Fractale - Episode 9

Despite the Granitz family's element of Lost Millennium's rescue operation for Clain and Phryne almost being ruined by a rival faction, both individuals (and Nessa to boot) manage to make it safely out of the now-wrecked Fractale laboratory and back to the relative safety of their protectors/kidnappers (depending on how you look at it).

The loss of Phryne in particular is felt keenly within Fractale itself, leading to them playing a trump card in the current game of cat and mouse with Lost Millennium - a system-wide broadcast informing all and sundry that this "terrorist" organisation are nothing but bad news seeking to destroy their way of life, and that as a result they should be hunted down and killed as soon as possible.  Needless to say, this makes life rather awkward for the outfit, leading them to desert their current hide-out before finding that their own home villages have been raided by Fractale goons.

In light of these events, it's up to Lost Millennium to decide what to do next, with a sense of despair eventually giving way to a determination to fight, leading to the group's council eventually deciding upon an all-out attack on Fractale's main installation.  Of course, the intent is to carry this out without the group's own trump cards in view, so the plan is to attack while Phryne and Nessa are left under Clain's protection as far away as possible.  So much for that idea however, with Phryne deciding to make her own way back into Fractale to try and persuade her father of his folly, in turn forcing Clain to go after her while taking Nessa with him.

All in all, this chain of events makes for a pretty typical episode of Fractale, albeit one that points out the original of the show's title and the system that fronts it (which I suppose I really should have figured out in my head earlier) and moves things forward in a solid albeit rather predictable fashion.  The trouble is, it just isn't that exciting or gripping, but I suppose as a lead in to those final two episodes I can forgive it that in the hope that things are about to get very interesting for the show's finale.  To be honest, it really needs an impressive finish to perhaps make up for its mis-steps to this point so far and unleash some of that wasted potential that has been so apparent in earlier episodes.