Episode 13 serves as a sort of breather, as we take a break from the main storyline. It’s also great to see Aria as the sole focus of an episode, and we certainly see a new and different side to her (and I don’t just mean squeezing into her bee pants).

Lag, while in better shape than Gauche/Noir, is exhausted from shooting too many shindans. As we all know, even for a healthy lad in the prime of youth like Lag shooting too often will make you listless and exhausted. So Aria dons her old uniform – with difficulty – and goes off to make a mysterious delivery to someone who “used to work on the airship”.

Aria’s dingo, Bolt, is old and tired now, so Lag begs a reluctant Niche to go along and protect her while he rests at the hive. Niche relents – calling Lag her “Poor thing” – and catches up with Aria. The interaction between Niche and Aria provides some of the best moments in the episode – Niche’s disgust at Aria’s boobs, her constant reminders that Aria is “no Lag!”. Aria, for her part, reminds Niche that Sylvette is a pretty serious rival for Lag’s heart – a fact that Niche is only too aware of.

It turns out that Aria is completely uncoordinated – tripping over her own feet, slipping and generally falling on her derriere constantly. But her shindan is an interesting one. The same violin she uses to soothe and restore tired bees also generates her attack shindan. She needs an awful lot of help from Niche to get her attack launched against the gaichu named – with glorious absurdity – “Tequila Sunrise”. But when she does, it zaps all of the gaichu simultaneously and even Niche is impressed – “Not even Lag can get them all at once!”

The main plot isn’t totally ignored here. We get the interesting revelation that the Amberground sun is in fact comprised of human hearts. Judging by the PV it looks as if the next episode will also focus primarily on Aria – whose delivery may or may not be connected with the central story – but something interesting is definitely going to happen with Lag at some point.