Kim's match reviews and pop culture emporium

 Asuka launches a barrage of kicks to begin. Chigusa counters after an irish whip with a flying wheel kick which I always have a soft spot for. The limb work for both of them is two fronted with Chigusa starting off by targeting the arm and pivoting to Asuka's back with Asuka's focuses being Chigusa's head and her leg as things get desperate. This match is really interesting having watched some heel Asuka from the late 90s cause it kinda feels like the closest she comes to it so far in the 80s stuff in that Asuka has an arm taped up and when Chigusa goes for the arm she very pointedly goes towards the uninjured one consistently whereas when Asuka goes after Chigusa's knee there's doubt about going after a preexisting injury. As the match goes on there's an apparent difference in firepower with Asuka attempting to close the match out but failing to twice to lead to a judge's decision. in ring a 9/10 might bump it down to an 8.9 on account of finish bloat

 The archangel enters Artemis and gets put into custody with the crew in the mess hall and the commanding officers meeting the leadership of the fortress. I don't know why but in the intervening time since my last viewing of this show I thought of the earth alliance as being more federated than this very factionalized force we see in the show up to this point. The officers get interrogated and eventually invited to stay along with a bit of arrogance about the impregnability of Artemis. The notable thing in the latter portion is Flay being peak white girl and narking on Kira being a coordinator exposing him to exploitation and fuck her. the episode ends with the blitz's attack on Artemis the crew breaking out and Kira launching to respond. 8.5/10