Thursday, March 26, 2015

Cross Ange Episode 24

We begin Episode 24 with Jill versus Salia, and as Salia is like 'why the hell are here?", Jill drops the bomb "didn't he tell you? I was his former lover." Salia immediately reverts to denial mode over this one, and Jill tells Ange to head on while she  keeps Salia entertained. Ange does that, and Jill and Salia start formally dueling.

Cue intro credits.

We resume learning the space time convergence is at 83%, and as the Aurora crew are fending off more of Embryo's goons, Riza is a bit surprised as Momoka is walking around the bridge, handing out snacks to everyone (but is grateful), and we also find out things are getting worse on the DRAGON side as well.

Embryo is all "their resistance is pointless", and as he and Tusk continue to have a cockfight over Ange, Hilda and Rosalie are managing, if only barely, to maintain parity with Chris, and Rosalie is still "Chris must die for Marika's sake".

We cut back to Jill who is matching Salia blow for blow and telling her having a Ragnamail and a fancy title doesn't make her as badass as she thinks, and as Salia is still spouting shit about how Embryo gave her everything, Jill (who knows better) is tearing down Salia's delusions with the truth about him being a self interested rapist with hax powers, and even though Salia knows this intellectually, denial mode hasn't broken yet.

We then cut back to Tusk and Embryo cockfighting, and as Embryo is trying to piss Tusk off with how he hasn't been exposed to Ange charms, Tusk manages to piss Embryo off by basically confirming "I hit that, you wannabe stalker", and as Embryo start realizing Tusk is fucking serious, this makes Embryo pissed as hell, and it's pretty fucking obvious Embryo has some serious Jafar lusting after Jasmine level delusion concerning Ange, and as Tusk keeps confirming Embryo got beat to the punch concerning Ange's virginity and that he (Tusk) is not going to be scared of a narcissistic pretty boy rapist, the last remaining shreds of Embryo's cool go out the window.

Meanwhile, Sala has finally made it to where Aura is, but quickly discovers he's got one hell of a force field between them, and meanwhile, the AUrora team is getting worn down by the neverending reinforcements, and the force field breaks as the grappler bombs take out Engine One, causing the Aurora to lose altitude. As the hit the water, most primary systems go down, including the particle field and the anti-air guns. Jasmine is pissed and tells Mei to expedite any repairs she can.

Meanwhile, Mary (one of the Aurora team) almost bites it, but Ersha pops out in a Paramail to provide support. Meanwhile, Ange has finally rendezvoused with Sala, chides her for wasting time dealing with Embryo's automated goons, and Sala has Ange take over, saying she's gonna fire her Space Time Convergence Cannon at 70% power) to shatter the force field around Aura. Ange tells her do it, and as Sala starts singing, Embryo starts realizing what she's doing.

Meanwhile, Salia is spewing her resentments to Jill, and Salia basically tells Alektra she just wanted to be special dammit, and she didn't care how. Meanwhile,the DRAGON side of things is in Mass OH CRAP mode, until Sala humming a few bars can be heard.

Cue intermission.

As we resume,  the convergence is at 91%, and even though Mei and her engineering team are working their asses off and Maggy (with Momoka) are patching up wounded just as fast, the Aurora defense team is getting exhausted, and Ersha decides to buy everyone else time by using herself as bait, and as the discs maul her Paramail, Vivian freaks out, but a DRAGON shows up from the other side to destroy the discs, giving Vivian time to bail Ersha out. More DRAGON pop out and surround the Aurora, and that's when the High Priestess sends a transmission to the Norma, offering the DRAGONs as reinforcements, and the DRAGONs immediately start owning the shit out of the grappler discs (and I agree with Vivian, it is "BADASS!") and provide lift to the ship with their own talons.

Meanwhile, Tusk is telling Embryo the tides have shifted, and that's when Embryo reveals his next trick.

Basically, teleporting all of his hired goons (Chris, Salia, etc) into the DRAGON hordes as a distraction to save his own ass.

Tusk is fucking horrified at Embryo's callousness as half of the no namers on the team (well, Tania and Erma, but they aren't plot important) bite it, but Embryo doesn't give a fuck. Meanwhile, Jill uses this event to punch through the denial and tells Salia "he pulled this shit on me too, don't let him fuck you over as badly as he did me". Chris too is realizing she was just a pawn as well, and this causes her a massive mental break as she just firing at everything in maddened grief. Hilda tries to talk sense into Chris to snap her out of it, and since Chris is bitching too much to listen, Hilda grapples her, rips off the cockpit cover, and her and Rosalie start bitching at her for being so fucking whiny, and Rosalie basically goes 'fuck it", jumps from her Paramail and pulls Chris out of her own seat, and as Chris is all "why would you do that", Rosalie kisses her as they fall as says they die together as she confesses her love to the still disbelieving Chris, and as they continue to fall, Rosalie rattles off some intimate TMI and begs Chris to trust her again, and Hilda breaks their fall by crashing her own Paramail at the drop point, and as Chris finally gets over herself, Rosalie forgives her for shooting down Marika and says they'll buy a grave to commemorate her, and after Hilda steals one of Rosalie's "Stock Romantic Speech.txt" lines, Chris just starts crying as Rosalie holds her.

