We went into this week’s AGE with two characters sporting more flags than the roof at the U.N., but surprisingly, neither one died.

Honestly, when I called Girard Spriggan “a woman with a man’s name” I never intended it to be taken so literally.  But that’s exactly what she is, a Federation deserter named Reina Spriggan who’s taken on the name of a fallen comrade (and lover) in tribute.  We’ve been down this road before with AGE – a female defector who has their own reasons for joining the Vagan – but one can hardly blame this one for being pissed off enough to do so.  I’ll give AGE credit for not soft-pedaling the venal nature of the Earth Federation – they really are a despicable and corrupt body, wholly as underserving of “winning” this was as the Vagan are.  But what they did to Reina Spriggan and Girard Fournell certainly qualifies as an atrocity almost on the level of the Tuskegee experiments – using test pilots as guinea pigs for their own X-rounder enhancement system (which clearly is even harder on pilots than the Vagan one).

Again, the only surprise here was that Spriggan didn’t die – yet (I still expect it soon enough).  And neither did Fram, the woman with an auto-supply shop’s name – she’s still out there with her mahou shoujo mobile suit giving Kio heck, and holding her own quite nicely I might add.  When Spriggan interferes in their battle a full-blown cat fight ensues between the two of them, with Fram clearly now having drunk the Zaeheart kool-aid and Spriggan clearly working for her own interests (i.e. causing the Federation as much pain as possible).  Meanwhile Zaeheart and Asemu have paired off as expected, and their fight looks to be pretty much a standstill.

The all-combat eps of AGE haven’t tended to interest me much, but this one wasn’t bad.  I’m still not sure of the wisdom in devoting so much time to a doomed minor character like Spriggan this close to the end, but her backstory certainly provides further ammunition for Kio’s way of thinking.  In effect we have Asemu trying to talk sense in Zaeheart and Kio into Spriggan – but to what end I’m not sure, as neither of them is in any position to broker a truce.  And as expected Spriggan’s entry into the fray has drawn Flit out of his hole, and he charges onto the battlefield spewing his usual genocidal ranting after giving Einus the order to prep his WMD for firing.  If possible I’m actually growing to dislike Flit even more, and his eventual redemption is likely to see pretty far-fetched to me.  It also seems as if Einus may finally be getting ready to show some backbone and refuse to follow Flit’s orders.  That would certainly be an interesting and welcome development.