That's what the noxious cloud actually was.
If you're wondering how Valkyrie Drive's second episode went, some random girl literally whipped them apart to start, then the bottom in the relationship was forced to get married (as in there was an entire wedding ceremony) where the 'groom' tried to rape/molest her into becoming her weapon, but couldn't bring her to orgasm, so the tan girl leapt through a window, instantly made her orgasm through really unnecessarily violently french kissing and molesting her. The end.
Impressions:
Fairly dull episode mostly concernd with introducing new characters by not really having them do much of anything. The first of the two was the breathy cloying character who is working overtime to fulfill the roles of Obligatory Animal Rider, Princess, and Wearer of Too Damn Many Bows. Her personality traits include being apologetic about everything and cooking soup. The second is the bandit girl, whose main personality trait was "barely appears in the episode, but for her 30 seconds, we're going to act like she's an important part of events before she vanishes back into the ether."
There just wasn't much going on this episode, especially in the first half which was weak comic relief at best. I think they realized this too by dropping in faux Hakuowlo (as is his name's official romanization) at the very end so that people could clap their hands excitedly. They moved from point A to B, carting the Princess Breathy with them, getting into an almost entirely offscreen fight with bandits along the way, and the bird vs bandits fight was… not pretty either. Chief Boss hasn't gotten any better at decision making either. "I'm taking every able man with me to ambush those brigands. Staying behind to protect the high value target will be… the useless guy I just met the other day, my pet clown, and her psychotic bird. Oh, and let's leave the combat medic. Where we're going, we won't need medics." Director was on point too. I mean, what other way is there to show that a bird is angry other than having a noxious cloud slowly rise up from the asses of characters?
Next Episode:
More Hakuowlo and nakedness.