... and the dorks.



There have been some good characterizations to be sure...

...but this episode finally forces us to confront the fact...

  

It's particularly nice after all the side stories to see Ruby actually be the kickass heroine of her own show!



Of course our heroes are totally screwed. The villain's plan is coming to fruition, Pyrrha is about to get de-Phyrrafied, most of the main cast is wildly separated. Ironwood and virtually his entire command ARE dead, and Blake...poor Blake.

Also: As God is my witness I did not think that Shub-Niggurath could fly.

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Delilah was one of the beast-girl maids/bodyguards from Italica who was sent to Alnus to provide security and translation assistance.  She stayed in Alnus and  has since opened an inn and tavern, which she seems to own a majority stake in, though it is an open secret that she's Italica's unnofical eyes and really big ears in the town. Delilah has a reputation of being something of a hard-ass despite her cottontail. You see, she takes no guff from anyone and runs her employees hard in order to make sure that inn she is proprietor of is well run and free of creeps. despite (and partly because of) this she is liked and respected in Alnus and her fastidiousness has paid off; her inn being quite successful. 

Today...It hit her.

Mere months ago she was a maid and bodyguard in Italica, which as a slave and member of one of the "subject races" was about the best she could ever hope for. Now she owns a business. She can own property, keep nearly all of the money she makes while living in a town where the food and water are safe. Alnus is also completely safe from raiders and monsters. The various demi-humans in town are treated as PEOPLE and the citizens are not worked to death in mines or other hard labor and peace is breaking out all over.

Reflecting upon this, Delilah, perhaps for the first time in the many years since her country of origin was conquered, finally relaxes...and skips through the streets of Alnus singing the praises of "the town the sky has smiled upon". 

 Life is good...

 

But wait...what is that on the desk there?



Could it be a bill?



TO: Delilah D. Bunny

FROM: X

New orders STOP Proceed to JSDF hospital in Alnus STOP Locate fmr sex slave recently freed from Imperial Palace STOP Target name is Noriko Mochizuki STOP Kill her STOPGood HuntingEND

Well. This is awkward...With a heavy heart, Delilah puts on her war paint.

Before leaving, she gives prayers and offerings to...well she's not sanguine about her chances so she is comprehensive...

Afterwards, she quickly finds Noriko and is tremendously relieved to discover that the despondent girl, having learned that her parents and her husband are dead, blames herself and now wants to commit suicide.

Unfortunately, Noriko states that she doesn't want it to hurt...this flummoxes Delilah, who spends time pondering with her prey how best to painlessly neutralize Noriko.

Into the midst of these deliberations walks Yanagida. He is quite chuffed at having just closed an extortionist real estate deal that would make the founders of New Amsterdam proud...until he notices that there is a crazy bunnygirl in warpaint on the grounds, brandishing a knife in front of a Japanese citizen. He and Delilah...tangle and they both end up unconscious in expanding, intermingling pools of blood.

Noriko is thus left to her own devices.

Meanwhile, Itami...wait...that's right; Itami left town last episode with Rory, Leili, Crazyelf & Yao to track down the dragon that is menacing Yao's village. In comparison to Delilah, Yanagida and Noriko, THEIR day is much more successful.

Though not without its pitfalls...

Well, this is certainly full of surprises...well except for the dragon. We were quite prepared for there to be a really big dragon in this episode.

This show is genuinely interesting. I am quite glad that, unlike some other people, I have not seen the manga, so I do not feel let down and this show's future is an unlit road for me. 

I think now is a good point in the show for those of us who have not read ahead to ponder and speculate on what we know: The show is ambiguous as to who Delilah thinks she is working for. We, the audience, know that this assassination order ultimately came from Tyuule, but it is also revealed that Delilah has sworn to kill Tyuule, and that Tyuule is fully aware of this and considers Delilah a traitor. "The warrior bunny who impudently seeks my life" and she is thoroughly pleased that she's got the potential to be killing multiple birds with one stone. She seems to be trying to implicate Princess Piña and thereby bring down the wrath of the JSDF upon the Empire. She refers to Delilah as her spy in Alnus, but I wonder if "unwitting" was omitted from that description...it appears that someone in Italica was working for Tyuule. 

When Delilah pray's before hopping off to war, she presents offerings to three of the region's gods: They are Emloy god of war(naturally) Hardy, god of the underworld, Deldout, god of oaths (loyalty?) and Paripan god of vengeance. Piña alluded to a pantheon in an earlier episode when she expressed disapproval of Rory's god, but everything that gets a name in this show has turned out to be significant to one degree or another. Presumably there are others like Rory running around.

