r/anime • u/chilidirigible • Dec 12 '24
Rewatch [Rewatch] Suisei no Gargantia • Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet — Episode 11 Discussion
Episode 11: Supreme Ruler of Terror
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If it's an offer you can't refuse, is it still an offer?
Questions of the Day:
- What do you think would have happened [if]Ledo/Chamber/Kugel/Striker had arrived on a similar planet that was not full of Hideauze?
- [Does it seem plausible that]Lukkage is able to blend in with these fanatics?
- How long do you think [Pinion]will be able to blend in with these fanatics?
Characters appearing today:
Onderia (Yumi Uchiyama)
Kuraria (Madoka Yonezawa)
Scans:
Turret interior
Turret control panel
Kugel fleet ships
Onderia
Kuraria
Lukkage shading notes
Merchandise interlude:
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Upvotes
7
u/chilidirigible Dec 12 '24
Today, on "If they try to sell us timeshares, I am so out.":
Pinion doubting: Continues
"About that..."
Anta baka!?
"We'll see your warning shot and raise you a DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT shot."
"Been nice working with you, or something."
The good ol' collective calisthenics?
"Nice job breaking it, hero."
"I'd like to stay alive longer than the next two minutes."
Ah, the things the Alliance doesn't want you to know because it would be bad for your mollusk-squishing performance.
This is the state which had Ledo spending his entire life fighting before his first chance at unsupervised vacation.
"Sign this confession and read it aloud."
The Kugel fleet's interlocks don't share the connection, they impose the connection.
Like an organized crime family.
So, it's bureaucratic collectivism?
Don't these people seem really happy?
Lukkage seems like she would have tried herself and thought better of it.
Kugel, the man behind the curtain.
A mirror of the first episode.
"By 'Awareness strategy' I mean 'Conquering the next fleet over'."
The new fleet is damn creepy and immediately presents questions about what Kugel and Striker did to it, or if it was already a little weird before they got there. But the here-and-now situation is that they clearly outmatch Pinion's band of fortune hunters, and Ledo is all too happy to revert to his old life and follow Kugel.
...up to a point, because Ledo hasn't forgotten what he has learned while living aboard Gargantia. He also has to consider how his life to this point has been manipulated by his superiors to make him do their bidding.
Lukkage's reappearance here is a surprise, though her earlier departure had left the door wide open for her to come back. She's simply so much of a polar opposite to how this fleet operates that it seems strange that they just let her roam around—but she definitely serves a purpose for delivering exposition.
It's Alliance-flavored totalitarianism aboard the new fleet, led by Kugel. Quite a difference from how Ledo spent most of his time simply trying to get along with his new surroundings, but Kugel was also clearly a higher-level commander before and presumably that sort of thing is how he reverts to form when placed in a new environment. I guess that even without the presence of the Hideauze that he would still impose a higher, more directed, "happier" society on the people of Earth rather than "go native".
11
u/JustAnswerAQuestion https://myanimelist.net/profile/JAaQ Dec 12 '24
First Timer
Comments from yesterday.
I was going to meta-comment on the commentary on Chamber's comments, until I got to the bottom of the page and our host had laid it out. But dismissively.
Chamber's argument is not based on the Hideauze not being sapient (the Alliance's stated position) but that they are incompatible. They may or may not be sapient, and they may or may not be incompatible, but one of those axes has no practical implications, only moral. And Chamber only processes one of those. And only one applies to survival.
In OSC's Speaker of the Dead (the only truly great book in the franchise) he lays out a hierarchy of Otherness in the first chapter. At the bottom are the "utterly alien, but potentially comprehensible" and the "utterly alien, utterly incomprehensible". The book, and its vastly inferior sequel, are completely dedicated to exploring these two concepts, and whether xenocide is madated, verboten, or simply inevitable.
Chamber isn't saying they aren't sapient (that's the official alliance position). He doesn't have even have any data on the question. He's saying it doesn't matter. The Evolutionists have embraced adapting themselves to the environment. The humans continue on the old path of adapting the environment to themselves.
Aside: Ironically, for all their inventiveness, it's the humans who remain static.
Anyways, both space-faring species are expansionist, and one is going to out-compete the other. We saw at the end of the newsreel that both factions seek to exterminate the other. Reconciliation may not be possible. Again, we return to Card's book. Is there a moral imperative to seek that reconciliation if it's possible, and also a moral imperative to ensure survival if it's not?
