Robotics Notes Episode 21
What They Say:
Working through the night, the Robot Research Club members and the throngs of volunteers finish modifying GunBuild-1 before the Black Hole Bomb can be launched. The club members also devise a number of strategies for the upcoming final battle.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The short time Kimijima is in the episode reminds us that he’s a pretty unrealistic villain. This has been obvious since we knew his plan was to kill the majority of the human race, but it doesn’t get any easier to stop wishing for him to have some sort of believable motive or goal. Airi points out that in life, he was more like this, and simply ended up sacrificing more than he’d like for the sake of his experiments, which is almost certainly foreshadowing some remnant of that side of him resurfacing for the final episode, but what we’ve been dealing with in this story is unfortunately the comical super-villain who acts like he’s trying his hardest to fill his role in the story.
This early part of the episode also concludes what we saw late last episode with Misaki and Geji, and it’s not long before the latter is out of the picture. Honestly it felt very abrupt here despite the setup last time, as Geji doesn’t do what Kimijima tells her to and so he immediately says “time to be deleted” and she starts disappearing just as immediately. Fortunately, with the real-life Airi now in the main group, this makes for a nice farewell between two parts of the same person, and it gives Geji a much more appropriate exit than it seemed like it might.
The bulk of the episode is spent on the expected preparations for the battle, but it’s not necessarily the most interesting part of it. When Kai shows up and convinces the others to put his life at risk in order to complete their mission, the mood starts getting much more emotionally impactful and it’s much better off for it. One thing that remains strong through all of this is the music. This leads to a scene of Kai and Aki alone, and even if you couldn’t guess what would be happening at this point because of Steins;Gate, it’s pretty obvious what the scene is going to do.
However, I actually wasn’t thinking about the necessity of this bit in the episode until that point. If I had thought about Steins;Gate parallels I certainly would’ve, but maybe between the fact that childhood friends really don’t end up together all that often and the recent scenes of them in situations that show them acting in a much more platonic way than you’d expect of love interests made me forget that this was inevitable until the time came. The scene definitely played out nicely, although Kai’s attitude and Aki’s embarrassment keeping her from actually expressing her own feelings in this particular episode made it a little less engaging than it might ideally be.
In Summary:
This episode wrapped up pretty much everything that needed to be wrapped up before the final battle, and it went about as expected. Kimijima remains a fairly silly villain with his over-the-top goals and childish method of execution, but there’s some strong emotional material between Geji’s farewell, Kai’s self-sacrificing determination, and the romance that finally blossoms. It still leaves a lot to be desired, but that all rests on the shoulders of the final episode next week.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Toshiba Satellite L655-S5191 PSK2CU-1C301U Notebook PC.
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