Thus we have the introduction of the rozenlitter, the badass close quarter combat specialists of Yangs party lead by the suave Walter who’s looking rather different in this adaption. He certainly looks a lot fierer here as opposed to his more charismatic look in the OVA. I suppose this new look matches with his demeanor in combat with is up close and personal but it doesn’t quite mesh with his womanising side. So not much to say about this episode as it’s mainly Yang preparing to take on Isoldon fortress and it being pointed out just how much of a ridiculous order it is. We got Greenhill introduced who’s judo throwing a guy just to show that she don’t need no man but yeah expect her role to mainly be Yangs secretary.
It’s great seeing the Rozenlitter and pointing out them to be former members of the Empire and thus rather untrustworthy due to the betrayals of the force in the past. However I notice the severe lack of battle axes in the training they are doing which is disappointing because those axes are what made the Rozenlitter so badass. I hope they haven’t replaced them with standard laser shootouts but it could just be because they are on earth instead of space where the axes are more relevant. It’s generally a bad idea to use lasers in spaceships due to the danger of compromising the atmosphere of the ship, hence the return of good old melee combat.
Honestly this was something I was worried about when covering this series, namely that at times there may not be much for me to comment on. It’s not that nothing happened this episode as quite a bit did. But rather it’s difficult to comment on it because it’s generally fairly straightforward planning. Yang had to talk a bit about his aspirations to Walter in order to get him on his side and i noticed that Walter was very much probing him to see if he was gunning for glory. Only to be shocked at his general declaration that he wants to grab Isolron to help set up a peace treaty between the empire and FPA so he can retire with a nice pension. Considering the FPA general attitude towards pacifism it is likely surprising to Walter to hear a high ranking officer talk about alternatives to sending millions to their death for glory. With the next episode we shall see how this whole gambit turns out.
You got the point that is hard to criticize these episodes as they were quite procedural. I thought it did a good job in preparation, but the outcome was much more toned down. Here is tidbit to make things more interesting. If you noticed it seems the FPA is ok with soldiers and officers below a certain rank to leave their ties loose. This is on purpose. When I served in the Greek army, my one year tour as a conscript, we were prohibited to close our collar buttons. Supposedly in the “unfree” Turkish army, soldiers were required to have the collar always closed. So in the Greek army, to show off our “democratic” credentials we were not closing our collar buttons. Indeed it was a unsanctioned ritual when basic training was over, to have the collar button removed. We called it “the Turk”. I bet there is some of this in the FPA attitude.