CROSS ANGE Rondo of Angel and Dragon

Episode 12

Cross Ange spends almost the entirety of the penultimate episode of its first season (it has already been confirmed to be getting a second) delving into all sorts of revelations about what is really going on in the world, including partial or complete explanations of various flashback snippets that we have seen over the course of the series. While some of those revelations were more or less expected, others are big eye-openers which put all sorts of new twists on what the series has been doing so far.

As Arzenal is picking up the pieces from the assault of the previous episode, Ange confronts Jill about the truth that Jill promised to tell her about what was really going on. This being the fan service show that it is, naturally that truth has to be revealed as part of a bath. (In an amusing twist, Ange expresses the viewers' skepticism about the need to do it that way. Jill's justification is a classic: “Secrets should be shared when completely exposed.”) Jill then reveals that the current state of the world was artificially set up to eliminate warlike elements, and that Norma are the unintended consequence of that set-up, a throwback to a time before humanity was reengineered to use Mana. Because they were an aberration that the creator of the current world could not manage to engineer out of humanity, he took the classic “unite the people by turning them all against an ostracized subgroup” approach to handling Norma, hence the current state of affairs. She also reveals that there is a remaining small faction of humanity left over from the pre-reengineering days, a faction which also does not have Mana powers and is violently opposed to the way the world has been reconstructed. That faction has made contact with Arzenal in the past and coordinated efforts with them, hence explaining the existence of Tusk. Their grand coup was obtaining Villkiss, the prototype for all of the other Para-Mails, but no one could pilot it until Jill came along – and she could only do it because she was a former princess herself.

Up until that last point truths along these lines had been more or less expected. The revelation that Jill (as Alektra) was born a princess, and thus had her own special heirloom ring, had never even been hinted at before, though. That explains a lot of things, including why Jill never took the ring away from Ange, had Tusk prioritize getting it back in episode 10, and seemed to be both antagonizing Ange and giving her special treatment: because she wanted to see if Ange could complete the job of unlocking Villkiss that she had failed to do, and the key was her not having Ange's song. It also explains why she doesn't pilot Villkiss anymore (she lost her ring when she lost her arm) and why Tusk treats her so respectfully. An even bigger – and equally unexpected – revelation follows, though, when Vivian discovers that she has transformed into a small Dragon and that Ange's song is able to reverse the transformation. That, of course, means that the Norma have been fighting transformed humans all along, and that, paired with the Villkiss's status, partly explains why the apparent princess of the Dragons was in human form last episode. The episode ends before that can be delved into further, which means that the whole truth behind how the Dragons fit into things will likely have to wait for the second season, as the next episode is suggested to be going in a different direction that will leave no time for such speculations.

The other big thing that the episode does is to reveal who the last character shown in the closer is: Embryo, the God-like person (a former scientist, apparently) who created the current world, who talks like he's done it more than once before. He has that very cultured look and way about him which practically screams “true main villain.” And it looks like his urging is setting up a direct human/Norma military conflict for the first time.

So, yeah, a lot of plot and world developments get dumped out here, but the gradual way that the details are revealed, and the way that they are mixed with other scenes, keeps the revelations from feeling too much like a brazen info dump. The revelations raise all kinds of new questions and points of interest, but just as importantly, Ange's talk with Jill in the bath shows that Ange has finally completed growing into her own as a character. She's no longer going to be naïve or at the mercy of manipulators and is fiercely determined to set her own path – whether that means working with the resistance movement Libertus or not. It's a far cry from where she started and a wholly welcome evolution for a character who, for a long time, was not very likable. Wherever the plot goes next, it will be with a stronger female lead than the series has previously had.

Rating: B

CROSS ANGE Rondo of Angel and Dragon is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.