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Episode 33 - Howl to the Earth
A recap of last week’s episode leads us into the opening credits. Coming out of them and the battle is still going on about the base as we see Zeheart moving away from where the bombs were placed. One of his squad members notes that they should set the timers for sooner but Zeheart states they need the time for all Vagan forces to get away.
The battle continues as we see on the Diva the bridge crew reacting to the damage to the ship and Natora freaking out and Flit yelling at her. This goes on until we learn via Flit that Natora has been studying how the Diva works during her off hours which gives her the confidence to start giving orders to the crew on how to get the subsystems back up and running on the Diva for the battle. This is when they get a message from the base about the Vagan’s pulling out with Flit thinking it was a bit too easy to drive them off.
Down on the surface we see the Gundam and Kio engaging various Vagan mobile suits as he’s still dealing with the rage of Shanalua’s death at which point he gets attacked by Zeheart. Recognizing it as a “Red” mobile suit Kio flies into a rage about why they’re using people and exploiting weaknesses as they did with Shanalua. Zeheart learns that it’s a child piloting the Gundam and goes on to berate him telling him it’s war as they continue their fight. Zeheart also realizes that Kio is an extremely powerful x-rounder.
Over to the Abis squad as they notice the Vagan units are not trying to push the federation units as Abis realizing they’re buying time for something. That is when we see Flit contact the base command and tell then what we guessed Abis relayed and Flit figured out: there’s something up with the abandoned Vagan Mobile Suits. We learn that on top of the bomb we saw at the end of last week that there are five others, making a total of six, planted around the base. We learn that there’s only ten minutes left on their countdown clocks and that the base teams can disarm only three, which the command then orders the mobile suit squads to handle removing the last three from the base.
Back with Kio as he’s got Zeheart on the ropes and has taken one of the arms off the red mobile suit. Just as it seems like Zeheart could be done Kio gets the call about what’s happening at the base and is ordered to return. Kio tries pleading noting in a few minutes he can take out his enemy but Abis reminds him of what Shanalua taught him and grudgingly Kio exits the battle. We also see that there was more damage to Zeheart’s mobile suit then he let on as the other arm fell off once he stopped. You know, I think Abis will come to regret recalling Abis if he knew Kio had a shot at taking out a high ranking Vagan commander. Zeheart also notes that the federation must have found the bombs and wonders if they can get them all in time.
We watch as the team tries to find the bomb with Flit urging Kio to do his best and find it. We learn via Flit that Kio has “untapped potential” and probably means he’s a super powered X-rounder much like Uso was a super powered newtype in Victory Gundam. Anyway, using his x-rounder powers Kio finds the last hidden bomb and he races to get it out of the base before it explodes. Of course, you know he does it and saves the base.
In the aftermath we learn the Diva is going to be sent into space with a mission to head to the moon. It’s also being loaded up with the original Gundam. Flit then meets with Kio and they deal with Kio being upset over the mission and Shanalua’s death. Over to Zeheart as he gets debriefed and then we meet his new assistant/teammate – Fram Nara. I do wonder if she’ll become this series Lalah Sune. The episode ends with the Diva blasting off into space.
Nimrod’s Thoughts – Well, there’s not much to say about this episode as it was basically paint by numbers Gundam. We’re also seeing that Kio is a paint by numbers Gundam pilot but at least he’s still fairly likeable compared to the last bunch of Gundam pilots we’ve seen.
