Cross Ange: Tenshi to Ryuu no Rondo – 14

Ange, Vivian and Tusk awake in the ruins of what was once a great city that is obviously Tokyo. Vivian is in dragon mode and Ange rides her around to gather recon, which not only gives us plenty of glamour shots of blown-up-Tokyo but confirms our hapless heroes’ fears that they are entirely alone.

Then a perfectly functional robot zips by informing them that space is available at the central defense force’s shelter. So Team Ange wanders off to investigate what that’s all about.

Piles of dead people, so it turns out. But also a computer, who’s chipper female avatar INFO-DUMPS us some back story about World War 7, the fall of the human race, and ultimately the destruction of everything by wars end  via BLACK VILLKISS(es)

Also, that this all happened more than 500 years ago, which depresses the hell out of Ange, who’s decided Tokyo is her home country due to the Dawn Pillar being present.

In her funk, Ange is rather unthinking about her criticism of Liberatus to Tusk, who’s parents were both killed fighting in it. She also yells at Vivian.

However, after seeing cute knick-knacks in an underground shopping area, she changes her mind and gives Tusk a necklace and they make up. Then they find a hotel with clean beds and a nice bathroom and spend the night.

Following some soap-flavored Ange-candy (and Vivi-washing) Ange and Tusk have an incredibly awkward and/or hilarious admission of liking each other and try to get some sleep next to each other in the same bed because Tusk broke the couch he wanted to sleep on by sitting on it.

COMEDY GOLD!

Then Dragons show up, complete with more elf rider-girls like the one we saw a few episodes ago, and this episode comes to a close…

Good:

• We almost went the whole episode without Tusk jamming his face in Ange’s crotch for once and the lack of exploitation was a nice change of pace.
• We received a lot of information about the world and, while it was via info-dump, things make a lot more sense now.
• It was a nice twist that Japan was destroyed by a nation that invented mecha instead of Japan being the source of mecha, which would be more typical for anime.
• One or two of Tusk’s lines were actually pretty funny! (intentionally or not)

Not so good:

• The pacing was sluggish, with jerky info-heavy moments and none of it reinforced the sense of loneliness, isolation or fear. It’s just another weird place for Ange to be, wherever it is.
• Ange and Tusk have no chemistry and the romance-thread feels as forced now as you would anticipate from Tusk’s first episode.
• I can’t decide if the over-the-top back story, Vivian’s dragon ‘whale song’ talking or the introduction of elves is profoundly stupid or profoundly stupid in a way I should just accept as how Cross Ange does things.

Verdict: This week was watchable, and advanced the plot efficiently-ish with limited skin-ploitation, which are all good things. That said, Ange has become less and less pretty to look at as time runs on and the story it is efficiently telling has gotten more and more ridiculous too.

As a series, I imagine Ange is what I imagine doing Bath Salts is like. At the beginning, it seems insane but straightforward, then it gets twisted and warped and you don’t know what anything means anymore, then you feel ill as the high crashes away and you’re left with a bleak world littered around you and half your neighbor’s fingers still digesting in your stomach.

Braverade’s Take:

When the Villkiss teleported Ange, Tusk, and Vivi away last week, I assumed they probably went to wherever dimension the DRAGON came from. Thus I was prepared for an entirely new and ultimately successful setting for the purpose of teasing a paradise for Ange. 538 years in the future, they’re literally the only two humans left.

This was, in a way, a scaling-up of the infamous island episode, only better in every way. The ruined Misurugi capital, which is actually Tokyo (the Sky Tree, Rainbow Bridge, and Diet are all present) is a far more interesting and awe-inspiring setting, helped by the mystery that initially surrounds it and some of the best musical tracks of the series. Watching Ange soar over the foliage-covered ruins aboard Vivi is a surreal, gorgeous shot. As such I can’t quite agree with Franklin that the show is “getting less pretty to look at”.

Once they learn when they are and what happened from “Shelter Siri” (an infodump, but at least an infodump they tried to present in a practical manner, what with the holo-imagers) Tusk believes it, but Ange instantly calling it bullshit is true-to-character.

It also helps that Tusk—and the show itself—are on their best behavior, as if they’d learned from the backlash to the island episode. Vivi stays in DRAGON form throughout, so there’s no naked loli. Ange never wakes up naked with a Tusk looming over her. They do end up in what looks like the love hotel near Amagi Brilliant Park, but Tusk doesn’t barge in on her bath, and when Ange opens her robes, it’s her decision, and because, well, she has needs just like anyone else…and he is the ‘last man on earth’.

Ange’s advances, along with her sentiment about this whole situation perhaps being for the best, are both dashed when a DRAGON shows up with two Ragna-Mail riders responding to a distress call. The show insists on getting one super-quick facecrotch in—the proverbial insolent child or dog doing something it knows is wrong.

This was a vast improvement over the last Ange+Tusk episode (not a tough achievement, but still). It was helped by its fresh setting, by the presence of Vivian, by the show’s restraint, and finally the tenderness with which it treated the romance of a couple who, let’s not forget, are both greatly wounded souls with vast weights on their shoulders.

No, it’s not Shakespeare, but their pairing at least makes sense and is being treated more seriously. And Tusk, while not ideal, is certainly Ange’s best choice for an opposite-sex romance in the show.