Quote Originally Posted by shinta|hikari View Post
EDIT: I rewatched it and the whole scene really was done poorly. Itami had more than enough time to run back to a vehicle then command them to retreat. Did you see how leisurely the blond knight tried to apprehend him when he shouted and the gap between them? The way it was done made it seem like Itami wanted to be captured.

Just to make it clear that I'm not just mindlessly griping, I'll propose an alternative way to get the same result.

Itami gets slapped and immediately gets grabbed. This is important to make him staying behind logical.
Instead of shouting in panic, he calmly gives out his retreat order to prevent agitating the enemy. Skillfully using a radio at this point makes sense.
His people retreat, he gets stuck with the knights, and we get the same result we have now, only without all the oddness.
If Itami had broken into a run, who knows what the knights would have done. That could have very easily started a melee. He could have been run down on horseback or had a dagger thrown at him or something.

The knights' actions make sense when you consider that they think they have the upper hand significantly in this encounter. They've got a full squad of mounted knights against a few carriages and strangely clothed but unarmed people.
If you don't know about guns, Itami's squad appears extremely unthreatening, especially given his demeanor when he gets out of the car.

I don't disagree that Itami suspected he would be captured. At the same time, he also seems to think he can talk his way out of this one, as long as he just gets a chance to explain. This doesn't seem too unreasonable, since he can name-drop the princess and explain what happened. The knights shouldn't have a reason to hurt him.
Positing that he did this out of same masochistic impulse just seems really weird to me.