Summary:
Isara is always prepared, and so the Edelweiss is already armed and loaded with shells and half a day’s worth of ragnoline. Thanks to her HS tank-driving classes, Isara is already an ace tank pilot, and so Isara drives, Welkin mans the turret, and Alicia stupidvises. The trio is easily able to elude the Imperial troops and join up with the rest of the town guard. Although Susie recognizes Welkin as a fellow University of Randgriz (Bio major) student, Chief Laaken’s subordinate, Melken Suustein, treats the siblings coldly. Melken considers Welkin a coward for suggesting a strategic retreat, and he is extremely bigoted towards Isara.
Because Melkin refuses to heed her advice about the crappy old tanks in the town shed, his tank stalls after winning the initial face off and is destroyed. Fortunately, Chief Laaken finally returns with news that the Gallian Army will be providing backup. With all the villagers evacuated, Welkin wants to retreat but somehow Isara interprets the order as obliterate the advance troop. Eventually the decimated Imperial troops retreat before the Gallian Army can arrive, and Alicia ponders the Lion’s Paw flowers surrounding Bruhl. The flash forward reveals that Alicia is now a sergeant rooming with Susie and Welkin is the commander of the 3rd regiment.
Reaction:
Damn those Imperial troops; I can’t believe they opened by destroying the Sister Mills! I don’t know if the Imperial soldiers thought they could have success copying Alicia’s style, but it was so disheartening to see them standing out in the open firing rifles at the Edelweiss (while the militia used cover, no less). That thing deflects tank shells, so bullets will not have any effect… The mobility of the Edelweiss was incredible, and it was funny how Isara basically stated that anyone else who tried to drive her tank would get a cleaver in the face.
A lot is being made of Welkin’s knowledge of nature so I’m guessing his battle strategies will involve a lot of hayfever and frickin’ trout with frickin’ laser beams attached to their frickin’ heads. I was quite surprised to see that Susie didn’t quit military life while she was ahead, but I guess the lure of hot men and the pressures of being in the Evans family got the best of her. Then again, if the Imperial troops have this much trouble hitting Alicia in the open, just wait till the Gallian Army starts dolphin diving.
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About Kabitzin: One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well-choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns. |
31 Comments
I honestly couldn’t last until the opening song (if there was one). I spent the entire time alternating between /facepalming and /headdesking -.-
The combat failed in this episode. Super tank aside, it turns out the militia don’t know how to use their rifles, or the Imperial soldiers are impervious to bullets, because I don’t remember the militia killing a single soldier while the soldiers killed and wounded several militiamen.
Well to be fair, the militia was just a bunch of folks forming a town watch, while the Imperial soldiers were pros (assumably), so I dont think it’d be a stretch for the Imperials to not have many or any casualties (let’s just forget about the part where the “pros” are standing in the middle of the street shooting at the town watch behind cover).
What I’m wondering is why’d it take them so long to bring out the super tank? Seems like with everyone dying I’d want to get that baby out there as soon as possible, orders be damned.
Guys straight out of Basic can hit a human-sized target within about fifty to hundred meters pretty reliably as long as they aim properly and neither side moves too much, though. And the target isn’t in cover. And seeing as how Gallia’s got universal conscription going, virtually everybody in the place – including second-line local-defense reserve formations like the town watch – should have at least *that* much training. Kind of the whole point of the “universal reserve” setup after all…
On top of which, rural folks like the Bruhlians more likely than not shoot diverse varmints as a hobby.
So, eh. Write it down to director dumbassery or something – although, given what the first levels in those tactical RPGs are wont to be like (in my experience anyway), the Imps’ acute dearth of tactical sense might also be an overly faithful rendition of the source material…
Still grossly stupid, though.
