Well, we're two thirds of the way through the series (assuming it's one cour) and we're doing yet another girl-of-the-week episode. This time it was Veronica, the boss of the unit, Yoshichika's superior. An old friend in trouble, and yadayada. Pretty uninteresting, except for the fact that it's the first mission for Yukari and Quetzalcoatl. They had some problems, but they got better as the mission went along. So far it appears that the only power they have when in trance is the ability to fly, but that can be pretty useful when you're fighting on a big oil derrick in the middle of a snow storm.
And she did pretty well, all told, and made a pretty good contribution. (And I won't be surprised if she eventually has some sort of attack.)
I think the only girl left we haven't done an of-the-week for is Athena, and I bet that's next. And then they'll be forced to tell their main story, since they won't have any more sidetracks left. I hope.
UPDATE: Actually, they've been dropping hints about something called "over-trance" all through the series and this episode was another. Ominously, in the first episode we learn that Yoshichika has done over-trance and didn't lose his mind, though he did lose his power. He asked Athena why she sought him out to be his partner and she said it was because she believed he'd be willing to sacrifice everything he was in overtrance. And we've been seeing hints all along about what this might mean. I suspect that the climax of the series is going to require Yoshichika to do an overtrance, again.
Sweet as she seems to be, it looks like Athena chose him because she expects to sacrifice him. And that's really pretty evil, you know that?
A couple of episodes ago there was a confrontation between Athena and Lucifer and what they said suggested that it was a conflict between the two of them which started the war. It makes me wonder if maybe Athena was the bad guy in all this.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I watch an episode of GATE, what I want to see is Itami and his ladies.
This episode gave us about 30 seconds of them, and the rest of it was about Zorzal establishing his power in the capitol via a reign of terror. The upshot of it all was:
it looks like Tyuule is getting her way. There's every reason to believe that all out war will be beginning soon.
As Trump continues to win in the primary ballot box and in the caucus race, I am endlessly amused by the reaction of the Republican establishment, not to mention earnest outsiders. (I'm not a fan of earnestness even at the best of times.)
Starting today, we're getting a huge smear job. I saw one article which talked about how Trump didn't serve in the military during the Viet Nam War. Another one talked about how he did a lot of sleeping around when he was young (gasp!). These were by people in the establishment trying to make those knuckle dragging religious plebes turn against Trump -- and they won't work. The establishment is completely missing the point.
Trump's voters are not voting for him because of what he is. They're voting for him because of what he is not. He isn't part of the establishment, and he clearly doesn't like the establishment -- and a lot of voters feel the same way. Republican candidates each two years come out and talk the talk, and get elected, and then go to Washington and forget all that.
I wrote about that last September. The Republicans aren't really in opposition to the Democrats; on most things they want the same result. And the Republicans seem to value collegiality to an insane extent; the thing they're most worried about is angering the Democrats and the Democratic media (which is to say, most of it).
Middle American Republicans are tired of that shit, and the reason they're voting for Trump is because he's a bull in the china shop. The one thing he clearly doesn't give a damn about is collegiality.
Maybe his presidency would be bizarre. Maybe it might even be catastrophic (though it would be tough to be as catastrophic as Obama has been). But the one thing that is certain is that it will shatter the existing order. And that is what his voters are voting for. It's what they really care about.
So how do more main-stream candidates beat him? The first step is to recognize what it is he offers that the voters really want -- and that's exactly what none of them are willing to do, because they're part of the establishment trying for the latest time to sell the voters a bill of goods.
The (Republican) voters want a complete outsider, one not beholden to the existing power structure, one not afraid of it and willing to say things that make the insiders gasp and head for their fainting couches. That means that in this Republican campaign Senators and Governors are all doomed before they begin. The simple fact that they're already part of the existing power structure is enough to render them unacceptable to the people who are voting for Trump.
And every time someone in the existing power structure gasps and moans and tries to bring Trump down, Trump grins and his support grows. Because it's obviously a desperation move -- and it completely misses the target.
For instance: Trump has been doing the H1-B game in his resort in Florida. Gasp! Stunning! Hey, all you plebes! Look at this!
