1 And you're not missing anything.  Trust me.

2 I've almost finished the manga and really enjoy it.  The anime isn't doing much for me.  The production team took out a lot of the little things that make the manga enjoyable.  They're also rushing the anime; I'm guessing to try to fit the whole story into one series.

3 Oh, and the glasses are inhabited by a shikigami.

4 I'm already looking towards a remake like Kanon 2006. But it is the only series I'm following in season. If I drop JitsuWata, there will be nothing left.

1

After reading your reviews on this show, I decided to give it a shot.  Despite the "everybody other that Japan is evil and stupid" I'm enjoying it.  I can forgive the writer some prejudice in favor of his country, though.  I'll probably end up paying for a Crunchyroll subscription to keep up on this.

The star fort is probably a reasonable structure, though not really necessary with modern weapons--the M2s they have mounted can place accurate fires a long ways.  If you're not worried about artillery, though, fixed fortifications are probably not a bad idea.  However, they've built it wrong.  They have a fence arranged in a star pattern, where they should have an elevated berm there with machine guns on it.  The purpose of the "arrowheads" on the star points is so you can place fires back along the wall to the inside corners of the star from the outside tips of the arrowhead.  When it's just a cyclone fence, as they have here, it really serves no purpose.  They could probably use HESCO bastions like they did for the rest of the walls.  The background artist probably worked from a drawing and didn't look too closely.

As far as the moat goes, they could certainly build one.  Drainage would be kind of a pain in the ass, but they're in the bottom of a valley so they could certainly provide an outlet.

I was trying to figure out what those hydraulic excavators were doing (other than "look like construction").  They weren't digging a basement or anything, and leveling ground is much, much, much more efficient with other equipment.  They still get a pass from when they had that king lead a cavalry charge and get his horse fuckered up on a wire obstacle.  Most fiction seems to forget about concertina wire, and it gets used everywhere on a real modern battlefield.

2

I think those clear areas between the outer fence and the first curtain wall are probably mined. If you can't have a moat, a minefield will suffice.

The problem with a moat is where to get all the water from. I assume that for water inside the camp the engineers have dug some wells, but for a moat that wouldn't be sufficient.

3

The clear area could be mined, though as much as the Japanese government seems to be fretting about public and world opinion, they probably wouldn't want to blow off the Ottawa Treaty.  It's hard to say if the writer even thought of that, though.  Either way, if they were mining the area they still wouldn't need to have the jogs in the fence line.

And moats don't have to have water.  I think on star forts they usually didn't--they just wanted the wall of the fort to be at the same elevation as the surrounding ground so the enemy couldn't place direct fires onto the face of the wall.  Besides, we do modern obstacles with dry ditches, though they're mostly to stop tanks.  If all you're concerned with are dismounts, wire obstacles are a more efficient use of effort since you don't need heavy equipment and you don't risk providing cover in the ditch.

4 It occurs to me they don't have guard towers around the perimeter, either.

5 A fire against that wall would be useless because that wall is made of concrete.

6 And it's clear that we're putting a lot more thought into this than the director did.

7 Direct fire as in "cannon fire coming in at no or nearly-no elevation", right?

Keep in mind that the JSDF has very little organic knowledge about a lot of aspects of war - no combat veterans, a complete break in military tradition, and a training culture entirely geared towards peacetime and, well, inoffensiveness. It's entirely possible they laid out a traditional star fort because someone asked "hey, what should we make the fort look like?" and looked it up on Wikipedia, without necessarily understanding the logic behind all the defensive features and whether they apply in this situation. Not saying they're stupid or ignorant, just that it's really easy to take for granted that armies are supposed to know this stuff - our guys aren't working out of sixty-year-old textbooks when they lay out a firebase.

I don't know that we can conclude anything about the presence of artillery just by there being walls in the town. We KNOW there are dragons of several varieties and some kind of orc/beastman thing; there may be other monsters about. A big honkin' wall may not stop the king and his siege train, but might be just the thing to help you live through an invasion of goblins or wargs. If they weren't having to defend that thing, there'd be houses on both sides of the wall, lining the roads in and out, etc. You only crowd into a fortification like that when you are worried that you'll need it. (Or possibly, as Steven said, we're thinking about this too hard, and the town was drawn that way because it looked nice in a manga panel...)

8

As was pointed out to me, this started as a light novel, so the writer likely just mentioned 'their fortified base' in passing.  Echoing what Avatar wrote, I'd imagine that the manga artist read that, looked up "forts" on Google Images, and drew what looked good.

I was intrigued this ep by the exchange between Itami and Lt. Yanagida, who comes across as an intel officer.  The losing radio contact is nice for the 'otaku-with-a-heart-of-gold' character development, but why didn't missing more than one check-in result in an air sortie of helos or jets?  Recon Team 3 could not have been that far from their base.  In fact, looking at the map of 'the land through the Gate,' I'd guess they were only miles away.

More overthinking?  Yeah.  Thing is, when you encounter what seems to be shaping up to be a gem of a series, you expect the best, even to the point of wanting to help.

"And I hope to hell no one makes Rory mad."

*snort!* It's a thing of beauty.

9 Geologically, those hills next to the river don't make a great deal of sense. You'd almost suppose they had to be deliberately built up.
Of course, the straight course of that river doesn't make much sense, either; Rivers meander, particularly in almost flat areas. Maybe it's actually a canal, not a river, and the hills are where they got rid of the dirt. 

From a defensive standpoint, though, with magical beasties, I suppose there could be something about those woods that makes them a less than desirable attack route. Rabid dryads, or something. 

10

A fire against that wall would be useless because that wall is made of concrete.

