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Kanos posted:The robots are super rad but they don't really do that much and it's really disappointing. This is true
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Aug 4, 2014 08:20
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Holy poo poo, the mobile armor this episode loving ruled!  Blume was p ridic too.
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Aug 10, 2014 22:53
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Yasser Arafatwa posted:Holy poo poo, the mobile armor this episode loving ruled! Calling it now, at some point Puck is going to hijack an upgraded version of that thing for a proper human vs AI final boss throwdown.
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Aug 11, 2014 03:41
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Hidingo Kojimba posted:Calling it now, at some point Puck is going to hijack an upgraded version of that thing for a proper human vs AI final boss throwdown. Macross Plus style, just need evil idol singing in the background. I finally got caught up with this since both the shows I'm watching this season are Saturday shows. I'm glad I did, for all the flaws in the writing I'm definitely enjoying the battle of the week laid back, almost Saturday morning cartoon pace of the show. It doesn't hurt that the animation is rad too. I will be disappointed if the Earth Engine doesn't go full Gunbuster by the end, and rip off Gurrenlagann's sweet boomerang attack.
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Aug 12, 2014 08:21
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Srice posted:That's a great example of the sunk cost fallacy in action. I did the same and just came into the thread to check things out, so thanks to you guys for the update! Maybe I'll go watch Star Driver eventually.
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Aug 12, 2014 08:28
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I've been trying watching this in three episode chunks to see if it makes the writing any more coherent and satisfying, but it really hasn't. The Salty Dog poo poo is really, really stupid. What on earth is the endgame for them? Even if they get what they want, how do they plan to get her to do what they want once they plug her into Blume where no one can touch her anymore besides Daichi? I could understand if they wanted to kidnap her friends and hold them as hostages to manipulate her into doing what they want or something but they just want to straight up kill them, which would probably adversely affect their plan that completely, entirely, and solely relies on her willing participation. The show even lampshades this and promptly handwaves it. "Hey even if we successfully kidnap Hana she probably won't do anything we say." "No, it's fine, she has a teenage girl's mentality."  And then the next episode preview talks about more Salty Dog poo poo. What the hell, she's in the loving ship, they can't really kidnap her anymore.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:14
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I don't remember ever understanding the story in this, which at this point I'm just thinking that it's good because of how stupid and hard to follow it is and how they whip up new buzzwords every episode without explaining what they even are.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:16
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Kanos posted:The show even lampshades this and promptly handwaves it. "Hey even if we successfully kidnap Hana she probably won't do anything we say." "No, it's fine, she has a teenage girl's mentality."
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Aug 13, 2014 20:50
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Finally an episode on time! Akari's mom wanting to adopt Hana raised all flags for a bitter-sweet ending. -e- Seems like I got a post out of forum limbo. Lurking Haro fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Aug 16, 2014 |
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Aug 16, 2014 23:47
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Guyver posted:I'm not going to argue that the plot isn't kind of convoluted and weirdly paced but this is obviously part of the theme they're going for. That is cooperation between the generations is a good thing and that the old shouldn't dismiss the young. The same sentiment was expressed last episode when Daichi met the old guy on the station who remarked that he's no hero just some boy. To them Hana is just some little girl who can be made to do what they want and Daichi would just crumble under the pressure because they are children. Both being shown to be far from the truth. The show even has the Saltydog rep remark how the old and the young work well together at the Tanegashima base. Hell the Kill-T-Gang are basically old humanity trying to suck the life out of the young humanity. They call Daichi a neoteny which is something that keeps aspects of it's juvenile form into adulthood. This "old people not having respect for the young" thing would have been a lot more poignant and make a lot more sense if they had placed it at the beginning of the series before everyone on the Midsummer's Knights became a proven hardened combat veteran with multiple Kiltgang kills under their belt. Having Salty Dog treat them like idiot children who can be easily manipulated at this point just paints the organization as stupid as hell rather than dismissive and disrespectful. Placing this stuff earlier in the series would help the pacing a whole shitload too because we're currently ping-ponging between "Let's go fight world-ending alien invaders" and "Let's deal with inter-office politics and idiots in black suits" so fast it's going to cause whiplash.