Well, the answer is Trump didn't make the rules, and he has a fiduciary duty to his stock holders to make his business as profitable as he can. If that means firing highly paid Americans and hiring foreign workers, then that's what the rules of the game say he's supposed to do. That's all it means.
It doesn't mean he's a hypocrite, which is what the scandal-mongers hope all the sloping foreheads will take from it.
The kind of people who are voting for Trump have spent years, decades even, being held in contempt by the existing order -- and now they're returning the favor. What they want is for the existing order to get destroyed. If there were a better candidate they thought capable and willing to do that, he'd be getting the votes. But Trump is the only one they believe in, so he's it.
And he's going to continue to be it, because the one thing the existing order (and all their hand-picked candidates) do not want is for the existing order to go away. Trump is going to win the candidacy -- and I believe he'll win the Presidency, too.
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His recent attempt to threaten the Ricketts family cost him at least one vote: mine. Not because Tom Ricketts owns the Cubs (his parents aren't involved at all with the team, save for being in the family trust), but because Trump tried to stifle their right to express their support for someone other than him
I would rather my president not act like a petulant child. Besides, where would he stop? If he's willing to threaten the founder of TD Ameritrade (personal wealth: $1 billion), what would he do to someone like me? Other than make me disappear, that is?
Nope, while I'm not particularly interested in voting for ANY of the candidates (if some party felt like running an actual turnip for president, I'd have to at least give serious consideration to voting for it), I'd rather vote for someone not so obviously batguano insane.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 25, 2016 05:20 PM (KiM/Y)
I read that to mean that he didn't object to them being against him; he objected to them being against him secretly.
Anyway, don't misinterpret this post of mine to indicate that I'm advocating voting for Trump. Rather, I'm trying to explain why he's winning, and why the attacks against him are making him stronger.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 25, 2016 06:20 PM (+rSRq)
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The only way Trump will become president is if Bernie Sanders is the other party's nominee. Trump is not afraid of saying outrageous things, but after he repeated the Code Pink mantra that George W. Bush is a greater monster than Hitler - there is simply going to be too many Republicans who will not work to get him elected if he is the nominee. Having no ground game is not a winning strategy, no matter which party you are - and Trump has not demonstrated any interest in having a ground game.
Posted by: cxt217 at February 25, 2016 06:28 PM (O4dlr)
I think a Saunders-vs-Trump campaign would be awesome: an avowed socialist versus an uber-capitalist!
I also happen to think that Hillary is toast. She's going to be indicted soon, or there's going to be a major scandal about the fact that she isn't being indicted. There are also hints that her health has failed, and rumors that she's an alcoholic. For the time being all those things are being hidden but I don't believe they can be kept secret until after the election. Even if she gets the nomination, she's going to be seriously damaged goods. Her campaign comes down to "Vote for me because I'm a woman" and if she tries to take that against Trump, he'll crush her.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 25, 2016 06:47 PM (+rSRq)
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Part of the reason I don't believe Hillary can do it is because this is looking like a rerun of Lurleen Wallace. And when it really comes down to it, I don't think the voters will accept that.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 25, 2016 06:49 PM (+rSRq)
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While I have no love for Trump at all, I appreciate why he's getting the support he is. It really tears me up when I wind up in mind-numbed political argument defending Trump because the latest tear-down hit-piece was mostly or completely false. I wonder if the latest attempt will gain traction; I've seen an increasing number of stories attempting to link support of Trump (by Republicans of course, not the Democrats who are supporting him) to outright racism. I read one in the Times that included the claim that 20% of Trump supporters opposed the abolishment of slavery. (The question was apparently something like "You oppose the use of all executive orders, would you even oppose an executive order like the emancipation proclamation?"
And of course the Nazis and Klan are for him, but as I've pointed out to several people, the Nazis and Klan are, according to news stories, ALWAYS for the leading, right-leaning candidate. If Trump somehow falls behind Cruz, the Klan and the Nazis will support Cruz.
