I apologize for the lateness on this, as I haven’t been feeling too well. I’m going to keep this one brief with just an impressions segment.

Impressions

When I think of Gundam, the first thing that usually comes to mind is thrilling space battles, and episode 3 finally delivered what I’d been looking forward to. The appetizer battle, if you want to call it that, against the purple Gafran was a nice way of showing that a powerful beam rifle isn’t worth much if you can’t hit anything with it. This segment also confirmed what many had assumed from the previous episode, and Yurin does in fact have some kind of psychic powers. More interesting was that she was able to share them with Flit. This proves to be the only way that Flit was able to take out the purple Gafran, and even scratch the Zedas.

The mission to pull the colony core out was tense, to say the least. I had been assuming that because there were no named characters aboard the thing, that the mission wasn’t going to succeed, but thanks to Bruzar’s sacrifice, the people of the colony made out safe. Bruzar was one hell of a guy for taking that kind of damage and continuing to push forward despite it. He not only manually detached the core while injured after the Zedas destroyed the base, but then  hopped into a worker MS and suicide into debris blocking the core, allowing it to escape. His death will likely have a lasting impact on Flit, seeing as how he seemed to serve as a father figure to Flit after the loss of his mother. The speech of using power responsibly and the needs of the many outweighing those of a few are classic, yet important lessons.

The highlight had to most certainly be the Zedas. For one thing, it’s on a whole different level from the other UE in terms of speed, and it seemed to be the smartest of the bunch. The way it ran circles around the Gundam was pretty sweet, but the fact remains that it couldn’t even scratch the AGE-1. Interestingly enough, despite managing to land glancing blows on it thanks to Yurin’s guidance, the battle ended in a draw, with the Zedas retreating after the Gundam’s rifle ran out of energy. There have been a lot of odd things about the UE attack. As Millais pointed out last episode, they could have destroyed the colony much faster by targeting its energy plants, so there must have been some sort of ulterior motive to how they did things. Couple that with the Zedas not taking a shot at the Diva’s bridge when it had the chance, and it later allowing the Diva and Colony Core in tow to escape without a struggle and you’ve got some suspicious behavior.

When it was all said and done, Flit and Yurin parted ways aboard the Diva, but not before Yurin gave Flit a farewell gift, her ribbon, saying that they would meet again. They are seriously pushing this love triangle, and with Yurin spending the majority of the last two episodes on Flit’s lap, you could say that Emily has some work cut out for her. Granted, with her leaving the scene for a while, Emily will have some time to catch up. The other big reveal was at the end of the episode with the awakening of Woolf. This guy is an ace with his own custom Genoace, and from the preview, it seems like he and Flit will be having a duel to see who’s better suited to pilot the Gundam. My prediction? Flit’s going to learn the lesson that the better MS doesn’t necessarily guarantee victory. Also, it’ll be interesting to see if any new stuff comes out of the AGE Builder with the data gathered from these and the coming fights.

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-Run toward the new age.