The main reason this episode exists is to have helicopters blasting Ride of the Valkyries.  It accomplished that… and not much else.

So, we begin with the one male in Pina’s order that wasn’t in the manga getting killed.  Don’t feel sorry for him; I’m sure he slept with half the order.

We cut to Itami’s group where, surprisingly, we actually have Rory really feeling it from all the death around her.

Out of fucking nowhere, we learn that the bandit army has this huge hulking beast of a man swinging a ginormous morning star flail.

The JSDF sends in a helicopter squadron to assist.  It takes entirely too much time for them to arrive, and way too much time is spent making Apocalypse Now references.

While they’re waiting for the helicopters to show up, the JSDF supports Pina (making Itami’s last words from the previous episode completely meaningless), though mostly to back up Rory, who runs in to kill so she doesn’t end up, I dunno, pleasuring herself to all the death, I assume.

We see Rory go all out and deliver an amazing display of BLOODLESS CARNAGE.  It’s hard to explain just how much this pisses me off.  It’s laughably bad.  Seeing a little girl swing around a giant axe will ease and kill scores of soldiers WITHOUT SPILLING A SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD… it’s like something out of Dynasty Warriors.

We finally get the scene where Kuribayashi charges in and shows off her badassery, but it kinda falls flat.  Rather than show off her martial prowess in a realistic manner, one of the first things she does is FUCKING OVERPOWER the bandit giant, fire off some rifle rounds. swing her bayonet a few times before breaking it, throw a grenade, and finally, FIRE A SHITLOAD OF PISTOL ROUNDS FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE BATTLE.  It was the height of laziness, and rather than make her seem badass (she still comes across as a little badass), Kuribayashi seems more rash than skilled… and unnaturally STRONG.  Manga Kuribayashi could at least pull off looking strong, but Anime Kuribayashi… it’s like she’s one of the fantasy girls rather than a Japanese soldier from our world.

I much preferred the scenes after the battle, though they could have been extended.  One of my favorite little moments of this episode is Pina praising Hamilton for what she thinks is her negotiating skills, and Hamilton looking at their agreement in wonder, as if something must be wrong with it.

Once the girls finally sell off their dragon scales, Itami’s group leaves for Alnus, but they encounter Pina’s late soldiers and Itami gets captured.  Or rather, he orders his team to leave and allows himself to get captured instead of slaughtering the lot of them.  And that’s where we end.  Er… okay.  To be fair, the only reason I think this is weird is due to knowledge from the manga.  I’m sure it’s as good a place as any to end.

Overall… pretty mediocre episode.  We could have cut a LOT of the forced Apocalypse Now scene recreation in favor of more world-building and character moments, but that’s just not how this adaptation works.  At this rate, GATE is gearing up to be a worse adaptation than Sailor Moon Crystal.  Hell, it has a comparable amount of animation errors; just look at pretty much everything involving Pina’s knights at the end.  Sure, we don’t have anything comparable to the two-frame baton twirl or the whole Shitennou debacle, but we make up for that in godawful direction and pacing.

So… next week we have camo paint and reactions to Itami’s ranger status to look forward to.  Maybe some dead sexy Bozes in lingerie action?  I mean, they’ve clearly established their okay with sexual content if not violence, so we’re good, right?   At the very least, you can’t possibly screw up the Ranger scene, right?  RIGHT?!