The sun rises on a school in ruins full of whiny little Spacian bitches (my God their complaining) but an Earth House on the rise. Seceila, mistress of whisperers as she is, must know Suletta’s M.O. down pat. After watching her help the other students out with small comforts without gaining anything from it, she’s compelled to ask Suletta “Have you changed?” Suletta gives her a confident look and a cool “I guess so.” How sweet is a liberated Suletta?
Petra is in critical condition, but she’s not dead. It’s a significant glimmer of hope after Witch from Mercury was rather stingy with the stuff last week. In the wake of the attack on Asticassia and the arrest of Zenelli, Miorine is duly elected the new Benerit Group president. It’s not an occasion for celebration. Recent tragedies on Earth and in Space on her ostensible watch aside, the group Miorine is about to inherit is about to shatter.
Those indolent Spacian brats having to rough it in the relief camp are in luck: Earth House doesn’t hold grudges. Suletta stashed away a sizable tomato harvest prior to Miorine’s greenhouse’s untimely demise by errant mobile suit.
She and the Earthians distribute the sweet and delicious nightshades to the other students, who welcome a little comfort in dark times. Everyone in Earth House is happy to be kept busy for the distraction. Perhaps in part due to Petra and Felsi’s attitudes toward her changed, even Chuchu doesn’t object to the tomato distributing.
Martin takes the time to talk more with Nika, who says she’ll be dropping out to face the music and return in her own right. It’s both sweet and rewarding to watch these two forgive each other and vow to support each other in the future. That it’s not a romantic development but something far more complex nuanced, makes it more compelling.
If the episode was simply a collection of these fine instances of some characters moving forward (Suletta, Nika, Martin) while others fall (Shaddiq, Miorine, Bel) I would have honestly been satisfied. But this episode had far grander ambitions.
Bel approaches Suletta, along with Inspector Guston Parche of the Space Assembly League, who wants to speak to Suletta. Now while we’ve heard a lot about the SAL, I don’t believe there’s much explanation of what exactly it is yet, so we get that: it’s the Space United Nations, if nations were corporations. That is, it mediates problems among all the competing nation-corps.
That context of neutrality is crucial to the events that follow, as the Peil Group goes rogue withdraws from the Benerit Group to to blow the whistle on the group’s militaristic designs and secret WMD, Quiet Zero. Basically, Peil run snitchin’ to the SAL, who deems Benerit a threat to peace and votes to mobilize a “forceful intervention” fleet to dissolve it. As if MioMio didn’t have enough shit to eat.
As that SAL fleet looms, the newly-released Sarius speaks to Miorine, managing to rag on her comatose dad (“he didn’t teach you enough”) while proposing a possible face-saving solution: throw Grassley under the bus for everything, and save the rest of the group, which Sarius believes to be of paramount importance. But Miorine has decided to draw the line when it comes to people she’s sacrificed for what she believed to be the greater good.
Back at Earth House’s relief tent, Bel explains Quiet Zero, which works kind of like an electromagnetic pulse, only rather than disable all electronics in its range, it hijacks all systems and vehicles that use Permet…which is pretty much everything. Prospera’s goal is to expand the radius to encompass all of the Earth sphere—creating a new world.
Bel and Gaston (very Beauty and the Beast) come to Suletta in hopes she can talk Prospera down, but with a look of bitter resignation and forced cheer, Suletta admits that reasoning with her mom is likely a lost cause. Then she tells Bell, Gaston, and all her Earth House family that she’s not Prospera’s real daughter, only a Repli-Child designed to be a key, then cut loose.
Suletta goes on to say that her mom is creating this new world for Aerial, AKA Ericht, who can now only live within data storms. She still loves her mom, because it’s thanks to her she got to go to school and meet everyone. But she doesn’t think there’s anything she can say to change her mom’s mind. That’s when Gaston says if talking won’t work, they’ll have her pilot a Gundam the SAL confiscated during the Vanadis Incident, the Calibarn, nicknamed “Monster”.
That’s when Nika speaks up for Suletta, lambasting Bel for blithely sacrificing yet another pilot like she did to Elan Ceres. Bel has no defense, and indeed falls to her knees and weeps. The only reason she hadn’t apologized for what she’d done is because she finds it so unforgivable in her own eyes.
But while Nika, Chuchu, and the others object to Bel using Suletta, Suletta herself isn’t bothered by it. Now that she knows she isn’t immune to data storms, but that Ericht bore all of the suffering so she didn’t have to, she still wants to talk to her “big sister”, and her mom, one more time. She’ll do what she can, even if she doesn’t gain one or two or anything else.
Once again, we’ve already got a high-9 episode with Suletta agreeing to pilot Calibarn. But we’re still far from done, because there’s still that space battle between the Assembly League fleet and the Benerit Group. Instead, they encounter Quiet Zero, a massive jewel-shaped battleship commanded by Suletta. Suit-type GUND-Bits sortie to face the SAL fleet.
It doesn’t take long for the Assembly fleet’s suits to realize the bogeys are unmanned drones too maneuverable to easily defeat. At Prospera’s command, Aerial connects to Quiet Zero, which goes from red to blue as a spherical network expands from the ship, and with it, a data storm under her control.
Once hacked and immobilized, the fleet isn’t just disabled, it’s utterly obliterated with cool, terrible precision. It’s also the biggest and most ambitious space battle to date in Mercury, even though, or possibly because it’s a squash match. Prospera isn’t playing.
Faced with still more death and destruction, Miorine’s downward spiral not only continues but accelerates. She seems to be at or damned near her breaking point. Never have I wanted Suletta to be by her side more than now, not least because I know Suletta wouldn’t throw salt on the wound by condemning MioMio, but probably thank her for dumping her because of where she ended up: free to make her own choices.
Suletta may be perfectly willing to risk her life to speak to her sister and mother again, to try to learn more about them and understand her loved ones better. But she’s not going alone. Chuchu speaks on behalf of all Earth House in saying they’re going with her, and lord knows she’ll need their help. Ceres, who was sitting outside the tent listening to everything, also lends his services, after properly apologizing to Suletta for the things he said to her.
Lilique and Aliya half-jokingly remark that his personality changed yet again, but this is the same Elan who was a major asshole to Suletta for weeks. She’s not the only one who’s changed. There are people she wants to talk to, and there’s a place he wants to go. Watching the kids unite to bring down a rogue mama had me rubbing my hands together with robust anticipation.
In addition, a new wild card takes the stage in Lauda. While he overheard that Guel had a hand in their father’s death, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Lauda has settled on a scapegoat: Miorine. Miorine, the cursed president already far too resigned to take on all of the amassed guilt of the world and let it crush her. She aimed to keep Suletta out of this mess, but now Suletta is choosing, on her own, to charge into it head-first.
RABUJOI - An Anime Blog 