WARNING: The following contains spoilers for World Trigger Season 2, Episode 2, “Collision,” now streaming on Crunchyroll.
The most impressive aspect of World Trigger’s battles is the focus on strategic elements, information gathering and planning. This is demonstrated well early on in the anime when the future-seer Yuichi Jin single-handedly defeated four of Border’s top fighters through very careful planning. The Galopoula invasion arc is another great demonstration of how the strategy works in real-time during a tense and fast-paced team battle in Episode 2.
Episode 1 already clearly set up Galopoula’s objective: to slow down Border’s movement against their master planet Aftokrator. They choose to use their elite team of agents to secretly infiltrate Border’s headquarter and destroy the expedition ship that Border will use to go after Aftokrator. Simultaneously, another team controls a larger group of trion soldiers outside of Border HQ to serve as a distraction. This would have been a successful plan had Jin not seen the future and knows they are coming. Galopoula has lost the element of surprise, but this episode demonstrates that they're still formidable fighters.
In the expedition ship hanger battle, Border sends its top four attackers Kei Tachikawa, Soya Kazama, Kirie Konami, and Ko Murakami to face two Galopoula invaders Gattlin and Ratarykov, which shows how much Border values this ship. But Konami reminds the team that Jin foresaw Tachikawa being cut in half in battle since Tachikawa is the No.1 fighter, this future vision suggests a far more tense battle than was previously expected by the other attackers.
The battle begins even before any actual contact, Tachikawa tricks the invaders by saying pulling both enemies' focus toward the three attackers in front of them, while Kazama uses his camouflage to sneak behind Gattlin and cuts off his arm. But to the Border team’s surprise, Gattlin uses one of his triggers to make a canon to replace his arm, instantly blowing a hole on the hanger door. This quick exchange demonstrates how important it is to know the enemy’s arsenal before the battle and act accordingly.
What follows is a very fast-paced fight, this is where the different objectives become crucial. While the Galopoula team is at a disadvantage in terms of manpower, their objective is only to destroy the ship. As such, their strategy is to continue sending in trion dogs to occupy the Border attackers. While the Border team needs to protect the hanger so they can’t move around too freely, otherwise they will risk creating an opportunity for the enemies to attack the ship.
World Trigger's team battles always provide a sense of a larger, dynamic battlefield even though viewers can only see one fight at a time. The fighters are always aware of the entire battlefield and cover for each other when needed. During fights, every fighter is still observing their opponents and looking for weaknesses.
For instance, Ratarykov quickly sees the weakness in Kazuma’s camouflage trigger: he can't use it in conjunction with other triggers. The Border team notices that Galopoula only sends in a few trion dogs at a time, indicating that it takes a high level of concentration to control these dogs’ movements, so destroying them is not their primary concern.
The teams’ strategies also evolve as they gather more information. The initial strategy of the Border team is to take out the weaker member Ratarykov first, but after the first round of the fight, they change their target to the stronger Gattlin, who is always covering for Ratarykov. Galopoula team also realizes that Ratarykov is being targeted, and is adding more trion dogs to compensate. They adjust their mission timeline from 10 to 15 minutes in order to wait for another opportunity to destroy the ship.
This battle in Episode 2 highlights some of the best fighters in the entire series, but teamwork always more important than individual fighting prowess for both sides. It is the coordination and the strategic thinking from all characters involved that makes World Trigger's team battles so fun to watch.
