Summary: The Allied Forces and their own parent company have turned on Generation Bleu and time is running out for the crew.  Meanwhile, Truth confronts both his Japanese allies and Naru, and discovers ‘shocking’ truths about his past. And Elena reveals some of her own mysterious history to Fleur and Ao.

Dragonzigg’s Thoughts: After the train wreck that was last week’s episode, Ao makes an attempt to pull itself together, albeit in an extremely unsteady way. This episode at least has the resemblance of plot, although it continues to make catastrophic errors of planning and presentation.  This is most glaringly exposed in the two major plot ‘twists’ that this episode attempts to drop on us. Firstly, both of these twists have been painfully obvious for quite a while now, and that dulls their impact considerably. But they’re still presented terribly, which saps any remaining power from them. Elena’s is almost comedically anticlimatic, a confession of being from another world while getting changed, it’s so casual as to be practically a mea culpa on the part of the production team. “Sorry, we know you all guessed this twist already, so we decided just to make the smallest deal out of it possible.

Truth being a secret on the other hand is a plot twist Lifesong guessed in the same episode he first appeared, which tells you something about how obvious it was. The fact that he hasn’t realised this himself just makes him look like a colossal idiot really. Naru meanwhile has reached almost Gazelle levels of annoyance by becoming coral Buddha and effectively commuting in and out of the plot when she feels like it. Gazelle still takes the crown for sheer irritation though, delivering what’s presumably meant to be an inspiring speech which falls flatter than a Rie Kugumiya character. The show keeps trying to sell Gazelle as some sort of noble rebel, fighting they system to do what’s right. In reality, he’s a smug, dickish jerk who is intensely unlikeable in his every appearance, and I wish the show would try and get rid of him as soon as possible.

What partially redeems this episode is the final few minutes.  Fleur’s violent assault on her ‘father’ is a genuinely shocking swerve that caught me completely off guard, and though the Truth is revealed mere seconds later (see what I did there?) it’s still a cool moment and a well choreographed use of violence to jolt the audience. Christophe’s subsequent gambit to kill Truth is actually reasonably clever (depite the fact the extra Quartz had to have come out of a plot hole) and I’m a sucker for a good heroic sacrifice. It would have better however, if I’d given two damns about him as a character. This is where Ao‘s mistakes come back to haunt it – even when it builds a great moment, the crumbly foundations mean that anything cool it tries to do is inevitably warped into something lesser.

Random Observations

– Harlequin are killed in the most pointless, soulless way possible. Their deaths serve no purpose and draw no reaction. What a waste.

– Truth can control electrical currents now? Since when?

– I’ll admit, I laughed at Elena’s Lillith impression

– Why on earth would you risk reinstalling your controlling AI when you KNOW an invasion from a hostile force is imminent?

– The next episode preview pretty much ruins Christophe’s sacrifice by revealing it didn’t work. Bugger.