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Sindai
Jan 24, 2007
i want to achieve immortality through not dying

DiabloCthulhu posted:

1980: immigration starts and 340,000 settlers are sent to Mars.
Well, okay Urobuchi. I'll just try not to think about it too hard.

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Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

...So, in 5 years he manages to convince the majority of 340,000 people that Earth is trying to get them? Right. 340,000 people who, given the circumstances, are likely very well educated? Either this Professor has brainwashing technology or Urobuchi, or whoever's behind this plot, has lost any sense of scale. He should have gone with the time travel idea, rather than "completely new culture forms overnight."

The action's been good, but stuff like this is completely destroying any sense of immersion, in what's supposedly a serious show.

OneDeadman
Oct 16, 2010

[SUPERBIA]
So basically, The Vers Empire are really just a bunch of Space LARPers who, through crazy repetition, believe that they are the true decendants of the old ancient.

Or in other terms, the Vers Empire right now is a bunch of LARPing space hippies.

Runa
Feb 13, 2011

There's the implication that there's something more sinister about the alien tech, but yeah the Mars situation is all kinds of silly.

Sindai
Jan 24, 2007
i want to achieve immortality through not dying
I guess it does explain why the Earth authorities thought they could beat the Vers. They still outnumber them by like 3000 to 1, and all evidence of the Vers' super fighting robots was covered up by some unknown entity.

PerrineClostermann
Dec 15, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Well this is kinda bullshit. That's really not long enough at all.

ViggyNash
Oct 9, 2012

Genocyber posted:

Given how they refer to a planet Vers, it's safe to assume they're not from Earth (recently).

From what I understand, there is another planet Vers that found Mars before humans moved there so the humans there are now part of the Vers empire. I think. Its bot all that clear at the moment.

Chalupa Picada
Jan 13, 2009

Kinda wondering if the supertech does actually influence their personalities, especially with the feudal system of government. Maybe all the colonists got reprogrammed into worker bees for the aldnoah god character/royalty? The complete indifference/scheming towards the princesses situation seems to undercut that possibility though.

Hell, maybe there was an ancient civiliation, they digitized themselves or otherwise backed up their conciousness/memories and overwrote the current "Vers Empire" so it's new and old at the same time? Total baseless speculation but it'd be nice if there was some kind of explanation.That timeline posted reminds me of the colony situation in Gundam storylines, but yeah it feels way too accelerated.

Runa
Feb 13, 2011

ViggyNash posted:

From what I understand, there is another planet Vers that found Mars before humans moved there so the humans there are now part of the Vers empire. I think. Its bot all that clear at the moment.

I think you're confusing setting info with Desuwa's theory.

To be fair, their theory makes a lot more sense than what's actually going on.

Furious Lobster
Jun 17, 2006

Soiled Meat

ViggyNash posted:

From what I understand, there is another planet Vers that found Mars before humans moved there so the humans there are now part of the Vers empire. I think. Its bot all that clear at the moment.

From the official timeline it's pretty clear that there is no other planet and the empire was founded by the ridiculously charismatic Prof. Ray Regalia (love the last name) on Mars; it's most likely his unbelievable rise to power has something to do with Aldnoah or some other anime hand wave magic.

Desuwa
Jun 2, 2011

I'm telling my mommy. That pubbie doesn't do video games right!

Not gonna lie, I find this really dumb. I honestly didn't think my theory was really out there, I saw it as just the natural reading from episode one, until episode two rolled around and cast more doubt on it. This timeline just feels poorly thought out.

Like I didn't even think I was making a theory, I thought my "theory" was the only way the setting would make sense and feel natural. So much for that.

Desuwa fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jul 15, 2014

PerrineClostermann
Dec 15, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Yasser Arafatwa posted:

That timeline posted reminds me of the colony situation in Gundam storylines, but yeah it feels way too accelerated.

Aldnoah.Zero: High Speed Gundam

Dr_Amazing
Apr 15, 2006

It's a long story
So any space rear end in a top hat older than 35 was born on earth and there's no one more than 2 generations removed? And they're talking like they've become their own species with special racial slurs and everything.

Rexides
Jul 25, 2011

That's overly complicated for a show about stompy robots. I would have kept watching anyway just for the battles, but all the interesting mechs were beaten by the laser-spamming, matter-disintegrating bore-bots.

Lurking Haro
Oct 27, 2009

DiabloCthulhu posted:

Here's the translation (taken from here):

1969: Apollo 11 moon landing is successful.

