Recap: On the run after offending Jugglabark, both Ecarlate’s group and Icognito are magically whisked away by the Mysterious Woman. Once they are safe, she prepares them for the real battle that lies ahead.

Jel’s Thoughts: I suppose the details of someone trying to harness the power of Ixion blah blah blah isn’t terribly shocking at this point, but it was good to finally set everyone up for their real mission. Most importantly we are finally getting everyone to fight on the same side, or at least thinking in that direction. It will probably take a little extra something (*cough*Marian*cough*) to snap ED out of his funk and get totally on board with working together, but it’s really only a matter of time.

With all the setup going on this wasn’t the most exciting episode of Ixion, but it did have a few great moments to keep things from getting too boring. I love the idea of complicated solutions for simple tasks, so seeing an entire team of super ninjas carry out an elaborate plot to plant a nose hair was really amusing. Contrasting ED’s moral dilemma of duty and honor versus Kon’s simple desire to get laid was also pretty great. The best joke though was storing the Alma Gear in a giant capsule machine. Coupled with the fact that no one other than Kon would even know what the thing was, it was a perfect way to remind us not to take the recent plot developments too seriously. Also, they are balls, and this show loves balls.

I made the mistake last season of assuming Ixion was only going 12 episodes and now I’m hearing rumblings that it may go yet another season. I haven’t been able to confirm if that’s true, but I could I could see things going either way. On one hand we just now got to the “real” plot and we’re already at episode 21, so we would have to move pretty quick to wrap things up. Considering next week episode looks to be a flashback, it would seem odd to burn your presumably third to last episode on more character development.

On the other hand, do we really need any more than that? As much as I’m enjoying the show I think I’m about ready to wrap things up. It’s also pretty rare for a late night anime to go three consecutive seasons without a break, let alone at all. For now I’m going to assume the end is near, and if that’s the case we should be in for a wild ride.