Review: Gen:Lock “The Third Way”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

As the gen:LOCK team prepares for their raid on RTASA, Miranda hatches a plan to appeal to Chase’s emotions. Meanwhile, General Marin confronts the Polity’s latest plot.

Our Take:

“The Third Way” continues with Chase still being influenced by the Nemesis demon during the Gen:Lock team’s attempt to infiltrate the RTASA. Meanwhile, Miranda enlists Dri’s help in reaching out to Chase, and The Union plots to use Sinclair to power up their new mech armor known as “Odin”. This episode was my first attempt at getting into the show, which seemed like a wrong place to start, even after reading the show’s recaps. There were many elements that forced me to look into more soon, especially the characters and their relationships.

As its own thing, however, I would say that it’s an okay continuation of the events that happened in the previous episodes in season two. Sure, the plot threads may be a bit too complex at times, but it was an alluring raid that provided more human drama than action regarding its style and character-driven moments. In addition, the voice cast still provided opportune moments in their vocal performances, especially Michael B. Jordan and Dakota Fanning as Chase and Miranda, respectively. As for the animation, the episode delivered a few stylistic moments that managed to keep me from tuning out of the show, primarily the RTASA raid and the environments. The animation may not have the best quality in its rendering, but I can see that there’s some effort in providing anime-like influences in CGI form.

Overall, “The Third Way” continues the Gen:Lock team’s constant struggle against The Union stylistically and suitably. Although, it did show that I will need to do more research on the show sooner or later before I press forward with the rest of season two. From what I’ve seen so far, I was impressed with the concept in terms of the voice cast and animation. Despite being confused with its plot elements, I was somewhat a bit intrigued with these characters and the scenarios they’re in, especially the cliffhanger ending with an unexpected visitor. Hopefully, I’ll find the time to look back on the previous episodes before next week.