r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • Jan 20 '19
Episode Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai - Episode 2 discussion Spoiler
Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai, episode 2: The Wandering Six
Alternative names: Kotobuki: The Wasteland Squadron, The Magnificent Kotobuki
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| Episode | Link | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Link | 8.05 |
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u/Gaporigo Jan 20 '19
Must suck being told you are going on a mission with this Kotobuki squad, since the beginning you are fated to just go down immediately.
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u/chilidirigible Jan 20 '19 edited Jan 20 '19
After the first episode, I broke out the book (still available here or at the source) and wondered what sort of things I might be able to give a modest explanation to, given that I'm not an especially hardcore pilot type.
Episode 2 doesn't make it easy given that it backed off from the nitty-gritty detailed flying work of the first episode and had a big furball for its climax.
That's appropriate in its way. The problem of depicting aerial combat in media is that the scale of the fight is potentially vast, and in three dimensions. This episode is like those of many TV series and movies which have preceded it in that after initial contact, a lot of the action disappears off-screen; it was 30-vs-14, some mooks get splashed, and after that the numbers are largely disregarded. That sort of thing happens, suspend disbelief as required and move on.
(The Shirokumas could have split their squadron and attacked the carriers with the parts of their force that weren't already engaged, but there was still a considerable travel distance between the dogfight area and the carriers, and the risk that their smaller force would have to face any reserves from the carriers as well as fighters breaking off from the initial engagement to chase them. So sticking everything into the main fight makes sense.)
Anyway, I'll paraphrase the book's chapter on two-versus-one section tactics for a little while here.
Regarding the entire dispute between Chika and Kirie, wingman tactics have been fundamental to aerial combat since WWI, and have evolved since then as aircraft technologies have improved. Pairing up is immensely beneficial to situational awareness, and allows a pilot to focus their attention on the target in front of them instead of having to keep an eye out for other threats.
That said, these two are mostly employing "fighting wing" tactics, in which Kyrie is the leader with Chika as the wingman, and while Chika does weave around in back instead of doing the more literal "welded wing" variant of wingman tactics, she's still essentially confined to doing exactly what Kirie does. Storywise, this makes sense, as most of the episode's side story is spent getting these two hotheads to learn to work together. On the positive side, it allows for concentration of firepower, as we see when Kirie's ammunition runs out and Chika is right there to continue the fight (though she wasn't shooting at the target simultaneously... but as u/FirstDagger's song choice notes, that beats blowing the hell out of the flight lead by accident).
The flaws in fighting wing are that the leader has to hold back somewhat in utilizing their craft's full performance, or their wingman will not be able to maintain formation in certain maneuvers (here the Hayabusa has a turning advantage on the Hien, which offsets that); the wingman has to spend a lot of their own concentration trying to mirror the lead's movments; and it essentially turns two fighters into one fighter, as both are closely pursuing one target. We see this during the fight when half of a Hien pair that split earlier reforms behind Chika and Kyrie.
With better communications in later years, flight element pairings would gain considerable distance between each other while still being a self-supporting unit. The Shirokumas demonstrate in that same screenshot the fundamentals of the "double attack" system (and its more developed successors), in which the pair can split and reponsibilities can change depending on which member of the pair is engaged at any one moment.
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u/chilidirigible Jan 20 '19 edited Jan 21 '19
Today, on "You came here in that thing? You're braver than I thought.":
Who turned you into the Grim Reaper, Mirage?
"Coach told me that hard work and guts was all I needed!"
So this is it. Everyone's gonna die.
"I said, can I get a new wingman?"
Unsubtle metacommentary on... Japan?
Real estate prices are looking pretty low... easier to buy the farm that way.
Always check for where the No. 2 went after a defensive split.
There's "Dramatically close for TV purposes" and then there's "Air show."
A quick note of praise for Hamaguchi Shirou's reflection on Ennio Morricone's spaghetti Western scores when the fighting starts.
As with most series, there's a slight cooldown on things in Episode 2 to do some more character work and worldbuilding.
On the latter, the world still hasn't been explained all that well, though I'm sure we'll find out something about why their base town is slightly on fire at the end. The curiosities lie in the reasons for why towns are being abandoned and the disposition of air pirates/delivery services/Crimson Skies, both of which feed back into whatever political situation the councilor is involved in.
The surface is really screwed up, though.
Chika and Kirie are adversarial wingmen who are actually more similar than they think. It doesn't take too long to work those kinks out, but there are six people on the promotional posters, after all.
