We get a very brief overview of the ceremony before the title card shows. There's a news reporter and lots of people seated outside.
After the title card, we see Tweedledum berating Un-oh and A-oh's security, saying they focused too much on one area. I haven't really noticed any security yet myself. In fact it seems to me that one could easily start picking off VIP's with just a sniper rifle or something. Whatever, I'm sure I'm just missing the absolute genius involved in having many, many important individuals and possible assassination gathered outdoors and unprotected.
For some reason, this episode feels the need to give a nod to many previous episodes. Ascoeur, Q-Feuille, and Di-air are all dressed for tour guide duty. We're given a glimpse of the old GOTT headquarters where TAMA was found. Alisa's yaoi fangirl side rears its head when she escorts Torch and Shade to their seats. Great job with security, by the way. Or do those sunglasses and suits just disguise them too well? Trixie and Troisienne show up briefly to compliment Ascoeur and Q-feuille's uniforms and suggest they take a picture later. As they're leaving, Q-feuille gets another headache.
We now have Director Hiver giving a speech. The speech is interrupted, though, by a voice saying, "No peace. No equality." And then suddenly there's a giant Geacht'er hologram/illusion and we hear him speaking quite freely in spite of being so quiet last episode. He seems to like talking, in fact, which makes his silence last episode even weirder. Everyone is stunned, naturally, and it takes a while before anyone starts trying to find the enemy or protect the guests. Again, nice job with security, folks. If this were a real emergency, everyone would be dead now. I wonder what these security measures were anyway since we didn't see ANY security AT ALL.
Seeing as how the non-existant security failed, Tweedledee and Tweedledum try to use their powers to destroy the hologram but fail. Un-oh and A-oh determine that enemy power users must be the culprit and dispatch troops. The troops find Torch and Shade pretty quickly. Torch comments on the security being "heavy". The anime really seems to want to us to believe this ceremony was under high security but seems to have forgotten to SHOW us rather than TELL us. So far what we've been shown has been the complete opposite. The bad guys have just been walking all over them. Hell, if they could scan for enemy power users shouldn't they, I don't know, have been DOING THAT FROM THE START!? We're not even half way through the episode yet and there's already more Plot Holes than you can shake a stick at!
Oh, wait, it gets stupider. These troops, faced with two potential power users, don't at all react when Shade makes a rather obvious power-using gesture, what with the glowing symbol on his hand and all. And when their captain starts seeing a monster, they still make no move against the two. Then Shade extends the illusion to all the troops, causing them to open fire on the perceived monsters and endangering the guests that they're suddenly in front of and firing upon. Weren't they JUST in a forest? Did I miss a transition here?
Drop pods full of G-Society troops then arrive to combat the seemingly turncoat GOT troopers. You know, given that there's an event like this going on, wouldn't the GOT have a fleet of ships in orbit serving as planetary defense? Also, I like how none of these troops can hit the broadside of a barn. Un-oh and A-oh even come under fire but only seem mildly annoyed as they're standing in the middle of it. The other ES Members finally go into action and Trixie and Troisienne try to blot out Geacht'er's image with a smoke cloud. He seems mildly annoyed by this. In the eye catches that follow, he's actually coughing from it.
Coming back, we witness some actual fighting. Though, with the lack of any depicted casualties or losses, it's hard to really tell. There's all this laserfire and no one's dropping. At least, not until Saphir and Rubis show up. Saphir... stops the GOT robots backing Tweedledee and Tweedledum with ice spikes. You'd expect they'd get impaled but they just kinda... stop. Rubis transforms, but Tweedledee knocks her back with a lightning whip. When she goes to attack again, Saphir freezes it. What. Tweedledum and Rubis then start to fight.
Meanwhile, it seems A-oh and Un-oh came under the effect of Shade's illusion power offscreen. A-oh manages to defeat the illusion with his ears and the two go on the attack. They're doing fine until the newest target of my hatred shows up, Letuchaia. Her ability apparently involves sound, which she uses to paralyze A-oh. Then Pauki explodes him. Ow.
Back with the cadets, the explosion seems to have clued them in that things might not be going so great for the ES Members. They rush off to help, a Theme Music Power-Up begins to play. Trixie and Troisienne leave the illusion-blocking to Triumph while they go off to help as well, with Trixie deciding to use their "G-Class" abilities to help everyone. The cadets get a power boost from Di-air and...
