Oh man, what a cool action episode. It's explodes right off the bat with Sunraku vs Rust which has the entire Nephilim Hollow community going wild.

@rikka@ani.social

Sunraku understandably loses. After all, he hasn't played this game in months and was fighting the #1 undefeated ranker! Rust is pissed at Sunraku for losing and we get some more of Rust's backstory. Seems she's on a quest for someone to reach her level. She wants a real rival, and I get the impression she was thinking of quitting the game right before Sunraku came back. Sunraku, the only person ever to come close to beating her. Rust really becomes a full-fledged character instead of some background NPC. Who knows, maybe Rust will end up playing SLF too!

Anyway, Sunraku tells Rust to give him a day to shake off the cobwebs and build a new Crimson Twinblade killing mecha. And of course Sunraku builds something completely ridiculous by the standards of the current meta. And it seems to work!

We were kind of spoiled this episode. We got two good fights, although the second one hasn't quite reached its conclusion. Twinblade seems like it's still capable of fighting and Rust doesn't seem like the type of person that would give up just because they lost an arm. Also, we've yet to figure out the full secret to Sunraku's sneak attack, and that one scissor claw can't be the only weapon Crab mecha has!

On a side note, I was really impressed with the animation this episode. The mecha movements felt very fluid, the background city was detailed enough to feel like background without being distracting, and the overall feel resonated "This is a video game" in my mind. I could even imagine it running on a different game engine than SLF. Just a lot of great nuances and artistic direction to really nail the look and feel of a video game.