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Enjoying alternative so far, but yeah the metaphors are definitely much more text than subtext compared to the original. Ep 2 felt like it was trying way too hard to go SEE LOOK THIS IS WHAT GROWNS UP DO THEY'RE TRYING TO ACT LIKE GROWN UPS whereas the original was much more subdued about it. I'm not sure how I feel about haruko, she barely even feels like a character in this. It feels like they kind of just shove her in because it's FLCL and she needs to be there and then oh it's almost end of the episode, better have a robot come out so haruko can defeat it. I wonder how someone watching this who never saw the original would feel about her. Would she come off as a mysterious character you want to know more about? Some random ex machina character that keeps showing up? Something else? Her and Kana don't really even seem to have any kind of relationship yet. I was a bit surprised when Kana said her name in the last episode, because it felt weird that she even "knew" Haruko.
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Sep 20, 2018 01:53
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CodfishCartographer posted:I wonder how someone watching this who never saw the original would feel about her. Would she come off as a mysterious character you want to know more about? Some random ex machina character that keeps showing up? Thinking about it in this context, wasn't that the case for an initial watch of the original series? She didn't really get expanded upon past wacky alien sex woman until the latter half of the original
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Sep 22, 2018 04:47
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smokyprogg posted:Thinking about it in this context, wasn't that the case for an initial watch of the original series? She didn't really get expanded upon past wacky alien sex woman until the latter half of the original I mean yes, we didn't get details about her until later, but she was a constant driving force in almost every episode of the original. In the episodes where she wasn't the one setting everything off, we got plenty of scenes of her up to no good that in retrospect would further her agenda. Alternative so far almost feels like we're on the outskirts of Haruko's story. She kinda just showed up in the soba shop, then the space junk just so happened to land on Kana so Haruko could fight it. It doesn't quite feel like the events are connected in a meaningful manner, where "this thing happened, thus this other thing happened, and thus this third thing happened" It feels a bit more like "this thing happened, and then this other thing happened, and then this third thing happened." If that makes any sense. Kana's individual stories follow a logical structure, but Haruko's don't. I guess that fits with her character, but it comes off more to me like lazy writing meant to shoehorn her in because "it's flcl, we gotta have haruko." She just feels like the weakest part of Alternative to me so far. (granted ep 2 did a bit better job of making her story have a logical structure, in that she shows up > steals boyfriend > that leads to the standoff in the parking lot. However, nothing led to her being in the park in the first place, she just decided to open up a kebab food truck for... Some reason??? Also, why did the car suddenly come alive?? I legitimately can't remember if it's explained or even hinted at, or if it just happened.)
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Sep 22, 2018 06:23
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CodfishCartographer posted:I mean yes, we didn't get details about her until later, but she was a constant driving force in almost every episode of the original. In the episodes where she wasn't the one setting everything off, we got plenty of scenes of her up to no good that in retrospect would further her agenda. medica mechanica doesn't appear to be a thing in this series so kana's N.O. is causing weird electrical malfunctions elsewhere instead. haruko's on the prowl for strong sources of N.O. which is why she's weaseling her way into kana's group of friends (she had some kind of detector/generator in her truck) and cracked hijiri's ex-bf in the head at the end of episode 2 the car thing is obviously a transformers reference which ties into hijiri trying to flip back and forth between "childish" and "adult" personalities while feeling satisfied with neither, but this seems to be one of those cases where the metaphor is more important than typical logic
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Sep 22, 2018 06:28
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Medical Mechanica is definitely in play this season - the MM logo was on the lips of the first monster and on the grill of the eco-friendly car/robot. Yeah, N/O is being shown as electrical/mechanically related here, but I agree, the metaphor (the very hamfisted, Freudian as hell metaphor) is what's important here vs. the specific cause and effect. The how is definitely allowed to be loose in a show whose progenitor did a meta-commentary cutaway in it's first 5 minutes anyway. That said, with the MM logos on everything that's sprung to life so far, it's fair to say they're here, just not being made blatant from the start as it was in OG and Prog. That choice is a big but subtle statement, since, well... ... RE:MM, rewatch the music video that ran during the premiere: the iron is hiding in the mega department store/not-AEON. Think of Medical Mechanica in Alternative as Walmart or Tesco this time around, because that certainly seems to be what's being implied. Ultraklystron fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Sep 22, 2018 |
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Sep 22, 2018 06:42
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Oxxidation posted:medica mechanica doesn't appear to be a thing in this series so kana's N.O. is causing weird electrical malfunctions elsewhere instead. haruko's on the prowl for strong sources of N.O. which is why she's weaseling her way into kana's group of friends (she had some kind of detector/generator in her truck) and cracked hijiri's ex-bf in the head at the end of episode 2 The problem is that the metaphor isn't doing anything. Characters don't advance through their actions in the fight scenes. The fight things are things that incidentally happen to characters going through an arc already. As said before, they feel totally disconnected.
