SUPER DIMENSION CAVALRY SOUTHERN CROSS
EPISODE 21: NIGHTMARE
ICONIC SCENE: “Being happy is such a wonderful feeling!”
BROADCAST DATE: September 16, 1984
1. Jeanne confronts Seifriet for ratting out Musica, and calls him a coward. He agrees, since he shouldn’t even have survived. This is enough, puzzlingly, to get Andrzej on his side, and he chides Jeanne for saying such mean things to Seifriet in his current state. So weird… I mean, at the end of last episode, Andrzej punched Seifriet in the face…
2. Bowie’s kind of inept at getting Musica to safety. First off, it’s raining pretty hard, and they’re on foot. She falls down, so he finds a conveniently-placed warehouse and steals a Flash Clapper hoverbike. However, the soldiers see him and give chase. He almost immediately accidentally crashes the bike (which at least causes the soldiers to drive right past them).
3. There’s a very nicely-animated sequence as Musica’s song is playing and the sun comes up and the rain stops. It’s not Miyazaki-level, but it’s great for a TV series like this.
4. The 15th go out to search for Bowie and Musica, although Jeanne says they’ll take the “slow-and-slow” approach and not try too hard to find them. However, Seifriet is watching from the barracks with a dark look on his face, and Lana is covertly following them.
5. The Zor suddenly realized that their supply of bio-energy is about to run out, so they immediately decide on an all-out attack on Glorie. Meanwhile, Leon decides that the Southern Cross Army will also launch an all-out attack on the Zor. This all, by the way, is one of the clearest indications that this episode was written AFTER the staff knew the show would be canceled prematurely. This is all very obviously setting up the finale of the series.
6. Rushing to a conclusion they show may be, but I appreciate that they still throw in some artful touches. Along with the sunrise mentioned above, I really like the scene of Bowie and Musica riding on the (now repaired) Flash Clapper while pretty piano music plays, contrasting that with the military getting ready to attack the Zor.
7. Bowie takes Musica to the three mounds, and as they enter, Bowie gets affected by spores from the flowers (Musica, however, isn’t). Bowie remembers a fragment of the Zor song, talking about “flowers of light,” and he and Musica realize that (SHOCKER) these flowers are the flowers in the song.
8. The rest of the 15th arrives soon after, with Lana and Seifriet not far behind them. Seifriet breaks downs and remembers that the flowers were what the Zor used to turn him into a biohuman, and Bowie speculates that they might be the “source of life” for the Zor… and he may be more right than he realizes.
9. As Lana prepares to arrest Musica, Emerson launches his attack from Aluce Base. It’s very obvious that he expects to die in this assault.
10. You’d think, given that the staff at this point must have known that they have to wrap things up more quickly than they’d planned, that this episode would feel rushed. And yes, the plot developments of the sudden massive attacks launched certainly do, but as I’ve pointed out, there are still a few nice touches here and there, and it doesn’t feel much different than the previous episodes, except in that the show makes sure we know that the story is drawing to a close.
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