Metallic Rouge – 13 (Fin) – All’s Well that…Ends

I was officially checked out of Metallic Rouge last week, and this finale didn’t offer a whole lot to change that position. Everyone basically stands around in a room for the entire episode while the Puppetmaster, revealed to be a Nean version of Roy Junghardt, explains how he always had a firm grip on the Immortal Nine’s strings.

Silvia tries to go against the “settings” he’d set for her, and pays the price. He inhabits Cyan’s body, but Naomi merges her consciousness within Rouge and fights Roy-in-Cyan’s body. Cyan also fights Roy and rejects him, enabling Rouge/Naomi to defeat him. Rouge then activates Code Eve, which I thought she didn’t want to do, and it triggers a Usurper trap.

A virus is sent to all Neans everywhere, making them pliable soldiers in an imminent Usurper war against humanity. But Gene, who is Noir’s human son somehow, predicted something like that would happen and uploaded an antivirus. Now Neans can push humans who push them, but aren’t automatically killbots, I guess.

The episode and the series end in abrupt and thoroughly unsatisfying fashion, with Rouge (with Naomi inside her) engaging a huge horde of Usurper killbots led by the clown girl Opera, who was never really a character. Naomi says “all’s well that ends well,” but I’m just glad this mess is over. Metallic Rouge started strong and had some fine moments, but it kinda completely fell apart at the end there.

 

Metallic Rouge – 12 – Live for Love

…Could we maybe not?

Here we are, back to having to hear the Puppetmaster drone on in his insufferably avuncular tone about puppets and plays and performances. I’m at the end of my tether with this stuff, frankly, and my worry is that if Code Eve can’t be extracted from Rouge, it will be extracted from the captive Cyan.

Rouge and Naomi run around the maze-like facility some more, encountering a Gene who’s a bit too energetic to be the real one. The two ladies calling Giallon out was one of the more chuckle-worthy moments of the episode, but then he has to start going on about how the proverbial play is boring and he wants the two of them to make things more interesting.

While he says he’ll take them to the real Gene, he instead takes them to Silvia, who offers Rouge one last chance to surrender her id willingly and sacrifice herself for the good of all Neans. Rouge declines the offer and a duel ensues, but Silvia can regenerate her lopped-off limbs, and stabs an open Rouge through the chest, extracting the id she needs to create her world.

At first Naomi leaves the id-less, fading Rouge on the floor and rushes to fulfill her duty as First. If Rouge lost, which she did, she has to initiate the self-destruct of the entire facility to prevent Code Eve from getting out. But as she’s going over the protocols, she has a change of heart, runs back to her friend, and lends her her own id to have another go at Silvia.

~dun dun dunnnnnn~

Meanwhile, Gene and Ash have convinced Aes/Alice to help them, and Eden has killed Grauphon, leaving Silvia with fewer and fewer allies. That said, she’s so certain that her cause is right she doesn’t seem to care. They all meet where the Puppetmaster likely intended them to meet, and he finally removes his mask to reveal that he’s Dr. Roy Junghardt himself.

I hate that it’s come to this, but like a Nean without an id, my energy and enthusiasm for this show has simply cratered. I’ll stick around for the finale to see if Rouge, Naomi, Cyan, and I guess Ash make it out of this, but I honestly don’t give a hoot about anyone else.

Metallic Rouge – 11 – Strings Attached

The Alters are all in attendance for the curtain to go up on the New World Silvia intends to lead. With the help of the Puppetmaster and Opera, the ship carrying Rouge and the others is being made to crash land at the Venus complex, ensuring they have no reliable way back home. But as Noir is also with them, Silvia asks Grauphon to give him back his id, and with it a second chance to join his bretheren.

Opera also sees to it that Rouge and Naomi are separated from Noir, Cyan, and Ash. Naomi knows the way, while Rouge busts up any guardbots that get in their way. But while they do a lot of running and bot-busting, you get the distinct feeling that they’re like rats in maze, their movements being largely controlled by the strings of their hosts.

Cyan is determined to meet back up with her sister, and make her own choice should she hear the voice again, but when the Clair de Lune plays in her head once more, she’s unable to fight it, and falls into a trance. She heads towards the Puppetmaster, her “masked father”, as Ash follows, while Grauphon gives Noir back his id, and prepare to fight.