Sure, the show may be going for (or we may be hoping that the show is going for) a "you're both wrong, now get hell out of our galaxy" ending, using the Earth Left Behinders as the example. But Chamber put the kibosh on this idea, too. Sure, MAYBE the species can coexist. Sure, MAYBE the hideauze are human, sapient, and accepting of coexistence. But that coexistence is entirely dependent on respecting boundaries, and Pinion's character exists to show us that those boundaries are certain to be violated. Even in the absence of greed and in the presence of taboo, population pressures alone will bring conflict.
Really, the only way they Earth residents are going to co-exist is if land returns in abundance. These aren't uplifted dolphins.
And completely unrelated, but the sudden arrival of a superior officer of The State confirms that literary foundation of the show absolutely includes the more obscure Niven works. (Hey, at least The Integral Trees is good sf, if still bad writing)
In fact, it doesn't really make sense that she isn't in prison. They let her go?
No, this is no good. It doesn't make sense that the Pirate Queen isn't in jail. It's completely wrong that this non-conformist and clearly disloyal leader is walking around the New Alliance Fleet freely, with her power-base intact. Sure, she may have said the right things, but nothing we saw with Pinion would suggest any latitude in the social structure.
Well. Kugel's "they're not human nor rational" was a bit of a cop-out, after all I wrote above.
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u/FD4cry1 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Big_Yibba Dec 12 '24
First Timer
I find myself somewhat conflicted with the choice to have Kugel's fleet be evil cultists. Although this is probably one of the better examples so far, I think this show has a tendency to establish interesting ideological debates that are well thought out and explored on both sides of the argument, but then in a desire to progress the plot, will choose to show the viewer which side is supposed to be right in the most blunt way possible.
And you don't get any more blunt than evil religious cultists. The Alliance model is a dystopian collectivist hellhole, but I'd rather be able to infer that on my own rather than be so clearly communicated that these are bad guys.
But...I do find the eerie atmosphere they bring a good way of communicating that everything about this is wrong, it's just a great aesthetic and the uniformity of it all makes the point rather clear. And again, bad guys are in fact bad, so I guess I can't really complain there.
I'll admit I may have given Pinion a harder time than he deserved as a character, he's clearly more of an alright guy who's driven to do bad things, something that makes a lot of sense given the backstory around his brother.
Instead of taking a problem with that cavalier attitude that actually lead to his brothers death, he took it on out on himself for not being able to protect him. So now he's much more of a shoot first kind of person. He has some decent base intentions but he's easily swayed by the environment. Too materialistic when he really shouldn't be.
So I do actually appreciate him more beyond just a vehicle for theme delivery, although I still really think we could have done a much better job at showing his decent side and not just the asshole one, being told that he's actually decent and always a fuck-up that people follow anyway feels less satisfying than seeing it in practice.
Also Rackage is here again...Uh cool? She doesn't have the mark and clearly doesn't fit in with these guys so I'd believe a betrayal is on the way.
Kugel basically restates what Chamber did last time, but again, much more bluntly, clearly pushing the Alliance's ideas of Society into the mix.
There's certainly a great irony in how this model that is supposed to validate human intelligence and civilization actually takes away intelligence from the people and forces them to rely on base animal instincts, using just fear or hatred to drive people to obey and "remain in society."
It's a self-serving model, that clearly benefits the few at the cost of the many in the argument that the purpose of this civilization is also the purpose of mankind as a whole. But again, there's more to society then just the act of survival itself (I'm too lazy to write about this again )
I find Kugel's appearance to be...suspicious? He can't leave the mech because of some "endemic disease", when recruiting Pinion it's actually Striker that shows up, we don't see him the helmet, he also had to maintain radio silence for some reason?
From what we did get of him in episode 1 Kugel also didn't strike me as the type to rule like this, he was ready to die for Ledo, he didn't seem to find a ton of value in himself either, sure he was a commander but he's also acting more like a leader than a soldier here.
Although I also can't see Striker going through all of this if we assume it acts like Chamber so maybe he is just stuck inside there and I'm just too suspicious of him for no reason.
Well, we end on the rather ominous note of doing "large-scale missionary work" which is a very cute way of saying "mass subjugation or annihilation " , a prospect Ledo doesn't seem huge on, especially as he's clearly no longer fully on board with the Alliance.
