Impression:

Do you like back stories for side characters? Well, you came to the right place. A heavy focus of this episode was the origin of Akira’s mental state and her brother’s odd personality. Oh yeah, and we also learned something about Marie that will hopefully be important. If it’s not, then they are messing with my head for no good reason.

These flashbacks started to get to me.

Dorssia was eluded in the previous episode, but the stealth mission is not yet over. The group needs to get through the special decent field without being noticed. Luckily, they have some mind control vampires on board that can make it so that they get through unnoticed. Too bad Satomi is a complete idiot that answered an unknown channel without any sort of hesitation. That tipped off the Dorssian forces and a battle started. The group was in the middle of reentry and that means they could not move as they pleased. This put them at a huge disadvantage. Protecting the ship was the top priority, but getting too far away would mean certain death. Akira fell victim to this as she had to protect the ship from a Dorssian model that could handle reentry. Luckily, Haruto was able to use some new technology that Otamaya and the otakus whipped up. It is a weapon attachment that was able to help with the overheating thing and they were able to save Akira after Satomi showed off his value to the crew by filtering through a bunch of radio signal to find the proper course of decent. At least he saved his sister this time. All of that bullying was a result of hacking into a school website to give her brother the answers to an entrance exam. Their parents put too much pressure on that kid. After turning a blind eye to the bullying, Satomi has been trying to make it up to her. It is a good thing that they resolved that because there are bigger problems for the crew now. Going off course during the decent landed them directly into the middle of Dorssian territory.

Does that look familiar to anyone?

Current Opinion of the Show:

This is completely based on the fact that there is an established story, but this is already my favorite series of this fantastic season. Is that jumping the gun? You bet your ass it is. Unless the series is a sequel, nothing has been out long enough to properly judge. Having said that, Kakumeiki Valvrave is one of my favorite series from this year and this season looks to be even better. I loved that little heat transfer attack that wasn’t taken from Code Geass at all. It is good that they are working on ways to get around the overheating issue. That is a very unfortunate weakness to have in war because battles are prolonged. It is going to be interesting to see the upcoming battle with new abilities because they did just drop into Dorssian territory. That is going to be interesting. I guess that the terrestrial battles with the new mechs are taken from the upcoming scenes. I am really worried because this is a high tension series and that doesn’t always sit well with me. I love it when I am watching it, but it makes me hesitate turning on the episode at times. I am a really odd person.

Side character development is smart development.

Time to talk about the not so little things. Was the back story for Akira and Satomi amazing? No, but I thought that it was good enough. The strict parents leading to extreme measures thing is nothing new, but there was a nice intensity to Akira’s torture that made it impactful. I can’t believe that I just said something like that. I don’t know if they will go back to this one often, but it will probably come up less from now on. Akira is on her way to opening up to people. Marie is an interesting one. She has amnesia and there was that scene where she stared at the Earth and wondered if she would remember anything there. What are the odds that she is a Dorssian sleeper agent? Zero to none? I knew it. I hope that her amnesia is important because it is on my mind now, but I also hope that they don’t spend too much time on it if it isn’t extremely important because there is a lot of other stuff going on that requires attention. Like the little conversation that is being had by some less than happy Dorssians. I am wondering if they will become traitors because Sunrise is big on stuff like that. It would be interesting, especially if they desert the Dorssians due to the corruption of the Magius in Dorssia and they find out about the shit going on in New JIOR. Oh yeah, and we got to see Lieselotte. She is that Dorssian royalty that L-elf is very attached to. I am wondering if the “accidental” landing in Dorssia was intentional or not. L-elf plans for a lot of things and he did want to bring revolution to Dorssia. What is the fastest way to do both that and save the people of JIOR? Take out Dorssia from the inside right now. L-elf may usually take a safer course of action, but this involves a girl. He might do some crazy shit. All I know is that I am far too excited to see more right now and I am already sad because I know that we are going to need more than another twelve episodes.

This better be a good side story.