Summary:

Under the cover of night, Laura directs three Agathions to destroy Jin and Toa’s home, but fortunately they had already escaped. Yonamine Kou is sure that the ISDA will quickly figure out that the house was empty and come after them, so he decides to drive them to Tokyo. His reasoning is that it’s easier to hide where there are a lot of people. What’s more, their target of Tartarus is heavily guarded, so they need to prepare and get equipment. Kou knows that they have to go somewhere the ISDA can’t get them for the time being, and that place is the Baumgard family’s home in Japan. The first thing Toa notices when they get there and go inside is the painting of Amadeus hanging over the stairwell, but the butler informs them that this is actually Sieglinde’s grandfather Alfred. When Sieglinde’s father Wilhelm then comes out to greet them, Sieglinde acts coldly towards him and wants to leave. He is willing to hide them though, including his daughter since she’s the family heir, and he knows the ISDA won’t come here because the family has invested money in the ISDA.

Meanwhile, at the ISDA base, a scientist is telling Kazuki, Widow, and Sakaki about a newly developed anti-Thanatos factor that works like a cancer cell killing the healthy cells. When Kazuki asks how they’re going to place this in Thanatos, Sakaki explains that they’ll use dragons and compares it to tossing an infected mouse into an enemy camp as a biological weapon. It turns out that they’ve already started experimenting with Howling Star and Amadeus. Back at the Baumgard house, Toa asks Sieglinde how it feels to have a father since Toa has no parents. Sieglinde claims that it’s not a big deal, and though she admits that she wouldn’t have been born without him, she feels that she could live without her father. She thinks that he is only hiding her because she’s the heir to the family and that he cares for the family name more than he loves her. With her stigmata acting up, Toa then decides to go out for a little while and is spotted by Gio from the balcony above.

Around this time, in a snowy mountain range, Laura shoots down Otome and Itsuki, capturing them both of them. Kou learns about this when he and Yuuri talk over the phone, and she reports that they’ve been taken to Tartarus. Yuuri also finds it odd that there are people and machinery being taken there, making her think that the ISDA is doing something with the dragons. Before hanging up, she asks Kou how Toa is doing, but Kou doesn’t know of anything in particular wrong with her. Yuuri then returns to her hideout and discovers that the stigmata on Nozaki’s back are acting up. Though he’s in pain, Nozaki tells her that it’s okay and that it’ll subside soon. At this exact same moment, Toa’s back is also lit up, and Gio approaches her to question if it’s really okay that she doesn’t tell Jin. Toa doesn’t think that it’s time for him to find out yet, so Gio points out that there’s not much time left. Gio then senses something from Thanatos, but he tells Toa that it’s nothing and vows to protect her.

Having noticed that Gio isn’t around, Jin is looking for him around the house when he happens upon Wilhelm staring at a picture of a young Sieglinde with her dog Amadeus. Wilhelm tells him that Sieglinde’s grandfather loved this country and frequently found time to come here. Sieglinde’s mother, on the other hand, died sometime after giving birth. Wilhelm then reveals that he’s not actually here in Japan right now for a conference like he had originally told everyone. After he had heard that his daughter was being chased, he had suspected that she would come here, so he came too because he wanted to help her. Jin thinks that he should honestly tell her this instead of talking about her being the heir, but Wilhelm feels that she hates him, and he explains that she only ever opened her heart to her grandfather and to her dog Amadeus. Nevertheless, Jin makes a plea for Wilhelm to tell his daughter his feelings because they’re about to embark on a dangerous mission with no guarantee of a safe return. The two are then interrupted by Kou who reports that Howling Star and the others are in trouble, so they have to leave the next morning.

Over at the ISDA base, Sakaki is observing how Laura also has the stigmata on her back, and he comments on how convenient of a tool she is since he knows that she’ll die after they’ve dealt with Thanatos. When she turns to look at him though, Sakaki avoids making eye contact. He then gets a notice from a scientist telling him that the anti-Thanatos factor injected into Howling Star and Amadeus has disappeared due to immune reactions. However, they haven’t seen this immunological effect in their samples of the original dragons, meaning that the anti-Thanatos factor will probably only work in those original dragons. Thinking about this and looking at Laura causes Sakaki to start laughing uncontrollably. The next morning, at the Baumgard house, Wilhelm asks Sieglinde to come home with him as his daughter. Jin is ready to leave her there, but Sieglinde decides that she belongs in the Dragonauts and needs Amadeus, so she ends up going with them after all.

Preview

Isn’t it a bit late to be having a Sieglinde focused episode? I’d say it was a momentum killer, but there wasn’t much momentum to begin, so I guess that doesn’t matter. It’s just that, all things considered, this was a fairly weak episode where all the Sieglinde parts could have just as easily not been included. The reconciliation with her father was something introduced and concluded all within this one episode, and I doubt that I’d feel that I was missing out on much if they had just moved forward with the main story instead. They did accomplish that to an extent with the anti-Thanatos factor (if you’re confused about that, think X-factor from X-Men) stuff, but we’re at the point in the story where there aren’t a whole lot of episodes left, so I wish each of them had more exciting/interesting/relevant material. Having said that, the one thing I can think of to justify all this is that the Sieglinde back-story might be being used to build up her character so that if she dies, it’ll have more impact. There’s no indication that they plan to do that, but it’s always a possibility.

26 Comments

  1. I don´t get this new mutual feeling from the japanese writers that you have to ” love ” animals and build a family with them…do you get the feeling….Okami + human…or dragons + human….Vexx´s dogs and his ass….OPS sorry T_T!!!
    this is a bunch of a big crap!!! the point is they are losing their creativity….AND THAT´S ALL!!!

