5 Point Discussions – Gundam Build Divers 22: “Devoted Heart”

Team Build Divers has come up with a plan to save their kidnapped teammate while also saving GBN. But the probability of success is…? Remember, if you like this article and 5 Point Discussions, please share it on Facebook or Twitter! It really helps. And if you’ve got any comments or questions, please hit me up @SageShinigami.

1. With Sarah captured by the Coalition of Volunteers, Team Build Divers is in dire straits when it comes to options. They can’t just bumrush Avalon’s headquarters, because this isn’t a “Gunpla Battle”–with the administration involved, they could be blocked from GBN forever and that would be the end of the game for them. They need a plan. Enter Koichi and the creator of GBN, who explain the idea Koichi came up with last episode in detail: since GBN isn’t really built for exporting large amounts of data (like the amount of code it would take to create an entire personality), they need a way to do that, and do so without alerting GBN’s systems.
Koichi manages to convince his old friend Tsukasa, teenaged edgelord and former Break Decal dealer, to use his talents and create something known as a Build Decal to help export Sarah’s data out while also deleting the excess bits of her programming that exist across GBN. The plan seems perfect, but there’s only one problem–it’s got a five percent chance of success, and if they fail then both GBN and Sarah will be destroyed. Oh boy.

2. I’m not sure why, but this scene felt over the top cheesy to me.  And my tolerance for corny stuff is abnormally high (I’m a Sentai fan, after all) but Sarah just breaks it here.  Last episode she was caught by Kyoya and turned over to the Coalition, and since then Sarah’s had the chance to think about what she wants for hours now. She remembers all the friends she’s made, memories they’ve had together, and how she could have only made them through GBN, so when Kyoya asks what she would like–she asks to be deleted in order to save everyone else’s happiness.
It’s a good sentiment, but her smile is almost too genuine. Instead of feeling broken, and it kind of throws everything else off.  Ironically it’s this scene that makes me agree that she’s just a robot instead of a properly functioning AI.

3. After being informed of the plan, Riku confronts Kyoya, the GM, and Rommel with the information he has, and they all but laugh in his face. Undaunted, Riku tells Sarah he’s coming to save her anyway. I respect that–he wouldn’t be a protagonist if he didn’t, but I really wish someone would have given him the same speech Kyoya got from Rommel. Riku’s moving without fully grasping the gravity of what’s happening, and ignoring everyone else’s feelings for his own sake.
The GM and the administration decide to wait until the day of the Raid Battle to administer the patch, which gives Build Divers roughly a week to prepare. In the meantime, it gives Riku the time to marshal his forces–Team Chat Noir Neo joins up, along with Magee and Tigerwolf as well, and in those days Koichi and Tori work on the patch as much as possible. They manage to get the percentage up to a whopping…twelve percent. Now while I appreciate them for being somewhat realistic about how long it takes to program something, I do wish at least someone would have asked Riku to think about what he was doing.
He’d ultimately still have to go save Sarah otherwise Divers has no point, but c’mon. You’re throwing away GBN for everyone for twelve percent?! This feels pretty impractical.

4. And while we’re at it, this is stupid too. When Riku visits Kyoya, the Champion points out that things online aren’t decided through majority rule. So Riku decides to take on the entire Coalition of Volunteers with just his friends. With 10,000 to 1 odds, Kyoya and Rommel have no problem agreeing to the challenge, while the GM balks and points out how unnecessary this all is.
And it is! GBN is a game that has to have cost a developer hundreds of millions. Hundreds of thousands log in and play the game every day. Why would I risk all that for something as trivial as a Gunpla Battle. On the other end of things, Sarah is a life, but Riku’s betting it like if he loses there’s no problem. The series eventually had to come down to some form of Gunpla fight, but it’s still a little irksome seeing it happen this way.

5.Next Episode: The only friend which didn’t come to the add of Build Divers was Shahryar. But next episode he looks to be making an appearance in order to fight against Tigerwolf. I’m hoping this is all a feint, as a guy who’s spent this much time blabbing about love, he’s got no business battling a team fighting so hard for their teammate.
Gundam Build Divers is available on Crunchyroll and Bandai’s GundamInfo YouTube channel.