I cry when angels deserve to die.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While Stiyl is STILL dealing with Index, Kazakiri engages with Gabriel, who then is redirected towards finding the parchment. That leads her to Accelerator and the Misakas, so he takes the angel on too, leaving them to drive off…right into a tree. So, the two not-angels seem to hold their own at first but are soon overpowered, so Acqua, who apparently “presides over” (??) Gabriel, uses that connection to her and her “telesma” (???) to disrupt her. This turns out to drain her of half her telesma, which Fiamma thinks will be enough for him to use…but then it turns out to not be? Afterwards, Hamazura and Takitsubo find the mortally injured Acqua and motivate him to keep living. They then try fighting the Russian troops attempting to spread hazardous microbes but are instead saved by Academy City forces. Also, Misaka Prime and Misaka 77 are still…doing stuff.

Meanwhile, Toma and Sasha continue their quest to wreck Fiamma’s shit while also figuring out exactly what he used to get his plan in motion, including that this floating “Star of Bethlehem” is what allowed him to control Gabriel. After Toma smashes some important looking tubes filled with important looking liquid, Gabriel explodes into flash of light. Enraged, Fiamma takes what information he could get about the parchment from her and decides that will have to do. He then teleports to Toma’s location (after Sasha falls through the floor) and begins to monologue. Something something “you thought you beat me but really it didn’t matter” blah blah “now my true plan can begin”. In this case, Fiamma is looking to take control of the four elements of fire, water, wind, and earth in order to…become the next Avatar! Or possibly become part of a 70’s R&B group. Or…maybe an 80’s Dutch progressive rock band? Either way, somehow this will shake out to creating a “proper world”.

OUR TAKE

Well, THAT felt…like stuff happened! This closes out the penultimate novel of season and this stretch of the series, leaving one remaining to be covered in the final three episodes, so it picked a pretty good time to signify that with the destruction of Gabriel, who seemed like the mini-boss to beat. That required a lot of unrelated people coming together with precise planning to pull off and it was definitely a cool moment to see both Accelerator and Kazakiri fighting alongside one another in a battle of winged people. For a big final battle like this, it makes sense that the most powerful characters (outside Fiamma) would have to clash to make clear this is a truly epic conflict. And naturally, not all of that fight is going to be purely offensive, as Acqua’s chosen move showed.

…HOWEVER, while I was already kinda shaky on how exactly Gabriel’s summoning and the elemental stuff worked, THIS truly had me feeling lost. Accelerator and Kazakiri I am pretty much caught up on, but what the heck is going on with this talk of Right Seat of God members “presiding over angels” and “telesma”, terms I’m pretty sure I haven’t heard in this story before now. I guess I should have figured giving the Right Seat guys elemental names was pointing to something, but not quite this. Equally confusing is the angel stuff, which kinda makes me wonder if the other members couldn’t just summon their own angels as like back up or something.

Then again, the fact that it took Fiamma THIS MUCH planning to just summon Gabriel probably means these aren’t just spirit animals that can be brought up out of nowhere like Jojo Stands. But then why did Fiamma use Acqua’s angel instead of his own, which might’ve eliminated the risk of someone else controlling it at a crucial time? And what’s all this about “distorted elements”? Is this why the other members joined Fiamma in the first place?

I’m obviously still plenty invested in what’s going on with all this, especially since we’ve only got three episodes left to go, but all of this elements and angel stuff feels like it should have been explained by now. We still don’t quite know what Fiamma is after, but it looks like we’ll be getting some crucial info on that next episode. For now, while I’m still hyped as heck, this confusion was a bit too much for me to not mark points down.

Score 7/10