[DreamSword]

Episode 3: The Infection Spreads

This episode feels like it's more concerned with setting up more things to come, rather than actually taking the next big step in terms of the story itself. Though it does still take us a slight step forward.

Gerd's' body has gone missing, and in his absence, emotions amongst the media, the XAT, and the public at large are running high. Not helped by how Jill(Gerd's' cheating ex) continues to spread lies about Gerd to the media. Many who hailed Gerd as a savior now see him as a Demon(iac).

I'm not too opposed to this scenario, as while it's not doing too too much in terms of the plot at large, it does help to further highlight alot of the other characters.

The most prominent example(atleast to me) being Malek, Amanda's' little brother. He has a small subplot about looking up to Gerd, ontop of him and Amanda apparently being immigrants to Anime Germany. His scenes also seem to imply that "Demoniac" in this universe is actually used not only as a term for the Amalgams, but also as a derogatory term against people from other countries.

It also seems to imply that it's common knowledge that people who become Amalgams gain the marks on their hands previously highlighted with Gerd, and later on in this episode with Matthew(the guy Jill was having an affair with).

I do like that it's also established that despite Hermann blatantly being a loose cannon, he's essentially given a slap on the wrist due to a combination of no one having gotten hurt outside of an Amalgam as well as the fact that the XAT is incredibly short staffed, giving the implication that everyone on the team is a sort of super elite that's hard to come by. There's also a very short line from the commander in charge, giving a blatant clue that there's something bigger going on in this entire thing.

The other big highlight is Joseph(Sasuke), whose character manages to already be inconsistent despite us barely knowing anything about him as of yet. At the end of last episode, he declared Gerd a lost cause, yet at the end of this one, despite interacting with no one and having not gained any more knowledge on Gerd, says that Gerd can still be saved. He's also given the title of "Blue" by the XAT, despite his color scheme being primarily Black, but whatever.

I also like how thanks to his powers as an Amalgam, he can modify his motorcycle on the fly. That's neat.

Overall there's... really not much I can say about this one. It has a couple nice character moments, but nothing major and it really does just feel like a general set-up episode. I think of all the characters so far, the ones I like most are Gerd and Hermann, but we'll see how things develop as we go along.