Interesting, an episode without nearly anything about the main cast. They only appear at the final minute or so. Instead, the antagonists get fleshed out. We see the two bomb-technicians (what where they again? My memory about the first season is too fuzzy) from first season back, and they team up with a newly introduced character named Pinocchio, who if I understood correctly, works directly under one of the five great families as an assassin.

What surprises me is the huge amount of hate-reactions this series has been getting, but I think that the huge expectations that everyone had about this series are partially to blame. The first season was of a really high quality, like expected from a studio like Madhouse. The second season just doesn’t have the same budget, and instead has had to sacrifice a lot in the graphical department. Artland just doesn’t have the experience nor the budget to make this the visual feast of the first season, and I can indeed imagine that if you had great expectations about this series, especially after waiting so incredibly long, the thing will disappoint. It’s for the same reason why I’m nearly certain that a lot of people will be disappointed by Haruhi II, even though I know hardly anything about the series.

In any case, there’s one thing that for me definitely improved in terms of the first season: the soundtrack. It fits the series much better, and it’s much more memorable than the soundtrack of the first season. There’s also nothing wrong with the storytelling. The first episode did a good job of refreshing my memory with a random fight-scene, and now the second episode starts building up for real, and it’s good to see so much attention to the villains this time.

So, long story short: the first and second season are, just like Solaris said, completely different series, and for now I have no reason to look down upon the second season yet. It knows how to build up and for now, that’s the most important for me.

Thankfully, the new OP and ED are much better now. They’re still a bit standard, but the first OP and ED just didn’t fit this series, not to mention that the ED finally has some quality animation that this series has been surprisingly lacking, considering the timeslot it’s on and all. I’m glad enough that they fit the epic feeling of this series. I still remember how the first ED gave me a headache when I watched it for the first time.

In any case, this episode is an intermezzo, introducing the next and biggest challenge for the Gundams yet, when they basically have to take on all kinds of elite-pilots from both the AEU and the Union, teamed up together. We also get a bit more information about how humans are able to live in outer-space for so long: by use of nano-machines. I must praise this series for this, because I think that it’s the first anime that I’ve seen that considers the strains on the human body if it lives in outer-space for too long. I now also know why we sometimes see the crew back on earth: to remain mentally healthy (hah!).

And Setsuna yet again surprises us with his sense of duty when he yet again goes off on his own. This time, he goes to visit Marina Ismael (whose guards are surprisingly lazy) while she’s sleeping for no particular reason. Still, I finally see where the creators are going with him. I think that it’s safe to say that he’s the youngest member of the Celestial Beings, and I don’t think that when he became a Gundam Meister, he was so young that his sense of duty wasn’t really that of an adult, and I also doubt that he had any choice in that matter. Someone like Lockon just had one horrible experience in his past, but Setsuna never got the chance to grow up normally.

In any case, because of this he’s the most sceptic Celestial Being about the mission. Something tells me that all he cares about is Exia, not the ultimate mission of the Celestial Beings. This episode mentioned it as well: he’s beginning to see himself as some kind of God, instead of a killing-machine. Because of that, he’s starting to wonder why people fight in this world. And something tells me that Saji and Louise (whose mother finally left in this episode) will play a key-part in this.

Sure, the characters are definitely not the most likable out there, and I don’t deny that some of them are pretty stupid, but their development has been going into a very interesting direction.