Hi Irina, I hope you are doing as great as ever! For us in the United States, it is Thanksgiving week which means that this week is about the same as usual just with a little less effort of work. The final forgotten barrier to the season of advent or Christmas here I suppose.
Isn’t there a lot of food involved in US thanksgiving. I always see that in the movies. Not only the turkey but people cooking like 24 hours in advance and being basically stuffed until Christmas.
Oh yeah, it’s a very food focused holiday. There is also a lot of preparation for one specific meal and it’s delicious. Some people order pizza though and that’s cool too…
I’ve personally never attended a Thanksgiving celebration. It exists in Canada but it isn’t a very popular holiday. Or maybe my friends are just snubbing me and that’s why I don’t get invited. Oh my.
The day I am writing this is much different than usual. It has been dark and rainy recently, so there was an accident on my way to usual community band practice so I just went home because it was at a stand still. I hope that everyone in that accident is ok. Wow, that’s a sad way to start a review, isn’t it?
That is sad, I hope everyone is o.k. ss well. It has been pretty rainy here too. We’ve had about a week’s worth of perfect sleeping weather! And honestly, I wouldn’t have minded sleeping all week but then again, I would have missed out on anime.
So Irina, going into this episode, did you feel like you were watching the wrong series or something for a little bit? I mean, besides the usual stuff with Gobert and his “I have upgraded your units AMAIM units once again” and Amou having his geek out momen with the other two probably thinking “what is this nerd talking about?”, it really was something completely unexpected to me because of how hard the show goes into its war stuff.
Maybe our difference in experience with Mecha shows is guiding our expectations. I sort of figured it would go all in for the industrial military aspect. And I actually don’t dislike that angle. It does run the risk of getting boring and coming off a bit like a presentation if it’s not well written but as a general rule, I like the nitty gritty.
I must have been a bureaucrat in another life and that’s certainly not something to brag about.
That being said, I really did like it but I could be off base about that. It just felt like something either out of Studio Ghibli or Eva 3.0+1.0’s first half. I like seeing this resistant unit actually fixing a Japanese village and providing water and energy. I am one of those people who likes seeing problem solving and it did allow some of our resistance members and pilots to do something besides fighting and that’s pretty cool. I still wish I knew who the members of the resistance group were besides the pilots and their AI.
I loved that. I have a soft spot for training and building montages it seems. And even though I still think the pace is a bit too brisk for AMAIM’s own good, this episode felt like a chance to stop and catch our breaths a bit. And you know, I thought the little comic relief bit with Gashin’s fake kid was fun as well. It was telling that everyone else’s reaction, although surprised, made it obvious that it was quite possible for Gashin to have a young child somewhere. This is rather bold considering that he’s like 16 and would have been 9(?) when that kid was born.
I honestly don’t think that we learned anything about Amou in this episode besides seeing him be clumsy with cookin compared to machine stuff. A good problem solver I suppose. I did like seeing Shion be pretty excited about the outside oven. Especially with her and the children working on some cool plates and dishes out of clay. I also really dug Gashin’s cute relationship with the younger girl. That was so cute. I almost expected him to shake her off, but she never did and simply accepted. Awww.
It was a pretty sweet episode. And just seeing those people who were living in hunger, get a feast to share was really heartwarming. But the pessimist in me couldn’t help but think, “remember what happened to the last rebel stronghold…” And this time there are a lot of children running around. It’s a little unsettling when you think about it.
And I’m once again a little confused on the timeline. Where did they get enough food to feed everyone. Did they have it with them? If so, how and why? Did they go out and buy it at some point? They start off with the guy saying the village is almost out of food, they have fish from the river and some mushrooms and end up with fancy onigiri for all after a montage where we did see them planting stuff. Are they implying they grew that rice? Because I’m pretty sure that makes no sense.
So yeah, I just broke my format for this week because I just really don’t have much to say about it. It was a fairly out of nowhere and interesting episode in the middle of what is a war drama. I mean, it was done for war drama reasons. That’s true. At the same time, it really did feel off putting considering every episode before it. But, I enjoyed it quite a bit though. Just felt happy and comfy for us and I feel like the war drama will probably return next week. But that is only my opinion though.
I enjoyed it as well. And I think we did o.k. More or less on par with our usual reviews. Guys, Scott is discombobulated because we are reviewing a mecha show and we didn’t talk once about robots throughout the whole post! I bet that’s why it feels like nothing has been said!
*Cries*
Mechanical Anime Reviews 
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