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Sep 22, 2018 10:10
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Oxxidation posted:adult swim's useless website still won't display any videos and i'm mad If you've got any kind of adblock on, AS's whole site basically shits the bed so try disabling if you haven't already.
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Sep 22, 2018 19:03
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Why did Japan hate this?
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Sep 23, 2018 04:58
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Waffleman_ posted:Why did Japan hate this? I have no idea. It's great so far.
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Sep 23, 2018 04:59
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Waffleman_ posted:Why did Japan hate this? That can't handle Haruko's dope rhymes.
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Sep 23, 2018 05:01
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I'm guessing it's because this is even farther from being a young man's coming of age/the stock Gainax bildungsroman than even Progressive was. If what sold OG FLCL to Japan was the obscure anime references and Eva in 6 episodes premise, Alternative's deconstruction/compression of SOL/iyashikei high school girl anime is an admittedly different thing. I'm 100% on board though with it though (though I also really liked Progressive's Lacanian coming of age, so maybe I'm an easy sell.)
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Sep 23, 2018 05:17
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i have never cared about the "girls in high school doing girls in high school things" subgenre but all these characters are so great especially compared to progressive's cast of Lady Anhedonia & The Deadweight Trio
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Sep 23, 2018 05:25
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Were these two series funded by Adult Swim/Toonami?
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Sep 23, 2018 05:41
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Yeah, but I.G. were the ones who approached them with the idea.
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Sep 23, 2018 05:42
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Waffleman_ posted:Why did Japan hate this? I don't know why they hate this... partially because I don't entirely know why I hate it. But yeah. I hate it, despite liking Prog, and maybe understanding myself will prove key to understanding Japan's mysteries. This may get a bit scattershot. This will get a lot scattershot. Okay, let's see. First off, the original and Prog aren't much like anything else. Like them or don't, they bring something different to the table as a core function. Meanwhile, this is a "Four girls hanging out" show at its core so far, and we get a lot of those. It's not competing against the original and nothing else. It's a show up against things like A Place Further Than The Universe, and let's face it. Nobody here is as amazing a mess as Shirase. Second, the original slowly built to basically admitting that Haruko was a villain, and Prog actually built on that, making her a clear antagonist to Hidomi and Ide even when they were ostensibly on the same side. We got more about what made her tick, we saw new sides, we had her inner conflict actually personified as a separate character. Meanwhile, Alt has her as just being a wacky intrusion in the plot who does whatever it needs for the moment. The overall plot is happening in the background, like always, but it's really boring in comparison, and it isn't bouncing well off the main. Where Naota and Hidomi's lives were unavoidably disrupted and reshaped by their NO compatibility, it just happens and vanishes so far in Alt, objects in space. Basically, it feels like a token FLCL skin on a kinda meh Four Girls Doing Stuff show.
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Sep 23, 2018 05:43
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Progressive absolutely ruined Haruko's character via overexposure so Alternative's take is definitely preferable i'm still pissed that FLCLassic made a point of showing that Amarao's "Haruko loves Atomsk" theory was totally off-base and just another product of his tryhard immature worldview, only for Progressive to have her literally break down in tears in Atomsk's arms by the end like everything else in Progressive, the show talked and talked and talked about Haruko's character but in the end didn't have any idea what it was trying to say
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Sep 23, 2018 05:48
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Oxxidation posted:i have never cared about the "girls in high school doing girls in high school things" subgenre but all these characters are so great Yeah, I think big part of why Alt has worked in the west so far and why it took an L on Japanese Otaku Twitter is the high school anime girls here are depicted as actual people, not as merchandise pitches.
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Sep 23, 2018 05:55
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Ultraklystron posted:Yeah, I think big part of why Alt has worked in the west so far and why it took an L on Japanese Otaku Twitter is the high school anime girls here are depicted as actual people, not as merchandise pitches. Japan also got the full show at once, while the USA's only halfway in. Might impact things. Also, this is where I bring up Sora yori mo Tooi Basho again. First off, I'm doing this as a general purpose plug, because seriously, it's brilliant, but it's also something of a mild counterargument. I don't have full information on its reception or the demographic breakdown, but it did pretty well. Sold an average of over 10K copies a disc without concert tickets, a big brand name, or a mobile game tie-in, and it did it with a cast that felt more fleshed out as people than Alt's been bringing. (Also, complimenting the show's handling of Haruko just feels... odd. She's pretty much what people said they were afraid of so far, an irrelevant add-on to the plot who shows up, does random things, punches a robot, and leaves, but because the show's not trying to flesh her out, that's... good?)
