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Hush's backstory is incredibly loving dark, even by the standards of this series.
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Oct 9, 2016 15:11
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Ethiser posted:If the trend continues Mika is going to end up a blind quadriplegic who can only feel things when physically attached to a war machine. So Ein, then. Guy Goodbody posted:I loved that scene. There was no dramatic music, no ~tiger aura~, but you still absolutely knew that Mika was completely willing to kill that dude in an instant My favorite part of the scene was Atra knowing exactly what was going on and immediately moving to defuse the situation, followed by the lines "Atra, was he bullying you?" "I don't GET bullied." Atra is so great.
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Oct 10, 2016 18:38
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Droyer posted:I like the idea of a broadsword being a middle ground between a katana and a mace. It's less of a broadsword and more of a blunt metal bat.
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Oct 11, 2016 05:32
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Well, at least if anyone was worried that the final episode of S1 meant they were toning down the brutality on display, this episode should put that to rest pretty conclusively.
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Oct 16, 2016 22:47
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Microcline posted:No one ever doubted the series' willingness to repaint cockpits with jets of anime blood. The problem is every arc ending with unfitting, unambiguous happy endings. A shitload of Tekkadan kids died horribly attacking Edmonton, on screen even. It's just that they were nameless and the decision to carry the show to a second season meant that Tekkadan had to continue existing as a relatively intact organization so their losses were played down and largely forgotten in the tonally inconsistent ending. This arc is pretty clearly all setup, since it's all about drawing Tekkadan back into conflict with McGillis's rivals in Gjallarhorn.
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Oct 17, 2016 04:16
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DigitalRaven posted:I just love that when Aki runs out of ammo he just pulls the GIANT loving CLAW. The use of Big Lumps of Metal rather than beamspam as weapons is one of the best things about IBO's fight scenes. To be fair, Akihiro sounded actually pissed that the guy surrendered and there's at least a reasonable chance he would have just killed the guy anyway if Lafter hadn't showed up to yell at him. Dude was bloodlusting.
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Oct 17, 2016 16:29
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I liked this episode a lot; it was really good that it pulled back pretty hard on the narrative of Tekkadan as scrappy good guy protagonists. Kudelia verbally acknowledging that yeah, Orga might be extremely successful in the short term but isn't really helping the issue in the long term at all was good and I'm glad that the show acknowledges it instead of pretending it's not an issue.Darth Walrus posted:I actually think that McGillis is going to play reasonably nice with Tekkadan. The problem is that Orga doesn't quite grasp the enormity of gaining his enemies. Speaking of, the title for the next episode is bland and un-poetic enough to be ominous as gently caress. Yeah, there's pretty much no current visible reason why McGillis would be looking to slip a knife into Tekkadan's back at this juncture. They're an extremely valuable and useful catspaw for him that he can utilize with at least a thin layer of plausible deniability and they have no reason to turn against him yet, so there's no benefit to him not just continuing the same sort of business arrangement that they used to take down the Dawn Horizon Corps. Tekkadan also makes some pretty big gains with this alliance too, honestly. While Gjallarhorn has lost a ton of stock in the world, they're still effectively the law. Having an in with a powerful faction of Gjallarhorn gives them a lot of leeway that they otherwise wouldn't have, as evidenced by them getting away scot free with cold blooded vengeance murder. But as you say, Orga is pretty badly underestimating the danger of inserting Tekkadan into the middle of a power struggle at the top of the most powerful organization in known space. Kanos fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Oct 23, 2016 |
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Oct 23, 2016 21:21
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Neddy Seagoon posted:We're all in agreement that at some point this season Tekkadan are going to get collectively slaughtered down to a small group of the main cast by their own hubris, right? I don't think I'd class their actions as hubristic because that implies a belief of invincibility; I think reckless is a lot more accurate. Orga is at least nominally aware about the nature of the risks he takes and the cost of failure; remember that Biscuit died in his arms. He just believes that taking insane risks is the only way to advance Tekkadan at a rate that he views as meaningful and acceptable. The blinders on Orga aren't that he isn't aware that Tekkadan could get hosed and lose everything, it's that he doesn't realize that the very success of Tekkadan is exacerbating the problem that Tekkadan's success is meant to fix. However, I do agree with: Neddy Seagoon posted:It won't be political corruption. They have been carving a bloody mess through everyone they fight without a shred of mercy. Eventually the wheel is gonna turn and bring the same down on them. They very heavily foreshadowed the possibility that Orga's tendency to resort to naked force to resolve every situation is going to turn around and bite him in the rear end at some point.
