Yeah, I’ve seen Uranus before, and this is definitely not it. Good call, Akari.
— Apparently, our heroes have stumbled upon Hyperion, which is one of Saturn’s many moons. Y’know, if they where this close to Hyperion, you’d think they’d be close enough to notice Saturn too. But more importantly, why have we stopped all the way out here? Oh god, please don’t tell me that the story is still stalling for time. I mean, we can’t stall for time, right? There’s nothing here but a lumpy moon! The story has no choice to push on, right?
— The characters speculate that last week’s episode was due to a psychological attack from the enemy. Psychological attack or not, there’s still some grain of truth in what Daichi saw. I stand by the idea that he had doubts he had to clear away. The Designer Children wouldn’t have been able to trap him for that short bit of time if he didn’t.
— So Baku shows up to intercept our heroes. According to him, because human lives are so short, they’re no different from dreams. Well, okay, that’s not really deep or anything, but we can pretend it is, if you want. But seriously, just by virtue of the fact that the Kiltgang are having a tough time dealing with Daichi and crew, you’d think they’d come to the plainly obvious conclusion that human beings can nevertheless leave a mark on history even if their lives are finite. I know he’s hung up on the fact that his true love died, but therein lies yet another problem about Baku’s philosophy. By degrading humanity, he also degrades the woman he once loved. That’s the problem with these shows. Instead of making the villains smart and multi-faceted, the writers opt instead to have them spew out catchy quips. These quips will sound smart and whatnot the first time you hear them, but there’s no substance to them, and thus no substance to the villains.
— Teppei magically warps in front of Daichi, thereby allowing him to fire a blast strong enough to repel Baku. Captain Earth fights are now just silly. Because of the magical powers of the Livlasters, anything can happen. Baku is literally beating the tar out of Daichi, but it doesn’t matter. Ironically, nothing the immortal being does even matters. Thanks to our heroes’ feelings — and I’m not even being snarky — anything can literally happen. Remember when Teppei slipped into another dimension temporarily just to save himself from Daichi’s powerful attack during the asteroid strike? Well, the kid can now warp from one location to another. Of course, he didn’t really warp; Teppei managed to Entangle Link out of nowhere. Still, an asspull is an asspull, and anything goes because of the Livlasters. You don’t really have to construct a coherent fight scene that eventually results in one side winning through a gradual accumulation of tiny advantages. You can have any result you want with the Livlasters; Entangle Link or not, the end result is that Teppei still appeared out of nowhere to beat Baku even though the latter had been winning the fight without much trouble. But seriously, while these asspulls might be easier on the writers, how can this be remotely satisfying to watch for us viewers? And shouldn’t that be the most primary concern?
— By the way, it looks as though they’ve destroyed Baku’s Ego Block. That was, uh, easy? And so much for Baku, huh? He finally shows up to fight, and he’s down for the count before the episode is even half over…
— Our kids then proceed to sit around and discuss the fact that the Livlasters can Entangle Link. Great, great, we’re still stalling for time.
— Then all of a sudden, Teppei tells us that he’s found God… or rather, a god to believe in. Still, really, Captain Earth? Sigh…
— Now, I don’t know what’s going on at all. Daichi says again that the Designer Children were trying to shake him up in his dream. Akari turns to Teppei and asks if this is possible. Teppei says no, and this is because they have Ego Blocks… I don’t follow. So were the Designer Children fucking with Daichi’s dream or not? But whatever, I don’t even care that much about the story anymore anyway.
— I just want the anime to get on with the story, but the kids are still talking.
— Oh hey, I was wondering where the OP was. It’s just ten minutes into the episode. Great.
— After the OP, our heroes finally make it to the bad guys’ ship. Also, I could’ve sworn that they had been calling the enemy ship the Oberon for the past twenty-three episodes. Why the sudden change to Auberon?
— Both the Earth Engine and the Nebula Engine kick off to carry out the mission. I can’t help but think how wasted the Flare Engine was, though. Hana got to use it like once… and now she’s stuck like this. Kind of an unfortunate position, no? The boys get to hop into their mechas and do cool shit. Meanwhile, Hana just gets to float there all naked and everything as electricity continuously surges around her. And hell, Akari’s role is boring too. All she ever does is sit in one place and type away on some keyboard as though her keystrokes-per-minute is what truly defines her character.
