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<\/a>Status quo for Orb<\/em> this week, pretty much. Better than the first few episodes after the timeskip, but I\u2019m still quite detached from the events happening on-screen. Things aren\u2019t as ridiculous as they were, which is good. But they\u2019re quite conventional, which I don\u2019t think is a great look for this series. To fall back on that To Your Eternity<\/em> parallel, both are series with a lot of creative ambition penned by mangaka who were very \u2013 very<\/em> \u2013 young at the time. I suspect it\u2019s much easier for a mangaka barely out of high school to close the deal with a conventional battle shounen than something like Fumetsu<\/em> or Chi Chikyuu<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/a>The episode here was pretty much conventional suspense drama, not much intellectual discourse this time, but well-executed. Schmidt and his merry band manage to slip through their encounter on the highway with a forged travel pass and some quick thinking from Draka. Once they arrive at the printing hideout they meet up with the rest of the Heretic Liberation Front<\/a>. A chap named Bolko<\/a> (is he a sergeant?)seems more or less in charge of them, and he\u2019s naturally suspicious of who this new girl is. \u201cA collaborator\u201d, Schmidt assures him, and after the incident on the highway he has reason to stand by her.<\/p>\n<\/a>We got a bit more speech to camera here with Draka appointing herself the one to keep Jolenta\u2019s heart alive, as she\u2019s decided that Schmidt is only interested in the practicalities. She\u2019s someone who says or does whatever the plot requires so this is very much in-character, so to speak. Lightning-fast changes of heart have been demanded of her on multiple occasions already. But the major plot driver here is Frei betraying the others, which is what the plot needed to move onto the next stage. I did like the facedown with Schmidt, which was quite tense and worked well as a dramatic device.<\/p>\n<\/a>Given that Frei has killed the horses<\/a> before he spilled his guts to Schmidt, options for the operation are strictly limited. Mind you, that itself was pretty far-fetched \u2013 even if Frei wasn\u2019t openly working with the Church he could have slipped away whenever he wanted rather than choosing to gloat. The explanation is that he wanted to give his comrades the chance to repent and confess, which patently flies in the face of the fact that he just tried to kill Schmidt, but whatever. Plot comes first now, we knew that already.<\/p>\n