What I Learned By Watching Anime THIS Week! #2
"Say 'dame' again! Say 'dame' again, I dare you, I double-dare you, motherfucker, say 'dame' one more Goddamn time!"
There is a fundamental problem with ever doing something and slapping a big old number “1″ on it; it means you have to do a “2″, or you just look retarded for putting the “1″ on the first one. Thankfully, the first installment of this series, which I hope to do… obviously… weekly, went well. At least I think it did. I posted that one on a Saturday, but I think from now on I’ll just hit these off as I find something really fucking stupid to comment on. I’ll have to find a way of restraining myself from posting two in a week, but I am a weak minded human being, so no promises.
Now that the meta shit is out of the way, I found something this week that was so profoundly fucking stupid that I couldn’t help but be inspired by it. The lead image here should be a dead giveaway as to what show this is coming from, so I’ll save you the suspense. I will offer this, however: if you told me that I was going to see something so profoundly fucking stupid that I couldn’t help but be inspired by it from Ano Natsu de Matteiru, especially when there’s much more prime targets for idiocy like Symphogear and Aquarion EVOL, I might not have believed you. And yet here we are. “What got my goat”, you ask? Click the “Read More” link below and find out.
AI - Artificial Intelligence. A truly great accomplishment for the Federation, dwarfed only by the invention of clothes dryers that don't catch fire when you forget to clean the lint trap. Here we see a fine example of Federation technology busying itself by handling its master's space vessel.
Unfortunately it appears as though artificial intelligence isn't without limitations or problems. For example, this particular unit is prone to having distress signals being sent out to the Federation Help Network (Just dial 991 for assistance! Only 25 credits a minute!) when and if a hyperactive human slut's ass happens to land on it.
And, okay, apparently they're prone to LYING THEIR FUCKING ASSES OFF to their master.
I can accept quite a few things, even in this example. I can accept that Rinon wasn’t really lying, from a certain point of view. After all, Rinon was fine, the ship was fine, or at least in the same condition as the last time Ichika asked for a status update, so it’s not a lie right? Well, no. It’s still deception. Something I don’t expect from cute mascot characters not named Kyubey.
Okay, maybe Rinon wasn’t telling Ichika because it thought it could fix the problem before it got worse. We do see it trying, in vain, to ward the Federation Help Network Rescue-O-Matic 3000 off. Still, if this is what artificial intelligence is capable of, maybe we’re better off having a bunch of dumb robots operated by Windows 7. Let me paint an analogy for you: this is like having your car’s GPS system neglect to inform you of an upcoming turn because it thinks there’s a more scenic route just another mile up ahead. That would be awesome if you were interested in such things, or a forgiving soul. I’m neither. I want my machines to do their fucking job, regardless of what shit happens!
Federation Help Network Rescue-O-Matic 3000, made by the same company as Rinon. You can tell by the little tree sprout emblem thingy smack dab in the middle of the unit. Apparently, the Federation hasn't advanced beyond the need for intellectual property rights, so Ron Paul is probably wrong, wrong, wrong.
Okay, I sit corrected.
Why am I wrong? Why should I be wrong? I’ll tell you why I’m wrong. Because whomever came up with these fucking AI systems apparently wasn’t consistent in his / her programing routines! Rinon has too much freedom to decide for itself whether to inform the boss of any problems earlier or when it is dramatically necessary to the story! Meanwhile, this thing is so completely single minded that it doesn’t even realize that the person whom it was sent to rescue, DOESN’T WANT TO BE RESCUED.
What asshole comes up with this shit? Oh right, the writers… I’m not done yet either.
So let me get this straight... neat morphing trick, by the way... this unit is designed to land onto a planet, to RESCUE SOMEONE, by letting them crawl up inside that there entrance, then presumably blast off back into space towards "civilization".
Like I said above, I can accept certain things, but not others. For example, the Federation Help Network Rescue-O-Matic 3000 has arms.
Okay, maybe the target is unconscious or pinned under rubble or something, that would make arms on the unit viable so that the unit could place the target inside. But why in the fuck would it have an Anti-Linkage Field? If the target is going to teleport away, maybe there’s a reason for that. You land, knock over a big boulder that’s about to fall on the target, the target tries to teleport out of the way and…. whoops.
Egads... perhaps simply compounding upon the stupidity of this model's AI system is a complete lack of topographic recognition software.
I can almost hear this thing going “Which way did she go, George? Which way did she go?” Of course, the situation required that Kai and Ichika get some distance so that Ichika could somehow try to still control the situation and for Kai to get all manly. Oh, speaking of that shit…
First, let me point out that if the Federation Help Network Rescue-O-Matic 3000 considered Kaito to be an enemy, it probably wouldn't have rounded that bend, stopped, opened up it's compartment, and waited patiently for Ichika to finish her tear filled scene of melodrama. I mean, c'mon, this thing is just doing its job, albeit badly. How is it supposed to know that this local lifeform was important?
