Cinnamon Ass - Reborn Like a Zombie

Sousei no Aquarion Episode 7 - The Knight of the Crimson Rose

Silvia attempts to get a Greek book on gems of power out of the library for Sirius, but gets pissed off when Reika won't let her - of course, Reika ends up giving it to him herself. An argument breaks out between Silvia, Sirius and Apollo yet AGAIN over who the real Wing of the Sun is, Apollo calling Sirius on his prejudice against Apollo's less than upper class background - as Silvia runs away, she flashes back to her past life as Seria and the moment when Apollonius saved her from certain death at Toma's hands - Seria arises from her unconscious state to discover a crystal like the one from the ED sequence lying before her as the only remnant of Apollonius.

After Sirius notes that the Shadow Angels have formed a pentagon of power nodes, he flies in to investigate with Silvia and Apollo but they are all caught in a Shadow Angel trap that attacks their minds based on their fears - Sirius is scared of disappointing his family (he is a prince of the Kingdom of Alicia, and has been told all his life he is the Wing of the Sun - but obviously that's not true!), Silvia of abandonment by Sirius, and Apollo of being worthless (and losing Baron, obviously). As they start to attack each other, Reika snaps Sirius out of it by reaching him telepathically, and he manages to destroy the power generator (which turns out to be inspired by a rose Sirius left at the scene of a battle), but the team's confidence is severely shaken.

As was I, oddly, and I'm not sure why. I actually found most of the second half of the episode surprisingly effective; I wasn't expecting quite this level of drama from Aquarion, with very little spazzy humour at all (aside from Kurt and Chloe's vibrating sideburns and Apollo's arachnid antics) and some rather good performances from our three leads in particular. We had some interesting hints dropped here about the past, too, which I continue to find particularly intriguing for some reason - I don't think there will be an amazingly epic backstory or anything, but I really like the character designs for Seria and Apollonius so I'm always happy to see more of them.

Bizarrely enough, I completely forgot who Pierre was during this episode, so that when I looked at the next episode preview on the official website I momentarily couldn't remember who he was (and why does it look like he's going to rape Jun?). Perhaps that sums up my opinion of him...