It’s not like the Gallians are much better either – their idea of fortifying a town apparently amounts to piling some sandbags across a few streets well *inside* the settlement, which would elicit little more than scornful laughter even from Napoleonic soldiery…
Also, they apparently had exactly one of those rocket launchers one of the sentries in the tower nearly tries to shoot the Edelweiss with and that apparently fell down a well in the meantime or something. You would think that infantry with access to such weaponry and fighting in urban terrain they’re intimately familiar with would be an acute nightmare to any tanks up close, but no. *sigh*
While I long ago gave up on expecting even quasi-credible tactics and whatnot from animu, it’d be nice if they would at least try.
I also can’t but wonder how come nigh nobody in the whole town seems to know Welkin and Isara, or even about them… you’d think the local celebrity adopting the latter (pariah minority and all) would have been a minor national and major local sensation back at the time, too. Far as I know everybody tends to more or less know everybody else in such small rural settlements… forced drama much?
Other irritating bits of faggotry:
- no machine guns anywhere. This despite even the Gallian town watch being armed with self-loading rifles, and the Imperials apparently to a man kitted out with what would appear to be StG 44 knock-offs. (Add the helmets, and the Imps Put On The Reich to a rather embarassing degree – although the closest RL period equivalent to that body armour they all seem to wear would be the frag- and pistol-proof breastplates Societ assault infantry sometimes used during WW2…) Meh.
- the artists seem to have some trouble with the various small arms, which are not only pretty fugly but worse still inconsistent in appereance, and clearly don’t know the difference between a ramrod and a gas tube… Particularly “meh” given that from what I’ve seen of the game’s art (from screenshots at the official site) the weapons *there* are pwetty and credible-looking enough, if now sometimes rather baroque and overdone in the usual animé fashion.
- Welkin has to have enabled aimbot h4xx0r with the Edelweiss to hit from evasive flank speeds like that, unless the damn thing has at least vertical gyroscopic stabilization on its main gun. Which I rather doubt. And the less that is said about the ability of him and Isara smoothly operate a tank of that size essentially by themselves (since Alicia doesn’t do much anything useful in there), the better… critters like that normally require like minimum trained crew of three to be worth a jack, and are usually designed for four or even five.
- the Imp tanks seem to be designed according to the “double gun” principle that was pretty common until around midway to WW2, with a long-barreled high-velocity gun for antitank work in the turret and a short-barreled, large-bore howitzer for shelling “soft” targets and strongpoints with HE mounted in the hull… and only ever use the former, chiefly for firing HE at soft targets and buildings. What.
- all the tanks seem to have steering wheels. Talk about egregious…
- the Gallian military apparently doesn’t issue trousers to female troopers for causes that defy reason. Or not… Still pointlessly stupid though. It doesn’t really help that the battledress of the Army proper seems to be purpose-designed to get its wearers shot via excessive visibility, what with all those shiny metal bits and contrasting colours – Alicia’s white collar thingy being a particularly glaring offender. And damn near nobody wears helmets, naturally. Because shell-fragment lobotomy is such fun.
tl;dr – better temporarily forget just about everything you know about *real* warfare and related topics while watching this series, unless you fancy headbutting your desk in half. On the plus side the main cast is pretty decent, and Welkin actually doesn’t make my knuckles itch (which isn’t that common in male leads) – probably because he’s so cheerfully loopy.
At one point, Melken complains about the crappy town guard guns, but who knows if he was just whining. I figure Alicia is actually quite capable, and yet even she was inaccurate last episode (and also shaking when she was supposed to fire on Welkin). This suggests that the town guard is both inexperienced and poorly equipped. Also, as much as Melken bitched, I think he was the only Bruhl resident to score a kill without using the Edelweiss.
Isara didn’t bring out the Edelweiss right away because racist Melken didn’t want a Darcsen shooting him in the back. Once he was eliminated, the Edelweiss was sent into combat.
