This episode was a vast improvement over the last one in terms of plausibility, not to mention being major league exciting.
Permission finally comes from Tokyo to launch a military raid on the Empire's Capitol to rescue Japanese diplomatic personnel and friendly senators, who had been captured and imprisoned, and several air-borne units get sent.
There's a picture-perfect parachute drop, for one thing. Zorzal has never seen, never even imagined that such a thing could be possible.
Japanese diplomats are in Pina's Jade Palace, and her Rose Knights have been doing their best to defend the place, but it's looking grim.
Or not so much...
Somebody local is going to make a fortune collecting all that brass.
Anyway,
they got everyone out that they were tasked with rescuing. Pina wasn't on the list and she's still in Zorzal's dungeon. Itami and his team were on the road this entire episode and arrive at the capital just after everyone else leaves. Next episode is the last and it's obvious he's going to rescue Pina and get her out. Whether he also gets Molt out remains to be seen. (If they can get him out, and cure him, and make him a friend, that would be a game-changer.) Whether Zorzal gets killed remains to be seen. Whether Tyule gets killed remains to be seen. (I don't like seeing women get killed, but for her I'll make an exception.) How many people get slaughtered by Rory remains to be seen, but I don't think there's any place in the capital that Rory can't get into if she wants to.
1
Tactically, this doesn't seem like the right time for a parachute drop. You do that to get in the enemy rear and cut off their lines of communication, you don't do it to attack a strongpoint.
A helicopter insertion would be a much better idea. I've seen Japan's 1st Airborne Brigade practice fastrope insertions with my own eyes, I know they can do it.
Posted by: Boviate at March 18, 2016 02:07 PM (XRvFv)
2
Well, you don't do it to attack a strong point that has seriously ranged weapons. Quick googling says that English archers armed with longbows would have had a range of maybe 400 yards. And that's if they'd been already deployed and ready. So I'd say it was safe enough under the circumstances.
But, they don't seem to be making much use of archers; The Rose Knights would be dead meat to even a handful of good archers.
Not much military use of mages, either. I'm surprised at that, have the mages established a rule that they simply won't participate in wars? I suppose they're dangerous enough they could make it stick.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at March 18, 2016 02:26 PM (l55xw)
I think this was simply a case of "We need X infantry there, and we don't have a lot more than that, so we have to use all our air-mobile forces."
They did use helicopters, too, but they didn't have enough choppers to deliver all the forces the plan required at the same time.
When you watch it, you'll see that this wasn't "move in and occupy". It was "quick in-and-out", with the Chinooks making several trips at the end to evacuate everyone. The whole operation only lasted a couple of hours.
Also, of course, because the writer wanted to do a paradrop.
6
There's a greater chance for scatter and (while it doesn't appear to apply here for a couple of reasons) a paratrooper hanging in the air from his parachute is a perfectly valid target for people on the ground to shoot. Pilots are considered to be no longer fighting when floating down, but paratroopers are just about to start doing so.
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at March 19, 2016 05:30 PM (ATlQg)
7
I suspect that, as these were "line" airborne, and not commandos, they dropped at their normal training altitude, since there weren't any threats forcing them to deviate from that training. I'm not sure how many jumps they get a year, and these are supposedly *not* the cream of the JSDF (since the best units were held back to deter other nations). So, no sense in taking risks.
I wonder if the original story contained that level of detail--you'd expect to find it in any Clancy-esque story, at least. Another possibility is that the anime director took liberty with the scene.
As a non-subscriber, I'm a week behind everyone else. The timing of events did feel off to me as well, but I decided about halfway through that the different plotlines were not happening in direct chronological order; that is, the Itami scenes had already occurred before the showdown at the palace had really begun. I've seen that device used to make the climaxes of different plotlines line up to heighten suspense, even when one had to finish before the next could really begin.
Posted by: Big D at March 19, 2016 09:34 PM (VKO9N)
Today's search term is "beer" and what could go better with cheesecake than beer?
It's a bit of a concern that a large percentage of the pictures were of German ship-girls from Kancolle. But I guess we take our cheap thrills whereever we find them.
1"This one looks like she's got ice cubes in her beer, which is the sin above all sins."