Direct fire as in "cannon fire coming in at no or nearly-no elevation", right?

I was speaking "Army" again without thinking about it.  Avatar is mostly right, except that the term "direct fire" encompasses small arms as well.

You could be right about the walls being concrete, though I originally didn't think they were.  They had HESCO bastions in the scene 9 minutes in where the refugees are introducing themselves, but the rest of the artwork is inconsistent.  I'd expect they'd use HESCOs for the outer wall., but on closer inspection they certainly could be concrete.

11

When I said "a fire against the wall" I meant burning lumber. That's a legitimate tactic against a wooden palisade, for example. (Or more simply, throwing oil on the palisade and then setting it on fire.)

We already know that the natives don't have any kind of artillery, or else Italica wouldn't look like it does.

12 *This* is why I like Gate so much--forget the harem, the JAPAN STRONK, and everything else--it provides endless opportunities for Engineer's/Armchair General's Disease, and the old magic/tech divide.

13 One side note on fortifications--the Empire is used to having air superiority.  While they normally mess around with talons and lances, one of the ways that they maintain their rule is probably with the threat of skins of oil and flaming arrows from above.  How would a medieval city or keep even begin to fight that, given that .50 AP is the minimum to penetrate dragonscale (meaning that arrows and bolts are only threats in the Golden BB sense).

14 Keep in mind that not all dragons are cut from the same cloth. In fact, we can be pretty sure of this. The locals know their forces got wiped out, and that those forces included... "ordinary" riding dragons? Drakes? Whatever. The same locals do not believe that the same force that kicked their butt so hard it relocated to their hairline could even -drive off-, not kill, not even injure, just drive off our friend Puff. Implies pretty hard that Puff is a few cuts above in terms of toughness, I think.

Honestly, if we say "half" is less an absolute numeric description and more of a way of emphasizing the importance, the Chinese premier's idea isn't a bad one. By our standards, the Chinese economic expansion of the last 30-40 years has been explosive, but that's slowing down as the low-hanging fruit of an industrial revolution are mostly picked out. Nothing on offer in China is even remotely as lucrative as the idea of vast new continents populated by people who don't even have firearms. Having a serious policy of Growth By Settling... darn it, what's our word for "the world on the other side of the gate"?... solves some very serious problems for China, including demographic (lots of young men with no available women) and political ("feeling oppressed? Head out for the New Territories!")

And Japan is in a terrible position to take similar advantage. They don't have a big population surplus, especially not a poor one who would find a farming life to be congenial. They don't have an expansionist impulse (we didn't merely cut it off, we seared the stump). They haven't had a settler tradition in recorded history.

(The US is kind of in the middle there. An extremely successful settler tradition, a cultural tradition that isn't rooted in ethnicity, a lot of good-government memes, and well, complete military dominance over the country where the gate happens to be sitting doesn't hurt. On the down side, a serious tradition of self-government, so any government body that arose there would probably be separate from the US proper...)

15

 I was intrigued this ep by the exchange between Itami and Lt. Yanagida, who comes across as an intel officer.  The losing radio contact is nice for the 'otaku-with-a-heart-of-gold' character development, but why didn't missing more than one check-in result in an air sortie of helos or jets? 

Well, the conversation indicated that they were communicating, but in short bursts. 
The scene with Yanagida was certainly interesting. 
Where is JAXA? I mean, the next thing they ought to check is to get a telescope look at the star pattern of the world. How many moons does this world have? Hell, transport a LAMBDA rocket or something similarly small through and put a satellite in orbit.  It's possible that there are continents/islands with no indigenous peoples and thus settleable without grief or guilt. Set up an airstrip at the gate and fly there.
 If it IS an alternate Earth, then physics just got a huge discovery. If it's an alien planet in a far away system then that's an important bit of info too.
Also set up EM wave detectors around all the magic users and find out what frequencies they are broadcasting on (Ocatrine obviously) and if they can't then physicists get ANOTHER budget increase . 

16

That's a good idea but it isn't urgent. For the time being there's a huge logistical bottleneck and they have to prioritize things which are militarily necessary: helicopters, spare parts, fuel, ammunition, food, building supplies, barbed wire, and so on.

JAXA can wait until the political and military situation is sorted out.

17

"If it IS an alternate Earth, then physics just got a huge discovery. If it's an alien planet in a far away system then that's an important bit of info too."

From the manga (which I am assuming to be canonical)... a year there is about 386 days and their days about 23 hours.  That would seem to point to an entirely different world. 

No one's ever mentioned issues with gravity.  Nor have we seen any modern device not work there, so perhaps the same physics applies.  That leads me to suspect that Leili & Kato's 'magic' is just a science we've not discovered here on Earth.

18 The JAXA et. al. ideas are great, and I'd expect them to be proceeding independently of our heroes' activities.  E.g. put a good portable telescope on a truck and have it plus escorts stay out at night beyond the light pollution of the base and make observations.  Sending probes up into space would take a while to build them and set up launch facilities, we can be sure no one has basic exploratory ones in stock.

Which could also explain the radio issues in the first expedition.  If you're enough beyond line of sight propagation gets interesting.  Conventional AM at night on earth can go quite a ways, right?  Otherwise, don't you have to bounce off of the ionosphere, the occasional micro-meteorite, or a space sat?  So radios optimized for well developed Earth might plausibly show unusual limits at distance until adjustments are made, or com satellites are in operation, and those would take a long time to be put in place (custom built after the orbital space environment is discovered).  Yeah, lots of chances for us to play armchair Engineer and Scientist.

