Are you guys ready for the big plot twist (not really)? Brace yourselves.
Seriously though, what difference does it really make? Not much of one, I can assure you. Oh sure, this latest development gives Hina a reason to now doubt both herself and the life she’s been living. After all, we learn from a flashback that she enlisted in the Zogilia army in order to protect both her homeland and its people. But what if she’s not really a Zogilian after all?! What if she’s an orphan because of Zogilia’s actions? So anyway, amidst all the chaos, she runs into Aoba and they proceed to sit down in a hallway to have a conversation. Lemme remind you that there are battles raging on all around them. In case you haven’t been following the show, or have just plum forgotten all about last week’s episode, Zogilia is infiltrating the Alliance base in order to steal both Luxon and Braydon. So yeah, despite this, our couple decides to take a seat in a hallway, and have a heart-to-heart about our heroine’s sudden bout of existential crisis. I’m surprised they didn’t break out a picnic basket.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not questioning Hina’s existential crisis here (like I did with Ryuuko’s in Kill la Kill), but I just can’t help but laugh at how those two are now casually chilling, having a nice, pleasant conversation in the middle of a serious conflict. In any case, Hina starts to wonder if she’s truly the Hina that Aoba’s been repeatedly referring to. Honestly, I don’t know why she would think that. She has memories of being a little girl in her (foster) father’s care, right? She has memories of attending a Zogilian military academy, right? So why would she suddenly think she’s the same Hina as the one that Aoba’s been referring to, i.e. the Hina he went to high school with. Ah well, the girl’s distraught! After all, her father just died (yeah, we pretty much all saw that coming from a billion miles away)! I should give her a break! And I will; her character hasn’t actually been all that grating in this show. She’s not particularly well-developed, but she hasn’t done anything offensively stupid… yet.
Once again, it’s Aoba who really ups the ante when it comes to displaying true cluelessness. He just outright tells Hina that she should come on over to his side, i.e. desert the Zogilian army and defect to the Alliance. H-hey, the good ol’ folks on the Cygnus took Aoba in without a question (shh, they would’ve kill him but they saw how valuable he’d be as Dio’s Coupling partner… just don’t tell him that), so I’m sure they’d take Hina in too! Even though, y’know, Hina’s been a Zogilian soldier for how many years now? Even though Alliance higher-ups would love to interrogate (read: torture) Hina for everything that she knows about Zogilia and their military secrets. Even though–… oh who am I kidding! This is an anime! So of course the good guys would understand. And the good guys would never do anything immoral either!
It’s just too bad Bizon has to show up just in time to spoil the fun. To make matters worse, something snaps in our dear Bizon when he lays his eyes on Aoba. It’s like he just knew Aoba was going to netorare his girl one day. Seriously though, you never go full yandere. Naturally, Aoba’s friends show up just in time too (everyone’s always on time in an anime) to save our dense hero from the yandere Zogilian soldier, but conveniently enough, our crackshot Dio manages to only shoot Bizon’s gun away and not the actual guy himself. As a result, Bizon was able to abscond with Hina, which allows them both to pilot the Luxon and Braydon back to the Vajra, the main Zogilian ship. To be honest, I don’t know how much longer I can endure this tension between Hina and Bizon. We know their relationship’s going to end in tragedy. I just wish the penny would drop already in this timeline; I don’t want to watch the guy agonize for episodes after episodes over Hina’s latest actions.
Elsewhere, Gengo correctly deduces that the smart thing to do here would be to shoot down the Coupling mechas. Hey, keeping them out of the enemy’s hands is better than nothing, right? Considering how the good guys have been winning every fight lately — and with great ease too — there’s no way you’d want the enemy to copy your technology. But of course, Aoba will have none of this. After all, Hina’s piloting one of the Coupling mechas. If you shoot them both down, Hina will die! Hey, I understand Gengo’s position, but I understand Aoba’s desire to spare Hina’s life too. What I don’t understand, however, is why Gengo didn’t just order his people to shoot the Coupling mechas down anyway. Oh, our newest recruit doesn’t want me to? I GUESS I BETTER LISTEN TO THE RESERVE SECOND LIEUTENANT THEN. Seriously, I don’t think we even hear from the guy again for the rest of the episode. Some commander he is!