Ice shouldn't sink in beer... Maybe that's just supposed to be a coating of frost on the outside of the mug? Or a weird reflection/refraction of something else? Some kind of translucent "whiskey stones"?
I'd hate for you to give the nice girl demerits for something she may not be doing...
Posted by: Mikeski at March 17, 2016 10:30 PM (LIUK5)
2
There's a few of Kongou. I guess the British have a reputation for beer, even if it's warm.
Posted by: muon at March 18, 2016 12:36 AM (IUHrD)
It's not just that the ads often slow down site loading and performance intolerably, it's that the ads can be positively harmful in themselves.
The latest example of malicious ads distributing malware happened last weekend. Someone managed to compromise a big league ad server used by the NYT and the BBC, among other high profile sites. One of the things it was distributing was the "TeslaCrypt" ransomware.
1
I don't have a problem with ads that consist of loading an image or an image and a link, unless they present a loading problem that interferes with my use of the site.
But too many ads these days don't just want to load an image, they want to run code, and "hey, trust me to run code on your computer" is something I'm a lot more leery about; "trust these other guys who are paying me some money to run code on your computer" is even worse. Nobody's willing to accept the responsibility for damage done through that attack vector, so why should I incur the risk?
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at March 16, 2016 07:21 PM (/lg1c)
2
Back before the web, when internet connections were typically three orders of magnitude slower than they are today, there was a programming language called TeleScript.
The idea of TeleScript was that you could write a program, set it running on your computer, and the program would transmit itself to the remote server where the data lived, run itself there to collect the information it needed, and then send itself back down the wire to your computer, where it could print out the whatever you'd requested.
We were young once, and in retrospect, too clever for our own good.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at March 16, 2016 10:30 PM (PiXy!)
3
Not long ago, I decided to turn off adblock for a day to see what it was like. I can't imagine how people who don't block ads tolerate it. Even sites that should know better are not just serving ads, but enormous numbers of them. Wired for example, the "please turn off your adblock" banner shows up on page as many as ten times. That's ridiculous. And of course, the risk, as mentioned, is getting intolerable. I wonder if you went to a site that had one of the new "turn off adblock to see this content" barriers, and then you got an infection, if you could sue?
Posted by: David at March 16, 2016 11:34 PM (+TPAa)
4
You can, but at the end of the day, what's the actual cost of having to format your computer and reinstall stuff? Less than the filing fee, to be sure. And a class action wouldn't be likely to work either - how would you be able to demonstrate that you got the virus or whatever from that site and not some other site? And precisely what's their legal responsibility in the first place? They're only obliged to take "reasonable caution", and nobody's defined what that is, when it comes to computer security...
I use NoScript - which could care less if you serve up a picture ad, but is great for preventing cross-site scripting, which is the real issue here. Nobody's serving up infected ads from their own servers, after all. (At least nowhere I'm browsing...)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at March 17, 2016 01:43 AM (v29Tn)
I haven't watched this in a long, long time so I took a look and there was a full BD rip available. torrent torrent torrent and now I'm watching it.
As harem comedies go, this is far from the worst out there. Most shows like this will drag out the introductions, with each haremette getting an intro episode. One nice thing about this show is that they didn't do that. Seven girls, and they introduced all of them in the first episode.
Anyway, Our Hero is Kotarou. It's implied that his mother is dead. His father has moved overseas for work, and Kotarou has been accepted as a student in the high school which inevitably is featured in (nearly) every romcom. He has found an apartment for the astoundingly low rent of just 5000 yen per month (about $45) and considers himself extremely fortunate.
But the reason that apartment is so cheap is that it has a reputation for being haunted. And it is in fact a top drawer weirdness magnet. Ep 4 was a beach episode, so forthwith the cheesecake!
The apartment is haunted. The ghost's name is Sanae:
The next haremette is Theia.
She's princess of some sort of stellar empire, and in order to prove her worthiness to succeed her mother, the currrent Empress, she has to get the occupant(s) of that room to swear fealty to her. She is extremely sensitive about her flat chest.
