Suisei no Gargantia – Episode 10

Whalesquids, teenage angst, pirates, treasures, photon canons, booze, mechanic girls. This episode has it all, but not what it takes to be good enough.

Killing squids makes you go crazy

Alright, I guess good things don’t last forever. This week on Gargantia we get a slow episode where nothing happens until the very end. For some reason they decided to turn Pinion into an asshole, or maybe he was already like this before, who knows. Because of that, he looks like some sort of bad guy for most of the episode, going around boasting that he has the strongest fleet (which is probably true, let’s be real), something they shouldn’t have done. Pinion was a nice character, actually somewhat likeable and one of the few to get a bit of development. In any case, this episode doesn’t really have a primary focus, but Ledo’s self-reflection is what stands out the most, as it gets a bit annoying at times. Turns out that after finding out what whalesquid truly are, he becomes depressed and doesn’t know what to do, and asking Chamber for help only makes him worse. Honestly, his 180º change in mindset feels very sudden and out-of-place. The only explanation to this is that Amy somehow managed to warm his heart or something.

The brightest smile

Despite all of this, the episode doesn’t really amount to anything; you’d think they would build up on the whalesquid story some more while at the same time just advancing the plot a little bit at a steady rate, but nope. It’s sad, really, because this episode has some really nice visuals and it can even compete with the first ones in terms of quality; it’s not Gargantia (the ship) levels of pretty scenery, but it’s alright. This is partially due to the fact that these episodes have had a darker tone than usual, and also because the ship just plainly sucks. The fog being everywhere doesn’t exactly help either!

Surprising ending

Overall, not the best episode but definitely not the worst. Something else definitely could have been done but the final scene is a great indicator that stuff is going to happen in the next episode. Come on, Gargantia, don’t let us down again!

3/5