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Aug 17, 2014 00:37
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Kanos posted:This "old people not having respect for the young" thing would have been a lot more poignant and make a lot more sense if they had placed it at the beginning of the series before everyone on the Midsummer's Knights became a proven hardened combat veteran with multiple Kiltgang kills under their belt. Having Salty Dog treat them like idiot children who can be easily manipulated at this point just paints the organization as stupid as hell rather than dismissive and disrespectful. Except they did? I'm pretty sure the first seven or eight episodes were all about "Salty Dog and the rest of the Ark Faction sabotaging them because "There's no way that kids can solve this problem" " Of course, the fact that they're doubling down despite the fact that the Midsummer's Knights are actually doing a fine job holding the line and have a pretty reasonable chance of success is kind of odd. Makes me wonder How they're so convinced that the Intercept Faction is a bunch of fuckups when they're pretty consistently getting poo poo done. And what it is they know that makes it a good idea to actively sabotage the defense of the earth-especially since there's gently caress-all that conventional Impactors can do to stop a Kiltgang, and they'll hardly have enough time to blast off into space in their space bunkers once they're convinced that defeat is imminent. Then again, maybe they're just stupid dicks who work against their own interest to give a conventional villain. Depends how Saturday Morning Cartoon the morality here is, and that's not going to be clear until the ending.
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Aug 17, 2014 03:43
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Alectai posted:Except they did? I'm pretty sure the first seven or eight episodes were all about "Salty Dog and the rest of the Ark Faction sabotaging them because "There's no way that kids can solve this problem" " Yeah, they did do the plot at the beginning already. And now they're doing it again. For some reason. Even though it really doesn't make any loving sense at this point, since Salty Dog's own solutions to the aliens(unmanned Impactors) have been proven repeatedly to be completely and totally loving useless and the Engines are the only thing that have successfully worked at all, so them actively attempting to sabotage the Intercept Faction all the time at this point despite having absolutely no idea when the Kiltgang will attack next basically boils down to playing insanely dangerous brinksmanship with total species suicide. You know, explicitly the opposite of what the stated goal of the Ark Faction is. I mean poo poo, say they kill Daichi/Teppei and kidnap Hana and get the Blume. What happens if a Kiltgang comes along while they're hooking the cryopod ship up to the Blume before they leave? They're hosed. Cooperation, even though they may not really like it, is absolutely the only thing that makes sense at this point. I don't mind cartoony villains, but I don't like villains whose decisions and actions make absolutely no sense and actively sabotage their own goals.
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Aug 17, 2014 12:13
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It is simple, really. Every single character is intensely stupid. Some of them might be incredibly competent in certain areas (mainly Akari), but they overcome this by doing dumb poo poo at every opportunity.
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Aug 17, 2014 16:20
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I'm starting to think I'm the only idiot still watching this show. It really isn't good and yet each week I turn it on hoping that maybe this episode will make it worthwhile. Sunk cost be damned.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:05
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Zydrate posted:I'm starting to think I'm the only idiot still watching this show. It really isn't good and yet each week I turn it on hoping that maybe this episode will make it worthwhile. Sunk cost be damned. I catch up every few weeks. It's actually gotten worse over time.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:23
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It is dumb as hell, and they never did anything good with the earth engine and its fancy robot hat. For a show that doesn't take place in a high school, it is incredibly dedicated to worshiping an idealized vision of youth.
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Sep 7, 2014 06:27
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I'm still watching. I kinda like the chill youthful summer cartoon vibe. The whole thing reminds me of happy old Saturday morning cartoons and it's kept me watching. Idk if I could marathon it, but Captain Earth has been great as my watch while I eat on Saturdays show. I liked this episode even though it was kind of a Congratulations/multidensional vortex ripoff. I'm a sucker for "break down mental barriers with your fighting spirit" episodes though.
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Sep 7, 2014 07:15
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Why couldn't this show be as fabulous as Star Driver? Im still watching every week, but I'm just still kind of baffled how they could go from something so stylish and satisfying from episode to episode to something this slow and plodding. This is probably the Giant Robot show with the least important giant robots i've ever seen.