1972: Apollo 17 finds remains of an ancient Mars civilization on the moon's surface. In the remains an instantaneous teleportation device, using previously unknown technology is uncovered, giving humanity the ability to travel between Mars & back.
This device came to be called a "hypergate".

1975: Under international guidance, plans to colonize Mars were drawn up, and the Mars Treaty was made. The treaty was ratified by all the U.N member countries, and they agreed to not use military forces on Mars, and such. Following this, the Cold War was for all intents and purposes finished. This same year, the First Mars Survey Corps was deployed.
Prof. Leylegaria (unsure of the right romanization) followed with them as the official overseer.

1980: Immigration starts and 340,000 settlers are sent to Mars.

Starting in 1982, Rayregalia starts inciting anti-Earth sentiments among the Martian settlers, calling for an armed uprising. The UN immediately moves to suppress the situation, but the situation escalates. They later arrest Rayregalia, but a mob attacks and breaks him out of jail.

1985: Vers Empire formed, with Rayregalia named as the first emperor. In fear of the empire, the countries of Earth form the Earth Federation and enter a cold war with Mars. Things are relatively peaceful for the next decade.

1996: Martian terrorists bomb several cities, killing 3,267 people, causing hostilities between Earth and the Vers Empire to increase rapidly.

1997: Rayregalia steps down as emperor due to illness, and his son Gilzeria takes the throne.

1999: Gilzeria declares war on the Earth Federation. The Vers Empire fights using mechs called Cataphracts. During a battle on the moon the Hypergate goes out of control and destroys half the moon. Pieces form the Satellite Belt around Earth, and some crash into the Earth in an event called the Heaven's Fall. Earth is still rebuilding from that. During the battle Gilzeria is killed in action, causing Rayregalia to retake the throne and is still emperor as of the series' start. Gilzaria's daughter Princess Asseylum is born.

2000: A ceasefire is signed by both signs, and a demilitarized neutral zone is formed.

2003: Earth finished developing its own Cataphracts and first uses them to quell the rioting caused by Heaven's Fall. The riots are stopped in 2007 and things return to relative peace. Steps are made between Earth and Mars for peace.

2007: Post-war clean-up on Earth finishes. Conditions continue to stabilize.

2010: 10 years after the war. In every Earth country memorial ceremonies & top-level meetings are held, as both sides begin to march toward peace.

2014: In the name of peace, Earth takes a growing interest in the Vers Empire. The peace negotiations are expected to continue.



Also regarding setting: http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p=5176528&postcount=391

Just spent an hour translating everything up to 1985 for nothing :negative:

Furious Lobster
Jun 17, 2006

Soiled Meat

Dr_Amazing posted:

So any space rear end in a top hat older than 35 was born on earth and there's no one more than 2 generations removed? And they're talking like they've become their own species with special racial slurs and everything.

Aldnoah.Zero: High Speed Gundam Space Racism. Hopefully, there's a logical explanation at the end.

KoB
May 1, 2009

Dr_Amazing posted:

So any space rear end in a top hat older than 35 was born on earth and there's no one more than 2 generations removed? And they're talking like they've become their own species with special racial slurs and everything.

I imagine the 340,000 people were all Tumblr users and theyre back to check our privilege.

Furious Lobster
Jun 17, 2006

Soiled Meat
One possible explanation for the rather swift change from Terran to space-sneering Martian comes from a Ray Bradbury short story, Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed where settlers from the US who live near ancient Martian cities, are gradually transformed into Martians themselves. Possibly, not only does the Prof. discover the ancient technology of Aldnoah but also the rest of the settlers' mental states are rapidly changed.

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW
Yeah "some kind of mind control" is the only way this makes any sense, especially considering how intense the selection process must have been to select 340,000 settlers out of billions of people.

Twiddy
May 17, 2008

To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.

Dr_Amazing posted:

So any space rear end in a top hat older than 35 was born on earth and there's no one more than 2 generations removed? And they're talking like they've become their own species with special racial slurs and everything.
The funniest part is that this sounds quite believable, yeah. Not the "wanting to genocide Earth humans" part, but the racial slurs and superior race bullshit taking hold in only 20 or so years.

How long do you think it's gonna take for people who discover absurdly powerful space technology to believe they're chosen ones above other mere humans? Hell, how long does it take to form a cult that believes they're chosen ones etc etc, and they don't even have fancy gadgets.


Honestly, my biggest surprise is that this "discovery" is shocking to people. The idea of an entirely different culture seemed like extrapolated information since it was first brought up in the summer thread. This is really just cementing all the information we were given.

