Izuru, Asagi, and Suruga have days off while Tamaki and Kei go on a PR tour with Peko. Izuru works on his manga and tries to show it to the pit crews. Asagi spends the day shopping with his pit crew member Anna. Suruga spends the entire day doing EVA with his crew, waiting for a countdown to end and a ship to appear. Tamaki and Kei go from photo op to photo op, wearing various costumes and helping to promote the GDF.
It would be…generous to say anything of consequence happened this week. This is a two-cour series, which means there’s going to be lightweight episodes like this, particularly after the revelatory, action-packed battle of last week. These kids need a break, but interestingly two of them don’t get one. The ladies are pressed into P.R. service, which strikes us as a little unfair. Why do the guys get to do what they want while Tamaki and Kei endure a dizzying schedule of photo ops? We don’t know, but the ladies do perform admirably.
The only thing we can say about this episode is that we’re glad it wasn’t just a straight recap. We hate recaps, and while there were a few recap moments, the episode had enough new material not to just fast-forward through in disappointment. There were some nice character moments, both between Tamaki and Kei and Asagi and that random girl on his pit crew, while repeatedly cutting back to Suruga out in space gave a nice slight sense of mystery to the episode, even if it’s never really explained what that ship is and why he was waiting for it.
Rating: 5 (Average)
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