Then again, given that the way the milita don’t deploy even their own two obsolescent rustbuckets in any fashion resembling sane or coherent to begin with and even Isara and Welkin engage in some singularly stupid moves with the Edelweiss (I can wax poetic with NERD RAEG on both topics if somebody wants
), all that can IMHO frankly be subsumed to the tactical sanity and rationale of the whole series thus far needing to be written off as a complete loss until further notice.
Even by tactical-RPG standards, I’d say; those at least have their own internal and usually reasonably credible logic going, but if it’s present in the anime it’s certainly been hidden very well.
OTOH, the Imperials actually manage to operate their tanks more or less sensibly in conjunction with the infantry during the street fights – mainly, having the footsloggers probe ahead and using the clanky cans with guns to reduce strongpoints they run into.
I strongly suspect this is wholly accidental, or derived from the AI doing something reasonably sensible in the game…
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Don’t worry, I got your back. I approved the comment from behind cover.
Nice comment there, Watchman. I didn’t notice nearly as many problems and it was already pretty absurd. Can’t imagine what you were thinking when watching this LOL.
Well, let’s just say that although reading the game’s entry at Tvtropes.org was a mistake insofar as plot spoilage was concerned, it did have an unexpected bonus – I learned the story’s actually so surreal and over-the-top it’s right great stuff, and quite a bit of chronic setting idiocy and whatnot gets handwaved as a result. It’s not really… relevant anymore after I learned what kind of straight-faced nuttiness lies ahead.
The fighting sucks hard, but eh, I wasn’t really expecting much anyway – the intro summary at AniDB and ANN kinda makes it obvious hardcore realism isn’t to be expected, and most “light” entertainment totally fails in the tactics and credibility departement in any case – so to avoid brain haemorrhages I really just handwave that junk and concentrate on the parts that aren’t horribad. Like scenery and the characters (who show some promise) and giggling at the sillier bits of the plot.
‘Course, commenting on the nonsense is its own brand of entertainment.
After doing some reading on the game I’ll say this, though: I’m going to be right disappointed if the anime doesn’t introduce Jane at some point. Killing-machine psychotic loli stormtroopers FTW!
When has orders ever stopped an RPG hero from taking matters into their own hands and saving lives?
I still think Isara’s first instinct should’ve been to take the reigns of the supertank once the racist drove away in the rustbucket
Personally I don’t really get by what merit Melken gets to be The Boss anyway, given that he’s such an obvious idiot. The town watch may not be the regular military, but they’re still part of the state armed forces and one would expect some standards in the leadership…
I mean, Alicia, Welkin and Isara turn up with this monster tank and urgent news on the movements of the enemy advance scouts – and what does the man do?
1) Set about organising the defense according to the hot intel and try to figure some way to make that steel beast useful.
2) Castigate them on not having gotten killed at “three kids with one rifle between them against a full company plus several tanks in support” odds, leave the mongo tank sit there, and go fail do anything meaningful with the pitiful tanks available.
3) LOL I DUNNO
…yeah. 2). I can’t for the life of me figure *who* let this twit command anything with more firepower than an oxcart, or why the villagers actually obey him…
Not that they were doing things very impressively even when he wasn’t calling the shots… Big war started, some border fortress already fallen, enemy troops nigh certainly advancing towards the town, what do we do with our few crappy, run-down tanks ?
1) Fix them up and running like pronto and start looking for good spots they can ambush the Imp tankers from, and then rabbit for the next spot – we know the terrain and all and have quite a bit of time to prepare positions, right ?
2) Leave them rusting in the barn, only start trying to fix them into working combat order after the battle has already started and the enemy troops are overrunning the city, heading out to make a pointless unsupported Hail Mary gesture against the already pretty much victorious Imps who have in the meantime mauled the hapless militia infantry.
3) LOL I DUNNO
…well, you get the point. Pretty much the only thing the dumbass Gallians do right is trying to shoot at the attacking Imperial troops…
Kinda makes you wonder what these idiots actually get taught during their mandatory exercises…
Darcsen do the jobs no one else wants to do… like repairing tanks.
