Recap: The party finally reaches the Capital, a city so large it takes hours just to reach the throne room of the palace. Ecarlate prepares to meet her betrothed and Kon sets off to find a way home, neither of which seem to be as simple as planned.

Jel’s Thoughts: It was a couple episodes late, but this really felt like it should have been the midpoint act break. The important thing is we’re here now though, and arriving at the capital is just the shot in the arm the show needed at this point.

Ixion has never been the prettiest show, particularly in the background art, and in some ways this episode kind of suffered for it. The Capital is supposed to be this grand, elaborate city and while they got the scale of it correct it did come off a little underwhelming. Despite the visuals though, there was a certain sense of wonder I don’t think we’ve experienced in the show thus far. Up until now the fantasy elements were really only in place to be parodied and joked about, this was the first episode I was really starting to wonder about the magic and technology in play.

On the comedy side of things the whole Anti-Empire People joke was kind of repetitive and just a little bit weird, but I suppose that’s to be expected. Ancient pop culture references aside, at least running around in Luchador masks for dubious reasons never gets old. While the humor was a mixed bag there is a just a slight emotional undercurrent brewing as Ecarlate is starting to realize she’s going to miss Kon when he’s gone. I’m sure that will come into play, for laughs or otherwise, as we draw closer to her arranged marriage. And speaking of her creepy betrothed, how obvious was it that he’s the bad guy? They reveal his plot pretty early on but the moment I saw him I knew “yep, that’s your villain.”

While I wasn’t totally blown away by this episode, I am more than happy to see Ixion move into fresh territory before it gets too stale. Next week will turn our attention back to the slightly disgraced ED and his crew. I’m telling you, it’s only a matter of time before they join Ecarlate’s group! Of course that would seem to be the usual pattern for a fantasy story, but who knows? Ixion isn’t always a show that plays by the rules.