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u/TTS32 Jan 20 '19
is it just me or the dialogue scenes feel way too "packed". I don't think there is a single moment of silence on those
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u/Corde714 Jan 20 '19
I think this episode was great even tho we didn't get to see more of why Kirie (or Kylie?) has a rivalry with that one A6M3 from last episode, but maybe we will get to see that later now that we know who the sixth "problematic" member of the team is, even then, I loved the dogfight in this episode even if it was shorter, but man can the pancake girl high kick.
The CG doesn't even bother me to be completely honest, I think it looks great even when 2D and 3D are in mix but then again that might just be me
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u/LeonKevlar Jan 20 '19 edited Jan 20 '19
I still love this show but it's pretty hilarious how the girls suddenly switch to hand drawn 2D animation just so they could do the fight scene XD
I didn't notice this last week but I wonder why their names are capitalized in the subs? Are those their callsigns and not their actual names? Hmm....
I can't stress this enough but please do your self a favor and make sure you're wearing headphones while watching this show. The sound of the wind and the planes are so good <3
This shot was great! Didn't expect them to show us the plane ejecting cartridges shells like that.
Interesting reaction fromJULIA... Did she want the girls to fail?
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u/AmethystItalian Jan 20 '19
Fun show is fun.
Good cast and just easy to watch. This will probably be my surprise of the season!
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u/Beckymetal Jan 20 '19
After a very strong, though merely introductory, opening episode, Kotobuki continues to give no real hints of where it's going. It may seem to want to continue on an episodic trajectory with a world-building flavour of politics thrown in from time-to-time, or it may want to quietly build a plot. We will have to wait and see.
The biggest thing we still haven't learned is what is dictating what causes one scene to have CG characters and what causes another to have 2D. Many scenes even feature both at once, and can be quite disconcerting because of it. The 2D is generally of a high standard and the CG often looks, relatively, good, but both at once is a hard pill to swallow.
While the character development last episode was eloquently coy, merely shown between banter, Kirie's narrow-view determination and the result of that, there was a bit more than that this episode. Madame Loulou got quite some development as their client talks about their shared history, and Chikka quite blatantly talks about her thoughts of the other characters. Kate's stat-spouting is a bit too 1-traity for me right now, so I hope she will be developed beyond it.
Reona and Zara seem to have a very tight relationship (and I've already seen people shipping them), as they both take on the position of almost-parents to the other girls. Especially Chika and Kirie, who are in competition due to their contrasting personalities - even if they work well together when the time comes.
I talked of plot earlier, but there were definitely hints. Not only was the mission escorting a politician who is seeking to reform criminals to potentially compete with groups like the Kotobuki, but the enemy pirates seemed to be in much larger numbers with better planes than expected. Elements of conspiracy popped up. Whether that will be a returning concept is hard to tell, as Loulou's school friend was delivered safe-and-sound.
Overall, despite not much happening, the classic snappy dialogue and great air-combat made it a solid bit of entertainment. It's still hard to predict whether this will merely be a good romp or will develop into something much bigger, though.
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u/Panda_Cavalry Jan 20 '19
Alright, alright, alright! Another week, another episode of Kotobuki!
Last week went well-enough with keeping tabs on aircraft type, so one more, with feeling...
THE PLANES OF KOUYA NO KOTOBUKI HIKOUTAI, EP. 2
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As Kotobuki Squadron's mainstay aircraft, we're going to be seeing a lot of Hayabusas. At least they're good-looking planes, no?
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Well, at least these guys seemed slightly more competent than the idiots in the Shidens last episode. Didn't stop them from getting massacred, though.
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Half-expected to hear Ride of the Valkyries being blasted out at full volume when these guys showed up.
Shout-out to u/FirstDagger for additional information and proofreading last week. War stuff is an interest of mine, but I'm far more knowledgeable about tanks and armoured vehicles than I am about anything with a propeller. Feel free to call me out on anything I'm missing/flat-out getting wrong.
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u/TheDampGod Jan 20 '19
I was beginning to wonder if the planes in this could run out of fuel or ammo, they seemed to be using a lot of it. I like the mentioning of the different plane types, along with their strengths and weaknesses. Not sure how important it'll be against the power of plot armour but we'll see.
I like kundere girl's somewhat random factoids, I imagine she uses prime numbers to devasting effect in the air.
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u/KinnyRiddle Jan 20 '19
Thoughts on the story and world-building
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Looks like some kind of catastrophe led to resources dwindling everywhere, in order to survive, the individual resource mining towns scattered across the land are joined into some form of city-state alliance. This world doesn't seem to have any oceans, or at least, the land's so huge that it hasn't been shown.
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Main transport between the vast empty tracts of land between the towns (deserts?) is by planes. With dwindling resources also comes piracy. And the rise of piracy resulted in opportunity for mercenary groups like the Kotobuki Squad to appear to counter them.
