Recap: Finally, the ROBO-ONE competition is here! Will Aki and Kai prevail, or will Mr. Pleiades’s star power be too much for them to handle?

I had a feeling I’d love this episode, but I didn’t realize just how much I’d love it. ROBO-ONE is all that I imagined it to be. I love that the school had such little faith in them that they didn’t even get a hotel room to stay in the night before. That sounds like a recipe for sketchiness in my book, but good thing they had Heartseed’s vessel, I mean Mr. Nagafukuda(I can tell why he likes being called by a nickname) along for the ride. The robot fighting was fun, and I’m glad they didn’t drag us through every fight but they coulda showed us at least one more, two and it just seems like a lazy jump at that point. I suppose our operator Kai is supposed to be a gaming ubermenche so it would be boring or something, but it would at least be fun to see some crazy robot designs or something.

So, biggest thing you can say i got out of this episode is that I was dead wrong about the last one. The way they kept talking about this mysterious sister it always made it seem like she was dead, but nope! Apparently she is not only perfectly fine but also a senior member in some robotics place or something? This puts the whole accident thing in a different perspective. It sounds cheesy, but if I can understand it correctly, it seems that Aki and Kei have inverted illnesses. As Aki has time fast forwarded to her, Kai has his slowed down. Seeing as Steins;Gate never really gave a great explanation as to why Mayuri was somehow able to give Hououin the Reading Steiner I’m in no ways optimistic we will ever hear the whole story about these two, but I suppose I was wrong before.

The best part by far in this episode, outside of Aki’s increasing adorableness, was Mr. Pleiades. It just brought this show to a whole new level of ham that may even have MADO SCIENTISTO HOUOUIN KYOUMA beat. The way Kai uncovered and blackmailed the dude was hilarious. You just can’t help being a superhero once you get the mask on. Kai’s character in general received a boos this episode, no longer being incredibly stubborn and, besides his usual snarkiness, treating Aki well. Looks like now that they’ve got their money and roped in Hammy McGee, it’s time for the teambuilding phase, getting all the characters together and handling their quirks. Steins;Gate set a pretty high bar for its ensemble cast, so I’m expecting good things for the future members of team GUN-BUILD 1.

Gee’s Thoughts: Robotics;Notes continues to be a delight to watch as we get to see Akiho and Kaito take their robot to the Robo-One tournament, which is essentially a robot fighting tournament. Akiho’s enthusiasm continues to be one of the highlights of the show, and all of her speeches about the importance of finishing moves and announcing your attacks resonates with hot-blooded soul such as myself.

As for Kaito, he continues to be, well, himself. He’s getting a little better but his overall demeanor hasn’t improved much in this episode. In addition, we see that he too suffers from some strange time-themed disease, likely due to the highly-ambiguous-incident-that-occurred-some-time-in-the-past-but-probably-won’t-be-revealed-until-much-later-because-this-is-an-anime.

Also, we see Akiho’s rather aloof older sister, who for some reason, refuses to speak with Akiho. How anyone could hold a grudge against somebody as sweet as Akiho is beyond me but I suppose that will be revealed in time as well.

I don’t know how many episodes Robotics;Notes is going to get, but this is how you do proper pacing. We get a fair amount of plot progression as well as find out more about our characters. While R;N may have started off at a relatively relaxed pace, I’ve yet to find myself bored watching.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Mr. Pleiades. That is all.