If I had to sum up my feelings about Chi Chikyuu in a single word, I think it’d be “bemused”. I’m not checked out on it – I’m still interested. But also baffled a lot of the time. And not remotely invested in the story or characters like I was in the first cour. This series has always been about big ideas, which is great. But at some point it was no longer those ideas as part of a compelling narrative but characters reading speeches about them. It’s not quite a descent into the bizarre the way To Your Eternity was, but that’s an awfully high bar (and it’s definitely in that vein).

I think it was always only a matter of time before Nowak turned up like a bad penny. And once Jolenta popped in last week the clock was ticking. The local bishop, Damian, is an old kouhai of Nowak’s. There’s a hot-blooded young inquisitor named Asch torturin’ and burnin’, all in the name of nipping the Reformation (and the overall deterioration of Church authority) in the bud.  He and Damian butt heads over methods, but when Asch confides that he’s working on a heliocentrism case and needs a SME (subject matter expert) Damian directs him to the old drunk in the tavern on the edge of town.

Nowak at this point is living off of Damian’s largesse, on the diocese’ payroll without actually doing any work. So needless to say he’s disinterested when Asch shows up asking him to earn his keep. But once he learns Asch is working on a heliocentrism case and that a stolen book is involved, he allows himself to feel righteous indignation again. It’s the heliocentrists’ fault (it isn’t) that his daughter is dead (she isn’t). This is a chance to get back into the revenge game and be productive in his declining years.

Nowak miraculously sobers up and deduces what’s happening with 100% accuracy. The Heretic Liberation Front (ROFL) isn’t freeing heretics or stealing books for its own sake – its aim to to undercut Church authority. He even figures out a printing press will be involved (again, the timeline is all over the map here). Not that Jolenta doesn’t have loftier ambitions – she does believe in the cause of heliocentrism, and in honoring Oczy’s sacrifice. Which is why she’s none too pleased when she finds out Draka burned his book. But any port in a storm – Draka is now her only link to her old friend.

Jolenta (definitely this year’s best anime character rhyming with an Italian cornmeal dish) and Draka’s conversation is one of those interesting conversations that never feels for a moment like it could actually have happened. Draka and her money obsession just aren’t fleshed out enough to have any weight to them, but as a discourse on socioeconomics at least it’s something you aren’t going to hear in your average anime. Orb is no more that than it ever was, but in a much less satisfying way than it used to be.