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Sep 7, 2014 08:03
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I'm still watching because it does have the occasional amazing moment like the Akari threatening to destroy humanity, but this giant robot show certainly has some of the most boring giant robot fights I've ever seen. I did like "You keep saying that. What's a real person?" this week.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:09
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Pyronic posted:Im still watching every week, but I'm just still kind of baffled how they could go from something so stylish and satisfying from episode to episode to something this slow and plodding. It's because they have this really weird thing about repeating themselves over and over and over and loving over. The Salty Dog stuff we're doing right now is a larger-scale retread of something they covered at the very beginning. Daichi angsting over having to pull the trigger if it means killing his friend is something they already covered several episodes ago. Them fighting a gigantic evil impactor is something they just did a little while ago. The show is so desperate to repeat things it already has done that it doesn't have any time to actually do anything new.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:22
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Kanos posted:It's because they have this really weird thing about repeating themselves over and over and over and loving over. The Salty Dog stuff we're doing right now is a larger-scale retread of something they covered at the very beginning. Daichi angsting over having to pull the trigger if it means killing his friend is something they already covered several episodes ago. Them fighting a gigantic evil impactor is something they just did a little while ago. If it repeated all this stuff but the characters handled it differently due to their development and growing out of their youth it could work but the outcome and the message is the same every time.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:46
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I still watch this show weekly, but I think their effort to try and limit how much information the audience gets directly, instead going for cryptic references, sudden bursts of exposition, and just generally having things being a mystery, has hampered them in the long run - mostly because they keep trying to keep as much to their chest as possible before they absolutely have to say something. And even then, it doesn't necessarily mean that the answer will be complete (see: We now know what Salty Dog's deal is, but not why their leaders are so damned convinced that this plan is somehow too out of hand to let the Knights do their thing). I liked the latest episode's dream sequence, mostly in how they might screw with things in brief edits that, when you're watching the episode through the first time, and in any other show, would indicate the depths of the Kiltgang's willingness to toy with Daichi whilst they have him at their mercy. Except, by the end... it appears to be nothing to do with them, defeating the entire point. And its yet another cryptic thing added to a show that has yet to explain some of its core concepts properly, seemingly just for the sake of adding more mysteries in. I actually thought when the vision ended that they were actually about to fire upon the Cocoon, because that made sense as like, an offscreen thing to have occurred after jumping into hyperspace or whatever. But no, still at the damned Impactor.
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Sep 8, 2014 19:33
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What was up with the different version of the ED this time? Still dug it, but seemed odd they suddenly changed the instrumentation.
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Sep 8, 2014 21:45
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Yasser Arafatwa posted:What was up with the different version of the ED this time? Still dug it, but seemed odd they suddenly changed the instrumentation. Assuming it doesn't change back in the next episode, maybe its meant to mark the show going into its final lap?
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Sep 8, 2014 21:59
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So with the preview this week, did anyone else get the feeling that Daichi is going to die next week? It would certainly parallel what happened with his father.
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Sep 14, 2014 16:34
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Nah, it'll look like he dies but then he lives thanks to livlaster magic because he ~promised~ to come get Hana out of her ball.
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Sep 14, 2014 19:13
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Okay, credit where its due, they actually did end up giving a drat about the whole dream sequence deal. On the other hand, it leaves the lingering question of what the heck Akari was watching, but eh. I kinda wish the initial fight with BugBear had been more of the standard for the setting. Yes, it has the usual sudden turnaround, but before it the fight is way more balanced than the show usually allowed, both sides getting in their shots and evading others. I feel like the staff aren't normally very good at these things, for whatever reason, so it makes a refreshing change to see a fight with effort from both sides, rather than it being utterly lopsided till the finale. Plus the sudden turnaround ended up meaning something for Teppei's development, and... I actually kinda liked the notion that he, a nigh-immortal alien being, found reason to believe in some kind of higher power. Though... I feel like the twist with Puck is just gonna end up used as an excuse to let the Kiltgang off easy for all the stuff they've done by making them into technical good guys for the final fight.
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Sep 14, 2014 20:57
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Astro Nut posted:Though... I feel like the twist with Puck is just gonna end up used as an excuse to let the Kiltgang off easy for all the stuff they've done by making them into technical good guys for the final fight. Shades of Star Driver there, unsurprisingly. Although to be fair to Star Driver most of the Glittering Crux weren't anywhere near as nasty as the Kiltgang.