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Oct 23, 2016 22:21
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anglachel posted:I think Orga's read is pretty on point. The world of Iron Blooded Orphans is not one where you can just settle on a farm and be safe and secure without an in with the powerful. Having McGillis be top dog is probably their only chance at present to have any kind of real long term security. There's also the simple fact that if McGillis thinks Tekkadan isn't with him, then he's gonna think they are a tool that can used against him. And Orga just saw him carry off a power play that had him on top of the most powerful organization in space. Why would he want to make this guy an enemy? Especially when he's already worked with him before at benefit to him? Not having McGillis as an enemy and entering into an alliance with him aren't the same thing, though. While I agree that Tekkadan definitely doesn't want to make an enemy of McGillis, Orga's just entered into an implicit contract where if McGillis fucks up his incredibly dangerous political game, Tekkadan will receive blowback for it, even if they don't have anything to do with why McGillis hosed up. McGillis isn't on top; he took control of the Fareed family, and taking control involved deeply damaging the Fareed family's prestige by implicating his father in the corruption at Edmonton. Rustal's faction controls the greatest part of Gjallarhorn's military forces(Arianhrod) and has the approval/support of other Seven Stars(Iok). That's a pretty dangerous thing to align yourself against, especially since Orga deliberately mentions Tekkadan's puny status relative to those other factions. The differential in power is illustrated pretty starkly by the battle here where McGillis was only able to send one ship while Rustal could scrounge up five to take Sandoval. Orga would take the alliance in any case because Orga is a compulsive insane risk-taker and an alliance with McGillis has the highest potential payout of all options available to him, but much like most of Orga's bets, it has the potential to fail so catastrophically that it means the end of everything.
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Oct 26, 2016 22:37
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This episode's foreshadowing was about as subtle as a brick to the face.
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Oct 30, 2016 13:36
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galagazombie posted:I'm wondering if Gaelio will be going the "cold and surgical" style of revenge or will go full "roaring rampage" style once the ball gets rolling. The fact that Gaelio went incognito and joined up with McGillis's greatest political rival to work against him on the down low rather than immediately going to the Seven Stars and publicly accusing/denouncing McGillis suggests that he's being very patient about this. Given that Gaelio is a Seven Star himself, he could pretty easily show up and drag McGillis's name through the mud in a protracted he said/she said situation, but it wouldn't guarantee McGillis couldn't weasel out of it in some way. By faking his death and feeding information to a powerful individual like Rustal he's playing the long game by assuming that Rustal will be eventually able to knock McGillis down to size with Gaelio's aid. The fact that McGillis is now aligned with Tekkadan must strike Gaelio as a wonderful bit of luck re: vengeance. My question is if Gaelio is 100% totally on board the "gently caress McGillis at all costs" wagon or if he still harbors any of his old desire to reform Gjallarhorn.
