Suisei no Gargantia - 10

"Island of Ambition"

Pinion, how can you be so insensitive? Don't you see Ledo having a PTSD breakdown there?!

If Gen Urobuchi didn't directly write this episode, he most certainly supervised it very closely. This is pretty much pure Urobutcher, with a Gargantia twist, and I'm sure that's what a good chunk of the fanbase have been waiting for. Personally, I could do with a bit less of this, not because it isn't interesting, but because of the ways in which things happen. Note, for example, how completely messed up Pinion is when he sees Ledo slumped against his mecha. Not once is he concerned for his "friend's" welfare; he doesn't ask him what happened or why he's suddenly so listless and distressed. That adds to Pinion's antagonistic feel, yes, but it really feels forced too. Who wouldn't be at least curious at what Ledo saw to make him so upset? Even if he wasn't truly concerned for him, Pinion never struck me as particularly cruel for the sake of being cruel, so why not at least pretend to show concern? It's that edge, that lack of characterization that sits well that doesn't quite win me over.

On the other hand, Ledo's crisis isn't quite as forced. It's still despair of the sort the Butcher specializes in, but it does feel more natural than some of his other instances have. I had someone point out to me last week that Ledo easily murdered those pirates and thus shouldn't feel so much remorse at having wiped out the whalesquid, but there's a fundamental difference. These particular whalesquid were non-belligerent. They were peacefully coexisting with the people of Earth, even if in some distant future they may have become violent. They weren't like the Hideauze of Ledo's world; it was not his war to fight here. The pirates, on the other hand, directly threatened the Gargantians, and Ledo saw fit to fight them as enemies. It's the difference between going into combat and slaughtering innocents. Even if the Hideauze posed some future threat, at the moment they had harmed no one that hadn't threatened them (Pinion's brother was killed for invading their nest, just as any animal or person will attack an intruder in their home or personal space).

Regardless, the real intellectual meat of the episode is at the end, where Ledo and Chamber converse about the issue. I'm not so sure Ledo could be this calm after the unhealthily depressive atmosphere he carries throughout the first half, but nevertheless Chamber has quite a bit to say. Even though he confirms that the video Ledo saw was accurate, he argues that it matters not; war is war, and the Alliance is fighting to preserve humanity, whereas the Evolvers gave theirs up. Once they did, they chose this path, and the war is an inevitable consequence of the two ideologies butting heads. As all this goes on, Pinion drives matters to hell as he takes over the fleet and uses violence to promote his own greed. However, the arrival of Ledo's ally from the Alliance, or at least, the arrival of his mecha, seems to imply that things are only going to get more and more complicated now that Ledo's been complicit in destroying the peaceful Gargantian life that existed prior to his arrival.

N.B.: Thanks to Ivan for the caps!