Rinne no Lagrange ep18: a most convenient series of events.

[Rinne no Lagrange ep17]

If by some miracle I could add something to this show (besides a lot more robot on robot violence), it might be Newtype powers.  Because the lengths this show goes to to get people to understand each other is ridiculous.  To make matters worse, you’re not sure after all this how much the characters actually do understand each other.  Rinne no Lagrange episode 18, a failure to communicate.  Rectified with violence and girl power. 

So what I believed was true, IS true.  Madoka and Yurikano switched skins so to speak at the end of the previous episode.  And before they have a chance to take stock of their situation, the Rinne crystals are enveloping Dizelmine’s flagship and wreaking havoc all over the place.  And with both forces on high alert, it doesn’t take much for a full battle to break out either.

And I say thank you for that.  Thank you for a space battle, because it is something I’ve been hoping for for a long time.  This ugly, obtuse and awkward mechs are hardly used for more than fodder, so I was interested to see if the grunts really could put them to any sort of practical use.  The action was decent, though in the context of Lagrange, it looked spectacular.  Kirus, Izo and Array finally put their mechs to use and aren’t half bad.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, I did say that Madoka and Yurikano couldn’t get their bearings.  And that is because Madoka in her new body was ushered off the ship into an escape pod; while Yurikano was taken away by a frantic Muginami, before they too were separated by the Rinne crystals.  On top of all that insanity, the mechs for the Lan, Muginami and Madoka show up for their pilots.  And I swear almost kill every last one of them in the process.  The problem for Yurikano is that Midori wouldn’t pick her up because it didn’t completely recognize Madoka with her in there.  So she was kinda left hanging.  Ouch.  It’s OK though.  She’s a resourceful girl and gets her own mech.  Quickly joining the battle.

Plenty of goofiness follows as Yurikano joins the three clowns and tries to convince everyone she’s who she says she is.  Villagulio even gets a bit red in the face with all her talk.  The ass kicking she helps orchestrate once they team up shows that she really was a damn good pilot.  The battle’s halted soon after though by Lan (woof!) and Muginami.  And that intermission is interrupted by a very talkative and ignorant Madoka as she mutters to herself in her escape pod, with the emergency radio broadcasting.  It’s convenient, but highly effective.

Not only does she divulge Yurikano’s feelings over the air, but she comes to realize that she was in love with Dizelmine.  I don’t think that had been established before this episode, so I was quite surprised.  It goes to show how tortured and desperate she was.  And it makes her decision to seal herself away much less selfish.  After her speech, Midori finds her and takes her back to the fleet.  Where they crash into Dizelmine’s ship and his personal garden where he so happens to be.  How incredibly convenient.  Even more convenient.  When Madoka falls out of Midori, and Dizelmine helps her up, for some reason Yurikano and Madoka switch back to their normal bodies.  That’s when Dizelmine decides to confess some of his feelings to Madoka about Yurikano, not knowing that Yurikano is actually Yurikano now.

AARRGH!  I’m trying to make this sound simple.  I really am.

Villagulio, Madoka, Lan and Muginami all rush to the two of them, just in time to see Yurikano say her piece and fade away back into the Rinne.  I’d like to believe that at the end of this episode, Madoka isn’t going to punch Villagulio and Dizelmin into hospital beds.  But she’s been awfully violent as of late.

For me, this was one of the best of episodes of the series so far.  It’s always good when characters start communicating.  And it’s always a good bonus when you get some action as well.  Though to use a currently airing show as reference, this used some Gundam AGE style convenient storytelling to get all this plot done in one episode.  It got really ridiculous there.  But like AGE, I’m not holding this show to too high a standard.  It moved the plot forward, and hopefully got some important characters to start understanding each other and working on what is ultimately the real problem here.  Two planets harboring billions of people are going to collide at some point soon in this show.  And this problem has to be solved without killing half of them.