Episode7 Attack on Titan

After the horror and flashback to yet more horror in the previous two episodes this one begins with a somewhat upbeat revelation...As far as is known there were no civilians eaten by the giants! Everyone made it through the gates before they were closed except the soldiers fighting the delaying action. The military, however has suffered mightily and as the episode begins Mikasa is going back to rejoin her friends  and assist in the survivors in an orderly retreat.  She arrives to find Sasha Potato Girl trying to rally a bunch of thoroughly demoralized troops, which include Armin.


And then,  Mikasa's eyes...just sort of die.



I must say this about the artists in this show. They really have the portrayal of dead, soulless eye's down pat.




I mean they've nailed it. The stills don't quite do the effect of this justice. While not particularly graphic the dead thousand yard stares in this episode are haunting in a way that really stays with you.


Of course, in MIkasa's case this is due to her leaning about Erun's fate. As one would expect she does not handle it well...



Here is the situation.

Their martial art involves a harness that includes power operated cables, grapling hooks and ascenders all powered by natural gas cylinders and supplemented by very short bursts from a rocket in the small of the back.  This allows them to swing about like fighters in some Xia brothers film and get to the vital spot on the back of a giants neck.

Well, after all that fighting, their gas cylinders are running low and without them they cant hope to make it to the wall, let alone scale it to reach safety. There is a facility with a recharge facility, but it is overrun by giants and most of the logistical command staff have fled.

Potato Girl and a male recruit named Connie Springer are  trying to organize an assault on the place to get at the natural gas depot and relieve those trapped inside , but no one will move.

At this point Mikasa of the dead eyes motivates everyone by the straightforward method of calling them all cowards and not worth saving and that she'll kill all the giants herself and abandon them...but they can come if they want.

It's unclear if motivation was her intent but it has that effect.

On the way Mikasa is separated from the group when she runs out of gas. Armin and Connie detach to find her but she has crashed in a heap at the foot of a giant in the wrong end of a dead end alley. As she contemplates why she is continuing to resist the inevitable, another giant shows up and rips the giant menacing her asunder....Armin arrives and scoops Mikasa up to the roof. He gives her his (barely used) cylinders   and blades. He, Connie and Mikasa watch the bizarre spectacle of the Aberrant Titan vanquishing others while ignoring them.





This episode ends with our protagonists pretty much in the same position as when it began, but a lot happened in between their making little progress. This battle is in it's third episode, and yet it doesn't seem to be dragging yet....which is unusual.

Mikasa had a moment of introspection that was interesting in that it had two aspects. On the one hand she determined that she is not going to give in to despair and she will fight to the bitter end. This is pretty straightforward and while well stated and inspiring it's not really unusual. What was unusual was the other thing she concluded. She reflected upon the fact that she's in a defacto leadership position and reflects on how this entails a good deal of DOWNWARD s well as upward loyalty.

 Mikasa has been portrayed throughout the show as a very decent person, but she really does grow in this episode even as she dies on the inside. There aren't many shows where this has come to the fore and off the top of my head I can think of only three other fictional fantasy female leaders who have had this virtue. Meia Gisbourne and the Captain in Van Dread, and to a slightly lesser extent Bellows in Gargantia.  This may not be a focus of the series but it is was refreshing to see this ethical point addressed.

There was also plenty of dystopic horror, and gruesomely gruesome gruesomeness, so the show hasn't had a sudden shift in tone...it's still hard to watch. But it remains intelligent and I note that nothing in this show has been extraneous...so that crazy ass giant means something.



Also, for those who've been watching the show : what happened to the key?

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Well This Was Surprising

Surprises:
Attack on Titan has lots of them,. Gargantia on the Verduous Planet has surprises too, but they are usually of an entirely different sort....
more...

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Attack on Titan (Updated)

One day, long ago, the world ended.
Huge giants just showed up and started...eating people. This seems to have coincided with a near complete technological collapse as society is now sporting renaissance era tech.

Society, furthermore now consists of a walled area of Europe that looks to be a bit smaller than Andorra. The walls, over 150 feet high seem impervious to the giants. As a hedge, there have been built two secondary walls protecting progressively smaller areas. For 100 years there have been no breaches and humanity has developed a sort of pleasant if neurotic normalcy within its' prison.

Within this womb of denial reside these three young misfits. Left to right we have...

