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Illegal Army

Plot Synopsis Interesting or Fun Details
Episode Review

Plot Synopsis

The episode opens with various scenes of the Knight Sabers going about their daily lives. Priss, as usual, is riding her motorcycle and she passess Sylia in her Mercedes. Meanwhile, Nene is gleefully hacking away with the help of some VR gloves and glasses and Linna is working in a brokerage firm. The opening sequence then turns to the AD Police rushing down a highway and Leon shooting in the firing range. Then there's a picture of a Boomer, followed by Sylia looking out a window, smoking a cigarette, and Nene asleep at her computer. Finally, the scene changes to the Knight Sabers, Sylia in just the undersuit and brainlinked into her computer, Linna flying and fighting, Priss firing at something with her new heavy-duty shoulder-mounted railguns, and Nene with a new weapon or two built into her shoulders.

After the opening sequence, the actual episode starts with a couple of obvious Boomers guarding a bank. As the working day ends, a boxy cleanup truck pulls up in front of the bank and stops. When one of the guardian Boomers approaches the truck, blasts from inside kill both. Five powered suits exit the truck and blast thier way into the bank. The Boomers inside the bank are also easily destroyed by the attacking suits, but one survives long enough to place an emergency call to the AD Police, who are immediately dispatched to deal with the robbers. Inside the bank, the suits cut into the vault, and steal a lot of gold bars, and then head quickly back into the truck. However, while the suits were inside the bank, the AD Police have surrounded the truck. Leon, in command, orders them to surrender by the count of three. Instead, the cleanup truck rushes the surrounding AD Police officers. The AD Police open fire on the the truck, but before they do much significant damage, the suits inside the truck blast upward and make thier escape through the help of an unknown and unmarked chopper.

The next morning, Leon and Daley are in the new AD Police Chief's office, asking for more money and permission to create special units which are armed with powered suits and heavier weapons designed specifically to deal with heavily armed and armored opponents like the bank robbers. The chief, however, is not really concerned with making the officer's lives easier. Instead, he seems to enjoy playing at politics and is concerned that the public views the AD Police as only slightly better than the criminals they're supposed to arrest. The scene changes, and Leon and Daley are eating lunch in a little cafe. Thier conversation turns to the issue of Boomer intelligence and the possibility of MegaTokyo eventually becoming nothing but Boomers. After the two leave the cafe, they talk a little about how quiet the Knight Sabers have been recently.

That night, Priss is recording a song in a studio. Her agent reveals himself to be a complete and royal sleaze, but Priss is extremely happy over the possibility of a concert anyway, and she takes off on her bike, daydreaming about her break into the big-time. The next morning, Linna is seen working at a brokerage and laughing about all the money that she's making on a corporation called Omni, a maker of Boomer AIs. That night, while Nene, Priss, and Linna are eating dinner together, Nene mentions that she's worried about Sylia. Linna and Priss seem much more caught up in their own worlds and fantasies than worried until Nene drags them out to the Lady633 building where Sylia and her Silky Doll lingerie shop are. The building has apparently been under construction for a while, but only Nene has noticed. Mackie is apparently at school in Germany, and no-one has seen Sylia for a while. Nene even goes so far as to suggest that the three of them go after the armored bank robbers themselves, but Priss is too worried about getting injured before her singing debut, and Linna isn't willing to take the risk without any chance of getting paid in return. It's obvious that Linna and Priss feel that the Knight Sabers are all but disbanded.

In a more daring raid, the same heavily armored robbers assault another bank, but this time while there are real people inside. The bystanders and tellers are knocked out by gas, and then, after a very quick battle with the guardian Boomers, the robbers steal a box from out of a safety deposit box. At the AD Police headquarters, the various officers watch the news apathetically. Leon, seeing his officer's reactions, goes ballistic and reams the apathetic officers who feel that they have no need or right to stop the robbery. Leon, very pissed off, goes to the shooting range to release some of his anger semi-constructively, but only gets more frustrated because of the new shooting range: an artificial, video-game style shooting gallery with fake guns and targets. Nene, angry at her fellow Knight Sabers and concerned about the robberies, approaches Leon and Daley and attracts thier interest in the robberies by mentioning the powered suits themselves. Leon and Daley, both of whom apparently are aware that Nene is something of a hacker, bribe her with unlimited deserts for more information on the suits and the mercenary unit called the Illegal Army which uses, or rather used, them. Supposedly, all the mercs are dead, having been killed in the Philippines.

While Nene is talking to Leon and Daley, a large number of people are repairing and maintaining the powered suits responsible for the bank robberies and a heavily cybernetically modified man opens the stolen box. A "Man-Behind-The-Curtain" voice comes from a computer scanner and indicates that the chip module is part of a new AI. That same voice then calls the man Colonel Lando, the supposedly dead commander of the Illegal Army mercenary unit Nene was just talking about.

Later, in an attempt to release some anger and frustration, Nene goes to a video arcade and plays a video game. She loses, but as she is about to leave, Sylia takes control of the game and asks her to get Linna and Priss and to join her at her hotel room in the Empress Hotel that evening for a late dinner. Sylia had apparently been renovating the Lady633 building. That night at the hotel, Nene freaks out and starts complaining about how the Knight Sabers should never be disbanded, and Linna and Priss both indicate that they are both ready for the Knight Sabers to cease to exist. Sylia, however, has no intention of disbanding the Knight Sabers, not after being hired to protect the other elements of the new AI and certainly not immediately after finishing some significant upgrades on the hardsuits. The Knight Sabers all retire to a steam room where they talk about the details of the new job.

