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[Leafsnail]

So just to be clear you're complaining about a show that you watched in a language you don't understand?

[Sirus]

If I could actually understand what anyone was saying, perhaps I wouldn't have such a big problem with the plot. But as it is I don't know if the loss of the battle was due to incompetence, bad planning, evil leaders, simple unfathomable stupidity or some combination of the above.

I could have sworn that the pylons were dropped where they were supposed to be, because it was pretty obvious when an airship got shot down and at least some of them showed no signs of taking damage that I could see.

I'm admittedly not fond of pointless battles (my biggest gripes about Attack on Titan were in large part due to these), but a show has to have something else to grab my attention - interesting characters, creepy monsters, good action scenes, hell even a romance subplot. Anything, really. The VOTOMS OVA pretty much had nothing.

The AA would have killed many of the mechs. But that's why you don't drop one or two, you drop dozens at a time from each ship. A comparatively tiny mech moving in all three dimensions at once is a hell of a lot harder to hit than a fuckheug airship moving in a straight line, and the AA didn't seem all that accurate. For each mech that dies middrop, at least one would have survived to make trouble. Or maybe not, but at least it would have been better than focusing entirely on landing on the beach.

Snow Crash is ostensibly about a theoretical future!Internet, and being written before the Internet really took off it predicted a large number of terms and concepts with reasonable accuracy (like the use of the term "avatar"). It also featured the Deliverator (a car straight out of Speed Racer used for pizza deliveries) and a nuclear-powered minigun called Reason. These things take up such a huge amount of discussion on the book that you would be forgiven for thinking that the entire book was about those. Instead, the Deliverator is gone less than a quarter of the way through, Reason shows up for two chapters near the climax, and the prediction stuff is relegated to infodumps. A good portion of the rest is Sumerian (pretty sure it was Sumerian, been a while since I read it) myth, new-age crap, and a really creepy relationship between the main antagonist and a teenage girl.

So just to be clear you're complaining about a show that you watched in a language you don't understand?

Yes. Which I have repeatedly stated. Good job for catching on, I know that must have been difficult.

[Leafsnail]

Well I'm just trying to work out why you feel like you have a right to complain about the show.

[Mattk50]

If I could actually understand what anyone was saying, perhaps I wouldn't have such a big problem with the plot.

.... yes...

[Leafsnail]

I mean what I'm getting from your post is less "VOTOMs is bad" and more "Watching a show which has a heavy emphasis on dialogue in a language that you do not understand without subtitles is bad".

[Parsely]

The AA would have killed many of the mechs. But that's why you don't drop one or two, you drop dozens at a time from each ship. A comparatively tiny mech moving in all three dimensions at once is a hell of a lot harder to hit than a fuckheug airship moving in a straight line, and the AA didn't seem all that accurate. For each mech that dies middrop, at least one would have survived to make trouble. Or maybe not, but at least it would have been better than focusing entirely on landing on the beach.

Except, surprise, in order to airdrop the mechs you need those airships (there are planes too but they can't deploy the mechs in appreciable numbers). They'd get shot down the same as the ones carrying those pylons. I'd say that's far worse than the beach deployment because the mechs wouldn't even touch the ground.


"For each mech that dies...at least one would survive to make trouble."
Sweet Jesus that's exactly what the generals' strategy was when they decided to deploy a quarter of a thousand mechs en masse on a beach!
What even is your argument anymore?!

[kaijyuu]

I don't see how anyone could expect to understand a show from visuals alone unless the show in question was specifically designed to be watchable that way.

[Sirus]

Okay, I'm going to explain this simply and use small words:

Do a Google image search for paratrooper drops. Notice how there are dozens of them falling at a time, spread out, landing in different areas and moving through three dimensions simultaneously. Oops, I meant "at the same time".
Now do an image search for a conveyor belt. Notice how there is one object moving though each stage at a time. Notice how a conveyor belt relies on the object being worked on being in the same position at the same time. If you're really, really clever, you may notice the similarity between a conveyor belt and those metal tracks the mechs used to climb the cliff.

You starting to see a disparity yet? Let me put it another way: what's the bigger threat, a thousand zerglings moving en masse or a thousand zerglings attacking one, two, or even three at a time?

That's the difference between what I would have done and what happened. Drop that same quarter of a thousand mecha from the air and I guarantee that at least two enemy bunkers would have exploded, thus doing twice as well as the beach invasion did. Unless of course they all forgot that they had guns again.

I'm not sure how I went from "this show wasn't quite what I expected and I am slightly disappointed about that" to this sort of thing, but apparently I'm simply not allowed to dislike something today.

[Leafsnail]

You can dislike it, but you can't claim to have an informed opinion when you didn't fucking understand it

[Parsely]

Okay, I'm going to explain this simply and use small words:

..you did not need to go there Sirus. You don't need to get angry at me just because I like the show.. :l

If the transports are destroyed before they can get past the beach or even the bunkers, how can you expect the mechs to be parachuted? The airships can carry a lot of mechs, the amount of mechs that you would need for what you're talking about, but they're too slow to get past the AA. Even very large planes can't carry that many. And you don't need to hit the mech, just the massive parachute that is needed to make it drop safely, which will kill it just as good.

