This is the show that makes you distrust the room you're sitting in. Gelsadra's gift is making feelings visible as little colored balloons over everyone's head, and Kenji Nakamura turns that gimmick into the most unnerving thing in the series: a nation of people quietly agreeing until they fuse into one smug pink blob. Tsubasa comes in swinging as the hot-blooded new recruit who thinks punching the problem counts as thinking about it, Rui's GALAX and the CROWDS system get put on trial by Rizumu and VAPE, and Hajime keeps grinning through it with Berg-Katze riding shotgun in her own body. Nobody here is the villain, which is exactly why it hurts. It's a magical girl in a lace apron with a pair of scissors, calmly cutting the atmosphere apart while everyone else waits for consensus to tell them what to feel.

One year after Berg Katze was stopped, the CROWDS system has spread through Japanese society and narrowed the distance between ordinary people and their government, with Prime Minister Sugayama endorsing it. When a huge UFO crashes into farmland outside Nagaoka, a peaceful alien emerges and Tsubasa Misudachi's everyday life is upended. Gatchaman founder J.J. Robinson hands Tsubasa a NOTE, making her the team's newest member, and she learns the ropes under veteran Hajime Ichinose. Meanwhile a mysterious organization called VAPE uses red CROWDS to cause havoc, turning the public against the technology, and the Gatchaman must stop them.