At the risk of repeating myself, I’m really having a great time with Shoukoku no Altair.  You just don’t get to see this kind of intricate macro-plotting go on in anime very often, and it’s really fun to get swept along with it.  If you love history and you love anime, a show like this one is kind of a perfect storm – and none of the arrows the haters fling at it seem to make much of an impact.  It would be nice if perfection were a realistic target, but I’m always more than happy to settle for damn good.

The catalog of new places Shoukoku throws at us continues this week with the republic of Cielo.  It has an interesting history – founded on the site of an ancients alms house, with a 1200 year history of expansive charity and never being conquered militarily.  I don’t think Cielo matches up as neatly with a real-world counterpart as many Altair locales do – at the very least if it does, I’m not seeing the connection.  Geographically it seems roughly to be in the same place as Portugal, but I don’t think Portugal’s history matches up with Cielo’s very well.

Cielo is certainly the lynchpin at this point of the war between the Tripartite Alliance and The Empire – though in truth it’s been almost entirely manoeuvring so far, with almost no direct confrontation.  Once more we see echoes of real life in this story, as Cielo confronts a flood of refugees (30,000 – at this stage in history a huge humber) from the lands conquered by Balt-Rhein.  Given Cielo’s longstanding history of lifting up the least among us, its leader Carbajal (Hirakawa Daisuke) throws open the gates to all of them, despite the fact that it will make him an enemy of the Empire.

Cielo is the place where all the major players in the field are converging as well – Team Mahmut arrives first (just before the refugees) while Halil Pasha and General Pino are racing to get their respective armies there first (a race Halil will win).  Halil takes time to meet with Vasco, the young boy who survived the sacking of Campana and has rendezvoused with him along with that city’s Kulak.  Vasco is apparently a mechanical genius, and has designed some sort of weapon which Halil thinks is too destructive be to used in battle.  He burns the plans, but Vasco has both a spare set and other ideas – his anger with the Empire fuels a thirst for revenge which burns strongly.  We haven’t seen the last of this subplot.

Carbajal seems a cheerful, kind soul – but right from the beginning, he gives off the vibe that he has a spine of steel when he needs to use it.  And 1200 year history or not, he needs it – because Balt-Rhein is marching towards his borders with 67,000 men, and even if he arms the willing refugees and counts Halil’s newly arrived army, the defenders are badly outnumbered.  Carbajal has many tricks up his sleeve – first he cuts off the invading army from their supply lines, then he sends Mahmut on a raiding party to steal what he can of the supplies just arrived from Phoinike and burn the rest.  But his trump card is a brutal one, indeed.

Cielo’s “cage” is a clever ruse, though as Mahmut notes a trick that can only be played once.  This is the true Carbajal – someone who seems completely at peace with slaughtering 10,000 men who’d come to invade his home.  The cage wounds the great bear that is Pino’s army, but it doesn’t finish the job – and it still leaves the Balt-Rhein general with a massive advantage in numbers.  One of the elements that makes Shoukoku no Altair an interesting story is that the antagonists are no less clever than the protagonists – Louis is a match for Mahmut, and his leaders in the field are no fools.  That means Cielo seems to be in line for a siege, one which can only end badly for it – that is, unless and until Carbajal or Mahmut (or Halil) produce one more hidden card from their sleeve…