It does appear that, regarding oil reserves in Elbe, that they are geological deposits as opposed to sunflower plantations. Yanagida drives a hard bargain and it is a pretty dickish treaty, with King Duran forced to give the Japanese mineral rights (excluding gold and diamonds) and refrain from taxing Japanese businesses at all. There were Banana Republics that got better terms. The conference with the general reveals that the Marco Polo Bridge school of international relations is official policy here, and not just Yanagida's machinations. I do note that this dopes not appear to be presented in at all a bad light. However that might be premature since it puts Yanagida actions regarding the Itami suicide road trip in a slightly different light, especially since Yanagida seemed unenthused about his meeting with the King.



"You melted your plane!"

"He breathed fire on me!"

"You were playing chicken with a dragon the size of a frigate...What did you EXPECT was going to happen."  


   
UPDATE:

One other thing: Steven has had some complaints about how the animal women have been toned down quite a bit from the manga. In general this hasn't bothered me since most of them have been domestics and  so were specifically groomed and dressed to be nonthreatening. (The better to surprise with their formidable combat abilities). Some of this is obviously playing to the audience, but but it still works.

However, I must say that I'm in agreement with Steven in one respect. Delilah's war paint and ninja outfit in the Anime looks like...

Oh, for crying out loud.



I guess we'll see a lot of cosplayers in this outfit at Comiket...

A ceremonial outfit maybe, perhaps in anticipation of her eminent death...It fails at ninja though. It fails at combat utility worse. (Hell, an actual bikini would make more sense.)

It also does not give the impression of "formidable tribal warrior". 

Compare what appears to be her war paint in either the manga or the LN


This is by Sao Satoru who did the manga (I'm unsure if he illustrated the LN).  It gives a really good impression of ferocity and hints at a fierce warrior culture that existed beyond the frontiers of civilization which, of course, is that the 'Warrior Bunnies' were. After all, it has been mentioned that they were renowned as mercenaries and their kingdom was only recently conquered...by Zorzal.

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Phantom World is a bit of a surprise. 

Sinister things indeed...

The show is very well animated and the art is nice. The characters are competently written to boot. The humor runs the gamut, but is occasionally rather broad and physical, mostly at the expense of the dude. I'm enjoying the show as is and am seriously intrigued by the hints that it may be going somewhere rather darker. This is often a tough thing to pull off. The show could easily fall apart, but right now it is fun, engaging and surprisingly smart. 

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In the latest episode of GATE Lt. Itami is pressed into service trying to help Tuka (Chuka?, Tsuka?), the blonde elf, deal with her grief issues.

That sounds so much more respectable than "Itami get's a gorgeous and exotic but mentally damaged teenager to call him "Daddy"'...."Though both are accurate.



Tuka is really broken, she cannot cope with the death of her father and has convinced herself that Itami, the closest thing to a father figure in the shattered remnants of her world, is in fact her dad. Tuka is proudly showing Itami off as her dad to everyone who doubted her protestations that he was alive and Itami, his command and the townspeople are going along with this co-dependant enabling of her mental deterioration because they are evil at a loss as to what to do.

Well...there is also concern that modern psychological knowledge does not apply well to elves. Certainly psychiatric drugs would not be advisable given that Elves are quite biologically distinct. This is eminently reasonable, and the concern about their different psychology is reinforced by the only other Elf present (Yao) who describes Tuka's physical symptoms as being typical of what one sees right before an elven psychotic break.

Yao is very familiar with Tuka's problem because she has deliberately forced the issue and pushed Tuka to the brink. Elves have a very profound need for closure and Yao, having observed that the Japanese are willing to go to great lengths to protect those in their circle of responsibility (like dropping a Paveway on the Imperial Senate last episode) is hoping that she can use this to her own ends.  Desperation has not been kind to her mental stability either...



The fire dragon is still menacing her people. In a rather frantic effort to obtain assistance, Yao has revealed that her land is rich in diamonds and "oil" ( one assumes she has specified rock oil, but for all we know it could be sunflower plantations). To further sweeten the deal, she has also thrown into the basket of incentives, HERSELF as a lifetime concubine to Itami if he oversees the extermination of the dragon. Yanagida, the intel officer is quite intrigued with the mineral riches in the dark elves area and decides this may warrant some ...flexibility.

Yanagida seems to be from the Marco Polo Bridge school of Japanese strategy and diplomacy. He presents Itami with a set of orders tailor made for him to "just happen" to blunder into the Fire Dragon. Yanagida is unsure just what makes Itami tick, but he is confidant that Itami will jump at the chance to do good, achieve glory, or whatever flicks his bic.

Elsewhere, we touch base with King Duran, who had multiple limbs blown off in episode 1 and was seen to have survived later when he advised Pinã  from what appeared to be his deathbed. The JSDF has given him prosthetics and he in return dispenses sage advice. 



