Ezelcant enters the battlefield.

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Following the successful rescue of Kio from the Vagan, episode thirty-nine picks up right were we left off in episode thirty-eight with Kio and Asemu squaring off against the newest Vagan mobile suit, the Gundam Legilis. While not being a terribly original concept among mobile suits, the design of the Legilis comes off as one of the more striking ones in recent memory with its blend of traditional Gundam designs mixed in with the more organic and demonoid look of the Vagan mobile suits. The Gundam quickly proves to be the most powerful Gundam built to date thanks to its blend of technologies from Asuno family’s Gundam and the bit of EXA-DB that the Vagan control. The episode wastes no time in displaying its power as it is able to easily dismiss the Bisidian customized Shaldoll Rogue and Jackedge mobile suits while keeping both the Darkhound and AGE-3 Orbital in check. 

All the while, the episode finally explores in detail Ezelcant’s Eden plan and his background story. It’s been alluded to in the previous episodes that Ezelcant sees a resemblance of his deceased son, Romy, in Kio and it turns out that he may just genuinely believe that Kio is the reincarnation of him. Despite knowing that Kio in his Gundam are the enemies of both the Vagan and his plan to create Eden, he still tries his very hardest to sway Kio to return to him and understand the full extent of his plans and support him. As for the Eden plan itself, it’s not surprising that it would entail for humanity to basically start over by selecting those best genetically suited to live in his vision of a peaceful and tranquil society. This kind of plan is practically what Durandal of Gundam SEED Destiny envisioned, but coupled with what is essentially a genocide. So now on both sides of the war, we have Flit and Ezelcant who wish to end this war with what amounts to genocide to ensure peace. For a series aimed at children, this is a bit of a disturbing fact to behold.

This leaves Kio — and audiences for that matter — stuck between a rock and a hard place as neither side’s solution to end the war comes off as favourable to him. No matter who he sides with in this war, Kio has now come to the understanding that things aren’t black and white anymore, and he’ll probably come up with his own path to take to end this war.

As positive as I’ve sounded with this episode, I want to at least point out that I was disappointed with the execution of this episode. I felt it was poorly structured with battles that felt more frivolous and poor in concept. This series’ version of bits is still laughable and the AGE-3 just took way too easy a beating in this episode. Still, the conflict Kio now finds himself allows for this episode to offer more than mundane action. 

GO Rating: 3/5

But at what cost?