First Impressions / Pumpkin Scissors

Summary:
In the dead of night, three chained up men are being hunted down by a noble in a tank. It is sometime later at the Pumpkin Scissors office that Alice is getting pissed off while waiting for Oland to report for duty. Stekkin is excited that they’re getting a new person whom she outranks, though Mercury did get demoted for head biting. Speaking of Mercury, she realizes that he’s gone missing. Oland is actually outside trying to get past the guards who finally let him through after they figure out who he is. As he makes his way to the 3rd Section, Oland suddenly hears a girl screaming for him to run away, and he turns around to see Mercury jumping up at him with mouth open. When Oland arrives at the 3rd Section, it’s with Mercury biting his head.
As for their mission today, the 3rd Section is going to be investigating a Viscount Wolkins who is reportedly disturbing the peace according to a petition they received anonymously. When they pull into town, they find a funeral procession, and an old man tells them that the three who died lost at a game to a noble. It is at his estate that Wolkins is currently dining – or rather, he is complaining about his food while surrounded by his maids. He gets interrupted when Alice angrily bursts into the room with her weapon drawn. Machs calms her down and accuses the viscount of making his citizens targets that he goes after with a tank. Alice gets even more furious when Wolkins calls it a game, declaring him a diminutive tyrant. To counter her, Wolkins claims that the military, in order to easily use the national budget, established a propaganda force for recovery from war damages – the Pumpkin Scissors.
Oland is surprised by this revelation, but the others don’t care, simply pointing their guns at the viscount with Alice announcing that they’re going to remove him from this territory. But with a snap of the fingers, Wolkins surrounds the group with his maids who are all armed with guns. He decides to make Oland, Machs, and Oreld targets for his tank and gives them five minutes to run away. Since the three of them are chained up together, Oreld produces a lock pick and proceeds to work on freeing them during this time period. As she watches from above with the maids’ guns trained on her, Alice figures out that it was these girls who sent the petition. But what she doesn’t understand is why the maids don’t just turn their guns on the viscount. One of the girls claims that it’s because the other party is a noble, and as commoners, they can’t turn their guns against him. Knowing this, Alice reveals that her full name is Alice L. Malvin, third daughter of the Malvin nobles. Realizing that they can indeed do it, the maids start pelting the tank with gunfire.
Wolkins continues on anyway, going straight for Oland right after the guys manage to free themselves and split up. Oland explains to the other two that the 901-AAT on his lantern stands for 901 Anti-Tank-Trooper and then opens the cover of the lantern, revealing the blue light. The tank appears to hit him with several shells head on, but Oland gets back up relatively unscathed. Wolkins’ right hand man realizes who Oland really is: a fairy-tale of the battlefield – the 901 Anti-Tank-Trooper, the Gespenst Jäger. But it’s too late because Oland is already in front of the tank with his gun pointed in. In trading fire, the tank manages to blow off a chunk of Oland’s shoulder, but Oland manages to kill Wolkins’ right hand man. Wolkins starts driving the tank forward, pushing Oland along, but as he realizes that he’s done for, he tries to plead to Oland. The Anti-Tank-Trooper hesitates because Alice calls out to him as she rides alongside the tank, and ends up firing a shot that misses the viscount. When the tank hits a rock and starts to tip over, Alice is the one who jumps over to catch Oland. As he gets out of the tank, Wolkins finds his maids lined up against him. He questions if driving him out of this place will lower the number of people starving or make epidemics disappear, but one of the girls shuts him up by firing at him, missing his head.
In the aftermath, Oland has to recover from all the wounds he got from the battle, but he doesn’t really mind. But what he’s worried about is if the world doesn’t change… Hearing this, Alice challenges if he can see that far away since he’s so tall. The group gets a letter from the ex-maids who are all returning to their hometown to work their hardest. After reading their hopeful message, Alice tells Oland to not look into the distance, but to look forward. That’s where it will be: the meaning of fighting. These war disturbances that extend the decay of society also spread evil. However, the force that assaults these war damages exists here. The name of this force is Army Intelligence 3rd Section, Pumpkin Scissors.

Preview

I felt like this should have been the first episode given how it ended. It just had that special “oomph” ending quality that’s kind of hard to explain. Anyway, this was a second episode where Oland takes on someone with a tank, and once again he more or less single-handedly stops it. I’m sure we’ll eventually find out how what military superhuman experiment or whatever allows him to withstand such brutal onslaughts, but for now he seems a bit overpowered. Nerf!
The preview for this episode from last week made me think the episode would be about maids with guns, but it wasn’t quite like that. Instead, it’s clear that themes of corruption and helping people are going to be cornerstones of this show. How good this series ends up being depends on how they use that in the story and how soon they get away from having standalone episodes with Orlando defeating tanks. I’m also interested in what’s going on in the Republic of Frost during all this, and if that’ll come into play.
In any case, I’ve decided to stick with this show for now, and we’ll see how the next few episodes turn out.

34 Comments

  9. for crist sake NO onmi!!!primo passo is a….SUZAKO…BYAKO…FUSHIGI YUGI…SHOUJO ALL THE MALES EATING WITH THEIR EYES THE MAIN CARACTER…. = ” I know girls this is you dream coming true ” But Hey real life sucks and WE are stucked with it so ” GET REAL ” 😀
    BLACK LAGOON The Second Barrage you can replace easly by that ” COME ON BOYS I AM HERE…EAT ME!!! ”
    OHhhh…come on T_T

    PS: And if you are UGLU no one will EVER look at you!!!At least only to make fun of course
    😀 😀

    tensai_otaku
    Reply

  22. hmm…looks like it’s following the manga(still ongoing) very closely. And basing it from the manga, this show will not be a “tank of the week”(hopefully). But he will defeat one more…before the main story picks up.

    jan
    Reply

  26. Concerning Oland being overpowered: I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this too follows Rurouni Kenshin: At the start of the series he seems like an unstopable killing machine (this time with actually killing ;-)), easily defeating all enemies that he comes across – then enemies that also belong to the top league appear, and the balance of power in the fights shifts greatly to the enemies. There have to be other 901-Troopers, other 9xx groups may be nearly as or even more dangerous than the ATT branch (we only know about 901 and 903 – 903 as CW experts can’t compare to Oland in terms of physical power – but who knows what other units exist there), and we shouldn’t forget the republic – they weren’t defeated by them, so they probably have some kind of secret units themselves.

    Gloranor
    Reply

  30. It’s quite good, slowly building up to something. This isn’t the kind of series that makes me excited but it is actually worth watching. It reminds me a lot of FMA, partly due to the uniforms and that they have a dog. ^o^

    koyuki
    Reply

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