Paranoid me would be preparing for that gate to close without warning.  E.g. after we (inevitably ^_^) discover we are interfertile with at least the human form natives (and either way would be very interesting, plus no doubt the elf's DNA and, say, CAT scans are being checked out with great interest), I'd be making sure there's a good enough library, and stocks of machine tools and metal stocks, food and seeds, and small arms ammo (the basic stuff without explosives have > 1/2 century shelf lives) so that the outpost could thrive if that happens.  Hmmm, fuel for electricity and engines could be the biggest issue there.

Although for some reason that sort of thing doesn't seem to be factoring in anyone's plans.  But that's another thing the on earth political craziness could play into, suppose it gets so bad someone decides its best to close the gate.  People like the mage and/or Rory might be handy in that case.  Heck, Rory might make them an offer they can't refuse....

19 Yeah. The reason I mentioned LAMBDA was that it's an easily transported rocket and would require little infrastructure.
As fast as they built the fort it should be doable.
You're right it doesn't apply to our heroes here...
I'm holding out for the Rocket Girls crossover.

20

As far as preparing an airstrip to explore a wider area from the air:  I had wondered why they didn't have any fixed-wing assets, just the helicopters we've seen.  This is strange, since they are facing an enemy with air assets (the dragons), and helicopters aren't very good at air-to-air (though in-universe they can apparently work well against an enemy not expecting them).

It occurred to me around the third episode that the gate is too small for any fixed-wing aircraft of decent size.  They could get a small general aviation-type aircraft through (think Cessna), but a large cargo or fighter aircraft would have to come through in pieces, and I can't think of anything that's intended to be disassembled and reassembled in a field environment.  I'm sure the Japanese government is working on it, but it'll take time to develop this capability, which would be unique worldwide.

21

When I refer to the GATE as a "bottleneck" it's not just the reduced capacity for shipping supplies through it. It also isn't very big physically, and a lot of things won't fit.

So far the JSDF quartermasters seem to have done an outstanding job on the place. I wonder whose idea it was to lay a cable through it?

22 It makes sense not to put fixed-wing aircraft through. Basically, if you do that, you need an air force base on the other side - runways are pretty big. To justify that, you need to be doing a lot of flying. To manage that, you need a lot of logistic tail - avgas, spares, etc.

But what are they getting with fixed-wing craft? Helicopters are fine for short-range recon. They're probably better than jets for the kind of anti-dragon work you'd worry about (could you even lock an AMRAAM onto Puff?) And the choppers have much better open-field capability, which is important in a world where -no other air strip exists-. Any fixed-wing craft that goes up must land there too, no matter what conditions, because there's literally nowhere else to do it.

I expect that a wise US president (which possibly excludes the not-Bush in this show) would loan the Japanese a bunch of drones in exchange for data sharing.

I expect "what if the gate suddenly closes?" is not a consideration that the Japanese planners are worried about.

23

So far the JSDF quartermasters seem to have done an outstanding job on the place. I wonder whose idea it was to lay a cable through it?

Whoever the JSDF has in charge of their generators, I'm sure.  (It's the engineers in the US Army.)  Generator plants for a base of that size would consume immense amounts of fuel, and running commercial power through the gate would be an obvious way to avoid a lot of traffic and to save costs.  Though, with a fixed gate with no enemy presence would probably justify a pipeline, which is far and away the most efficient way to transport liquids.  I don't recall pictures of the current gate, but IRL it would probably look like a utility tunnel at this point, with pipes and cable races all along the perimeter.

But what are they getting with fixed-wing craft?...

I think that the success of rotary-wing aircraft against those dragons is probably attributable to the Imperial forces not being used to this type of combat.  I think those were AH-64s they had, and the fire-control systems on those were never really intended for air-to-air combat.  The dragon riders can't stay stupid forever, and they'll start having occasional successes.  (This is assuming that the writers don't make helicopters invincible by fiat--given their treatment of other countries' politics, not a great assumption, I admit.)  Some of the magic we've already seen could probably be used to whack a helicopter, if the caster was either on a dragon or positioned on the ground in the right terrain.  Air-to-air is more a fighter jet core competency, but it's probably going to be a while before that matters, especially if they avoid getting into battles where the enemy can learn.

As far as using an AMRAAM against Puff, if he returns radar I don't know why it wouldn't work.  I don't know if there's a limitation in the guidance computer to exclude low-speed returns that would need a programming change.  However, the radar itself can pick up all kinds of things.  Even civilian ones will get flocks of birds, buildings, and occasionally traffic.  These are usually very slow speed and in predictable places, and the radar excludes them from the operator's display.  I was taking a tour of an approach facility in Springfield, MO, and the controller told me that there was a hill in I-44 where they'd get returns off of highway traffic under the right atmospheric conditions, and they programmed the radar to ignore returns below a certain speed in that spot.

However, reconnaissance is where I think that fixed-wing would really make money.  Most long-range UAVs use satellites for control, so I think that in the Special Region, they'd be pretty limited in range.  I know I'd want to have a rough idea of what's going on around me for as far as I could send out aircraft.  As Steven pointed out, though, the gate severely limits the size of what can be brought to bear.  UAVs would be the best bet, but the ones with range still require a pretty good-size runway.

24

The cable I was referring to was data, probably fiber. That's why they can now have a cell tower that connects back to the network in Japan.

I think that laying a power cable would be terrifically dangerous. It's a catastrophe waiting to happen. They are much better off with local diesel generators, even if the fuel has to be hauled through that tunnel with trucks.

(A fuel pipeline gives me the willies, too. Gad!)

Probably about a quarter of the truck traffic in that tunnel is fuel, anyway. It's not that big a deal.

