I knew this guy back in my middle school days who was... not the brightest star in the sky, let's say. I'm sure the only reason he managed to move up from grade to grade, barely passing with Ds the entire time, was that the teachers were horrified at the thought of having to deal with him for another year. His primary mode of "learning" was to bug other students for their assignments so that he could copy them and pass them off as his own, only to add his own errors in the process. The sad part was that he always seemed to plagiarize from students whose grades were just barely above his. Not only could he not rub together two brain cells to do his own work, he couldn't use them to pick the right people to mooch off of. He was eventually kicked out, after what was probably just a long stretch of denial that anyone could be so pathetic.
ICE is a little like that kid. We can already see from the first episode that its marks scream "summer remedial classes," so what does it do? Borrow a leaf from Plan 9 from Outer Space's book, by trying to cast the entire thing as a cautionary tale with a profound message. So reads the opening card to the second OVA:
Right. I'll just hide down here in my Hunker Bunker with Harold Camping and wait for the Mirpocalypse.
We begin with an actually halfway decent shot
of Tokyo in ruins beneath the Twin Tower, as a siren echoes over the barren landscape.
This immediately segues, of course, into a bizarre scene of helicopters hoisting a giant monster corpse over the town. The only explanation I can think of for this is that those are the charred remains of the ICE beast that Hitomi exploded in the previous episode, but didn't that turn into a giant eye thing? Well, whatever it is, the Twin Tower's massive clone army is mobilized in response, moments before George Lucas sues the production company out of existence and puts us all out of our misery.
I wish.
Mint is furtively wandering down an opulent hallway somewhere, gray folder in hand, as a few of the anonycruits pass her by. ICE tries to have a "look at me with my attention to detail" moment by placing her next to a pair of bathrooms with the men's room sealed off, but this just comes off as a headscratcher: why not just remove the gender plates altogether and (almost) double the available toilet capacity? Ducking into a nearby room, Mint delivers her report to the rest of the squadron: though they've gotten the monster's bones back, the higher-ups aren't searching for the Captain. She then hands off the folder to Rinne, claiming that it's the only official document that mentions ICE or the Twin Tower.
As you might expect, the report gives us little that we hadn't already figured out ourselves: one, ICE is for the production of children; two, the ICE crystals have incredible defensive mechanisms; and three, the only explanations this show is capable of giving are three times longer than they need to be. We do get another confusing diagram for our trouble, mentioning some kind of evacuation system that is, of course, left utterly ambiguous. Presumably, the label "EYES ONLY" means that you're only allowed to read it with your eyes, instead of by, oh, sense of smell.
Mint pushes for an investigation, angry that the Guardswomen have been left in the dark, but Murasaki stops her and says that she'll go herself when the time comes. Meanwhile, Usuha finds what seems to be a password written in the margin of one of the report's pages. At least it's not on a sticky note.
Ever-innocent (read: empty-headed) Aoi, on the other hand, has gone directly to Giulia with a different dossier on ICE. She tells Her Excellency that she'd like to have a little boy. If you were under the impression that this could possibly end well, Giulia gives a little evil smile before the two of them step, alone, into an elevator. Or at least I think that's an evil smile; it could also be a grimace, as in, "Oh, no, not another long elevator ride with this chick. When will she get the hint?"
We rejoin Yuki and Hitomi on their lightcycle, zooming down an elevated expressway near the Odaiba Funhouse. Hitomi is busy explaining that she hasn't slept for three consecutive years, as a consequence of a cocaine bender gone awry during her college days. Well, her doctors explain it as a "mental abnormality," but that's basically the same thing.
The conversation goes silent for a moment, which Yuki seizes as an opportunity for more awkward come-ons. (Remember, she sounds thirteen, while the Captain has a head of gray hair.) Hitomi, having learned that incredulity will get her nowhere, folds and lets Yuki kiss her on the cheek. Apparently, I'm the only one who remembers that they're going about a hundred miles per hour down the highway. Better keep those eyes on the road!
The sky suddenly goes from burnt orange sunset to deep blue night in the span of about five seconds, in a poor attempt at livening up the animation for this lengthy, pointless conversation. Hitomi goes on to talk about how she doesn't like the Kisaragi clan: they have lesbian sex, do drugs, and have an obsession with death. Yuki claims that she doesn't do any of those, before immediately asking if she can have another kiss.
Way to undermine your case there, bud.
The Captain asks Yuki to put in a call to the Guardswomen and get her a helicopter transport back to HQ, as her transmitter's broken and she'd rather not be seen around the Twin Tower hanging around with a Kisaragi girl. Yuki obligingly takes her cell phone, finding twelve unanswered messages from Satsuki... Oh, right, her! She was about to go all homicidal on them at the end of the last episode, wasn't she? Whoops, I don't know how we could have forgotten about that! Turns out she's been following the pair on bike for the past who knows how long, and that most of the text messages she's sent to Yuki wish death upon her.
Conveniently, it's at this point that Satsuki yells the first thing she's said all chase and fires an impossible number of rockets from her shoulder-mounted launcher. (Good thing this road's been entirely straight, because steering with one hand all this way would have been a pain.) Of course, all of her shots cause only cosmetic damage. Yuki tries to yell at her to stop, but since her VA is incapable of actually raising her voice, the sound gets lost in the explosions. Hitomi takes point at the back of the lightcycle, forming a magical defensive shield by... firing a bullet out of her Revolver Sword at the ground? Oh, whatever, let's just go with it.
Just as it looks like everything is going well, another problem comes up: the elevated span comes to an abrupt stop ahead. Note that we haven't seen a single exit from the highway in about ten miles, so I can only assume this road was built as a deliberate death trap. Anyway, the Captain orders Yuki to gun it and jump off the gap Speed-style. Yuki, being nowhere near as good an actor as Keanu Reeves, doesn't make it to the other side, so Hitomi grabs her collar and jumps down into the markets as Satsuki's missiles de-rez their lightcycle.
Somehow, their crash into a tent manages to both (a) not summarily kill the two of them and (b) immediately attract the attention of both the Guardswomen and the soldiers of Kisaragi. The Kisaragi women immediately assume that Hitomi has kidnapped Yuki, a reasonable misunderstanding considering that blindfolds seem to be a mandatory part of their uniform, and hurry to cross swords with their enemies and... well, not really do much else, because they're immediately halted by the appearance of a leader who much resembles a jellyfish (the first relatively interesting character design this show has offered us), Giulia, and Hitomi's horrified-looking squad.
Satsuki, up on the stub of a highway ramp above, makes a "tch" noise and turns back around. I feel for you, girl—I'd want to leave right now if I were in this OVA, too. Hope you can negotiate out of your contract.