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Nov 2, 2016 09:39
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Darth Walrus posted:Well, he did pick the Arianrhod fleet, who presently seem like one of the better Gjallarhorn factions. Rustal's methods are extreme, but he does so far seem like a reformer who believes that McGillis is a key part of his organisation's corruption, and will use any means necessary to take him down. The Arianrhod fleet was the military force responsible for carrying out the slaughter of the Dort worker unions and were totally on board with killing the gently caress out of Kudelia for daring to maybe want to negotiate with Arbrau. I think the only factions that exemplified the sort of corruption McGillis wanted to root out more clearly were his father and the dude originally in command of Martian Gjallarhorn. Rustal doesn't seem to have stated any intention to reform anything yet; his focus has so far entirely been attempting to sabotage McGillis by proxy(trying to snipe Sandoval out from under McGillis/Tekkadan, setting up this war that Earth Tekkadan are fixing to blunder into to reflect badly on both Tekkadan and potentially McGillis if his connection to them is revealed) in order to consolidate power under his faction. Kanos fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Nov 2, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 14:43
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MonsterEnvy posted:Thats going to be a bit hard for him given that one of his arms and eyes don't work unless he is in a mobile suit. I also have a feeling his body will get worse as the series goes on. He seemed to do okay in the interim according to what Atra was saying to Kudelia about his cultivation and experimentation. muike posted:How do you even rehabilitate someone like Mikazuki? Is he beyond what you could do for even a normal child soldier? How do you start with someone like that? It's probably impossible for someone as far gone as Mikazuki to ever be "okay" at this point. He should be able to live a normal life just fine because he doesn't seem to be prone to random psychotic breaks or anything like that and seems to be able to live in peace with people he likes just fine, but I think he will always have a super warped view about the value of human life and the morality of violence/killing and he will always be hair-trigger totally murderous if anyone threatens the people he likes in any fashion, purposeful or accidental.
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Nov 3, 2016 01:08
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muike posted:That traitor dude in Tekkadan is gonna be hosed if the Jovian mob finds out about it. Yeah, I'm surprised at him, to be honest. It's one thing to disdain working for a bunch of kids that you think you can run circles around(even if they're terrifyingly competent child soldiers), it's another thing to actively sell out a gigantic mafia syndicate that will likely loving murder you for your betrayal because of that disdain.
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Nov 7, 2016 07:43
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What's interesting to me is that this plot arc and this episode in particular have made it abundantly clear exactly how utterly brittle Tekkadan is, regardless of all the power, wealth, and military force they have accumulated. Without Orga's direct input and orders, Tekkadan basically ceases to function on every level. All it took to completely paralyze the Earth Branch and put them on effective autpilot was to cut off communication between the Earth Branch and Orga. In this episode, Orga asks the supposed inner circle of Tekkadan - his friends and confidants and seconds-in-command - what they think of McGillis's offer and the best they can muster is a bunch of "Um, uh, I don't get it but whatever you think is cool, Orga". Even Eugene, the deputy boss and most assertive/intelligent non-Orga commander figure in Tekkadan, is completely flabbergasted and at a loss by the machinations going on here. The only figure with the knowledge and intelligence to potentially plot a course for Tekkadan besides Orga is Merribit, and she is an auxiliary figure with no authority who is often simply ignored or overruled. In effect, Tekkadan is so top heavy that all it would take to completely derail the organization and reduce its members to a gaggle of ineffectual children once again is to incapacitate/kill Orga or even just temporarily remove him from the picture in a high stress situation. The mess in Arbrau is a direct result of the Rustal faction being aware of this, and it's doubtful that anyone else who has interacted with Tekkadan on a consistent basis doesn't realize it by this point too(McGillis, Naze, Teiwaz).
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Nov 21, 2016 22:02
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Darth Walrus posted:Remember, if he just wanted to reform Gjallarhorn, he could have just stuck with Gaelio. I'm not sure that that this is a statement that naturally connects. McGillis's actions in S1 show pretty clearly that his vision of reforming Gjallarhorn includes straight up eliminating the Seven Stars families. No other conclusion makes any sense, because betraying and killing Gaelio and Carta would serve absolutely no other purpose besides to make his own goals more difficult and strip himself of powerful and influential allies who are loyal to him and share his views. Only in the framework "The Seven Stars must be destroyed in order to achieve meaningful reform in Gjallarhorn" does McGillis stabbing Carta and Gaelio in the back make sense, because he took the opportunity to knock them off while they were still vulnerable and unaware of his true intentions to save effort in the long run.
