English Dub Review: Girls’ Frontline “THE KINDLING 03”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

AR15 was taken into Griffin custody for leaking info to Sangvis, but she was able to escape and go on the run. The rest of the AR team wants to find her, but they also have Destroyer to worry about. She’s got them pinned down with super weapons, and they’re forced to retreat. And to top it all off, they’re then pulled from the mission in favor of human contractors.

Our Take:

Girls’ Frontline goes hard in this week’s new episode. Picking up where we left off last week, the AR team is on the hunt for Destroyer. AR15 is on the loose as well, and her team members are eager to be reunited with her. There’s also some intrigue with Krueger and the Griffin group, plus Dreamer has some tricks up her sleeve. It all makes for a pretty messy episode that introduces a few twists along the way.

After surviving the attack on Griffin base and chasing Destroyer out of the Sangvis factory, you’d think it would all be downhill from here, but unfortunately things aren’t that easy for Griffin and the AR team. Dreamer may like to tease Destroyer, but in the end she comes through and is able to focus the new Sangvis super weapon on the AR team, wreaking havoc and chaos on the dolls. This weapon isn’t like any that Griffin has encountered before, Krueger says, which is concerning because it means that the Sangvis are evolving.

Another big reason why the weapon is worrying to the Griffin higher-ups is that they can’t afford to lose these AR team dolls. Up until now, we’ve been working under the assumption that every doll could simply be restored with a data back-up and sent back out into combat, but apparently that’s not the case for the AR team. They’re so advanced that they’re too advanced to be backed up. It’s an interesting quandary for sure, but it’s also just really dumb. Like why would you bother inventing a way to backup the lesser dolls and leave the more advanced ones without a system in place? It’s a little confusing, which is just par for the course for this show.

There’s a bit of added intrigue at the end when the AR team exchanges fire with a new group of combatants who are unlike any we’ve seen before. Eventually the dolls get the newcomers to surrender, but then it turns out that they’re a group of humans led by Commander Krueger?! Which makes it really weird that he allowed them to exchange fire instead of just identifying himself, but hey, whatever floats his boat. The dynamic between the humans of Griffin and the AR team seems to be a bit fraught, and AR15’s flight will only intensify that feeling as we near the final episodes.

Overall, THE KINDLING 03 was a fairly boring episode despite some interesting revelations occurring. There was a lot of cutting back and forth, both between different times and between different characters, but despite that I feel like nothing really happened in the episode in terms of advancing the plot. We did learn a little more about the dolls and the AR team specifically, but I’m left with even more questions now about their operation and what Griffin has planned for them. Until next week!