Let's Watch Southern Cross! Part 5
After an excursion into the world of fake dancing and the end of Monday Night Football, we're ready to put this boxset to sleep. This is it, the final four episodes of Super Dimensional Calvary Southern Cross. Who will win? Will humans defend Gloire, or will the Zor retake it? Or can they come to some peaceful understanding? Grab your bags, it's on!
12:25: To avoid having Musica interrogated as a POW, Jeanne schemes to sneak her past Lana once they return to the surface. At first, it appeared like she was disguised as a wounded soldier they were going to take to the hospital, but when Lana investigates... it's Charles, acting like a goof over a sprained ankle. That hides the true disguise, "Private Jack," but the mention of the name makes Lana suspicious, since he was killed at Aluce Base.
12:28: Musica may be adjusting to life on Gloire, but things aren't so rosy back in space, where her identicals have been segregated from society along with others who have lost part of their trinity.
12:30: The flowers Jeanne discovered earlier are indeed the source of the bioenergy needed to stabilize the Zor, as the high command learns that Musica's case is not isolated among their people.
12:36: Seifriet is confronted by Andrejz, after the former gets all wangsty on him. Seifriet, now confronted by his recovered memories, isn't sure how to reconcile his past with his present and would have rather died in the Zor carrier. Andrejz, angered by his selfishness, gives him a good whack and tells him he should be happy to be alive. And all the commotion reminds Musica how her choice has affected others, and she runs off, leaving Bowie to chase after her. So it's just another normal day for Squad 15, eh?
12:39: Seifriet calls Lana and tips her off that Musica is a Zor... and also claims she is a spy. Snap and a half. Knowing Lana, this will end badly.
12:41: Musica sings a song about Gloire and the flowers of light, and Jeanne connects the dots with the ruins they found on their picnic a few episodes ago.
12:44: Lana arrives to make the arrest, but Jeanne stalls long enough for Bowie and Musica to escape from the barracks. Leaning against the wall, Seifriet thinks that things are starting to get interesting. So he went from being a sympathetic character to being a jerk in one episode flat. Well done.
12:48: Seifriet is still brooding about still being alive, and although Andrejz tries to defend him for some reason, he's become completely unlikable in my book. It makes no sense for him to turn Musica in, nor does any of his reasoning really justify it. Our in the rain, Bowie steals a bike so he and Musica can cover more ground faster.
12:53: Squad 15 is ordered to search for Bowie and Musica, and Lana follows on a bike. The Zor plan an all-out attack on Gloire to retake it before the light flowers bloom, and not to be outdone, Claude Leon plans his own all-out attack. So far, we've met most of the conditions for the bad end. Somehow Bowie and Musica are going to save the day, but yeah... things look grim.
12:56: Rolf sounds like he's ready to go out in a blaze of glory.
12:58: Jeanne knows that they went to the ruins, so she tries to shake Lana and get her squad there, too. But overlooking them all from a plateau is Jerkfriet, who will no doubt be heading for the ruins, too.
1:00: Bowie and Musica find he flowers in full bloom, and the golden spores make Bowie dizzy as he enters the cave. Musica identifies it as the same energy that is used to stabilize the Zor.
1:05: Lana and Jerkfriet arrive at the cave and see all the flowers, and while Lana tries to arrest Musica, Jerkfriet calls into despair when he realizes that the flowers were the reason he was turned into a biohuman. Bowie deciphers the lyrics of Musica's song and deduces that the flowers are the source of life for the Zor and the reason why they're trying to reclaim Gloire.
1:07: Rolf takes command of the Aluce forces and launches his attack. The final battle has begun! I don't like Gloire's chances.
1:12: Lana is unable to make the arrest after all, thanks to Bowie's resolve and a quick save from Jerkfriet, who at this point is just doing stuff for no reason. In space, the Zor are actually having a tough time in the battle due to a lack of bioenergy, which is affecting both their personnel and their technology.
1:14: Claude Leon holds off on launching his forces from the surface, and has to turn his attention to Zor units which have broken through. Rolf is on his own, and Leon chooses that time to inform him that Bowie is AWOL with a Zor girl.
1:18: The Zor give Claude Leon 48 hours to completely quit the planet or they face annihilation. Leon tries to negotiate but the Zor are unwilling to listen, since they need the energy of the light flowers. In space, Rolf's forces are also taking a major beating, but he stays at his post and prepares the self-destruct... only to be carried to an escape pod by Marie and Lt. Brown.
1:22: Jerkfriet uses the flowers as a bargaining chip with the Zor, claiming they'll destroy them if they attack. He claims that it's for Musica's sake, since if the military police are busy here, they can't arrest her. I think he's just out for petty revenge against his former masters and needs a convenience excuse.