Posted by: Ben at February 25, 2016 06:54 PM (DRaH+)
So why should that matter to anybody but the Ricketts? Though, to be blunt, if it was all that secret, I doubt that Trump would have found out about it.
Considering that the FEC and the NY Times announced that they had donated $3 million to a SuperPAC, it hardly required any heavy detective work to discover... just the ability to read.
Wait, you're right... that might make it a problem for him.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 25, 2016 07:33 PM (KiM/Y)
Trump has also recently publicly favoring Obamacare, except he believes the wrong people are in charge. Having had to deal with Obamacare, I view with disfavor and distaste anyone who favors it. Also, where is his ground game?
Trump is the candidate that the GOP establishment deserves. He is not what the Republican Party (As a whole.) or the United States deserves or should get.
Posted by: cxt217 at February 25, 2016 08:10 PM (O4dlr)
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This election is a startling display of how disfuntional our politics has become. Neither Hillary, Trump, or Sanders should ever even have been willing to step up, should have had no backing if they did, and should have immediately gone down with 1 or 2% poll ratings. The democrats have nobody that they can realistically present as centrist, so they lie and claim somebody like Obama is a centrist when in reality he was the most liberal nominee until Sanders.
On the Republican side, you can go all the way into squishy RINO territory, and still be viewed, or at least universally portrayed, as a far-right looney.
It is currently impossible to get the support of either party's mainstream wing and have any cross-over to the other party. And it looks like that's going to get us an election where our choices are an incompetent blow-hard, and someone that about half the nation believes should be in prison.
Posted by: David at February 25, 2016 08:16 PM (+TPAa)
David, the reason is that the establishments of both parties are routinely ignoring what the voters want. If they were listening, and paid attention, there wouldn't be a voter revolt like we're seeing.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 25, 2016 09:00 PM (+rSRq)
It never occurred to me that this show was intended to be a comedy, but that's how it's turning out. It isn't a huge surprise, on the other hand, that there's at least some fan service. Less, in fact, than I originally expected considering the teaser poster released before the series began. Anyway, this episode makes up some of that deficit.
It's an onsen episode. Yup.
A phantom creates a hotspring right in the middle of the school. It's heating up the place, not to mention making the humidity rise like mad, and classes can't continue until it gets dispelled. So we get to see some of the other teams try to beat it, and no one can. Like these three:
Back in the classroom, licking their wounds.
Haruhiko's plan is to paint Mai's butt red to try to seduce the giant monkey that's causing all this.
And she gets captured by the monkey, who is about to give her a lick job. Haruhiko demonstrates a new power:
Believe it or not, he summons Cthulhu, and he doesn't need his sketchbook to do it. (I thought Cthulhu was more impressive than that...)
This whole episode is complete silliness, but it's fun, and it's an excuse to get the girls into swimsuits. So it's not a total loss.
UPDATE: After last week's episode I was expecting a flood of Neko-Mai pictures, but it didn't happen. I wonder if this episode will inspire Mai swimsuit pictures? Maybe the fan artists have lost interest in this show...
UPDATE: One problem is simply that Mai hasn't been getting a lot of screen time.
Anyone who has regularly followed sites like Danbooru and Gelbooru will have noticed a radical shift in subject matter over the last couple of years. Used to be about half of it was Touhou Project, but these days that's pretty rare and the most common subject is Kancolle.
I think the reason is pretty obvious: the Touhou characters all look like they're 5 years old, but the Kancolle characters are grown up (and out!). So the tldr answer is "Boobs".
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 23, 2016 07:04 PM (+rSRq)
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To be fair, that's the correct answer to many things.
Posted by: Wonderduck at February 23, 2016 09:23 PM (KiM/Y)
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There's a range in both games. Touhou has a couple of lolis and a few adult women, with the rest being teenagers, being drawn as older teenagers in ecchi art. Kancolle has destroyers and submarines generally as middle-schoolers, cruisers generally as high-schoolers, and the battleships and aircraft carriers generally as older teenage and adult mikos. (One of the carriers is younger and has breast envy.)
Posted by: muon at February 26, 2016 06:17 AM (IUHrD)
I don't do "social media" stuff. The only reason I have a Facebook account was originally to allow me to make comments on Powerline, but these days also Instapundit and Hot Air.
