This episode starts off with Trixie and Troisienne in the director's office, being asked to go out on a mission. The two then make an absurd request: to take the main characters with them! Cue title card.
Well here's a fun little throwback to Kiddy Grade that I never thought I'd see in this series, the ES ship launching sequence. The girls are pretty amazed to be in space. Can't say they're the only ones here. The ship takes off into warp speed and the girls talk about how Trixie and Troisienne's ship differs from the other ES members. Seems they've been getting lectures from them. We then get a brief conversation where Trixie asks Q-feuille if Troisienne jumped her. This leads to Di-air proudly proclaiming that Ascoeur jumped her, leading to a bit of a misunderstanding as Di-air was thinking of jump rope.
More talking, but now about the actual mission at least. Seems they're on their way to capture a factory illicitly producing battleships. A heavily armed factory.
The Rafale, Trixie and Troisienne's ship, emerged from warp and requests permission to land. Naturally, this request is responded with by the factory launching a fleet of ships to intercept them. The enemy ships fire but fail to even penetrate the Rafale's shields. They fire missiles next, but the Rafale evades and eventually shoots down the missiles and then returns fire with a pair of cluster missiles that destroy a good number of enemy ships. The Rafale then plots a direct course for the factory, coming under heavy laserfire. It blasts a hole in the factory straight down to the reactor core, where it shoots the reactor and then escapes the resulting explosion to make the jump to lightspeed.
Wait, no, I got that last sentence kinda wrong. They just land in there. But you know that reactor is going before the episode is out.
At this point I have to sit back and wonder what the hell just happened. Character development? Action? Plot? All within about five minutes of the episode starting? I AM still watching Kiddy Girl, right!? Seriously, we just came off the... second weirdest fanservice episode I've ever seen and now we're getting what seems to be the first actual serious episode in the series? What, were the first six episodes Filler?
Moving right along, the girls disembark from the Rafale riding a guard robot called Triumph. They soon arrive at a hangar full of illegally produced battleships. Seems GOT had received a tip about the factory selling them to the G-Society. What's the G-Society? Apparently they're a terrorist organization responsible for the assassination attempt in episode one, meaning Saphir and Rubis are also part of the G-Society. We now have a name for the show's enemy. Seven. Episodes. In. Really, did we just change writing staff or something? Not that I'm complaining since so far this is the best episode yet. Hell, Ascoeur hasn't caused any headaches yet and we even get a cheap laugh at her expense!
After blasting the hangar security with Triumph, the girls decide to split up. Ascoeur, Triumph, and Troisienne head off one way and Trixie, Q-feuille, and Di-air go another way.
Cut to the control room now, the staff there is frantically trying to launch ships to keep them from falling into the GOT's hands. One of them mentions two individuals from the G-Society wandering around the station. Troisienne and Ascoeur then make their entrance, announcing their intention to arrest everyone there for illegally producing and trading battleships. Troisienne requests permission to make an arrest and Director Hiver pops up briefly to grant it. It really is like we're watching an entirely different anime here. One of the men tries to shoot at them, but Triumph appears and blocks the shot. They immediately stand down.
Outside the station, the other girls manage to open a battleship and are about to head inside to find evidence of the factory's dealings with the G-Society when two mysterious men appear suddenly on top of the vessel. Trixie seems to recognize them and says they're... cutting to the eye catches for a commercial break. The eye catches are just Trixie trying to remember who these two are. Silly, but pretty low-key as far as the eye catches go.
Returning from the eye catches, we find out that these two guys are G-Society power users named Torch and Shade. They mistake Q-feuille for Troisienne at first for some reason and are surprised to hear Q-feuille's name when Trixie mentions it. The two refer to themselves as Shadow Workers. Shade goes off on his own and Torch commands several battleships to fire on the girls, but Trixie uses her power to bend space and block the shots. Spacial power, huh? Pretty nifty. Torch tries more lasers, but this time Trixie uses that same power to teleport away.
Trixie teleports around for a bit, avoiding more lasers, then finally tries to attack Torch with some kind of energy blast. Torch seemingly teleports as well, but Trixie then explains that Torch uses illusions and isn't really there at all. This is why they mistook Q-feuille for Troisienne. They're somewhere they couldn't see her too clearly.
Back in the control room, the Pink-Haired Nitwit has decided to be annoying again and torments the prisoners, who are all locked in some kind of pod now, and teaching Triumph to do the same. Seeing Triumph trying to mimic Ascoeur is a bit... odd. Troisienne, meanwhile, is using the console to try to retrieve the battleships. Wait, so what was the point in splitting up then?
Shade shows up in the control room suddenly and commands the battleships outside to attack the station, aiming their attacks seemingly for Rafale. Rafale's shields withstand it, but the reactor is hit because, like any reactor, it exists pretty much to explode dramatically and promptly does so. Rafale is engulfed in the ensuing explosion but auto-pilot kicks in and it escapes the flames. Or rather, slowly lifts off. It's pretty clear that the Rafale just does not care about your exploding reactors.
The girls are forced to launch the escape pod that their prisoners were contained in and Ascoeur tries to attack Shade. Naturally, it doesn't work because Shade is just an illusion. The girls beat a hasty retreat on Triumph but Shade closes several large doors that stand between them and the exit. Triumph charges through one but clearly isn't as tough as that dragon from the first episode as doing so seems to damage it a bit. Or at least causes Troisienne some concern. Shade appears just to tell them that they're not going to escape before the factory explodes. Troisienne urges Ascoeur to teleport out on her own, as Troisienne refuses to leave Triumph behind, but Ascoeur seems to have a plan.
Back outside, Trixie is still dodging fire from the battleships when suddenly her vision goes rainbowy. Seems this is Shade's doing as he arrives to help Torch. Trixie can't teleport now, so Torch tries the battleships again but Rafale shows up and takes them out before they can fire. But now it seems one of the destroyed battleships is falling toward the girls now and Rafale won't be able to destroy it for some reason. Seemed to destroy the others just fine. Q-feuille then gets some kind of premonition and turns to Di-air.
Back inside, Ascoeur teleports from door to door to activate the emergency release so Troisienne can drive Triumph through. All the teleporting takes its toll on her and she collapses with one more door to go, but Troisienne manages to break down this last door and the girls make their escape. Back with the others, we see the destroyed battleship collide with the one Trixie, Q-feuille, and Di-air were on but then we see them fly out of the resulting explosion on turtle-mode TAMA. We then see the factory finally exploding.
Cut to Torch and Shade, who are escaping in the only battleship they managed to get out of the whole mess. Apparently the rest of that rather sizeable fleet is considered an acceptable loss because they were dealing with two pairs of ES Members. Seems something about the cadets is bugging them, though. If it's Ascoeur, you aren't alone in that, guys.
Back on Rafale, it's revealed that Trixie and Troisienne took the girls on the mission for training. But they've still got another 10 years of hard work before they'll be real ES members. Ascoeur whines. Episode ends.
This episode had its flaws to be sure, but this is easily the best episode we've had yet and the most like the original Kiddy Grade. If they wanted this series to be about ES Cadets rather than full fledged ES Members, then more episodes like this would have been a much better way to go about it. Less shenanigans and serving coffee, more training and actually working toward becoming full fledged members. And ESPECIALLY less crap like episodes 2 and 6.
Judging by the next episode title it seems like we're not going back to that anytime soon, either. Instead, looks like we're going to learn more about the GOT's enemy. The G-Society. 8 episodes in. Almost a third of the way through the series. About time, geez!
Next Episode: The G-Society!
