AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep15 – 8 Months

Hello everyone, I hope you had a happy Easter! I ate a lot of chocolate! 

I hope you had a happy Easter as well, Scott. Did you do anything special? And how was your week in general?

Oh, my week and weekend was pretty great. I did the silly thing of going to Seattle for a convention, Sakura-con, on Saturday and it was a very long but fun day trip after a pretty busy work week. So I kind of had the time of my life again with the kind of crowd that I missed being around.

Then Easter came around and I played trumpet at church for both services and then have some family over. The result of all of this was the day I am writing this was my crash day where I slept for most of it. I am not a very energetic person, so when I do energetic things it’s usually a lot and I have to recover from it. Maybe this is too much for an intro, but it was fun though. Would do it again. 

We are now at episode 2 of the second cour of AMAIm and I’s just going to say it, Ms. Misuzu is a big tease!

When the episode started and Amou just sort of slotted right back into group combat I thought to myself, oh, maybe everything is going to be fine. Mauve that sad face he was making at the end of the last episode was just nerves or he had something weird for lunch. It’s all good. 

Muscle memory is impressive because those three really did snap back into formation as if no time had passed at all.

Misuzu is just too powerful honestly. I think the twist around her was kind of fun and honestly pretty brave for what was revealed to us in this episode. 

Yeah, I agree about the three finding their combat and line up again.. I had that feeling that the three of them would connect together pretty easy in this conflict. Especially if the guys are like the ones they were facing in being so incompetent that they would be just easy for the three to fall into place like that. Like a training exercise.

But it quickly became apparent that Shiba was not alright at all. I know that they mentioned something about him being back to how he was when he just joined but I don’t remember him ever being so withdrawn. Do you?

I don’t ever remember him being withdrawn either, Irina. Would could say that he was pretty enthusiastic and naive, but he wanted to get along with everyone and understand everyone. He did seem changed a lot and very antisocial which is not very him at all. 

But Amou isn’t the only one that’s back, Misuzu is back as well and she brings both supplies and revelations. First, we find out that she’s actually ghost’s mother. I feel like that should have been a bigger deal than the episode made it out to be. She should be a huge asset!

Yeah, I agree. That reveal could have had a bit more pop and circumstance than “what, I’ve been working with the executive of who made these parts for that long?”. Makes me wonder if there was some retooling here with the focus of the story and how it went about. But I definitely think we shall see a lot come from this as time goes on. 

Then she says that she’s going to tell us all about what happened in the past 8 months, but she doesn’t tell us anything. Ok, so the excuse that it’s not her place to talk about Amou is fair enough. It’s a good excuse but then don’t tell us you’re going to catch us up to speed if you’re just going to pull the rug out from under us.

But then she doesn’t really tell us anything else either.

She came with a ton of supplies that levelled up everyone to a ridiculous degree. I was starting to feel bad for the other guys! But how did they manage to get their hands on all that and bring it back so easily? How?

I hope it’s not just a plot convenience thing to get the show forward a bit more with some simple mysteries. But if they were underground for that long and no one knew they were around, I suppose they have some stealth technology that we haven’t seen yet. I hope so at least.

Also she didn’t really tell us so much about what happened in between the two cours but rather what happened before the start of the series. About how Gai ended up laying around in the woods like that. Which is cool too but somehow I had already accepted that he just ended up there somehow and didn’t really need an explanation for it. KNow what do I mean?

I hope so. I really feel like that information didn’t really add anything to the episode at all. It would have been better if the Gai mystery was left alone and it was just Amou picking him up in the middle of the woods instead of making it much more complex than it was. It does set up some things that may play into the show later, but the timing felt off. 

I will say, that I found this episode to be quite bloody compared to the previous episode. I remember last week when they shot the traitor, I thought to myself, this is a bit ruthless for this show. But this week, we get an execution of a seemingly good guy character with blood and everything. I’m not sure we’ve seen blood before. It’s starting to get a bit edgy!

It has mostly been our characters fighting remotely controlled units and not killing manned units before or hints at something bad was going to happen, but this show is definitely going in a darker direction where optimism isn’t as prevalent anymore. Maybe there will be a focus on getting that optimism back again. What do you think?

And this brings us to that final scene. I was pretty shocked. I didn’t expect it and the animation was effective. The second instance of blood in the episode as well. I’m not sure what to make of it.

On the one hand, this is a war. And wars get bloody. It’s not like anyone lost their minds, they gave him a chance to escape and everything. But at one point, can you really risk your allies for the sake of mercy. On the other hand, this is a big departure of Shiba… Or is it? He was pretty dead set on destroying ghosts and at the time, I don’t think they knew whether there was a pilot in there or not. 

It really makes me extra curious to find out what happened in those 8 months. Even Gai is acting meek, that can’t be a good sign.

Well, I think that our three pilots and everyone else knew that Ghost was an AI unit because everyone wanted it. In that way, it felt like going hard against a robot was fine considering how crazy it was an generally how humane it was compared to fighting other units.

Maybe it is just me, but it seemed like Amou and his Kenbu were going for a more Berserk sort of look with how his mecha had a gigantic sword. And slashing through enemies the same way Guts would do. Very cool aesthetic for mecha, but not his usual style.

That final scene was crazy though. Simply directed, but pretty effective in showing how he has changed. Amou did give the enemy an out, but their cartoonish evil-ness was just a bit too much for him, so there is something there. Poor guy couldn’t even be a prisoner, so there is something to look forward to starting with the next episode!

Some pretty heavy stuff going on here.

Previous Episodes

• AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep1 – After the War
• AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDER EP2 – THE COUNTRY SIDE TERROR
• AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep3 – A knife to a gunfight
• AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDER EP 4 – THE COSTS OF WAR
• AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep5 – Homecoming
• AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDER EP 6 – AWAITING THE HERO
• AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep7 – Double Ghost
• AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDER EPISODE 8: IS THIS A GHIBLI FILM
• AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep9 – Family Ties
• AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDER EPISODE 10: A RETURN TO ARMS
• AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep11 – Day Trip
• AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDER EPISODE 12: THE GHOST OF AMAIM PRESENT
• AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep13 – An Actual Cliffhanger
• AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDERLINE EP 14: OMINOUS BEGINNING