11.16
Author’s note: Sorry about the wait on this one folks. The episode had not yet been made available when I had time to watch it due to apparent system errors over Daisuki. What’s worse, apparently this weekend’s Magi is getting delayed as well. =(
When last we left our heroes, they had discovered a large battleship was being sent to destroy New JIOR once and for all… however that’s not important right now. This week its all about Haruto and L-El…excuse me… MICHAEL! (yes he has a real name now, sorry Foggle).
DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!
We’d received piecemeal bits on the rather strained relationship between L-Elf and his distant amour, Dorssian princess Liselotte, but this week’s episode added a rather large chunk to the puzzle. At some point Michael NoLastNameYet tried to smuggle Liselotte, who is apparently a prisoner of the space wizards and Cain, out of Dorssia. However, Liselotte talked him out of it under the impression that there was really no place they could flee to. However now that Michael has dumped Dorssia for good its time to go about with an escaple plan in a blaze of glo-EPISODE OVER.
…yeah that was the smallest plot of the week. As for the main plot… ugh…
You're so matter of fact, Q-Vier
The Dorssian Royalists alert Haruto and the Gang to a huge cache of JIOR refugees who are being detained in an underground complex beneath the Dorssian capital. As the kids try to find members of their own families in the list, one name immediately jumps out to Hauto: Souichi Tokishima, his father…
Oh dear god, its a Sunrise family reunion episode.
Its as plain as the Liselotte on nose's face.
For those who are up on their Sunrise mecha show lore, the family reunion episode is usually one that leads to serious emotional head trauma for its protagonist. For example, in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, after spending 30+ episodes assuming he was dead, Amuro Ray finally found his father only to have discovered he’d gone totally space crazy. Likewise, in Gundam Seed, Kira Yamato found out his parents actually weren’t his parents at all, and that he was the product of a sinister genetics program designed to create the ultimate super being. Now Valvrave wouldn’t have the gall to ripoff off either of these plots right?
HAHAHA! Nope you’re getting both of them!
Nothing in this show is "natural"
It turns out the JIOR hostages constitute the original VVV development team and, to noone’s surprise, Daddy dearest here was the leader of the project. You see, the Valvraves weren’t designed for military use initially but instead to trigger the next stage in human evolution, the “Homo Sapiens Novus”. All the students at the school are test tube babies, genetically engineered so that they could be turned into space vampires by the VVV system, and – despite the obvious drawbacks caused by what happened to Marie – Mr. Tokishima is very proud of his work. Naturally this only earns him a knuckle sandwich from Haruto.
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
As you can tell, most of this episode was just old Sunrise cliches being served to us on a reheated blue plate special. This was a problem episode 14 had a few weeks ago but its worse here because you can tell they just are trying to hide it. Haruto’s backstory is now recycled that if there was any chance of him becoming anything more than “generic Sunrise mecha boy”, that day may never come. At the rate we’re going, I expect Shoko to be revealed to be his sister next week or something. The other plot with L-Elf is decent but there’s just not enough of it to save this episode. Ultimately a waste.
4/10