Episode 5 of Locodol feels like a rather clumsy filler, but when I watched girls praying to the lesser-known god, I figured that it needs to be considered from the right angle. I remembered the Stellvia 09, the episode ahead of the Great Mission, where nothing much happened either.

The episode's best expression, I think, was the scene of Shipon calling her family[1]. While the school is clamping down, she walks into the empty gymnasium and pulls out her cellphone. Her brother answers. A casual conversation follows. Shippon informs him that she's on standby[2] starting the next day and promises to call the day after, that is after the Earth undoubtedly survives. Both of them understand the implications, but they exchange the promises and Shippon hangs up.

Now that's how you make the night-before-battle episode. Creators of Locodol do not quite measure to Tatsuo Sato, but that is to be expected, and they did what they could.

UPDATE: On a completely unrelated note, the 05 is where Saori makes an observation that I wrote down an episode before: the actual goal of locodols is to attract economic benefits from outside of the community, as opposed to advertising local businesses to locals. To be sure, a local economy is not a zero-sum game, but lowering the taxes is not in locodol's power or charter. Fortunately, our heroes and their management manage to keep their eyes on the ball after all.

[1] The 09 is also the episode where Shipon finds her mother's secret message, which is pretty heart-rending, and the timing is perfect, of course. But it's not playing into the overall calm before storm theme of the episode. It's more about Shipon's demons that she has to face. A wonderful part, but not quite the parallel with Locodol 05 that I am building here.

[2] Althogh selected to fly in Great Mission, she's assigned to a standby reserve. Well, given this is anime, you can imagine how that goes.