  Armin, a bookish nerd who dreams of seeing the outside world.This heretical notion as well as his socially unacceptable belief that humanity is becoming too complacent about its tenuous hold on existence gets him beat up a lot. Fortunately for his longevity he is friends with...
  Erun, an athletic young man, who excels at fisticuffs and hangs out with the wrong sort of people (see above). As a result of this antisocial influence he has read the forbidden geography book Armin has squirreled away and dreams of seeing the ocean. When he gets old enough, he wants to join the Reconnaissance forces and explore the outside world. His parents do not approve, as the recon forces have a horriffic attrition rate. He's something of a hothead with a bit more idealism than sense. fortunately this is often tempered by his close proximity to...
  Mikasa, an orphan who is his adopted sister. Her parents were refugees from some mysterious, far away land called "Asia" so naturally, this being anime, she is cool as a cucumber and good at everything.  Having suffered through great loss, she does NOT want to loose her adoptive family and she strives to assist in extricating Erun from his many self-inflicted challenges with a fervor that borders on co-dependency.

Well, as you can see from the expressions on our protagonists faces, in the course of the first episode things go downright pear shaped. 


OK,  the end of episode 1 and most of episode 2 involve a particularly large giant 3-5 times as big as any others showing up and kicking in the gate to the walled territory. The smaller giants then swarm into the city where they begin devouring the populace. Meanwhile, the military, who would find this situation tough in the best of times, is very nearly useless due to having become complacent and confident behind their walls.  The soldiers are routed and most that are not devoured flee. A few take the time to to assist the civilians  like Hannes here.



We first saw him in episode 1 drunk at his post and generally not displaying a good military bearing.  In episode 2 he runs in to engage a giant, takes one look at it, realizes he is drunk, unfit to fight and heads for the hills. However, he somewhat redeems himself when he returns  to save the kids, wrenching them from their mother as they attempt to extricate her from the rubble of their house. He pulls them out kicking and screaming as the giant he did not engage devours their mother in front of them*.  (I'll spare you the screen cap).

As mentioned before there are 3 walls. They are called Rose, Maria and Sina...in the course of episodes 1&2 the territory between Rose and Maria is overrun. The gates of Wall Maria have to be closed to save those inside and 1/3 of the human population is lost.


^{* We see Hannes later in episode 4. He's still the same friendly guy, but he's gotten his act together and has become the very demanding captain of the gate guard for Wall Maria. Hannes is determined to never repeat his mistakes and ensure others don't either. An interesting theme of redemption from a frequently dystopic show.} 

 Attack on Titan actually has had quite a bit to say about the dangers of complacency,  the utter contempt ruling elites can develop for those in the hinterlands, the necessity of freedom in healthy human development and the cancerous rot that results from its absence...and it often says them in the most graphically unsettling ways possible.

This show has has some extraordinarily disturbing visuals. If it were a live action film it might get an NC-17 rating. There is just something nightmarish on a primal level about people being eaten by big, naked, implacable giants that look like otaku.
Actually, nightmarish doesn't begin to describe it.

This is a gut wrenching show and difficult to watch but it is actually pretty interesting.
With a  structure, that evolves into something very much like a war story, it successfully captures the horror and dread of going into combat in a way that few shows have. The show is full of surprises and there's already been some decent character development. I do like the fact that Erun, while very much a shonen lead arch-type is NOT possessed of some awesome power and is not really the best at anything...getting by instead on his wits and tenacity. 

Episode three has a 5 year time skip. There is a brief flashback revealing that due to most of the croplands being between Maria and Rose there was a famine. This was alleviated by the straightforward method of organizing the adult males fom the overrun portion into a militia and sending them out with a small military force and some engineers to retake the occupied territories...and then locking the gate.
Other than that 3 and 4 are boot camp stories. Our heroes have enlisted and the cast triples in size as they deal with basic training and exposition on the shows signature martial art, a complex ballet involving swords and swinging through the air on wires. The other takeaway is that while one can apply for any position one wants.  only the top 10 percent can get into the military police, only those with the best academic scores can get into the gate guards (it involves engineering) and the lowest performing  end up in either the scouts or the regular guard force. This, as Erun points out is in fact ass backwards as everyone is striving to hone their giant killing skills to get as far as possible away from the giants in the interior compound. The front-line troops are set up to fail.

Erun, to the astonishment of everyone (except Mikasa and Arun, who know he's a loon) signs up for the Recon forces he strove so long to join. When questioned on the sanity of this he gives an impassioned speech that inspires several others to do so as well. Graduation day comes and the cadets are running about their duties on the wall in anticipation of their new assignments, when a 60 meter giant just...sort of...teleports in and kicks down the gate to Wall Maria.

And then things get bad....
 

Be advised that Attack on Titan does not shirk from showing women perishing in combat with all the same gruesomeness as the men.  However, the series has several likeable and strong female characters, including Potato Girl here.

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Tankery in the US

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Tankery in the UK

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Old Meets New

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Do So Very Much Want

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Wonders of the Internet

While perusing the comments at Chisumatic, I recently discovered that this internet thing is even more awesome than I was previously aware.

You see, Pete Zaitcev and others have compiled a surprisingly comprehensive meganekko database.