25

Aside from the logistics of building an airbase with supporting infrastructure (Including workshops to assemble and prep aircraft.), someone at the Fandom Post noted that moving all the material and equipment from Japan TO the gate would be a massive undertaking, since you have to ship them through an urban environment.  I seen naval aircraft with folding wings (Which Japan does not have.) suggested as being the ideal type of aircraft short of Harriers to be shipped through the gate.  But partially disassembling aircrafts and moving them through using HETs seem a better idea.  It had to be the way for the JSDF to ship the excavators through the gate, because you can not send those in one piece.

(I am a bit late coming to this because while I did see via Crunchyroll  - which I have a number of guest passes for - on Friday, shortly after it was posted - I was at Otakon and the wifi was spotty.  Fun Girls und Panzer panel, though - and where else other than a gathering of military buffs can you see someone running around with a model of a Panzer IVH?) 

26

It had to be the way for the JSDF to ship the excavators through the gate, because you can not send those in one piece.

I doubt they'd need to do anything special for the HYEXs.  The gate looks to be around 15', maybe a little higher--I don't know the dimensions for JSDF tanks, but tanks are typically pretty tall and there's a fair bit of room over them.

A John Deere 270LC on an M870A1 lowboy trailer with the arm slightly out of travel position will just lose the hydraulic hoses on the top knuckle going under the Biggs Road bridge on I-65 NB in Indiana, which is posted as 14'-7".  If the gate was a little under 14'-6", they might have to road the HYEXs, but I don't think it's so short that it won't clear one on its own tracks.  If somebody has done a better estimate of the gate dimensions, I'll defer to them.

27 The streets of Shibuya and the lack of a reasonable staging area there is part of the bottleneck, and definitely a headache. It's almost enough to make someone in power consider condemning a couple of those high-rises just because the JSDF badly needs the land they're on.

28

As to the backhoes, I suspect that the buckets were removed and then they drove themselves through with the arms completely folded and flat level. Then you don't have to allow for a trailer in your height calculation. The bucket would be brought in later, on a truck.

Another possibility is that the backhoes were lifted apart, with the track part shipped separately from the cab and the arm.

In that case you'd need a crane at the other end to put them back together, but you'd only need one. And there are some pretty amazing cranes out there which are designed to be transported on city streets and not take out bridges; I'm sure one could be found that would fit through the gate.

Given that they spent 3 months doing planning before moving through the gate, it's not impossible that some of this gear was custom made, or custom modified. This is a "cost is no object" kind of problem, obviously. The Japanese government gave the planners pretty much a blank check.

Someone up there wondered why they had backhoes at all, rather than things like bulldozers and graders. I think the answer is that a backhoe is more versatile. It can level ground (I've seen it done), for instance. It isn't as good as a bulldozer at doing so, but there are a lot of things a back hoe can do that a bulldozer cannot do even badly. All things considered I do think that back hoes were the best choice for the initial wave of heavy construction equipment.

A back hoe isn't limited to just using a bucket. They also have hammers (for taking out boulders and tree stumps without having to use explosives) and I've think seen goats feet, and a back hoe can be used as a crane very easily.

29 The excavators shown were rather large for most construction projects, especially when you have several of them at work.  They are getting into the size where you would use them to do strip-mining, and while the amount of concrete the JSDF used (And still to use.) on their construction would require a lot of aggregate, it feels like they are starting to bring in dual-purpose equipment for future resource extraction.

30 An Apache showed up in the Shibuya fight in the manga, but in the anime, all we've seen so far are Cobras, which follows the theme of using retired or second-line gear.

The manga features Cobras and Hueys "soon", and Phantoms and Chinooks later on.  I look forward to the non-readers' reactions to the air cav commander.

For power, couldn't they just run steel pipe through an upper corner of the gate, and then run an insulated line (like those used for buried lines) through that?  They domed-off the gate on the Shibuya side, so they have plenty of control over the immediate environment.  Of course, lots of stuff is fighting over priority, so it's hard to guess what the status of individual projects might be.

Given that the initial force had to immediately take the hill, obviously they had to make do with traditional military generator logistics at first, and may still do so at this point.

31

For power, couldn't they just run steel pipe through an upper corner of the gate, and then run an insulated line (like those used for buried lines) through that?

No, not really. The problem here is the quantity of power needed. The kind of line you're talking about is good for a few megawatts, but that base needs more power than that.

So there are really only two ways to make that happen: higher voltage or higher current.

If you go with higher voltage, you have a problem with insulation. You have to run two lines (hot and return) and they're right next to each other. If the voltage difference is high enough, it will breach the insulation and short.

If you go with higher current, your problem is heat. The wire will have some resistance, and heat dissipation is I²R, it goes up as the square of the current. Do too much of that and your insulation will burst into flames, and then the line shorts. Or the conductor will melt and open, and then you don't have any power going through.

If you run two pipes on opposite sides of the tunnel, that helps a bit, but not as much as you'd think. You still have one problem or the other. The pipe is grounded so if the voltage is too high and it breaches the insulation, the hot can still short to the pipe instead of the return. And you get all kinds of excitement.

And if you go with high current, you can still smoke the insulation, and again you can short to the pipe. And you can still melt the conductor.

I figure they need something like 100 megawatts for a base that large, and in the real world the only way to deliver that kind of power is high voltage, with the wires physically separated using air as the primary insulation. That's not practical in that tunnel; too many opportunities for vehicles to interfere with the wires.

32

I see some visceral objections to the idea of powering that place with diesel generators. So let's run some numbers just to get a first approximation of the size of the problem.

Diesel fuel is about 35 megajoules per liter. If you figure your generator at about 35% efficiency (though I bet they're better than that) then to produce 100 megawatts you burn 9 liters per second.

