Rinne no Lagrange: Season 2 - Episode 4

Aside from giving Madoka some decidedly "different" experiences to chew over last week, the Vox Particle Control Experiment at which our protagonist and the Vox Aura found themselves at the centre also demonstrated the frightening potential of said combination of craft and pilot to the masses.

Having witnessed this demonstration themselves, both Dizelmine and Villagiulio are keen to meet on the neutral territory of Kamogawa, if only to press home their home desires to one another - something which Asteria is more than happy to allow them to do in the privacy of... a broken elevator.  With CCTV cameras so that everyone can watch their entire conversation.  While any hope of compromise already looks remote, the arrival of an erraticly piloted Ovid for the Le Garite mothership destroys the "conference entirely".

Things only get worse when the pilot of said craft is revealed - Yurikano, the younger sister of Villagiulio who is now in the care of Dizelmine while having no recollection of her brother and his men due to the events from which Dizelmine rescued her effectively wiping her memory.  Needless to say, this is the cause of some distress for Villagiulio as Yurikano refuses to even go near him, while Madoka is also drawn to this childlike girl as a spitting image of the person who confronted her in the Vox Aura during her previous experiment.  Such is her curiosity that Madoka and Muginami disguise themselves to make their way aboard Dizelmine's ship along with Lan - a move which is only likely to further confuse the political issues surrounding the two factions currently in conflict.

I'm not sure quite how it manages to do it (mostly because I can't put a finger on my own feelings towards the series), but once again Rinne no Lagrange has proved itself to be more entertaining to watch than its contents and plot progression suggest that it should be.  I would wager this is largely down to the fact that the series continues to refuse to take itself seriously, happily throwing some daft but humorous comedy into the midst of otherwise serious machinations surrounding galactic politics.  It really shouldn't work, but between Madoka's cheerful meddling and the behaviour of others it ultimately manages to get away with it, leaving me with a smile on my face each week even if I probably don't give a monkey's about the future of Le Garite or De Metrio as a result of the show's outlook on its story.