Mecha-Ude Ep 7 Review: Unlocked Memory

After resolving Aki’s issue, we refocus out attention back to the star – or rather – the arm of the show: Alma. After Amaryllis’ words last episode, it has unlocked the dormant memory sleeping deep within Alma. And once again, he shows the way he deal with such traumatic event: by running away…again. And Hikaru has to chase after him…again, after receiving some “encouragement” from Aki.

We start the episode with a brief flashback to Alma’s past with Yakumo, which was pretty depressing. But we follow it up with a pretty funny meet-up with the Kagami goons. At this moment, those henchmen dudes and gals are basically just cannon fodder for comic relief now, since they can’t hold a candle against Aki’s Sinis and Dex, not to mention Hikaru’s insanely powerful Alma. I guess they add some interesting flavor to the series, but ultimately, they are mostly side piece until a boss Mecha-Ude show up. And it seems to be that fedora guy from Kagami Group or Jun’s brother himself.

Once again, Mecha-Ude utilizes 3D in the fight scene, which still looks pretty good. And after the poster fight, Alma suddenly snapped and revealed that he had gotten his memory back, and that he doesn’t want to involve Hikaru in these conflicts anymore, and so, he ran away from “home”. It baffled many, but mostly Hikaru, because he has been under the impression that Alma needed him to get his memory back, and even after, Alma will still stay with him. This sent Hikaru into a brooding streak once again.

Hikaru then visit Fist at the ARMS headquarter, and he revealed the truth about Alma’s past with Yakumo, as well as the Mecha-Ude’s basic background. This somehow remind me of Promare with the living flames from another world. Yakumo Kagami seems to be a very optimistic and charismatic person, a very shounen mc type. His brother – Tsukihito – is the brain to Yakumo’s brawns. When trying to awaken the Ordella – basically the All-spark of Mecha-Udes – things went wrong (because of course it did). The Ordella turned into the Hand from Smash Bros and decimated everybody. But Yakumo take up Alma and fought against its defense system.

But if it’s just that then Mecha-Ude would be totally standard. Thankfully they didn’t. They gave Jun a moment to shine too after Hikaru saved Aki. Jun stepped up and actually ripped Amaryllis from Fubuki’s body, which was pretty badass with the Ouroboros arm tug-of-war thing. So many badass moments this episode accompanied by Kohta Yamamoto’s soundtrack. Furthermore, they are using 3D this episode to “rotate” the camera during combat scenes. The mix between 2D character model and 3D environment really give another layer to the animation. Before this ep, we only got normal 2D combat whereas this episode we get a super important fight with incredibly high production quality. Definitely the highlight of the season.

Aki and Hikaru’s relationship also develop quite nicely as well. Dude’s a total dork and stutter all the time but his purehearted attitude really touch Aki’s. I’m sure the audience is basically Shirayama right now – observing from afar and gushing about them. The episode also setup so much for the next arc as Amaryllis dropped a hint about Alma’s original master and the “thing” Alma did. We also saw the Kagami Group setting up for their big bad machine. The after credit showing a shadowy figure picking up Amaryllis. I reckon it’s Jun’s big brother unless there’s another character at play. The series’ pacing is very decent right now even though it’s not very fast but each episode advance the plot in a meaningful way, and we can always count on the Sawano x Kohta beatdrop for the action.

=Aaron=
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