Since Dio’s now all deredere for Aoba, he agrees not to shoot down the Coupling mechas as long as the two of them can just get the mechas back. Our heroes thus hop into some old-type mechas that had just been sitting around in order to chase after the Luxon and Braydon. Yadda yadda yadda, their attempt to Couple in these old mechas results in some gnarly side effects, yadda yadda yadda, the Alliance finally suffers a huge and perhaps embarrassing defeat for once. After all the ridiculous propaganda efforts from the previous episodes, how can this latest setback be anything but a major P.R. disaster for the good guys? But let’s be honest, none of this truly matters in the grand scheme of things. It appears as though the latest Coupling attempt, i.e. the one with all the gnarly side effects, not only merged our heroes’ thoughts, but their memories as well. As such, I guess Dio will now believe Aoba’s crazy story about how he’s a time traveler from the distant past. As for the Luxon and Braydon, I’m sure our heroes can dig up some new and thus fancier mechas for future battles. Hey, that’s just standard practice for a mecha anime, after all.
Moe Sucks 
Holy crap! I thought Tokishima Haruto (Kakumeiki Valvrave) was naive! If Aoba was in Haruto’s place L-Elf would have torn his head off long ago. If they’re gonna run the story like that they should have made it go the way Rinne no Lagrange did. At least we’re not going to expect too much blood from the start. Hmm… maybe many mecha anime fans were horrified by Kakumeiki Valvrave’s killing spree of main characters so Sunrise decided to make a happy happy mecha anime for people mentally/emotionally living in Wonderland.
SkyKnight and FireBrand should be weaker in fighting power compared to Luxon and Bradyon but the Coupling system’s version on the older mechs seem more advanced, or should I say unrestrained? Looks like they sacrificed the full potential of the system on Luxon and Bradyon to make it safer for the pilots.
Going back on episode 1 Bizon was wearing a different pilot suit with glowing parts included. And I’ll bet there’s a bad side effect. Probably the result of Zogilia playing around with Luxon and Bradyon’s cockpits.
It didn’t seem like they’d be stronger. Sharing your memories doesn’t really communicate much to me about combat prowess. Plus, they looked clunkier in design, and as we all know, aerodynamic mechas are faster. Like racing stripes.
oops. I think I didn’t make that clear enough. I only meant that the older pair of mechs had a version of the Coupling system that connects the thoughts of the pilots deeper than the newer version. Plus the memory sharing part.
personally I’ll feel that my privacy is being invaded if my fellow soldier was checking out my memories like it was a film.
well there are big plot twist you forgot about, although there’s nothing new about her father died but the twist is the Hina that the father found was a loli version of Hina from ep 1 (based on her clothes she wore the same school uniform) without her memories except she only remember her name is Hina, now we knew where she end up after she timetravel to the future with Aoba…
My point isn’t that she isn’t the same Hina from Aoba’s timeline. I thought that was a given from what we saw in this week’s episode. Rather, it’s that she shouldn’t actually think this yet. Putting myself into her shoes, there’s still no good reason why she should suddenly believe Aoba’s story. If I was her, I wouldn’t be thinking, “I’m from the past?” Instead, I’d be thinking, “Well, who are my real parents then?”
well, she’s in emotionally unstable, if she’s not Hina Ryazan that means she’s the other Hina…Hina is the only clue that she got about herself, maybe what she thinks and consider Aoba ever said about Hina Yumihara and why she can’t remember him before that made her think she’s maybe really his Hina because she lose her memories when the Ryazan found her…
that’s actually an interesting plotline that they have going on here. Hina’s very existence is a paradox in that she was never “born” in either the past or the present. she simply goes back and forth those two time periods endlessly.
