That was an episode that didn’t require much explanation…

To be honest, an episode like Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince offered up this week can sometimes be a bit tough to blog.  While this series historically has plenty of quirks, twists and personal stories, this week was pretty much a straightforward battle episode.  To make things worse, it wasn’t even really a battle episode – it was a set-up-a-battle episode.  Nothing wrong with that – it was perfectly entertaining – but there’s isn’t much grist for the mill as far as blogging it’s concerned.  If you watched the episode, you pretty much know what happened.

There are a few meaningful developments that bear pointing out, starting with the fact that Patrick is so far gone over Tamaki that he’s mooning over her even while Dobermans are in combat.  Seriously, Patrick?  We also had a rather interesting turn in that Asagi openly admitted that Izuru was a better pilot than he is (or any of the other Bunnies, much to Tamaki’s dismay) and as soon as he does so, his harmonic levels spike to their highest point ever.  And Suzukaze may finally have gotten a clue that Ange isn’t suited to fighting as part of a combat unit – while the other Rabbits are sent to defend Earth from the Wulgaru invasion stemming from Lumes’ espionage, Ange gets sent to the front lines to deal with the main fleet (more or less solo, though Dobermans are there for backup).

Oh, and Suruga gets to fire a really big gun, though it’s incapable of breaching named character armor.

The most interesting thing in the episode, as is often the case, is the Wulgaru.  Their internal politics are interesting in that no one really seems to much actual obeying of the supposed ruler, Garukie.  It seems an open secret that Jiart is the real power (Lumes is reporting directly to him and leaving the elder brother out of the loop), but more than that, it seems as if their social structure lends itself to a kind of anarchic free-for-all.  We see Klein, for example, disregard Garukie’s orders and sortie even though he’s wounded, and head for Earth on a personal mission of vengeance.  And it seems as if Jiart (thanks to Lumes) is the only one in the high council that knows where Theoria is, though he at least claims to hold open the possibility that she was captured rather than defected.  Jiart, when Lumes tells him of the Earthers’ practice of genetically modifying their own supersoldiers, describes it as a “pale imitation of our society” – and though it’s certainly the damning criticism he intends it as, I think it is so in rather a different way.  That seems to be a growing theme here, that the human hierarchy fails almost as badly as the Wulgaru – and if GKMP is as faithful to treasured mecha plot strictures as it seems to be, it seems only a matter of time before peace between the two sides becomes a serious plot point, if not a serious possibility.