Zero and his classmates enter a Pro-Ing Mach battle with
upper classmen as the next stage of their training. As Zero bonds with his pacifistic senior,
Erts, he begins to find a new source of strength and inspiration. However, tragedy strikes when the Goddess
team loses one of their own in battle. A
replacement must be chosen, but who will it be?
Will Zero finally get the chance to live his dream or will another
surpass him? And what trauma will this
loss deal to the rest of the current roster?
The unexpected advance to the next level and those who thought
themselves invincible will learn there is no such standing.
By the time we get to the middle of this weeks set, we
lose a main character, a Goddess pilot no less.
And yet there’s both no time to take it all in or any reason to grieve
cause its for a character we hardly knew or cared about. Let me make a comparison. Gundam 00 had two good examples of handling
an important characters death. In Season
1, we lost Neil Delandy, the first Lockon, who died heroically trying to kill
the man who killed his family. Celestial
Being lost not just a teammate, but a brother, someone who could get through to
everyone like no one else could. Through
him, Setsuna and especially Tierria changed totally and became more human
through his loss. In Season 2 we got a
more interesting example. Anew Returner
wasn’t the best character of the bunch, hell I was wondering why no one ever
figured out she was an Innovate well before it was revealed. And yet her death had weight and good drama
to it, mostly through the good character moments with Lyle, the second Lockon,
and Setsuna. Lyle’s agonizing moment of
loss is highlighted when Setsuna lets Lyle beat the crap out of him for killing
his love just to save the life of his teammate, something they all knew had to
happen. Even for a character as
unmemorable as Anew was, even she got an amazing send off.
By comparison, the death of Goddess pilot Ernest feels so
empty and without reason other than to shake up the story a bit. We have spent barely any time with the main
Goddess team as we need to spend most of our waking hours watching Zero make an
embarrassing ass out of himself. Had
this show done a sort of staggered episode run, where one group is the focus of
one episode and then it switches to another team for the next, and we’d spent
time getting to know the Goddess pilots outside of their bland and forgettable
character designs AND had let this death happen much later in the series…then
maybe idve felt a shred of emotion. But
no I felt nothing and the show hardly gives time to let it sink in. It’s one of the reasons the character of Teela
has begun to piss me off. She loses a
teammate but hardly acknowledges it and just moves on…after she’d spent most of
the battle that got said teammate killed just hovering around and doing nothing
when her Goddess alone could have saved the day in one big attack like she has
in every other battle. But no, time to
jettison some dead weight and move on, no muss, no fuss. Well there is fuss but its quickly forgotten
about. A new pilot is chosen and it
isn’t Zero, Galoo (who seriously I cant hear his name without thinking “Baloo
the Bear”) cries for Ernest for five seconds…and that’s it. All in all, yes something finally happened
this week on Pilot Candidate but it hardly feels relevant…you could sum up the
whole series with that thought.
Ugh, all that explaining and ranting, did anything else
happen this week…that actually stood out?
In a good way, no. In a bad way,
absolutely. Zero got paired up with
Kwaoru…ugh sorry Erts (who also happens to be Ernest’s younger brother but
you’ll gloss over that because the show just forgets about it after its quick
mention) and the two hit it off much like you’d expect. I should really just call Erts Kwaoru because
he feels like a lesser breed of everyones favorite tennis shoe wearing
Evangelion Angel. He doesn’t want to
fight and sees a bright future inside Zero…or with Zero it’s hard to tell. Yet in battle he’s…ferocious? Idk it’s hard to tell how good he is in an
Ingrid because the CG continues to suck and now looks like bad, bad pre viz
animatics for Real Steel with Hugh Jackman.
The other upperclassmen paired with and against Zero’s class was kind of
just a footnote. I couldn’t even tell
you if I remember the one that Hiead challenged at the end of this set. Most of that is because I don’t care. I was done with this series after week one
and the only reason im still with it now is because there’s one more part to
go.
Speaking of Evangelion references, Zero had a pointless
inner dream episode where he tried to find out why he was losing his memories
of home and starting to replace them with images of his new friends. Did this go anywhere? I don’t know, I was
tuned out by this point. Youd expect two
episodes with plenty of drama (decent drama for once mind you) to have some
lasting impact in the following episode.
Nope, life goes on and Zero ignores the death of his new friends brother
because “I WANNA BE A PILOT YAYYYY!!!!”…god what an inconsiderate asshole. Also, why is Teela reaching out to Zero all
of a sudden and why is she trying to be this shows version of Rei Ayanami in a
skimpier outfit? Here’s a better
question: DO I EVEN CARE?!! The answer is no.
Wow, three weeks in and this show is shattering my psyche
with how bad it really is. So far only
the first couple of episodes have been the most memorable as a proof of
concept/nostalgia trip down memory lane.
Everything else just sucks and is beyond half assed. So, can I make it through one more week of
horrible badness? Well…I actually get a
week to breathe from the horribleness of Pilot Candidate. Yep, next week is a week off as im heading to
Katsucon this weekend. In two weeks you
guys can join me again and watch as this already crashed ship plummets through
one planet and into another one…man I knew this might be bad but THIS
BAD!? Pilot Candidate might end up
getting a lower score than Silent Mobius.
But is it 0/10 worthy? I don’t
know but it’s getting awful close.
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