A tank truck can un anything up to 44,000 liters. Figure 30,000 as a happy medium. Then one truck load of diesel can power the base for just under an hour. You burn 26 trucks of fuel per 24-hours.

That, of course, assumes a constant load of 100 megawatts. In practice power consumption varies and the overall usage average is going to be less. So somewhere between 20 and 25 trucks per day of fuel for electrical generation.

And that isn't really very much of a load on the logistics. I figure they can probably put several hundred trucks per day through that tunnel.

33

I don't doubt you could run that base from generators and tank trucks.  We run Bagram Airfield off of generators, and that makes the fort shown look like Coda Village.  I question whether they would, given a commercial power source very close by.  Deployable power is unreliable, expensive, maintenance intensive, and very inefficient.

Field Manual 3-34 estimates a load of 2,450 kW for a 3,500-man brigade (US).  However, that's for a pretty austere environment.  This PPT has figures from 249th EN BN (PRIME POWER) for 12,950 kW for a brigade, which is probably closer to the truth for a comfier base like we saw in the episode.  According to Wikipedia (the three most trusted words in information!) the unit responsible for the defense of Tokyo is the 1st Division, with a strength of 6,300 men.  Assuming they sent the whole division, that's a power requirement of about 26 MW.  I don't know what the highest voltage you can run through an insulated cable (as opposed to an overhead conductor), but I know they make cables in 22kV from personal experience.  I make 26 MW/22kV=1181 A, but in 3 phases, you've got 1200 A/3=400 A per phase.  That doesn't sound crazy to me.  The figure I used was in kVA, so I don't think it needs to be corrected for power factor.

None of that is to say that they wouldn't have gensets as emergency power (that's only smart), but I still don't think they rely on them as the primary power source.

cxt, those excavators were utility, (like you see on a construction site), not production (large mining).  Look at the size of the operator in the cab relative to the equipment.

I'm sure the JSDF uses Komatsu, but they look to be about the same size as the John Deere equipment we use in the US Army.  About 10-11 feet in travel configuration, plus trailer height.  Easy to bring through, and if the gate is juuust a bit too small, like Steven and I said, you can road on it's own tracks so you don't need the trailer.

Excavators are versatile, and we used the hell out of ours on my last deployment, but there's still plenty of work they're not good at.  (You have me on "goat's foot"--I don't recognize that attachment.) Leveling a piece of ground that's larger than the swing of the arm is one of them.  Now, you can certainly make good use of them in conjunction with a dozer, where the dozer pushed dirt into a stockpile and the excavator loads trucks.  For the base of the size we saw, I guarantee they'd have a full set of earthmoving equipment.

34 Given those numbers, it sounds like it's doable either way, which punts the issue down to the tiebreakers of priorities and politics.  Which means, who knows which solution the author had in mind or why.

Even if grid power is made available, I would expect a full set of generators and a week's worth of fuel to be stored on-base just in case--and when you add in the vehicle fuel (including those thirsty choppers), there should be enough reserves to dig in and hold out for months at minimal power, if the Gate were to close.  At that point, a lot would depend on what their emergency plan was.

35  Not an expert on this, but based on these reliable sources I found with Google, I get the strong impression that more than enough electricity could be delivered in cables, especially since the major constraint seems to be dissipating heat, which shouldn't be difficult for the short run where you might want them to be close to each other:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_cable

Cable brochure: https://www.generalcable.com/NR/rdonlyres/77BB059A-77D9-4EAE-BE55-B7C3661DB89F/0/GEN37727SilecBrochure_FA.pdf

Detailed exposition with lots of data on how to do it: http://www.nexans.com/Corporate/2013/60-500_kV_High_Voltage_full_BD2.pdf

Of course, it would be bad if one of them develops a fault.  Then again, they're running all sorts of high explosives through the gate, or if the fuel tank farm catches on fire, etc. etc., there are no civilian level "safe" options.

36 Of course, logistically it could be done. On the other hand, I don't know that I'd want to have been on the team that approved it. "You want to put a brigade on the other side of the gate, then run HOW MUCH power through the gate?" Not dangerous in "we don't know how to engineer this," so much as "we can't know what this will do to the gate until we turn it on". Fuel pipeline would be significantly less dangerous in that respect.

Assume the land for some staging areas is available in case of emergency. My ol' textbook on Japanese law has a lot to say on Japan's weird land ownership, but one of the weird results is that there IS some empty land, or barely-developed, smack in the middle of Tokyo. Boring reasons, no need to discuss here.

It's fair to say that a JSDF base will consume less power than an American base of the same size. Almost certainly less air conditioning in there, for one...

Man, this is fun. And a new company licensed the manga over the weekend for US release, too.

37 "You want to put a brigade on the other side of the gate, then run HOW MUCH power through the gate?" Not dangerous in "we don't know how to engineer this," so much as "we can't know what this will do to the gate until we turn it on".

Indeed, although it could be tested before putting the brigade through, e.g. terminate it with a BIG resistor, back everyone out, and see what happens!

Then again, given that we can assume gate physics is not yet well understood, the potential a Tragedy of Bashtarle plus or minus centered in the middle of Tokyo is to be avoided.  Yep, run a pipeline.

Good to hear about the manga being licensed, I like it.

38 Here is a link to a blurb about the power generation for one of the main coalition air bases in Iraq.  35mw of contingency power generation on site.  The picture shows a farm of container sized generators, with a fairly large cluster of fuel tanks nearby.  It clearly wasn't a small project to set up, the generators are all on concrete pads, they mention 7km worth of cable runs, etc.  But I suspect that our gate base would have something like it as a backup, at least.

39

 

And a new company licensed the manga over the weekend for US release, too.

