As soon as I saw this line, I knew this had to be the screenshot for this episode (@rikka@ani.social):

Alas, no chocolate for me today since my whole face hurts after getting a root canal this afternoon. So, I will postpone this chocolate bar until next week’s finale, whereupon I will consume two.

This episode sees a couple things happen:

• Another not death for Jaron as he is pushed off a platform and falls down a shaft
• Gene figures out that his father is Eden
• Silvia gets her hand/arm cut off only to grow it back while in robot form
• The puppeteer is revealed to actually be Rouge’s father, Roy Junghardt

…come to think of it, all of these are pretty Star Wars inspired so far. In any case, some thoughts…

I liked the Eden vs. Graufon fight visually, but the emotional weight just wasn’t there (will be a theme this week). We never really got to see enough of the relationships that these guys are fighting for to really care that much. I felt similarly when Naomi and Rouge had their moment and Naomi shared her id with Rouge. I understand intellectually that it is supposed to be moving and show how much the bond that they share means to Naomi that she would do something illogical like that, but the scene lacked that kind of emotional heft. Similar to the Eden/Graufon fight, we just didn’t get enough opportunities to see the two of them develop such a close friendship. If we got some slower-paced episodes where the two of them could bond more and we got to see Naomi and Rouge butting heads over what is logical vs. not, it would have gone a long way to making me care about this scene. Alas, the show feels like it has been cut down to 13 episodes, so we lost most of that in the process.

I don’t know yet what role Cyan will play in all of this, so I will be interested to see how that plays out in the final episode. Junghardt makes a big deal out of the mask that he puts on her, so that will have something to do with it I guess. Before we get to the grand finale though, it seems like Rouge is going to be squaring off against Silvia once more. I wonder how sharing an id like Naomi is doing will impact Rouge’s ability to fight. We will find out!

Ok, now I can officially say they’re kinda dropping the ball. Seems like they had a lot of cool ideas/world building, but 13 episodes wasn’t nearly enough to develop any of them meaningfully. It all feels rushed.

This is a series that has reminded me, at various times, of Wolf’s Rain, Ergo Proxy, and the David Lynch version of Dune—not always in a good way.

In the end, I think this needed to be two cours to give them enough space, or else they should have slashed the Original Nine down to the Original Five-or-so to make more space for other aspects of the story.

Not a surprise the Puppetmaster was Roy. It couldn’t really be anyone else.