08.23
Dat's a knife!
Oh boy! Gatchaman Crowds time again! How low can we go this week?!?
THIRTY MINUTES LATER…
Who is the man who made this episode and what have you done with my usual hipster hack Kenji Nakamura?!?!!?
You gonna die kid.
Following his rather lame attempt at getting Gatchaman to drop the whole Gatchaman thing, Rui decides its time to fight fire with fire and eliminate his “benefactor”/torturer Katze using the CROWDS. That goes about as well as the Hindenberg disaster as Berg Katze annihilates the CROWDS without much effort, causing several GALAXters to drop dead in the process. He then proceeds to activate his own NOTE, transforming into a giant diamond whip to pound Rui into the ground. Sugane witnessing this, begs Paiman for the go ahead to strike back but gets nothing from that annoying worrywart.
CRACK DAT WHIP!
Eventually Jou shows up to fight Katze in Sugane’s place and immediately gets his ass kicked. With no response from J.J. Robinson over whether or not to enter into the fight as well; Hajime, Itsutsu, and Paiman set off on their own and we finally get to see Paiman’s Gatchaman form…
Paiman and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H
Yup, that big-ass mech from the op is actually Paiman. Sugane drags the injured Rui to safety who proceeds to explain what the CROWDS actually were (something about the combined consciousness of GALAX users) and how he came into contact with Berg Katze. Meanwhile, Paiman gets cold feet mid-trip and dumps Hajime and Itsutsu on the side of a road. That’s really sportsman-like of you Pai(n in the ass).
Yeah good luck with that.
Sugane gets quickly KO’d and Jou is pretty much slaughtered by Katze (who also has the ability to hack the G-Suits making them inopperable) With his NOTE removed (but not destroyed), he gets left as a bloody pulp. However Itsutsu is able to use her power (which I still don’t exactly get how it works) to heal the two of them. X tells Rui he needs to run away as fast as he can from the now even more deadly Katze, and the episode ends with Hajime eating sweet things and looking out the window for some reason… I guess.
Damn son...
If that synopsis seems like a mouthful then it is. Suddenly instead of a boring show where nothing happens, we have an insane over the top action show where our heroes spend most of the running time getting their asses kicked. We knew Pimp-kun Katze had the capacity to be a blood thirsty monster under his goofy exterior but this week… I mean… Jesus. Paiman proves to be an even worse far-more ineffectual jerkwad when we finally see her out in the field (if only O.D was brought in instead). And Sugane finally cracks under the rules and regulations bs he’s been forced to swallow over the years. See there was a potential for a good episode in this show, it just took a lot of whipping and Jou getting mutilated for it to happen. 8/10.