely heading right for them. So before Shinobu evacuates the area, she assigns herself a last mission in this area and that is to save her friend Jeanne. Who has no idea about the corruption in the Azure Brigade and still pledges herself to the ideals that it was built upon. Before she can arrive though, Jeanne is attacked and betrayed, only living from the idea that the men wanted to ‘have fun’ with her.
I feel like Cinema Sins here by rolling my eyes and going ‘All bad guys are r*pist cliche’.
Shinobu steps in and helps Jeanne fight them off, before showing her the corruption of the Azure Brigade by showing her the golden statue that is stored in the basement.
When the leader walks in and they hide, they get a glance of a mysterious masked man that has been lent to the Brigade to fight the seven-light faith and if you want my personal guess? It’s Gustov, like he can summon the spear. He can cast fire spells with ease and we haven’t seen him speak. His hands are bandaged up like someone who was in a large fire of sorts. Shinobu reacts to him in a way that makes me think i’m on the right path.
My complaints throughout this series remain consistent. Oh well, nothing to be done about it I guess. Let’s see where things go now!