Combatants Will Be Dispatched!

Episode 6

“In which our 'villain' has his big damned hero moment.”

So here we are at the end of the first arc of the series. A lot of the episode is the “big action climax” as the demon army overruns the city. However, it is also big on character development—especially when it comes to Snow and Six.

As Rose and Grimm fight toe-to-toe with the generals of the demon army, Snow realizes how insanely outclassed she is. She's worked hard her whole life—prided herself on how strong she has become—and now realizes that it doesn't really matter when facing down the most powerful the other side has to offer. But more than that, Snow finally admits to herself what she has gained since meeting Six and Alice: true friends. Grimm and Rose would die for Snow—fight an unwinnable battle just to give her the chance to escape.

While Snow is a selfish, greedy individual due to her childhood of poverty, she understands the value of what she now has and is willing to do anything to keep it. So she rushes to the one man she knows that might be able to save Rose and Grimm: Six. She is willing to throw away her pride in a very real sense if that will give him what he needs to save her friends. She doesn't know about the evil point system and how it explains many of Six's actions but she agrees to let Six do horrible things to her if it will help him save them. Unfortunately, while both a noble sentiment and a high point for her character growth, it also causes a bit of a practical problem.

As we learned last episode, evil points are not awarded if consent is given. Six has to do something Snow wouldn't allow to get the points he needs—so he yanks down her panties in front of her boss, the Princess. And while the shock, shame, and anger overwhelm her in the moment—when the battle is over she's still willing to give herself to him. He did save Rose and Grimm after all. If nothing else, Snow is a woman who pays her debts.

The other big character development this episode is centered around Six—namely that the way people view him and how he actually is are two different things. Snow and the Princess see him as some kind of twisted tactical genius—out-thinking the demons instead of facing them head-on. When they ask for his help, what they expect is some kind of cunning plan—but not anything more than that. Of course, Six, due to his own laziness and aversion to getting his hands dirty has played into this persona—but that's not the truth of who he is.

Six is the longest-living henchman in Kisaragi. You don't survive as a front-line field agent in a war against superheroes by being weak. There's a reason that the leaders of the organization want to have him join their ranks beyond his loyalty to those he cares about—it's that he is the man who gets things done. It's not Freezing Astaroth, Flaming Belial, or Black Lilith who's been out there killing the heroes of Earth—it's Combat Agent 6.

Properly equipped, he takes down a squad of elite enemies led by one of the five strongest demons in existence in under a minute. They can't even fight back against him. He so demoralizes the one demon he leaves alive, Heine, that she agrees to a ceasefire on the spot and retreats. It's no wonder that the Princess doesn't care about his suspicious background and evil acts. He's someone you want on your side and she is willing to bend over backward to keep him around.

...Though, given his new deficit in evil points, I wonder how long it will be until she regrets that decision.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• It's telling that Six's one virtue, his loyalty to those he cares for, can make even a villain like him become a hero.

• I love that Rose is a proud Kisaragi member... without understanding what Kisaragi is.

• Grimm has figured out the loophole in her own powers: if she targets something the enemy has but she does not, even if the curse rebounds to her, she'll suffer no ill effects.

• We had a good little character moment with Alice this week as well. She was designed and built solely to support Six—to help him stay alive in an unknown world. But he doesn't see her as a tool. He sees her as an equal—his partner in crime.

• I wonder, did Six not kill Heine purely for strategic purposes or is it that he has a problem killing women?

• Good on Six for making it clear that, while he finds Snow super attractive physically, he does not want a relationship with her.

Combatants Will Be Dispatched! is currently streaming on Funimation.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.