機動戦士ガンダム /Kido Senshi Gundam episode 28
Mobile Suit Gundam – 28

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Char is pleased with Boone’s report that Miharu is aboard White Base.  Miharu is in Bright’s office looking for information when she’s discovered by Kai.  Kai takes her to his room, understanding she is a spy.  When they are spotted by Amuro, Kai says she is his girlfriend whom he is dropping off at South America.  When Miharu attempts to pump him for more info, he won’t give it because he doesn’t want White Base shot down, which would kill them both.  Meanwhile, Boone and another Zeon have stolen a fishing union’s plane and issued an SOS which White Base responds to.  Once on board, verification of the plane is made while Boone makes contact with Miharu, who reports what little she knows.  Kai returns with food for Miharu and asks if she’s made contact.  When she confirms this, he finds this odd and then realizes the plane has Zeons but it is too late as they leave. He makes a report to Bright but cannot reveal why he believed them to be spies.

Returning to Mad Angler, Boone presents Char with what he’s learned.  Char is pleased that White Base is not going to the African front since he cannot leave Mad Angler for the time being.  As Boone has lost four mobile suits and pilots to White Base, he requests permission to take a mobile armor unit out to attack White Base.  Char grants him use of the Grabro along with two Z’gok mobile suits and they begin an underwater assault by firing missiles up to White Base.  As White base launches countermeasures, Sayla and Amuro quickly go over a plan of attack whereby she will take the G-fighter out and he will take Gundam out.  Back in Kai’s room, Miharu is horrified to discover the three orphaned children on board White Base, especially now that the ship has taken a few hits.

Sayla and Amuro barely launch successfully in the G-Armor as a missile hits close to their launch point.  Hayato launches in a Core Fighter as Hayato prepares to go down and launch himself.  Miharu wants to help defend the ship since she knows it is her report that made the attack happen, despite Kai’s assurances that she didn’t give enough information to cause the attack.  However, since she doesn’t want to sacrifice the orphaned children for her own siblings, Kai allows her to follow him.  Meanwhile, another Zeon attack has rendered the launch bay for Kai’s Core Fighter inoperative.  Following Frau Bow’s instruction from the bridge, Kai heads to Gunperry, which has been armed with anti-submarine missiles and agrees to let Miharu be his gunner since the normal gunner is busy manning a defense station.

Gundam successfully dispatches and G-Fighter comes together as White Base drops anti-sub ordinance into the water.  Amuro soon comes upon Boone’s Grabro while the two Z’gok’s attack White Base, Hayato’s Core Fighter, and Sayla’s G-Fighter.  Amuro finds himself at a disadvantage with the giant mobile armor unit and though his beam rifle melts one of the Grabro’s claws, the other one has Gundam by the leg.  Meanwhile, Hayato attacks where a Z’gok is and as it rises to counterattack, Sayla swoops in for a kill.  Boone’s support fire causes G-Fighter to go into the drink and Hayato has exhausted his weapons.  Kai takes Gunperry and has Miharu launch several of their missiles but they miss the remaining Z’gok.  Gunperry takes a hit, so Miharu goes down to launch the remaining missiles manually.  This works, but she is caught in the blast and thrown out of Gunperry to die.  Meanwhile, Amuro manages to destroy the Grabro and upon returning to White Base, has to tell Bright that the mystery woman Kai is weeping for was a stowaway.

Thoughts/Review:
 
Wow.  I didn’t expect for them to kill Miharu so quickly.  I had thought we might get some interesting stuff from her but I guess not.  Anyway, I find myself surprised  that I actually felt more for Miharu’s death than I did for Matilda’s or Ryu’s.  Maybe it was because Miharu was doing what she did for her little brother Gil and little sister Milly and that her desire to help fight because of Kai and the orphans felt very real to me.  I also believed her regret over having been a Zeon spy and her desire to be free of that.  Regardless, while I didn’t expect her to be killed, I did think she might get axed once she had to go and manually fire the missile. I was hoping I’d be wrong, but the scene just screamed, “She’s going to die!”

Even though Kai and Miharu didn’t have much of a romance, I liked how things played out.  Kai again walked the line with knowing she was a spy and wanting to help her without sacrificing the ship or his comrades.  Kai has proven to be pretty sharp about things over the last couple of episodes and here, he gets to play a nice guy, though smart enough not to give up the whole store.  I also liked how over the course of the episode, Miharu went from addressing him as “Kai-san” to “Kai,” something surely lost in English adaptations without Japanese honorific usage.  Hopefully, Kai will become a better person from this as Amuro has apparently done after his little tantrums from earlier in the series.

The orphans were actually heroes in this episode.  They’ve often been shown doing little tasks here and there and generally just being minor filler of sorts.  However, when the three of them were trying to fight fires with the fire extinguisher and nearly lost their lives in an explosion that sent them literally flying down a hall into one of the bays, I briefly wondered if the kids might die or get seriously hurt.  None did, thankfully.  Even though the orphans haven’t done much for me, there was just something so noble in three little kids using a fire extinguisher to save their home during the middle of a pitched battle.  Normal kids would have been playing, not caught in combat.  I wonder what will become of these three.

I have to call “bull crap” at the attack by Grabro and the two Z’goks.  I know the Zeons have been shown to have high-powered explosives in small warheads, such as the small explosives they used in a failed attempt to take down Gundam.  However, these Z’gok units can only carry so many of what seem like rocket propelled grenades, yet they seemed to keep bobbing up to the surface to launch barrage after barrage.  The beam attack they had was something I had no problem with since the weapon could charge up again, but with the ordinance, I’m thinking, “yeah, right.”  Even Grabro seemed to have a giant supply of munitions to waste, enough to seemingly outclass a normal warship or submarine.

Well, White Base has been beaten up again and needs repairs.  I guess they’ll have to get those at the Federation base.

In the end, we had a good, action-filled episode with a lot of emotion as well with the death of Miharu.  The realities of the ugliness of war…