Cross Ange Ep. 18: Everyone’s a tool

I have never been a fan of reunions. Awkward… Especially when they start getting all possessive.

— Ange tries to tell everyone aboard the Aurora that the dragons are cool. In fact, they should team up with the dragons to defeat Embryo. Naturally, this is a tough pill for the others to swallow. I understand how they feel, honestly. They’ve never even so much as conversed with a dragon. Now you want them to just fight alongside a former enemy? Yeah…

— The bigger problem here, however, is that Jill is completely drunk on her own kool aid. Again, you can empathize with just a bit. Just a tiny bit. After all, she’s been at this LIbertus plan for how long now? And she’s failed at it for how long now? Long is all I can say. It’s become a bit of a crazed obsession for her. She’s so hellbent on her mission that she no longer considers anything but Libertus’s success.

— Everyone seems to insinuate that Ange and Tusk have done the deed, though. Furthermore, they seem to act like it’s a bad thing. Like sex with a man — or similarly, becoming a woman — is what has corrupted and rotted Ange’s mind. Truth be told, she’s always had a rebellious streak.

— The good doctor gropes Vivian as if that will somehow tell her whether or not the dragon girl will suddenly turn back into, well, a dragon. She also reveals that she had chopped off Vivian’s wings and tails in her human form. Everyone just treats this like a joke, though. Hahaha, you got mutilated. Funny stuff.

— Hilda’s all tsuntsun with Ange. I guess distance has made the heart grow fonder, and she’s practically in love (in lust?) with Ange. Weird. They’ve hardly had any development on the romantic front, but Hilda’s mega-clingy with the heroine now.

— There are some new faces since Salia and a few others had left to join Embryo’s side. I don’t think these guys will play a significant role in the story, though. As such, I’m not going to bother learning their names.

— Just more signs of Jill going off the deep end. The episode seems to suggest that Embryo had violated her in some fashion, but I can’t be too sure. You simply see him with bare shoulders…

— Likewise, Emma’s drunk on the kool aid. Literally drunk. Apparently, it takes being abandoned by your own kind to finally recognize that the Normas aren’t as bad as people say they are. It’s funny how people can simply refuse to believe what’s right before their very eyes.

— Later that day, Hilda assaults Ange in the shower, but no one’s going to bat an eyelash because it’s yuri. She demands to know whether or not Ange and Tusk have slept together. Yep… I figure she has no one left. Her mother has abandoned her. Zola the Rapist is thankfully dead. And oh yeah, her former lesbian lovers have also abandoned her in a sense. So maybe this explains why she’s suddenly so attached to Ange, the only person that she can now consider a friend. Obviously, this sort of obsession is not a healthy.

— These faces… bad animation or not, for the love of Embryo, at least draw a decent face.

— So Jill finally decides that she’ll cooperate with the dragons, but only if she can sacrifice their lives in order for Ange and the Villkiss to swoop in and assassinate Embryo. I like how she thinks it’ll just be that easy. Like Embryo will be too distracted by the dragons or something, and the Villkiss can just shoot the guy in the back.

— It doesn’t even look like Tusk can sit in his chair properly.

— Oooh, exciting mission briefing scenes… yay…

— Surprising no one, Ange doesn’t agree with Jill’s “everyone’s a tool” strategy. Jill’s also not very smart. She should’ve been a little more subtle about her schemes and maybe people would’ve gone along with it. But she’s probably been a commander for far too long, so she just thinks everyone will capitulate. Well, we’re not in Arzenal anymore.

— She has a contingency plan, of course. If Ange doesn’t obey, that precious maid will bite it. Good riddance, I say… but right, right, we’re suppose to care for all of these characters. Yep.

— Ange tries to struggle, but Jill quickly disarms and overpowers the heroine. Tusk tries to help, but he just gets backhanded away. Goddamn, I didn’t know Jill was that strong.

— But Tusk has a contingency plan of his own: he’s placed gas canisters all throughout the ship, and they’re filled with… some sort of debilitating gas. Shrug.

— C’moooooooon.

— Even then, Jill stabs herself in the leg to stay lucid, and as result, she and Ange have a bit of a duel with each other. She loses this time, but hey, the lady has a gaping wound in her leg, and also, she’s suffering from the gas effects. I’m impressed she can even fight so well. So the only reason she can’t pilot the Villkiss to its full potential is because she doesn’t have some dumbass plot reason (the ring).

— In any case, our heroes make their escape. Ange even wants to open a portal back to the dragon world, but they just happen to run into Salia and company. The ocean must be big… it must be enormously big. Nevertheless, Salia and company just happened to be scanning the right place, and the Aurora just happened to surface in just the right case. Ah well.

— All in all, a pretty whatever episode. I’m just here to ride this thing out. I stopped caring about any of these characters a long time ago.