Recap

We gain a brief glimpse into the past DOGOO’s enigmatic commander and her origins. In response to the battleship class Invasion Object’s odd behavior, Sio formulates a plan to take it out in addition to halting their advance.

Gee’s Thoughts

In the first of these two episodes, we figure out what exactly is up with the old lady in charge of DOGOO. Turns out she was the first to be recruited by DOGOO the alien himself, thousands of years ago. While her backstory doesn’t add much to the actual plot itself, it’s an interesting look at how no-Kyubey has operated for centuries, recruiting various talents from across the ages. In addition, the commander’s own tumultuous life, constantly coming in and out of extended stasis explains how she and St. Germain have hanging out all this time, with the reveal that St. Germain is the actual man himself, and the rumors of his immortality were true. We also see that as someone who experienced war herself, she was initially none too keen on recruiting Nobunaga. Thankfully it seems she’s mellowed out since then since she even approved of Sio’s crazy plan.

Side note, I get that Vidocq is a huge fucking asshole, but the fact that he gleefully smiles while gloating and talking about the deaths of others really has me thinking the man is not right in the head. I suppose we’ll see if that ever amounts to anything.

The executed plan itself is a textbook example of how to juggle an ensemble cast effectively. While they’ve informed us multiple times that the E-Gene holders are ostensibly a team of trained specialists, barring a few special occasions, we’ve never really seen the team working together and complimenting each others’ skillsets. You’d think with powers like giant tomahawks, motorcycles, unmanned drones, barriers, etc. you’d have tons of really unique combinations of those powers. Alas, it seems it took Sio’s planning to bring it all together. Thankfully it works wonderfully, showing off how the characters’ various mish mash powers can be used in tandem. Again, Nobunagun lives up to its gleeful Saturday morning cartoon vibe.

That said, it’s not all perfect. Sio’s extremely questionable comparison of herself to Heinrich fucking Himmler was a really strange choice. Anyone who’s moderately familiar with Nazi military history will know there are quite a few other generals and leaders that would have been better people to compare yourself to than the man who was responsible for the Nazi concentration camps. Rommel. Manstein, and Guderian all come to mind immediately, and I’m sure they could have gone with, oh, I dunno, anyone else? Additionally, while the 11th episode itself was a lot of fun to watch, it ends on a rather poor note with requisite tentacle groping that apparently must happen any time anime characters fight a cephalopod creature. It’s a cheap stupid thing to do, and while I’m sure Sio is going to get out of it relatively unscathed, it still makes me wonder why they had to go there in the first place.

Still, a couple of solid episodes overall and with Nobunagun’s future up in the air, it seems we’ll be approaching the end of the first major arc soon. While not the most original show around, Nobunagun continues to be fun enough to keep itself in my good graces.