I have a LiveJournal account but the only reason was so that I could leave comments on Pete's page there, back when he used it for anime. I think it's been years since I last looked at it and I'm not even sure what the URL is any more.
Facebook really, really would like me to do more, like have lots of "friends" but I'm trying not to get caught up in that. And if there's a Twitter account in my name, no one ever told me about it, and it isn't mine.
So it's been amusing to read about the latest social media tempest in a tea cup: Twitter is committing commercial suicide. Seems a few days ago they created a "Trust and Safety Council" and invited a whole bunch of non-conservative activists to join, including someone named Sarkeesian who is an SJW of the worst kind. And starting last weekend, it seems she went on a jihad to cleanse Twitter of everyone she hated, started with someone named Robert Stacy McCain. His main account was blocked; this morning his backup account was also blocked. When various people piped up in support, a lot of them had their accounts blacklisted in one or more ways. A lot of other people are piping up (Ace and Instapundit) and there's the beginning of a conservative boycott, which may grow.
Meanwhile, Twitter's stock price has been plummeting for the last couple of months, for what seems to be a pretty straightforward reason: there's no income. Money is going out but none is coming in. The business model is right out of the dotcom boom: look for millions of eyeballs and figure out later how to get money from them. Well, it's "later" and they still haven't figured out how.
But the first step seems to be to alienate about half their users. Not me, though, because I was never a user to begin with. And as long as Pixy doesn't succumb to political correctness, and there's no indication that he's susceptible to that, then this particular soap box is big enough for me. I've been in the spotlight and it wasn't very comfortable. I'm much happier over here in the twilight where not many people are paying attention. (But I'm grateful to you all who do, nonetheless.)
Hooray for idiots! Life would be a lot more boring without them.
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Twitter's problem isn't just no income, it's now no user growth too. Lots of new economy companies promise their investors that they will burn money getting users, then convert their user base into cash "eventually". For Twitter, they haven't managed to figure out the conversion process, and now they're not making any progress on expanding their user base either. Things are not looking good for them.
Posted by: Boviate at February 22, 2016 04:42 PM (XRvFv)
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I'm convinced that the modern social media business model makes sense. It just doesn't make financial sense.
The new business model is to build up a large customer base by being useful and reasonably impartial, and doing it at a loss to attract customers. Then, at some point, when you decide you have enough customers, you take your profit.
But, not in the form of money. In the form of political influence. You've got eyeballs, you feed them a skewed version of reality designed to effect how they vote. You've got customers who are of the opposite political persuasion, you screw with them, and extract from them the opportunity cost of switching to a different platform right in the middle of an election campaign.
Sure, your company tanks, customers eventually flee. But not before you've thrown an election.
The big investors in companies like Twitter don't object to this, because this is the profit they were looking for. They weren't buying future income, they were buying a chance to push politics in a direction they like.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at February 22, 2016 04:47 PM (l55xw)
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Except the foundation of Twitter's business is pictures of cats.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2016 06:03 PM (+rSRq)
If they're playing that kind of game, they're likely to all end up in jail. (Not to mention sued into oblivion by other stock holders.)
Anyway, all inside trading is public information, by law. If a bunch of them were shorting the stock, it would be on the front page of the WSJ.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2016 09:18 PM (+rSRq)
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How's this? They offer paid accounts, like $5/month, and guarantee no censorship or blacklisting! They could call it the "Conservative Shakedown Special".
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2016 09:41 PM (+rSRq)
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Skeptics of social media only need to discover how obscenely profitable Facebook is before their belief system is shaken to its core. Or perhaps not -- people's capacity of delusion is immense.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at February 22, 2016 11:13 PM (XOPVE)
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Not only is Twitter committing commercial suicide (the absolute number of tweets has declined rapidly as well, meaning less participation as well as fewer users), but management is opening itself up to a lawsuit from Twitter's shareholders.
