March 18, 2016

GATE -- ep 23

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.

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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.

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Or not so much...

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Somebody local is going to make a fortune collecting all that brass.

Anyway,

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 12:04 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 123 words, total size 2 kb.

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)

3

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.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 18, 2016 04:42 PM (+rSRq)

4 That looks pretty high for a tactical drop.

Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at March 19, 2016 04:05 PM (ATlQg)

5 There wasn't any AAA, and all the other air defenses (i.e. flying dragons) had been taken out, and a lower drop is more risky.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 19, 2016 05:02 PM (+rSRq)

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)

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