Sekai Project is new to manga publishing, but they have been around a few years, helping to push visual novels from Japan to a Western audience, especially the big name titles like Clannad, for example.  While some of the games are adult-only hentai releases, others (Like Clannad.) are all ages.

Not bad for a company that originated as a fan-translation group for Japanese VN.  We have to see about how they go about doing the project, since every other company releasing manga in the US right now were started by people who had experience working in manga publishing or the domestic book publishing industry.  But if MangaGamer could do it, why not?

And I actually had a chance to go to the Sekai Project panel at Otakon where they announced it, too, but real life intervened.

Re: the excavators - I did not say they were the full-sized equipment used at resource extraction sites (The sheer size of those would mean a major effort to bring them through the gate, along with their support infrastructure - and that is assuming they went for mobile equipment only.  And for that to happen, they need to have a much WIDER secured perimeter.), but it does appear to me that the JSDF is beginning preparation for resource extraction.  Given the size of the base the engineers built in the span time, they needed a full kit of mechanized engineering equipment and then some...And that is probably not enough for what else they should be building.

I do find it interesting that the it appears the base's vehicle entryway seems to be designed against VBIED. 

40 It's better to take precautions than to not do so and wish you had.

41 Ok, I just noticed something weird about that next to the last picture, the one with all the dead dragons.  Not one dying dragonrider dropped his lance.  Every single one of them stuck it in the ground as he crashed.  I went back and rechecked; there's three scenes with parts of the battlefield visible, and not one lance is lying on the ground.   
Ok, I'm officially nitpicking that scene...

42 You're not an engineer so you're not permitted to do that.

43

You might be missing the big 'dragon in the room' in the scene there - given the time that passed, why are the bodies of the dragons still lying around?  The JSDF should have buried the bodies of the beasties, for both reasons of health and aesthetics .

And for those who minds go to low places - can you see what is wrong in the quick edit of the princess and the other member of her order of their ride to Italica?

44 All the human bodies are gone, just the dragons, wyverns, etc are left. The JSDF probably used the lances to indicate the areas already worked.  The dragon bodies are too big to deal with without excavators which have higher priorities.  Also with this having been an artillery battle the site may be a few miles from the base making a field of rotting corpses a bit more tolerable. Depending on the wind...

1 Wow, I'm really sad to hear that about Gate, which is the only thing I've even tried to watch recently, because it's one of the few with a non-dork male lead.

2 Fortunately, they only spend one night in Japan, and then go back.

I had wondered if they would have the temerity to insult Teh Won, but clearly, they're going to stick with the original "evil cowboy monkey Bush", who was in office when the story was first written.

That whole part made absolutely no sense in the manga, as did the part about everybody being sure that Japan would lose to a bunch of Romans with plate armor and auxiliary orcs, when they had already beaten back an invasion out of the blue in a single afternoon with a scratch team.  There's no way IRL that anybody serious would expect an expeditionary force to lose short of magic on a scale not experienced in the first fight.  The US, in that time period, would be shoveling MRAPs, Javelins, and other toys into Japan in exchange for a piece of the action, not sitting there holding the idiot stick.

Hopefully they skip past that part in a hurry and get back to the good stuff, particularly the economic and cultural shocks to the fantasy world, as well as the grognard stuff.

3 Dragon Ball Super isn't post Battle of the Gods.  They're actually redoing it.  At least for the first cour?  Unsure how long it'll be.

4 Gasaraki finished losing me when they went "Ooooh!" about the revolutionary mecha stomping an armored unit parading down a hostile main street by lobbing munitions down from high buildings.  Which is a WWII tactic, and comports with WWII experience and current US Army doctrine that an armored unit by itself will get destroyed if it tries to take a city (rather, you have to use infantry to take them, with armor providing very useful support).  GATE doesn't seem to be danger of that sort of stupid.

As for our host's current concerns, based on the manga GATE doesn't look awful.  Yeah, there's posturing by a more photogenic "evil cowboy monkey Bush", but in the end he says "Eh, the Japanese are our allies and right now we'll benefit from what they're doing."  Probably much more significant, making a lot more sense, and very dangerous are the thoughts of the PRC's leadership, and much more interesting is the concern by at least one Japanese superior about temptations to repeat the previous century's imperial mistakes.

Then we get back to another expedition, that harem/group of women orbiting our hero won't get any bigger staying at the base! 

It doesn't look to me like it's going to be any sort of conventional harem, e.g. as mentioned that's not even really Rory's thing, and as I mentioned I've heard she later takes a role that's very suited to her, one I'll now note would likely have her regularly interacting with our hero but probably not all the time.

The elf is a special case at least two times over (the second should become apparent in the next episode), and as I recall from the manga the mage is there to among other things learn new stuff, time to spread her wings after her apprenticeship.  The next woman is a trip, but I'd be very surprised if she orbits him closely, at least immediately, due to their respective political positions (I'd hint at more but my copies of the manga are off-line while I upgrade my file server/avoid systemd like the plague).

5 Man, that's disappointing about GATE, because it's just about the only show this season with decent pacing.  Gansta has gone four episodes without really establishing a plot, and Overlord has the slow pacing of a movie, not an episodic series.

Joukamachi no Dandelion is going to develop a character or two per episode, and none of them are interesting.  Sky Wizards is exactly as you described it: we got maid and playboy bunny outfits in episode 3.

I actually missed the twist in episode 1 of School Live! because I shut it off thinking it was some sort of cute-girls-doing-cute-things anime, so it cracked me up when I tried the second episode and was completely confused.  I don't know if I'll last through the season, but for now it's a little different fare.

I forgot how silly Aquarion was until I started watching the extended first episode of Logos. Naked mecha transformation sequence confirmed; off button on remote pushed.