I've heard some sources probing about the possibility of a class action suit against management for pursuing policies designed to shrink their user base, and there may be some justification for this. Several prominent alt-right and conservatives have left or have been banned outright, and the purging will continue as long as the anti-speech Truth & Safety Council exists.
I've been trolling Twitter since 2012 and the best part of it was the silliness and insanity of the users. Now their TOS allow you to lodge a complaint against someone for "disagreeing with my opinion." There should be a couple of alternatives to Twitter cropping up soon, though. Mark Kern is working on one for League for Gamers, and Vox Day is working with a group to put his own together. I know Quitter already exists, but I hear that's also run by SJW types.
Posted by: wahsatchmo at February 23, 2016 07:59 AM (VFkGH)
Aside from that, and a lot of angst, a waste of time. Sheesh.
Olga keeps varying between sympathetic character and total asshole. It's obvious to even the most casual of observers that
he's eventually going to partner with Lucifer and I wish they'd get on with it. But I guess they can't, because that's also obviously going to be the final plot arc.
UPDATE: Athena is turning out to be major league angsty. I guess it's in the rules: if you get a magical girlfriend, she's either going to be tsundere or angsty. Frankly, I don't like either of those but at least tsundere gets you better fan service.
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"I guess it's in the rules: if you get a magical girlfriend, she's either going to be tsundere or angsty." Would Belldandy be an exception? I don't think she was too angsty in the anime.
Posted by: muon at February 22, 2016 04:34 AM (IUHrD)
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Beldandy was totally angsty, and let's not get sidetracked by her please.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2016 07:20 AM (+rSRq)
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Here's a question: Would Ruby and Yukari from Rosario to Vampire count as magical girlfriend characters?
Posted by: topmaker at February 22, 2016 02:29 PM (6stZH)
Yes, magical girlfriend is a narrative trope, not a character trope. The girlfriend doesn't even have to be a magic-user; Chobits is a magical girlfriend show with a robot girl, and FLCL with an alien, for examples. You just need a putzy everydude completely outkicking his coverage with some sort of supernatural female.
Rosario is just a harem with two witches in it; it head-faked being a magical-girlfriend story (with Moka as the magical girlfriend), until Tsukune powered up.
So if Potato-kun in Luck and Logic gets his mojo back, it could take the same track, I suppose.
Posted by: Mikeski at February 22, 2016 04:05 PM (LIUK5)
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I just want to say that I love the "outkicking his coverage" metaphor you just used. That's the first time I've seen that particular sports term used in that way, and I applaud it.
Posted by: Boviate at February 22, 2016 04:44 PM (XRvFv)
A lot of interesting things in this episode but one in particular: some back story on the gate itself.
Also, Lelei is awesome and she seems to think she's married to Itami. Maybe. Via a local form of common-law marriage. (I don't think she's serious about it; she's just preempting her sister.)
The nice thing about this series is that most of the characters seem to have their heads screwed on straight. We'll see if Itami continues that trend and reports this up ASAP. Also, if he makes an effort to pick Rory's and the older mage's (can't remember her name) brain for what they know about it.
If the gate opens and closes like that, the biggest issue is not having a brigade on the wrong side when it closes. Figuring out what everyone else knows about that and getting it to decisionmakers should be a priority.
Posted by: CatCube at February 19, 2016 10:41 PM (fa4fh)
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Japan will need to make some major decisions soon.
Do they pull everyone back (unlikely).
Do they poll the soldiers to see if they want to be possibly trapped for a lifetime? If so, do they bring families over?
Do they build factories to be able to maintain a military advantage? There's going to be an awful lot of folks looking for payback.
Posted by: topmaker at February 20, 2016 12:46 PM (6stZH)
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I suspect it will be a major evacuation, except that Itami will stay. But for the moment the government of Japan doesn't know there's going to be such a crisis. Itami will be including it in his next report and it will go from there.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 20, 2016 01:01 PM (+rSRq)
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I think that is what people in the other world think is going on - but I am not convince that is necessarily so or at the very least, what they know does not represent the whole story. I think the standard reply to hearing that would be "More data needed."
