Heavy Object

Episode 17

Finally, some supporting characters! I was beginning to wonder when we'd see all those previously unknown faces from the new opening sequence. They even come in a wide variety of flavors, including ditzy reporter, easygoing soldier dude, and no-nonsense military police girl. Enjoy them while you can, because the show doesn't seem to have any qualms about killing them off in order to move the story along.

This week's setup is pretty complex, even by Heavy Object's standards. The Baby Magnum crew is tasked with taking down a hostile country's mining operation, but the terrain in the area gives the enemy's Object a big advantage in a head-on fight. In order to level the playing field, Havia and a few of his fellow soldiers have to sneak in on foot and sabotage a radar station. The station is guarded by a group of UAVs, so Qwenthur and some of his fellow “students on deployment” must hack the flying drones to let Havia's group pass through unnoticed. If all of that goes as planned, Milinda is set to roll in with Baby Magnum and blow up everything in sight. The only problem is that one of the students in Qwenthur's group turns out to be a traitor and shoots his unsuspecting comrades in the back.

This is a return to the more complicated storylines that characterized Heavy Object's early plot arcs, and that means we've got plenty of exposition to slog through. The vast majority of the episode is dedicated to explaining the mission and developing the new characters. The thorough explanations are useful when it comes to making sense out of the multi-step operation, but no amount of playful banter between the characters can keep this from being a very dry viewing experience. It's perfectly tolerable for anyone who's managed to keep up with Heavy Object's technical lectures over the course of the season, but it's not exactly what I'd call compelling wartime drama.

While the stampede of new faces can be a lot to process, expanding the team has some interesting effects on the complexion of the series. Instead of trading witty complaints with one another, Qwenthur and Havia are dropped into separate groups that are more closely matched to their areas of expertise. Surrounding Havia with other professional soldiers creates a team with a more casual attitude towards danger; they all see taking risks as part of the job, so their gallows humor is a little calmer and more irreverent. Qwenthur's student team lacks any pretense of toughness or bravery, which gives him a chance to be more open about his motivations for choosing to study on a battlefield. We even get to see a different side of Frolaytia, as the presence of a TV reporter has her tripping over her normally eloquent litanies of threats and profanity. Even if we haven't really learned enough about the new characters to form much of an attachment to them, their presence is proving to be useful for developing the core cast.

Since the mission doesn't start going off the rails until the end of this episode, it's hard to guess where things will go from here. There are enough wild cards and moving parts that just about anything can happen, though I'm willing to bet that we'll see a few more casualties before all is said and done. As grim as it may sound, that's one of the advantages of having a larger cast: it's easier for someone to die without bringing the narrative to a screeching halt, and the higher possibility of someone biting the bullet helps crank up the dramatic tension. Because the mission relies on a lot of events going as planned, it's likely that we'll also see plenty of improvised heroics from the main characters.

A slow-moving start makes it difficult for this episode to stand on its own, but that methodical preparation could certainly pay off over the next couple weeks. Knowing my luck, I'll probably pick out a couple favorites from the new group of characters just in time for those people to get the axe. Remember, new kids: keep your heads down, don't tell anyone about the restaurant you're planning to open when you get home, and try not to stand next to any of the heroes when the bullets start flying.

Rating: B-

Heavy Object is currently streaming on Funimation.

Paul Jensen is a freelance writer and editor. You can follow more of his anime-related ramblings on Twitter.