Sousei no Aquarion – 23

Short Summary:
Glen is indeed a fusion of man and feather, courtesy of the military. Using two dummy pilots, Glen is able to freely change between Aquarion forms and does so frequently in his assault on Sirius. He eventually blasts Sirius with a beam cannon shot to the chest that destroy the Cherubim part of Cherubim Mars. Sirius starts calling out to Silvia through her bracelet, causing its power to flare which sends Silvia through the teleport changer and switches her with one of Glen’s dummies. Doing so breaks his Aquarion, and Sirius manages to down Glen’s Vector when Glen tries to shoot down Silvia. Silvia’s Vector heads toward Sirius, but Apollo stops her by using his powers to force a gattai on her and Reika. They form Aquarion Angel, with Silvia as the head. Meanwhile, Sirius gets a replacement Cherubim. He reaches out to Silvia yet again, this time using his powers to reveal the wing on his arm with a resonating effect that causes the same to happen to Silvia. She almost takes his hand, but a combination of Apollo stopping her and Sirius’ disparaging words once again stops her. Instead of taking his hand, she chooses Apollo’s. The battle starts again and Silvia takes to the air to avoid Sirius’ lunge. She throws her sword at him, but he easily swats it. She uses her powers to give her sword wings and guides it back just as Cherubim Mars appears in front of her, stabbing it through. Sirius manages to get away, but the battle is over. Back at DEAVA, Jun discovers a feather inside of the dummy pod that Silvia teleport changed with.

Awesome battle episode…Absolutely awesome. Glen’s piloting was amazing, as was Sirius’ resilience. The first half is almost all battle, culminating in a buster shot to the chest of Cherubim Mars. The second half is more about Silvia’s decision, but I was equally impressed with her Lonely Angels attack. I’m happy that Silvia takes a more active role and gets a good bit of screentime. The choreography, music, everything was great. I had some minor issues with the animation at the very beginning, but they didn’t persist. Overall, the quality of this show has gone way up over the past few episodes.
The scene in which we get to see Glen’s transformation is so very creepy. I’m not quite sure I understand what the significance of insects leaving his body is though. Maybe the feather is purging him of impurities?
If I were more cynical, I’d say this episode is a platform to sell more models (especially after seeing someone assemble an Aquarion model in the foreground with the next episode preview playing the background), but that sort of applies to this entire series anyway. The preview didn’t look or sound too serious, but the name of the episode (天空のゲート, or “Gate of the Sky”) hopefully suggests otherwise.
Closing Thought: I just figured out today that Sirius, Mayama (H&C), and Rin (SHUFFLE!) are voiced by the same guy, Sugita Tomokazu. No wonder his voice sounds so familiar…