“So they managed to defeat Torai huh. Well he was the weakest of us.”
“Actually he was the strongest.”
“Wait! Huh?”
Now that’s part of why I love you Satoshi, you lay out a shounen cliche and subvert the hell out of it. Even having Torai in the room about to leave the group only for the leader to say that he could still help them goes against the usual foil of someone getting expelled out of the organization after defeat. It’s been one episode and already love these Paladin guys, for considering they are supposed to be the villains(?) they all hang out like ordinary people. For they don’t think of themselves as villains and actually see themselves as heroes which by all accounts they could very well be. So here’s the rundown as it stands now, we have three factions, the Nebula sealing faction(The weird ass aliens) which seeks to stop humanities evolution due to fear they will take the wrong path, the Nebula Soldiers faction(Souya and cat sensei) who wish to watch over humanity passively without interfering and the Paladins whose goal isn’t quite certain yet. It could have something to do with what the maid mentioned about Humanity taking the evolution of Love or the evolution of power. The leader of the Paladins looked to nearly spill the beans as he looked over the city and declared his determination to defeat the Nebula soldiers…but then he was interrupted by his dad hitting on the secretary. Honestly laughed with him getting exasperated and shouting “Would you knock it the fu-”
So there is a bit of formula going here with another Alien showing up with another Hero getting an illusion shown to her followed by Souya and crew defeating her afterwards. But by all accounts the heroes made some smart moves here for one they got everyone to go home in pairs so Souya had to fight two of them and it seems they laid down an ambush where all the heroes trapped him by episodes end. Pretty clever, others should take notes that instead of letting someone whittle down your forces one by one, maybe just attack them with everyone from the start. As for the flashback within the Alien I actually kinda like these as they act as good spitfire ways of knocking out some development for the Paladins. With it we at least know Miu has a complex over strength and used to fight in Judo tournament with the shy Paladin she’s paired up with. It’s funny that the girl was trying to show her determination to break out of the illusion as something heroic by claiming she has real power now but that certainly seems like a flawed resolution. The Illusion was trying to convince that she doesn’t need to be strong and that it’s okay to be weak and she demissed that by running away to the supernatural power she has gained, one which was all too easily stripped away by episodes end.
Overall I say this show is getting more and more interesting, so it’s a shame that the negative factor would be the action of the show itself. The fight choreography is actually good with two people fight at once instead of having one standby. Even the dialogue and sound is on point. The only problem is that I wish this team could have stolen a mecha animator from the new season of Full Metal Panic or hell even someone from Ufotable because these mecha look bad and there movement is jank. It’s a shame because the action in this series could be so very good but with these CGI models you might as well be slaping plastic figurines together. The CGI actually detracts from the design of the mecha themselves as this is what they look like in the manga. I in particular don’t understand why they took away each mechs individual colour and just gave them all some rainbow energy stuff. The different colours helped them look more distinct. Well dodgy CGI aside this show is getting quite a bit interesting, I for one wonder why they insist on not feeding any meat to Souya. Hopefully the steady uprise of quality continues and this becomes something rather special.
