Psychopathic, eyepatch-wearing commanders aside, I’m still wondering how seriously we should take the threat of an empire that has eight ships stolen by a little girl so easily that the thefts didn’t even make it onto the screen…

I tend to find the scenes inside the bowels of the Ades Federation the most interesting ones, at least so far, so it was rather stark to see most of the moral ambiguity of the first five episodes swept away in one midnight massacre. I hope Fam and Millia never find out that their 8 (and counting) ship thefts and flyer for the Turan Government in exile led to the execution of a roomful of nobles, as I assume they’d take that pretty hard. It’s hard to imagine Luscinia didn’t know that his charges that the nobles had given their ships to the Turan willingly were false, so he obviously trumped them up as an excuse to eliminate what he saw as undesirables. The allusions to Nazism are growing every week as far as the Ades are concerned, though it’s to be assumed the little empress Sara knows nothing of such atrocities (she cavorts this week with lovable scamp Sorush,as played by Nakamura Yuuichi, a sure sign he’ll become important later). It remains to be seen what the political subtleties of the Ades power structure are – is Luscinia acting with the full blessing and consent of the highest authorities, or is the “former bodyguard” something of a rogue (there are indications the nobility despises him, anyway)? There are implications of Guild connections here, but it’s too early to say for sure.

There continues to be a stark dichotomy between the bloody geopolitics playing out across the Earth and the scenes involving Fam. Said scenes were very odd indeed this week, as The Silvius has made port and Fam – still in search of the other 7 ships she’s promised Tatiana – seeks out the faux noblewoman Baroness Roshanak (Sakamoto Maaya, still incapable of being ordinary, ever). What an odd duck she is – a sultry sybarite who bought her title with ill-gotten gain and surrounds herself with a harem of shota and similarly slutty-looking women, many of whom appear to be smoking opium. My money says she knew all along that the disguised Millia wasn’t a reverse trap, and made a bet with Fam not because she wanted to add Millia as another boy-bauble on her boy-bracelet, but because she has an inclination to insinuate herself into the coming conflict with the Ades somehow. Her motives remain unclear (financial gain is a safe enough bet), but her words say quite clearly that she knew who Millia was, so rest assured of two things – she’ll be back, and she has some sort of plan to profit from all this.

As for the race itself, it pitted Fam and Gisey against a bunch of stage props and former Grand Race bridesmaid Yacheval Anand. The stakes are high – lose, and Millia joins Roshanak’s harem, win and she gets the “Baroness’” battleship – and it was remarkably free of surprises, but a good chance for Gonzo to show that they can still do CGI as well as any studio out there making TV anime. Did you ever really think Fam wasn’t going to win, honestly? And she even pulled out one of Claus’ old tricks to help her do it – or rather, you could just as easily say Gisey pulled out one of Lavie’s old tricks. The best part of the sequence was probably Fam’s reaction when she found out that the bishie mechanics all bet on Yacheval. All I know is, it’s a good thing The Baroness didn’t get a look at Teddy in his sailor suit.

Also worth noting is the brief mention of Anatoray in the conversation between Tatiana and Dio, and the disappearance of Fam’s 8 stolen ships. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see where that train might be headed, since the Anatoray connections onboard The Silvius are obvious and if there is indeed a Guild connection with Luscinia, that could be the underpinnings of the coming conflict The Baroness referred to. yes, war is inevitable and it looks as if it might be a mixture of old hostilities with a newer “natives vs. immigrants” milieu, which by happy chance would be yet another Nazi parallel. I suspect we’re going to get out first look at Alvis (as voiced by KanaHana) very soon, with Luscinia after her as a potential Exile key.