Pumpkin Scissors Ep 3
The show starts with Oland waking up in a sleeping bag under a bridge where he apparently sleeps at night. It jumps to Alice waking up in a lush big bed. At breakfast, one of her sisters makes comments about Alice’s uniform being to manly for her. Alice points out that its a military uniform. Her father asks her how long does she intend to play her “army games”. Alice mentions that its family tradition to be in the military. Another sister points out that the war has been over with a for a few years. Alice states that the real struggle is to help the people recover and that its the job of her unit to help bring relief to everyone who needs it. Her father points out that while people are going hungry, she’s been eating well. At the office for her unit, Oreld gets there late, but realizes that Alice is also late. Machs points out the lipstick on his chest. Later, Alice still hasn’t shown up and Oreld points out that she’s rarely late. Stekkin makes a comment comparing Alice to the habitually late Oreld. Alice then enters, out of breath from running from her house to the office. Alice says that commoners don’t have carriages to take them back and forth like she does. When Stekkin offers her a glass of water, Alice hesitates, asking if commoners drink water. Machs and Oreld wonder if anything happened to her. After Alice apologizes to Captain Hunks for being late, he sends her and the team off to repair the Su-13 tunnel in the south.
Travelling by train, Oreld is complaing about rebuilding the tuneel. Machs explains that a rebuilt railroad will bring money back into the empire. Alice agrees and is enthusisatic about having her team work along side the commoners. Just then, her stops growls, causing her to become embarassed and Oland to ask if she’d eaten anything. When the train gets to the tunnel, Alice wants to use the tunneling train to bore directly into the rock that had collapsed into the tunnel. Oland thinks that the tunnel would collapse further if they did. They hear Oreld shouting and turn to see him holding onto a young boy who has stolen some food rations. The boy complains that the military gets to eat well. This hits a nerve with Alice who lets the boy keep the rations in return for taking her to his village. At the village, the boy’s father, the village leader, refuses to help Alice and her team. He explains that when the tunnel collapsed five years earlier, the military hired them to repair it. Instead of being payed for their work, the villagers recevied an exemption from serving in the military. With bad crop harvests and no money, people died. Alice asks him to trust her but he won’t help her repair the tunnel.
Alice decides to go ahead and start the work by herself and orders the rest of the team to help. Oland then comes out with lunch but Alice refuses, ignoring her growling stomach. Alice can’t eat, thinking about people all of the people going hungry while she grew up having food. The same boy, Peter, from before shows up, playing on the tunneling train. Alice explains that it isn’t a tank like he thinks it is. Its a shield train. It was sued to knock down barriers and fences in front of soliders during combat. It’s been modified for drilling the tunnel. Peter apologizes for his father, but Alice understands that he won’t help based on promises. Alice starts working in the tunnel by herself, but since she hasn’t eaten, she collapes and dreams about her grandfather. We see a young Alice asking her grandfather if he feels lonely living in a huge house by himself. He tells her that all nobles are somewhat alone. She wakes up, with Oland sitting next to him. Alice slaps him. When Oland asks why, she admits that she doesn’t know why. She then refuses the dinner that Oland brought. Talking to no one in particular, Oland mentions that the country is wretched, suffering from a disease that he calls “war damage”. Alice compares the people of the country to patients suffering from the disease. She goes on to say that their unit is the doctor, working to cure the country. Oland tells her that the paitents don’t want the doctor to be a friend or to share their suffering. They just want the suffering to end. Alice starts to understand that ignoring meals has no affect on helping the country to recover.
The next morning, Alice and Oland return to the village. Alice drives her dagger into the table causing everyone to think that she’s going to use the threat of violence to get them to help. Alice removes the handle from the dagger, revealing the Emporer’s crest. Alice explains that this isn’t a normal military sword. The crest indicates that she’s the next in line to succeed to the head of the Malvin family, one of the 13 Appointed Families of the empire. She then swears an oath that the villagers will receive the money owed to them for the work they did five years earlier. Orled runs in shouting that Peter drove the Shield train into the tunnel and that it collapsed. Alice and the village leader crawl into the tunnel and find Peter. The tunnel entrance becomes completely sealed, trapping the three of them inside. Alice tells them that her team will get them out. The village leader is amused by her faith in her team. He doesn’t understand why a “well-off” person like her would risk her life. Alice tells him that its because she’s well-off that she risks her life. He then tells her that the tunnel collapsed when the villagers were working on it and that the nobles in charge of the project left without helping. Alice gets a premonition and shoves Peter and his father out of the way as a boulder starts to move. Just when its about to hit Alice, it explodes. Alice then sees a blue light and realizes Oland shot destroyed the boulder with his anti-tank gun. Alice wins the trust of the vilalge leader and the villagers start helping the Pumpkin Scissors team to repair the tunnel along side of the team.
There really isn’t much to say about this episode. It was nice to get some background on Alice. We see that Alice’s father and sisters are typical nobles and that she’s the idealistin the family. We also learn that she will succeed her father as head of the Malvin family. Despite that, it was a predictable episode. And instead Oland shooting tanks, he shoots a boulder. I know this is only the third episode of the show. I don’t know how many episodes the show is scheduled to run for, but I hope a fair amount of them don’t end with Oland using his anti-tank gun and blue lantern to end things. Its not a bad show, but so far, it hasn’t become a great show to enjoy.
