Dragonaut / First Impressions

Summary:

Two years ago, Jin had been found alive in the ocean after the shuttle accident. Yuuri had watched over him being operated on afterwards, and she had identified what looked like a Resonance with him. Back in the present, Yuuri and Sakaki go to Kiril about temporarily taking the Lindbulm Unit off the D-Project so that they can go to the moon to look for the Album. With Yuuri reasoning that to understand Thanatos, they need one of the original Dragons, and with Sakaki suggesting that their plans to go after the Album won’t cross with the Girouard military’s pursuit of Gio, Kiril gives the go-ahead. When Kazuki finds out about the new mission, he’s not at all happy that he’s being put on standby and that they’re not trying to get Gio back. On the way back from the meeting with Kiril, Yuuri asks Sakaki why he suddenly proposed capturing the Album, so he reminds her that it was she who had originally brought it up. She then admits that there are still a lot of things she wants to know and hopes to get both the Album and Gio soon, but Sakaki knows better than that. He’s sure that the Girouard military won’t hand over Gio if they capture him because they want to obtain the Resonance procedure.

Laina, Akira, and Sieglinde soon take off for the moon and are planning to work with the Girouard military for their respective operations. Having been left behind, Kazuki sits alone in his messy room and takes a pair of scissors – which were stabbed into Jin’s face in a photo – out to cut his own hair. On the moon, Jin is unable to hear Toa’s song and starts searching on foot with Gio. The two of them go to the coffee shop that Toa has been staying at, but she’s not there when they go in and the owner doesn’t let on that she knows who Toa is. Toa actually comes back with some groceries while the two guys are still there and hides herself until they leave. Back on Earth, Yuuri gets ambushed with a kiss by the reporter Yonamine Kou. She punches him in the face for doing so, but he entices her further by revealing that he found a special piece of thread that’s only found on Girouard military uniforms in Amagi’s room. They then go to his place where he reveals that the thread had a certain perfume on it, and this perfume is only used by one person in the Girouard military: Garnet.

Having arrived on the moon, Howlingstar, Amadeus, and Machina set out to look for the Album. Howlingstar notices Machina looking worried, and he thinks that she’s still stuck on Spirytus, so he suggests that it’s better for them to just do what their masters say – that’s their fate. At that moment, Toa is crying over Jin, so the coffee shop owner makes her a mocha blend that was the favorite of her loved one. She had gotten into a fight with him and regrets it because he died, leaving her feeling that they’re now arguing through all eternity. The owner doesn’t want Toa to make the same mistake and advises Toa not to lie to her own feelings. This talk reminds Toa of her feelings for Jin, and she decides to try to look for him. She quickly finds him and Gio, but before she can reach them, Howlingstar and the other two Communicators get in between them. Fortunately, Gio helps her out by tackling Howlingstar and urges Toa to go to Jin. Unfortunately, Machina interferes before Toa can get to Jin, and Amadeus takes Jin away. To Toa’s surprise, Machina doesn’t intend to capture her and instead wants to know why they were born. She feels that it would be sad if they were born to kill their friends, but Toa tells her that it’s all destiny.

Howlingstar and Gio have meanwhile started fighting with Gio saying that he was born to protect Toa. Howlingstar thinks that Gio would be a nuisance for Jin and Toa, and he declares that they were born to protect their masters – that’s their fate. Refusing to believe this, Gio and knocks Howlingstar into some boxes, and when the dust clears, Gio is gone. Amadeus meanwhile brings Jin to Sieglinde, and the two of them explain that a Dragon forms tight bonds with its master via the Resonance. Dragons can’t go against their master, yet he and Gio broke that rule. Amadeus then reminds Sieglinde that they need to take Jin to the spaceport, though Akira shows up at this very moment and offers to take him herself. Akira, however, actually lets Jin go and tells him that Toa is waiting at the coffee shop. Jin initially asks her why she’s helping, but when she doesn’t directly answer him, he doesn’t bother sticking around to find out. Later that day, Machina tells Howlingstar how the Album said that it was destiny that they were born – not fate, but destiny. She explains that the difference is that fate is not something you can change, but destiny is. The evening sun soon gives way to more rain, and as Gio watches on, Jin and Toa are happily reunited in front of the coffee shop.