Ruth is her aide/servant. She also serves as a bit of a governor, to prevent Theia from blowing up the Earth with weapons on her spaceship, and in general to rein her in when Theia gets furious.
Kiriha is from an underground empire. Her people once had a shrine on that spot, and her job is to gain control so she can rebuild the shrine -- which will then provide plentiful mana for reconquest of the surface. Or something like that. And yes, her boobs are by far the largest in the show. And she knows it and is proud of the fact.
1
I felt the same about Yurika, but for the life of me I could not understand why she didn't just perform magic to show them. That was truly amazing magic she performed for Harumi. Also those ghost catchers as well.
Posted by: topmaker at March 16, 2016 07:22 PM (6stZH)
2
I could hand-wave it by saying "You can only do magic when you really need it" but the real answer is that if she'd done magic where the others could see it, it would hav ruined the joke (sic).
When are they going to get into some kind of underlying story? This was another filler episode. The series is beginning to remind me of Kamichu which didn't actually have any kind of underlying plot. It was all the noteworthy events of Yurie's first year as a kami. The only thing they had in common was Yurie herself.
We have been told that there is a real story here, and a whiplash is coming. Well, it better be soon; they're running out of time -- unless this is two cours.
In this episode Haruhiko is reduced to a little kid. The members of the team decide they can't leave him alone, so he moves in with Mai, who takes care of him until they can figure out what happened and how to correct it. And the ending and solution actually did make sense -- I'll give them that. But it didn't contribute anything to the overall plot line (even assuming there is one) except for character building.
Word is that Microsoft has reclassified the Win 10 upgrade to "Recommended" and if you're not paying attention you'll get it even if you don't want it. I assume that means that anyone using AutoUpdate will get it automatically. For the rest of us, who have turned auto-update off, be really careful to peruse the "recommended" upgrade list and turn that one off.
There was a thing I ran last summer which got rid of the Win 10 nag in the tray, and also got rid of the update choice in the Update applet. I wonder if this new upgrade choice will show up for me?
1
I assume that means that anyone using AutoUpdate will get it automatically.
That's not necessarily correct. If you have the "give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates" box unchecked, Windows won't automatically d/l them (assuming you have Important updates installed automatically).
I actually have about 30 recommended updates in queue, waiting for me to approve them... including the W10 install thingy.
Posted by: Wonderduck at March 14, 2016 03:04 PM (KiM/Y)
2
I've done four Windows 10 installs now - two old notebooks I was handing down to my nephews, one new notebook, and a virtual machine on my Mac.
Windows 10 itself is good enough, as long as you turn off every single option it offers during the install process. (There's three full screens of helpful things Microsoft offer you, and you want none of them.) Installing a clean copy is easy and very quick. I know my iMac is supposed to be fast, but watching Windows install itself in under a minute was a new experience.
The process for upgrading an existing machine is... Fraught. Don't let the automated download do its thing; it will very likely break. (It hasn't worked even once for me.) It won't break your machine, but it won't upgrade you to Windows 10.
Instead, download the ISO from Microsoft and use their install tool to load it from a thumb drive. That approach is mostly painless.
Or, of course, just stick with Windows 7.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at March 14, 2016 11:49 PM (PiXy!)
3
Sticking with earlier versions of Windows might not be a choice much longer. Botnets can become a matter of national security, and Microsoft is "too big to fail," let alone be taken down for refusing to keep earlier OSes patched and secure.
I'm going to move all the "stuff that could get me in trouble" to cold storage, do the upgrade, and see if I can set up a dual-boot with Windows 10 (for video games) and Linux (for everything else). Just gotta remember to never install a real web browser or video viewer in Windows again, I've already trained myself to always cancel whenever anything opens an IE or Windows Media Player window.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian at March 16, 2016 08:01 AM (4njWT)
They're playing fast and lose with the canon in this series. For example, the Room of Spirit and Time. In the original series you could only spend two days (our time, i.e. two years inside) in the room, and both Vegita and Goku have already reached their limit. According to Mr. Popo, if you run over the door vanishes and you're stuck inside forever.
And the door is already gone: Piccolo destroyed it in an attempt to trap Majin Buu inside.
