Let’s get back to the fascinating Simoun! With the show’s episode nine peak having represented its first major turning point, we’ve now finally arrived into much sturdier territory, where the melancholy and dramatic ambiguity of the first episodes has been replaced by a much more propulsive focus on Chor Tempest actually regaining their throne. Of course, Simoun is far from a straightforward action platform, and the ambiguity of Simulacrum society, along with its thorny class dynamics, lent a welcome moral complexity to last episode’s conflict between Mamiina and Rea.

In my mind, the first act of this show ended up serving as a somewhat awkward demonstration of the fact that a show needs to make you care about its cast before it can accomplish anything else. Simoun’s concepts have always been interesting, but they haven’t always been grounded in relatable emotional stakes tied to characters we’re actually invested in. With the team now having pulled together and pretty much every episode celebrating one of its internal relationships, Simoun has finally arrived at the emotional grounding necessary to drive its very compelling themes home. Whether this episode continues to bolster the show’s relationship dynamics or returns to interrogating the assumptions of its world, I’m excited to see whatever’s next!

Episode 11

Opening with a nice pencil-and-watercolor background of the mountainous north, swiftly marred by our big CG clumsy ship. It sure did take anime a long damn time to arrive at Land of the Lustrous – early CG has many crimes to answer for

Ah right, they’re stuck in these cramped dorms now. It’s a graceful bit of storytelling to have the team’s fall from grace force them into this shared living situation. The show’s first act was able to show us the decadence priestesses are accustomed to, but those decadent single rooms aren’t really useful when you’re trying to pull an ensemble cast together as a team. Here, the team is naturally stuck together all throughout the day, enabling group drama at any time

Aaeru drinking from a tiny tea cup is very good

Actually, this whole procession of shots is nice. I like these quick cuts offering little insights into what all the team members do during their time off

Rea’s Nisioisin-style Character Growth Haircut is a very smart design shift. Her braids naturally evoked a sense of prim, upper-class distance, whereas this short cut makes her feel much more humble and approachable, regardless of her behavior

This haircut also just looks really good, actually. You rarely see this sort of fluffed-up hair in modern anime, it’s kind of an ‘80s look

And of course Mamiina comes to the rescue here, solidifying her renewed friendship with Rea. Hurray for character development

The team descends somewhere out in the woods. What, is this a training camp episode?

“United Front”

A squadron of roughly dressed men board the ship, and marvel at how normal it all looks. “What did you expect, a secret garden?” An extraordinarily charged term, often used to describe the boarding school-set and often yuri-focused melodramas which Simoun consistently riffs on. Its use here is very smart as well, naturally contrasting the “heightened melodrama about girls framed as ethereal priestesses” and “blunt, bloody war drama” perceptions that provoke so much of Simoun’s conflicts

And once again we get to see the priestesses as common people do, these strange, beautiful women who seem so apart from ordinary life

Para naturally moves to place herself between Neviril and these unfamiliar men, a great little character acting detail

Of course, Para ends up escalating the situation with her brashness, whereas Yun defuses things. The cast are definitely coming into their own as a collection of unique and very differently talented people

The script really hammers in the brutish “maleness” of these intruders, having them refer to each other as thugs and apes, and having their leader refer to Para as “sweet cheeks”

The leader expresses doubt as to the priestesses’ efficacy as a fighting force, saying he’s never seen any combat squad like them before. I guess that means we’re once again collaborating with a group outside of Simulacrum, since I can’t imagine Simulacrum soldiers would mock priestesses like that

Looks like Dominura set up this combined operation

While some of the girls fret over these rough men “defiling” their squad, Aaeru responds that the only problem is they’re making the ship crowded. Meanwhile, Floe is off flirting her heart out. You get ‘em, Floe

“A common soldier like me isn’t even supposed to talk to a sybilla!” “Stop making things so complicated.” Huh, I guess these are Simulacrum soldiers after all. Anyway, the neat thing about this Floe conversation is how naturally it subverts the assumptions of this setup – everyone else is worried that these rough-edged soldiers will pursue the sybilla, but it’s actually Floe who’s being the pushy one drawing this soldier out of his comfort zone

