1 Split cours maybe?

2

Well.  Rory's rampage was kind of... Disney-fied.

From understanding about one word in five, once again Princess Pena realizes that not only is the Empire screwed, it's been screwed by one of the most benevolent nations on Earth.

I wonder if catgirls will be enough to reverse Japan's demographic catastrophe?

3

Rory's rampage was kind of... Disney-fied.

I think that was inevitable. The manga is pretty ecchi, and they've been toning down the nudity and the gore quite a lot.

4

The best thing I can say about this arc, besides Rory proving as awesome yet again, is that it is over.  Now I can pretend it never happened.

What a piece of crap to have to sit through.

5 This pretty much ends his "Americans are assholes" message, as well as "People in the Diet are stupid" message.

His third message, to the extent that there is one, is "Soldiers should consider doing what they know is right, even if it means violating orders." And that one is pretty subversive and a little terrifying.

Through the whole series, the defining characteristic of Itami is that he does what he thinks is right. His officers, particularly the commanding general, put up with this because every time he's done so the outcome has been a good one. So he gets slapped down with a token punishment, and then permitted to continue to serve.

His insubordination (for that's what it is) gives his superiors an excuse to do things they also want to do but had no orders for, the most extreme case of that being in chapters 39-46.

6

And then we have Shino threaten to shoot and kill her superior.  That is not even something that can be joked about by a private, let alone a non-com.

7 "Well. Rory's rampage was kind of... Disney-fied."

Well, it may have been in the background, but that one guy's head was definitely torso relinquished.

I did like the fact that it was at least the big three who were equally smeared. The Prime Minister resigned, so that was a plus as well.

What was the call from the defense minister for? Was it to brief him on the attackers, or to tell him about the resignation, pr was it to say he had free reign to counter attack?

8 You know, if Itami is the defense minister's secret doujin hookup... that goes a LONG way to explaining how he managed to get a Ranger badge.

9 I don't think the timeline works. He wasn't minister of defense when Itami first joined the JSDF.

10 Yeah, but if he was in line to become Minister of Defense later, he would have been plenty high enough to call in a favor or two, "don't kick this guy out" - especially in the JSDF, which (pre-Gate) isn't really a fighting military...

11 I've not watched this anime but have followed it's reviews and comments on this site closely.  This may seem melodramatic but I find this series.... disturbing.  I love anime and admire Japanese culture but I am fully cognizant of Japan's dark side.  Japan has always had a major xenophobic streak and in the early 20th century that xenophobia was amped up and turn psychotic.  That was a major reason for Japan's war crimes.   Japan has been shielded from it's enemies by the US and has been a model state since WWII.  However, I'm sure the smarter Japanese have noticed that the US interest in it's allies has.... waned under the current administration.  With a more belligerent China and perpetually opportunistic Russia (and the rest of Asia still pissed off about WWII), I'm sure many Japanese realize that they will have to step up their own defenses and not rely on the US which is becoming less and less reliable.   But how to do this?  The Japanese for good reasons have been very contemptuous of their military for it's abysmal failures in WWII.  And then there are those pesky constitutional restrictions.  What is needed is a dramatic attitude change toward their military.    Now I don't have an issue with that and I think it's needed and healthy.  However, it seems from this anime that some Japanese (at least the creators of this anime) are slipping back into their bad old habit of xenophobia.  They are portraying the rest of the world as evil/incompetent with the Japanese as a shining beacon.  Kind of similar to their pre-WWII propaganda.     And that bit about the female refugee's worry about having to sell their bodies to get by?  Wow, talk about tone death.  Given the Japanese military penchant for sex slaves in WWII I'm amazed they'd even go there. 

12 I apologize for my giant wall of text but the comment section refused to add my paragraph breaks.  I'd appreciate any advice on how to incorporate them in the future.   

13 You can't use HTML tags here. Also, try using the "preview" button before you post.

14 Sorry, I did use the preview function and saw the lack of paragraph breaks.  I added more empty lines between the paragraphs in the comments screen by hitting 'Enter' but they didn't take in the preview.  I used no HTML tags so I dunno what the problem is.

15 homer1357: To make paragraphs, I add two line breaks, and they display as an almost two line separator; a bit ugly but it works.

Hmmm, I came across a spoiler that indicates the author didn't fall into the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere Mark II trap, at least not directly. And there isn't a lot of xenophobia being shown, is there? Yes, the cat-girls and such are implicitly in a bit of danger, but not of that sort ^_^!

You raised an interesting point about Tuka worrying about having to become a prostitute. Iffy in the context of someone who knows about the WWII history of comfort women, but then again, how many Japanese are taught about that? I don't know, but I've read a lot of WWII history taught in the schools is sanitized. I myself took it merely as a description of how bad things could be in their world---or at least what she was told about humans while growing up.  I guess we already sort of knew that from how the group of refugees came to live with the JSDF.

16

When you signed up in order to comment, you got your own blog here. You don't have to use it, of course, but it would be a good place for you to experiment to look for a solution.

I'd prefer not to turn my comment session into your debugging session.