| Kanzaki is pleased to learn that a proposal of his has been accepted by the Macwell Corporation. At Area 88, Shinjou has become popular with the pilots as he gladly takes their pictures and gives them prints. McCoy tips him off that Shin has nearly earned the $1.5 million in bounties needed to buy his way out of his enlistment contract--one more kill should do the trick. Shinjou confronts Shin (who he has genuinely come to like) and asks him if he intends to make an early return to Japan. Shinjou is about to admit the real reason he came to Area 88 when Shin is scrambled to intercept some enemy planes. Back in Japan, Ryoko finds her father strangely depressed. A story has gotten started that she is engaged to Kanzaki. McCoy offers to sell some secret information, that Shin wasn't interested in, to fellow pilot Greg. Meanwhile, Shin and Kitri engage three Mig-21s. despite being unusually nervous, Shin maneouvres onto a Mig's tail. As he pulls the trigger, he says to himself "with this it's over!"... |
| I like the way this series is coming to a climax. Shin suffered a crushing setback in the first of the three OVAs, but in this remake it happens here in the next-to-last episode. Plus, he gets a double whammy with a bit of bad news regarding Ryoko. Things aren't going all that well for Shinjou, either--I was skeptical early on if he would be a serious character (having been created entirely for this TV series), but it looks like he is after all. The OVAs had an ambiguous, love-it-or-hate-it conclusion, but I'd be willing to bet the way things will wrap up here will be more clearly spelled out, and more viscerally pleasing--i.e., the good guys kick ass. Kanzaki wound up in jail at the end of the OVAs, and I read he was killed dogfighting Shin in the manga, so who's to say what will happen to him here? I'm eager to move on to the final episode. |
