11.08
Last time on Valvrave: Marie died’ya know! …yup I’m not coddling you, she’s dead. Bye bye.
BOKU JA NAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!
This week’s episode begins with the grieving of the high schoolers over Marie’s lifeless husk of a body. Meanwhile Haruto and L-Elf try to get answers from the now very chatty Pino. We learn that once the Valvrave completely sucks up the pilot’s blood and ragging libido, the brain will go next. And shocker of shocks, Haruto is dead man walking! Yay for that. Naturally he’s unable to think straight while piloting VVVI and this is a concern for L-Elf.
Not cleaning that up Haruto....
We then move on to the main plot of the episode. The newly revealed Dorssian Royalists want to work with our band of JIOR revolutionaries but not until they blow up some super special submarine… which happens to be pink… yeah. Haruto and L-Elf will sneak into a large castle (that bears a strong resemblence to Cagliostro) while Kyuma defends their stolen Dorssia carrier all by his lonesome. In a potential subplot for next week, Thunder and Akira are sent off to find the still missing Saki who is still hanging around with R-Drei as a hijacked Karlstein kid.
Now excuse me while I stab you in the back...
While all this is happening, we have the story of H-Neun and his attempt to figure out if evil green lantern wizard Daisuke Ono (aka Cain) is trying to stage his own minicoup on Dorssia’s lousy and rather uninteresting Emperor Takehito Koyasu (seriously when Daisuke Ono is upstaging Koyasu this government is clearly fucked in the balls). It only earns him five bullets to the shoulder and the shock revelation that Ono loves X-Eins (aka Megane-Guy) more than Neun (way to go genius).
This last stand is soooo last standy that we don't even see it.
So yeah what about that sub? Well it appears its actually a storage device powered by several semi-naked women with wires going into their heads. Yup, Dorssia has apparently discovered how to harvest Runes on their own (no doubt in order to fuel VVVII). This little factoid upsets Haruto so deeply that he proceeds to trash several of the storage containers before getting bitch slapped by L-Elf over the futility of what he’s trying to achieve. Eventually it leads to a decent (if incredibly brief) mecha fight that results in a volcanic eruption because… I don’t know… Valvrave.
Shoot straight Haruto!
The theme of this week’s episode is about doubt and the impetus to act. Haruto’s in the dumps after the shock death of Marie proved the Holy Spirits actually can kick the bucket, and thus its L-Elf’s job to break him out of that funk the only way he knows how… slut shame! But really can you blame the guy? He’s the only character in the show would be able to use the Valvrave in a constructive manner but can’t because it’ll just kill him on the spot (its revealed this week that ONLY JIOR high school students can use Valvraves for some reason). The subplot with H-Neun is somewhat interesting but only goes so far, primarily because H-Neun just isn’t that decent of a character (only X-Eins is less developed than he was of the Karlstein bunch).
TAKE ON ZA WARUDO!!!
Ultimately while this episode does continue the surprisingly grim and somber direction the series has been headed in since three weeks ago, it doesn’t quite work as well. I chock it up to trying to do too many things at once without much narrative flow leading to a rather disjointed feel. It seems all that time wasting stupidity in Season 1 is finally starting to take its toll since the writers now have way too much story to tell and only six more episodes to spit it out. Tsk Tsk.
6/10