Gamemaster enters
On-the-clock scavenger hunt
Main plot starts to move
What happened in this episode?
Surprisingly picking up the character development thread from last week, Sera is still homesick. Yamato suggests going to the beach to raise her spirits, but she seems much less enthusiastic while Leo and Mario are way too excited about it. Also, Mario is a sunfish. Meanwhile, Genis finally decides to get his butt of the seat and participate in the Blood Game himself, bringing out a piece of equipment to the shock of both Kubar and Azald.
Cut to the next scene, and the team is already in battle against grunts, after which they intercept Naria- Wait, they can see her?? The way they never mentioned about her in any previous episode, I figured she was just an enlargement fairy visible only to… I dunno, people with imagination?
Anyway, she’s here mainly to relay Genis’ words, which in summary is: “Blah blah blah inferior lifeforms, toys and games, evil, blah.” Then he erects a spherical barrier over the area with the team inside, which starts to shrink and can erase every living thing it touches. The Game is literally on, as the team scrambles to search for the off-switch to the barrier dome – whereupon winning, there’s a “gift” waiting for them, according to Naria. And yes, we get to see how evil this game is by having a kittycat get the shaft.
Not having any luck and the clock ticking down, Tusk and Sela start to feel dejected while Leo outright snaps at Yamato when the latter tries to motivate them. The situation is not helped by the fact that the current search is reminding them of their lack of success two months into their Cube search. Amu defuses the tension by saying those who have given up are free to do so, and continues on with Yamato. She later apologizes to him once they’re out of sight and explains the others’ frustration. Yamato, always being the serviceman, decides that the best way to re-motivate them is to finish the switch hunt, and finally busts out his eagle eye. The remaining three, meanwhile, begin to have second thoughts about sitting out. Seeing and subsequently helping civilians to safety, they figured they might as well go down trying, since they’re not the only ones who want to make it out alive.
Yamato finally spots the switch stuck on top of a tower, and shouts out the info to Sela. Thank cubes she instantly knew where to look, since all he said was that it’s “on the tower”. Leo wire-lifts himself climbs up the tower and mauls it off, and Tusk catches it with his extensible trunk – because elephants can totally do that – finally shutting it down.
The team regroups and Yamato cheers them up again in regards to the search. They’re not out of the woods yet, however, as the switch starts to transform into a deathbot – which is the “gift” Naria mentioned earlier. It’s completely mechanical, so their tails didn’t react to its presence, but I’d argue that they have no excuse for not hearing a deathbot assembling itself three feet away from them, especially when Sela is there. Wouldn’t you know it – it’s named “G.I.F.T.” What does the acronym mean? I’m going with “painful irony”.
The team transform and engage it, but get their bums served on a cube. G.I.F.T., as it turns out, was created by Genis as an element for Blood Game in the past, but got stashed after proving to be a gamebreaker that blew up ten planets upon its activation. I guess Genis has never heard of the term “nerfing”. Yamato jumps in as JuO Gorilla after everything else fails, but the bot enlarges itself and swats him off like a bug. JuO King and JuO Wild engage it, but second verse same as the first.
G.I.F.T. finally prepares its giant Fuck-Off beam to break the planet, but the two Mecha jump in to block it, naturally breaking them apart and ejecting the team inside. Before Yamato gets smashed by falling debris, he’s saved by a bird Ju-Man – in human form.
What did I feel about this episode?
Things are finally starting to get interesting… but haven’t gotten there yet. Genis “steps in”, but turns out he’s just outsourcing his work to a machine. Lazy ass. And the game he tried to play is… actually pretty dickish, because unless the switch is placed at the dead center of the shrinking dome, the game risks becoming unwinnable before the dome completely zeroes in. Which could arguably be the point, given his premise, but then why bother expecting the participants to actually find the switch? For that matter, I’m surprised this never occurred to the team.
Speaking of which, I feel unsatisfied by the team this week, particularly the lack of smart thinking. I haven’t categorically compared these sort of “timed search” episodes, so I can’t pull out many comparisons from the top of my head, but I remember one in MagiRanger being more urgent, exciting and clever – and that’s a series where the solution to a lot of problems is basically “deus ex magica“. Here, they didn’t have Tusk sniffing out any unusual smell, and even Yamato’s eyesight wasn’t used until later in the search. Really, it just highlights the same problem they’ve had with their Cube search so far: They lack a systematic approach. Three of them just giving up in the middle of a crisis without learning that lesson really doesn’t help the impression either, and just undermines the urgency of the situation. By the time they got their second wind, Yamato has done their share of searching. I get the whole “frustration from lack of success” part, but time and place, people. I cut Amu and Yamato some slack though, since they at least worked hard.
Come to think of it, why is Genis busting out a gamebreaker this early and knowingly? If it’s supposed to be a catalyst to speed things up, why not at least wait until the Azald and Kubar’s teams started escalating things with no clear lead? Yes yes, “having fun” and all that, but frankly, that premise is starting to feel like a plot-hole plug too, just there to handwave away the lack of clear explanations.
The mysterious Bird-Man finally appears! He’s sporting white hair, which – as revealed in #06 about sharing Ju-Man Power – could mean this is the same one that gave Yamato his own. And we know that someone picked up a Champion Symbol out of the Link Cube’s wreckage, so this is consistent with how he could have a human form. Anything else is… just in the air, hopefully revealed next week. He’s pretty much the only point of interest in the episode, and he only showed up at the end.
Overall, a decent build-up episode to what could potentially be a more interesting one.
Leo knows how to use what he has.
Even if it isn’t much…
Wired Jungle 