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Starblazers 2199

Via Crunchyroll and Anime News Network comes word that XEBEC has announced that Yamato 2199 is about to be aggressively marketed internationally.


The title of the international version will be Starblazers 2199.

Oh Fabrijous DAY!

This is interesting as Star Blazers was the release name of the show in the US and Canada. Several of the name changes in the US version like renaming the ship itself ARGO were actually done by the Japanese creators. I 've gushed excessively about the old show and the remake several times before but it really is good.

Yamato 2199 has managed to remain quite faithful to the original while adding quite a few surprises for those familiar with the show. 

 The premise of the show is straightforward enough.

Earth discovers that it is not alone in the universe...8 years later the aggressive interstellar empire Earth encountered has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. The planets surface is rendered uninhabitable by a combination of constant bombardment, radiation and invasive alien plants that have absorbed most of the oceans...and still the aliens attack. At this dark hour, the earth is contacted by another alien race which offers them a device that can restore their planet. Unfortunately, it won't fit on the blockade runner and apparently can't be made from local materials, so instead the aliens sent plans for an FTL drive so the humans can come get the physical device. The humans install the FTL in the hull of a sublight starship ship they were constructing to carry a few survivors off planet. To conceal it's construction, the ship was being built within and below the hulk of the old battleship Yamato which accounts for it's appearance. Now, this jury rigged ship with an FTL drive that the crew barely understands must break through the blockade of the solar system, travel 168,000 light years to the greater Magellanic cloud...and back,...and do it in a year if they are to have any hope of saving Earth....and the aliens will fight them every step of the way.




With such a large cast and sweeping story it might seem unlikely that the show would have much character development, but the writers really have managed the ensemble well thus far.  In contrast to the single female crew member in the old show, several women have been added to or re-imagined into the old cast.  This has actually added a good deal of depth as they are, for the most part interesting and well written. Yamamoto, for instance is one of the best realized female military officers since Van Dread's Meia Gisbourne from over a decade ago. Several of the enemy characters are quite interesting as well.

  While it is not hard sci-fi by any means, the show also throws a good deal of actual science into several stories.  The exact physics of their FTL is handwaved (by the fact that the crew really doesn't understand how it works), they work in bits of recent astronomy news and make a real effort to keep their non-FTL techno-babble grounded in actual physics, biology and IT speak.

Despite it's bleak premise, '2199 thus far, has managed to be remarkably optimistic and even inspiring. It has been quite intelligent as well, much more so than most sci-fi TV. Additionally, the show has done a far above average job of conveying a sense of service professionalism and even the ethics of command and leadership.

About halfway in, Yamato 2199 has been superb, I'm crossing my fingers that they don't muck it up in the end.

Assuming they don't, I'm  genuinely looking forward to seeing what the US version is going to be like.

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It Occurs to Me

...that despite the otherwise satisfying ending of the show, we never did get an explanation for this.

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Remember Kids. Saftey is Important!

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Scale!

There. That helps.

I don't know enough to be sure, but I suspect that concealed withing the overall excellence of Girls und Panzer there might have been just a tiny smidgen of political commentary regards the efficacy of Japanese public works boondoggles.

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Preview clip for the 5th Yamato 2199 Movie.

This is different from the trailer below. It's the first 9 minutes of the 5th film (which translates to episode 15-18 of the series that airs this spring).
Spoilers abound so beware.

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As they say...ZOMG Sauce

I ran into a couple of intriguing animated .gifs that have defied my attempts to find a source.

Does anyone know what they are from and if said shows are any good?

They're a bit large so they're below the fold.

more...

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Girls und Panzer Ends

I must confess that in spite of everything, I like Kadotani a lot. She's enthusiastic, calm under pressure and has balls of brass.  She's a departure from the rest of the cast in that she was developed beyond the  trope she represents.

Girls und Panzer is in a lot of ways a collection of tired old tropes and annoying recent ones. There is no new ground here. It's a sports anime with mechs aimed at a demographic that is so insecure that they can't abide male characters in their anime potentially competing for their 'waifus'. The result is that we get the galling notion that the war on boys has been carried to its logical conclusion so that males aren't allowed to compete in the sport at all.

Given this set-up and an overly large cast that seems to have been concieved by 31 die rolls compared against a moe/tsundere stock character generator, the only real question about the show would seem  to be "To what depths of squalor will the panty shots descend?" But that is not the question I find myself asking. Instead I find myself grasping to figure out how this collection of mediocrities can have kicked so much ass that one can be forgiven for worrying about a trans-Pacific ass shortage.

What the HELL? How did they do that? This show is not refinement  of stale tropes. This was frickking alchemy. It was lead into gold. Oh, and the answer to the unasked question above is "None". I don't think there was a panty shot in the whole show...they get points just for that alone. However, this show is about way more than propriety. Girls und Panzer manages to deal with ethics, sportsmanship and honor in a way few shows have.

