Gundam AGE Episode 11
What They Say:
The Diva arrives at the neutral colony Minsry. Flit and the others, planning a secret meeting to discuss an assault on the UE space fortress, call upon Minsry’s leader, a tycoon named Birmings. There, Flit is reunited with Yurin, who was taken in by the Birmings family. As the meetings continue, Yurin opens her heart to Flit, who shares her tragic past. Then, as they return to the Diva, they are stopped by a Federation MS squadron. Grodek has been judged a traitor, and his capture ordered. Flit and the others decide to take on the Federation forces, but…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With most of the last episode given over to combat, it worked well to showcase the changes in how Flit has been dealing with his opponents and the skill of mastering the Gundam itself. But it also brought him closer to death than he may have realized before as we saw others fall and his inability to save people along the way. So it’s pretty understandable that it’s all weighing on him at this point, even as there seems to be a growing sense among others about the severity of what they’re facing. He’s been up in it from the start so it’s always been there, but now he’s starting to really feel it in a personal way that he hasn’t so far, even as the group on the Diva come closer to being a family of sorts.
Having survived the encounter they did, the group of has arrived at Minsry, a neutral colony in a solar system where neutrality will really get you only so far in the long run if others don’t respect it. Looking to hook up with a man that was recommended to them by Boyage, there’s a good sense of calm and reflection amid the peace of the colony. Of course, the fact that they’re there to talk about how to plan an assault on the UE space fortress is kind of amusing when you look at it since they’re all going for the calm and quiet side of things while planning such large scale chaos and carnage. And it really doesn’t help that the man they’re meeting and working with, Birmings, is a tycoon of sorts with a tricorner hat with a revolutionary America kind of dress overall. It’s just a comical mishmash that you have to laugh at him and not take him seriously, especially when he is serious.
The show spends a good bit of quiet time on things throughout it while Flit and Grodek meet with Birmings and try to shore up support for their plan. It’s fun to see Woolf doing his down time thing and a curious little moment with Flit and Yuirin as well that lets him have a little quality time with a girl. It’s all stuff that pushes in the end towards the larger goal of bringing them into a plan to deal with the UE fortress, but a lot of what we really get here is minor but welcome character moments. You can learn some things about people by how they relax and play and this episode definitely does that, though in small ways. Simply seeing Woolf lounging around with the others is amusing but it’s also good to see that unlike Flit, who is always keyed up, others can relax when there is the time to do so.
In Summary:
With Minsry being the most Earth-like of colonies, we do get to see a good bit of what it’s like there in a few locales and you can see the appeal of it all. The down time is nicely done, though it doesn’t really dig into who anybody is or truly form better bonds, but it has small moments that helps in different places. The time with Grodek and Flit with Birmings is interesting but I just found myself unable to take the man seriously due to his look and style. There’s not a lot of meaty material here but we get the small prodding forward bits throughout and it does leave us in a new place at the end with some new people in the mix that could be more important as time goes on.
Grade: B
Streamed By: YouTube