    Tensai Otaku
  2. @Tensai Otaku: So let me get this straight: If YOU met a really hot wolf/dragon girl, who is head over heals for you, and who would lead you on many wild and interesting adventures……you’d say NO? Bullsihit.

    DmonHiro
  3. Vote Dragonaut for worst series 2007/2008, or guilty pleasure.
    Nought will be left save shattered thrones, with no rulers but the dead dragons shall rule the world entire. ~Cult of Dragon, Forgotten Realms

    tahuti
  4. OMG, it’s Danny Choo! 🙂

    I think this show can stay off your watch list actually. The story got pretty めちゃくちゃ due to poor writing and planning IMHO. Dragonaut as a whole seems like a waste of nice animation and talent (seiyuu-wise) so far. :\

    With that said, I’m still going to finish watching it though, due to well… watching 18 episodes so far.

  5. Hmmm… it looks like this show is going for a romeo & juliet or hamlet style tragedy, in that all the people you “like” are going to die… well we know that the dragons are going to die anyways…..

    IfOnlyYouKnew
  6. Well we don’t know for sure if the dragons are going to die since the stigmata is tied to Thantos and Thantos is who/what decides when a dragon gets a stigmata. It was said by Toa when her stigmata was discovered by Machina that Dragons have a much larger life span than Humans but the stigmata marks the the coming death for the dragon and it’s issued when their mission is over.

    This means that Thantos pretty much is taking the mission to retrieve the eggs as a failure and because of this the stigmata was issued to Toa and Nozaki.

    strider87
  7. *DmonHiro

    you got some…er….INTERESTING points here my friend!!!
    I have to tell you that that´s why we have dog shampoo this days….er….!!!!!
    ” you really got me !!! ”

    😀

    Tensai Otaku
  8. I had faith that Toa will not die. She is an important character of the entire show like Jin.

    Felt that omen that Sakaki may be a villain, who knows. If he detests dragons that badly, then he should just get rid of dragon Laura.

    Please no love triangle of Jin X Toa X Gio. >.

    C
  9. @Jezreel: No, you’re not the first and stop posting just to be the first. This is to comment what you think about the episode/general anime and not to bluff about being the first posting…

    Dragonaut was in my top 10 animes airing but it’s falling very fast now… Raising True Tears instead. They’re presenting too much stuff and nothing is being solved.

  10. I love people that complain about a series and how crappy it is but tune in each and every week to watch the next episode. If you are unhappy with the anime then push off and go find one you like. Way too many hypercritical people on the net now watching decent anime for FREE and bitching all the time about how that anime sucks.

    Splash
  11. @Splash

    It’s not that people hate it (well some do), it’s the fact that they hate how the creaters/writers/producers/etc handle the show and how they throw away the fact that there could have been a lot more opportunity/potential to it… That’s whay they get pissed off about (at least me personally), plus even though I despise the writers of the show more and more, I’m not going to stop watching it… Especially since it’s already episode 19 and I’m 2/3s of the way watching the series… Also, ANIME is free… I mean I can watch anime all the time on CN or Adultswim, heck I can even check some of it on movieplex or nickalodian (probably mispelled) sometimes… Even though I can watch it for free I’m not going to stop mysylf from voicing my opinion on a show just because others don’t want to hear it because it pisses them off since they really like that show… Also, if I lived in Japan I could watch it all the time since anime/manga is very popular over there and it’s aired during primetime slots. So you complaining about anime being available for free on the internet lacks any ground to you criticizing people voicing their dislikes about a show… Not only this, but with any show in the world there’s always going to be people which don’t like something on a show, so get over people voicing their dislikes and/or opinions about a show because people are still going to do it and you just criticizing them about them criticizing the show is pointless… And at this point I’m just rambling on, and also probably “flamming” a little but ya… I’ve finished what I got to say…

    IfOnlyYouKnew
  12. Dammit, every time I see Kazuki’s stupid scar-patched face, I have this uncontrollable urge to scream “just die, and die screaming!” to the screen. I mean, we’ve all seen more flaky characters before…but his ‘tude grates on me like nobody else’s.

    KIJIN
  13. well i’m watching dragonaut since it’s a GONZO anime and Aya Hirano (Garnet) is in it, anyway the story is pretty okay but dragging. it seems that GONZO likes to kill off characters just like what they did w/ Masane in Witchblade. art is top notched just like Witchblade! stupid robotic dragons though, reminds me of bayblade and crush gear cgs..wth?

    karoshikurenai
  14. Didn’t Itsuki’s brother have a resonance with a dragon? Did he survive? There hasn’t been any mention of him since that episode. I hope they didn’t introduce a character and then forgot about him.

    Dead Air
  15. If your talking about the “space isda” chick’s brother right? (Can’t remember the character names other than the main ones lol) If so, then during that episode they implied that he was killed after he had a resonance with that dragon, however if this was true and based on what happened to Maccina (misppelled, too lazy to correct) after Akira’s death, we would assume he would be alive, however, since Maccina was an earth born dragon the rules may not apply to dragons born from Thanatos… Also from the way this series likes to drop plots countless times and not revisit them to explain them more in depth, I doubt we will see the “space ISDA” chick’s brother again… So it’s safer to assume that he’s dead… Though I could be wrong since we do have six episodes left, though it would be kind-of late to reintroduce him back into the storyline again, who knows though…. The way this series likes to hop around, we may just seem him yet…

    Ifonlyyouknew
  16. @karoshikurenai

    The spoiler tags are there for a reason…

    As things stand though, I think Witchblade is a better series, especially in terms of character development.
    There aren’t enough episodes left of Dragonaut to turn it into a series that achieved its potential, and I’m just wondering how they’ll end it (I’m sure death will feature prominently).

    Auto

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