|
Raenir Salazar posted:Is this why the previous officers killed themselves? It's vaguely lovecraftian. Learning information they weren't mean to know or weren't able to handle all at once? Almost certainly. Remember, Shin cut the connection from HIS end when he realized Lena was freaking the gently caress out. He also warned her in advance that this was going to suck and she should cut the Para-raid before engaging the Black Sheep. I have absolutely no reason to believe he would have done either of those things for any previous handler, most likely they went mad when he did his usual deep strike tactics and heard the wailing screams of the damned with no context and no relief. Tabletops posted:So they’re gonna defeat the legion THEN kill the nazis in the second cour right Here's hoping! As for where the show is going, my deep strike into the dark is that Lena and Shin managed to contact the Legion command intelligence and organize a cease-fire. You know, "you're the ghost soldiers of the fallen Empire left without a purpose, we are the dehumanized slave soldiers being forced to fight by incredible assholes, we aren't all that different if you think about it, you and I, so let's team up and make a country out here that isn't run by Nazis." As a bonus, doing this continues the Antifa themes of the series so far, victory would be won not through the fascist myth of "proud, noble, necessary sacrifices for the greater good as commissioned by hard men in hard times against an insurmountable, existential enemy who seek to destroy our cherished traditions", but by finding common ground for understanding and empathy, which is a path that is downright poisonous to fascism.
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 01:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 05:05 |
|
|
I don't think we should assume that every single Legion ghost is a victim - that's not the sort of capability that a killer robot army would normally be expected to have. The Legion may in fact be imperialism distilled to its purest form, with the humanity of both its rulers and its subjugated victims stripped away into an endless tide of brutal expansionism.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 04:11
|
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:I don't think we should assume that every single Legion ghost is a victim - that's not the sort of capability that a killer robot army would normally be expected to have. The Legion may in fact be imperialism distilled to its purest form, with the humanity of both its rulers and its subjugated victims stripped away into an endless tide of brutal expansionism. I'd also assume the Legion would be the "real" enemy because, to be blunt... They're actually a threat. The Albish government is genocidal (or borderline genocidal if the retirement offer is legitimate), but it's also a bunch of armchair military types at best with very little practical experience. Once their walls get breached, they don't have much fight in them. Themes aside, that's not a very interesting last arc.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 05:35
|
|
|
Omnicrom posted:Here's hoping! The Legion does seem to have a purpose now - it's to kill and assimilate everyone it can get its hands on to perpetuate and extend its own existence. I don't really see any reason why the Legion would slow down a war that they're already absolutely going to win at the current pace just to team up with the 86s, who are a scratch force of conscripts that have no logistical base of their own, instead of just eating their brains. I feel like a much more likely outcome is that the Legion unleashes some kind of brand new, unexpected superweapon or some kind of new strategy(sapping the walls with burrowers?) that brings the war suddenly and directly to the Albans in a way that they cannot possibly ignore, which will force a societal conflict where they'll have to either join hands with the 86s as human beings again or die.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 06:23
|
|
|
The legion is just the robots from hzd
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 06:56
|
|
|
chiasaur11 posted:I'd also assume the Legion would be the "real" enemy because, to be blunt... They’re genocidal, not really questionable. As they said, there’s really only kids left. Everyone else is dead.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 06:57
|
|
|
The moonshot scenario that Omnicron is describing is that The digitized minds that have been slaved to the Legion's AI processing can be convinced to rebel against the Legion proper. That is one of many directions the story can go. Well, the boundary of Legionness can be loose, it's clear that Shin was partially uploaded, some harvester machine probably carved out a part of his neck and inserted part of the AI processing chip before it got shot off by a friendly, which is why he can access the Legion communication network.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2021 07:24
|
|
|
We've all seen an anime/read a YA dystopian novel before, there's no negotiating with the Legion, they're not secretly the Dutch Resistance in this increasingly strained Nazi metaphor, they're all deadly von neumann probes and the vestigial traces of human thought are there to make them extra creepy. They're going to breach the walls, start killing civilians and we might get some exploration of what does/doesn't justify the murder of the complicit vs the innocent but in the end the 86's will have to save the day and Lena and (maybe) Shin will be left to pick up the pieces of a broken nation state.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 05:13
|
|
|
I figured it's okay to not use spoiler tags since episode 5 has been out for about a week. After this latest ep, I think at least one of the wild Para-Raid things that'll justify it being a thing in the setting (and not just using secure voice chats that don't require brain-linking) is that it'll be used either to hack/disable some of those cyber brains or in a trojan-horse style attack with someone being hooked into a Para-Raid when a brain is plugged into the system. Hard to picture what the scenario would be to make that happen exactly, but we've got robots stealin' brains and wiring them into themselves and tech that lets brains connect over vast distances; that can't be a coincidence. With all this intel the smart thing would be to try to make a synthetic dummy-brain, pop that in a cadaver, and rig that up to do one hell of a cyber attack or infect the Legion's mind with a disabling virus. It'll be fun to watch no one believe Lena and see the lovely "lets somehow needlessly sacrifice 86's for this" plan when they do. Also, it's basically a requirement for this type of story that Lena gets tossed into jail and is put into a skimpy anime prison outfit, so I figure that'll happen as a result of her "spreading dangerous disinformation that will devastate morale" or "knowing this secret thing that only people at the top know, and that's too dangerous a secret for anyone to know." That could also be something that happens further down the line and would be in future seasons though. It's hard to really get a fix on when exactly the horrible society she's a part of will get fed up with her not going along with the flow. Also, after looking through the thread a bit I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking "why the hell aren't they just using some normal voice comms?"