The show does this without being preachy. Furthermore, despite what ought to be a completely predictable storyline, it manages to keep the viewers on the edge of their seat. The use of WW2 tanks was inspired and the battles with them were thoroughly entertaining and well thought out. Even the fairly by the numbers characters were well written to the point that one actually cared about them. These girls are smart and make up for their vastly inferior equipment by being clever and audacious.

The few problems with the show did not stem from the writing, or the directing but with a subcontractor who flamed out requiring two 'clips' episodes be inserted and the last two episodes be delayed over three months. After the spectacular surprise hit the show had been nothing could live up to the anticipation the last two episodes engendered.

Despite this handicap the two episode finale is a thoroughly satisfying rollercoaster that still manages to surprise.
The fact that the final showdown ends up being fight between sisters in a schoolyard...with tanks....is a nice touch.


Everything about this worked. The mockery of the big clumsy Porche Tank turning into the sick realization that "It's a big immovable Tank!" was priceless. The only thing that stretched credulity was the method for taking out the Maus...and I'll let that slide for the sheer awesome involved.
 
I am in awe.

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"...Through all the fire and the smoke, we will never give up hope..."

Here is the extended trailer for the 5th Yamato 2199 Movie. It's about twice as long as the one on the DVDs.

Be advised; there appears to be much spoilage therein.

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Somebody Needs to Fund This

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I do miss this show

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GJ Club

I'd found a couple of cute animated .gifs and tracked down their source. When I read the premise for the show it did not excite me...at all. However, a bit of digging turned up the fact that despite the cast and premise it is based on a series of light novels...and not a dating sim.
So I gave an episode a whirl.


In a certain school with very garish uniforms four girls and a boy round out the membership of the mysterious GJ Club. The clubs purpose is unclear but within the tiny club room, the five young souls drink tea, play chess, change light-bulbs and have other such harrowing adventures....

This is an odd one.

Case in point....

This here is Kirara Bernstein. She's...well she's an exchange student...from someplace. She doesn't speak Japanese confidently and is generally very quiet.  She  seems to be on Atkins. Kirrara is also exceedingly tall and a bit awkward. She nearly died when bitten by a black widow at age 4 and this has left her with a terrible fear of spiders. Is there anything else I'm failing to mention here?



About 2/3 of the way through episode one, Mao the rather manic club president and Nebbish McOrdinary here notice that, yes, there is indeed something odd about the girl sitting by the window.


Which precipitates a conversation that ranges from how there is no cut of meat on any animal that looks like that to whether or not eating it will allow them to "increase their hit points" and speculation on just how the HELL that thing Kirara's eating was prepared.

The other club members are Shion, an elegant but slightly out of touch genius chess player and Mao's younger (and much taller) sister Megumi who is the absolute master of the club tea service. The dude is named Kyoya and serves mainly to be the butt of pranks. He prefers Josei and Shojo mamga because they tend to actually have character development.

Artwise, GJ Club has got quite detailed backgrounds with the animation itself being about average. There are occasionally some editing quirks that are fairly clever.

Although his show's cast seems to consist entirely of cliches it has a fairly offbeat feel to it in part because the pacing and humor is rather dry, though there is some slapstick as well as the oddness evidenced above. By the end of the first episode there are actual hints of personalities in some of the characters.  

I'm not sure what to make of this show...

However I laughed.. and it's cute so I'll probably watch at least a few more episodes to see where it goes.

Thus far it's way better than it ought to be.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that one of the things that seems so off center is that while it is cast like a harem show it's more a cute girls doing cute things sitcom with the caveat that one of them is a guy.

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Media Blasters Status / Other News

Media Blasters has posted an announcement on their website clarifying their situation. The rumor that they had no business liscence hit them hard as did an injury to the owner. Several titles are no longer in their possession and at least two are owned by them but with no plans for release. It seems that they intend to sell those rights to other companies.

The only labels MB will continue to acquire and release in for 2013 are AnimeWorks, Tokyo Shock and Kitty. In addition there will be a focus to produce and release original productions through Fever Dreams.

So they are not in fact dead, though they are limping. I find it strange that they are going all in on their hentai line with one title a month in the pipeline. I would have thought that that would have been the hardest to get sales for given current technological realities. Perhaps the licenses were very cheap.



This is true on the Meada Blasters PR page and their Facebook page.

I don't know if this omission means anything but I allow myself a tenuous hope as their dub of Squid Girl season 1 was superb.

In other news the High School of the Dead manga is re-starting in Dragon Age on April 9th.



Crunchyroll will be streaming the missing episodes of Girls und Panzer on March 28th.

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