12.02
Sorry about the delay on this week’s writeup. There was this little thing called “Thanksgiving” getting in the way. That said, there was hardly anything to talk about this week, which is a surprise since we’re entering the final stretch.
Wow so meta...
After successfully disabling the pink space sub from three weeks ago, the kids are finally back home from their little adventure on Earth! …albeit minus Marie, who died ya know (can’t stop abusing that MST3k joke, I’m sorry), and Saki… who they forgot (more on that later). However unbeknownst to Haruto and the gang (and by proxy us since we haven’t seen these characters in a month outside of flashbacks), Shoko has been fighting the war as well, over the airwaves. A tv crew has arrived to make a documentary series about Dome 77 and their struggle to survive cutoff from their home nation. Its really struck a chord with ARUS and now they’re finally ready to ratify an agreement labeling Dorssia as a hostel state. Hooray!
No Beer and No TV make L-Elf go Something-Something.
That’s basically all this week’s episode gives us for a plot: characters being interviewed by a tv crew. The exception being L-Elf who’s gone all catatonic after Lieselotte’s death last week and locked himself in a storage closet to reenact the Walenski scene from Dark City. Finally we get to the treaty agreement with only two of the three major powers present (Shoko representing New JIOR and the American ARUS president), only to have Dorssia crash the party with a live satelite broadcast of Cain impaling a certain popular idol with a large saber. And before the captive audience can react to Saki Rikuno’s shock demise… her wounds immediately heal revealing the existence of the Kamitsukis. Well Haruto you got some ‘splainin to do.
Damn son....
Outside of the crucial final minutes (which is basically your “Something horrible happens to Haruka Tomatsu”-moment for this season), very little of anything interesting happened. Well maybe L-Elf’s slow and rather depressing decent into insanity too. I guess the fact that we were finally back home in space would give me the false impression that we’d start returning to the classic Valvrave “Oh dear god why?!?”-style episodes from last Spring, but the episode was almost funereal in its tone making for a rather disinteresting watch. The ending just barely saves it but not by much.
4/10.