Don’t worry, Izuru – you’re definitely the hero.

I think it’s fair to say last week was a bit of an off one for Majestic Prince.  The episode had too much of the air of a placeholder to it, as if nothing really big were going to be allowed to happen, so it tried to make up for that with a lot of sound and fury (think of it as a microcosm of the middle six episodes of “Defense of Trost”) signifying not all that much.  It certainly wasn’t bad but didn’t offer anything truly indispensable.

Perhaps the biggest limiter of last week’s episode was the fact that the main character was on the sidelines, and nothing really big could happen until he was off his leash, put down the teapot and climbed back into the cockpit – as long as Red Five was standing by, everything was on-hold.  GKMP honors mecha cliché to the point where one is often never sure whether they’re watching parody or not, but honor it does.  There was nothing too surprising in the buildup to Izuru getting back into the game – things simply got so bad on the outside that there was no choice but to let him go (the rest of the crew, clearly being mecha fans, gave him the green light even before Suzukaze did).

The fight this week was a big step up in every way – more exciting, more tense, better-animated and choreographed.  There was all along a much greater sense of potential consequences this time, all the more when Izuru joined the fray.  It was Uncle Jiart that caused it, by blocking the escape paths of the other Bunnies, effectively forcing Izuru to come and play by holding the rest of the team hostage.  Dolgana joined in, too, as the G.A. threw everything it had at the gate (including one more failed straggle laser attack) and Lumes calmly held them at bay.  Things were looking really grim, in fact, before Chandra showed up with a rousing “Tally ho!” and a fleet of mass-produced AHSMB’s he called “Doberman 2”, and just in the nick of time.

One thing I can say for certain is that Majestic Prince has become a kind of self-contained dead pool, and the question for next week’s finale isn’t so much whether any of the main players will die, but which and how many.  Izuru is certainly an obvious candidate, as the mere act of piloting Red Five again was supposed to kill him, but now he’s “fully awakened” to boot.  And then there’s Papa Simon (it really did feel like watching loving parents when they were shown reacting to Izuru’s launch) who plans to use the Star Rose as a giant battering ram as a last-ditch effort to destroy the gate.  Given how many death flags Siegfried and (especially) Giuiliano have set for themselves it’s safe to assume that’s going to be a bumpy ride.  Guiliano did get off the best line of the ep, though, with his assessment that disregarding the safety measures in maneuvering the ship to escape likely meant “broken plates and muscle pain in the morning”.

There’s one big wild card in the mix here, and that was the last major player to take the field – Theoria.  Her mech is certainly impressive – “like a Goddess” indeed, as Siegfried says – and her order to the clone soldiers of Wulgaru to stand down seems to be binding.  Presumably Jiart or Galkie, also being of royal blood, could countermand it – but her presence has definitely scrambled the puzzle pieces quite a bit.  She, too, as the noble defector from the invading aliens who wants peace for all, would be a logical character to sacrifice herself for the greater good.  The thing is, though, we’re still in the murky “will they or won’t they?” waters when it comes to a potential second season, so it’s not at all unlikely that we’ll see the series end with uncertainly over someone’s fate – and if so, Izuru would seem the most likely candidate.