hontou ni sou omou? » kabitzin geass

CANAAN 2-3

Zyl — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:53:31 +0000

Maria-san is being watched

My reservations WRT yuri siscon, I take them all back WRT Liang Qi. Maybe because it’s faux siscon. Or maybe because it’s Tanaka Rie goodness. It’s such a pity that she’s flagged for death but I’m going to enjoy Liang Qi goodness while it lasts – ah, so good that I’m Cummings!

By the standards of the first two eps, the third episode was a bit of letdown. Some expectation readjustment is definitely in order.

But fighting action aside, I’m well pleased with the yuri quotient. I love how Canaan has got her priorities right and that comment about how they flirt a lot was spot-on.

It’s true that Maria might have one super stalker problem if Canaan goes super stalker on her but I’m just thinking she might the one who’s inclined to do the stalking instead once Canaan’s true love makes contact.

Queen’s Meido

Zyl — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:00:03 +0000

I was wowed by the above chara in the ED of the first episode of Queen’s Blade. Of all the meido uniforms, I still prefer the modern black and white French maid (miniskirt version) like the one worn by Saber in Fate/Hollow Ataraxia. But when I did a bit of research into this chara, it seems that nothing is safe from Kabitzin’s awefull power.

Airi is also called She Who Entices To Hades which in moon language (冥土へ誘うもの) is pronounced *meido* no sasoumono orz

I’m sure it must have been a pun. But it also seems that the official website had a Geass canceller because it uses the description of 沼地の魔女 (could well be numachi no majou but I’ll go with shouchi) instead, though both seem to be based on the original material.

Unfortunately, I’ve not found a creditless version of the above scene and the art I’ve found thus far has been nowhere as appealing as the dreamy water colour tones of the first ED. Other reasons why I thought the image worked so well include the incongruity of Airi’s groceries (with bread!) and the skulls floating around her as well as the good fit between the gothic theme of the landscape and her black and white colour scheme. The second ED, on the other hand, was a disappointment, going into fanservice overkill and, more troubling of all, had Gundam-SEED-esque connotations.

While I’m on the topic of meido, it seems that Elina’s meido-tai dress code doesn’t just apply to the uniform but also to their hairdoes. Another reason to aspire to royalty I suppose.

Power games in Midchilda, Playing politics in Lilian

Zyl — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:56:56 +0000

If Subaru was anything like Mami, she would really do well in the senior ranks of the TSAB; you need to be a cunning little raccoon dog ("chibi tanuki" was what Major Nakajima called her after realizing how he’d been manoeuvred by her) to survive there, like Hayate – was what I found myself thinking as I watched the negotiation, about the Card Treasure Hunt, between the Yamayurikai and Lilian Newspaper in Ep 10.

I’ve long wondered: Why does the Mistress of the Night Sky require a whole phalanx of guardian knights when she’s rated SS?

And Chapter 10 of the StrikerS manga answered my question most satisfactorily: not all Ss are equal, there’s Ground Combat S, Air Combat S and composite S. Hayate’s SS rank is a composite rank based on her staggering amount of mana but she won’t be rated highly for either ground melee combat or air combat. LOL at her speculation that, out of the whole Riot Six personnel, she’d only be able to beat Caro. And then again maybe not. LOLOL. In essence, she’s like a hugely powerful artillery platform, excellent at dealing death and destruction long range but will be in a lot of trouble if engaged up close even by lightly armed infantry.

Which reinforces zwei my belief that Yagami Hayate’s real power lies in her political streetfighting skills. Despite barely concealed opposition from TSAB Army HQ and rather more insidious opposition from the TSAB High Council floating brain troika, she carefully built the support she needed from the Saint Church and Inter-Dimensional Navy, leveraging on her Belkan heritage and family ties respectively, to establish Riot Force Six.

StrikerS was, for me, intensely political; it’s not party political but it had a clear bureaucratic politics angle to it. Likewise I also find MariMite intensely political, especially in the encounters between the two above-mentioned powers of the school, in terms of the very broad definition of politics by Harold Lasswell: "Politics is who gets what, when, and how."

And the "what" of the MariMite universe are the members of the Yamayurikai themselves. The souer relations within the Rose families overdetermine the rites and rights of succession. And the Lilian Newspaper’s main preoccupation, far from being some kind of putative Fourth Estate, is to be the main source of Rosa news and organizer of Rosa events. Which is sometimes at odds with the personal feelings of the Roses themselves.

In this season I’ve enjoyed seeing how much Mami has come into her (though I do miss her terrorizing Minako) exemplified in how confidently she talked to the whole council on her own. But also heartily approving of her cutting and pasting last year’s plan for this year! Now, for great staff work, she just needs to be more judicious with doing the Find And Replace.