Episode 9 "Rebels"

This week's episode was all action and thankfully, lots of powerful and strong female characters. After the slip in quality of the last episode (save for sentimentality), this week's episode is miles away in terms of story, and most of all character.

As an action heavy episode, most of the story takes place fighting the Rebels who have allegedly come to kidnap Lillith, once again. The Duo teams manage to hold them off for most of the fight, but it is ultimately Professor Rito who saves the students. Rito reveals what her power looks like when she doesn't hold back, and it makes for a fantastic action sequence.

This episode is full of women being powerful, including Tachibana, who begins the episode with her skills alongside Imari, who seems to have improved since day one. The real highlight of this episode however is Julie.

So far, Julie has been somewhat disappointing as a character. At first she was charmingly cute as her "harem stereotype" requires her to be, but with Lillith and Miyabi both making bold moves to get Tor, her character fell a little bit by the wayside. Thankfully, she's back in full force in this episode.

Julie's backstory is revealed in this episode, and while it appears somewhat typical that she too is suffering from loss, it feels a bit refreshing to add some complication to an otherwise oblivious character. In fact, if there's any overarching weak point in "Absolute Duo," it's that the character development is not balanced well with the main plot.

This may have to do with the protagonist Tor, since by very nature, he's a bit inactive. He's the male lead of a series that is supposed to be privy to allowing average male viewers to inject themselves into his shoes. But I'd say this is a disservice to the entire appeal of a series because it ultimately makes the desire for the surrounding female characters feel false, which subsequently makes their characters weak in their goals.

Overall, this week's episode was a step far ahead of last week's episode and offered plenty of action and story development. The brief glimpse into Julie's backstory was just enough character development to make for a strong episode.

Here's hoping for more episodes like this.