Oh, wait, that's what you would EXPECT them to do. I bet Q-Feuille's enhanced prediction abilities would be incredibly useful in a situation like this, with so many unknown opponents around, but she doesn't use them. Ascoeur's enhanced teleportation powers would also be incredibly useful but she opts for her regular powers. They arrive to help A-ou and Un-ou, but guess how that turns out. Neither of them are even hit by anything and just sort of... fall over.
Fortunately, Trixie shows up and starts using her spatial powers to turn the tide. She completely traps the two brats in one move. She almost cuts Torch and Shade in half as well but apparently they were just illusions and the REAL Torch and Shade... dodged at the last second. Wait, so they were in the same spot as their illusions? That seems... stupid. Well, guess imcompetence isn't limited to the good guys in this. Just whoever is supposed to be losing at the moment. Yes, folks, this whole episode is one long Idiot Plot. It completely ceases to work if even one person in the GOT did something, ANYTHING, that made ANY sense.
Back with Tweedledum and Rubis, Rubis is just dodging his attacks until suddenly deciding to go for Tweedledee. Tweeldedum manages to get in the way, though, and is impaled on Rubis's claw-sword instead. Of course, as explained above, the losers are going to be idiots in this episode. Therefore, even though she's already impaled him, she doesn't push her claws in far enough to kill him. Instead, she withdraws them and starts clawing him repeatedly across the back without even drawing blood. At least until he's suddenly frozen in time and her claws shatter when she tries to hit him again. I can't even begin to wrap my head around how THAT works. But, hey, Troisienne is here now.
Rubis falls back and then attacks Troisienne together with Saphir. Saphir's ice shards are frozen in the air and Rubis... has her arm and leg frozen in time!? WHAT!? How does THAT even work!? If my arm was frozen in time while the rest of my body wasn't, then my heart is going to be continually trying to pump blood into that arm but going nowhere! And nothing is coming out either! To say nothing about what would happen if you tried to move. Holy cripes, have we abandoned ALL logic here!?
Apparently, yes, because Saphir's ice shards just drop when they're suddenly unfrozen. Instead of, you know, continuing what they were doing before. Like you'd expect. An object isn't just going to lose momentum if you pause time and then have no momentum when you resume it. If it's paused, it's paused. If it resumes, it resumes. Therefore those ice shards, once free of the time freezing effect, should continue on the same path as before. And why ice shards? She's been throwing ice spikes around like nothing, so why flick just a handful of ice shards are her now? Oh, right. Of course, the enemy power users manage to escape anyway as we're now informed that using these powers is rather taxing. Once again, we see no sign of this.
But it seems this was the moment Geacht'er was waiting for because now he can do that suddenly-impaled-by-a-rose thing. I'm not sure how his ability to do this correlates with Trixie and Troisienne's powers, but by now this episode has long since lost me. Suffice to say, they're dead. But because they're pretty girls, they don't shrivel up suddenly like the old guy in the last episode. They just collapse. Triumph and Rafale are shot down by... something. I don't know, we didn't see ANYTHING at ANY point in this episode that could have done so. Presumably, there's G-Society ships in orbit. Presumably, there would be GOT ships in orbit. But we're completely uninformed as to what's going on in space right now. They could have been shot down by a passing Star Destroyer for all we know at this point.
The giant Geacht'er, who has been quiet all this time, starts to speak again. And Trixie and Troisienne are now lying in a small pool of blood. The cadets are crying, Trixie and Troisienne are just flat out baffled by how they suddenly seem to be dying, and Geacht'er is giving a speech. The scene is a bit of a Tear Jerker, though Di-air is just kinda watching and staying quiet and Ascoeur and Q-feuille can't seem to say anything other than "Trixie!" and "Troisienne!" respectively. Geacht'er declares that the GOT should be dismantled and Trixie and Troisienne ask the cadets to protect the galaxy. Then they die. Di-air is still just being quiet and watching. Triumph gets a few last words too before going offline, because we really got to connect with Triumph didn't we? Geacht'er ends his speech. Ascoeur screams. Episode ends.
This episode... was a mess. An absolute mess from start to finish. There's just way too many things that don't make sense, too many plots that require one or more individuals involved being absolute idiots. About the only saving grace for the episode is that this is the first major plot development in the entire series. But that alone isn't going to go NEARLY far enough to smooth out all the wrinkles in this episode.
Next Episode: The Two Who Lived. I smell Angst.
