Posted by OP2 Sequence
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OP2: 「Never Gave Up」 by ALL OFF
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「騎馬戦は足元を崩すべし アマゾンシティ総力戦 I」 (Gibasen wa Ashimoto o Kuzusubeshi Amazon Shiti Souryoku-sen I)
“In a Cavalry Battle, Knock Down the Foothold The All-Out War in Amazon City I”
While the structural underpinnings are improving, the details are still shifty.
Worst. Names. Ever.
Captain Burning Alpha Staccato. Amazon City. Major Halreed Copacabana (again). Sladder Honeysuckle. Major General Buffa Planters. Is it just me, or are these some of the worst engrish names you’ve ever seen? There are some that can beat them, I’m sure, but that’s quite the list. I can understand Halreed Copacabana or Buffa Planters—like Raye Penber (DEATH NOTE), they sound sorta kinda close to something, so I let those slide. But Sladder Honeysuckle? Burning Alpha Staccato? Give me a break. Those are chuunibyou attack names, not people’s names. And Amazon City sounds more likely to be a suburb of Seattle than it does a city located in the actual Amazon basin.
Backs To The Wall, Badly Excused
As I’ve said before, forcing both the protagonist’s and the antagonist’s backs to the wall is a good way to up the tension and make a conflict compelling. The problem with this episode is that some of the reasons given for why backs were connecting with walls were shifty at best. This isn’t a problem with the antagonists—I thought their asylum plan was quite good, and it gives them a time limit to hold out for with limited resources to do so. Not so with the protagonists.
Object parts are all order-made? Really? I don’t know a lot about a lot, but I know that you don’t custom design a tank, airplane, or a rifle every damn time. Military tech needs to be robust and reliable, and part of the latter means that if something breaks down, you can have parts on hand to fix it! So when they used that as an excuse as to why they couldn’t find extra parts for the Baby Magnum, I rolled my eyes. Especially since they could have gone with, “The Mass Driver Foundation destroyed our extra parts base,” or “All the extra parts are for Gen 2 Objects, not Gen 1 Objects,” or “We don’t have time, dammit!”. Especially since the last thing is what ended up happening anyway.
This has been an endemic problem with Heavy Object. Not necessarily that the explanations are bad, but that it feels the need to explain. Probably because its world is unnecessarily complex, requiring constant explanations to make sense of it. Only I wish they would stop trying, because it’s Heavy Object. Nothing much about it makes sense.
Goofy Banter & Rabu-Rabu Antics
As usual, the silly stuff was the best part of the episode (though the construction of the coming conflict is a close second). For my money, Ohime-sama’s jealousy takes the crown, though Frolaytia demanding that Qwenthur not walk behind her was good too. And her finding out about Lady Jessica, ufufu~. Even the electrocution gag, though over-the-top (in the not as good way), was better here than most of the times I’ve seen it, since it’s a soldier who was slacking off that got shocked rather than an innocent high school student. Compare those to the whole army ant battle, which wasn’t terribly compelling, and the banter still wins the day. I have hope for the rest of this arc, though.
tl;dr: @StiltsOutLoud – The Mass Driver Foundation isn’t gone yet. But if their stupidly named leader isn’t dead soon, it’s war #heavyobject 13
Random thoughts:
- The new OP is fine, and it looks like Qwenthur and co will be getting new named allies in the near future. Nice. I just hope they have better names than Burning Alpha Staccato.
- Don’t worry, Milinda. You’re fine just the way you are. Yours are shapely.
- My biggest takeaway from this episode: Their comm discipline is shit.
- The new ED is all right too, but the old ED was one of the few endings which I listened to every single episode. As much as I like Iguchi Yuka, I don’t know that this one will be the same.
My first novel, Wage Slave Rebellion, is available now. (More info—now in paperback!) Sign up for my email list for a FREE sequel novella. Over at stephenwgee.com, the last four posts: $%&@* cuss words, Stephen, what is best in life?, It depends, and Momentum & mental space.
