Recap: The Majestic Princes are given some R&R before their (and humanity’s) first offensive against the alien threat.

Iro’s Thoughts:
We get a bit of a breather this week, as does Team Rabbits, but the show itself keeps dropping lore and backstory hints throughout the episode. Each of our band of heroes is abnormally skilled in a single area, and their commander says she chose them to pilot the Juria units because they had strong survival instincts. How this translates from our hero charging into battle, I don’t know. Also notably, there’s a throwaway line about halfway through the episode where Kei says they all had their memories erased before they enrolled into the academy, and the military higher-ups talk about how they  “created” our heroes. Is everyone at the military academy a clone or something? Perhaps so.

Otherwise, the show still goes out of its way to humanize the characters. They’re treading a fine line here between just flat out abusing anime cliches and just having all of them act like awkward teenagers who expect they should be acting according to anime cliches. Some of these antics are amusing precisely because they are not actually amusing, and it barely works because the show seems aware of this. At least, I hope it is…

On the plot side, we get a glimpse of the Princess who features prominently in the OP and who made a short appearance last week. Our heroes head out for their first offensive mission against yet more new alien mecha, and (predictably) get the crap beaten out of them. We end on a cliffhanger with Tamaki’s shields down, getting blasted on all sides by the aliens. Will she die?? Probably not, but I guess we’ll see next week.

Lifesong’s Thoughts:
It wouldn’t be a mecha show without a few cliffhangers. I half expect to see the cast die in the next episode only to be replaced by clones right after that. Who put that dumb old man in charge of team Rabbits anyway? He is probably a biological engineer or something and not a real military man. Three episodes in an I’ve already fallen for this cast. I hope they won’t get butchered in the next episode.