— With the help of a bunch of explosions, the Kivotos manages to penetrate the enemy ship. Yep, yep, the symbolism is very meaningful. I bet you the Kiltgang didn’t see this coming. Heed the lesson, kids: no protection out there is a 100% effective.
— Inside the Auberon, it’s all purple for some reason. And there are a bunch of purple spikes, too. The writers’ imaginations are really going out of control. Eventually, the kids reach the core, a.k.a. the bad guys’ cocoon.
— Naturally, the bad guys won’t go down without a fight, so the rest of them — minus Baku — finally show up to do battle. The dialogue sounds like something you’d find in a cheesy 16-bit RPG. So naturally, Amara will make Daichi an offer he will refuse. Yes, why not join the bad guys and destroy all of humanity! What? You don’t want to? You’ve been spending the entire series trying to save humanity, so you’re kind of attached to it? Gosh darn, I didn’t think you’d turn me down!
— Setsuna shows up, cries some tears, and Baku magically returns to life. Laaaaaaaame. I guess the good guys aren’t the only ones who can perform asspulls. And blah blah blah, Setsuna can give everyone Ego Blocks. Join our nakama, guys! Just throw down your Livlasters! Here’s where we awkwardly zoom into Hana’s Livlaster.
— All of a sudden, Puck shows up! And he attacks Setsuna, because she’s somehow a threat to the AI. What’s going on, guys? What is the AI even doing here? Hell, do the good guys even know Puck exists? I’m not sure if Daichi and crew have ever even interacted with Puck once in the entire series. Is this where the Kiltgang realizes that Puck is the true villain of the series, and they must reluctantly join the good guys in order to take down the rogue AI once and for all? Puck now has the ability to install his ego into every sentient life form in the galaxy, so I guess he’s god. And since this is anime, god is always the biggest threat. This is a bit of a lame turn in events. I mean, the true villain is just a powertripping AI. Two lifeforms went at it, but in the end, it’s technology that we must be wary of. And again, the good guys don’t even know who or what Puck is. It’s just lame. Daichi tries to take Puck out in one shot, but oh no, you haven’t seen my final form yet! When the smoke clears, Puck reveals his next iteration!
And… it’s a giant Ego Block…
— Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion to Captain Earth. I’m excited! Aren’t you?
Moe Sucks 
Lord save us… our nightmares are almost finally over with Captain Earth & Buddy Complex. Once we still an old yandere finally bite the dust, we are done with mind-numbing mecha shows… until that one Fukoda show comes out with the bikini pilot and if Reconguista in G isn’t a step above AGE… and when Aldnoah.Zero returns.
You know, the Kiltgang have to feel very stupid right now to aide in an AI’s quest for transcendence, but the show should have done this swerve earlier, and even though he came back, why was Baku the one who died and not Ai?
And, in the finale, it looks like he succeeded where Salty Dog failed so many times… take control of that naked chick with the mechanical schlong. I think they forgot about Puck’s obvious weakness… he’s still connected by his original mainframe, and if that gets, um, messed-up, Puck is F**ked.
Age was a solid story and made sense. Season 1 was just standard gundam, Season 2 was actually pretty great and saw gundam take a few new territories and story lines. Season 3 was ruined by gundams biggest tree huger also had a bit of rushing. It really wasn’t bad at all you just wanted to constantly bash the tree huggers face in with a rock constantly and not stop. Plus flit becoming pretty much hitler for a while was pretty good. Only gundam series where one of the good went off the deep end and had his faction saying wait um dude thats pretty racist and well extreme even for war or what the fuck dude training your kids to fight in war is wrong. So it was nice seeing a gundam series finnally touch on that stuff.
True, Asemus story was the best part, I only hope we don’t get another SEED/SEED Destiny, worse one by far in my opinion.
Yeah, what really sucks about Puck being the one true villain is that he pretty much disappeared 2/3’s of the way into the story. All he did was flirt it up with a bunch of his female office coworkers. Then all of a sudden, I’m supposed to believe he had been building himself up to the point where he can take over the entire world? No, not even the entire world. The entire galaxy!
Yeah. I mean, when Puck finally got a human body, the interactions we got was “Puck now knows what its like to be a human, and he loves it because he can pork other humans” and the show still focused on the Kiltgang still wanting to destroy the Earth if at the very least just to stay alive. The concept of Puck wanting to achieve Godhood was never truly explored because it seemed that all Puck really wanted was to get out of a computer mainframe and into the minds of organic creatures to enjoy the pleasures of basic urges.
