Infinite Stratos episode 5

A second male able to pilot IS transfers into the academy, so he replaces Houki as Ichika’s roomate.

However, this may or may not be a trap.

The episode opens up with Ichika at a MALE friend’s house, on a short vacation. Yet even here, he can never escape from his harem, as evidenced by his friend’s sister Ran who has a crush on him. His friend points out his cluelessness toward girls, though Ichika doesn’t catch it.

A teacher enters Houki’s and Ichika’s room to announce that the rooming problem has been solved – Houki will move out to another room, and will be replaced by someone else. Houki reluctantly leaves, but returns to announce that if she wins her Inter-class match coming up, Ichika will go out with her.

Enter mysterious (and allegedly MALE) French transfer student Charles Dunois to Ichika’s class. Ichika is relieved to no longer be the only male student in the academy. In addition, Charles, as a natural bishounen, draws some of the swarming girls away from him.

The two leave the classroom to allow the girls to change, going to their own private locker room, where Ichika has some ‘male’ bonding with Charles. Charles’ embarassment at seeing Ichika seminaked hints at the fact that Charles is a trap and may not in fact possess testicles.

A rather long scene involving IS training occurs, the key point that I took out being that the teachers are strong.

During the training Houki needs to enter an IS that she can’t reach due to the previous user exiting wrongly. She gets carried to the cockpit by Ichika in his IS, an enjoyable experience for her. While getting in the IS, she offers to have lunch together with Ichika, who accepts.

Ichika of course misinterprets Houki, inviting Ririn, Cecilia, and also Charles to the rooftop lunch. Ichika and Houki end up acting quite lovey-dovey (though Ichika is most likely unaware), to the dismay of Ririn and Cecilia.

The episode ends as it began – with yet another transfer student. This time, it’s Laura Bodewig from Germany, who starts off her part in the show by slapping Ichika across the face and promising never to accept him as Chifuyu’s brother. An interesting start…

All talky no fighty. I was pretty unsatisfied with the talky, too. This whole episode was filled with unnecessary, cliche material – the two males running from a horde of females, being crowded upon by a similar horde, and to my great dismay, the accidental grope scene (Infinite Stratos had done so well with restricting the fanservice that I thought this might not even happen) not to mention the female assault that follows.

While it’s entertaining to watch the girls bicker over Ichika while he watches cluelessly, it’s getting old. Ichika does seem to be progressing with Houki though, and the focus of this episode (other than Laura and Charles) was her. Now that she’s moved out of his room, she’s lost the advantage she had over the others, and as a result takes the initiative twice. Although… though Houki plainly expressed her desire to go out with Ichika, nothing came of it… not sure why. I’m still confused over that, Ichika had to react somehow to her statement.

The two new characters seem interesting. I wonder why ‘Charles’ is posing as a boy, and Laura’s evident dislike for Ichika and reverence for Chifuyu could serve as good material for an episode or two. In addition I wonder whether the two of them will join Ichika’s harem or not (from the way the show has gone with Ichika capturing every girl within sight, they probaly will). Now that the whole cast is present, where will the show go?