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 14:20
|
|
|
Probably some pseudoscience that brain-brain communications go through quantum entanglement or something while regular comms use EM radiation.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 14:48
|
|
|
One minor touch in this episode that I liked, if I read it right? We've had the running gag of Henrietta's horrible romantic history, but this episode actually highlighted the reason. There's a very limited selection of boys in her age group because a whole generation was gutted in the initial conflict. What the Republic is doing is unconscionable, but it was a solution they arrived at after getting completely stomped into the ground, leading to national trauma and the collective lie of a "war without casualties". It's not just bad people being racist. It's the horrible result of a deeply hosed situation, and scared people following their worst angels. Nice recontextualizing a joke to provide some worldbuilding.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2021 21:18
|
|
|
chiasaur11 posted:One minor touch in this episode that I liked, if I read it right? France after WW1 you say. I'm not entirely sure yet if Lena managed to properly broach the subject and got shut down or if she only kinda hypothetically approached it with her friend and on figuring it might be a bad idea suggested using the mortars but without the accompanying information about the Legion wrt them not shutting down in 2 years like they think? I'm also really unsure if there's enough 86 left to last another however length of time (2 years?) they think remains. It'd make sense to me if there's still like a few million 86 outside the walls and they're just occasionally pressing increasingly younger generations into the fight but I'm getting a bad sense of scale from the anime but then again that's very typical of a lot of fiction. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 03:56 on May 16, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 16, 2021 03:52
|
|
|
My brain must be really slow on the uptake lately, but I just realized how Shin's mercy killing of his comrade early on got recontextualized now. I figured Shin just knew he was slowly dying and shot him to end his pain. Kind of a smart move to set up the situation like that on the show's part too, where there's an obvious reason that a lot of people will assume is the reason but also another one hiding beneath the surface.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2021 05:38
|
|
|
A nice change from the novel this week is that the spearhead casualties were very matter of fact and distinctly separate from the fireworks scene. The intercutting here was a nice touch.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 19:44
|
|
|
Motto posted:A nice change from the novel this week is that the spearhead casualties were very matter of fact and distinctly separate from the fireworks scene. The intercutting here was a nice touch. It was so abrupt and sudden in the battle I had to actually go back and rewatch the fireworks scene to take an actual headcount to see just how many got hit there.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 22:38
|
|
|
The direction in this show is so good. It's impressive how it shows the same events from Lena's perspective and then spearhead's perspective each episode, but with hardly any repetition and never leaving you confused about what happened.
