AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline ep23

Oh wait, I’m supposed to say something before that part. Something funny and all. I would but I’m just a little tired and all because… Mondays!

Aside from the slightly tired part, I’m doing pretty well. I just got a slew of new manga and now I can’t wait to go to bed every evening so I can spend 3 hours reading and be tired the next day. I have good healthy plans!

How is your Monday, Scott?

Oh hi, Irina
Oh, new manga sounds exciting! I only have a couple days a week where I spent a lot of time reading manga and I don’t know if I can push myself to read more than that at the moment. My addiction that I am trying lessen is writing blog posts…even when I announced a reduction….

My Monda was pretty good. Had a good work day, watched some good anime, played some good music that I went home early today from because we ended early. Not a lot to complain about. My night owl tendences are still countering my day to day sort of schedule…

AniList is not telling me how many episodes of AMAIM are left but it feels like we’re going into the climax, doesn’t it. Everything is slowly lining up.

I was afraid that they were going to spend the entire episode being bummed out about Eiji. And it started out that way. Now I like Eiji and I understand that he was the second in command so a pretty important figure for the rebels but still, they have lost comrades before.

I was going to write this paragraph about how you can’t dwell on loss in times of war but then… They didn’t. I have to say that for my money, this episode did a really good job of balancing out the pain and loss the kids felt with the acceptance and renewal necessary. Sure it was a very speeded-up grieving process but I like it that way, I don’t think AMAIM has the time to really go into a big depressive arc at this point and I know for a fact that Scott isn’t that interested in mourning Eiji.

OH wow, called out. Thanks Irina!

I kid, I kid. Yeah, I can’t say that I am a fan of people being sad about Eiji because he was barely a character in the show perhaps. I don’t want to be one of those people who says that characters in a series can’t be sad over people dying that I don’t care about because this is fiction and that happens all the time. I just wish that there was more of a connection to us so we could feel it too.

I’m glad that a lot of soft character moments and realizations came from the short amount of time that they did mourn for Eiji. We got to see a lot of the insight from Shion and the others in how that death affected they and how they feel alien to being angry and wanting revenge for Eiji’s death. Shion is such a softy.

As far as the rebel side goes, things are going almost suspiciously well. The tragedy has renewed the alliance. The double-cross they suffered has backed them into a corner and what is expected to be a really tough fight, which is arguably not a good thing. But these dire straights seemed to have given everyone a renewed sense of purpose. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them all so optimistic. Cautiously optimistic for sure, but still.

In fact, everyone is in such good spirits that even I am starting to wonder if they didn’t have something to do with the assassination attempt after all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a pretty simple girl and I like happy things. I’m not complaining that AMAIM decided to go a lighter route here.

How about you Scott, do you things they are taking things too lightly? Or do you think the show is lulling us into a false sense of security and they are all going to get slaughtered in the next few weeks?

Honestly Irina, I feel like there is a false sense of security going into the episode. I mean, they were able to calculate their success against the North America Coalition too so the alliance knows that they are on the edge of losing the next fight that hasn’t happened yet. Even with Mizusu putting in the A.I. into each of the robots that are going to be fighting possibly on an equal stance, the best they could do is fight perhaps.

I think that is just what is happening. Everyone is calm when facing the superior force that all they can do is just batten down the hatches and hope they survive maybe. Perhaps. I don’t have any complete answers because it is so strange. I’ve seen a lot of things where people usually stress out over the coming battle, but it never really ends up helping or doing things for them either.

Right now, I’m just trying t figure out Brad’s game. And it seems I’m not the only one. He has his own secret service after him. I wonder why though. I don’t think we’ve seen any hints previously that someone other than pinkie was getting suspicious of Brad. Could it be German?

And then we learn that Brad had all of Ghost’s backup data deleted so only the one installed in his AMAIM remains. Why though? Is he planning to run away with it? I mean he can’t very well stay once people figure out what he did so obviously he’s planning to run away with it but…why? What is he disagreeing with? Did he figure out German’s plan or the truth behind the assassination attempt? There were some indications that he at least suspected an inside job. But even if he found out everything, would he really just betray the army and his nation like that? It seems like he skipped a few steps.

Hey, if it means a happy ending for the good guys I’m all for it. I just really want to know what Brad’s up to. My curiosity has been piqued.

Yeah, the Brad stuff is going more and more wild all the time. It’s like the escalation behind what he is doing behind the scenes is going to get him eventually. I really wish that we actually saw something other than just assuming that Brad Waytt is doing stuff in the background because it is clear he is plotting something. Especially since it feel slike Brad really is taking on the world by himself. How can a person be tracked and accused by their own secret service and still fight for his country? It’s really weird.

There really are just so many strange bits of German being tracked down and plotting a lot of things too. I honestly think there are too many things in the background tracking down different parties and details that just makes it a bit more messy then AMAIM should be to me. I don’t know…

The episode ended in a rather silly sequence. I do appreciate the mirroring and back and forth between the speeches. In fact, this episode of AMAIM in particular had scenes of the opposing parties mirroring each other a lot and I like that trick. It’s blatant cinematic language but I also think it’s effective.

However, the speeches themselves were a little over the top. The American side was openly aggressive and militant while the New Japanese Republic was giving a speech about friendship and collaboration. I’m not sure I would buy any military in the world giving a speech entirely about friendship and collaboration to its troops right before a decisive battle. And let’s face it, historically, Japan has been just as hawkish as the United States. The contrast between the two was a bit too much for me and it went from a little sappy to outright funny very quickly.

Am I being unfair?

I have to admit that I was picturing the President’s Speech from Independence day when it came to the end of this episode. That some ridiculous sort of energy from the North Americas self deciding they are the liberators of Japan to the Japanese being who are being there. It really is that classic sort of “Die, die die” to “We are here just to make friends.”. That dichotomy of Japan being perfect lambs and the horrifying U.S. occupation is still going on here.

I’m kind of nervous about the big fight. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Usually, I can tell when a show just won’t kill off its darlings but with AMAIM, I think there might be a possibility. What do you think Scott?

I’m pretty nervous too. I think our three AMAIm pilots are going to be ok. Probably Brad too. I really have no idea about anyone else. I guess there is nothing but to see what happens next week.