Who knows if Chief Laaken really left Melken in charge. The Chief didn’t seem to care where Melken was when he got back. It’s possible all the other n00bs just listened to Melken because they figured he had real experience.
That’d make no sense at all. Just for one example Isara seems to be like the only Darcsen around the town, but the milita seems to have been capable of keeping their rustuckets in something approaching running order anyway – and she presumably hadn’t been anywhere close to those machines previously, since nobody apparently knew her. (And keeping tanks even remotely functional takes a *lot* of work; with rare few particularly rugged designs being the exception, the things are maintenance hogs and wear out various components at truly amazing rates – particularly the transmission, drivetrain and tracks. In the World Wars more were probably lost to mechanical breakdowns than combat…)
Doesn’t make much sense more generally either; that’d amount to leaving a critically important logistical role to a rather small ethnic minority not all that highly trusted and in all likelihood incapable of providing enough sufficiently tech-savvy personnel in any case, and it’s not like mechanic work has ever been regarded as particularly undesirable AFAIK. Heck, as far as “blue collar” jobs go, it’s a pretty prestigious and well-paid field – “skilled labour” and all. Also has tended to attract folks who like machines and/or tinkering with them.
I don’t buy it about the militia not having a properly defined chain-of-command either. They’re a freakin’ uniformed local branch of the military with standard-issue weapons, ferchrissakes, whose members have been receiving systematic military instruction for a good chunk of their lives – not random rabble with pitcforks and torches. Organised.
Not that it makes much sense for Laaken to head off to talk to the Army either, anyway. They have a radio and thus should in all likelihood also have good ole cable telephone too – which has the additional benefit of being reasonably interception-proof and very reliable as long as the lines are intact… Kind of foregone conclusion the local militia HQ communicates with their superiors and through them the rest of the military hierarchy with those. Now, I could see the point of sending off some of the milita to act as guides for the Army troops (likely young lads and lasses better kept away from the expected combat), as locals’ familiarity with terrain, shortcuts etc. tends to be very useful for units needing to get somewhere fast (in WW2 Allied troops in France for example benefited much from such aid from the local inhabitants), but the resident C-in-C ? No.
Just chalk it up to the general train wreck of hackneyed idiocy that forms so much of the backdrop of the first episodes at least. Now, I know the first one or two levels of these tactical RPGs tend to be essentially tutorials more often than not liberally sprinkled with cautionary examples of What Not To Do, but really, the director and scriptwriters should have realised porting those bits over to the adaptation is just going to end up looking really stupid…
Thanks, mate; back into the breach then.
O_O a long-ass comment… from someone other than me… and ISN’T SPAM?!?!?!
I think you just took my longest comment award 
Hmm, I’ll watch this series when its not a PS3 exclusive *ba dum psh*
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Eh, I’m a raging military and history nerd. I can write entire mini-essays (AKA Walls of Text) on that stuff when suitably motivated, ie. NERD RAGEING…
Not necessarily a trait to be proud of, I’ll give you.
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NONSENSE!!! Someone who takes away my long-ass comment award like that, whose power level is not even 159 yet? AND doesn’t have a Gravatar?!?! Listen here punk! Around these parts, we don’t take kindly to you Watchmen, which is why you need protection! That standard
shuriken“sure-you-can(take my ass virginity)” gravatar is not gonna cut it! Whats gonna happen when the big-boys like Chris return here huh? You won’t be safe, and I won’t be there to protect you! Which is why you need a legit homemade gravitar to ward off the penor-dragons! Yea, thats right! Don’t be surprised when Falkor the Luck Dragon is riding YOU instead of the other way around! Oh, you think ur safe cause he only likes “children”? Well lemme tell ya! Dat bastard is over 9000 years old, so everyone is considered “children” to him! He’ll definitely be watching you… MAN!!!Show ▼
It would be ironic if Watchman actually downloaded that image and used it as his gravatar…
…hmm, well, it would be a pretty slick move, I’ve gotta admit
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Ah! Tru dat Chris159159159! Thanks for reminding me =3
Dude, don’t start putting weird ideas in my head.