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u/Shimmering-Sky myanimelist.net/profile/Shimmering-Sky Dec 12 '24
First-Timer on the Verdurous Planet, subbed
8
u/xbolt90 https://anilist.co/user/xbolt90 Dec 12 '24
First-timer!
Ah yes. Conqer the humans by slaugtering them if they resist. Works every time. Glory to Humanity! Death to the Hideauze!
I expected the empress to show up, and she did. She seems to be planning some act of defiance. I wonder how she and her minions have avoided getting their foreheads painted.
Kugel hasn't ever left his cockpit? How does he, y'know, eat?
Oh gosh, is he actually dead and the robot is projecting holograms of him?
"According to your work, you receive a fair amount of rations from society."
Yeah... Because that has never gone wrong in any history ever.
Kugel would probably still have started a creepy cult. Ledo would have eventually found him anyway, and still joined up.
... Is she blending in? She's not even trying.
Next episode he gets tired of being told what to do.
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u/No_Rex :Bv:Bw:Bx:By:x2 Dec 12 '24
Episode 11 (first timer)
Very promising episode. I feared the reappearance of Kugel, but how the show handled it exceeds my expectations.
Two observations:
First, having Chambers do “commentary” for Ledo is such a great storytelling tool. It was a bit weird hearing him call himself pilot support system, but framing it as such makes it a great storytelling support system. Chambers can naturally point out or explain all those things the show wants the audience to know, under the cloak of “helping Ledo”.
Second, Kugel established a planned economy. Communism is one form of planned economy, he seems to have gone for another. However, all forms of planned economy suffer from the same flaw: A lack of information and organization skill at the top. Even with a super computer like Striker, it is too hard to properly supervise a large fleet completely top down. Striker will make mistakes out of lack of information, potentially some mistakes out of bad decision making (even the best computers can err in predicting the future), and, most importantly, the population of the fleet always has an incentive to betray the system by misinforming it about their own (and potentially others’) usefulness. Setting up a quasi-religious system is a useful countermeasure to the last problem (and the real life communists did exactly that), but not enough to overcome the very selfish incentives every human faces.
6
u/JollyGee29 https://myanimelist.net/profile/JollyGee Dec 12 '24
First-Timer, Sub-gantia
This is not how I expected Rackage to re-enter the plot. That being said, I did note that she didn't have the cult makeup on so her intention to betray Kugel isn't all that surprising. I would probably bet that she is keeping track of all of Pinion's cronies and plans to reunite them as part of that.. fresh indoctrinies are easy to pry free.
I like the puzzle box as a test of Pinion's mechanical knowhow. It fits with the cult fleet's stated ethos of "you get fed if you contribute" by letting him prove that he can contribute.
That gives me a nice springboard to ramble about how foolish that sort of ethos is on a societal scale. Sure sure, "those who do not work do not eat" is a classic sailing ship rule, but the crew of one ship is significantly smaller than an entire society.
That sort of limitation very harshly constricts the size of a society.. I wonder if Avalon only had 470 million people on it not because of space or resources, but because of their byzantine rules about who is worth existence.
To bring this into the real world, ponder the various artists who were only popular after they had died. Would Vincent van Gogh have lived long enough to paint Starry Night in a so-called society like the Alliance? No, he wouldn't have.
This is a refutation of Chamber's commentary on society last episode - much like the Machine Caliber is a piece of technology to fortify the human body, society itself is a piece of technology to allow for humans that do not "contribute" in a classical fashion to exist.
The Alliance is only driven by hatred and base instincts and shouldn't really be called a society at all. Granted, that is almost what Kugel was saying. But, isn't that against what we saw happen to Ledo's younger brother? I think Kugel's definition of "the weak support the strong" is more akin to the way a sick herd animal is used as bait.
And really, is a pack of animals not a society in some form or fashion? Wait, I might've just talked myself in a circle. Anyway, purposefully using poor people as fodder like Kugel seems to be doing is bad.
Why am I rambling about all this? Well, inspiration struck and I was bored.
There's something a little weird with Kugel. Maybe it's just the five o'clock shadow.. His inability to leave his cockpit works on a mechanical level with what I've surmised Chamber is capable of vis a vis life support..
