For the previous post, I originally wrote some stuff questioning what happened with the Colossal and Armored Titans after the fall of Zhisanga, because as big as the territory inside Wall Maria is, it presumably isn’t large enough to take them years to reach the next wall. Now I’m glad I didn’t bother to keep that, because it looks like we just got an explanation. The regular Titans do seem a bit mindless (so far…), but it looks like the non-typical Titians only show up at specific points to sow terror and bust down some walls. The attack on humanity is far more calculated and deliberate than it seems at first, and it’s as much psychological warfare as anything. Humanity’s had five years to get their hopes up, only to have them crushed again when they’ve reached an apex.
Relatedly, of course
everyone is going to be proclaiming the glory of the Survey Corps now. Five
years ago they were ‘those idiots suicidal enough to go outside the walls.’ Now
that the Titans have gotten inside that the Corps is humanity’s only chance of
retaking what they lost is a lot more meaningful. That one guy who sneered at
the cheering seems to be cogent of this. When your choices are ‘hope the Survey
Corps can accomplish something’ or ‘om-nom-nom,’ you’re probably going to go
with the former.
Despite that, humanity still doesn’t seem to have learned
its lesson. Everyone may love the Survey Corps now, but in the barracks there
was still bewilderment over why anyone would join them at the cost of passing
up safe, cushy Military Police postings far away from anything that considers
them Purina Titan Chow. There’s still a belief that as long as they stay within
the walls, they’re safe. New flash: they aren’t. But that’s probably a hard
thing to shake, after it held true for a century. Which is probably why the Titans or whatever’s behind them
waited so long before breaching the walls. That or it took them time to develop
the wall-busting Titans, but if we’re going with the premise that this is also
about taunting and demoralizing humanity while exterminating them, I think it’s
the former rather than the latter.
Then there’s the oddity of only the top scorers being allowed to join the military police. Like Eren
observed, that means the only ones allowed to take behind-the-lines posts are
those who’d be best suited for actually going out and fighting the Titans.
Wouldn’t that kind of non-combat post be more appropriate for the lowest scorers, those more likely to be
a liability in battle? Since the king, and presumably most of the high and
mighty as well, also live inside the third wall, furthest from danger, it sort
of sounds like the intent is for the best fighting men and women to hopefully
stay behind the lines where they can be of more use to those at the top. It has
an air of the elites shutting themselves up in bunkers during a nuclear
holocaust while the masses are left outside to die. And when you think about
it, this is basically a fantasy version of that scenario – just replace nuclear
bombs with the Titans.
Also, Sasha is hilarious(ly awesome). Just sayin’.
Gargantia on the Verdurous
Planet [ep 4]
Having read a little of what the show was about before
watching it, I’d assumed the opening battle would be more of an attempt to
convey that humanity is part of a desperate, ongoing struggle, in contrast to
the more peaceful life on Earth. And that probably is the case, to an extent,
but now I’d say it was more about contrasting the monotony and blandness of
Ledo’s life up until now with the more colorful and vibrant environment he’s
currently in. Consider the predominance of blacks, whites, and grey in the
Galactic Alliance, and how everything is streamlined, practical, and pristinely
new-looking, versus the bright, multi-colored Gargantia, with its
cobbled-together, blocky, used appearance.
That’s much easier to see now that he’s had a chance to describe
life in the Galactic Alliance to Amy and Bebel. It’s run like a machine, with
its people reduced to parts. You don’t think twice about replacing a defective
motherboard or broken bike gears, for example, and people in the Alliance have
been put on the same level. But, the need for unity and precision of purpose
makes sense, since this society is mobilized entirely towards a very specific
task. Everyone needs to be useful or
they’re just a drain on resources. Dr. Ohm is right – Ledo’s definition of
‘efficient’ is too narrow. What he’s known until now is only one kind of
efficiency – the kind necessary for total war. Gargantia isn’t fighting a total
war, so its concerns aren’t the same. The opening battle wasn’t so much about
the conflict itself as it was about highlighting this. Ledo’s old life was one
where everyone was geared towards the same thing, whereas on Gargantia everyone
contributes in different ways, allowing even the impaired like Bebel to have a
place.
The differing outlooks have really been the point of these
first episodes. It’s been slow-paced, but it allows the show to explore this in
different ways. There’s things like how people are regarded, and how to handle
conflict. Ledo killed the pirates attacking Bellows’s ship because in his experience
that’s just what you do. But while
the Hideauze, as far as we know*, trying to wipe out humanity, the pirates are
opportunistic and out for plunder, not destruction. They’ll respond in force
when there’s a perceived threat to their strength, but wiping people out is
counterintuitive. There’d be no one left to pillage, otherwise. The Gargantians
don’t want to fight either, because they believe in cooperation, not
intimidation, and because even if they did, wiping out the pirates would be too
costly to be worthwhile. The goal is simply to convince the pirates they’re too
much trouble to bother with.
Plus, it’s obvious they’re not so different as Ledo thinks
at first. He’s puzzled at Bebel being allowed to live, or that the affection he
and his sister have for each other is itself reason enough. But even if he
doesn’t consciously think that way, his flashback suggests he understand it
better than he realizes. Meanwhile, the kid in the capsule looks suspiciously
like him, and family is something that’s apparently not done in the Alliance. Given
that, Ledo’s just one of a given model of clone, isn’t he?
*We know next to nothing about the Hideauze; Chamber only
says they are the enemy and “coexistence [is] impossible,” which doesn’t
necessarily mean ‘they’re trying to wipe us out,’ just that humans can’t exist
alongside them. The opening narration makes similar assertions, but it’s being
given by a member of the Galactic Alliance, so we can’t assume it’s unbiased. They
may very well just be inconvenient, or humanity considers them abhorrent in
some way. There’s hints early in episode 1 of an attack on the homeland of
Avalon, but we don’t know the circumstances behind that either.
Flowers of Evil [ep
4]
Ah, classroom politics, so horribly wrong. But I have to
say, I’m not so sure about my earlier comment that Kasuga might not have
defended Nakamura if she wasn’t blackmailing him, because that doesn’t actually
make a whole lot of sense. The whole thing was directed entirely at Nakamura
and had nothing to do with him, and standing up for her was never one of the
expectations she had of him. That he knew she was innocent definitely informed
his reaction, since he dwells on how he normally wouldn’t have said anything,
but he didn’t do so because he was afraid of what she’d do to him if he didn’t.
And even if he did only stand up for
her because of their existing relationship, unhealthy and destructive as it is,
he still took the high road and spoke out against his peers, something that’s
never easy to do regardless of age or context. Much as I’d like it to be
otherwise, I can’t say with confidence that I’d always do that now, let alone
9-10 years ago when I was his age. For once his holier-than-thou attitude feels
justified, since seemingly everyone else except Saeki took him defending
someone they’ve labelled as undeserving of respect as a licence to shun him and
go ‘hurr durr, you like Nakamura!’ Y’know, because there’s no other possible reason why he’d stand up for her. That took a lot
of guts on his part, and he even got some deserved recognition for it.
And that’s what’s frustrating about all this. On the one
hand, Kasuga does something like this, but on the other, he also did something
inexcusable, and his thumbing his nose up at his peers is usually hypocrisy
because he’s rarely better. Then there’s Nakamura, whose circumstances should
make her sympathetic, but then she does things like blackmail, assault, and in
the case of making Kasuga wear the gym uniform on his date with Saeki, taking
what he did and rubbing it in because of jealousy. Because you’ll have to
forgive me if I don’t believe her when she says she’s not.
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