Romantic Drama, uh, finds a way.
So, we open this episode with Akira actually doing the commando mission rescue himself. He gets pretty far, springing Amrou from the cell where she awaits execution (because OWEL has never heard of “take them out behind the shed” apparently) and nearly getting all the way out of the fortress before the Fop Commander finds them and corners them with a horde of goons. He even does okay fighting back there, but sure enough Yuugure has a change of heart and drops in to complete the rescue at the last moment.
The trio heads to Aomori. Along the way, Amrou gets her scars and slave barcode erased thanks to Yuugure, and comes to the idea that the three of them should Elsie. Yuugure counters that she and Akira are getting married, while Akira points out three good reasons why none of this should happen: Amrou is probably under Suspension Bridge Effect, Yuugure is a robot who doesn’t understand love, and Akira himself is not emotionally available.
This argument continues into arrival to Aomori. Aomori, it turns out, is run by a bunch of Great Depression gangsters (complete with weird tommy guns and the occassional car), with the younger generations remaining hopefuls being (half) brother and sister with some awkward tension between them. And, wouldn’t you know it, it’s also festival season in Aomori, with a big mixer being the talk of the town. The gangsters go because dad orders them to start up relationships if they want to be the successor to the throne, and Amrou and Yuugure both take off having reached the conclusion that if they can turn down a bunch of suitors it would prove their love for Akira. Akira ends up on the grounds, somewhat concerned for the girls, when he hears that dangerous gangsters are the toast of the town.
At the festival, Yuugure gives everyone the cold shoulder and steadily gets herself drunk on the free booze at the event, while Amrou just busily gushes and makes scenes of herself. Akira decides he has little to worry about… until he literally bumps into the sister of the gangsters. While fussing over the mistake and before noticing who he’s talking to, he has a little slip of the tongue that gets the gangster woman interested. Amrou tries to come in with the save, and ends up spilling all the secrets about Akira being a living relic. So of course, the woman decides that’s what she wants in a partner.
Akira tries to talk her down, realizing that she’s really in love with her half brother, only for the two of them to spot over the balcony, half brother proposing to a Yuugure who is too drunk to do anything but hiccup in reply.
Well, this is bound to be a mess, but that’s where this episode ends.
I guess it’s more to the pitch that we’re dealing with Elsie and the culture of the future again, rather than facing another eccentric big-eyed OWEL villain. I’m also expecting this to be a meatier arc than episode 2’s “resolution in the first five minutes of the next one”, but that’s far from guarenteed. Based on the OP and ED it’s pretty much a given that Amrou is going to get her way, even if just as a cover story for their continued travels, but it’s important to get there by a sequence of events that makes sense for Akira, especially.
The thematic shift from pre-industrial to Al Capone style gangsters in a more developed territory does make sense given that OWEL clearly still has access to not just industrial but fairly high-end technology, acting as a throttle rather than a wall (though based on the wonder held for Akira’s technical skills, they clearly don’t understand it all perfectly). But all the same, going hard into the gangster genre’s look and feel did feel like a crutch the show didn’t need. We could have understood that these were the scions of a powerful family with a ruthless reputation without pinstripe suits and automatic fire. It’s the difference between having a setting that feels kind of like the old west because it’s a desert-y frontier, and putting everyone in cowboy hats. A big part of what’s supposed to be interesting about this show, and what has been interesting, is the world building. Going for genre hats hurts that.
We’ll see if they recover or go deeper next time.