Sousei no Aquarion Episode 19 - An Innocent Trick
After a poolside romp (seriously, Pierre, wearing Speedos is NOT a flattering look) the next Aquarion outing is to a mysterious glowing tower - when the Vector Machines reach it, all their systems go dead and all contact with DEAVA is lost - even worse, when Sirius teleports in to replace Reika, neither one of them appears again, so Sirius, Reika, Silvia and Apollo are unaccounted for.
The Vector Machines crashland in a strange, warped world, where cute kittens transform into hideous monsters and everyone looks very, very odd - the only constant is the glowing tower once more. Each of them is subjected to a different torment - the ugliness of the situation is more than enough for Sirius, whilst Reika’s bad luck continually haunts her, Silvia is confronted by shadows calling her both an angel and a traitor, and Apollo has conversations with each of his DEAVA comrades about Apollonius’ traitorous defection and love of Serian (which I think should be spelt Celiane if we follow the 2nd OST’s naming scheme, but I can’t be bothered to change it now). Most of all, though, Apollo is haunted by the form of one of the annoying brats from the first episode, nicknamed Chibiko, who is a mouthpiece for Futaba - using one of Apollonius’ feathers, he’s controlling the situation with the tower etc. (there’s a vaguely interesting conversation between him and Otoha about why there are no other Shadow Angel children).
Anyway, Apollo and the others eventually make their way towards the tower - Apollo on foot, the others in their Vector Machines. Whilst Apollo deals with yet another Chibiko apparition asking him who he really is, while Toma appears in a Cherubim and starts whooping Sirius’ psychological ass by playing on his insecurities about the feathers in his arm (remember back in episode 13 or so when the plot looked like it was going to kick in?). The world goes uber-loopy for a while, but then Apollo decides that he doesn’t give a damn and that he, unsurprisingly, is himself - the world goes back to normal, everyone’s more secure in their personal identities, and Cherubim buttock is verily kicked.
On the one hand, this episode is an artistic treat if you like weird-ass animation - of course, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the series much (even within the bounds of Aquarion’s fluctuating character designs) but the whole “weird world” thing was fantastically well done and really quite a cool idea, especially the fully cel-animated Aquarion fight (imagine if they’d done that for EVERY episode!).
On the other, it was almost entirely pointless - it wasn’t quite filler, because it seemed to tie in with the main plot, but nothing progressed and nothing really very much happened. I still liked it and all, but there was something just not quite substantial enough about it, considering how late we are into the series. I’m sure things will pick up from here, though, the next episode preview looks great!
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