Gleipnir, Episode 10: Smoke Gets in My Eyes

The leader of the powerful group of Gatherers catches Shuuichi’s team. He offers their lives in exchange for a reprehensible request.

Episode 10 – “Beautiful Flower”

Hmm.

Gleipnir gave us an episode of standing around and arguing about stuff. These are not my favorite kinds of stories. There weren’t even any surprising character or plot revelations. More like, all the talking confirmed things from the last episode. Gorilla Guy runs his group of Gatherers like a street gang, complete with a ruthless set of ethics which places loyalty to the group above all. Sayaka’s hair choker does work, and it does choke. I wanted to see garbage person Ikeuchi’s head pop off like in Sayaka’s graphic explanation of her power, but this is Team Choker, not Team Chopper. And Clair is a crazy, cruel bitch with creative thinking skills. Gleipnir has proven that last part about Clair many times already.

There were a couple of things I wish were clearer. First, did Madoka the Gorilla Guy take the bullet shot from Shuuichi’s gun, or did he just move to reposition the gun’s aim quicker than Clair and Shuuichi expected? In the last Gleipnir episode, we saw Gorilla Guy’s face steaming after he took Youta’s punch, but we saw no such aftermath scene besides Shuuichi’s smoking gun.

The second thing may never get a resolution. Sudo the Green Titan is dead and now Ikeuchi is dead. What was their relationship after Sudo caught Ikeuchi doing reconnaissance in the forest? It should be important, because it’s how Clair maneuvered into joining Team Choker in the first place. She blackmailed Ikeuchi into an introduction, and then nothing ever came of it, except for Gleipnir to keep showing we need to hate this creepy voyeur. His death justified all the hate, but why didn’t his prior actions trigger the choker until now? I can only guess that the betrayal requisite had to involve revealing a secret, like how Isao’s power worked. I’m not confident we’ll get an answer before the end of the season.

Heh.

Gorilla Guy still has his missing tooth in gorilla form. No regeneration powers for him? Did Gorilla Guy just take a bullet? What did Gleipnir show here? Yoink. No gun for you! Shuuichi took it back when he reverted. That’s good to know. Gorilla Guy’s name is Madoka. The rest of his crew arrived. Things don’t look good for Team Choker.

Madoka wants them to join his team, but first they’ll have to pick somebody to die for how badly they hurt the Centipede Guy, or he’ll kill all of them. Gorilla Guy is speaking Clair’s language. Madoka likes her attitude, of course, plus other things. We’ve seen a lot of Clair’s, uh, “backstory” already. Quite the ultimatum, but it also makes this Gleipnir episode a character driven plot with lots of dialogue. And yelling from garbage person Ikeuchi.

Ho. Clair is going to provoke something out of Ikeuchi. It’s about time. He thinks he’s going to die either by sacrifice or by annihilation. Or some other reason? Like betraying Sayaka?

Speaking of garbage persons, Gleipnir shows us Madoka’s sad sack existence as a recycling reclamation clerk before he picked up his first Star Coin. He built up a criminal gang after that. Miku the Invisible Girl wants to try assassination. Eh, sounds like a bad idea. Clair rightly warns her that they may have people with sensing powers that could catch her. More “backstory” from Clair as she talks to Isao. Where did she keep that bag of flowers? Oleander? Ohohoho! Clair is going to get Isao to make a ton of poison! There’s that trash Ikeuchi spying again. How’s he going to protect Chihiro by ratting on Clair’s plan? Unless he’s going to rat to Madoka the Gorilla Guy? Do it and die already!

Clair thinks she still needs to be the bad cop to Shuuichi’s good cop for their team. If Clair got nanomachine powers and fused with Shuuichi like Chihiro did, their roles would reverse. Probably. Who knows yet? She says a good thing here, which is the central theme of Gleipnir — special powers aren’t scary; whoever uses them are the scary ones. There’s a monster in every one of us, whether we have Star Coin nanomachines inside us or not. Oh, Shuuichi. Hugging a girl to let you kill other people in self-defense is not that cool. Still, you get to hug Clair in a swimsuit. Big Ups, man. Also, he wouldn’t be doing this if he remembered how much he loved Elena the older sister. Okay, NTR is the real central theme of Gleipnir.

Oh crap. Clair and Shuuichi set fire to all those oleander bushes. This is chemical warfare! There it is. Ikeuchi betrays Team Choker. Gleipnir finally pulled the trigger on him. Chihiro never thought about you anyway, even as a friend. Good girls know who the creepy garbage persons are. The betrayal trigger must have been revealing a teammate’s power. Madoka wants to kill Team Choker, but he needs to save his gang first. That’s part of his ruthless ethics. Revenge comes later.

Oh good. Gleipnir showed us Sayaka’s “backstory” too. Clair gambled that Madoka would save his gang from the poisonous fire before coming after Team Choker’s escape. Do they not notice, or care, that Ikeuchi is missing? Clair keeps a lot of things in that swimsuit. A baggie of oleander. A Star Coin. What else? If all that stuff was supposed to be in Shuuichi’s backpack, I haven’t seen him with it all episode.

Oh? Elena needs to talk to BBB for some reason. That’s a nice way to bring Gleipnir back to the larger story.

Gleipnir streams weekly on Funimation.