Of course, stuff happens, things get complicated, our hero ends up incurring a debt and there is some indication of what's being hinted at in those silly closing credits.....  UPDATE:

I probably should mention this...One other thing warrants some discussion: Roary Mercury invites herself on Itami's damned fool errand to go slay the dragon alone. She's joined by Leili who does not bite Itami, or suck his blood...which would be unworthy of mention if Rory had not done so. It seems that Rory has called "dibs" on Itami's soul so that when he dies she gets to feed on what she is confident will be a most tasty élan vital.  It bears repeating that Rory is a demigod who eats souls...or at least guides them through her body to the afterlife. It is unclear if she's going to guide Itami's soul or digest it as the interaction of her digestive tract and heaven, hell and or samsara are not entirely clear. So yes,. at this point Itami is attempting to go out and fight a dragon that a recon unit could not handle with a crazy woman who thinks he's her father, a 15 year old mage, a fairly ruthless elf and a being who is eagerly looking forward to his death.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong? 

Meanwhile.... As hinted last week, Zorzal, the thoroughly despicable Caligula wannabe prince,  is going to assume the throne of the empire. In reality he is supposed to act as a figurehead, allowing the Emperor to maintain control, while the Empire is allowed to save face. In in an unsuspected and even more real reality he is quietly plotting to go for the whole ball of wax, and is sending out warnings to people to pick a side in the upcoming power struggle.


 It appears that the of the theories we advanced in last weeks review of this show; number two is the winner (It was: She has a cunning plan). You see, the Rabbit Queen is making her move. It turns out that for some time, Tyuule has had way more on the ball and vastly more power at her disposal than anyone assumed. She sends word via a courier that things are about to fall into place.

It's hard not to sympathize with Tyuule, but some of history's worst monsters are those who have truly suffered and whose rage has some justification to fuel it. For those are the ones most likely to abandon mercy and most willing to see the world burn.

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Just...don't.

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This episode superbly captures the bi-polar nature of this series. In 17 minutes, it provided us with a highly improbable hand-wave, What Yang is facing at this point is nothing short of...



...being disqualified from a sporting event.

She is apparently not being prosecuted for the assault (bordering on attempted murder) that the entire world watched. Yang, is about the most hated person on the planet at the moment. Even amongst her small circle of student and faculty supporters several think she did it,. However, they are dismissing it as 'just" Adrenaline and PTSD..."which can happen to the best people". I imagine being a J.A.G. in Ironwood's army must be rather less fraught than in ours. I suppose the grand jury might be pondering things, but no mention of such a state of affairs is made. It's ever so slightly possible that this is a subtle commentary on the cultural attitude that result from living in a world with literal monsters at the gate.  as well as a scene that clumsily dropped some plot points in a thoroughly perfunctory and dubiously characterized Qrow, visits his niece, and states flatly that he thinks she's...insane.



Yang, perhaps in a moment o self doubt brought on by her epic (but nonjudicial) gaslighting relates the utterly blinkered story about the teleporting woman who saved her bacon in episode 11 of last season. This causes Qrow to reassess his postulates since this story is vaguely similar to something he was told recently by his sister, Yang's long dead mother, who is BY THE WAY still actually alive (and a not particularly nice person). Yang reacts to this bombshell with such completely uncharacteristic calm that it could perhaps be indicative of someone who has just passed from the confining realm of sanity into the infinite possibilities offered by madness...or perhaps the whole scene was badly handled. manner.

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 ....after a two week hiatus and hits the ground running We finally, in conjunction with last weeks episode, get a whole slew of answers to many of the questions people have raised

Unfortunately for the sanity of its audience, not one of the questions  answered is "What happened to Yang?"

This is mostly a flashback episode dealing almost exclusively with the villains and how Cinder gathered her accomplices as well as the assault on the Avatar of Autumn, which was an impressively animated fight. It turns out that the only reason the secret executive hero committee has any clue what's going on is because Qrow blundered into her plot and interrupted it.



Emerald seems to be the key to Cinder's plan, and, as hinted in the fight between her and Coco, she is a vastly more formidable and scary individual than she has heretofore appeared. In some ways she's more formidable than Cinder, though her psychological issues allow Cinder to play her like a violin.

Mercury is pretty much as we supposed though he has an impressive pedigree and his footgear is not quite what had been hinted at.



We also learn that Neo can drive...presumably with pedal extensions.

Cinder may well be working for someone else. Given both her competence and powerful she is now, this must be a truly formidable individual or group. The method she used to assassinate the Autumn Avatar was quite hideous and further hints at the Grimm being something even more eldritch than was previously hinted at.





One offhand comment by Emerald raises some questions. She mentions that she projected an illusion on two people. One was obviously Yang, who presumably did commit the assault the way everyone saw it (albeit unwittingly). There should be no reason to mess with anyone else's head...so who else was she messing with?

This was not quite what was expected, but it clarified much and advanced the plot quite a bit. This season continues its much darker tone, but it is coming together nicely.

"Tonight's top story on the Alliteration Channel..."

One technique this episode used quite a bit was fading to a black screen for narration. This was used to good effect, but taken with the two week hiatus may speak to production difficulties. 

"Oh PLEASE no more of those!"

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