1:25: Rolf, Marie, and Brown are captured by the Zor high command and instructed to recommend a surrender. But the three of them deduce that the Zor are after the light flowers, which the landing party reports are under Jerkfriet's control. Rolf instead recommends that the Zor coexist with the humans on Gloire, a solution which is emphatically rejected.
1:28: Jeanne figures out that Jerkfriet is indeed out for his own revenge and says he's the one actually suffering the most out of all of them. Feh, I still think he's been kind of a jerk. But the Zor leadership offers a trade -- they'll return Rolf, Marie, and Brown if they'll abandon the ruins and return Musica. Jerkfriet accepts the conditions, so now I'm really confused. What's his plan?!
1:33: Of course, the exchange was set up as a trap, and a firefight breaks out once they all reach the Zor ship. Rolf sacrifices himself to save Bowie and instructs him and Musica to help the rest of their races coexist with each other. Damn it, Jerkfriet, this is your fault, you know.
1:34: Speaking of Jerkfriet, he went and got his red bioroid again, so he can chase after the Zor leadership. One episode left. Let's see how this all shakes out.
1:38: Jeanne runs off after Jerkfriet, while Musica and Bowie persuede the rest of the squad to try and rescue as many Zor as they can, including Musica's identicals. Given that the Zor leadership is ready to commit multiple acts of genocide -- or humans to free up Gloire for their own use, and of their own people to ensure stability of the race -- that doesn't sound like a bad idea.
1:42: Jeanne arrives in time to save Jerkfriet from a room full of biopsychers, and after he fails to get her to go back, accepts her help as they plunge forward.
1:47: Jerkfriet arrives at high command and challenges the trinity of leaders, shooting one in the chest as he tries to protect a specimen of the light flower. The Zor have a symbiotic relationship with the plant -- in exchange for protection by the Zor, the Zor are granted eternal life. All this time, the flowers on their spaceships have not been able to bloom, hence the bioenergy crisis. Jeanne grabs the flower as it flies out of the wounded Zor's hands... and it blooms. Hooooo boy.
1:50: Meanwhile, Bowie and the others find Musica's identicals as well as other expendable Zor. They quickly lead them to a hanger so they can escape the ship.
1:54: The escape runs into a dead end and a gunfight, and several civilian Zor are killed by their own. Charles arrives in his mech to aid the escape.
1:55: The cities of Gloire are all but destroyed at this point, and the mothership starts to absorb the flower's energy by splitting the ruins open from space. Well, shoot, if they could have just done that from the beginning... in any case, the ship is on a collision course for Central City and the Zor leadership is finally killed completely by Jerkfriet.
1:57: Jerkfriet kisses Jeanne goodbye and shoves her in an escape pod. He stays behind to destroy the carrier and prevent it from landing on the city. Which is, as I just said, basically destroyed already. What's one more big thing falling on top of it at this point, right?
1:59: And the pieces of the destroyed Zor carrier fall on the ruins and destroy all the plants. The fighting stops, the ending theme plays and... show over. Wait, show over? So... Pyrrhic victory for the humans, then. Right.
Well, there you have it. All of Southern Cross in a day. Final thoughts:
* Seifriet near the end... ugh. So, yes he was out for revenge, but he sure picked the roundabout way to do it that involves everyone and gets people killed. Way to go.
* Not enough Marie. Not. Enough. Marie.
* The ending was very abrupt. Both sides plodded along throughout the show with some fairly conservative planning, but then all of a sudden, let's have a decisive final battle! Why not? A lot of loose ends are tied up, but my conjecture is that the death of the Zor leadership and the destruction of the plant ruins means the end of the Zor as we know them, and that ultimately they phase into humanity as Gloire rebuilds.
* Both sides deployed new model mechs about halfway through the show. Neither really performed any better than the stuff they replaced.
* Squad 15 spent too much time on the sidelines doing uninteresting stuff, which is weird considering that through the first couple episodes they were pretty much the only team capable of harming the Zor. This makes me sad, because the main characters in that squad all had quirks that played well with each other, and their interactions were fun to watch.
* Bowie got a lot of attention throughout the show, and especially after hooking up with Musica. But their relationship ultimately had a pretty small impact in the grand scheme of things, and instead that just served as a little added complexity to the regular action.
* I'll never understand why Jeanne became a soldier in the first place, but she did gain some maturity by the end of the show.
* Oh, right, when Jeanne grabbed the flower in the last episode, it started this strange mental hallucination of her as a Zor trinity, and there was a field of flowers, and skulls, and... yeah, that was never explained, and then the ship exploded. The hell?
* Did I mention this show needed more Marie?