Though i would agree with E Minor that the more believable route for her is to ask who her real parents are. after all, she wouldn’t quickly come to that question of whether or not she came from the past if she just know that she was adopted.
now, if only the writers would actually focus on the storyline of who Hina Yumihara really is and not throw in any more of the nonsense that they have been churning out for the past 11 episodes, then we might have a show that is definitely way more interesting than valvrave.
That’s probably why I said: “Ah well, the girl’s distraught! After all, her father just died (yeah, we pretty much all saw that coming from a billion miles away)! I should give her a break! And I will…”
this is the 1st time I’ve seen time traveling make someone younger if ever that was really the case with Hina. We could all live forever if we use that.
okay, so hina somehow de-aged when she was thrown into the future, landing into a time ten years earlier and losing her memories. that’s…..
….actually interesting!
ahhh, that moment when the female character actually has a lot more interesting storyline going on for her than that of both our male leads. hope they at least don’t waste her in this one (*cough* Rukino Saki *cough* ).
and the death of Hina’s dad was definitely way more relevant than that Fermi guy they wasted too much time on for two episodes.
really, this is what i find annoying about Buddy Complex. it actually has some interesting bits to tell, which the writers keep on burying under tons of nonsensical shenanigans for eleven straight episodes, for god knows what reason. what a great way to waste the potential of the story concept.
I agree for the most part. Plus, it feels like we should be rooting for Zogilia than the other way around. Alfried is a more interesting commander than Gengo. Hina is more interesting than either of our protagonists. William Hahn seems like he has more personality than Elvira. Even Dorzhiev had a better death than Fermi.
uhhh, who was Dorzhiev again? >:D
But, are we supposed to be hating them? cause, y’know, they are the commie empire and they are bad because they, er, wear black -_-‘
I forgot how to spell his name so I just took it off of the Wiki page.
This might be the first mecha anime in which [i]downgrading[/i] will somehow make the good guys stronger. They’re gonna be forced to rely on those clunkers from here on out, but I guess it’s becuase they’ll know what to do with it, as oppossed to Zogillia, who might just throw them out onto the battlefield and expect the soldiers to work with it. Bizon’s suit from Episode 1 might actually be a life-support system because he was so corrupted by it.
I was also hoping you’d comment on Margaret’s butthurt when Alfried told her that sticking to the main plan was important. I notice that she gets pissed when people don’t listen to her, but every time she’s ignored, Zogilla wins. Maybe if you didn’t get out onto the battlefield like a complete moron and all your battle orders are “Fire more missles!” you wouldn’t be dealing with a demotion.
Also, you can tell that people who worked on Gundam SEED are working on this show because they recycled footage from a previous episode and just made it “night”.
Gundam SEED… the master of recycling scenes… By the way, they always show Freedom shooting only 5 streams of beam and yet it destroys dozens of mobile suits that are placed in more than 5 different locations… And they recycled that shooting scene of Freedom throughout the show… And almost everyone thinks Freedom’s attack is impossible or stupid.
But I re-watched Gundam Seed (or was it Gundam Seed Destiny?) last year and saw 1 scene where Freedom uses the same technique but this time all 5 guns were shooting like machineguns.
I noticed it the first time I watched the episode, but I didn’t start writing this post until… I think 5AM in the morning? So it slipped my mind.
So bitchy blonde is the one who goes yandere? Because, maaaan, bro, I better catch up on this show!
Bizon’s the yandere, and unfortunately, he’s got silver hair.
Well, shit, bro, fuck it, then, guess I don’t have to catch up!
The blond is tsundere though. So there’s that.
duuuhhhhh he’s blonde
This show sure live up to it’s stupidity.
Why would a war commander listened to a nobody?
Give me a break.
I wonder why haven’t his superiors demoted him yet, with all his stupid shenanigans?
All his plans are a total gambling which depended too heavily to somebody who’s basically a stranger.
It was all luck (bad writing) that they are alive up until this day.