One of the little oddities in the setting is the major Darcsen haet that seems pretty ubiquitous among the hoi polloi (and even Alicia has some to spare). What makes it kinda weird is that said folks would appear to enjoy essentially full civil rights in Gallia and seem to be subject to the same universal conscription and associated full course of military training as the majority populace – it doesn’t really quite add up. All the more so as AFAIK one of the better cures to prejudice tends to be everyday association with the “Other” in a neutral setting, like, say, whatever form the part-time Boot Camp the Gallians get put through since rather early age takes would seem to be…
Cohesion, cooperation and a kind of communal spirit – espirit de corps – is after just about the main point of modern military drill, after all.
Yeah, I know they’re pulling the Jews IN SPACE thing. They’re just not doing it very well; doesn’t really help that the actual reason the Darcs get so much bad rap seems to only ever get rather vaguely alluded to, and comes across as more than a tad hackneyed…
(My personal bet it just mostly comes from whoever wrote that part of the setting not actually having had much of a clue of how and why Anti-Semitism worked… the Japanese being a little short on comparable historical experiences.)
The Darcsen hate isn’t quite anti-semitism, though its similar. There are other extenuating circumstances that allow for a hate of Darcsens even within a context where they aren’t officially discriminated against.
The situation is rather more complicated than it appears at first.
I don’t doubt the “more complicated” part, but I’ve considerable reservations if that’s going to make the execution of the concept any better…
There is something very unique about the Darcsen’s position in Gallia, and it will be explained later.
In other countries they are indeed considered “sub human” and treated as slaves and whatnot.
Yeah, and that makes *so* much more sense.
Did I mention something about the depiction of this stuff in Japanese popular culture tending towards the ham-fisted an naïve ?
*groan*
You’d think that made Gallia the migration objective #1 for any Darcsens that got fed up with that and took a hike, mind.
Try not to think of it as a historical setting, its a fantasy setting thats simply been advanced forward 500 years compared to what we normally think of as “fantasy”.
Anyway as I said, the Darcsen situation makes sense within the context of the overall setting, once you know some details.
Regarding the first paragraph, eh. I can immediately think of two sticking points with that; one, you can’t “simply” port over pseudo-Medieval junk (which would be the run-of-the-mill fantasy fare) to a pseudo-Modern, post Industrial Revolution, setting and expect the copypaste to work at all; two, the handling of the relevant topics in the fantasy settings tends to be no better to begin with…
Regarding the second paragraph, we’ll see though I seriously doubt it – not in the least because by what I know of it, the overall setting itself has some issues with credibility and ham-fisted oversimplification.
A case of Did not Do the Research? I’m thinking that the creative staff of the game were never Military tactics/hardware afficionados to begin with, even less History degree-holders.
I’d be more inclined to write it off as They Just Didn’t Care, as getting a grasp of the basics isn’t exactly challenging; you can read up enough introductory books in like two days or so.
To be fair, this arguably isn’t much of an issue with the game proper – after all, in tactical RPGs the setting and plot are really just excuses to have virtual guys and girls run around shooting stuff up and having weird conversations and the gameplay tends to more or less force you to think tactically at least within the framework and limitations of the game engine (since you’re wont to hit GAME OVER pretty fast if you get stupid).
The animanga adaptations, OTOH, obviously lack such distractions, so the gaping holes in common sense and credibility get that much harder to ignore.
Well, as mentioned previously, I kind of wrote the worst offending parts of the series off as a complete loss until further notice and didn’t have high expectations regarding them to begin with. What I actually find harder to forgive is the crappy art of the weapons (especially as the game and anime do them *right*) – self-loading rifles are by and large pretty sleek and neat looking things; how the Hell do you screw that up…?