First Impressions / Soukou no Strain

Summary:
Sara finds herself surrounded by Lottie and friends all the time, though the one watching from a distance is now Lavinia who secretly has feelings for her. The Libertad is meanwhile decelerating into Gall space, and the pursuing Deague ship is doing so too. Ralph heads off with Medlock after telling Emily go back to her room, but she instead chases after him. The problem is that she doesn’t have the proper ID to get to certain areas of the ship, including where Ralph went with Medlock. And so, while Ralph is kissing Medlock and sleeping with her, Emily is wandering around the ship and finding that she can’t get anywhere. She eventually gives up and returns to her room feeling bored. Back onboard the Libertad, Melchisedec has made some improvements to Sara’s Strain that raise reaction speed by 10%. He and Carmichael run a simulation with Sara and Emily in the cockpit, but it ends in smoking failure that gets her all dirty. Lavinia, who happened to be passing by, sees Sara going to take a shower and thinks that this is her chance. She imagines herself offering to clean Emily for Sara while she’s showering and how grateful Sara would be, but this never comes to fruition because Lottie and Jessie come up to Sara first and Lottie offers Jessie to do the same thing.
Lavinia’s next plan has her going to the locker room and placing a thumbtack on the shower room’s access panel. She wants Sara to injure her finger on the tack so that she can arrive to lick Sara’s finger and apply a bandage. Sara does indeed hurt herself, but before Lavinia can make her entrance, Becky shows up and sees the bleeding, so she takes Sara to the doctor’s office. To make matters worse for Lavinia, she accidentally trips and falls on her box of thumbtacks. She doesn’t give up though and tries to catch Sara in the shower a bit later. Lavinia sneaks up on someone she thinks is Sara in the shower and kisses the girl, but soon realizes that something is wrong when she hears Lottie and the real Sara coming into the shower room. It turns out that the person Lavinia is currently kissing is actually Jessie. Because she’s so embarrassed from being caught by Sara and Lottie, Lavinia runs out of the room crying, though she doesn’t realize until she’s outside that she’s still naked. News of this incident spreads to even the instructors, and the ship’s doctor thinks that it’s not just Lavinia – the ship’s students are at their limit in terms of stress. They decide on allowing everyone some time off the ship at Gall, which makes the students quite happy.
The Libertad soon arrives and docks safely at the large Gall station. Some of the students run off the ship as soon as they’re allowed, though Lottie and company aren’t quite that rushed. Sara, however, will be remaining on the ship so that she can focus on her training. Learning this, Lavinia also decides to stay. Meanwhile, on the Deague ship, Emily is rummaging around the room and hides under the bed when Ralph comes back. Not noticing her, he dumps his jacket on the bed and goes to take a shower. Emily gets the idea to wear the jacket, and it allows her into those restricted areas, including the hanger room for the Gloire-type. But the vehicle she heads for is a small shuttle, and she launches in it, ready to go see someone. Barrow thinks that Ralph is the one taking off, but he realizes that’s a mistake when Ralph shows up on the bridge with Meadow. Back on the Libertad, Lavinia’s new plan is to hide Emily while Sara is away. This way, Sara will cry over the loss of the doll, and Lavinia can come make things better by pretending to find Emily. Thus, Lavinia goes and kidnaps Emily, placing her on the top shelf inside a storage room. However, after she leaves, the doll falls down into a garbage cart.
Everything goes according to plan for Lavinia, with Sara desperate to find Emily. Though Lavinia misjudges how much the doll means to Sara, who claims that Emily is her last hope, she goes through with her plan and takes Sara back to the storage room. The problem is that Emily isn’t there anymore because the garbage cart has been emptied and a truck has already taken away the ship’s garbage.

Preview:

Wow, I didn’t expect that kind of nudity from this show, which I had thought would be fairly serious given how few episodes they have. And just to balance it all out, we got a Ralph shower scene too. Anyway, this was quite an amusing episode because of Lavinia and all her (failed) attempts to seduce Sara. And it’s not all just girl-on-girl filler either. Her accidentally causing Emily to be thrown away means that Sara will have to go look for the doll now. I bet that next week, Carris finds Sara searching through the city, and the two go on a date of sorts. They’ll probably encounter real Emily (as the preview suggests) and then Ralph will enter the scene looking for her. Not quite what I had thought would happen, but I guess it works. I’m looking forward to hearing the real Emily (voiced by Nonoka Ai) doing some more talking next week.

51 Comments

  4. what the heck? what’s with the sudden barrage of tits? i thought this anime only has mild nudity and all of a sudden, we’re close to seeing EVERYTHING. Latvina is a real perv, that’s for sure.

    Kenta
    Reply

  17. Not that I mind fanservice and yuri. I love Kannazuki no Miko so much I bought the series, but this looks like a bit much, considering the previous episode didn’t have a lot angsting and only had a minor skirmish. Judging from the preview of episode 8, though things will get back on track. I’ll just reserve any further judgement and enjoy episode 7 after it gets subbed.

    dojikyo
    Reply

  30. I have to admit, I was honestly hoping they would stay with the barbie-doll nudity: never actually showing the “naughty” bits. But it looks like they were just waiting to use a character who’s over 18. I find that… disappointing.

    Honestly though, I’m more worried about Emily. Sarah’s Emily, that is. They’d better find her and rescue her unharmed, or someone will suffer!

    Wanderer
    Reply

  33. Wanderer: Actually, we still have SnS anime coming for another two weeks. (so two more episodes) /Then/ they take a two week break, then another episode, then another two-week break. So unless they don’t show what happens to her in the next two episodes, then we’ll find out before SnS starts going on its break-o-rama.

    Shinji103
    Reply

  34. Well, yes… but… Let me put it this way. It’s going to be almost a week before I see the fansub for THIS episode, simply because that’s how long it takes for them to get the sub out. Therefore it will be nearly two weeks before I see the fansub for the NEXT episode.

    I’m going to be relying heavily on this blog to tell me that Emily’s safe. Seriously. I can’t take not knowing.

    Wanderer
    Reply

  38. Why else did you think Jessie always followed Lottie around? ;P (What she is doing is practically the opposite of objecting. She’s pulling Lavinia back in when she’s trying to get away. XD)

    Spectrum
    Reply

  42. This sucks, i agree with jD’s opinion, what hooked me to this anime in the begining is its seriousness(and sara’s screama the end of episode 1), but now i am extremely disappointed. This isn’t anime, i’d watch real porn any other time. I want drama/action/storyline not dancing boobs.

    Silvar
    Reply

  49. I agree, i really liked this show in the beginning cuz of the plot..but this is just …weird..really really weird..-_-;;. I actually liked Lavinia’s character b4 and they make her out to be some kinda stalker rapist freak.

    Saori
    Reply

  51. I liked this series a lot… til I saw this ep… not gonna be archiving this tho I’ll probably keep watching it as long as something like this doesn’t show up again. totally unnecessary.

    Maniac
    Reply

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