this episode was interesting to say the least
I was expecting non-stop action and got very little action and instead a very heavy houki centric episode with her dealing with her anger
the part with the boat just seems pointless, they could have just moved away but instead ichika just draws gospels fire and goes in the direction of the boat (wtf?) houki wanted to let the boat get destroyed and ichika wanted to protect it even if they were illegal fishing, seems they just wanted to dag out houki's aggression
anyway gospel goes berserk sending bullets everywhere then ichika protects houki from the shots which causes them to fall into the ocean
and thats it for the action part
ichika's now is too hurt to fight, all the girls are weeping over ichika, especially houki's who has flashbacks to when they were in grade school and ichika protected her from bullies
all we needed was "dust in the wind" playing when houki was on the beach to make it perfect
another forced thing seemed to be the girls cheering on houki to keep fighting and get revenge for ichika and rin slapping her, it just felt a little out of place
anyway houki decides to keep fighting and now basically all the girls have gone rouge without chifuyu's permission to engage it
chifuyu after seeing this just brushed it off like its no big deal
and thats the end of the ep with all 5 girls engaging gospel, next ep is the final battle
ichika will probably wake up and rush to help the girls and finish the IS off with a powerful move he has never learned or practiced before
we get a little big of fan service with houki's bathing suit though, also her hair ribbon in the preview is white, where as the green one she always wears got burned during the gospel fight, this is most likely the gift ichika got her in ep 9
tabane was also absent from this ep, guess she went home