You can dislike it, but you can't claim to have an informed opinion when you didn't fucking understand it

^^This so much. You've only watched ten minutes of a much longer OVA, in a foreign language no less.

[Tack]

You can dislike it, but you can't claim to have an informed opinion when you didn't fucking understand it

-ish
I watched the first few seasons of Naruto in Japanese with no subtitles.
But it was a crazy straightforward anime.

But anyway, everyone has their things they like and dislike in anime, and Sirus's 'thing' is the protagonists losing a battle. Given that the first episode of this is the protagonists losing a battle (And the reasons why being a little bit foggy due to language barriers) then it stands to reason why he wouldn't like it.

As a 'thing people dislike', this is relatively minor. I have a friend who will only watch an anime with swords.
I was like 'Sweet! Action! Check out black lagoon!', he watched two episodes and didn't like it.

[Parsely]

As a 'thing people dislike', this is relatively minor. I have a friend who will only watch an anime with swords.
I was like 'Sweet! Action! Check out black lagoon!', he watched two episodes and didn't like it.

That's a strange habit. Hope he likes Berserk!

Love Black Lagoon. Fantastic show.

[Sirus]

Spoiler: Rant because I spent 15 minutes getting this together and to hell if I'm going to delete it. Don't read if you want to drop this line of discussion. (click to show/hide)

You can dislike it, but you can't claim to have an informed opinion when you didn't fucking understand it

When did I ever claim to be informed? I did the equivalent of flipping a book open and reading the first couple of chapters to see if it grabbed my interest. It didn't. I never said I did in-depth research on the series canon or finished the OVA, nor did I dig up translations. Because that shit should not be required to grab the attention of a newcomer.

Okay, I'm going to explain this simply and use small words:

..you did not need to go there Sirus. You don't need to get angry at me just because I like the show.. :l

If the transports are destroyed before they can get past the beach or even the bunkers, how can you expect the mechs to be parachuted? The airships can carry a lot of mechs, the amount of mechs that you would need for what you're talking about, but they're too slow to get past the AA. Even very large planes can't carry that many. And you don't need to hit the mech, just the massive parachute that is needed to make it drop safely, which will kill it just as good.

You can dislike it, but you can't claim to have an informed opinion when you didn't fucking understand it

^^This so much. You've only watched ten minutes of a much longer OVA, in a foreign language no less.

You know that first part you linked to still had at least two transports un-exploded, right? That's a far cry from "all getting destroyed" considering how many mecha they could each carry. Hell they've got probably a couple hundred pylons each and those dwarf the mecha.
Parachutes aren't going to fail from getting a bullet hole in them. Not the kind of heavy-duty reinforced parachutes that would be required to support that kind of weight. They would have to be shredded a good deal and at that point it's more likely the mech the chute was supporting would be destroyed. But why bother with chutes at all? I mentioned those ziplines they used, and the airships are fairly low to the ground. It might be better to simply rappel down; faster, no worry about chutes colliding with each other and getting tangled, and they could easily create some sort of attachment system similar to how they deployed from the boats.
And for the record, I watched 20 minutes. Minor quibble, admittedly.

But anyway, everyone has their things they like and dislike in anime, and Sirus's 'thing' is the protagonists losing a battle. Given that the first episode of this is the protagonists losing a battle (And the reasons why being a little bit foggy due to language barriers) then it stands to reason why he wouldn't like it.

How have I not made this clear?! I don't like the protagonists losing battles when it was clear that the whole thing was entirely fucking pointless! Even if the leaders were corrupt, even if the battle was poorly planned, even if enemy resistance was stronger than anticipated, THAT DOES NOT FUCKING EXCUSE THE SOLDIERS BEING GODDAMN CATTLE. In fact, new headcanon: the whole thing was a plot to rid society of the terminally stupid before they could spread their genes. Now it is slightly bearable.

Screw it, I can't deal with this any more. Enjoy your VOTOMS, I'll find something else to watch.

[Parsely]

Turns out, I read the synopsis of the episode, and the battalion commander who led the attack is later court-martialled for being deranged. So.. Argument invalidated. The island was a massive fortress that even later on stymied repeated assaults. 1500 mechs were destroyed in the battle.

It cuts away as one of the airships is being destroyed. It doesn't show them turning around and flying off so its possible and actually nearly guaranteed they were all destroyed before they could turn around.

Plus the whole ziplines and parachutes thing is still quite grasping. I don't know if the airships can even deploy mechs. If there wasn't an army of 1500 mechs marching up the beach you can bet they would've been knocked out far more quickly with all the enemy fire directed upward. The airships were there for about 10 seconds and in that time two out of four were destroyed. How long do you think it would take to deploy 1500 mechs via rappels? Is that even feasible? And you can bet flak would tear the hell out of any parachute, its fabric for God's sake and it wouldn't take very many holes to make a 6,600 ton vehicle drop like a rock.

[Tack]

I don't like the protagonists losing battles when it was clear that the whole thing was entirely fucking pointless!

But there's a point to all of the people dying in Attack on Titan...
Maybe it's not that you don't like a loss, and it's not that you don't like pointless fighting, but just that you don't like hopeless situations?
In which case I would recommend you don't watch Berserk.

Spoiler: For them that know what I be talking 'bout (click to show/hide)

Dat eclipse