The target audience for these summmaries are those people who haven't seen it all, but are so hooked they have-to-have-it-all-NOW. You know who you are. Don't mind my dry sarcasm, and I'll try to keep my personal comments separate.
Please note that more often than not, all 'quotes' are paraphrases- not exact quotes.
Alright, I'm making an exception for episode 14.
This episode, IMO, isn't worth watching a second time- I tried, really.
But I'll write up a summary anyway, from memory, and it's not perfectly accurate, or in order, or whatever. If you haven't seen it yet, you'll understand, I imagine, when you do.
This is supposed to be a funny episode, I think.
Kaname's dreaming about a fun, romantic summer at the beach.
She's not getting her dream- instead she's stuck attending a civilian military-otaku festival with Sousuke, Shinji, Kyouko, and Mizuki.
She's very annoyed.
Make that *very*.
Kyouko's as cheerful as ever, and Kaname acutally mock strangles her for it (I've *never* seen her strangle, or beat on, Kyouko before.)
Mizuki is also pretty cheerful about it, as she's hoping to get hit on by some young, handsome, 'BS' pilot. (and showing her ignorance of military stuff, too...)
Course, Sousuke and Shinji are psyched.
The guys go check out the booths and stuff, while the girls just...hang out, and Mizuki gets really pissed when a really, massively dorky playboy type older guy seriously hits on Kaname. She blows him off in a manner that only makes him more interested in her.
Shinji has a personal interest in this particular festival- his dad, a former solider, participates in a civilian Arm-Slave hobbyist team. The highlight of this festival are the AS games- sort of like the Olympics, only with Arm-Slaves. The amusing thing is that these games are more athletic style than military style (in fact, the games they show aren't really very military at all).
And Shinji's dad leads a team, which, basically, sucks. They've lost every year, always to the same team which always takes the top. What makes this worse for Shinji is his personal hang-up about his dad. Part of the reason Shinji's such an AS freak is because his dad's performance in the military- he had failed to demonstrate the skills necessary to become an AS pilot, and ended up serving in a support position well behind the combat lines. All Shinji wants is a heroic, AS-piloting dad to admire and be proud of.
Makes for a tough Dad-son relationship.
Anyway, his dad's reputation isn't getting any better, in Shinji's eyes, by leading this sucky AS team.
So, the gang is watching the games, and it becomes pretty obvious that the always-victorious team is cheating and using other unethical tactics- and they're just killing the team they are rooting for. Sousuke doesn't really like unethical fighting. Just as the others notice he's no longer with them in the stands, the ARX shows up out of nowhere, beats the cheaters in the current game, and the pilot lectures about ethics.
When he gets out of the ARX, he's hiding his identity by wearing an awful AS costume mostly composed of random cardboard boxes (a guy had been wearing this earlier.... assumably Sousuke borrowed it so he could act while staying 'under cover')
Course Kaname knows right away who it is, and bitches at him some- he acutally asks her how she knew it was him!
Anyway, he volunteers to help out with Shinji's Dad's team, basically showing them some stragety, and helping to direct the actions taken.
While Sousuke is doing this, Kaname is off moping by herself, when the dorky playboy, who is the leader of the cheating team, finds her and gets around to asking her if she wants to help him pilot his AS. (BTW, the civilian teams are using old model Arm-Slaves which require 2 pilots, one to do the actual moving, and one to sort of navigate and keep an eye on what's going on)
She finally decides attempting to extract some revenge while releasing her angst is worth the price of putting up with the offensive guy.
So, basically, you have Sousuke and Kaname on opposing teams, which had a lot of potential to be really funny, but, in the end, isnt (IMO). And Kaname's even piloting an AS!
(but it still isn't really funny...it was all just presented too too wierd.)
So, when the big battle comes around, Sousuke doesn't know Kaname's the one piloting the other team's leading AS, and is acutally impressed by her skills.
(we don't even know if he ever finds out it was her or not...)
Sousuke eventually directs his team to victory (he isn't piloting, just directing from one, btw)...
while managing to teach Shinji the value of the behind-the-scenes support people at the same time. Oh, and also teaching his Dad's team a thing or two about fighting successfully.
Kaname ends up having to beat up the annoying guy, and is in a rather bad mood on the train home, while everyone else is pretty happy ('cept Mizuki, who never seems to be really happy).
I think that, if the visual quality was better, it would be re-watchable.
But it would still be ultra-wierd humor- the characters were so exaggerated they were practically out of character. I mean, they were pretty super-hyped up.
And getting to the visual quality...well, basically, I don't plan on doing any screencaps for this episode. Unless they re-draw it for the home release (which does happen sometimes for some series), but I don't expect them to. (so far the DVD episodes have been identical to the broadcast, as far as I can tell.)
But the visual quality is so bad, it looks like a different person drew each different shot- people who weren't given the standard character design sheets, people who didn't communicate with each other or the animation director....
I understand Gonzo must have poured quite a bit of money into the more important episodes, but did they really have to hire a third grade class to draw this one because of that??