Overview (Spoilers Below):
The Griffin teams are pinned down by the Sangvis Parapluie operation while trying to track down AR15 and M4A1. It looks like all hope is lost, but then Gentiane’s fellow commanders arrive to help clean up. While everyone else evacuates, SOPII tracks down AR15 and saves her from a ringleader, but AR15 doesn’t retreat with SOPII and M4, instead deciding to blow up the Sangvis Mastermind—along with herself.
Our Take:
Thank goodness this mess is finally over! After weeks of monotony and boredom, Girls’ Frontline is going out with a bang. Literally, in AR15’s case. COMET 02 chronicles the last remnants of the search for the missing T-Doll and her struggle against the Sangvis who had infiltrated her mechanics with a virus. It’s not exactly a terrible episode all things considered, but it tries to center AR15 in the storyline now and it doesn’t really work for me.
The episode begins with how things have been for the last several episodes: things are looking bad for Griffin and the AR Team. Pursuing the missing dolls has led them right into a trap set by the Sangvis Mastermind, who looks like a weird feral child, and somehow they are now surrounded by a bevy of faceless Sangvis bodies. This is presented as some major threat, but it’s really hard to take it seriously when this combat situation looks no different from others we’ve seen in the show. The animation and direction doesn’t do it any favors, as random laser blasts fly everywhere and hit nothing.
That stuff is really just a distraction for the real meat of the episode, though, which is all about AR15 and her battle against the Sangvis suckers who tried to take advantage of her. Her big plan is to lure the Sangvis Mastermind to an abandoned building and blow it up with the two of them still inside. Apparently she’s always dreamed of becoming a big hero and competing an important mission since her creation by 16LAB, but she hated being saddled with M4 as her leader. The focus of the episode tries to hone in on their connection, but it doesn’t land because we’ve never gotten to see AR15 and M4 together in normal conditions—and even if the show had shown us that, it wouldn’t amount to much since there’s no character development even for characters who are constantly onscreen.
In the end, the AR and Negev teams are able to evacuate thanks to the contributions from Gentiane’s fellow commander comrades, but M4 doesn’t accept that AR15 decided not to come, so she and AR16 and SOPII race back into town just in time to see the building blow up. Y’see, AR15 almost blew it by letting her guard down and allowing Mastermind to shoot her detonator away, but she was still able to get to it because the Sangvis are worse than Stormtroopers when it comes to aiming—so she does blow the building and supposedly herself with it. But here’s thing: it didn’t help the AR team to escape since they were about to leave anyway, and it doesn’t even destroy Sangvis because we see them regrouping in a post-credit scene.
So what was the point? That’s a question I ask myself about this episode and the entire show. COMET 02 doesn’t come to any satisfactory conclusion. The only option it leaves viewers is to buy the game and see what happens. It’s a toothless finale that feels cowardly and clueless about how to tell a good story. I wish AR15 would’ve just blown Sangvis and Griffin up in the first episode—it would’ve saved us a lot of boredom.