Where do we begin… Let’s go in roughly chronological order.
You’ll recall that last week, the inept commander’s entire strategy relied on a single spotter plane which he neglected to protect and was immediately shot down. Then the students, which shouldn’t be participating in battle at all, were called in to take its place.
And… the soldiers are not sure whether they should trust the information from the students. When their only other option is to fire blindly. These people’s idiocy boggles the mind.
The commander, in his infinite wisdom, decides to accept their information. And Claire and the students in question act like this is unexpected and are extremely happy that he accepts their information. Come on… there is no rational information not to accept their information. The characters’ relief just draws attention to the futility of the entire exercise.
Then what’s his face and what’s his face’s friend get blown up, but only after they throw their gun overboard and fly within arm’s reach of the battleship to get some precise observations. Guys, pretty sure you don’t need to go *quite* that close to observe a ship.
Then Claire wants to stop everything and look for them in the middle of the battle while their ship is about to get sunk. And the commander says that it is pointless to look for them. Um, I think it might be a good idea to look for them… but perhaps wait until the battle is over…? Just an idea here. Of course later on it turns out that their teacher went and rescued them somehow.
Now we get to the high point of the battle, where Ka-el vows he won’t let anyone else die and will protect Isla. A bit overdramatic. Ka-el gets pissed so he turns into an ace pilot that even ERU-ERUFU respects. Ok, then. Let’s get back to Ka-el’s vow to protect Isla in a minute.
But Claire’s ship is going down. Extremely slowly. Slowly enough for her to have a lengthy conversation with Ka-el as it falls and confess her love while sparkles fly around her in the sky. But she’s going to die. No, evacuating the ship is not possible. Nor is jumping into Ka’el’s plane which is right next to her. Oh, but before her ship can sink an enemy fighter is going to run her over on the flight deck. Because that makes total sense. Fortunately ERU-ERUFU shoots it with his rifle and blows it to smithereens half a second before it runs her over.
Of course Claire regains her powers (who saw THAT coming?!!) and proceeds to slaughter the enemy army to protect the ones she loves.
Now let’s get back to this question of protecting Isla, which Claire also announces is her intention. Is Isla worth protecting? From what I’ve seen, absolutely not. It’s an imperialistic project which intends to invade other countries’ airspaces without even talking to them. Its inhabitants look down at the rest of the world as barbarians. Its leaders don’t care one whit for the lives of children or soldiers, much less for their neighbors. There is no reason that they should protect Isla. In fact, I would go so far as to say that defending Isla is morally reprehensible. Sure, protecting the lives of her friends and the people of Isla is a good thing. But when that comes at the expense of killing others, who have likewise done nothing but protect their own homeland from invaders? Not such a good thing. Certainly, it’s more the leadership of Isla that is responsible for this state of affairs than it is Claire or Ka-el. But let’s not pretend that what Claire and Ka-el are doing is in any way virtuous or just.
If they don’t come up with a tragedy for this poor excuse of an anime, I’m gonna be scarred for life.
I hope so too. A happy ending would be horrible for these people.
It’s like watching a comedy about WWII in an alternate universe. One where physics don’t exist and mountains can fly.
It took this post to make me step back and realize it, but the Isla assholes really are the bad guys here. They flew their big stupid mountain into these peoples’ airspace, fired the first shots when they took out those wooden planes, but now we’re supposed to hate these faceless guys because they shot down a few planes that happened to have students in them.
This is bullshit anime politics at its worst.
Yeah, the Isla people really are the bad guys. What’s so weird about this show is that I’m not sure whether the creators of the anime realize this.
You really gotta hand it to them they made the drama so bad….
ALSO MISSING LIMBS MAKES ME LAUGH.
Yeah, they should learn a thing or two from Kill la Kill when it comes to missing limbs. The drama is awful.