Once Cyan arrives at the spot where the Puppetmaster summoned her, he knocks her unconscious, removes his mask, and places it on her before snatching her up and heading off we know not where. Ash might have managed to catch a glimpse of the Puppetmaster’s face. Is it Jung, whose death was faked? Or someone else?

While Aes takes Gene to his room where he’ll stay for the time being, Silvia orders Giallon to intercept Rouge and kill Naomi, but doesn’t specify how. He disguises himself as Gene in hopes of lowering Rouge’s guard. It’s a simple trick, but that may be all he needs against someone as pure and simple as Rouge.

I’m not feeling too great about Naomi’s life expectancy, to be honest.Just about everything this week goes Silvia’s and the Puppetmaster’s way. We even see that there’s a factory churning out both new Neans and the Nectar to fuel them, which means Silvia doesn’t have to convince all extant Neans to follow her; she has a pliable army waiting in the wings.

We’ll see if Gene can make any headway with Aes/Alice, or if Naomi can stay alive long enough to keep Rouge and Code Eve out of the Alter’s hands. If she can’t, the Solar System will likely be Usurper territory within a year.

Metallic Rouge – 10 – Rocket to Venus

Rouge has decided that she wants to protect both humans and Neans. On the trip to Venus, Naomi is eager to unveil a secret weapon that will help their cause, but in the crate is a stowaway: Cyan. Unlike the one who was hellbent on killing Rouge, this Cyan is a lot more affable and childlike than when we last saw her, insisting Rouge is her big sister and that she only wants to “play” with her.

Meanwhile, Gene arrives on Venus with Silvia and the other Immortal Nine. They are welcomed by the Puppetmaster, who assures Gene that the Usurpers are merely his “sponsors.” They all sit down for a meal (of chocolate bars, of course) and reminisce on memories Gene doesn’t quite recall of all of them being together as a family.

Despite looking like a young woman, Cyan acts like a little kid, drawing crude pictures of her ideal life with her beloved big sister. That said, she’s perceptive enough to notice that Naomi and Rouge share a bond. When she refuses to bathe, it’s Ash, who is a father, who manages to convince her with the promise of ice cream.

While strategizing for when they arrive at Venus, Cyan takes exception to Naomi, even going so far as to tell her she hate her and starting to transform into her gladiator mode. Rouge stops her and calms her down, saying she can’t just hurt people, and she should also question the voice in her head when it pops in to tell her to kill. She should make her own choices.

Cyan tells Rouge she’s a bit jealous of her and Naomi, and asks what Naomi is to her. As Naomi overhears in the hall, Rouge tells her Naomi is the “best stranger”, someone who is irritating at times, but overall someone she doesn’t mind spending time with. This is heartening for Naomi, who as the First Nean has probably always felt pretty lonely.

I can’t say what awaits them on Venus—likely more robo-fighting—but this was a pleasant enough calm-before-the-storm episode that takes stock of the connections between the characters and the roles they’re to play on the final stage.

Metallic Rouge – 09 – Making Up In Space

Turns out Aes isn’t on Rouge’s side, but Silvia’s. Grauphon knocks Gene out and offers him to Rouge in exchange for her id. Eden sacrifices his id to save Rouge. Giallon arrives in a Usurper landing ship to pick up Silvia, Graupon, Aes, and the unconscious Gene. Rouge prepares to chase after them, but is kicked by her counterpart Cyan, who is itching for a fight.

She gets one, and she and Rouge soon learn they’re equally matched in Gladiator mode. Naomi reaches out to Rouge and tells her to trust her and invert her output phase, deforming as if she were in human form. Rouge puts her faith in Naomi once more, and it works: she and Cyan cancel each other’s power out and revert to human form, with Cyan passing out.

Rouge and Naomi agree that they need to talk, and Naomi chooses a rather extraordinary location to do so: the orbiting space station of the Visitors, the first aliens to make contact with humans. After docking and walking through a corridor devoid of air, Naomi suddenly takes her helmet of, shocking a still-very-mad Rouge. Turns out Naomi is a Nean too, one created by the Visitors to serve as a go-between with humans.

Naomi takes Rouge to meet three of the X Noah—the Visitors—who look like a possible design for the spice-transfigured Navigators in Dune, but Rouge first mistakes for merfolk, which is cute. They call Naomi “First”, since she’s the first Nean ever created. She’s brought her here because it’s the safest place to be, both for her, the humans, and the Visitors.