EDIT: vvv I feel like those logistics were never going to make sense, but yeah they used a lot of bad numbers.

Twiddy fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jul 16, 2014

Dessel
Feb 21, 2011

Yeah holy poo poo that timeline :psyduck:

Discounting ridiculous Deus Ex :catdrugs: plot twists that poo poo is incredibly ridiculous.

Screw that, even that isn't enough to justify effing 300 000 colonists getting lifted up to the Moon to enter Mars through the gate in this kind of timeframe:
72: Mars ruins discovered
75: International treaty
80: 340 000 colonists lifted up to Moon to enter Mars.

Just lifting them up would be a feat I can't imagine humankind achieving even united as one. Not to mention the facilities needed on the Moon and Mars.
gently caress's sake, using this as a source (Sorry for non-Imperial measurements here),
assuming worldwide average weight (which is low by Western standards) of 62 kg, you'd spend 340,000*62*25,000$ to send people in space just by weight alone by current standards That's 5,27*10^11$. Gross world product is 7,1*10^13 for comparison.


Ah screw it, it's just an anime.

Dessel fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jul 16, 2014

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012
The AnimeSuki post linked above suggests that the mystery of Prof. Regalia completely changing 340,000 people's outlooks overnight is a plot point. The logistics of getting 340,000 people up there in the first place in 1980 is probably not a plot point, but I'm willing to roll with it.

Lurking Haro
Oct 27, 2009

Dessel posted:

Yeah holy poo poo that timeline :psyduck:

Discounting ridiculous Deus Ex :catdrugs: plot twists that poo poo is incredibly ridiculous.

Screw that, even that isn't enough to justify effing 300 000 colonists getting lifted up to the Moon to enter Mars through the gate in this kind of timeframe:
72: Mars ruins discovered
75: International treaty
80: 340 000 colonists lifted up to Moon to enter Mars.

Just lifting them up would be a feat I can't imagine humankind achieving even united as one. Not to mention the facilities needed on the Moon and Mars.
gently caress's sake, using this as a source (Sorry for non-Imperial measurements here),
assuming worldwide average weight (which is low by Western standards) of 62 kg, you'd spend 340,000*62*25,000$ to send people in space just by weight alone by current standards That's 5,27*10^11$. Gross world product is 7,1*10^13 for comparison.


Ah screw it, it's just an anime.

They found matter-annihilating robots and a Stargate up there. Being able to ship 340k people to the Moon is the least unrealistic thing about this.

Edward IV
Jan 15, 2006

And here I thought that the backstory was supposed to be a cross between Turn-A Gundam and Mass Effect's First Contact War.

PerrineClostermann
Dec 15, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Edward IV posted:

And here I thought that the backstory was supposed to be a cross between Turn-A Gundam and Mass Effect's First Contact War.

No moonlight butterfly for you.

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
Well to give it a little perspective, we've had quite a few dictators in the past century or so who managed to either convince or strong arm their countries into doing atrocious things in about the same time by manipulating already existing grievances. Reminder that this backstory mostly occurs during the Cold War. The idea that any moment someone in charge might get mad and wipe humanity off the face of the earth was a thing that really weighed upon people's minds at the time.

Given a group of humanity's elites (they already know they're better than the average), the existing climate of countries poised to glass each other at the drop of a hat, the discovery of insanely advanced technology and a very charismatic leader I can totally see a sort of fascist movement to clean the Earth of inferior humans with the superior technology they feel they were destined to have. A kind of "we are the best of humanity and we have a chance to wipe the slate clean and make a better society" kinda deal except they gotta fumigate the place first with disintegration fields.

ViggyNash
Oct 9, 2012

Furious Lobster posted:

From the official timeline it's pretty clear that there is no other planet and the empire was founded by the ridiculously charismatic Prof. Ray Regalia (love the last name) on Mars; it's most likely his unbelievable rise to power has something to do with Aldnoah or some other anime hand wave magic.

Oh, whoops, didn't see that timeline translation.

I still think there had to be some kind of outside interference, maybe the mars tech itself, but there's no other way things could escalate and diverge this quickly.

Guyver
Dec 5, 2006

DiabloCthulhu posted:

Here's the translation (taken from here):
Someone got their Gundam in my Layzner. Hopefully the bored kid gets some bullet deflecting tonfa and a haro.

After this and Gargantia I'm starting to think Urobuchi is a big Layzner fan.

Guyver fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jul 16, 2014

Runa
Feb 13, 2011

Guyver posted:

Someone got their Gundam in my Layzner. Hopefully the bored kid gets some bullet deflecting tonfa and a haro.