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Nov 22, 2016 16:02
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Darth Walrus posted:This does, however, continue to raise the question of why he wants to destroy or sideline the Seven Stars. It could be just anger at the corrupt system they've perpetrated, it could be an ancestral grudge for what they did to Agnika Kaeru and his family, or it could be simply because they're obstacles to his total rule of the solar system as its rightful king. In fact, it being a little of all three could be quite plausible. All of these are plausible, as would be a belief that it's impossible to reconcile a reformed Gjallarhorn with one ruled over by an aristocracy. It's pretty easy to understand where he'd get the idea that maybe having a small group of hereditary noble families wielding disproportionate power over the solar system's strongest military power might not be conducive to fair and just rule, especially given his adoptive father's political maneuvering. There's also the pretty much guaranteed fact that precisely none of the Seven Stars would likely go along with a plan of reform that caused them to lose any significant amount of power, and you can't reform an organization without at least some level of cooperation from its leaders.
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Nov 23, 2016 01:51
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Well related to McGillis's final scene this episode I have to wonder how much of this is really him and how much of it is him playing into what Gali's little sister wants to hear. He's got a long history of loving with people interested in him, especially women with romantic interests in him. McGillis is definitely just telling Almiria what she wants to hear because she is a useful pawn due to being the heir apparent to the Bauduin family after Gaelio's "death" and also being head over heels for Macky because she's a little girl with a crush on a handsome guy who is nice to her. I don't think you need to worry about McGillis being an actual pedophile. I mean, he's still a disgusting monster for manipulating a child, but we knew he was a disgusting monster the moment he betrayed and murdered childhood friends in cold blood.
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Nov 28, 2016 06:49
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Zebulon posted:To be honest I think it'd be far more likely for Naze to fall on his sword (or be straight up murdered before he has the chance to on his terms) and for Tekkadan and the remains of the Turbines to team up to go to war against Teiwaz. Orga's loyalty is to Naze, not Teiwaz as a whole. Naze dying for him is pretty much a one-way ticket to "burn it all to the ground" town and I can't really see the rest of the Turbines not wanting in on that. Amida's conversation with Yellow Coat in this episode pretty clearly states that, much like Orga, the Turbines' loyalty is also to Naze and not necessarily to Teiwaz; in fact, Amida sounded pretty much disgusted with your average Teiwaz mafioso. In the event that Naze bites it, I seriously doubt the Turbines would be willing to side with people like Yellow Coat who they detest versus siding with their hubby's beloved little brother. I can see Yellow Coat and possibly a coalition of other disaffected Teiwaz bosses who resent Tekkadan's rise putting together something on the down low to make Orga seriously stumble and force Naze to live up to his (incredibly stupid) promise, which would then leave Tekkadan without a friend at the Old Man's side and make them far more vulnerable. A huge amount of Tekkadan's military power is based on them getting repairs and upgrades and mobile suits through Teiwaz pipelines so if they suddenly fall out of favor or come into conflict with their parent organization their only options at this point are going to be either to become totally dependent on McGillis or to die. ImpAtom posted:My basic problem with reading the writers is that they want to keep convincing me Naze Turbine is a better person than he is and that colors a lot of my feelings on "am I reading this right?" We've already had multiple opportunities for the show to take a more critical turn about the Turbines and they've never taken it, so it's not going to happen at this point. Naze has pretty consistently been shown by the writers to be so nice and pure and selfless and good that doves nest in his fedora. The closest thing to Naze actually demanding anything from Tekkadan in exchange for his tireless support was him saying "OK, Orga, I smoothed over you embroiling your organization in a massive power struggle in the government of the solar system without discussing it with any other member of the organization you're supposed to be a part of by promising to kill myself if you gently caress it up but I swear guys next time you do that you're grounded young man!!!" I actually dislike Naze specifically because the show has basically portrayed the man as so weirdly spotless he might as well be Jesus H. Christ, Mafioso Harem Master.