Sindai fucked around with this message at 23:29 on May 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 22, 2021 23:27
|
|
|
Motto posted:A nice change from the novel this week is that the spearhead casualties were very matter of fact and distinctly separate from the fireworks scene. The intercutting here was a nice touch.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 00:33
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:LN Spoilers: Will this season end with the 86 and Lena switching sides to Republic Giad? The expectation is that it will cover volume 1.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 01:32
|
|
|
Hol up. I'm watching Ep. 6, and uncle General says as justification "86 can be replaced" and I'm like, with loving what. They're down to child soldiers, already, where do they think these replacements are going to come from? edit: I see y'all had this question also Raenir Salazar posted:I'm also really unsure if there's enough 86 left to last another however length of time (2 years?) they think remains. It'd make sense to me if there's still like a few million 86 outside the walls and they're just occasionally pressing increasingly younger generations into the fight but I'm getting a bad sense of scale from the anime but then again that's very typical of a lot of fiction.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 04:10
|
|
|
I like this show still but at this point it feels like it's kind of spinning it's wheels (granted, in a brutal fashion where the front line gang are gradually killed off) and just illustrating the various hosed up angles on what was a pretty obviously hosed up situation from the get-go. Is the entire first cour (is this even split cour??? Is this going to be the entire show????) going to be spent standing in place while an increasingly grim picture gets painted?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 04:49
|
|
|
booksnake posted:Hol up. I'm watching Ep. 6, and uncle General says as justification "86 can be replaced" and I'm like, with loving what. They're down to child soldiers, already, where do they think these replacements are going to come from? The assumption on display is that they're fighting a time limited war and that there's plenty of bodies remaining to fight that time limited war at the current casualty rates so it's not worth worrying about. I'm completely bullshitting numbers, but say if their numbers assume 2000 86s die in combat every day on average, and they have another 500 days to go, as long as they have 1,010,000 potentially viable 86 soldiers among the remaining population(gotta account for a few high casualty days!), then surely they're fine! It's an absolutely idiotic and inhuman view, but the entire point is that the Republic is both idiotic and inhuman, even the less evil ones like Lena's uncle.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 05:41
|
|
|
Kanos posted:The assumption on display is that they're fighting a time limited war and that there's plenty of bodies remaining to fight that time limited war at the current casualty rates so it's not worth worrying about. Also, the genocide is the point. Not the first time a natural disaster/pandemic/other lethal crisis has been used as a deniable way to get your ethnic cleansing on, and not the first time it's backfired horribly. See also, India right now.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 12:32
|
|
|
booksnake posted:Hol up. I'm watching Ep. 6, and uncle General says as justification "86 can be replaced" and I'm like, with loving what. They're down to child soldiers, already, where do they think these replacements are going to come from? Sounds like theres concentration camps and they are accepting "volunteers" I imagine once they run out of those it will be forced conscription.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 16:58
|
|
|
DurosKlav posted:Sounds like theres concentration camps and they are accepting "volunteers" I imagine once they run out of those it will be forced conscription. I think the camps are in the 86 enclave outside the walls, in order to serve as bait for the Legion? That seems to be what the Processors are defending rather than San Magnolia itself, and that would give them ample reason to sign up to pilot Juggernauts.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 18:00
|
|
|
It seems pretty obvious that the show is going to end with the former territory of Galdia being given to the surviving 86/minority population of the Republic, establishing their own country. Pretty much all of their land will be an urban wasteland (good luck trying to get investment to rebuild it!), but at least it will probably be better than living in the republic. The only way I can see them staying in the republic is if there is a military coup that reforms the republic, but so far it doesn't seem like there are a lot of dissatisfied officers in the republic, let alone sympathizers among the populace. (Or I guess there will be something cheesy, like the enemy robots breaching the capital city, and then Spearhead is taking them out, and they're being televised for all the country to see, and then the main Alba populace sees that they're being piloted by the 86 minorities, which leads to something like popular opinion changing or something and they get their rights back). The foregone ending aside, I have to question the mindset of the characters in the present. What is San Magnolia's plan is for when all of the 86 minorities have been expended? All of the adults have died and now they're just down to the children. Eventually they're going to be gone too, which means that San Magnolia will need to tell its people the truth (people are going to have to get in the robots) and start recruit its main populace. Except those people are going to be total newbs, as they aren't going to have experienced 86s to mentor them. It reminds me of Japan vs the US during WW2: Japan kept all of its aces on the front lines, so while the aces racked up impressive kill counts, they eventually died, meaning that there were no aces to pass on their knowledge and train up new waves of pilots. By the end of the war, all of the aces had died, leaving Japan with just poo poo pilots. Whereas the US rotated their aces back out and had them pass on that knowledge, raising the overall skill level of the US' fighter pilots. I didn't quite understand why Spearhead is still sticking around. They straight up said that the war was futile, that they will fall and that San Magnolia will probably fall after. So why bother fighting? Can't they just pack up and travel to another country? I'm sure that other countries would LOVE to have hardened mecha pilots to instruct their own soldiers, and would probably pay Undertaker handsomely to do so. Gotta be better than hanging around out at San Magnolia.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 22:35
