A funny coincidence I’m thought of while watching this episode is that Suletta’s life starts falling apart the second Guel rebuilds his. Maybe Guel’s godawful luck went to her after he defeats her in the duel.
Episode 18 starts with Suletta coping over her loss and breakup with Miorine by focusing on her studies and pretending everything is alright. Honestly, it’s really funny seeing Suletta attend class because if there’s one thing that we’ve barely seen in this anime, it’s actually see these dark kids learn. Most of the school scenes tend to be after class or one of the duels. Whenever anyone asks Suletta about how she truly feels about losing the duel, Suletta tells them she wasn’t good enough to win and she was foolish to think that she was, which is pretty darn frustrating. You can really tell that Suletta bases her self-worth around pleasing her mother and the second she fails, she just thinks ill of herself. Also, how telling that Prospera doesn’t show up to help Suletta deal with her defeat.
Meanwhile, we see Miorine and Guel struggling to rebuild Jeturk. Kind of like with Miorine when she created Gund-Arm, Guel can only bank so much on his father’s reputation and his lack of a proven track record is holding his company back. This becomes detrimental for the election as Shaddiq has a staggering lead against Miorine in the election polls, thanks to the alliance he’s formed between Grassley and Peil. I like how Shaddiq actually goes as far as talk business with Prospera. He’s that confident that he’ll become Benerit’s next president that he’s already looking into how to best make use of Miorine’s own business assets. Interesting that Prospera sticks with Miorine. Maybe she thinks Shaddiq would oppose Quiet Zero. I guess peace among Earthians and Spacians isn’t exactly the same thing as empowering Earthians.
Obviously, Miorine needs something that’ll give Gund-Arm and Jeturk an edge in the election. Prospera reveals that she was in cahoots with Vim in developing a Gundam for Jeturk, the Schwarzette (and goddamn, that design is slick). Claiming it’s a collaboration between Gund-Arm and Jeturk would be good buzz but Miorine rejects this idea, being adamant about pursuing GUND research for medical purposes. Later in the episode, Prospera brings up the riots going on in Earth over Benerit’s increasingly aggressive presence there, due to their conflict with Dawn of Fold. Miorine decides that resolving the riots will signal boost her campaign though she refuses Prospera’s suggestion that they need to bring armed forces. The only compromise Miorine is willing to make is bringing an unarmed Aerial and some members of Dominicus to guard her. I really like how Prospera keeps suggesting something to Miorine and Miorine keeps doing it own her way because she dislikes Prospera that much.
On her way to working on Quiet Zero, Belmeria is apprehended by Feng Jun (Akeno Watanabe) for questioning. Oh my God, the Space Assembly League might finally make progress with their investigation. I can see Belmeria revealing every secret she knows to the League. With how guilt ridden she is regarding her research on Gundams and Enhanced Persons, she’d probably think helping the League will finally give her the peace she desires.
At Grassley, El5n reveals to Nika that he is in fact a doppelganger for the real Elan and he proceeds to explain why there body doubles of the real Elan. I really dig the justification for this bit of exposition. Like, El5n is going to die anyway if Peil finds him so he figured he may as well leak all of their secrets. Apparently, Peil uses AI to select its new CEO (how topical) and their program found the Elan to be the best candidate. When the duels began in Asticassia, Peil needed a body double who could compete in Elan’s face. Seeing as they also needed guinea pigs for their Gundams, they also made these doppelgangers Enhanced Persons. Kind of funny how it’s implied that Elan sucks so much at piloting that he needed a body double for that. I guess it’s not technically required for business but you’d think Peil’s fancy AI would have considered that when it was searching for the next CEO. Otherwise, we finally get confirmation as to why there are multiple Elans.
Naturally, everyone at Earth House, most notably Chuchu (Miyu Tomita), are concerned about Suletta, feeling that she’s bottling her feelings up. The gang decides to take her to Miorine’s office, hoping that the two of them can have a honest chat with each other. Martin (Junya Enoki) is left behind to look after the dorm and while alone, he grows conflicted over his decision to report Nika during the battle royale. He ends up admitting what he’s done in some sort of confessional booth, only to then get called out by Secelia Dote (Aya Yamane), a member of the Dueling Committee. To be frank, Martin is one of my least favorite characters in the show right now. The dude is such a whimp, I can’t stand it. Still, I’m curious what the show might do now that it has Martin regretting his decision to report Nika. Even though she’s appeared multiple times by now, I haven’t mentioned Secelia. She honestly doesn’t do a whole lot in this show than commentate on duels (though to be fair, her comments can be pretty funny). Maybe now that she’s seemingly involved in Martin’s arc, she’ll finally do stuff.
Rather than receive access to meet up with Miorine, Suletta is instead led towards a hanger where the Aerial is stored. Suletta decides to take the Aerial out for a spin and in the process, she meets Eri via the data storm. I had thought that Suletta and Eri are half-sisters but as Eri reveals in this scene, the former is actually a clone of the latter. That does explain why Suletta never once mentions her father; turns out she never had one to begin with. The fact that Suletta is a clone puts some perspective on her relationship with Prospera. Like, I always knew Prospera is using Suletta but finding out that Suletta is a duplicate of Eri furthers the implication that Prospera doesn’t really care about Suletta. She’s just using her second daughter to bring back the one she actually cares about. That in turn makes Suletta’s loyalty to Prospera even more frustrating.
Eri also reveals that she can now reach a Permet Score of eight. Aside from being the highest level anyone’s achieved with a data storm, this apparently means that Eri is now strong enough to pilot the Aerial all by herself. And since Eri is self-sufficient, she no longer needs Suletta. Eri ejects her sister out of the Aerial and Prospera arrives to commandeer the Gundam for Miorine’s trip to Earth, leaving Suletta to return to Asticassia with yet another breakdown. Curiously, it seems that both Prospera and Eri believe Suletta deserves to live freely. This would then imply that Prospera was going to let Suletta go after she accomplished her goal, regardless if Miorine had demanded it or not. I suppose it’s at least nice to know Prospera cares enough to give Suletta her freedom but I can’t be too happy about it. The thing is, what Suletta wants is a family and the only family she has is pushing her away, as if she was never truly a part of them.
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