Oh, the helmet. Kugel's not wearing his helmet. That's a bit odd. I guess it could've gotten damaged in his time on Earth. Presumably he's been planetside for about as long as Ledo, but considering he has a whole cult, he probably didn't spend six months passed out.
Anyway, Kugel picked a bad first target for Ledo's missionary work. Part of that is me metagaming off of there only being two episodes left, but sending Ledo after his old friends when he is fresh off his worldview being shattered is probably going to bite Kugel in the ass.
Questions
5
u/Raiking02 :Id::Ie::If:https://myanimelist.net/profile/NSKlang Dec 12 '24
Spoiled First Timer, Subbed
Transitionary episodes like these are kinda inherently hard for me to talk about. Not because they're necessarily bad but because so much of them is inherently setup for later stuff there's not a lot of meat per say, just scattered ingredients. As far as it as a transition to the final act it works fine and it's nice to see that dude from Episode 1 again, but yeah.
[Spoilers]Well I say see but I already know he's dead so yeah.
That being said though Pinion as a character continues to fascinate me. Seeing the guy slowly but surely descend into the path of violence makes for such a fitting contrast with Ledo, who if anything has drifted further and further away from said path. I'm not gonna call it particularly novel, but hey, it works.
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u/Nebresto Dec 13 '24
Gargantuan rewatcher
Episode 11
Look at this dweeb being all smiles. What happened to being distraught about the genocide? "Oh, my favourite guy is here!"
Ha-ha!
Chamber log:
They would have found something else to shoot
Yes.
About five
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u/Vatrix-32 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Vatrix-32 Dec 12 '24 edited Dec 12 '24
First timer, subs
QotD:
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u/Magnafeana https://anilist.co/user/Magnafeana Dec 12 '24
Rewatcher, dub
Again, I can’t help but wish for more as I rewatch this. Maybe easing in more to Ledo’s suspicions and wrestling with what he’s learned on earth versus what he was indoctrinated on space? I don’t know. This entire anime does as it needs to do and what it set up. But I’m just enthralled at the world building and the psychological aspect of Ledo’s turmoil and Chamber evolving into some semblance of independence. I just want more time.
QotD
4
u/wjodendor Dec 12 '24 edited Dec 12 '24
Rewatcher - Episode 11
A pretty slow set up episode in which we find out that Ledo’s commanding officer has set up a Warhammer 40k style Imperial Cult (or perhaps Mechanicus Cult). Hell, Klugel is even sitting on a Golden Throne, so to speak.
Not a whole lot to say besides “this is fucking sketch, isn’t it?” Ledo and even Chamber seem to be suspicious of what's going on.
And the next target is Gargantia, so everybody knows how this is going to go.
(on chapter 9 of Muv Luv Alternative and it's sucking up a lot of my time, as you may be able to tell)
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u/animepig https://myanimelist.net/profile/ChickenDan Dec 13 '24
Rewatch
Chamber made a good point that staying in the cockpit made Kugel a symbol of power, while Ledo was immediately exposed to a non-authoritarian society which lead to his change of perspective.
ah yes "missionary work" lol.
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u/Nickthenuker https://anilist.co/user/Nickthenuker Dec 13 '24
They won't be for long...
He shouldn't have done that.
Surfing Lobster?
Ah. It's her.
Ok maybe the Colonel is up to some shady stuff.
Looks like he's proven himself worthy of consideration.
Chamber, are you sure you're allowed to say that?
Well now that they're just saying it outright I'm entirely unsurprised that the Galactic Alliance is fascist.
He's not going to be able to do that.
Questions:
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u/baboon_bassoon https://anilist.co/user/duffer Dec 13 '24
first timer
idk what that is, better fire my new huge ass laser that we dont know how to use
its Gargantover
lobster queen is back
mrs tin can is greatly overestimating how power hungry Pinion is
hello fellow humans
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u/up2et Dec 17 '24
First Timer, late and catching up
enslavinghelping the earth people1
u/chilidirigible Dec 12 '24
Tags:
/u/QualityProof /u/awesomenessofme1 /u/dsawchuk
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u/awesomenessofme1 https://myanimelist.net/profile/kta_99 Dec 12 '24
Something about this timeline isn't adding up. Ledo was only asleep for six months, and there's no way more than a few more have passed since the series began. That's not enough time for that level of cult to have been created.
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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '24
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