We actually witness an operation planning meeting for the first time. It looks like we may have finally established Simoun’s “conflict of the week” platform, a mere eleven episodes in

The simoun themselves will be used to smuggle soldiers into town. Neviril balks at this, but I really like how this plan establishes Dominura as someone who’s already abandoned any pretense about the glorious nature of the sybilla, and is perfectly willing to use them in whatever way is most tactically useful

Morinas gets the unglamorous job of illustrating the default sybilla reaction to this plan, a swift jump from “but simouns are the chariots of the gods!” to “but putting those soldier transports on them makes them look so uncool”

Aw, Floe and soldier boy actually get along very well

Para confronts Floe about how her behavior is “demeaning the position of the sybillae.” I like how Floe is essentially right in her argument (“your thinking is totally rigid and arbitrary”) but unconvincing in her delivery (“maybe I’ll just stop being a sybilla to spite you!”), whereas Para is very polite and respectful, but also embodying the oppressive conservativism of her society. It’s a very naturally unproductive conversation that nicely reflects each of these characters

Ooh, looks like we’re really going somewhere with this. Soldier boy Mastif pushes Floe away at last, and starts reflecting on how “if I didn’t have my faith, I couldn’t fight.” He might need priestesses to exist as an unapproachable symbol more than he wants to maintain this relationship with Floe

“Tomorrow’s operation is to take back the town in which I was born.” God, there’s such a great complexity here. Like with her Para conversation, the relative justice of the things they’re saying is so nebulous. It’s not fair to Floe that Mastif wants to see her as a symbol, but it’s also not fair of Floe to demand Mastif treat this society and its wars as lightly as she does. The stakes are far higher for Mastif, and there’s a clear justice in his choices, even if those choices are predicated on assumptions taught to him by an unjust society. The conflict here is messy in a very satisfying way

“I’ll protect you.” She makes this promise so lightly. The war has never been real for Floe, but I get the feeling that’s about to change

“In order to avoid damage to the town, Ri Majoons are forbidden barring special orders.” Welp, now I’m pretty sure they’ll have to destroy his town at the very least, though I’m guessing he’s just dead

I’m really liking these mountainous backgrounds, though of course the horrific composite job between them and the CG craft continues to hurt

A nice bit of light banter between Aaeru and Neviril before they realize it’s an ambush. Moments like this are important, and I’m hoping we get more offhand scenes building up the chemistry between these two

The church’s winged frontispiece is an excellent motif here – contrasting austere beauty and flight against the ugle smoke in the background

Floe and Kaimu each demonstrate Tempest’s naivety in their own way – Floe by ignoring the fight to look for Mastif, and Kaimu by freezing at the thought of shooting actual people

“Leave our priestesses out of this!” Sometimes the hypocritical paradox of the priestesses’ nature works in their favor! “How dare you besmirch the dignity of our high-powered laser bombers”

This episode has been really good for impressing upon us the truly terrifying nature of the Ri Majoon. These “beautiful dances” are here treated like the last-resort superweapons that they are

So in order to protect Mastif, Floe ultimately does have to destroy his beautiful town

“The Simoun are demons!” And there goes Mastif’s faith

And Done

That was a great episode! Full of neat little character interactions, very smart in its reflections on Simulacrum society, and in general just an excellent little vignette for Floe’s first focus episode. I’ve always really liked how Floe’s pettiness and general bad attitude acted to counterbalance the self-righteousness of the other priestesses, and I felt this episode did a great job of further establishing her humanity without betraying her core qualities. And her relationship with Mastif, while a little archetypal, also successfully brought the war home in a way Simoun has rarely managed up until now. Frankly, this feels like it’d actually work as a pretty natural episode three or four, if Simoun hadn’t spent so long with the team on ice – this was urgent and exciting and rich, and did its best to give nice moments to pretty much every member of this cast. It looks like Simoun has fully arrived.

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