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Sep 15, 2014 01:34
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Blah blah blah, I hate humans and hanging out with 7 other people and a horndog AI for eternity sounds great. Especially the idol, since hearing her repeat some variation of that terrible catchphrase every 5 minutes from now to the heat death of the universe won't ever get old. Puck saying "yo gently caress you chumps, I'm gonna go inhabit every body and then have them screw each other" is a much more sympathetic motivation, really. poo poo, at least glittering crux had style. gimme the GOD DAMN candy fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 15, 2014 01:43
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Only like half of the Glittering Crux could really be considered "evil." Heck wasn't one of the factions goals trying to keep the others from blowing up the planet? And most of the rest weren't really trying to kill tons of people save Head who didn't get a redemption. The KT-gang on the other hand have proven themselves willing psychopaths almost to the man the whole show, yet we pretty much know they'll get off scott-free
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Sep 15, 2014 05:57
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galagazombie posted:Only like half of the Glittering Crux could really be considered "evil." Heck wasn't one of the factions goals trying to keep the others from blowing up the planet? And most of the rest weren't really trying to kill tons of people save Head who didn't get a redemption. The KT-gang on the other hand have proven themselves willing psychopaths almost to the man the whole show, yet we pretty much know they'll get off scott-free The only one of them who ever demonstrated any traits other than "totally evil crazy person" from the moment they awakened was Bugbear, and even then his attitude basically boiled down to "I've got nothing left to live for anymore so gently caress it". I guess Seiren hasn't been actively evil but she's had literally no development whatsoever.
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Sep 15, 2014 09:18
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Kanos posted:The only one of them who ever demonstrated any traits other than "totally evil crazy person" from the moment they awakened was Bugbear, and even then his attitude basically boiled down to "I've got nothing left to live for anymore so gently caress it". I guess Seiren hasn't been actively evil but she's had literally no development whatsoever. The Glittering Crux were a cadre of people who wanted the seals on the island broken for various reasons. Some just wanted to be able to gently caress around with giant robots, others just wanted to actually be capable of leaving without invoking a crazy timeloop, and some of course wanted to rule the drat world. A few were just bored otherwise and saw it as some eccentric thrill ride with only a few consequences involved. By comparison, as you note, once any of the Kiltgang - save Bugbear - awoke, they were instantly onboard and totally okay with attempting to commit total genocide of the human race. Hell, the only reason Seiren hasn't done anything so far is because she thought attacking the good guys one at a time was stupid, so instead she's been slowly building up the Orgone energy supplies so they could just attack all at once. Their entire schtick is that they operate on a Black Adam style god complex, biologically superior and thus think themselves free to treat other species however their wish - namely, feeding off them for sustenance. Beyond that, there's been little conflict of any kind revolving around their previous human lives versus the reality of what they are, or indulging in the various comforts of human society - aside of like, Malkin realising she has a fairly attractive body and wanting to show it off. It feels like a vastly missed opportunity for there to have perhaps been some inter-faction conflict among them, especially with Albion/Teppei having potentially set an example that they didn't necessarily have to just wander the universe being team Galactus. And given how few of them there are, it'd be way easier to characterise and play off that conflict than if they had been a full army or whatever.
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Sep 15, 2014 13:42
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Astro Nut posted:Hell, the only reason Seiren hasn't done anything so far is because she thought attacking the good guys one at a time was stupid, so instead she's been slowly building up the Orgone energy supplies so they could just attack all at once.
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Sep 15, 2014 14:03
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Yeah, the way the Kiltgang crew was handled is really weird. Especially Malkin's showing a faint spark of development and then getting instantly shut down by Amarok and going nowhere. I think the story would actually be way more interesting if Daichi and Akari didn't exist, or at least weren't the main characters, and it was mostly about the Kiltgang freaking the gently caress out over being both humans and world-eating space monsters. Sindai fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 15, 2014 23:25
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Guyver posted:That might be part of it but it does seem like she's pretty conflicted on what to do. She puts on the same pained face when ever Amara starts cheer leading team Kill All Humans. Her conversation with Daichi supports this. If doctor lady didn't manipulate and use her she might have sided with Teppei but people hurt her so she wants to hurt them back. All of which makes Kanos' statement about her not getting any development strange to me. The sum total of Seiren's development is "Lives with doctor lady, doctor lady turns out to be psychopath, awaken as Kiltgang, fade entirely into background to be used as Kiltgang power generator". Having a core motivation during her intro episode does not equal development; if that was true Zin and Incredibly Obnoxious Idol both qualify as having development and they really, really do not. One note characters are not developed.
