Episode 11 – “Awakening”

I’m really not sure what’s going on in this series anymore. I mean, I understand that they’re trying to activate the train system to evacuate everyone in the Zone before the 1st Division can blow it up and before the deadly radioactive wind arrives. But there are just so many discontinuous scenes and character personality jumps that I don’t know what to think anymore. I personally fault the production studio rather than the source material because there are definitely some cool concepts and great characters. I just don’t agree with how it was presented in the anime.

A lot of things in this episode just came out of nowhere for me. Like Aoi’s sudden amazing angel powers, Ibara’s lovestruck schoolgirl side, and death flags being thrown every which way but loose. It’s like everyone decided that he wanted to be a cool guy and sacrifice himself, but still come out alive in the end. It kind of got frustrating after awhile because it diminished the effect, having seen it happen repeatedly throughout the episode.

Though, I must admit that the part when the guy that looks like Donkey Kong (man, I don’t even know his name) told Gennai to take the Aether, lying about taking himself, got to me a bit. Maybe it’s just because it was so crafty of him, or maybe it’s because Gennai takes the Aether stabs the hell out of Donkey Kong. Well, I guess that’s a poor choice of words considering that shot saved him from the wind, at the price of Gennai.

Next on the chopping block are Haruto and old man Darth Kunikida who sacrifice themselves to save the train from a falling electrical pole. The thing bothers me the most, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, is the fact that Kunikida was literally shooting Haruto minutes before deciding to help him out. I love the whole Darth Vader style change of heart, but I feel like it takes more character development to pull it off. Actually, never mind. I just remembered that I really don’t like how Darth Vader turned good so suddenly at the end of Star Wars.

“We Coppelion were born from the mistakes humans made.” ~ Haruto Kurosawa

B.W.