Coppelion - Episode 7

Things have gone decidedly sideways in the latest attempt to rescue Aoi, and although this member of the Coppelion team is now safe, it seems to have come at a great cost to Ibara.

With a shrapnel wound, heavy blood loss and in cardiac arrest, it takes everything that Haruto and the rag-tag collective around him have got to stabilise her so that they can return her to The Planet for surgery and a life-saving blood transfusion.  All of this is too much for Aoi, who locks herself away whilst blaming herself solely for the deadly fate that almost befell her friend and comrade, but in the meantime the group also has themselves a decidedly handy prisoner in the form of the leader of the 1st Division.

As a result of this - and some disregard for human life shown by Haruto - we learn the true intentions of this mysterious pseudo-military division, and the news isn't good.  In essence, the group's plan is to use the sarcophagus which is at the centre of this Tokyo wasteland as a weapon to terrorise and most likely destroy Japan.  It is however, a plan that needs the held of a Coppelion to even get near the highly radioactive sarcophagus; certainly, with none of the group in question captured nobody seems to be taking their threat all too seriously, especially when they have a pregnant woman about to give birth to worry about instead.  This, though, is a small slice of hubris which is potentially about to be punished...

If you can get past the fact that by this juncture Coppelion's plot has more holes than a Swiss cheese after a session with an electric drill, it feels as if the series is finally going somewhere in the grand scheme of its story.  We now seem to have a central "enemy" to worry about, the final characters within Tokyo's proverbial chess board are about to reveal themselves, and the cast all seem to be in the right place to deliver some decent action and plot progression.  It's a real shame that the series is so heavy-handed when it comes to some of the things that it's really trying to say - criticism of government priorities for the most part at present - and it's clearly not going to be a much-loved classic by this point, so I hope at least that we can get some more strong moments out of Coppelion before it fizzles out.  The show has proved itself capable of providing such moments at least occasionally, so perhaps next week's instalment will manage to add to that number.