Second, to its credit, the Federation Help Network Rescue-O-Matic 3000 tried to disarm Kaito here. Well maybe it did. Maybe it meant the whole time to slap the Kaito upside the head because the little humanoid reminded it way too much of a fluffy yapping space dog that once peed on it. It's easy to make that kind of mistake with Kaito's character design. Either way, it broke the stick.
Why?
Let’s back up about one-minute and forty-seconds so I can show you how retarded this actually is.
Here we see the first shot of the Federation Help Network Rescue-O-Matic 3000 coming in for a landing. I say "landing" with much kindness, since the damned thing doesn't so much as "land" but "crash like it was Vegeta's space pod". We don't know how fast it is going here, but we're led to believe it is moving awfully fucking fast.
Now, I don't know space technology from a turkey leg, but this could be some kind of amazing braking system that burned off a bunch of the velocity without somehow flattening the Federation Help Network Rescue-O-Matic 3000 like a bug. Then again, maybe these are just a really pretty special effect the animators wanted to do because they like drawing glowing lavender circles. I know I do.
Kersplat. More lavender circles. Must be the space equivalent of carbon emissions. Someone make these fuckers more "green", will you!? Nobody cares about our environment, sheesh. Anyway, regardless of how much velocity was involved, the thing kicked up enough dust to indicate that... yeah, it hit the ground pretty hard, yo.
Let’s recap:
- Space worthy.
- Can presumably travel at or faster than light speeds.
- Shrugs off friction caused by entering Earth’s atmosphere without so much as even getting warm.
- Slams into the ground, causing a big mess.
- Undamaged.
- Capable of morphing solid mass from one shape to another.
- Shrugs off getting stuck against rocks without so much as a scratch.
- STICK! OH MY GOD A FUCKING STICK! GET IT AWAY! GET IT AWAY! DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF HARM YOU CAN CAUSE TO A SENSITIVE PIECE OF EQUIPMENT LIKE ME WITH ONE OF THOSE THINGS!?
And so…
Seriously, I want to find the guy who programs these things. Somewhere in that network of conditional statements is something like: "Subprogram initiated: Knock indiginous lifeform off high place to create dramatic action moment." You never know when you might need it.
Is it just me? Am I thinking too hard? No, not really, because about half a minute later the Federation Help Network Rescue-O-Matic 3000 takes some kind of jet vehicle to the face and doesn’t explode or anything. It does, however, stop functioning. So apparently a high velocity game of bumper cars can slow it down, and we expected that non-petrified piece of wood to do what, exactly? Exactly what happened: break… because it was never a threat to a highly advanced machine. But the machine reacted as if Kaito was coming at it with a One-Hit-Sure-Kill-Godslayer-of-Hitpoints-Wooden-Sword. Shit, even Link didn’t start off with THAT badassed a weapon, and Kaito is just winging this motherfucker.
So what did I learn this week? I learned that advanced technology is only as advanced as the anime writers want it to be. The writers basically used and abused this concept to create a couple of faux moments of drama. The entire thing was an asspull; a giant steaming pile of convenient shit taking in order to… hell I don’t know. Probably the next episode will drive the story forward a bit. Now that everybody knows she’s an alien, maybe something will happen. Doesn’t mean we needed this convoluted piece of bullshit to make it happen. Good gravy.
Yet more logical fallacies. If you included all the points on the forum made by others, you’d be hitting 3 pages or so. I’ve always thought this show was very forced the whole way through, but this episode it’s made itself incredibly stupid as well.
when I saw that first screencap, I thought this post is about Anohana… since it wasn’t, I have to skip the rest of the post because it won’t make sense anyway. I’m not watching this show this season.
I knew I didn’t regret dropping this show around episode 3.
This episode (and the show in general) isn’t actually too bad. It’s just this one scene at the end of the most recent episode that was, well, not really well thought through (and was a pretty transparent plot device).
Forget the science fiction trappings; Ano Natsu’s problems are more fundamental. The problem with romance anime that relies on delaying the fated union of the main pair (or pairs, in this case) is that eventually there will be so many stupid interruptions and contrivances to extend the “conflict” that it builds much more frustration and enmity towards the show than the typical payoff scene can assuage. It feels like a giant waste of time, and often the writing has to stoop to dumb cliches and plot twists (lol nudists?) to keep it going. My suspension of disbelief is well beyond broken by now.
@kadian1364
If you were to list all the times when obvious plot devices were used to push or stall romantic development, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say you’d be hitting a couple of pages if you just listed them, no pictures, just text and bullet points.
I said this really near the beginning, but I wonder half the time whether they are doing this on purpose.
This is why, most of the time, the best romance shows are hour-long-movies, or shows where the main pair isn’t obvious from the first five minutes of the show, in which case there can be actual drama (Toradora is a prime example, I would think).
Oh wait, this post wasn’t about romance. It was about technology. Oh well, you know technology. Positively ~tectonic~.
You should do this with every piece of vaguely advanced technology you come across in anime.
Really, do it.
It’s not nit-picky or annoying at all.
@Taka
That is a great idea! I think I’ll do just that! I can call it: “Anime: Technological Shitbox!”