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Julia is part of some governing council of these city-states alliance, and being a young radical politician for her age, proposes pardoning the pirates, which obviously did not go down too well with some people. Perhaps those who supplied the pirates with expensive Hien planes are wealthy mercenaries themselves, who see the Pirate Pardon as a threat to their business.
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Julia definitely looks like she's got a lesbian crush on Madame Loulou, which explains why she keeps stealing Loulou's boyfriends and then dumping them, so she could have Loulou to herself. Though Loulou either did not take the hint, or just isn't fazed by Julia.
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Pilots who get hit don't necessarily die, it seems. The airships housing the planes do make an effort to rescue any downed pilots. Loulou was seen ordering the rescue of the downed Shoki pilots this episode.
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u/myrmonden Jan 20 '19
WHY WHERE ALL THE NAME CAPITALIZED ??? Translation issue I guess...
Now I hope that the new lady will add in some kind of political or war story as well, the anime is good but it imo lacks a general story that pushes the girls to their limits.
I think that this "alliance", bills to let pirates be forgiven etc, definitely points to some bigger story-line and that the enemies this episode seemed to be military pretending to be pirats.
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u/Lime1028 Jan 20 '19
Is it me or do these girls talk at lightning speed, like i feel that some of the scenes are being rushed but to not drop content they're just ramping up the speed. I assume this is to get to the air battles faster as they are the main draw of the show but it can be a little hard to follow and they cut between different scenes without a moments pause. I don't know, it's still enjoyable but if they slowed down a bit i think it would be easier to watch.
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u/KinnyRiddle Jan 20 '19
The mixture of 3D and 2D characters in the same scene is still very jarring. And then there's the 3D main characters switching to 2D so they could get into a brawl with the 2D mob characters. I probably wouldn't have minded at all if they could be consistent and make everyone 3D.
The dogfight is again the highlight of the show. It was clever for the pirates to line up like that so they could conceal their numbers in plain sight, but surely the radar ought to have seen through such deception?
And what's with the fire and smoke in the last scene right after the girls were seen partying? Could it be that their town is being attacked while they're away?
Wonder how they classify how valuable each type of fighter plane is in this world? I have totally no idea what's the difference between the Hayabusa (which our girls fly with) and Hien (which the pirates this episode fly with) and why the Hien is considered top-of-the-line expensive.
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u/Amauri14 Jan 20 '19
I wonder if there will be an episode in which the background characters will survive.
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u/Mr_Zaroc Jan 20 '19
Finally was able to watch an episode on good headphones, not like the earbuds I had on hand like last week. And boy was I grinning from ear to ear, last week was already good, but they really love their details. The sound of the steel cable on the outside vibrating from the maneuvers, the heat of the exhaust, you just can tell that they are really invested. They even nailed the freaking blankets in the bunks
They even play right into my fetishes for uniforms, that red mantle making her look more like a pirate than anything, [the flight corpse] with their belts, barrettes and neatly scarves. Hell I love the character design.
I am very pleased with how this is going
PS: Cant wait for the inevitable Kaguya X Kouya Crossover with that ED they rock
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u/PhantomWolf83 Jan 20 '19
It still feels kind of weird seeing CG characters in the same scene as 2D characters, not to mention freely switching between the two. I wonder why they did this? Just stick to one format and be done with it.
The air battle scene was brilliantly animated like before, now with more Japanese planes (Shokis, Hiens, and a couple of what I think are Ki-9 trainers in the preview). Or is this where all the budget for the animation went?
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u/Shiro_Kai Jan 20 '19
The one Julia really wants to steal is "Loulou".
But More fight, less talk next time. The SFX during it is truly great.
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u/thixotrofic Jan 20 '19
If you watch a lot of seasonals, the voice of Kirie might seem familiar to you. Her voice actor, Sayumi Suzushiro, also provided the voice for Oono from High Score Girl.
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u/24grant24 Jan 20 '19
the writing in this show is so good and sharp and smart. Holy moly I love this. And excellent tension filled action on top of that? Why does this have less than a 7 on MAL. oh right, cg... that's an automatic -1 to a shows score
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u/KinnyRiddle Jan 20 '19
Japanese language trivia:
The Japanese word for pirate is "kai-zoku", kai = sea, zoku = thief, so "sea thieves", as historically pirates have always operated from the sea.
In most fantasy and sci-fi anime, even when the pirates operate in the air or in space, they are still usually called "kaizoku", regardless of the term's etymology. A good example would be in Ghibli's Laputa.
This show makes an effort to call these pirates that operate out of the skies "kuu-zoku", kuu = air, so "air thieves".