Within her id is the key to decoding Code Eve, which will free all of the Neans from the Asimov Code. However, the Usurpers, the evil aliens who started a war, are trying to start a new one, using the Immortal Nine with their mutual enemy as their vanguard. If Code Eve were executed, all the freed Neans would end up assisting the Usurpers in their conquest of Earth.

With all that in mind, this space station is the safest place for Rouge to be. But it is not the only logical place for her to be. After Rouge learns that the Nine and Gene are now on Venus, she wants to go there to fight them and get her brother back, and Naomi manages to convince the Visitors that Rouge’s wish to go is logical, because she trusts Rouge’s potential to defeat the enemy with her own power.

After Naomi kinda-sorta apologizes for putting Rouge through so much and making her think she betrayed her when she was only doing what she thought would keep her safest, Rouge insists on punching Naomi once. After that, the Visitors allow Rouge to head to Venus to try to resolve things, but order Naomi to stay put. In response, Naomi asks for her first-ever PTO day for self-care, which the Visitors grant.

When they reach the airlock to their ship, they encounter Ash and Eden, who flew up to orbit after learning Earth is on DEFCON-1 due to simultaneous Usurper attacks on and around Venus and Jupiter. Shit is starting to go down, and I couldn’t be happier Rouge and Naomi are back together to save the day, and then hopefully go to a nice beach somewhere and relax.

Metallic Rouge – 08 – Between Freedom and Order

Rouge arrives at the Junghardt mansion with Ash and Noid just as her brother Gene discovered a secret passage. They discover a vast repository of Roy’s memories, most of which come off as cold and analytical where both Gene and especially Rouge are concerned. She wonders if he only ever thought of her as some kind of experiment or test subject.

Gene, who spent more time with Roy as his adopted son, can’t say for sure, only that Roy was “a complicated man.” But the memories also include those of one Eva Kristella, who was the genius behind Code Eve, an protocol that would free Neans from the Asimov Code that made them subservient. The Immortal Nine are part of Code Eve, as is Rouge. She has to choose whether to free all Neans now and risk the chaos and harm that is likely to follow, or try to maintain order until the time is right.

Their little confab outside the house is interrupted not by Naomi’s Ochrona soldiers, who stand by in the trees, but Cyan, the self-proclaimed little sister of Rouge. She immediately deforms into a blue version of Rouge’s battle mode and attacks Rouge, but Rouge won’t deform and doesn’t want to fight. Honestly Cyan is pretty one-note, interested only in fighting and killing Rouge. The question is, why?

When Gene’s assistant reports that Aletheia HQ is under attack by Jill and an army of bots, he picks Gene, Rouge, Ash and Noid up in a copter to take them there. Deciding she’s not going to allow Jill to slaughter humans and make things worse for humans and Neans, she leaps out of the copter and into a fight against Jill, who is keen on destroying anyone who stands in her way of punishing humans and needs Rouge’s id to execute Code Eve.

In the resulting melee, Noid is mortally wounded, and his last words are that he always felt human when he was with Ash, and urging him to take better care of himself. Distraught by his partner’s sudden demise, Ash pulls a gun on the humans who killed Noid and basically tells them to fuck off. No detective wants to outlive their young assistant.

When Eden “Who Are you?” Varock, AKA Jet Black Noir, shows up, Jill assumes he’s on her side, but he blows up all of her bots and sides with Rouge instead. Aes also shows up with their ice attacks, presumably on Rouge’s side, while Cyan lurks overhead like a bird of prey ready to strike when the time is right. I’d advise Rouge to look up now and then to avoid an untimely death.

While I remain frustrated that we’ve been deprived of the best thing about the show—i.e. the relationship between Rouge and Naomi—and that Naomi herself has had shockingly little to do but sit around observing, I decided to follow the advice of my Anime News Network counterpart and simply go with the flow and not think about stuff too much.

As a result, I was able to enjoy this episode more on its own terms rather than my preconceived notions. It’s really never been all that clear where Metallic Rouge is heading, or what exactly Naomi’s endgame might be. But the fact Rouge has chosen to protect humans as well as Neans probably bodes well for their ending up back on the same side eventually, assuming they both survive the remaining robot battles to come.