ED2 Sequence
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ED2: 「変わらない強さ」 (Kawaranai Tsuyo-sa) by Iguchi Yuka
Preview
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Overall, this series was enjoyable, but I was annoyed very much by how loud the 2 MCs are. It just doesn’t make sense that they are always shouting and bickering while in enemy territory. Even when they are “sneaking” into enemy bases, they are yelling and shouting as if they were the only 2 people in the world. Perhaps making a ruckus is some new Navy Seal Co-Op tactic that I’m not aware of.
It starts out fine, then just keeps going and going. And like Stilts said, there’s no way their comms would really be on the whole time unless they’re actually trying to be dumb. A nitpick point is that the light isn’t even on, yet somehow only the right people hear everything to jump into the conversation. Way too convenient to believe.
Haha, Burning Alpha is just his codename.
But Sladder Honeysuckle does sound ridiculous.
That almost doesn’t matter! It’s still dumb!
*pulls hair out*
Alright, and what code name would Stilts want?
…Stilts? Stilts would work.
Depends on the context. I don’t see why I’d go with a codename among my allies, though maybe that’s going to be a plot point later, in which case I’d go with something that doesn’t make it immediately obvious that it’s a codename (another guy was named Jesse Montana—like that). If it was a secret op, a one-syllable code name’d be best, like Red Leader or Rogue Six (Star Wars etc).
I remember Burning Alpha Staccato. I think it was quarter-circle-forward + kick.
I cant believe the major threat in this episode was…. an army of ants.
In defense of the mighty army ant, they ain’t called that for shits and giggles, my friend. Those voracious little bastards would devour just about anything that they could sink their teeth into. If you saw an entire colony of them heading towards you, you’d want to get your ass out of there too.
Admittedly fighting off an army of ants doesn’t really come up often in the world of anime.
You haven’t seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull have you?
What are you talking about? There were only three Indiana Jones movies, AND NO OTHERS.
Poor Milinda. A-Cup Angst trope confirmed.
https://randomc.net/image/Heavy%20Object/Heavy%20Object%20-%20OP2%20-%20Large%2005.jpg
Combat Maids…. coz REASONS!
At this point, I think anime has decided it needs more of a reason NOT to have combat maids. Friggen seriously…
I’ve seen Ninja Maids (trope!), but this takes the cake. Also, nice MP5s they got there.
So the ero-DVD Quenthur and Havia watched back in episode 9 wasn’t put there by Frolaytia on purpose. I actually don’t mind having my theories jossed, as it shows that the author does care about the worldbuilding in his or her work (although with that being said, the worldbuilding in Heavy Object can get dodgy at times).
And Milinda does know about Qwenthur groping Frolaytia! XD (I guess that’s why Milinda’s artillery barrage hit “danger close” to Qwenthur and Havia’s position–and only gave them a warning a few seconds or so before it actually hit.)
“She doesn’t deny the fondling.”
Milinda, I love you. Seriously best tsundere I’ve seen in a long time, though it helps that all her reactions come courtesy of a gigantic war machine.
She’s certainly a different flavor than the usual hot/cold variety. More emotionally muted, seemingly, though really the emotions are just deeper down, and her tsun moments are funny and adorable rather than being overly angry.
I guess our resident princess is flat in more ways than one…*badaching*
(I like Milinda as is, so don’t get those chest enhancements!)
She’s more of a kuudere than a tsundere, but that is arguable. I agree that Milinda is best the way she is. Her current ones fit her frame better than the overinflated water ballons she was fantasizing about
Am I the only one who noticed that the antagonist this time around is apparently evil Tony Stark? Possibly even genderbent.
Object parts are all order-made? Really? I don’t know a lot about a lot, but I know that you don’t custom design a tank, airplane, or a rifle every damn time.
In defense of the show:
1) Generally speaking, every new generation of those things is actually a custom design; sometimes from a different manufacturer (or manufacturers) than the prior generation. This is a key difference between specialist mass production and public mass production and it often means that there are few, if any, parts that are interchangeable between generations/models. The supplies issue you’re pointing to comes not from the fact that they’re not unique, but from the fact that they’re mass produced and it increasingly makes sense to have spares on hand when you have 100’s/1000’s/10000’s/… of a common item in use.
