What a great episode! I especially liked the scenes of Houki being one tsunderelicious osananajimi. I thought they were really well adapted and portrayed, and in addition to the superb performance of Hikasa Yoko being her seiyuu as well. Although I'd put much less emphasis than what is needed on that last part, because I believe a good seiyuu does not necessarily turn a bad anime into a good one under a simple concept of similar wavelength. The rest of the segment also featured some nice story progression (with a bit of back story for a person and some thing here and there), which included a brief intro for Shinonono Tabane hakase (professor), which seemed to strongly affect Houki's mental constitution, Ichika being supported by the government thus receiving his very own personal IS, Chifuyu's previous katana, the Yukihira, and of course our dear Cecilia finally realizing her own lustful desires...err, attraction, yes, that's what I meant--attraction toward Ichika after being put under his manliness. I'm totally using "manliness" loosely.
Shinonono Tabane, Houki's sister. It's unclear to Ichika why Houki reacted that way when her sister was a hot topic in class. Unfortunately, the situation doesn't really get explained after this point, and the only information given was that the IS cores (black boxes) were created and developed only by Tabane. Currently, government and organization powers are searching for her whereabouts in hopes of being able to obtain a few extra black boxes, presumably, because she refuses to create any extra ones past an amount limit.Jealous Houki is win. She eventually agrees to teach/supervise Ichika some basic IS maneuvers, but...Kendo?Houki's so adorable trying to hold herself back from jumping Ichika. After beating down Ichika in a kendo spar, her dere dere side finally surfaces. It's amusing to see her reactions whenever she thinks about being alone with him after school.Ichika's new IS suit.A little back story shot of when Ichika first encountered/touched an IS suit. He notes that the feeling of touching his custom IS is somehow a bit different when he touched the previous. This doesn't really get explained any better further on, so I'm not really worrying about this. This may or may not be a necessary fact for future episodes and story progress.Towards the battle, our hero marches. So, apparently this "fitting" system basically just adjusts and adapts the IS suit to the movement of the pilot, thus resulting to the creation of the pilot's profile, so the suit can better function. That was a nice good ol' ace-in-the-sleeve move there Ichika. Although you didn't really have any idea what it was about or what was going on then.
Ichika lost because his sword drained his shield energy. I feel like I've heard a saying before that perfectly fits this situation.Fanservice shots, despite being pretty lame. I liked the Houki shots better.Preview:A certain transfer student from a certain neighboring country. Houki looks hot in her IS. The ED song for this week also features Cecilia's seiyuu, Yukana, in addition to Houki's Hikasa Yoko.
