I thought the Sealing Faction would just, y’know, seal mankind’s evolution. I didn’t know that this involved literally putting everyone to sleep. Humanity may as well be dead in that case. Anyways…
— Because Benika was exposed to the Sealing Field in last week’s episode, she has been placed into a deep sleep. Naturally, she’s dreaming of a world in which her senpai, a.k.a. Yosuke’s brother, is still alive. I really wish the show had leaned more on these dream sequences. Not only are they far more compelling to watch than most of the real world stuff, they also help to flesh out these paper-thin characters. The problem is that most of the time you only ever learn about these characters when it’s finally time to do battle against them. The results are mixed at best.
— Why did she lose all her clothes?
— Yosuke’s kind of pathetic.
— Back on Earth, our hero is still despondent, but Sensei believes in him. Nozomi eventually drops by to check up on Soya.
— Nozomi’s parents look adorable.
— Elsewhere, we see people questioning Takezo about his son. He’ll likely have a role to play when the Dragon returns from the moon.
— Anyways, when Benika finally wakes up, that’s Yosuke’s cue to “finish the job.” He’s going to try and seal humanity, because… well, Benika was his world and she got sealed. But lest you think that’s it, let’s just say he gets even more pathetic with every single line that he utters.
— I really can’t stand sad sacks like Yosuke. They sit around and mope all day. They mope all day because they don’t have the guts to fix their own problems. Then when all that negativity builds up within them, they become melodramatic as hell. Oh no, my world is gone! Give me a break. Okay, his brother died, and I feel for him. But then he claims that he has no reason to live without Benika. That’s just dumb, yo. If you want to commit suicide, do it on your own terms. But to drag everyone down with you because the woman you love — whom you’ve never even bothered to confess to, by the way — is now gone is just pure selfishness.
— Back on Earth, Nozomi proceeds to say a few nice words to Soya. Something she says particularly struck a chord: “I’m on the side of the people I want to befriend.” It’s the corny, schlocky nonsense that you can expect from a show like this.
— So Yosuke descends to Earth along with this giant ram. His photon armor also resembles a ram. Benika was his world, and because he lost something that big and important to him, this gives him a lot of psychic ability? And as such, he is able to absorb the entire sealing device and become this huge monstrosity? Eh, whatever.
— The point is, he’s far bigger than Hideo, so the latter doesn’t even stand a chance. Miu and Harumi eventually show up to lend a hand, but three ants aren’t much better than one.
— And now that everyone has been defeated — the Pacifist faction doesn’t even show to the battle — Yosuke proceeds to give the entire planet one big hug of death. His arms just keep going and going and going until they’ve surrounded the whole planet.
— And with this, all life on the planet has been extinguished. Kinda.
— People are technically still alive, but they’re all locked in blissful dreams. In my opinion, they may as well be dead. Anyone can strap themselves to a happy machine and dream their life away. That’s not the same as living. To live is something completely different.
— Also, like I said up above, this is not what I expected at all. I thought they would just seal human’s psychic potential or something. Let humanity stagnate in its current form, y’know? But instead, this is… this is death, man. Yosuke forced everyone to commit suicide with him, just because 1) he’s sad about his brother and 2) he’s sad about Benika. That’s so lame. Like if you’re going to go down this route, you need a character with a more tragic backstory. You need a character who tried his best to save the world, but was betrayed in the end or something. A character who’s lost more than just his brother and a woman he never even bothered to confess to. You need more than a sad sack like Yosuke.
— By the way, Sensei got sealed as well, but Generalissimo doesn’t seem to bothered by this.
— Anyways, Soya is the only person not to get sealed, and it’s not hard to imagine why. Yes, the People of Paradise (since we only ever see one of them, can’t I just call him the Person of Paradise?) had protected him.
— Our kid hero starts remembering all of the good times, especially with Nozomi. Y’know, how she befriended him, how she stuck with him, how she defended him when everybody wanted him to fight. So in the end, he decides that he wants to protect this planet. In exchange for help, he promises to defeat the Dragon later. We all knew this would happen. It just took two long episodes.
— The Person of Paradise then enlarges Soya’s mind, and this allows him to speak to the entire planet. The kid then asks if people still want to return to their regular lives even if this means giving up their blissful dreams. Everyone starts raising their hands, so yeah, people want to live. People want to experience life.
— For a scene like this to work, you gotta pretend that everyone’s normal. That nobody’s doing anything weird. But let’s be real: some schmuck out there was probably busy jerking off to loli hentai or some shit when they got sealed, and now they have to raise their hand to return to their degenerate life. But no, let’s be serious about it. Some poor sap was about to be executed by members of a drug cartel and now they have to return to his sad life. Some poor victim got caught up in a sex trafficking scheme, and now they gotta wake up. Basically, it’s easy to tell others to take the good with the bad, but some people have to endure horrible acts of atrocities at the hands of others. At the end of the day, I’d always argue against this stupid sealing idea, but man, there’s a whole lot of people who wish they could probably keep dreaming. But I digress.
— After Soya’s words touches everyone’s hearts, color is restored to the entire planet as humanity collectively wakes up with tears in their eyes.
— The three amigos try once more to take Yosuke down, but they’re still ants. I mean, nothing’s changed as far as that is concerned.
— But when Yosuke readies another punch — one that would probably shatter Miu and Harumi’s photon armor — Soya and Sensei finally show up to the battlefield to protect them.
— The dog looks mad, but he’s just being tsundere.
— It seems that Soya’s words also reached Benika. I’m still wondering why she’s naked, though. I mean, she wasn’t naked at the end of last week’s episode. Who stripped her down and why did they feel that this was necessary?
— Even though they have a giant, rampaging ram to fight, Hideo still finds time to ask the kid why he’s fighting. Blah blah blah, I am on the side of the people I want to befriend. Cool.
— Soya finally discards as his mask as there’s really no reason to hide anymore at this point.
— Ginko then joins him and Sensei, and together, all three of them hop into the Sensei-shaped spaceship. In doing so, they transform into a giant samurai cat big enough to subdue Yosuke’s ram. Our trio also strike a pose.
— Yosuke hilariously tells Soya and company to stay out of Earth’s problems. He then whines that he and Benika can only be spared from their emotional baggage by sleeping. Okay…? So go to bed by yourself. Why does everyone else have to go to bed too? This is exactly why the good guys have to get involved despite being aliens. A couple of selfish idiots have decided that 7 billion people on this planet must do what they want to do. Planet With isn’t without potential, but its characters are so weak. If we had a single antagonist who wasn’t hilariously childish and myopic, then this conflict wouldn’t be so flaccid. Unfortunately, we get Yosuke.
— With his Tera Cat Hammer, Soya defeats Yosuke in one blow. And now it’s Benika’s turn to catch the guy before he falls into the ocean.
— Soya then points up to the sky and challenges Generalissimo directly. I guess we gotta take care of him before we deal with the whole Dragon on the moon nonsense. But y’know, Kogane and Shirashi were no match for Takashi, so I’m not exactly sure how they’re supposed to pose a threat against Soya and his bigger and improved mecha. But this is anime, so characters can always pull hidden power levels out of their asses.