What happened to my DFC!?

Slow subs are slooooow, but better than nothing I guess.

This episode is mainly administrative stuff, with Karen, Otoha and Ichijo arriving at the test pilot base and getting briefed. I’m a little worried about how Sky Girls will progress in terms of plot pacing, everyone in the world is still under the belief that the WORMS have been completely eliminated, so throwing them back into the plot will most likely be a gradual thing. In the mean time, I fear we might go into some sort of training arc akin to StrikerS, at which point I’d have to kill myself.

Episode Rating: 7.5/10

Ichijo returns from a training session and is greeted by a shady looking fisherman. Annoyed at him for patronizing her because of her appearance, Ichijo quickly assumes a formal address when she learns that the man in front of her is her direct superior, Lieutenant Colonel Togo.

In the debriefing, Ichijo is informed that she will be assigned to the 13th Aerial Squadron at Yokosuka base as a test pilot for the prototype sonic divers. But more shocking is the news that there will only be two others with her, civilians at that.

Elsewhere, Otoha is aboard a train heading to Yokosuka herself, already showing signs of homesickness. She ends up dozing off, only to have Karen board the same train and sit with her. When their stop comes up, Otoha is woken by Karen and runs off in a hurry, relieved that she barely managed to wake up in time to get off.

Instructed to stay in front of the station and await pickup, the two run into each other outside and start talking, but they’re cut off by a purse snatcher running their way. Otoha goes to stop him, only to have the thief pull a knife on her, but with the help of Karen randomly chucking her luggage, the two are able to subdue the thief and return the purse to the cheer of the onlookers.

When Togo finally arrives to pick up Karen and Otoha, they’re both shocked to learn that the other is a test pilot candidate as well. The surprises continue when instead of being brought to Yokosuka’s main base, they end up at a remote testing facility with a whole lot of nothing except open field space.

Coincidentally, Ichijo happens to be out for a run when the two arrive and Togo takes the opportunity to introduce the pilots to each other as well as himself, their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Togo, much to the surprise of Otoha, who initially took him as their chauffeur. Not one for lively discussions, Ichijo excuses herself and continues with her jog.

After another debriefing, Karen and Otoha make their way to their room, only to find Ichijo in a state of undress. The two are lectured about by her about the military being an organization governed by rules and regulations that are not to be taken lightly. After unpacking their stuff and changing into their uniforms, the three are called to the hangar.

Expecting to see fighter jets, Karen and Otoha are confused when they see the sonic divers, which look more like robotic exoskeletons than things made to be flown freely. But they are assured that these devices are the pinnacle of biotechnology that have the power to defend lives and the peace of the earth. The reason they were chosen is also revealed, being primarily biological, the sonic divers require a certain synchronization percentage when matched with their pilot, in other words, the machine chooses its pilot. Hearing this, Otoha wanders over to one of the sonic divers and claims it as her own, feeling some sort of connection with it.

After the brief introduction, the girls are called inside to try on the motion slits that they will be wearing to pilot the sonic divers. After getting fitted, they are sent to be coated with nanoskin, a gel layer made of nanomachines that provide the pilot protection from shock, among other things. With the absorption ratios of the nanomachines being just shy of 100%, everything seems to be in check and the girls are relieved for the day.

Thoughts

I know it’s only the second episode, but the pacing of Sky Girls isn’t looking too great so far. As i said, there hasn’t been any indication that the girls are going to be used as anything other than test pilots, with the WORMS thought to be extinct. Given the grand scale of the WORM clusters that was shown in the introduction of the first episode as well as the OVA, they’re return wouldn’t be something that should be easily hidden from the general public. With all this in consideration, I can’t help but think we have a lot of briefing/training episodes ahead of us before we delve into some serious action.

But looking objectively, that is at all possibilities, you can’t rule out the possibility that the WORMS will make a sudden reappearance, wipe the floor with the standard military, forcing them to rely on the not so ready but only chance in hell of surviving sonic divers. Which would be a good buffer into more frequent encounters and eventually the appearance of a main threat. Hopefully it turns out to be the latter.

In addition to the surface events of this episode, there was also a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. When the girls were doing their sync test with the nanoskin, they noted that one girl in particular had surprisingly high readings. Also, there was a cut away shot of Lietenant Hizuki who was being told that one of the pilots has an interesting background and a strong relation to an event known as the final Encounter.

These scenes were much too vague to guess what/who they were referring to. But if I had to take a guess at which character had the highest sync ratio, I’d say Otoha, no real reason, just a random guess XD

Much lulz at the motion slits, which I’ll be referring to as plug suits from now on, because of NGE ingraining the term into my head. We all know that it’s just an excuse to throw in some fanservice, encasing the pilot in a cockpit instead of leaving her fully exposed would have the same effect, but hey, I’m not complaining.

So I can only hope that Sky Girls doesn’t dig itself into an inescapable hole of plot elements which they don’t have time to wrap up, and that sub groups pick up the pace on the subbing. But with Ayako busy with Murder Princess and Seto no Hanayome, I wonder if that’ll happen.

Damn you Japan, damn you and your flaunting of Felica and superior cell phone technology!

~ Shirukii ~