Idolmaster XENOGLOSSIA – 11

Summary:

The Mondenkind Japan group has arrived in beautiful but cold Iceland to look for the fourth iDOL and are greeted there by Mondenkind EU’s Saku Hibiki. As Ami explains in the briefing, Iceland is a place that should experience a lot of earthquakes because of its location where the Eurasian and North American plates meet. However, for almost 20 years, it has barely had any earthquakes. Mondenkind EU investigated this and found the core of the final iDOL inside a volcano – the Hiemus. The group is eventually able to locate it inside a magma reservoir, but before they can act, Chihaya and R.I.F.F.A strike: the Nubilum immediately goes after the Imber while R.I.F.F.A’s new iDOL heads toward the volcano. When Azusa orders Makoto in the Nebula to the volcano too, Makoto refuses because she wants to defeat the Nubilum, forcing Azusa to threaten to take Makoto off the Nebula for disobeying orders.

When Makoto does arrive at the right spot and starts looking for her opponent, she’s surprised when it suddenly pops out of the ice and attacks her from behind. R.I.F.F.A then introduces her new iDOL, the Epimetheus I, and Makoto has a hard time trying to fight it. Upon getting video feed of the fight, Azusa realizes that the new iDOL is part of the Epimetheus series from 40 years ago where man tried to artificially create iDOLs. It was the research of professor Kaien and Tell, the latter of whom is the central figure of the Turiavita (the old woman Karasu and R.I.F.F.A refer to as their mother). Despite Makoto refusing to lose to a fake iDOL, she gets beat up and thrown around quite badly. Haruka isn’t doing so well either against Chihaya, but she fights on despite being scared. Ami meanwhile is hearing terrible discord because of all the iDOLs and Masters’ sounds, and it all suddenly boils over in a SCALE OUT warning. At that very moment, the core inside the volcano lets out a huge shockwave that shuts down all four iDOLs and causes Chihaya and R.I.F.F.A great pain.

Lava begins pouring out of the volcano and soon envelopes the Epimetheus I. The ground under the Imber and the Nubilum also gives way, sending both iDOLs crashing down into the ravine below. Azusa realizes that the Hiemus has awakened, and in the aftermath, only Makoto and the Nebula are still visible above ground. Inside the ravine, Haruka gets out of the immobile Imber and sees Chihaya stumbling towards her. Chihaya ignores Haruka and fixes her gaze on the Imber before falling unconscious. She dreams of the Kaien and Tell standing over her on an operating table and her agreeing to a procedure with someone else that allowed her to pilot the Imber. When she wakes up, she finds herself sleeping naked beside Haruka in a cave. Haruka doesn’t recognize who she is, so Chihaya ends up introducing herself as Mondenkind EU’s Kisaragi Chihaya. As Haruka gets dressed and introduces herself back, Chihaya retrieves a gun from her bag.

Preview:

Chihaya should have just shot at Haruka at the end cause it would have made for a good cliffhanger. It would have been a much better end to what wasn’t the most exciting episode, despite the battles. For whatever reason, I find the iDOL fighting rather uninspired and even boring. It’s just not very impressive to watch. That being said, a lot of back-story is now being developed for the Turiavita side, and it appears that the two geniuses Azusa referred to back in episode eight are the ones that Chihaya calls mother and father. Both of them were still wearing Mondenkind badges in that flashback scene, and it looked like Azusa was the person on the other operating table.
Unfortunately (or not), it looks like from the preview that Chihaya doesn’t shoot Haruka, and I imagine this will instead turn out be a good chance for Haruka to learn about Chihaya’s past with the Imber.