So it turns out that a "whale squid" is genetically identical to a "Hideauze", and Ledo's war has come to the Earth. Maybe.
What in hell is a combat mech doing with genetic analysis equipment, anyway? And the comfortable feeling I had with this series just got tossed in a basket. Maybe it'll be back, maybe not.
3
Did I miss the battlefield use of biowar weaponry? It doesn't have analysis gear onboard, but it does have a NBC defensive system built
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 19, 2013 08:50 PM (Axk8h)
4
I got the feeling that Chamber is a mass produced unit, which has scouting capabilities. It seems a little odd, but it's not something that takes too much hand waving to believe. Though it does seem a little strange.
...it DOES have NBC protective systems built in, just in case. Since we don't seem to be facing biowar attacks, and it's not like analysis gear is exactly small to date, the Abrams doesn't need to carry it.
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 19, 2013 08:53 PM (Axk8h)
6
Not totally beyond the pale, really. Can it travel through space? Can it land on a planet? If so, something onboard better be able to tell the pilot if he can breathe the air, drink the water, and metabolize the flora and fauna... and the last one of those three takes a pretty sophisticated sensor suite.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 20, 2013 02:42 AM (GJQTS)
7
I haven't seen anything past the first episode yet (except the bountiful cheesecake...), but given the capabilities that Chamber displays there, I'm not surprised he's capable of genetic analysis. It's got to be easier than including a self-contained cold-sleep facility with hypnotic indoctrination capability.
Chamber doesn't make sense as a dedicated combat mech built to fight in a desperate war against an enemy that's well on the way to exterminating humanity. If anything in the propaganda video is true, then he's ridiculously overbuilt for front-line cannon fodder. And yet the carrier ships are specifically designed to deploy large numbers of them, and Ledo's been paired with Chamber for as long as he can remember. (side note: 145,000 hours of service? Is Chamber counting from birth, counting cold-sleep time, or is something even odder going on?)
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 20, 2013 08:54 AM (+cEg2)
8
I suppose you could hand-wave
some sort of awesome replication technology which can duplicate pretty much anything rapidly and cheaply, and if you have that then there isn't any obvious cost to loading up the mechs with fancy gizmos. If they have that, then the limiting factor on their war is people.
I'm entertaining the possibility that the entire war is a hoax, an excuse for the people on top to maintain a police state. Not that I think there isn't any war, but I think the humans started it, and I think the bosses are deliberately not fighting it to their full ability. I think the bosses want a stalemate.
The problem with the 1984 setup is that Ledo appears to be genetically engineered in the first place, with Spartan-like ruthlessness in child selection. That seems like a strange way to keep a society working without some actual existential threat around.
If they have no problem with genetic engineering, culling "less than effective" humans and sleep-indoctrination systems, I really doubt the humans "in charge" would have much issue keeping their position with that Power already established.
A few people have suggested that Gargantia is, itself, an acclimation program for Avalon. That Ledo actually made it home and this is the system used to become less of a solider and more of a human. The problem with that thinking is that they've spent a lot of time on the side characters and world building, with a massive amount of independent action by characters. The series should be much more focused on Ledo than it is, if that was the case. The Gargantia itself is a bit too much of a character in the show for that to really work, other than for a big twist at the end.
I think, though, that we might have a sign of what the actual problem is with Avalon. The Computers are actually in charge. So they keep fighting against the Hideaze because that's what they're supposed to do. They're a life-like AI, not actually sentient. This is pretty much the "Terra e" construction.
Actually, no, this series almost IS "Terra e", which would imply that Chamber is both a problem and a solution.
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