Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova – 05

As the crew of the I-401 take on their Vibration torpedo payload, Haruna and Kirishima end up as guests of Osakabe Makie, a young girl with no parents living in a huge mansion. After downloading Kirishima into a teddy bear, Haruna gradually becomes friends with Makie. After delivering a status update to Kongou, Kirishiima and Haruna are led to a secret facility below the mansion, where they meet Osakabe Toujuurou, who created Makie to do what he couldn’t: design effective anti-fog weapons, including the Vibration warhead. When the government discovers Makie has had contact with Haruna, they send troops to the mansion.

Hold on, now, what the heck was that? We didn’t sign up for this! How does the show go from a submarine crew battling two battleships, to one of the battleship’s avatars turning the other into a teddy bear and then spending an entire damn episode bonding with a little rich girl who comes totally out of left field, who of course is a manufactured being herself, because SCIENCE! C’mon, seriously. Why do we have to hang out with the little rich genius test tube girl? Why’d they have to introduce her and the old decrepit bedridden guy suddenly bringing up all this stuff about human experimentation? What in the world does this have to do with awesome naval battles? Why 109 embryos?!

We get it. We brought this on ourselves. We knew that a lull was coming after a battle as big as last week’s; that’s just the pattern this show is following. We also know that the more the Fog girls hang out with humans (at least some of them), the more trouble they have accepting Kongou’s assurance they’re only inhabiting “temporary personas.” We knew last week that little girl found Haruna. But did the show have to forget about the crew of the I-401 for an entire episode? Not that they’re the most interesting bunch in the world, but you can’t just…change shows in the middle of a run. For us, this was simply a turn down the wrong road.

To quote Haruna when Makie wouldn’t give her coat back: “Sniffle, sniffle.”

Rating: 3 (Bad)