On the plus side, this episode set up a couple of really interesting routes that the final episode could potentially take. On the minus side, the normally marquee action was a couple of settings downward on the smoothness slider.

It was really, really obvious this week that the villains in this episode made pretty horrible choices in funding their war technology; there’s not much use for drones that shoot harmless mood lighting. At least, that was how I interpreted the fact that Andy, whose only power is esp cancel, was able to charge down a corridor of over a hundred of them rapid-firing and not take a single hit. Even funnier was what happened after, as he stood tall, with feet planted on the ground, gunning them down for at least 10 seconds. Seriously, how does one not hit that? I could understand if Hyoubu gave him some sort of magic esp bullet shield, but nothing like that was ever discussed. I wouldn’t have noticed if the scene was as solid as those in previous episodes were, but they were just killing drones for 6 minutes; it felt repetitive and gave me opportunity to notice how logically flawed that part of the scene was.

Don’t try this at home. Because it won’t work.

Hilariously inept guards aside, this episode offered a final look and an appropriately ignoble death for Andy’s old boss. It was hard not to root against the guy who wondered why Andy turned out the way he did when he was shot and left for dead. Yes, that is unmistakably a reaction of an creature of pure evil, not a fairly understandable guy who cooperated to large extents with you and enabled you to get your hands on the magic dolphin brain and was shot for his trouble. He’s not in “also killed all your squad” Soumei-tier, but his all-too-poetic friendly fire death was good appetite whetting for the finale.

Maybe the rays only work on backstabbing assholes

The actual finale seems to be centered around a now-evil Yuugiri, or evil clones of her (very possible considering her test-tube baby status). Important tidbit: level 7 telepaths in ZKC have the ability to copy other nearby espers’ powers. The interesting part of this is that they’re finding Yuugiri in New York, where this new esper rights-advocate mayor Norman Green has just been elected. There are so many ways this could go, and I’m glad I don’t need to predict which one it will choose. The most interesting of the theories I’ve got so far (ZKC fanboy alert!) is that Norman Green could be pulling an Emperor Palpatine and will come out in support of the esper community after the attacks, only to reveal his true colors after reaching higher office and conduct the esper research we know causes Kaoru to side against normals in the upcoming war. Speculation (and the predictions I made at the end of episode 9) is all I’ve got right now.