Dragonaut / First Impressions

Summary:

It has been one year since the battle on Mars, and Amadeus and Sieglinde find themselves being chased by Agathions and by the ISDA. After the Agathions destroy the pair’s car and prevent Amadeus from escaping in dragon form, he is attacked by a girl in a special suit who uses her staff to knock him out. Sieglinde manages to get away, and the leader of the operation Sakaki decides not to continue searching for her. He instead tells his men to withdraw and instructs the girl in the special suit to wait for orders back in base. Raina and Howling Star meanwhile are also being chased, though in their case, it’s by Kazuki and Widow out in the wilderness. After Howling Star gets shot down, he and Raina try to make their way through a forest by foot, but they get surrounded by the ISDA and by Widow. Although Howling Star still wants to fight, Raina decides that they can’t win here and gives himself up, allowing Kazuki to take them to Tartarus.

Back at ISDA headquarters, the Girouard king is talking with Sakaki about the rebuilding of the facility and Girouard’s financial affairs. The Girouard king thinks of things in terms of business and money, and he suggests that the ISDA is the same way, but Sakaki asserts that they’re not pursuing dragons to make money. After what happened on Mars, the common view now is that dragons are dangerous, and Sakaki explains that that’s what the new D-Project is for. Elsewhere in the city, Yuuri returns to a secret base where Nozaki has been watching over the remaining dragon eggs. He’s also been looking at the movements of Thanatos and found that it is still headed for Earth. When Yuuri questions if he still believes that man and dragon can coexist, Nozaki reveals that he hopes for it, and that’s why he saved the eggs from the ISDA. Nevertheless, he understands why Sakaki started to dispose of the eggs and admits that the Mars incident made him question what power was sleeping inside of himself.

Meanwhile, in a small town somewhere, Toa is working as a waitress in a family restaurant and gets picked up by Jin after work. The two then do a little shopping, and while they’re outside, they overhear a mother explain to her son that the bright red light in the sky is Mars. The mother claims that a dragon went berserk one year ago and destroyed the planet, causing it to burn red. The mother subsequently telling her son about how dragons are evil makes Toa sad, and Jin can’t do much to make her feel better. They eventually return home where Gio has been cooking and doing housework, and to everyone’s surprise, both Sieglinde and Yonamine Kou also show up. Sieglinde isn’t happy that Jin, Toa, and Gio have been living in the middle of nowhere for the past year, but Jin explains that they’ve been leading a normal life. He thinks that it’s been like a dream, but this just gets Sieglinde angrier, and she reveals that the ISDA has been disposing of dragons.

The Dragonauts opposed this and had escaped, however Raina, Howling Star, and Amadeus have all been caught, and Sakaki intends to eradicate the dragons. Toa worries that this will make Thanatos angry and lead to the destruction of this planet. She explains that Thanatos has no interest in Earth or humans and claims that it’ll quietly leave if it gets back its dragons. From this, Yonamine makes the connection that Earth was merely a spawning ground, but he believes that the public won’t accept this. Later that night, as the girls are bathing together, Sieglinde asks Toa about her relationship with Jin and points out that Toa’s feelings might have been created from the Resonance with Jin. Despite this, Toa decides to trust in her feelings and hugs Jin afterwards. During this, however, she senses something from Thanatos, as does every other dragon on the planet.

Preview

So with the exception of the ISDA, not much has changed in the past year. I was hoping that Jin or Sieglinde would be more mature, but they’re pretty much still the same. It seems to me that the writers are just using this time jump to switch the focus of the story from the Girouard stuff back to the Thanatos stuff. In that regard, it feels like Asim was a diversion that didn’t have too much of an impact on the overall story. At most, it sets up public opinion against the dragons, and it killed off Machina and Akira.