Note: In Japanese, both shukumei and unmei can mean destiny or fate, but unmei has a less fatalistic connotation than shukumei, so I’m using shukumei to mean fate and unmei to mean destiny.
Preview:

It seems pretty apparent that they’re making Gio feel like he’s a third wheel in Toa and Jin’s relationship, and I assume that this will be the source of some conflict in the near future. Another potential source could be the fate and destiny stuff that probably doesn’t sit very well with the ISDA leaders and Laina in particular, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Howlingstar eventually took control of his own destiny and stopped following orders, kind of like how Machina and Akira already aren’t. And of course there’s still Kazuki, who was so emo that I thought he was going to slit his wrists with the scissors or something, though it turns out he was just cutting his hair. I can’t wait for him to actually do something rather than sulk and look angry all the time.

Animation-wise, the quality wasn’t that great this week, though not horrible either. They’ve started using some of the stock footage of the transformation sequences for Howlingstar, Machina, and Amadeus. I had expected this to happen since those scenes looked so generic when they were first shown back in episode three, but what irks me isn’t the fact that they’re using stock footage – it’s that they’re using the exact same 80-second clip without bothering to shorten it since we’ve already seen it once. It’s not a huge deal, though I would have preferred if they had just used 15 seconds to quickly show the transformations and then spent the extra time on something else. Hopefully it’ll be shortened in future episodes. Speaking of which, next week appears to be the swimsuit episode, though it looks like it’ll provide some background on Sieglinde as well. Dragons in swimsuits…

43 Comments

  4. Wow, this episode looks really good. Can’t wait for the subbed version!
    I really want to see that pic where Toa hugs Jin! It looks so moving!!!
    Hopefully the animation quality doesn’t turn too bad…like Blaech when the
    fillers start to appear

    Pyrotechnic
    Reply

  12. Smaller boobed women seems to be more in tune with everything in this anime.
    Bigger the boobs, bigger the trouble in their mind.

    “LET’S GO, BLUE APPLE STAR!”
    “TRANSFORM!”

    Rembr
    Reply

  15. so many unintentional lols

    emo kazuki, kinda corny reunion, shocked Gio, HENSHIN!, jin gets caught…AGAIN (anyone keeping count?)

    But I still love this show. even if others bash on it.

    kazekage26
    Reply

  27. Oh noes my best friend who I haven’t been in contact with for years, but who I’m still obsessed enough about in a gayish way to have a wall full of photos of has stolen the shiny new toy I recently enslaved against its will, I’ve got to turn psycho.

    The way Kazuki is a total control freak and how Jin takes every chance he gets to get cuffed up makes it obvious who was the Uke and the Seme in their relationship. It’s like they’re destined to end up as fodder for bondage fantasies of Yaoi fangirls

    bearzerger
    Reply

  34. Ok here’s my bet on kazuki…. after another 2-3 episodes of him being an emo bitch he’s going to accept that he’s not getting “his” gio back and will resonate again with that chick that was playing the piano at the bar (the short blue haired one who is still nameless as of yet)and that chick will be his new dragon partner, this is pretty predictable since they show them together in the opening credits, even though so far the chick has only been shown for maybe 10sec tops so far in the entire series. However, kazuki will despise jin for “taking” his precious Gio, even though he has a new kick-ass hot-looking dragon partner that IS female.

    IfOnlyYouKnew
    Reply

  38. @IfOnlyYouKnew

    didn’t she also got a few seconds screentime in the episode after that? when she walked with the other researches in that ISDA building?

    Other then that sweet episode. Jin getting caught to much but one time it was a setup. He got caught 6 times so far I believe 🙂

    Lamex
    Reply

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