Much later, the Illegal Army breaks into the Zone Corporation, the corporation which hired the Knight Sabers, and steals yet another part of the new AI. However, this time the AD Police arrives before they make their escape, and Leon goes head to head with Col. Lando himself. Leon, only in a K-12s powered suit, does a lot better than the rest of the AD Police, but still loses, and only Lando's flashback to his last, lost battle in the Philippines convinces him to leave Leon alive. The next morning, Leon is in the hospital, recovering from his injuries when he makes the connections between the recent robberies and the research components of the new AI. At the same time, in another part of the city, the heavily cybered Illegal Army is sleeping and, at the same time, being conditioned by the same voice which Lando reported to earlier.

The next scene shows Priss in her dressing room before what is supposed to be her singing debut. She is surprised by her agent giving her a frilly dress to wear and sheet music to sing. His intention is to make Priss an idol singer rather than allow her to sing her own songs and to have her own style. After angrily smacking the agent around some, she storms out of the dressing room. Linna also appears to be having a problem, since the Omni stock she made so much money on is dropping like a rock due to the Illegal Army's bank robbery. She finally stands up and resigns her job, effective immediately.

In the opening sequence of the final scene, the Illegal Army is preparing for another, final raid. But at the same time, the Knight Sabers are themselves preparing for combat, dressing themselves in their hardsuits. The four Knight Sabers exit the Lady633 building in a new way: from the newly constructed hanger that contains a vectored-thrust military aircraft, with Sylia as its pilot.

The Illegal army, coming up from the sewers, blasts into the final target building and steals the last component only to find that the component is fake and that they have been trapped. They try to escape up to the roof only to find themselves facing the Knight Sabers. In combat, some of the new toys integrated into the hardsuits are revealed. Priss has a new version of the original needle railguns, but this one is shoulder mounted and much more powerful. Linna has two long electrically charged wires in her forearm mounts which are equipped with razored "arrow" heads. Nene's suit countermeasures are even more powerful than originally, and she takes control of an attacker's missiles and redirects them back to the firer. Priss, Linna, and Nene kill three of the four powered suits only to find that the originally human wearers are actually very large Boomers. Nene, however, has another toy to play with, and her ultrasonic attack destroys all three Boomers.

Unfortunately, Col. Lando is the most powerful of all the Illegal Army, and his attacks injure all three before he takes off in an attempt to escape. Sylia, appearing in combat for the first time, drives her extended sword through the armor and into Col. Lando, who's armor then explodes. Unfortunately, the explosion doesn't kill Lando, and he rushes out to surprise Priss. He grabs her by the throat and begins to crush her, until she uses a sword similar to Sylia's and cuts herself free of his grasp. As soon as Priss is free, she leaps out of the way and the rest of the Knight Sabers take to the air in an attempt to avoid an attack by Lando which seems to have a lot of the same general effects as Linna's thermal ribbons. In response, Linna uses her electrospines and ribbons to electrocute Lando and cut off one of his legs.

Seeing himself as lost, Colonel Lando activates a self-destruct mechanism, which Nene scans for, locates, and then links up with Priss to destroy. Just before the bomb detonates with a blast powerful enough to easily destroy several city blocks, Priss, seeing the mechanism through Nene's scanners, fires a railgun needle, destroying the self-destruct mechanism and saving everyone within the blast radius. Col. Lando, however, nearly dead now, indicates that he's a Boomeroid - half Boomer, half human, and superior to both - and that there are still others like him fighting to create a world of combat and chaos perfect for Boomers. When the AD Police arrive, however, the Knight Sabers have vacated, leaving only their burned logo in the concrete next to Lando's body.

In the final scene of the episode, Sylia, Priss, Nene, and Linna are talking at the grand re-opening of the Silky Doll. Priss is talking about finding another agent, and Linna about returning to work for a new broker, and Sylia is happy about it all.

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My Review

In general, I like this episode. It's got some problems, of course, but all in all, it's not that bad. My first complaint is that the music for the opening sequence leaves a little to be desired. It's such a major change from the original music, both in content and quality, that it's disappointing. I also happen to like Mackie. Having him in Germany means he's not in MegaTokyo, and that means he can't help out the Knight Sabers personally. Bit of a bummer for me, because he also happened to provide some needed comic relief on occasion. One of the other major complaints with this episode is related to one of the complaints I have regarding the entire series: the stupidity of Boomers. Only Lando is really intelligent in this episode, and he used to be a human being. All the Boomers are morons, and if that wasn't enough, the Illegal Army's power suits cut through the various Boomers they encounter with too much ease. Not only that, but even the dangerous Boomers are way too easy to kill.

Other problems are the number of powered suits that the Illegal Army uses. Five come out of the truck in the beginning, four come out of the building, and three fly up into the helicoptor. The second bank hit has all 5 again, but the final conflict is down to 4. Looks like the continuity editor was out to lunch most of this epiosode.

Now, that's not to say that I don't like this episode, because I already said that I did. I really like the new, advanced hardsuits, with their new weapons and abilities (Linna's original jumpjets now enable her to fly, for example). Leon and Daley are back together again after being split up in Scoop Chase, the last Crisis episode. And Nene has become more confident in her abilities and less likely to run or cower in fear during combat, a direction that I saw her taking by the end of Scoop Chase. And there is a good amount of decent foreshadowing in this episode, especially at the end during the combat with Lando. As a personal fan of Leon, I'm also quite happy to find him fighting head-to-head with Lando, even if he does lose badly. It would be nice to see Leon win at some point and not have to be bailed out by the Knight Sabers, but that's just a personal preference.

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