Recap: Ledo continues his search for work, stopping to go to a festival, ogle ladies, and kill aliens.

Iro’s Thoughts:
What kind of festival is confined to a single shady bar? At this point I just figure that they’re like “We have a hentai artist doing the character designs, better milk this for all it’s worth!” Anyway, the whole belly dancing segment was of questionable worth in every sense, full of shady camera angles that made me glance around the room in an uncomfortable fashion. Ledo and Amy’s moment afterwards was pretty cute though, so I guess it’s not all bad.

Thankfully, unlike last week, we get some actual plot going on. Ledo freaks out when dinner is revealed to be some sort of crazy clawed octopus, mistaking it for one of the Hideauze. More importantly, when he’s out doing his new salvage job with Bellows, Chamber detects what is presumably an actual Hideauze in the oceans. This and the off-hand revelation that the lightning-spewing “lightbugs” are actually nanomachines left behind by humanity raises some questions as to what exactly is up with the Hideauze. They certainly don’t seem to be our run of the mill space monsters – perhaps they were genetically engineered by humanity? Gargantia is nearing the halfway point, so I expect we’ll get some answers soon enough.

Gee’s Thoughts:
Another fanservice episode. What a surprise! Though unlike last week’s fanservice episode which fit the context of the universe quite well, this one definitely came off as a little…too much perhaps? That said, the underlying narrative itself was quite solid. Ledo continues to be confused by Gargantian society, due to his own society’s obsession with every member of society having a useful purpose. Also, as I totally suspected, Ledo is a rather incompetent pilot when he doesn’t have Chamber backing him up.

As a side note, while Ledo choosing to go with Bellows was totally predictable, I do think Ledo teaming up with Pinion and going on awesome adventures while drinking and hanging out with hot babes would be a pretty brotastic outcome.

Anyway, before I go off topic, despite the kinda skeevy undertones of this episode, Ledo and Amy’s growing mutual attraction to each other is really quite adorable, as Ledo begins to wrestle with the concept of being attracted to somebody in the first place. Considering he comes from a society where the reproduction is a privilege, I suppose it makes sense that this is all very new to him. As I said earlier, to call it charming would be an understatement.

The events at the end confirmed my suspicions that Earth is somehow related to the Hideauze, and it should be interesting to see how the overarching narrative develops from here. Next episode looks to introduce some elements to get the plot rolling so here’s hoping that Gargantia can remain a solid show, even when it isn’t about charming world building and cute girls with blushing shoulders.

Zigg’s Thoughts:
Not too much to say this week, since this is mostly lightweight fluff, but there’s some decent stuff in here anyway. I like Ledo’s continuing bafflement with elements of how the world works. This time it’s economics that befuddles him, and that makes a good deal of sense after all. He comes from a society that’s geared towards a single goal, where the only things provided are essential to that goal and the only things expected in return are his obedience to that goal. It’s a natural evolution from the question posed last week, where Ledo was searching for a new purpose on the Gargantia. Now that he’s found that purpose (sort of) he has to learn that it’s not something that he’s meant to do 24/7

Or at least that’s the theory. There’s some decent gristle to be found in Ledo’s talk with Pinion (and later Bellows) on how he should go about his life  and how he doesn’t have to live a spartan existence anymore, but it’s sort of made to look pretty silly by the fact the camera keeps cutting away to three teenage girls shaking their stuff. Look, I’m not above enjoying a little fanservice, but the entire dancing scene here is completely irrelevant to the story. There’s no indication as to why Amy & co. would be dancing in a bar, it’s sort of gratuitous and it’s a distraction from actually interesting stuff. It feels like what it is, a skeevy attempt to shoehorn some more T&A into a story which really didn’t need it. Call me a prude if you must, but it made me feel uncomfortable and actively diminished my enjoyment of the show and that to me is the sign of a bad element. Oh and it’s also terribly animated, in a jarring lapse from Gargantia‘s usual standards.

In contrast, the scene at the end, where Amy dances for Ledo on the ship’s deck, is much much better because while it’s equally as fanservicey it also helps build the relationship between the two. The erotic undertones work because, well, that’s what the characters are getting out of it as well, and it’s actually a rather lovely scene if you can look past some more rough animation. It’s nice to see some acknowledgement of physical attraction in anime, where romances tend to be as pure as the driven snow.

The other big moment in this episode is of course the ending, which (after a pretty funny setup scene earlier on) implies the Hideauze are in fact on Earth. I think any decent thinking person immediately sees the plot jump out before them straight as an arrow, and I’m sort of hoping that there’s a twist in there to liven up what might otherwise be a little predictable, but we’ll have to wait and see. Suffice to say it’s a decent surprise at the moment, and a good cliffhanger to end a rather weak episode on.