Tide-Line Blue - episode 5

"Attack - Offense"



This is more like it.

Teen misbehaves with Aoi and Keel decides that he wants to "help" Gould again. Unfortunately everything that Gould does is vaguely militaristic, which clashes with Keel's pacifistic nature. Keel's a bit slow. The way that things work out, and the realisation that Keel comes to, however, are well worthwhile.

Gould is finally becoming the interesting character that he needs to be for this series to work: his methods may seem brutal, but they are effective. The sheer disappointment that Keel feels when he realises that Gould was right all along is fairly powerful, and all the moreso due to the fact that this episode uses very little in the way of SD shots for once.
That said, Joze is not very sympathetic at all: her grey hair and yellow eyes make her far from trustworthy, almost implying that she is ruthlessly behind everything.

I didn't much like the Teen scenes because that smug bastard look he carries on his face annoys me to no end. This time the Gould side has enough information to make me start caring about them, but the Aoi side is still too mysterious: unexplained contraband communications systems and all sorts of new characters aren't getting me going.

This is good enough, but nowhere near gripping; the characterisation is slightly annoying in Keel, and Teen takes too many notes from the book of Joze rather than Gould.