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Sep 23, 2018 06:33
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For the last three episodes Haruko's been engineering scenarios that force the girls to confront their immaturity, inadvertently or otherwise - her comments to Kana in the soba shop kick-started the rocket project, her seducing of Hijiri's boyfriend led her to re-examine her views of relationships and what she wanted from them, and in this episode her meddling had Mossan re-evaluate her positions on the importance of goals and the meaning of responsibility (and she didn't even get into a giant robot fight this time). Other than that she's been doing the same thing she did in FLCLassic, constantly tinkering away on some vague project that we still don't fully know the meaning or significance of. At this point in the original series we didn't have much of an idea why she kept yelling at cats or stoking a pre-pubescent boy's libido, either. But rather than being a main character here, she's mainly a catalyst for the mains' conflicts. It's a different take. An alternative take, even. Most importantly, it shows confidence in its themes and execution, whereas Progressive only had puerile babbling about things that happened in the original series. Absolutely everything Haruko said and did in Progressive went back to Atomsk, Atomsk, Atomsk, and it got even worse when Jinyu (who turned out to be a total non-entity as well) shared screentime with her. So far, Alternative has shown that it has its own ideas it wants to get across. Progressive just had clumsy mimicry, and its constant focus on Haruko was just one more aspect of that. also once again just the visual style and mood-setting of FLCL:A is so much better than the other one, that brief shot of Kana walking through the fields of needles was haunting
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Sep 23, 2018 06:47
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What I kinda like about Alternative so far is how, strangely enough, Haruko seems genuinely helpful here... in her own way. It's a nice contrast to the original, where her antagonism starts to show more and more, and Progressive, where she's straight-up the villain. Not that there has to be any relation between the seasons, but one might think she's actually mellowed out after what happened in Progressive. Oooooof course, we're only halfway through, so who knows... But this most recent episode did have her rapping for no other reason than to cheer someone up. That's almost the polar opposite of Progressive-Haruko at her worst. Maybe you DO learn, Haruko  Really liked that she crashed the show without even realizing whose dress she had
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Sep 24, 2018 13:53
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Have we been given a firm answer on Alternative's relation to the other series? I know some people said it was, you know, an alternative take on the original FLCL in its own self-contained narrative, but was there any official word about that or just assumptions? I can possibly see this being a sequel since Haruko could have mellowed out a bit since the events of Progressive and isn't really all that antagonistic. Also why MM would be disguising its irons instead having them just sit in broad daylight.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:07
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I figure we will find out, especially with the plot ramping up next week.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:11
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Notably we haven't seen Kana's father yet, right? I could see them pulling a "LOOK HER DAD IS NAOTA!" thing, possibly. I actually wondered if the government dude who keeps loving up his soba might be Naota all grown up, but he's got a totally different name.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:50
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it's FLCL, and screwing with the audience by teasing both in Progressive and Alternative without paying off the idea of either dad maybe being Naota would be a perfectly on point move.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:08
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A very good and cute episode. Haruko in a jersey and pigtails is a hell of a look.
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Sep 30, 2018 04:56
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I think the person in the main Toonami thread who made the Lola Bunny joke was 100% on point. That said, that episode was great, and it solidified how it ties into the other two shows philosophically (finally got our "be the you you're ready to be, don't feign adulthood" moment for Kana,) so why was Japan's anitwitter salty about Alternative? Ultraklystron fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Sep 30, 2018 |
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Sep 30, 2018 05:04
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Ultraklystron posted:I think the person in the main Toonami thread who made the Lola Bunny joke was 100% on point. Two episodes left to find out. Apparently, the ending is A Thing.
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Sep 30, 2018 05:08
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That Slam Dunk reference out of nowhere killed me
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Sep 30, 2018 07:43
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All I know is they're gonna have to gently caress up bad, like real bad in the end for me to end up not liking this show
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Sep 30, 2018 23:45
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Yeah, even if it has a slightly underwhelming ending like Progressive, I'll consider the series as a whole a net positive.
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Oct 1, 2018 00:11
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Jesus, that was a rough ending.