Around the same time, Sala fires.

Moments later, Aura is finally free.

Everyone save Embryo is all 0_0 at the sight, and Jill catches up with him and says 'admit it, win or lose, you're just going to leave this world to rot, right?", and then her tiny remaining fragments of feeling for the guy come to the fore and she begs him to take her with him, and he finally fills in the final remaining pieces of how it all started.

Basically, she was jelly over how the guy who would be Tusk's father hooked up with Tusk's mom, she was butthurt, so he took advantage of her from day one, no genuine love on his end was meant by that.

Embryo then tries to goad her into killing his ass, but she's smart enough to know it wouldn't work, and she reveal she hid a mini cryo cannon in her cyber arm, which she freezes him into place with, and just as she radios the Aurora to let them know (she planned this in advance), Embryo reveals his failsafe (his Ragnamail can serve as a backup body in a pinch), and as he lasers her side then melts his human form, Embryo tells her, "fuck you bitch, I have no need for my sloppy seconds anymore" as he files off.

Meanwhile, the space time converge is still ongoing (despite Aura being liberated), and that's when Embryo reveals he anticipated this:

Basically, he just used Aura's energy as a detonator/catalyst, with the resulting instability causing a self sustaining geometrically increasing chain reaction that would do the rest. In short, Aura was merely the plutonium trigger in his multistage universe fusion bomb, with the second stage doing all the work even without Aura's intervention.

Embryo then kidnaps Ange (minus her clothes, ring, and Vilkiss), and the space time converge hits 97%.

Cue end credits.

Next episode has a lot of fighting in space, a lot of banter about how it's the finale, and Embryo pissed the hell off.

2 comments:

  1. After watching the episode, there's a couple things that just seem to bug me:

    1. We've established that creepy as fuck relationship between Embryo and Ange (nice Aladdin comparison, BTW). But at this point, with Tusk revealing he got it on like Donkey Kong with her. I don't get why he needs the sloppy seconds when he could, just as easily, cut his losses and kill everyone (Ange included).

    2. Tania and Erma- Aside from Sunrise realizing "Oh shit, we need to round out the bad guy's forces", the two had almost no purpose being there. Aside from Embryo and maybe Salia and Chris, they never interacted with any main characters, took part in the battle in episodes 17 or 21. Plus they never had any build up to their appearances or back story as to why they're even with Embryo in the first place. Even the new Arzenal pilots (Mary, Nonna and Marika) got more screentime and did stuff in comparison to those two.

    3. Jill- I joked at the end of episode 21 that all that was left for her to lose (after her humanity, virginity, the first Libertus, right forearm, ability to pilot Vilkiss and at the time, command) was her life. Good to see I was right, cause damn, that's a lot of blood. If she does manage to survive, then that asspull has got to top Tusk's survival in episode 22.

    4. Hysterica, Embryo's mecha- I'm half tempted to call it and say that either the real body's inside that thing. Or that it is Embryo's real body. Think about it. We never see it in flight mode, not the cockpit like we do the other mecha. So they're clearly building up to some reveal for the next episode.

    Either way, for a series that started off with prison rape and pants-wetting, it's actually got me invested. Which is more than I can say for most Anime (or cartoons, movies or pretty much anything) nowadays.

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    Replies
    1. Good points, my take on them:

      1. Embryo seems to have a "repulsion on makes my love/lust stronger" thing going on, in that he desires what he can't have, and Ange has, to date, utterly resisted his efforts to win her over via logic, mind rape her, or good old fashioned seduction. His obsession seems to stem from his need to be the one in control of everyone he sets his eyes on.

      When Tusk basically told him "sorry dude, I took her v-card before you and she liked it", Embryo flipped out because Tusk already got more than he ever could out of someone he just couldn't break.

      And yeah, the Aladdin reference fits perfectly here. Much like Jafar, he doesn't NEED the girl, he just wants to bend her to his will to prove he can for his own ego.

      2. Basically, Embryo is Paptimus Scirroco 2.0, and like the original used his mind hax rapist powers to get an Amazon Brigade to do his will in Zeta Gundam, so Embryo did the same. Problem is, due to how late they introduced him as the villain, they didn't really have a lot of time to develop any more characters, so they were just disposable props to flesh out Embryo's coterie of female bodyguards.

      Lame, really, as they could have excised them and the plot really wouldn't suffer too much, and at least all of Scirroco's female goons had plot relevance.

      3. Eh, it's possible she gonna live, the wound hit her side around the lower abdomen, and unless she doesn't get proper medical treatment soon, she'll probably live (Embryo seemed to have left her alive so he could gloat). Besides, the whole Salia and Jill resolution would go out the window now and be left hanging if they killed her off.

      4. Yeah, methinks you might be right. He never actually enters the cockpit, even though it's confirmed he used it in the backstory to wipe out Earth 1.0, so his dimension projection revival bit is probably tied into the space time weirdness built into his mecha, where his original form is probably serving as the control mechanism.

      And yeah, for a series that started off a shitty note, it got better surprisingly fast, hope they don't piss all that away in the ending.

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