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Nov 30, 2016 23:09
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Kuroyama posted:I don't think Tekkandan and the Turbines would be totally hosed over if they lost their respective leader. Amida defiinitely has a good head on her shoulders, and Eugene would probably manage with a little help form assistants. The big question would be if the relationship between the two groups would be wrecked in whatever would cause Orga and/or Naze to die, preventing a merger from being on the table. We literally just had an entire plot arc devoted to how even loyal first-generation members of Tekkadan revert to gullible children when divorced from Orga's guiding hand. Eugene is good at relaying orders and handling minor stuff, but his response when asked by Orga for input about the deal with McGillis basically boiled down to "I dunno, lol, whatever you think is best man"; he would be about a mile out of his depth if plunged into the shitfest Orga has tied them to with McGillis and that's not even counting the impending Teiwaz shitstorm. If Tekkadan were just a tiny mercenary company they might figure it out if Orga was removed, but they've become a fairly major player that has made a ton of very powerful enemies in a very short period of time. There would be no time for training wheels for a new leader. The Turbines would probably handle the death of Naze better than Tekkadan would handle the loss of Orga because they have more individuals we've seen who are used to independence and command roles, and that's only including the very tiny subset of the organization we've actually spent time with. Amida, Lafter, and Azee are all competent leaders who are used to giving orders, and all of them are seasoned enough to see through bullshit. The issue with the Turbines that would arise isn't one of competence so much as they're incredibly tightly bound to the Teiwaz command structure and Teiwaz looks to be a very chauvinistic organization. Would it be possible for someone like Amida, in the case of Naze's death, to swear a blood oath to Teiwaz to take over for him? Would Teiwaz even allow it? Would the Turbines be able to survive in their current state cut off from Teiwaz support if not?
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Dec 2, 2016 20:47
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While this is an interesting twist, I really hope that we don't derail our gritty political drama and end up with everyone teams up to fight killer robots who were The Real Bad Guys All Along or something.
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Dec 4, 2016 20:25
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It's worth noting that Vidar was the one who put forward the "they found a mobile armor" idea and then immediately connected it with "he's going after the Order of the Seven Stars", which then impelled Rustal and company to action. A cynical take on that scenario would be Vidar was intentionally hoping to goad Rustal or one of his subordinates(such as Iok, since Iok appears to be a complete moron) into doing something foolish. It seems unlikely that someone who knows about the deep history of the Calamity War wouldn't grasp the potential consequences of bringing mobile suits into close contact with a mobile armor; McGillis certainly did and avoided it. It's notable that Vidar opted to not join Iok on this operation, despite it being a chance to gently caress McGillis once and for all. So from this angle, what would Vidar be gaining from provoking this?
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Dec 4, 2016 22:59
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Re: the origin of the mobile armors, I'm betting that they were effectively weapons of mass destruction developed by pre-Calamity War governments akin to the current economic blocs to be used as deterrents against each other Mutually Assured Destruction style and then some sort of conflict caused them to actually be deployed en masse. Cue the governments collapsing under the weight of literal robot dragons trying to wipe out humanity and Agnika Kaeru forming Gjallarhorn to save humanity.
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Dec 14, 2016 07:44
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Neddy Seagoon posted:If that were true, there'd be some kind of parameter for friendly forces and locations. These things had to have all come from a single source or faction to be utterly indescriminate in their genocidal slaughter. If they were "conventional" military superweapons, you can be certain after 300 years Gjallarhorn would have archived IFF signals or faction banners to use. As others have alluded to, I'm thinking more of a mutually assured destruction second strike thing; if you gently caress us up, we'll turn on our mobile armors and they'll loving kill all of you. There's absolutely no other situation where a device programmed to literally hunt down and slaughter all humans indiscriminately would ever be deployed. A device like that wouldn't need an off switch and in fact would be actively hampered in its purpose by such an off switch.
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Dec 14, 2016 10:42
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The AV tech absolutely requires children, because it grows into their spinal column as a fundamental part of how it works. Einborg was a brutal surgical replacement, and all the Gundams we've seen have had conventional cockpits. Einborg was a brutal surgical replacement by necessity of the fact that his body was totally ruined and he was crippled/dying when they gave him the AV treatment. It's entirely possible that you could give AV treatments to older individuals and have it take if the procedure was being done in a high tech hospital by doctors instead of by rear end in a top hat field medics jamming needles into kids spines in a tent. I mean Gjallarhorn has an entire rank reserved for people who killed a mobile armor and I strongly doubt that Agnika Kaeru and every member of his merry band were all 14 year olds.