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Sep 15, 2014 23:36
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Sindai posted:Yeah, the way the Kiltgang crew was handled is really weird. Especially Malkin's showing a faint spark of development and then getting instantly shut down by Amarok and going nowhere. I actually kinda like Daichi, but I do think there would have been room in perhaps using his odd status as a point of interaction between the various factions as something other characters could bounce off. I mean, you actually see it at some points in the series between him and Amarok, since the latter sees him as some strange thing who somehow convinced a 'superior' being that the cattle are people worth protecting. Whilst Daichi, in turn, has a special grudge against Amarok for, you know, killing his father and all. The others don't generally get that level of interaction with the rest of the cast, beyond their initial episodes. I was actually surprised when they brought back Aiatar's avatar being an idol singer as a plot point, since it gave her a briefly renewed focus, followed by her being Daichi's false romance in the dream world... for some reason.
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Sep 16, 2014 01:35
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Astro Nut posted:Though... I feel like the twist with Puck is just gonna end up used as an excuse to let the Kiltgang off easy for all the stuff they've done by making them into technical good guys for the final fight. Seriously, god drat it. The show is ending next episode and they're going to spend the entire time fighting Generic Megalomaniacal Evil AI. This show is infuriating to me because the ingredients for something interesting and good are there but they waste so much time repeating themselves and emphasizing all the boring generic parts that they never actually deal with the good stuff. If they had excised the entire Salty Dog plot and Puck didn't exist we might have had enough time to actually make the Kiltgangs into fleshed out characters and make them interesting villains. Most of the Kiltgang(everyone except Zin and Aiatar) had momentary flashes of actually being a multi-faceted character - Amarok's rivalry with Daichi and confusion at Teppei's actions, Malkin's inquiring if Amarok found her attractive, Bugbear's backstory(easily the most interesting of all of them), Lieban's speed thing when Teppei beat her, Seiren's "I don't know if I'm ready to walk that path yet" - but none of them are given enough focus to actually expand on any of this, which is a huge shame. We also totally dropped interesting plot threads related to our protagonists like Teppei's father. As for the most recent episode, it was pretty hilarious how everyone poo poo their pants about Teppei destroying his own ego block and how it looked like our protagonists actually achieved something when they killed Bugbear but whoops nevermind Space Princess can resurrect them anyway even if their ego blocks blow up.
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Sep 17, 2014 07:15
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Wow, I'd totally forgotten about Teppei's dad. It's like they came up with enough characters and plot lines for a 52-episode show and then had to cut it down to 26 at the last minute. Then they chose to do that by including the start of every subplot but only some of the endings.
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Sep 17, 2014 07:26
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...So, final episode. My general impression, as well as for the series overall, is that this was made with a lot of ambition, but not necessarily the know how to realise it, certainly within the space it had at least. It wants to be some grand space adventure interwoven with mystery and conspiracies both on Earth and from beyond the stars. It wants to be a tale of the greatest summer a young boy has ever had, rising to become a hero, and finding the girl of his dreams. Of living up to a father's legacy whilst becoming their own person. Of learning what it means to be a human being. But it seems so... confused. The ending leaves us with more questions and open speculation than answers and closure, even with a few fairly neat fight sequences in between. Similar to the Star Driver ending, but cranked up to eleven, which if that means they're planning for a movie, then I just sigh and shake my head. What happens to the Kiltgang since their avatar bodies were still on Earth? What's the deal with the livlasters and the neoteny? Or wherever the hell Hana came from? How is Salty Dog gonna react to being totally ineffectual and counter-productive? Answers, please!
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Sep 20, 2014 20:38
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Wait, who was the blue-haired girl who showed up at the very end? I remember seeing her before but not when. Has she just been chilling in the background the whole time? I guess that means she has something to do with the livlasters, since they keep saying they're also living aliens but never went anywhere with that. Also I still haven't the slightest idea what "neoteny" is supposed to mean.
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Sep 20, 2014 21:36
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