Posted by: cxt217 at February 20, 2016 02:24 PM (Z3BHy)
When a series is based on light novels, sometimes the wiki has information from the novels that doesn't appear in the anime. The wiki for Mondaijitachi is like that and has loads of info that never made it on screen.
I was kind of hoping the wiki for GATE would be like that, in as much as the story in the light novels is finished, and that's what both the manga and anime are based on.
But it doesn't have; it's entirely based on the anime. It acknowledges the existence of the novels but has no material derived from them. Alas.
What I do know is that
the final novel is named "The Gate Closes".
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 20, 2016 05:17 PM (+rSRq)
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I also have a pretty good idea of how the plot of light novel series goes - and it does not appear to be what people are speculating.
Posted by: cxt217 at February 20, 2016 05:48 PM (Z3BHy)
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Building factories to maintain that military advantage would be a rather difficult undertaking; Modern munitions rest on a large industrial ecology, steel making, chemistry, semiconductors, plastics. I don't think it's been established what the smallest self-sufficient industrial society would be, but I'm guessing it would be in the 100k+ range.
So you're talking a major colonization effort. Just shipping a century of munitions use through the gate would probably be easier.
Lelei has demonstrated that a knowledge of science considerably increases the power of a mage. We also saw that magic works on both sides of the gate. The obvious conclusion is that Japan should prioritize learning everything it can about magic. And they've got something to trade: Knowledge of physics.
Might ultimately let them reopen the gate if it closes. But even if it does close, magic is probably a bigger win for Japan than the oil and mineral resources they've been looking for.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at February 21, 2016 05:47 AM (l55xw)
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OK, CXT, that's why Pixy gave us spoiler tags. Let her rip!
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 21, 2016 09:55 AM (+rSRq)
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Ah...well.
If there are people who are willing to risk staying, they need to be left at least the equivalent of a victorian workshop. As Brett Bellmore points out, modern nitrocellulose propellants require an extensive (and toxic) physical plant. Black powder on the other hand, is quite doable and Giridonis have a number of advantages and should be adequate given that the enemy has medieval tech level.
Things like water filtration systems, steam engines....steam engines coupled with mages. Airships...hot air airships heated by mages with fire spells...with gattling guns to deal with the fiery but not "fire" dragons...these would still give the Alnus settlement a considerable trade surplus while the powers that be try to get their Murata's and Maxims cranked out in large enough numbers to take the place of the more effective earth built ordinance.
Of course the reason to risk this is, the science. Brett Bellmore mentioned magic. These mages are channeling something that was disproven by the Higgs Boson...so somebody would be wrong and there is some energy that is not interacting with our technology that they can harness. I'm sure that a lot of mages are going to be given tours of the far side of the gate...and the inside of MRI machines...and spend a lot of time touring the inside of hospitals while this is being examined. Physics aside...WHERE is this place.? Is it another planet, or another dimension? A telescope needs to be built and an expedition sent to the antipodes to set up another one there to map the sky of this world. A Lambda rocket would certainly fit through the gate (one tractor trailer could bring two dozen) and could be used for sounding and possibly sending a small micro-satellite into a polar orbit to give a rough map of the planet. the biology of FLYING. FIREBREATHING. DRAGONS. needs to be studied. There are plants and animals that might have medicinal properties or commercial applications (Dragon....Steaks..and a side industry of dragon scales. ) so you have a huge set of things that can reproduce, and KNOWLEDGE of immense importance that will be available for a limited, but uncertain amount of time. the rewards are immense and will accrue with every day you have teams in the field, but the end may come with little or no warning so there is a very real reason to keep an ability for anyone left behind to take care of themselves.
Also catgirls and elf chicks.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at February 21, 2016 04:56 PM (AaBUm)
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Speaking of the Lamda rocket, why hasn't Japan launched a reconnaissance satellite yet? Heck, are we even certain that the "special region" is even on a spheroid planet? Have we confirmed that it isn't a flat disk resting on the backs of elephants, who in turn are standing on a turtle?
Posted by: Siergen at February 21, 2016 06:09 PM (De/yN)
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They don't know anything like enough about the planet on the other side.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 21, 2016 06:23 PM (+rSRq)