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Oct 7, 2018 04:59
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I said it in the Toonami thread but maybe the reason JP hated Alternative is because Kana and Pets aren't going to go back to bring friends at the end
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Oct 7, 2018 05:02
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That episode is what I want out of anime. The atmospherics, the hints of dread, the action... and that crusher of an ending.
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Oct 7, 2018 05:08
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Alternative is definitely hitting me more than Progressive
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Oct 7, 2018 05:11
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Alternative is the bitter realization that high school life is crap. Your dreams don't come true, your teenage crush was misjudged pity, you and your boyfriend are both lovely people, friendships will just end and there's nothing you can do about it. Alternative denounces the magic of the high school age and Japan is laser focused on saying that's the best time of your life with anime ceaselessly revolving around it, including the previous 2 FLCLs.
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Oct 7, 2018 05:33
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this series is going to end with the irons activating and everyone turning into catatonic smoothbrained vegetables and i will play komm susser todd and be all "i'm glad of it"
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Oct 7, 2018 06:13
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seriously with the skyrocketing temperatures, kids uneasily wondering why school is canceled early, and government officials screaming at the press and storming away from the podium, this series is doing a better job of capturing the impending apocalypse the younger generations face better than Progressive did even when I still thought Progressive had an actual point to make
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Oct 7, 2018 06:17
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Crabtree posted:Alternative is the bitter realization that high school life is crap. Your dreams don't come true, your teenage crush was misjudged pity, you and your boyfriend are both lovely people, friendships will just end and there's nothing you can do about it. Alternative denounces the magic of the high school age and Japan is laser focused on saying that's the best time of your life with anime ceaselessly revolving around it. Except if that's its game, it's weird that there's so much screen time spent on how great the friendships were earlier, and how the thing complicating Kana's life is having to leave high school. And it really doesn't scan with what I've read of the ending. I think at least one more fitting explanation for why Japan doesn't like Alt, putting questions of the ending and quality, is that it really doesn't work as a movie. It's even more episodic than the original, with episodes 2,3, and 4 being able to be shuffled in any order without a real loss of coherency, and that kind of structure doesn't work as well in a theater as it does week to week. (Prog, meanwhile, has the style shuffling every 20-odd minutes, which is uncommon in movies and a very FLCL kind of move.) Moving back to this episode, I really felt it worked better than the rest so far (episode 3 was dire), but it really didn't do enough with Pets prior to get the full impact it felt like it wanted. We only get any focus on her when she goes away. In a wider context, this episode seems to eliminate the possibility of this being a sequel. Even in the original, the government had started responding to weird poo poo with weird poo poo of its own, and in Prog, they'd reached the point where official documentation would include the phrase "A giant iron has been sighted! Make local teenagers as horny as possible, I repeat, MAXIMIZE TEENAGE HORNINESS". Here, MM is being treated as invincible, which would be a pretty odd way to act after they'd been taken down multiple times.
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Oct 7, 2018 06:34
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The Terminal Core's appearance in FLCLassic resulted in the chief official in charge of the military response literally screaming into the sky about how hosed they all were, and the Immigration Bureau's attempt to stop the iron by force in Progressive did nothing. Both times the iron was only stopped by Atomsk's intervention, and Atomsk is conspicuously absent from this story, plus they've dispatched another couple hundo irons worldwide just to be sure. MM has always been treated as invincible by everyone other than Haruko, while the Earthlings who are aware of them just try to tiptoe around them like a dormant volcano. The main difference in Alternative is that they're acting far less capriciously, having diagrammed the entire world in advance for maximum smoothbraining. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 06:39
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Oxxidation posted:The Terminal Core's appearance in FLCLassic resulted in the chief official in charge of the military response literally screaming into the sky about how hosed they all were, and the Immigration Bureau's attempt to stop the iron by force in Progressive did nothing. Both times the iron was only stopped by Atomsk's intervention, and Atomsk is conspicuously absent from this story, plus they've dispatched another couple hundo irons worldwide just to be sure. Prog had whole fields of wrecked irons. This isn't the first time we've seen them go hard from a viewer prospective, and they lost. Also in Prog, the Brotherhood thought they had a plan that could stop the irons. Now, it went hideously, hideously wrong, as you mention. But they were working from a position it was possible to win, based on past events. Meanwhile, nobody in Alt, not even Haruko, is treating this situation like it might not be the end of the world. You'd think discussions of what Medical Mechanica does would maybe bring up that there's at least one thing in the wide galaxy that can beat them back, but nothing doing. Whatever else Alt is, it certainly isn't acting much like a sequel to the original or Prog. It's acting much more like, well, an alternate.
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Oct 7, 2018 07:30
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