The ending rubbed me the wrong way, but just about every show I watch anymore does that, so I guess I'm not going to complain too much. But it's sort of like a less good version of Macross with less sexier mechs.
12:25: To avoid having Musica interrogated as a POW, Jeanne schemes to sneak her past Lana once they return to the surface. At first, it appeared like she was disguised as a wounded soldier they were going to take to the hospital, but when Lana investigates... it's Charles, acting like a goof over a sprained ankle. That hides the true disguise, "Private Jack," but the mention of the name makes Lana suspicious, since he was killed at Aluce Base.
12:28: Musica may be adjusting to life on Gloire, but things aren't so rosy back in space, where her identicals have been segregated from society along with others who have lost part of their trinity.
12:30: The flowers Jeanne discovered earlier are indeed the source of the bioenergy needed to stabilize the Zor, as the high command learns that Musica's case is not isolated among their people.
12:36: Seifriet is confronted by Andrejz, after the former gets all wangsty on him. Seifriet, now confronted by his recovered memories, isn't sure how to reconcile his past with his present and would have rather died in the Zor carrier. Andrejz, angered by his selfishness, gives him a good whack and tells him he should be happy to be alive. And all the commotion reminds Musica how her choice has affected others, and she runs off, leaving Bowie to chase after her. So it's just another normal day for Squad 15, eh?
12:39: Seifriet calls Lana and tips her off that Musica is a Zor... and also claims she is a spy. Snap and a half. Knowing Lana, this will end badly.
12:41: Musica sings a song about Gloire and the flowers of light, and Jeanne connects the dots with the ruins they found on their picnic a few episodes ago.
12:44: Lana arrives to make the arrest, but Jeanne stalls long enough for Bowie and Musica to escape from the barracks. Leaning against the wall, Seifriet thinks that things are starting to get interesting. So he went from being a sympathetic character to being a jerk in one episode flat. Well done.
12:48: Seifriet is still brooding about still being alive, and although Andrejz tries to defend him for some reason, he's become completely unlikable in my book. It makes no sense for him to turn Musica in, nor does any of his reasoning really justify it. Our in the rain, Bowie steals a bike so he and Musica can cover more ground faster.
12:53: Squad 15 is ordered to search for Bowie and Musica, and Lana follows on a bike. The Zor plan an all-out attack on Gloire to retake it before the light flowers bloom, and not to be outdone, Claude Leon plans his own all-out attack. So far, we've met most of the conditions for the bad end. Somehow Bowie and Musica are going to save the day, but yeah... things look grim.
12:56: Rolf sounds like he's ready to go out in a blaze of glory.
12:58: Jeanne knows that they went to the ruins, so she tries to shake Lana and get her squad there, too. But overlooking them all from a plateau is Jerkfriet, who will no doubt be heading for the ruins, too.
1:00: Bowie and Musica find he flowers in full bloom, and the golden spores make Bowie dizzy as he enters the cave. Musica identifies it as the same energy that is used to stabilize the Zor.
1:05: Lana and Jerkfriet arrive at the cave and see all the flowers, and while Lana tries to arrest Musica, Jerkfriet calls into despair when he realizes that the flowers were the reason he was turned into a biohuman. Bowie deciphers the lyrics of Musica's song and deduces that the flowers are the source of life for the Zor and the reason why they're trying to reclaim Gloire.
1:07: Rolf takes command of the Aluce forces and launches his attack. The final battle has begun! I don't like Gloire's chances.
1:12: Lana is unable to make the arrest after all, thanks to Bowie's resolve and a quick save from Jerkfriet, who at this point is just doing stuff for no reason. In space, the Zor are actually having a tough time in the battle due to a lack of bioenergy, which is affecting both their personnel and their technology.
1:14: Claude Leon holds off on launching his forces from the surface, and has to turn his attention to Zor units which have broken through. Rolf is on his own, and Leon chooses that time to inform him that Bowie is AWOL with a Zor girl.
1:18: The Zor give Claude Leon 48 hours to completely quit the planet or they face annihilation. Leon tries to negotiate but the Zor are unwilling to listen, since they need the energy of the light flowers. In space, Rolf's forces are also taking a major beating, but he stays at his post and prepares the self-destruct... only to be carried to an escape pod by Marie and Lt. Brown.
1:22: Jerkfriet uses the flowers as a bargaining chip with the Zor, claiming they'll destroy them if they attack. He claims that it's for Musica's sake, since if the military police are busy here, they can't arrest her. I think he's just out for petty revenge against his former masters and needs a convenience excuse.