What was interesting with this episode was mainly on the ISDA side. I found it a bit hypocritical for Sakaki to be using Laura (or the dragon that looks like her) as an enforcer at a time when they’re going after the other Dragonauts and dragons. And it’s also aggravating to see Kazuki on that side. I still don’t understand why Widow would want to help an idiot like him by granting his wish and killing Jin. The eyepatch continues to bother me too. It seems too incredibly stupid for him to be wearing that to cover just a normal scar, so I wonder now if there’s not something more to it. Of course, exploring that would mean more screentime for Kazuki, and I’d rather they not do that. Unfortunately, that might be what next week has in store.

36 Comments

  9. Soo.. Emozuki is back and he has joined the “enemy” side. Hardly a surpise if you ask me. And that so-called eyespatch doesn’t make him look cooler :(. Toa looks cute in this episode though :3

    SpectatorBeholder
    Reply

  12. Toa wearing glasses?? LMAO… umm… other than that don’t got much to say at the moment, I will later though 😛 and it looks like they actually went through with the one year skip. There’s a couple things that I’m now curious about though… 1st, what’s behind Kazuki’s patch? 2nd, what happened with the I.S.D.A.? 3rd, how long till Toa is going to die?… And finally, I want to know when the final “kicker” of the show is going to kick in, that’s probably next week, I guess… >.>

    IfOnlyYouKnew
    Reply

  25. its official i hate kazuki as a character in this anime more then suzaku in Geass, more the n the new meisters in gundam 00, more then the entire cast of Kyoshiro no towa no sora i hate him that much and because hes that hate by everyone apparently he wont die til the end or til a second series and he’ll probably die like a good guy poss redeming himself a little (Bit like Ryan Schapell from american series 24)

    WingZero zxt
    Reply

  26. Wow that was an incredible abrupt one year time-lapse. I’m fairly convinced the script is written on-the-fly now. o_O

    The ONE saving grace of this episode for me was finding out that Sawashiro Miyuki, who played Akira, is still in the show as Laura’s seiyuu.

    divine|s
    Reply

  28. When will you people understand that Kazuki is the best character? Seriously, the moment he dies, I’ll stop enjoying this show. Every single moment he’s on screen I’m laughing my ass off.

    JINNNNNNNNN!!! 😛

    That “eyepatch” is probably the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

    roast-beefy
    Reply

  30. Toa looks so CUTE!!!!!!!!!! I wouldn’t be surprised if Jin was getting jiggy with her at night LOL….

    I hope they don’t kill off Yuuri….

    WTH is with Kazuki’s patch? I mean come on…at least give him something that looks like a patch and not a G-string….

    JT
    Reply

  32. It is questionable that Sakaki may be an antagonist like Kazuki, Garnet and Asim.

    I still don’t want Toa to die. Without her, Jin finds it hard to be alive. Glad to see Gio, Siegliende and Kou alive.

    I believe now that Nozaki and Yuri are good guys. ^^

    C
    Reply

  33. Guys… thats not an eye patch to cover a scar. When it gets uncovered we will all see that it has something important behind it.

    Also, anyone smell a bittersweet ending coming when this series is done? Most likely Toa will die and probably quite a few of the dragons/partners. We have already seen Akira/Machina bite the dust. Looks like the old turkey gonna be next.

    Vanhaln
    Reply

  34. Well it looks like Nozaki doesn’t have long to go either, so it’ll probably be him, Toa, Gio, Amadeus, Widow/Kazuki- hell, a lot of them could be up for the chop. I agree that they’ll go for some bittersweet ending, probably involving ‘the power of love’ or some kind of nonsense.

    And to be fighting for the ISDA, Kazuki must’ve made some kind of deal whereby after all the dragons are rounded up, he’ll turn in widow.
    And for some reason she seems to follow his every whim, even though he’s not her master. Get a brain, widow… you can be more than just a tool!

    Auto
    Reply

  35. From a uber-powerful dragon that caused a calamity on Mars, to a pink-apron wearing cook! What happened Gio?

    Was confused at first about what was going on, hope they’ll have some more flashbacks at the beginning of next episode to allows us to catch up to speed.

    FX102
    Reply

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