So, our first episode past the pilot begins.
The team is putting the Liger through it's paces, assessing what it can do now that' it's actually got a pilot that can control it. Presumably there's no Jane's Fight Zoids or similar publication. Of course, the real purpose behind this is to inform the view of what the liger can do. Which is "Go Fast", and precious little else. The liger can reach 200 mph with it's jet boosters engaged, but to reach that speed it gives up everything else (save for, presumably, durability). Most distressingly, it is very lightly armed, something that draws sharp criticism from the rest of the team.
Oddly, the team repeatedly say that it is
unarmed, which is obviously wrong, as it has the laser claws. I originally thought they meant it lacks ranged weapons, but they seem fairly insistent it has no weapons throughout the episode, and zoids armed with melee weapons are far from unknown, so it wouldn't make sense to call it unarmed purely because it lacks range.
Leon is the only one that sees something in the Liger, and if anything he has the opposite problem, talking up the design's "unlimited protentional" that Bit will be able to to draw upon as he and the liger bond. Between that comment and the hair, I'm starting to think that Leon knows he's in an anime.
The narrative then jumps to a trio of mooks discussing their current opponent mid match....that sounds like the kind of thing you should probably plan out before you get into a giant robot fight. She's nicknamed the Red Comet, and she's never lost a battle (It's not clear if this meant as "never lost,
ever", or something more reasonable like "never lost since she started fighting professional" or something that implies she has at least lost at some point in her career). Their attempt to hype her up to the audience via dialog is interrupted when she starts hyping herself up via action, quickly sniping out all three of thier mechs from extreme range:
The mooks were all driving something called Heldigunner, some sort of iguana based design though iguana's aren't noted for rapidly burrowing through the sand like this, so I'm not sure where that comes from. One by one, they're picked off, and then we're introduced to the warrior the mooks were talking about, the
real hero of the show, Naomi Fluegel!
Seriously, she has a halo of light around her head in her
first establishing shot (which doesn't look quite like this, it's a slow pan from her boots up, I just stitched several screenshots together to get a fuller picture).
And no, I don't know why she dresses like that, but it's apparently her day to day outfit as well, as she's still wearing it in the next scene when she's talking to some new pilots she's recruited to form a team:
(You can they're new to zoid fighting, because they dress like normal people)
BTW, that's new pilots as in "haven't actually piloted a zoid before". I'm again that's meaning in a zoid battle rather than literally never having been in the cockpit), but she reassures them that it's not going to be an issue and that they'll be fine.
Jumping back to the main team, they've been assigned Naomi and her two newbies as their next opponent, and it's established that she the undefeated champion in zoid duels (which I'm guessing is what the guy before meant when he says she's never lost a battle), and that it's odd that she's fight in a team. It's also made very obvious that the two girls she was talking to are just there as warm bodies to fill out the roster and that Naomi is planning on doing must of the fighting herself.....which actually makes her better in my eyes, because even thought her two teammates are just there as slot fillers, she's still being kind, supportive, and encouraging toward them despite having no reason to. Naomi get's a point.
Oddly, Naomi has set the rules for the upcoming battle, specifying that each fighter gets just six rounds of ammunition to fight with, further stacking the deck toward her, since other than Bit, she's the only person in the show that can consistently one-shot opposing zoids. An ammo load that low would presumably mean that many zoids with less powerful weapons would simply not be able to compete, and it's very strange that Naomi would be allowed to dictate the battle's terms like that (at least in a formal, organized, Zoid Battle Commission sponsored event, which this is).
We also learn that during previous engagements with Naomi, no one's ever gotten within a 1000 yards of her, which is a bit odd since contemporary tank guns can shoot 3 times that distance with ease, it's strange that zoid weapons are so comparatively inaccurate.
Given all this, it's no surprise that the team is not enthused about their chances, save for Bit, who thinks they have a shoot. I'm not sure if this is supposed to due to Bit's can do attitude and refusal to admit defeat, or Bit's total lack of experience leaving him unable to assess the odds, though I'm leaning toward the former. Bit's plan is, obviously, to just get close enough to Naomi that she can be engaged in close range combat. The professor agrees with this, with one change....they're going to send Jamie out in his Pteras aerial zoid and attack from above. Two people are not happy with this plan: Bit, for being sidelined, and Jamie, for being frontlined.
This is Jamie, we haven't really met him yet. Thus far, he's basically been sitting on the bridge of the Hover Cargo, watching the monitor and generally providing exposition for the audience. He's also a pilot....in theory, but given that he's the worst pilot on the team, he rarely deploys, and he only becomes a better pilot in an indirect way. You'll see.
In this case, he's right to be dubious about this plan, because it is a terrible plan, boiling down to "Let's hope that an experienced zoid pilot that's probably the best shot in the entire series has never faced an aerial zoid and is unable to hit a large, subsonic target (the Pteras is capable of supersonic flight. Jamie is not capable of flying it to that speed, however) flying around in the air with no cover". This is one of the worst plans the heroes have ever devised, possibly the worst plan overall.
Luckily, Bit has a plan. He hits up a contact of his from his junk trader days, and buys some Heldigunner parts for the Liger, which his contact has lucky just gotten ahold of. Given we just saw 3 heldigunners get blown to bits by Naomi earlier that day, and given that it's apparently quite common for dealers to scavenge zoids parts from wrecked ones, it's entirely possible that the parts Bit's buying are only available because of Naomi's actions.
Speaking of which, back at the....bar, I guess? Where Naomi and her team are meeting, trouble has arrived, in the form of some unsavory characters hitting on Naomi's new teammates, but oddly not Naomi herself.....I guess these guys just have terrible taste in women.
(I don't think this guy's a pilot, but his fashion since is a bit borderline, so maybe).
Naomi immediately comes to her teammate's defense, earning herself another morality point...and also possibly a beating, as while she's getting into a staredown with the goons, her teammates, in a remarkably poor show of loyalty, start looking for the exit.
In a further show of just how good a person she is, Naomi is incredibly bad at trash talk, as her main put down of the two is sarcastically commenting that "men are here sure are gentlemen" in a way that's clearly supposed to be a put down....but I don't think these two are the types that think of themselves as gentlemen. She also calls the first one "Baldylocks", even though he clearly just shaves his head.
And we've hit the image limit for this post.
