LAST EDITED ON Sep-10-14 AT 11:41 PM (EDT)
 
>It's a great intro, and the anime managed to translate it equally well
>onto the screen. Unfortunately, it isn't the pilot (yes, yes, you see
>what I did there) arc. It doesn't happen until 105.

It probably didn't help that they seemed to rush to "Au Revoir, Marianne" a bit, and then backfilled the middle of the season with a series of flashback episodes to stuff that happened before then. That makes sense narratively, in that it doesn't frontload the season even more with pre-The Big Action stuff, but at the same time it does tend to make the middle bit slightly confusing to viewers who may have come in late, and/or drag a bit to those who know what's going on and may find it a bit stressful to suddenly go look at a bunch of things that happened before it rather than proceeding immediately to what happened next. ("Barking Creek" is an excellent example. If you don't pay close attention at the beginning of the episode and miss the framing sequence where it's set up that Hurry is telling P-40 an embarrassing story about Spitfire, you're like, "Why is Spitfire acting like she's never seen a German?")

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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