2) All indications are that Objects are not mass produced and they’re huge resource hogs in comparison to those things; we’ve yet to see two Objects with the same feature set (weapons, drive train, etc – the only commonality seems to be a round core) and are instead uniquely developed by different manufacturers often in differing nation states.
3) Objects likely take a while to build but at the same time are still new, undergoing rapid and constant development and are in comparison to those things thus more likely to see modifications to designs between runs as lessons are learnt from each one made/new weapons & systems are developed to drive them. Think of it more along the lines of how different the first WW1 Tank was from the last and then again from any of the WW2 tanks.
This is why there’s a higher likelihood of each Object having a different component than 1 of 1000 M1 Abrams.
I’d be more likely to knock them for not simply using some sort of supersized 3D Printing for the part. But, based on the publication date of the first book that’s a tech that’s only really become a viable concept after this story was written.
Love your idea on 3D Printing. Sort of a real replicator. But agree these objects are to one of a kind for easy supply of parts. There of course be some shared parts but also many specialty parts.
Making do with making parts though can be done. A US Infantry Division in WWII decided to collect every knocked out and abandoned German armor unit it could find, repair them and use them in combat. The Division even called it self an Armored Division after awhile. But of course it was hell keeping everything running, and the German’s already had a problem with to many types of armor units in it’s army let alone a unit making do with what parts it could salvage combining them with a certainly energetic machine shops to make parts that it had. Still in this story they don’t have the time for much of that.
As usual I enjoyed the banter. Poor Major she is so horny with no where to solve it.
I agree that each Object is unique, and each one probably requires unique supplies for a full maintenance. The main issues with the Baby Magnum were the damage to the propulsion and the main guns. At the very least, the main guns would probably require custom (or at least specialized) parts, since no two Objects seem to have the same exact main weapon. The propulsion systems that Objects have also seem to differ from the normal tech used in other vehicles, so I’m assuming they’re cost prohibitive to make. Probably can’t scrape something together for that, though more likely that another (Gen 1) Object’s spare parts could do the job. The engineers could probably salvage parts to patch up the armor and the secondary weapons, but the armor doesn’t seem too compromised yet, and the secondaries aren’t that important against another Object.
To be fair, you’re all right. And to be fair to me, the issue I’m really driving at isn’t with how it would work as the world is presented. It’s how the world probably should have been presented.
Even with giant money pits—see: naval ships, aircraft carriers in particular—militaries tend to settle on a design and then make at least a few of those. Now it could be that there are multiple near-identical Baby Magnum Objects running around, though if so we haven’t seen ’em. But there probably should be. I can certainly accept them testing out new models—the Bright Hopper not having extra supplies on hand makes sense—but I would expect each major power to only have a handful of Object designs, as they realize that all the others are comparatively shite.
Of course, the reason for all this variety is the same reason most magical-fantasy-action series contain warriors with wildly different combat styles—it’s easier to write battles when each one is superficially different. Trust me on that; the magick system in my own books is relatively static, so it can be hard to great an interesting and varied battle when you’re remixing the same tools (though I also enjoy that challenge—RL battles have proven to be interesting even though they remix the same elements, so I can do it too). They do it for novelty, even if they probably should have standardized a Object designs and be mostly using them.
Standardization can be a real problem for some. One of the reasons Albert Speer’s reforms worked so well when he became Minister of Armaments was the previous lack of standardized war equipment (in 1941, Germany had around 2,000 different types of motor vehicles just in the Russian front).
Still, this is just another one of the many military sins of this series. Or maybe this is the Legitimate Kingdom’s fault? I think it would have been easier to suggest that Baby Magnum is such an old model that they don’t have spare parts available everywhere.