|
|
|
Moofia Boss Val posted:Can't they just pack up and travel to another country? Are there other countries?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 22:50
|
|
|
Moofia Boss Val posted:The foregone ending aside, I have to question the mindset of the characters in the present. What is San Magnolia's plan is for when all of the 86 minorities have been expended? All of the adults have died and now they're just down to the children. Eventually they're going to be gone too, which means that San Magnolia will need to tell its people the truth (people are going to have to get in the robots) and start recruit its main populace. Except those people are going to be total newbs, as they aren't going to have experienced 86s to mentor them. The plan for San Magnolia is the Zapp Brannigan special. The killbots will eventually shut down. They just need to survive until then by throwing wave after wave of their own men at the problem. And the data they have is showing results. The fact that this won't work is something only known to Spearhead since Undertaker has the whole psychic link thing. They basically don't have a plan for if (when) this strategy fails. As for Spearhead, at the moment getting to another country seems impossible. They don't have the logistics to get through the killbots to another country, if there's one that would take them, so their options are basically fight or die. At least, for now. If running actually becomes possible, that might change the math.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 22:52
|
|
|
who knows, they might be on a large island or small continent with no access to the rest of the world.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 22:56
|
|
|
Yeah, the 86 enclave, being bait, is under siege by design. If they were militarily capable of breaking the Legion's siege and escaping, then they wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. Besides, Spearhead in particular seem like the sorts of people who'd be none too keen on abandoning their posts and leaving the 86 civilians in the camps to be exterminated.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 23:03
|
|
|
gimme the GOD drat candy posted:who knows, they might be on a large island or small continent with no access to the rest of the world. I mean, they gave us a map.  They are surrounded and land locked, there's nowhere to go.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 23:17
|
|
|
Also as the 86's themselves have said as much as they dislike the Albans for trying to kill them, they don't blame all Albans. It's the government they blame, not the millions of innocents.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 23:21
|
|
|
MagicBoots posted:They are surrounded and land locked, there's nowhere to go. This is what I was thinking for a possible exodus to another country.  The Spearhead members said that they were heroes to the 86s, in which case they'd probably have enough sway to convince the other 86 units to leave along with them. "You know that we have seen the most heavy fighting. We know it is futile. Why not come along with us in search of a better home?" IIRC also non-Alba minorities have been pushed outside the walls and are on the 86 bases, so picking them up is just a matter of going along the perimeter. The mechas seem to be able to travel several KPH, and plus it seems that the units are allowed to sally without the command of an operator (Spearhead was operating in enemy territory without the protagonist even knowing about it and apparently it was a regular thing), so Spearhead could leave in the middle of the night, go around the perimeter, and take what people they can with them and be halfway to another country before headquarters starts realizing something is up. Moofia Boss Val fucked around with this message at 23:37 on May 23, 2021 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 23:35
|
|
|
Moofia Boss Val posted:This is what I was thinking for a possible exodus to another country. The problem is that the war's been going for years, giving the Legion plenty of time to surround and besiege them. Those potential escape routes were likely sealed off long ago - as far as anyone with the 86's limited strategic intelligence knows, anyway.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 23:36
|
|
|
MagicBoots posted:I mean, they gave us a map. that map doesn't really give any details other than the fact that san magnolia exists.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 23:37
|
|
|
gimme the GOD drat candy posted:that map doesn't really give any details other than the fact that san magnolia exists. I don't see any other borders on that map, I had assumed because they have lost so much territory that they no longer share land borders with their neighbors. I haven't read the LN but as an anime watcher I was under the impression that they are cutoff or at least sufficiently isolated that contact with the outside world is cut.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 23:44
|
|
|
MagicBoots posted:I don't see any other borders on that map, I had assumed because they have lost so much territory that they no longer share land borders with their neighbors. I haven't read the LN but as an anime watcher I was under the impression that they are cutoff or at least sufficiently isolated that contact with the outside world is cut. We know at least that they have a really difficult time getting luxury goods like natural ingredients for sweets.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2021 23:47
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:We know at least that they have a really difficult time getting luxury goods like natural ingredients for sweets. Specifically cream and eggs, which aren't typically things you'd be lacking in a developed society, especially not when you're a part of the nobility.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2021 00:11
|
|
|
The OP animation clearly points to the coast of north Africa, but that doesn't fit with the hilariously low-effort map a few posts up. Or anything else about the show, really. Weird thing to do if it has no relation to the actual setting at all though.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2021 00:19
|
|
|
Scifi and fantasy authors draw horrid maps.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2021 00:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 05:05 |
|
|
There's also an implication in the novels that the fascists are deliberately avoiding trying to contact the outside world so that when they reenter the international stage post war they can present the genocide as an act of god and avoid awkward questions.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2021 01:06
|
|