Which also makes Puck’s desire to destroy the Earth even more nonsensical due to the fact that there are a lot of women Puck could have fun with because the guy he’s using is charismatic and wealthy, yet he now decides he is going to annihalate the human species because he can. Was it because his secretary said “no” once?
You know story telling should be a simple art form regardless of the medium So how just how are animes fucking up this badly. Video games in recent memory for the majority have had a more coherent plot than the shit studios are churning out.
Because “who cares about coherant storytelling when we can load up on the fanservice!”, that’s why.
I wanna see a story where both sides are fundamentally flawed, but don’t feel they have to resort to excessive violence and gore or pointless fanservice or harem pairings to tell it. Sadly, the anime complex these days cares more for niche groups for the most part, and the “big” shows that come out tend to feature elements that are guaranteed to turn off certain groups of the community.
Quoting Hayao Miyazaki, anime suffers because industry staff is made up of otaku who “don’t spend time watching real people” and are “humans who can’t stand looking at other humans.”
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/01/30/ghiblis-hayao-miyazaki-says-the-anime-industrys-problem-is-that-its-full-of-anime-fans/
I knew something was wrong when Captain fucked up hyperspace traveling. It would had been Ok if there was something in the flight path, but psychic interference? That’s BS
Baku is the best character in this show and he is being ruined by the Gears and the show itself. He went from a class-A antagonist to a C. ;_;
IT’S BECOMING AO ALL OVER AGAIN!! BONES SHITTING ON SOMETHING GREAT!!!
I like Puck, but sacrificing a pimp planet for godhood? I thought he had better tastes. He could had been a great Palpatine expy.
I guess Bones is only good with adaptations (and Eureka Seven and Darker Than Black). Worst this is, the second I found out the character designs was done by a porn artist, I knew it would be bad.
See, this is really my big problem with that episode last week. As interesting as some of its elements might have been, it still ends up being gibberish (and a wasted episode) because it never even connected to the previous eps nor to this one. The story pretty much brushed it aside as filler. This is pretty much the sam<e with the Eiji Arashi episode, which was interesting, yet pretty much went nowhere (I wonder watever happened to that guy).
And whose idiotic idea was it anyway to focus more on the salty dog/ark faction vs. intercept faction mess (which again went nowhere), instead of giving Puch the character arc he deserves. This guy was more entertaining, you know.
Which was exactly as I feared. That episode was a good psychological analysis into how people wished they had more control over their lives and the ability to go back in time to do things differently. Ultimately, though, it was merely a time-killer because they needed something to do.
That problem was due to the fact that they felt that infighting in Globe was more interesting than Puck, largely because Ark Faction wanted the Kiltgang to win so that they could create a new civilization and viewed it as a necessary evil. Of course, the Salty Dog members lacked personalities and their motivation was purely “We want Hana! We want Hana! Don’t know what we’d do if we got Hana, but we still want Hana!”, which was what really creeped me out during that time… and what will creep me out if Hana starts to talk like Puck.
Ok, two questions, why the hell did the livelaster have to be a dildo/strapon? And why is it that in a lot of anime God or at least their version of God is the enemy? Heck, why are angels the evil ones while the demons always turn out to be the good guys? It’s a trend that’s always bothered me.
Not saying it wouldn’t be something interesting, I mean if they at least tried to show us the duality in a meaningful way instead of “Let’s kill the angels/god because the hot demon babes are crying” bs we always get, it would be a lot more interesting.
First question: I guess it’s an impromptu fig leaf, especially since they fulfilled their personal destiny of showing off every single curve of Hana’s body without those annoying clothes that get in the way. However, Kill la Kill had a LOT of full frontal nudity towards the end of the series, but the characters were not anatomically correct, so they got away with it. The difference, though, is that the positioning of the Livlaster with Hana while she is in her state and he fact that it’s shaped like a dildo makes it very unfortunate. And stupid.
Second question: The Japanese seem to have a curious fascination with the themes present in Judeo-Christian religions, and primarily because Christianity is minisculy practiced in the country, they feel that they can explore characters wanting to become God (almost always the bad guys) and making monsters look like “angels” without offending anybody because, hey, it’s Japan and everything doesn’t make much sense. There was even a manga that took complex Biblical stories and morphed it into a shota.
But, I do agree with the fact that duality would be nice. However, because of how anime and manga are written these days, such innovation is unlikely.