Everything else I've watched is worth about one line each:

Charlotte isn't terrible, but it needs to get to whatever conflict it's hinting at soon.  

Classroom Crisis managed to take a story that should have been about the colonization of Mars and instead focused on office politics and budgeting.  

Shimoneta is about as fresh and fun as a pair of panties on one's head can be.

Game of Laplace is a detective story without any clues or mystery involved, leaving you feeling as detached as the protagonist.

Ushio to Tora is 48 Hrs with youkai.

Rokka no Yuusha is this season's required epic anime, complete with too much story and not enough time to tell it.

God Eater is World Trigger, Mark II.

I'm still watching most of this, but there are no series this season that are really 'must watch'.

6 hga: "Probably much more significant, making a lot more sense, and very dangerous are the thoughts of the PRC's leadership, and much more interesting is the concern by at least one Japanese superior about temptations to repeat the previous century's imperial mistakes."

That's good to hear, especially the point about "imperial mistakes". I can live with President Monkey is an occasional aside, as long as the Gate War itself remains the focus.

7 50srefugee: Hmmm; if the PRC leadership acts out on their desire, that (primary) ally status would become very significant, "President Monkey" would almost certainly get involved, and no doubt have a price for our help (but there's no reason it wouldn't be palatable to the Japanese, however tastelessly all this is conveyed).

Which could be the whole point of inserting him in the story right then, although, yeah, it would have been nice to avoid the insulting stereotype.  But with the otaku hero acquiring something of a harem of an elf, a mage, a loli-goth, and probably an [you'll find out soon enough], I suspect those of us wishing they'd avoid stereotypes will be disappointed.  We'll just have to see how it all plays out, but so far, despite the inherent dangers, they've pulled it off.

1

Actually, I'm getting a bit pissed off. Saturday I ordered some things from a place in Nevada and paid $20 for overnight shipping. They shipped it by Fedex and it was supposed to be delivered today.

On Sunday it said it would be delivered by 3PM, but later it changed to "by 8 PM". As I write this they've got another 10 minutes to meet that deadline.

I would have thought that someone paying extra for express delivery would get priority on delivery, but I guess not.

2 8:00 PM and they are now officially late. The online tracking now says "No estimated delivery date available at this time." grumble

3 Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Los Angeles was (and might still be) shut down due to a bridge washing out, and Interstate 15 (which would be the obvious way to detour up to I-80) over the Cajon pass was also closed down due to fire.  I can imagine that throwing a bit of a wrench into shipping all over the west coast right now.

4 I had something like that happen with an Amazon Prime shipment last year.   

Though, rather than "No estimate" it changed to "Damaged in transit, returning to sender".  It wasn't a particularly fragile item, so I think the UPS truck got in a pile-up somewhere.

After business hours, of course, so "2 day" delivery for the replacement was 3 days, plus the weekend... so my original 2-day order took a week to deliver.

Amazon did get the return, eventually, so I assume the UPS driver was ok.  It was hard to be grumbly about that one, though, not knowing exactly what happened...

5

I doubt that bridge was involved. The package tracking said it went to Memphis, and was at Portland at 3AM today.

In other words, if there's a problem it was local.

6 I was thinking more in terms of most of the big centers on the west coast scrambling to reroute stuff, which will affect packages all over.  But if it was at the local shipping center on time and didn't make it to you, that's just a local failure.  Of course it's still possible that the people that would have been doing local things got called into the bigger cluster, but I'd still consider that a failure if they can't do that cleanly.

7 One of the first big impression of American long-haul transportation for me was the prevalence of roll-on-roll-off. Schneider is very aggressive in this mode, but FedEx Freight (former Viking) and other single-axle trailer companies do it. It was pushed quite hard in USSR, but never caught on. In fact, Russians uses to use a large amount of small shipping containers, about 10ft format if not smaller, which would be considered an LTL (Less Than truckLoad) in U.S. and typically gone on a pallet. Hopefuly it's changing now. Still, the companies like Schneider can ship quite a bit using the railroad. I'm just not sure UPS is flexible enough to use the railroad in case of a bridge washout.

8 In my many, many dealings with FedEx, both personal and (particularly) professional, it was a rare day indeed when a shipment was delayed due to problems on their end.

Oh, to be sure, a hurricane or heavy snowfall on the east coast could throw a spanner into the works, but it's not their fault that an airplane can't fly in 100mph winds, or trucks can't drive with a foot of snow on the roads.  But that actually doesn't happen all that often, and when it does?  It's usually only a day's disruption.

Usually if there was a delay in getting boxes of textbooks, it was on the publisher's end, not FedEx or UPS.

9

It looks like my box is being treated as normal traffic, not as overnight. It reached the Portland sorting center Sunday evening, and rotted there yesterday. The online tracking says it reached the Lake Oswego office at 7 this morning. I think that's too late to get onto a truck for delivery (and anyway, the tracking system would say if it was on a truck), so it'll probably get delivered tomorrow.

This looks like a simple sorting error. From Nevada to Portland it was treated as overnight (which is why it went through Memphis) but someone at the Portland sorting center tossed it in the "normal" basket instead of the "express" basket, and it's been in turtle mode ever since.

10 Sorry to hear that, which has to be infuriating with the premium price you paid to have it overnighted.  If it didn't hit the local station until a couple hours ago, there's a very slim, but unlikely shot it arrives today.  Before trucks are dispatched for the day, there's one last pass to catch the "oh s--ts" and late arrivals that didn't get loaded earlier in the morning.

It's a little peculiar that it went through Memphis in the first place.  Normally, FDX overnight shipments with both a West Coast origination and destination route through its regional hub in Oakland rather than go to Memphis and back.  

