Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans

Episode 10

This week's episode of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans became a meta experience. While our characters struggled with feelings of trust, I started feeling quite a bit of distrust for the show, which decided to throw out a ton of death flags for various characters. Letting people into your life, the Orphans learn, means trusting them not to screw it up. I'm learning that watching a Mari Okada show means to always be on your guard. That makes this episode both emotionally complex and deeply suspenseful.

For the orphans of Tekkadan, family means many different things. For some, Tekkadan is all they have, something Biscuit considers carefully when he insists that crew members' mail from actual family should be forwarded to individuals privately. Biscuit, Takaki, and as we learn later, Akihiro, all have blood relatives whose lives they hope to one day improve. Biscuit and Takaki feel responsible for their younger siblings, who trust that their older brothers will provide for them completely (if they survive). It's a lot of responsibility for these kids who aren't even 18 yet (13 in Takaki's case), and they clearly feel it. On the other hand, Kudelia, who is not an orphan, doesn't feel the least bit of trust toward her parents, and the feeling is mutual from them. Kudelia's no idiot, and she seems to realize that her father sold her out. She envies Atra, who has had a tough life, but it led her to comrades she can wholly trust. Mikazuki may not have played a big role in this episode, but the Mikazuki of Atra's memories sure did. The flashback to Mikazuki and Atra as bratty but conscientious kids was pretty adorable. Atra welcomes Kudelia to the family, to the point of being chill with being her sisterwife (!!!), which I suppose is its own kind of trust.

Speaking of trust issues, there's a new crew member on Tekkadan's ship, Merribit Stapleton. Orga feels mistrusted because Naze and Teiwaz feel the need to put an overseer on his ship, and he certainly doesn't trust Merribit. His first impulse is to view her with suspicion, even though she's been nothing but kind to him so far. Of course, Merribit doesn't quite regard Orga as an equal just yet, since she's only seen him in times of weakness, like when he's vomiting off a balcony. “Great ship, hard to believe it's run by children,” she says. “Can you please not treat us like children?” Orga responds, annoyed. This adversarial dynamic, combined with the way Orga and Eugene were just speaking about women—and their obviously scant experience with them—right before her introduction leads me to believe that Orga and Merribit will soon become an item, at least until one of them gets killed off.

Speaking of death flags, Akihiro has been acting a little differently, as Lafter notes. He's not fighting as recklessly as before. If he's changed, Akihiro thinks it's because he has a family now. Later, while on patrol with Takaki (because what could possibly go wrong?), we learn that Akihiro has trouble getting close to people because he's lost his brother. When pirates boarded the ship Akihiro and his brother lived and worked on (hey, isn't Tekkadan holding valuable cargo?), they were separated and haven't seen each other since. Even though it's not Akihiro's fault that it happened, his brother screaming his name as he gets dragged away clearly rests uneasily on Akihiro's mind even now. This scene is so painfully full of death flags that I watched to the end with white knuckles, and even now that the episode's over, I'm still wary of Okada's upcoming schemes. Overall, this anime continues to be a story rich in both meaning and dramatic tension.

Rating: A

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans is available streaming at Daisuki.net and Funimation.com.

Lauren writes about anime and journalism at Otaku Journalist.