The Luna Barco enters a fight from which is may not return. What they Say:
“Episode 11 – Love Song”
The latest and greatest in the “Pilot” series! With today’s top staff and cast, it’s at last being animated! To find the end of the sky and sea, we went on a journey aboard the flying island Isla. A boy who lost everything in the revolution. The lonely girl who calls the wind, who became the revolution’s symbol. The young pilots set out aboard the flying island Isla to find the end of the sky. Friendship, love, adventure… and each of them have something they want to protect. An epic story of love and dogfights begins now.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers).
Noriaki and Benji continue to risk their lives in order to get a visual on the enemy battleship, in the absence of more experienced gunners. However, it takes Nina Viento’s insistence before the military leaders will accept the students’ observations as accurate. Kal and Ignacio arrive just in time to take down several enemy fighters in pursuit, and make that their duty as their two comrades continue to send back tactical info. The Luna Barco is able to get a lock on the enemy ship and destroy it, but not before Benji and Noriaki are sent flying from their broken plane to the world below.
Kal breaks into a rage and seems to release some limiter on his flying skill, because in that moment it’s as if his plane and himself are one. As quickly as Ignacio can fire shots at the enemy, Kal has spotted another. When they run out of bullets, they head back to the Luna Barco only to find it ailing. Claire rushes to the deck and appeals to Kal, shedding her Nina Viento persona and professing her love for him. It’s then that Kal remembers his mother’s words of forgiveness, and begs Claire to go on living rather than sacrifice herself to the enemy.
As Claire absorbs Kal’s words, she feels her magic returning to her, and she uses the wind to rescue the ship and send the enemy away. Likewise, the forces of Isla are defended by their new allies, including the pilot in plane with the seagull insignia.
The two protagonists reach their own personal story climaxes, at least of a sort, during this episode. The result is actually pretty satisfying as it clears away some of the less believable “debris” that has been clouding the characters for a while now. Kal’s boiling hatred towards Nina Viento was always a point of contention with me, as it was so intense as to be overwhelming and cartoonish rather than truthful. Claire’s position as a figurehead in spite of her young age and lack of magical power also kind of bothered me. Now that the masks have come off and the two characters have decided that they can acknowledge their feelings, I have hopes that maybe that the story can come to a close unburdened by the kind of negative melodrama that’s been irritating thus far.
On the other hand, the story also reverted to a lot of its prior tactics to work up some melodrama throughout the episode, and having been exposed to the same sort of tropes several times now I’m beginning to see right through them. Benji’s and Noriaki’s dangerous recon flight provides the opportunity to all sorts of flashbacks, including ones that involve loves left behind and promises that could not be kept. During the first conflict at the midpoint in the series, this sort of thing still had an air of tragedy to it. It was surprising to see characters killed off, and in such numbers as to be shocking. Now that it’s happened once or twice and in quick succession, the sense of danger has been dulled and the sense of loss too familiar to be very affecting. At the rate things are going, the only two people who’ll be left alive are Kal and Claire.
Now that they have shown up en force, I’m interested to see more about the forces of Fana Levamme who appeared in the nick of time to aid the Luna Barco and its crew. These allies have been mysterious and distant for the entire series, seemingly hands-off in when Isla was in dire need of help. Whether it’s been due to distance or an inability to get involved in the conflicts that have been raging throughout the second half of the series, their absence has done a good job of ramping up the anticipation for their eventual appearance. And as for the pilot in the seagull plane…
In Summary:
Whether this episode marks the final climax of the series or is yet another lead-up to something even bigger, I can’t really tell. As the characters have become unshackled from their pasts in time to express their love for one-another, the story has taken on a new lightness that might help offset the rampant death that’s been taking place just about every other episode. With all the fighting that’s been going on, it feels like the plot has been lost in the shuffle, and just like the explorers in this series, I’m getting really anxious to see what lays over the next horizon.
Episode Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: Acer P235H 1080p LCD Monitor connected via DVI input, Logitech S220 2.1 Speakers, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
0 comments:
Post a Comment