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Aug 25 2010 02:24 PM
Since I had some time over the last few days I went back and watched ep 5-12 & 7,5. Overall it wasnt really bad nor great. But ep 11 & 12 were just great and the whole anime shouldve been like this like everyone thought it would be in the beginning.

Sure the anime was pretty funny a lot of times but the best scenes were the actual war scenes (like the last 2 eps or Felicias past). Somehow they wanted to do both a violent but funny series but failed with that. Everytime you learned about something plotwise it went back to comedy. It wouldve been really great if we wouldve learned more about Iria and the Romans.

But good point was the german Aisha spoke. I dont think I ever heard such good german in an anime. When I heard her for the first time I thought "nice again the germans are the evil ones", but it was Rome and not really that evil. But Aisha defenitely isnt a german name ^^

Oh yeah and the end with Rio coming back was completely unrealistic and destroyed the mood even though it was soo obvious.

Overall I give it a 7/10.

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Jun 26 2010 10:13 PM
As someone who doesn't drink I can sympathize.  Poor Kureha.  Hanging around people who don't know their tolerance levels is only entertaining until you get taken from your observer's perch and thrown in with the lions.  Perma DD does have its perks though, primarily not spending $200/mo on alcohol at bars and also always knowing your friends aren't about to drive into a telephone pole.

It took me a while to catch on though so I lost some of the comedy factor of the watergun fight.  I thought maybe war games just brought out the kids in them or something.  I saw the wine bottle, but getting that stupid over 2/3 a bottle split between 6 people didn't register.

Thanks for posting about it otherwise I never would've seen it.

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Jun 26 2010 12:26 PM
indeed 7.5 was funny as heck. though it had it's facepalm moments. there is an mp4 version done by kmimi that's small but very well made.

it was nice to finally see some fanservive from the anime. I lol'd hard when Filicia forced striped Kureha wanting some "skinship." And to see Noel get a 'mad scientist look" on her face when she brought out her Gatling water gun was epic. Kureha may be able to drink without getting drunk, but she doesn't get totally Scott free since she suffers the dreaded overhang vomiting afterwords.

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Jun 26 2010 11:32 AM
Episode 7.5 is out in 1080p goodness (file size excessive though). As for the episode itself I actually liked it a lot better than the series all together. It was fun and entertaining to watch the influence of alcohol and Kanata trying to discover the group's money making secret. It was also remarkably enjoyable to see Yumina as a major character for once.

The best part of the episode, however, was it being told from Kureha's perspective and how she is unable to get drunk no matter how much she drinks XD. Can't wait for the next special in September.

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Mar 25 2010 02:33 PM
I have to agree that the whole, "not firing your tank canons when well within range" was a pretty dumb plot hole. i mean, when was the last time an army had to charge Calvary style into one another. i mean even if your world was nearly destroyed and weapons were scarce like it was here you still could start shooting well before getting that close.

This last episode also reminds me a bit of Macross, with the whole music stopping the battle before it starts premise.

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Mar 24 2010 06:27 PM
As predictable the last ep was, it was still a good ep. Certain things bothered me a lot about the last ep though. Apparently during a charge in the Woto world, tanks are supposed to be in melee range before they fire their cannons. Also laughed at how the proportions changed on items in between scenes and how people could hear Rio at over 300 meters. The spider tank made up for it though, that thing was badass.

Each aspect of the series wasn't unique in its own right, but when combined made for an enjoyable watch. However, its a shame they didn't use all of the potential available. It was enjoyable, and I'll give it a 7/10 because of it.

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Mar 24 2010 01:10 PM

Other people feel that just making them all speak and read the native language (in this case Japanese) gives the feeling to the show that the different fighters are all the same background and race, which can make a real hash of the story line if they are supposed to be different cultures at war with each other. Similarly, if all the foreigners in a war film spoke perfect English (or Japanese) the audience would end up just laughing at it and say the producer must not have been able to afford to pay for actors who could actually speak a foreign language. Can you imagine a war film with what are supposed to be British troops all speaking WITHOUT a British accent? And they run into French troops who didn't speak any French? Producers of any film where foreigners are supposed to be talking at least try to gt actors who can fake an accent close to what the audience would expect someone from the other culture to have.

And, unfortunately, making things for video isn't as straightforward as you might think. For example, everyone knows that ships flying by you in space make no noise, and that explosions in space are also silent (no air to transmit the sound to the listener), but leaving those sounds out of the video reduces the impact of the shot being shown to the point that the audience actually loses interest in the scene being shown, and in the entire show itself. A common comment is that "it just doesn't have the impact without the sounds."

And for really silly, have you ever heard someone speak to a crowd hundreds of meters away from them WITHOUT using amplifiers? On that Battlefield, NO ONE could possibly have heard ANYTHING Rio said, they were simply too far away. Yet, no one objects to that little bit of "stretching" the facts to make the scene work.

Hence these sometimes awkward attempts to make foreigners sound foreign.

Teri

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Mar 24 2010 12:39 PM
Yeah, Music saved the world. OK. Well, at least the finished spider-tank was cool.

I wish that this had been the first draft of the series and I was an editor able to give notes on how to make it better. Like emphasizing the impending spiral towards ware more, and seeding the bad guy from the last two episodes earlier in the series to give him more weight. But it was what it was. 7/10 mostly for characters.

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Mar 24 2010 01:50 AM
Just make them all speak Japanese and don't bother. Considering enemy grunts rarely have more than a few lines, and nobody cares, as well as the fact that the Japanese usually screw up foreign VA really bad, that's the best option. If you're adapting something from the real world for a pseudo-historic anime that automatically means you're taking a shot at making an alternate reality. Using it out of context makes zero sense. If you can't do it right, don't do it, imsco.

Rather than "a quick way" it's more like a "lazy way".

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Mar 24 2010 12:29 AM
All the comments about this being a scrambled world (Italian names, German language, French writing, etc) are highly amusing to me. Those choices have nothing to do with alternate realities, they were made from a very simple prosaic basis: i.e., they didn't want any one country in the real world getting pissed off at them! If you have the enemy called Romans, but make them look Indian and speak German, no one can get upset and accuse you of being racist and stereo-typing THEIR country as "bad guys." Some citizens in other countries get rather upset about stuff like that.

It's also a quick way to get something done, I mean, seriously, have you every tried to INVENT an entire spoken and written language just so you could have your characters read and speak a language that sounded real? It's SOOO much easier to adapt something that already exists to your purpose.

Teri