Short Synopsis: Allelujah is found and this episode shows how the Celestial Beings go and rescue him.
Highlights: Lots of different characters get a bit of development.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
We’re three episodes in, and I’ve got a huge question burning on my mind: what the heck happened to Ali al Sarshes!? I mean, he was a pretty big villain in the first season. I can’t just imagine how he would have suddenly decided to retire or something. I can understand how the guy wouldn’t have a big role in the past few episodes, but not even one shot of him?

In any case, in this episode it becomes clear why the creators went through such lengths of making Setsuna meet up Saji and Marina Ismael: so that he could pick both of them up in the second season. In this episode, it’s Marina’s turn, as it seems that she screwed up with her country, and coincidentally ended up in the same prison. While that’s a bit questionable, I’m interested in what the two of them will turn into once they’re pas their angst-phase. Right now, it’s pretty logical for them to be confused about Setsuna’s ideals and stuff, but it mustn’t take too long.

One major advantage of the second season over the first season is that the characters are already fleshed out in the second one. I remember how the characters spent a lot of time warming up to the viewer in the first season, and that’s one problem we don’t have here. I originally thought that the second season would introduce lots of new characters, but to my surprise, the amount of new characters has been really low. None of the major characters of the second season didn’t appear in the first, and the only important new ones that I could pinpoint were the new young crewmembers of the Celestial Being, probably to replace Liechty and the other one who died at the end of the first season. The other big advantage of this is of course that now, there are hardly any teenagers left in the series. Always a good thing. ^^;

It’s a bit cheap to replace the dead Lockon with his twin brother, to not anger the guy’s fans too much, but then again this IS Sunrise after all. I appreciate that the creators at least give a bit of effort into reviving their characters, and don’t let them just appear from out of nowhere. Lyle also adds an interesting element to the group dynamic of the Celestial Beings: he didn’t go through the same things as the others, so he isn’t on the same line as the others yet. My only real complaint is the following: how the heck did he know how to pilot a Gundam right off the start? I really would have preferred to see the guy train a bit more and get used to the controls.

Oh, and is it just me, or did this episode have a different ED than the previous two? The song still really isn’t to my tastes, but some of the artwork that appears in it is downright gorgeous.

(* Note to self: Gundam 00 continues with some new material after the ED. I usually skip that part to avoid the next-episode preview and potential spoilers, but that’s not something that should be done with this series. *)

Short Synopsis: Ran&co win a trip to a tropical island and lots of toilet paper.
Highlights: Nothing really new here…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10 (Solid)
One thing that’s always bugged me with this anime is how as a mystery-series, it never really tries to hide its bad guys: so far, they’ve all got the bad guy evil-grin. I mean, this series is fun enough while exploring why they’ve got such an evil grin, but a bit more ambiguity on the scale between good and bad definitely WOULDN’T HURT. I mean, the bad guy in this episode would have made for a pretty interesting character, if his expression didn’t scream out “Evil!”. Thankfully, the creators realized that and wasted no time in establishing that he’s possessed by an evil snake.

There’s another thing that’s bugging me: this series is about to run out of episodes. Right now, it’s taken two episodes per volume, there are nine volumes and it’s currently doing the seventh one. If it were to continue with this pace, it’d run out of stories by episode 22, so how are the creators planning to fill its final four episodes? I imagine that it’s going to be some more original stories, but I hope that they’re going to be better than the first wave of original stories. They weren’t necessarily bad, but thinking back, they were the least memorable of the stories in this series. Since the original novels didn’t seem to have one big conclusion, ideally, those four episodes should focus on the development of Ran, Rui and Midori. I hate to say it, but none of them really developed through the series. Thankfully the creators have made up for it by fleshing the cast out really nicely, but I’d still like to see some sort of development at the end.

Nevertheless, this arc again promises to deliver a solid story, although perhaps not the best. It’s another building-up episode where the real meat will take place in the next episode, and in the meantime we get to enjoy some nice slice-of-life scenes as Ran and the others enjoy the island, known as Snake Island. The most interesting is of course that snake-spirit: what does it have to do with that shell Ran found, why does it stick to that evil guy and are the snake we see in the flashback and the snake around the evil guy the same snake?