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Dec 15, 2016 05:35
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Ein is a really tough example because we don't know how much of his condition is due to the mortal wounds he had taken and how much is due to the difficulty of getting an AV system to function with a less than ideal subject. The very fact that they did manage to make a three whisker AV link - something vanishingly rare even among child candidates - function pretty much flawlessly in an adult subject suggests it's possible to "brute force" AV connections even in absolutely terrible conditions, but until we see an example of an older patient that isn't on the verge of death already subjected to the treatment it's hard to say if such brute forcing would allow a subject to retain normal functionality.
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Dec 15, 2016 11:30
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Adel posted:That's interesting about the Kimaris and a good point regarding how well it was preserved, though I find it kinda suspicious that it doesn't have an AV system considering that the gundams were made to take advantage of it. Maybe it had one originally but it got gutted early on when opinions turned on that technology? I guess we'll see with the Flaurus. Given the huge prejudice against augmentation of any sort shown in season 1(to the point where Gaelio is nauseous at the very concept of whiskers) and the fact that it's been shown to be pretty easy to slot out cockpit blocks in mobile suits by virtue of the Tekkadan mechanic crew managing to basically slap a mobile worker cockpit into Barbatos on the fly and have it work fine, I'd lay dollars to donuts that the original Calamity War version of the Kimaris had AV like all the other Gundams but the Bauduins swapped it out for a normal cockpit at some point.
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Dec 16, 2016 03:48
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Caros posted:I think this sort of goes back to my point from last week that the AV we are seeing in use in the show is indeed sort of a lovely knock off of the version used in the calamity war. It wasn't Shino, it was Dante(one of Chad's squadmate mooks) I think. It's also possible that it's the quality of the connection that is causing the stroke out problem rather than the number of whiskers. Maybe the lovely hacked together mobile worker cockpit AV connections are similar to using a badly degraded audio cable or something; you get the data from point A to point B but the connection is awful and there's a lot of painful background noise that fucks up the signal. I base this on Ein not seeming to have too much problem handling the full output of his three whiskers full time while Mika had to nearly kill himself to do it. Kanos fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Dec 19, 2016 |
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Dec 19, 2016 00:51
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Darth Walrus posted:Remember that Mikazuki actually took in that level of data before. It seemed the implication was that the safety locks had been specifically added by Tekkadan and Teiwaz's engineers so that sort of thing could never happen again. Darth Walrus posted:That could equally have been about what triggered the safety-locks. They definitely couldn't have known about the Gundams' anti-MA systems. While the wording in the episode is ambiguous, they've never mentioned Tekkadan and Teiwaz adding safety locks of any sort after Edmonton and almost no one - including the chief mechanic who spends all of his time maintaining these things - had any idea what the hell would cause the suits to behave the way they did. Adding safety locks to prevent the Gundam going full throttle and stroking the pilot out suddenly would imply that they had some sort of idea that the Gundams could randomly adjust their power levels in extremis without the pilot's express consent(i.e. Mika saying "Barbatos give me everything you've got"). There has been no indication of the Gundam frames going full throttle without the pilots' consent before this very moment, so it would be kind of weird to add safety locks to prevent them from going full throttle that the pilot has full control over as shown by Mika deliberately telling the Barbatos to go whole hog in Edmonton and at the end of this episode.
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Dec 19, 2016 12:19
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Darth Walrus posted:The Flauros was restored by the same team of Saisei engineers who remodelled the Barbatos and Gusion into the Lupus and Full City. Judging by Orga's behaviour this episode, him making it impossible for his top pilots to cripple themselves (deliberately or otherwise) as a matter of policy after Edmonton would be entirely in character. Mika had to circumvent safety features to go full power at Edmonton in basically the same manner as he's doing now and that occurred before anyone realized how dangerous a Gundam's full power could be to a pilot. Mika then proceeds to do the exact same thing he did at Edmonton and circumvent safety features in order to have the Barbatos go full power here. If Tekkadan or Teiwaz had added additional safety features above and beyond what was already there in order to prevent the pilots from crippling/killing themselves, why would they let said safety features remain under full control of the pilots with no reference to outside approval? That would make them totally pointless at the intended goal of preventing the pilots from crippling/killing themselves.