To be fair, Germany employed so many vehicle types because they lacked in quantity. The majority of Germany’s logistical train at Barbarossa’s start for example used horses–all those different vehicles were used to try and reduce the strain on logistics and keep the pace of advance up. No matter the romanticism thrown about, the Wehrmacht was far from ever being a mechanized army. If Germany had the production capacity, you can be sure their armoured and mechanized forces would have been standardized. Hell the Panzer III and Panzer IV were standardized prewar (~1936) and the Entwicklung project in 1942 was developed for the sole purpose of standardizing the entire armoured force.
I also think you’ve nailed it here Stilts, besides author ignorance, the uniqueness of each Object probably boils down to cool factor. Just like mechs, having each Object vary widely allows for more interesting battles and “tactics” (if you can even call them that). By itself that’s not an issue, it’s the explanation which is the problem. Gundam never tries to justify its individually different mech designs beyond prototypes for example, allowing for better suspension of disbelief–the problem of supplies never comes up. If Heavy Object had done the same or used a better excuse (supplies destroyed, lack of time, whatever) we wouldn’t even be questioning the rationale behind this.
Bingo. Given another reason, we wouldn’t question it at all.
It smacks of first draft or bad editing to me. Not on its own—if this was the only odd point, I’da barely mentioned it. But it’s endemic. The author needs a good editor who will tell him when he’s being lazy, or to take more time with each volume.
I have noticed one thing: aren’t Objects basically useless in a urban environment? They were lucky that Amazon City was abandoned. What would have they done if civilians lived there? It’s the kind of urban warfare that it has become so prevalent nowadays, and there an Object should be as useful as a nuke.
You would think so. An Object looks to be 30-50 meters in diameter, which does not include any of the superstructure (i.e. propulsion devices, weaponry, etc.) surrounding it. That already precludes Objects from going in any dense urban sprawl–they just wouldn’t fit, especially if the roadways are further blocked by rubble. Of course you can always knock over buildings in the way, but no matter how cool it may look, it’s incredibly easy to get something stuck under all that debris.
Civilian issues aside, there’s also the issue of ambush. No matter how much pseudoscience is thrown about, an Object is just like a tank. Urban environments offer multiple avenues of attack for defenders, the operator(s) cannot watch everywhere at once, and every military vehicle has a weak spot that can be accessed. It’s why tanks–no matter how advanced they get in explosive reactive/composite armour and anti-missile countermeasures–are never recommended to enter urban areas; the tanks may not be destroyed, but they can be isolated, immobilized, and dealt with later. Objects wouldn’t be any different.
yeap, if these Objects are forced to standstill, they are just a barking Dog that can Bite, but on with a Line bound at his Home. Unable to leave this Place
An immobile Fortress, and 2nd Tirpitz Monster!!..
@Mistic @Pancakes
Aye, agreed. That’s another element that wasn’t considered when the whole “Objects changed the face of war” fallacy was trotted out. People tend to live in cities. We don’t march out to the countryside to fight anymore. Whatcha gonna do then?
Of course, they made some cases for a retreat from total war to more limited war, I just never believed it. And the most recent arc seemed to debunk it as well (trying to rupture the dam, etc).
https://randomc.net/image/Heavy%20Object/Heavy%20Object%20-%2013%20-%20Large%2035.jpg
So, they could build the Main Weapon again. But where is the Power generator? the Special Ammo? Oh well, little details
how could only Humans move and lift these parts, without Crane and such?
Oh well, the tension!!. an Weapon (real or fake) can shoot at our Heavy Object. Kill it!.. Kill it with Fire!!!
Let alone the supplies to build this gigantic thing.. no one noticed? come on, the Crew in taken charge of the Spy satellites should get fired
Show Spoiler ▼
“All the extra parts are for Gen 2 Objects, not Gen 1 Objects,”
In the LNs they were capable of providing replacement armour and possibly secondary weapons, but the Guns and Motive System weren’t compatible with the ones for the Forrest Roller.
In the Novels Cocobana is unhappy his logistics are are out of range but thinks that our Heroes will be able to do armor and some other replacements for the Bright Hopper.