After this and Gargantia I'm starting to think Urobuchi is a big Layzner fan.

All this talk about it makes me want to go check Layzner out, actually.

Dr_Amazing
Apr 15, 2006

It's a long story

Eej posted:

Well to give it a little perspective, we've had quite a few dictators in the past century or so who managed to either convince or strong arm their countries into doing atrocious things in about the same time by manipulating already existing grievances. Reminder that this backstory mostly occurs during the Cold War. The idea that any moment someone in charge might get mad and wipe humanity off the face of the earth was a thing that really weighed upon people's minds at the time.

Given a group of humanity's elites (they already know they're better than the average), the existing climate of countries poised to glass each other at the drop of a hat, the discovery of insanely advanced technology and a very charismatic leader I can totally see a sort of fascist movement to clean the Earth of inferior humans with the superior technology they feel they were destined to have. A kind of "we are the best of humanity and we have a chance to wipe the slate clean and make a better society" kinda deal except they gotta fumigate the place first with disintegration fields.

This actually makes a lot of sense, but it still seems weird. Like that guy at the beginning slapping around a dirty terran for daring to take an interest in his daughter was probably born on Earth himself.

I guess everyone just wants to feel superior.

ViggyNash
Oct 9, 2012

Dr_Amazing posted:

This actually makes a lot of sense, but it still seems weird. Like that guy at the beginning slapping around a dirty terran for daring to take an interest in his daughter was probably born on Earth himself.

I guess everyone just wants to feel superior.

Princess Asseylum is not his daughter. I think he was smacking Slaine around on racist principles, and nothing more. He seems rather nationalist, so it makes sense.

e:

DiabloCthulhu posted:

Setting is definitely not one of the strong points of this show. Some kind of brainwashing shenanigans were certainly involved (and maybe still are), but it's still silly. Though I don't really care about setting here and how silly it is.

The setting isn't bad, but it hasn't been explained enough. All we know for sure is that the Vers empire is technologically superior because they found some tech on Mars, and they now hate Earth's guts and want to wipe out the planet. A David and Goliath war between planets essentially.

ViggyNash fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jul 16, 2014

DiabloCthulhu
Mar 23, 2013

Lurking Haro posted:

Just spent an hour translating everything up to 1985 for nothing :negative:
Oops, sorry about that.

Setting is definitely not one of the strong points of this show. Some kind of brainwashing shenanigans were certainly involved (and maybe still are), but it's still silly. Though I don't really care about setting here and how silly it is.

DiabloCthulhu fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jul 16, 2014

ConanThe3rd
Mar 27, 2009

T.G. Xarbala posted:

All this talk about it makes me want to go check Layzner out, actually.

Speaking of, how is Layzner? The SRW J story sounded good on paper so I'm thinking of giving it a shot.

Guyver
Dec 5, 2006

Layzner is probably the best show Ryousuke Takahashi's done not called Votoms. The story is decent as far as 80's Sunrise robot shows go but where it shines is the animation and direction. You can find some of the best mecha animation from the 80's in Layzner.

muike
Mar 16, 2011

ガチムチ セブン
i haven't seen layzner or dougram but i'm sure it's better than FLAG, but it will have to try hard for me to like it more than gaogaigar.

Mo_Steel
Mar 7, 2008

Let's Clock Into The Sunset Together

Fun Shoe
Episode 2 solidified this show for me, definitely interested in seeing Martians obliterate everything around our stoic protagonist.

Wonder if we'll get to see humans use chemical or biological weapons to counterattack. Or maybe we'll get the ID4 response of computer virus!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6y8fc3n-mI

Dr_Amazing
Apr 15, 2006

It's a long story
Has there ever been a giant robot anime where battles were won with tactics and clever tricks instead of just getting a better robot? Code Guess had it for a bit in the beginning but then it really went the other way.

ViggyNash
Oct 9, 2012
Wasn't there a Gundam that was basically Counter Strike with giant robots? I remember a friend telling me something about it.

Pootybutt
Apr 5, 2011

This show does make me think of gundam wing a lot, mainly in how it's only fun when the villians are around.

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Guyver
Dec 5, 2006

Dr_Amazing posted:

Has there ever been a giant robot anime where battles were won with tactics and clever tricks instead of just getting a better robot? Code Guess had it for a bit in the beginning but then it really went the other way.
A few. One of Victory Gundam's defining features is the main character's inventiveness in combat. Amuro was no slouch either. In Vifam the character's all use standard military units. The same for Votoms for the most part.

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