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Dec 19, 2016 14:27
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I'm pretty sure it would be costlier in both time and resources to replace a powerful full custom mobile suit using an incredibly difficult to manufacture twinned Ahab reactor setup that you lost due to sending it into combat against gigantic murder engines with a suboptimal pilot at the helm than it would to make sure you had the best possible pilot for the job, though. Given what we've seen of the Hashmal, it's incredibly unlikely that a Gundam sent into combat with a mobile armor with a poorly trained conscript at the helm would accomplish anything besides dying and getting their suit obliterated. As for your second point, if anything, I feel a full cyborg setup as the progenitor of AV technology followed by effective miniaturization and refinement leading to cheaper/easier injections that make "natural" whiskers that do the job but less efficiently or safely makes more sense.
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Dec 19, 2016 15:04
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Tae posted:Does cost really matter when humans are on the brink of extinction? Resources are likely a limiting factor when mobile armors are blowing up your major population and industrial centers and killing everyone who would normally be extracting rare resources. Time is an even more pressing factor when you're talking about developing countermeasures to killer AI that don't need to ever stop their rampage to sleep or eat or rest. I doubt they could just build a new Gundam when some random idiot thirteen year old who happened to survive being shot full of nanomachines strokes out and gets the illustrous Gundam Buer sliced into segments by a mobile armor on his first time out.
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Dec 19, 2016 16:29
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Adel posted:How much of a difference in performance would you actually get between an experienced pilot and an inexperienced one? The AV system allows for the pilot to directly download the manual regardless of literacy and the Gundam frame was made humanoid so it was easier/intuitive for the pilot to control; the design strongl suggests that it was made with the idea that the pilot can become proficient with it as quickly as possible regardless of previous ability. For an in-series demonstration of the difference in performance that an experienced pilot makes in a world with the AV system, look at the difference between Shino's performance and the performance of Tekkadan's other single whisker pilots. Alternatively, look at the difference between Lafter/Azee and all of the AV pilots. The AV system is effectively a massively enhanced control interface. If you don't know what to do with those controls in extremis, it doesn't matter how good your controls are, and experience has been shown to allow even unenhanced pilots to keep up with AV systems. Lafter fought Mika to nearly a standstill in their first encounter and Mika is pretty much the high water mark for monster in this show. McGillis is consistently presented as one of the most fearsome and canny pilots in the show and even he is totally flabbergasted at how difficult and dangerous it is to fight a 300 year old wreck of a mobile armor despite having basically all of the intended advantages you mention(heavy support to cut off the plumas, nanolaminate to null beams, multiple other mobile suits with elite pilots attacking the MA in concert with him).
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Dec 20, 2016 00:53
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ImpAtom posted:It's worth pointing out though that Mika was explicitly piloting a crippled Barbatos in that fight. In comparison Ein stepped all over her without effort. This is true, but Lafter was piloting an older model mass production suit at the time. It's still a pretty impressive achievement to be one of like three people in the entire show to present a challenge to Mika beyond the level of speedbump(the only other two being McGillis in their first brief encounter and Einborg). That and Lafter is shown in side scenes regularly kicking two-whisker Akihiro's rear end all over the place in practice simulations on a regular basis. I'm honestly pretty certain the reason Ein kicked Lafter/Azee's asses so one-sidedly is mostly sheer surprise value. All of a sudden this huge Graze appears and before you have time to process why it's like 30% taller than normal it pulls goofy AV system moves and that's that. The concept of Gjallarhorn fielding an AV unit, especially a three whisker AV unit mounted to a loving Graze, probably didn't enter their minds until it was too late.
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Dec 20, 2016 01:24
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I don't envy Orga the choices he has to make here. Things being what they are, trying to tell Mika not to fight anymore would probably be crueler than having him continue to fight. That said, I think the other characters are misunderstanding the Orga/Mika power dynamic. Orga is nominally in charge and Mika will go along with almost anything Orga says, but Mika has proven that he reserves the right to completely ignore or veto any decision that Orga makes that he doesn't agree with; that's how Mika ended up in this situation to begin with, after all.