But as of this series it's back and there's no longer any limit. Vegita and Goku spent several more days inside, training with each other and not bothering to shave.
Some other changes: Bulma has an older sister named Tights. The Supreme Kai has figured out how to undo his merger with Whosisface and is back to his original form, which we were told was impossible. And Whosisface is back, too.
There are TWELVE universes, and each one has its own pantheon of deities, including its own God of Destruction. They are in pairs. Universes 1 and 12 are similar; 2 and 11 are similar, and so on. All this time we've been in universe 7. The God of Destruction in universe 6 is named Champa and he is the twin brother of our God of Destruction Bills/Beerus/whatever. Champa has an aide named Vados who seems to be the older sister of Whis, aide to Beerus.
Champa and Beerus are apparently competing, or at least Champa is. He seems to think that his universe has the best food, and he shows up with six bird's eggs which he claims are the most delicious food there is.
Well, they're just ordinary eggs, nothing special. Then Beerus brings out instant Ramen from Earth, and blows Champa away with how good it tastes.
And then it gets silly.
I'm not watching it regularly, but every once in a while I catch up.
And now I'm going to go hardboil three eggs and eat them.
2
I would be surprised if it was truly intended to go to Portland as opposed to being diverted somewhere en route. Probably Europe as I've long had a suspicion that a mass muslim uprising would be the source of our next great European Adventure (along the lines and scale of the two previous Adventures from the early part of last century).
Posted by: StargazerA5 at March 14, 2016 11:00 AM (5YSpE)
3
At least they didn't end up shipped to Cuba again.
I can see the dedicated TSA agents now:
Dog: *Woof*
Agent 1: "Woah! Check this out!"
Agent 2: "It had better be a bomb; we have too many packages to check."
Agent 1: "It's a Hellfire Missile!"
Agent 2: "Bad dog!"
Dog: *Whine*
Agent 1: "But he found a missile! He's a good boy!"
Agent 2: "He's a bomb-sniffing dog. It's not a bomb. Let's keep moving."
Agent 1: "But it's a dangerous item!"
Agent 2: "Orders are to look for bombs. This is a propelled weapon; ergo, it isn't a bomb, now, is it? You're new, you'll get used to it..."
Posted by: Civilis at March 14, 2016 12:07 PM (UkqiM)
I was reading about this somewhere else, and it got pointed out that a Hellfire isn't "man portable". It is in fact pretty complicated to launch. For one thing it requires a significant avionics package on the launch vehicle to designate a target.
It's not an ideal terrorist weapon. About the only thing a terrorist could do is disassemble it enough to get the warhead out and use that as a bomb -- but if that was the intention, why not do that before it got shipped?
7
You can't discount inaccurate initial reporting, especially coming from a distant country where English is not the primary language, but that latest conflicts with what was reported last night in significant ways. Most notably, the initial reports were that that missiles were hidden in false compartments, and that the shipping crates were, in fact, wooden coffins.
Posted by: David at March 14, 2016 05:30 PM (+TPAa)
8
Move along! Nothing to see here! Absolutely no terrorism involved!
10
Even with the original reports I assumed that "wooden coffin" was a mistranslation. The word is cognate with "coffer" and comes from a Greek or Latin word that meant something like, well, "box". So there are presumably similar-looking words in other languages.
Posted by: Boviate at March 15, 2016 02:33 PM (XRvFv)
11
Not to mention that a pair of coffins wouldn't have enough room for two Hellfires and associated electronics, let alone hide them in a secret compartment.
I dipped into this episode three or four places for just a few seconds, and it was exactly what I expected it to be. It's also a complete waste of time. I know exactly how the series is going to end.
Olga would be considered to be trancejacked by Lucifer except that Olga isn't resisting. He's going to cause lots of problems, what with releasing all the foreigners from the jail and lots of other things, and our team isn't strong enough to fight him. Nor is anyone else. So Athena is going to convince Our Hero to Overtrance, and he'll win the day. But he'll lose his magic again, and this time it will be permanent. Yawn.
All three of my series this season have turned out to be crap, and they're getting worse by the week. Just lousy, uninspired writing from one end to the other.
And they aren't even giving me much in the way of fan service.
