LAST EDITED ON Sep-08-14 AT 02:15 AM (EDT)
 
>It shows Zero in her dream-sequence samurai-girl outfit - hakama, gi
>with the sleeves tied up, geta, got her Murder Face on - standing with
>her sword drawn over 40, who's sprawled unconscious on the ground.
>The background is just a wall of fire, and the black smoke amid the
>flames forms the Japanese for "victory without honor has no meaning".

That scene is a lot of peoples favorite, and it's also why Season Six is so polarizing among fans of Zero.

Well, I say season six. It really started with the finale of season five, which was a deeply ambitious undertaking. "Leyte Gulf! (I Have Returned)" parts one through four (521 through 524, going by their production numbers) was a longer single story than anything else they'd ever done; even such classics as the season three finale ("Tora Tora Tora!") had only ever been two-parters.

And "Leyte Gulf!" was pretty amazing, don't get me wrong. People thought they'd blown the animation budget for the season during "Turkey Shoot" but it turned out, no, they still had gas in the tank after all. And people thought we'd get some resolution on a plotline that had been simmering for a little while; there had been these inexplicable scenes where Zero would exchange glances with Judy, and then Judy would take off and fly away into the sunset while Zero just stood there watching looking grim.

So we get to the tail end of part four of "Leyte Gulf!", right? And Zero ties on her headband (which had by this point become nearly a self-parodying "shit gets real" statement; they had stock footage for it, in fact)... and then slings a two-hundred kilo bomb over her shoulder and throws herself into the air. And it's like... what the hell? You're not a bomber, Zero! What fuckery is this?

Well, it turned out that the fuckery was that Zero was going to attempt to score points by diving directly at targets, cramming an enormous explosive down their maws, and then blowing herself and them sky-high. The Allied league protested this as a gross rules violation, but the points Zero scored from sending St.Lo to the bottom remained on the board.

So that was how season five ended, and Zero's descent into basically complete nihilism continued all through season six. She was... still kinda recognizably the same person, you know? Quieter. More intense. But man, the Zero from "Honor Doesn't Compromise" would never have tried some of the increasingly desperate shit she got up to in the final season. It was a logical character progression; Zero had kinda had the Mark of Doom on her from day one, with her whole "Last of the Breed" samurai persona.

... come to think of it, the Pacific Conference matches were really where Fly Girls put most of their dark shit, weren't they? The European Conference was always kinda... fun, even a little lighthearted. The Blitz storyline from the very first season is practically a comedy, and the Strategic Bomber episodes are unintentionally hilarious a lot of the time. Even when things got real grim for the Axis League later on. Sure, you had Stuka fouling people left and right and it was heavily implied Ilyusha and Yak had some real drinking problems, but they seemed to have saved all the "Hey, remember, this stuff is based on a real war" punches for the eastern hemisphere.

Interesting production choice I'd never really thought of before.

-Merc
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