Rinne no Lagrange ep22: betrayal

The home stretch. In one corner we have the De Metrio army lead by Lord Villagulio. And in the other we have the Le Garite army lead by King Dizelmine.

Well, it looks like the end game has started. Dizelmine, influenced by Moid somehow, has unleashed Le Garite’s full force across their territories, especially Earth. I really don’t get it. Is Dizelmine so in love with his idea of peace through power that sense and negotiations are just thrown out the window? I guess he sees his opportunity and is perfectly willing to kill people for it. Tsk! This show never liked to explain itself very much, and neither does its characters.

This whole episode is just one big battle, which you would think is right up my alley. But this show’s combat has never been good. Villagulio makes the “brilliant” decision to take his lone machine and meet Dizelmine in combat. You know, to talk things over. Good damn grief! I know Gundam does this too, but at least they’re not so cavalier about it (most of the time)! How stupid is it that the two leaders of these warring nations are crying and b*tching to each other over an open channel right in the middle of battle?

Despite Dizelmine’s motives not being comprehensible, he at least has enough sense not to go out to battle alone. Thank goodness the trio of useless boys reunites to help even the odds. Seriously, what was the point of them even leaving?! They just returned the very next episode! Is there any chance all three of them die horribly by the series end? Probably not. *sigh*

Dizelmine is in some new machine, that very well looks Vox level. I still hate these mecha designs, they’re all just so ugly, this one is a prime example. Anyway, Dizelmine uses his new machine to push the fight with Villagulio into Earth’s atmosphere. Villagulio is being overpowered until the girls arrive.

Before that though, we got to see Madoka, Lan and Muginami have another friendship moment where they talk about how they’re all friends and in this predicament together. It was pretty clear that their promise to no longer pilot the Voxes was over.

Things get weird as Dizelmine starts becoming more and more psychotic.  Whatever is happening, it sees that that machine he’s in is causing it.  In a pretty good surprise, Dizelmine’s machine literally turns dark and powers up.  He uses the opportunity to overwhelm everyone and apparently kills Villagulio!  The episode ends with Dizelmine completely freaking out and creating a Rin-ne in the sky.  Weird multi-dimensional crap is about to happen man!

Unfortunately, this episode shows me just how bad Lagrange really is.  This should have been a tense exciting episode for me.  It had all the elements I wanted, and it kept the friendship crap between the girls to a reasonable level.  But even when this show does what I want, it still does it terribly!  The ship battles are just “pew-pew” scenes with ships just aimlessly firing at each other while they sit in some formation for no none reason.  The ugly mecha just fly around in space and poke and shoot at each other in random patterns.  Even when two important characters like Villagulio and Dizelmine meet, their dialogue in combat comes off more annoyed than anything else.  It’s so unimpressive.

At this point of the show, I’m left just hoping it doesn’t end with a crappy ending.    All I’m asking for is some excitement and a decent ability to tap into my emotions, which this show has done rarely.  Nothing will really save this show in my eyes, but I’m hoping it at the very least ends with some level of dignity.