The Third Episode 3 - A Desert Town
Honoka parts from Iks on arrival in Emporium Town, much to Joey’s annoyance (mmmm, generic unrequited love). While in town, she meets up with various people, including the half-cyborg Kevin who tells her to watch out for Blue Breakers (the mecha agents of The Third) on the move. She heads to a local hospital to get her arm checked out by a standard perverted doctor who announces over the tannoy that she’s there for a breast enlargement operation; he, of course, guesses she’s had a run in with Jouganki, and that a guy’s helped her arm heal faster much to her embarrassment; he also tells her to watch out for The Third, and that they’re after someone in particular (obviously Iks). While he sends her off to be careful, he also gets his cyborg nurse to provide her with contraceptives just in case (…)
Honoka spends the rest of the day running errands to help the townsfolk; she gets a rest with Cindy, who runs a grocery stall, but informs her about a man being taken from his family on account of his holding a Technos Taboo, forgotten ancient skills(?) which The Third strictly regulate. While Honoka gets upset about being able to do nothing, she goes wandering around and bumps into Iks doing cat’s cradles for little kids; she drags Iks off to a local bar to keep him vaguely hidden, where Iks expresses gratitude for how much fun he’s been having with her. However, their conversation is interrupted when The Third’s robot soldiers burst in looking for Iks; Honoka is about to defend him with a glowing blue fist of righteousness, but Kevin and friends start a massive barroom brawl instead, giving her time to escape.
Honoka and Iks make it back to Boggie, where they are apart to part once more, until Iks asks if he can help Honoka with her work; unsurprisingly, she accepts, and off they go adventuring!
This was quite a lot more enjoyable than the last episode; The Third is still fairly unoriginal but this episode was nicely executed (even with the breast jokes). It’s even more obvious that Honoka is also one of the Third (especially as they give it away in the next episode preview), but we still don’t know what’s up with Iks which at least gives us something of a serial plot to work on. I still think they could probably do with a few more regular characters helping Honoka out (other than Boggie!) as Iks mostly seems to sit around benevolently and do a bit of healing now and again, but it’s still very early days yet for the series; I’m not too hopeful on this front as there’s only one character in the ED that we haven’t seen yet, but who knows?
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