Impression:

Some really crazy stuff went down during this episode and my mind has yet to calm down because of it. To start things off, Red fought with that whalesquid from the end of last week’s episode. It was actually pretty tough because Chamber’s space weapons proved to be ineffective underwater. A classic issue that shows up in Gundam Seed in a similar fashion. The crazy thing is that the whalesquid is a religious entity to the people of Gargantia. I guess that may be due to its size and bioluminescence. Killing a religious figure will not get you very far in society. Add that to the fact that you are an outsider that incurred the wrath of pirates and we have ourselves a pariah of sorts. Red refuses to stop going after the whalesquids and it confuses him that the people he talks to are not more afraid of what he sees as a threat. You can take the soldier out of the war, but you can’t take the war out of the soldier. Trauma often lingers in the minds of soldiers and this is even more prominent when it comes to ones that started their fight at a young age. When you know nothing else but your mission, how are you supposed to give it up? Most of the episode was spent with people talking about what went down with the whalesquid, but things take a turn for the worse when a pod of them swims directly under the fleet. I guess that they are normally deep dwellers. This results in a standoff where Red realizes that he must leave the fleet because of his mission. However, Red isn’t the only one that is saying good-bye to Gargantia.

You can’t force children to fight in a war.

Current Opinion of the Show:

I was taken aback by what went down this week. Things have been moving rather slowly in recent episodes, but I did not think that things would pick up as quickly as they did this time around. To start things off, I am very glad that Chamber’s artillery was less effective in the water. The Galactic Alliance would not have accounted for that and Red should feel lucky that Chamber was as effective as he was in the atmosphere to begin with. It is just realistic. Also, the way that Red is reacting to all of this just feels natural. I am happy that Amy could not convince him to give up his fight because it would make no sense for the time that they spent together to override all of Red’s training. Next there is the DNA sample. My mind is going crazy over the fact that the whalesquids are biological the same as the Hideauze aside from their ability to handle very different environments. That raises a whole bunch of questions. Did the whalesquids and Hideauze coincidentally evolve like that? I stated that in the last impression, but I like crazier theories. Could the Hideauze possibly be a force that invaded the Earth before the mass exodus? The environmental changes would not have been the only reason that humanity fled the planet an ages old conflict has continued for longer than anyone can remember. Some of the aliens were stuck on Earth during the ice age and they evolved to live in the ocean. However, their aggressive behavior was dampened over time and that is why they do not go after humans. That is crazy and unlikely for this series, but fun to think about. The last theory I have is just to cover the bases. Humans experimented on animals and created the Hideauze. They soon became too powerful and see the latter half of the second theory for further details. The first one is the most likely in my opinion because I don’t know how involved this series wants to get. Having said all of that, the craziest thing that happened was Pinion and Flange requesting to leave Gargantia. That Flange guy is a shady character and I think hat this means Gargantia may lose around a quarter of its size. Red has agreed to go with them because they are targeting the treasures in whalesquid territory. Sounds like a symbiotic relationship to me. Everything that happened in this episode has me excited, except for what happened to the fleet commander. Having his heart give out in this situation just seemed forced to me. Oh well, I can’t wait to see the results of this in the next episode.