1:25: Rolf, Marie, and Brown are captured by the Zor high command and instructed to recommend a surrender. But the three of them deduce that the Zor are after the light flowers, which the landing party reports are under Jerkfriet's control. Rolf instead recommends that the Zor coexist with the humans on Gloire, a solution which is emphatically rejected.
1:28: Jeanne figures out that Jerkfriet is indeed out for his own revenge and says he's the one actually suffering the most out of all of them. Feh, I still think he's been kind of a jerk. But the Zor leadership offers a trade -- they'll return Rolf, Marie, and Brown if they'll abandon the ruins and return Musica. Jerkfriet accepts the conditions, so now I'm really confused. What's his plan?!
1:33: Of course, the exchange was set up as a trap, and a firefight breaks out once they all reach the Zor ship. Rolf sacrifices himself to save Bowie and instructs him and Musica to help the rest of their races coexist with each other. Damn it, Jerkfriet, this is your fault, you know.
1:34: Speaking of Jerkfriet, he went and got his red bioroid again, so he can chase after the Zor leadership. One episode left. Let's see how this all shakes out.
1:38: Jeanne runs off after Jerkfriet, while Musica and Bowie persuede the rest of the squad to try and rescue as many Zor as they can, including Musica's identicals. Given that the Zor leadership is ready to commit multiple acts of genocide -- or humans to free up Gloire for their own use, and of their own people to ensure stability of the race -- that doesn't sound like a bad idea.
1:42: Jeanne arrives in time to save Jerkfriet from a room full of biopsychers, and after he fails to get her to go back, accepts her help as they plunge forward.
1:47: Jerkfriet arrives at high command and challenges the trinity of leaders, shooting one in the chest as he tries to protect a specimen of the light flower. The Zor have a symbiotic relationship with the plant -- in exchange for protection by the Zor, the Zor are granted eternal life. All this time, the flowers on their spaceships have not been able to bloom, hence the bioenergy crisis. Jeanne grabs the flower as it flies out of the wounded Zor's hands... and it blooms. Hooooo boy.
1:50: Meanwhile, Bowie and the others find Musica's identicals as well as other expendable Zor. They quickly lead them to a hanger so they can escape the ship.
1:54: The escape runs into a dead end and a gunfight, and several civilian Zor are killed by their own. Charles arrives in his mech to aid the escape.
1:55: The cities of Gloire are all but destroyed at this point, and the mothership starts to absorb the flower's energy by splitting the ruins open from space. Well, shoot, if they could have just done that from the beginning... in any case, the ship is on a collision course for Central City and the Zor leadership is finally killed completely by Jerkfriet.
1:57: Jerkfriet kisses Jeanne goodbye and shoves her in an escape pod. He stays behind to destroy the carrier and prevent it from landing on the city. Which is, as I just said, basically destroyed already. What's one more big thing falling on top of it at this point, right?
1:59: And the pieces of the destroyed Zor carrier fall on the ruins and destroy all the plants. The fighting stops, the ending theme plays and... show over. Wait, show over? So... Pyrrhic victory for the humans, then. Right.
Well, there you have it. All of Southern Cross in a day. Final thoughts:
* Seifriet near the end... ugh. So, yes he was out for revenge, but he sure picked the roundabout way to do it that involves everyone and gets people killed. Way to go.
* Not enough Marie. Not. Enough. Marie.
* The ending was very abrupt. Both sides plodded along throughout the show with some fairly conservative planning, but then all of a sudden, let's have a decisive final battle! Why not? A lot of loose ends are tied up, but my conjecture is that the death of the Zor leadership and the destruction of the plant ruins means the end of the Zor as we know them, and that ultimately they phase into humanity as Gloire rebuilds.
* Both sides deployed new model mechs about halfway through the show. Neither really performed any better than the stuff they replaced.
* Squad 15 spent too much time on the sidelines doing uninteresting stuff, which is weird considering that through the first couple episodes they were pretty much the only team capable of harming the Zor. This makes me sad, because the main characters in that squad all had quirks that played well with each other, and their interactions were fun to watch.
* Bowie got a lot of attention throughout the show, and especially after hooking up with Musica. But their relationship ultimately had a pretty small impact in the grand scheme of things, and instead that just served as a little added complexity to the regular action.
* I'll never understand why Jeanne became a soldier in the first place, but she did gain some maturity by the end of the show.
* Oh, right, when Jeanne grabbed the flower in the last episode, it started this strange mental hallucination of her as a Zor trinity, and there was a field of flowers, and skulls, and... yeah, that was never explained, and then the ship exploded. The hell?
* Did I mention this show needed more Marie?
The ending rubbed me the wrong way, but just about every show I watch anymore does that, so I guess I'm not going to complain too much. But it's sort of like a less good version of Macross with less sexier mechs.