Like last week, we’ve got a live reaction video for you, after the cut. The short version is that there’s more competence shown than previously, but it’s still really not any good.
https://youtu.be/RCDx9-DvEvM
For those who don’t want to watch a 23 minute live rant, I would liken the animation to a student project. You know how in most shows, the limiting factor is the budget? The element that usually results in the first episode being way better in order to hook people while later episodes may suffer? That’s not the case here. There are still some unbelievably cheap corner cuts, but I actually think that what’s on display is the fact that the limiting factor on Ex-Arm’s animation isn’t budget or deadline, but skill. When working on Episode 1, the team had no idea what they were doing. Episode 2 was a little better, with fewer absolutely lifeless shots, and here in Episode 3 we start to see things like actual editing and dynamic camera angles that were sorely missed in the first two outings.
It’s still unbelievably ugly, in a way that makes me pine for RWBY Season 1, especially when we get into the slow and stiff action animation, but it seems like someone with at least an apprentice understanding of the art of cinema is on the case.
But enough about the animation, what about the story. This time, our topic of concern is a genocidal African warlord being offered asylum in Japan for… reasons. He’s in possession of an Ex-Arm of some description, and it’s the job of our team to take that from him. Complicating this process is his current residence in a weird UN-controlled zone where everyone else also wants the Ex-Arm, and his robot maid.
This leads to Alma (with our main character riding along) getting into a fight with the Maid, who’s using the Ex-Arm, while the rest of the team gets into a shootout with UN goons lead by the JPG of McLeach from Rescuers Down Under. It’s… unclear why, having delivered their android operative, the rest of the gang decided on the firefight, but they did.
Along the way, we get some history of androids, how they were first developed for search and rescue but have become controversial second class citizens of the world. Mr. African Warlord (who we pointedly don’t see in the “present”, suggesting the maid may be hiding something about him) has the odd backstory of trying to create an android paradise and, on meeting resistance, turning to brutal genocide because evil I guess. It’s not exactly compelling, but it does work.
And… that’s basically what we get for this episode. There’s a lot of the really terrible action with its random slow-mo and stiff motion and not a lot of meat. We don’t even finish the confrontation, leaving off with main character (piloting a new robot) facing off against the maid (driving a big robot) and trying to get through to her on a human/emotional level, with no resolution. We’ll have to wait for next week to get any answers.