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Dec 25, 2016 18:25
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It's kind of hosed up that they can't be bothered to get Mika a damned wheelchair.
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Dec 25, 2016 20:45
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Tae posted:Do you think they have one? I'm pretty sure that Yukinojo can MacGuyver together a wheelchair with a small motor even if the entire planet of Mars somehow doesn't have a single wheelchair available for purchase. These are the technicians that managed to restore a 300 year old Gundam frame to functionality with no resources and then kept it running for half a season by bolting random parts of the mobile suits it killed to it, after all.
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Dec 25, 2016 21:11
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Darth Walrus posted:Eh, I'd say they were half comedy, half 'oh jesus this is hosed up guys'. You know, a bit of bathos to underline how outlandish the situation currently is. Yeah, I think I reacted pretty strongly because I've had experience with seeing people lose body function like that despite remaining mentally intact so my gut response to the scene was "holy poo poo at least give him some agency and dignity back". The Hush and Atra/Kudelia scenes were pretty clearly intended for chuckles at least on some levels, especially how Hush is so completely blase about it to the point where Atra mentions that Mika periodically just goes missing, like he calls Hush and says "yeah we're going to wander the base as man and potato bag".
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Dec 26, 2016 05:56
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ImpAtom posted:I don't want bad things to happen to Mika just because Bad Things Are Good but I do feel that Mika's plot is so heavily focused around tragedy and the damage done to him that undoing it would sort of weaken it. Mika is interesting because he's so hosed up, so abused and his life is so awful that it really drives home that it isn't awesome when he goes blood-crying-super-Gundamjin-mode and in fact it's horrible, hosed up and ruining his life and it really drives home how awful it is to use him as a pilot and what little choice he has as his options are stripped from him. A huge part of Mika's story is that a lot of the damage done to him is absolutely and completely self-inflicted and if he somehow snapped out of it and realized that he can control his own fate if he's willing to just stop hiding behind Orga as an excuse to be a weapon he'd be able to mitigate a significant portion of it, though. Under this lens, it is plausible for Mika to achieve some semblance of recovery provided he comes to understand and accept that he's a person and not a weapon. The Hashmal fight makes this really clear that Mika has crossed the line from being a weapon out of absolute necessity and has entered the realm of being a weapon because it makes life simpler for him. Despite being explicitly ordered to stand down, Mika's response to this order was "no gently caress you" and then he rocketed into the fight and went SSJ4 as his very first action. He didn't try letting the others fight it, nor did he try fighting it without unleashing the Barbatos; it wasn't an Edmonton situation where he was on the verge of death and unleashing the Barbatos was a last moment panic button to avoid death. When McGillis tried to support him, his response was to blow McGillis off completely to fight alone. As a result he won by nearly killing himself and his reward was becoming a paraplegic, and then his reaction to becoming a paraplegic is to be thankful because it means he doesn't have to think about things anymore. Nobody is doing this to Mika, Mika is doing it to himself. Orga is immensely guilty for enabling this behavior, but the impetus for it is coming entirely from Mika's messed up head. I think it would be grim to the point of being a complete turnoff to have the plot arc of a character who is a suicidal child end with him succeeding at suicide. Kanos fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 04:06
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Zerilan posted:So considering the whole Order of the Stars thing, shouldn't Mika be space nobility now? It's likely that Mika would to press his claim and need a Seven Stars member(McGillis) supporting his claim for it to be considered seriously by the Seven Stars as a whole. I doubt McGillis would support such a play, both because it would put Mika in a higher position of authority than him and also because of what Neddy said: Neddy Seagoon posted:It sounds like they just want to sweep the whole issue under the rug. Fareed's letting it go to look good in the eyes of the Seven Stars by not jumping at the first chance to upset everything. This, basically. It lets McGillis look incredibly good and devoted to Gjallarhorn that he kept his head and dealt with the situation without trying to claim credit for himself or his subordinates and also makes Iok(and by extension Rustal) look like a giant moron for causing the situation in the first place. It's why Rustal was so cold and short with Iok, because Iok basically handed McGillis a political victory on a plate by being an idiot.
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Dec 31, 2016 08:54
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