11

I thought that all overnight deliveries went through Memphis. That way the local offices don't have to sort them. The Memphis sorting facility is built and staffed for it.

The tracking page now says my box is in a truck, so I guess I get it today after all. Sure hope so.

I'm also getting a grocery delivery today, but I'm sure that'll be fine. It's my 151st delivery from them (according to the receipts I get) and they've only been late one time.

And the driver phoned me when it became clear he couldn't make schedule, and he apologized and explained when he showed up. (One of their trucks was down that day.) I bet Fedex doesn't explain or apologize.

12 It sounds like your retailer owes you a refund of the overnight fees (or at least the overnight fees minus the standard shipping fees). You've got tracking data to prove you didn't get what you paid for.  You gave them the money for expedited shipping, so it's up to them to get the money back from the shipper.

The worst they can do is tell you to pound sand because the shipping schedule isn't "guaranteed" or some other such lawyerism. 

13 If it gets delivered today, I'll let it go. If not, I'm going to contact the retailer and let them know what happened.

14

Well, that was pretty measly. The Fedex delivery person leaned the box against my door, put my mat on top of it, and snuck away without knocking.

Anyway, I got it. And now I can take my nap.

15 Memphis is indeed the superhub, where most packages route through globally.  Indianapolis is another hub, mostly for the northeast, and surprisingly Anchorage is another.  Air freight out of Asia stops there to get cleared through customs before heading to Memphis.

Not to sidetrack, but I learned about Oakland's operations a few years ago when working with a Big Three auto manufacturer with a major parts depot in Arizona.  It was during a UAW contract year, and sickouts and slowdowns were the rule.  It was killing the outbound metrics, since numerous shipments missed the 5 PM cutoff time to be loaded for Memphis.  Trying to figure out a solution, the FDX ops manager mentioned that west coast origin/destination packages went to Oakland and plane didn't leave until 9 PM at the time.  On the tracking label, the series of two letters followed by four letters determine the hub routing.  Once I figured out which Oakland-bound codes those were, I had the junior supervisors hold back those pick tickets in favor of the earlier Memphis-bound packages, and then released those west coast tickets later in the shift.  Long story short, that corrected the on-time issue in less than a week.

16 "put my mat on top of it"
Cleverly hidden from thieves!
I had a UPS guy put something on my doorstep without knocking a couple weeks ago.  Except I was sitting ten feet away with an open window.  I went out to get it, saw it was for another apartment, and hoofed it over to him to give it back before he got in his truck.  Second time that week he'd left something for the other end of my building.

17 Had a UPS guy leave a box on my front porch once, that was clearly labeled "must sign". I was kind of irate about it, it was my Calico carbine coming back from a warantee repair. Sat there on the front porch all day, in plain sight.
Good thing I lived in a good rural neighborhood.

18 Outside my front door, I have two columns, a bench, large planters filled with four-foot-high bamboo plants, and a rather large grill, any of which would hide reasonably-sized boxes from the street, and yet I keep finding them tucked behind the bushes, next to a sprinkler head. Fortunately I have the sprinklers set to go off very late at night, and only once a week.

This is of course why I have most deliveries sent to my office.

-j

19

Not to defend your retailer or FedEx, however, FedEx Air services (Overnight and 2nd Day Air) is always counted in M-F business days. Large e-tailers build their shipping hubs near FedEx facilities, but even if FedEx accepts a package over a weekend into their system (or more likely, it's scanned and loaded into a trailer) they will always stick to the 'business day' delivery schedule. FX 2nd day shipped on Wed will arrive Friday. Shipped on Thur will arrive on Monday (unless the extra fee is paid for Saturday delivery). In this way air service is actually sometimes slower than local ground delivery if the recipient is in a 1 day zone. So an order placed on Saturday via FX Overnight shipping, even if the shipper places the parcel into the system over the weekend, should be expected for delivery the following Tuesday, as that is the 'next business day' after Monday (the first business day after shipment) according to FedEx's air delivery schedule. Tuesday delivery would be correct for a parcel if the order was placed Saturday via overnight shipping.

Also, most FX air parcels, regardless of origination, still get sorted thru the superhub in Memphis. If I ship a FX Air Parcel across the street, it will still probably go to Memphis and back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xEczrGIy08

20

I'm aware of that. I entered the order last Friday evening. The retailer shipped it last Saturday, by "next day" delivery. So it was scheduled to be delivered yesterday, Monday. The package went to Memphis sorting center on Sunday and then reached the Portland sorting center Sunday evening. In the past when I've had packages doing that, the package reaches the local truck barn in Lake Oswego by about 3 AM the next morning and gets put onto a truck for delivery that day.

That's what should have happened this time, too. Instead, my package spent a day at the Portland sorting center, and reached the Lake Oswego truck barn this morning (Tuesday).

1 The GURPS RPG distinguished between "unaging," "unkillable," and "immortal." Unkillable was that age was the only thing that could do you in, so immortal was the combination of the two.

2 I'd settle for either one...

3

I dunno. Being unkillable without being unaging sounds hellish to me. As you get older and older and more and more feeble, it's going to be terrible.

But being unaging also sounds pretty hellish to me. Watching friends and loved ones age and die; making new friends and then watching them in turn age and die.

And boredom would be terrible, almost poignant. After a couple of thousand years, what could there be to do that you hadn't done a hundred times before?

I think immortality would be just about the worst curse imaginable.

Alan E. Nourse wrote a book which included a story about immortality. The basic hook was that they had discovered how to make people immortal, and the government decided it would only bestow that "blessing" on great scientists, great artists and composers and writers, and the like.

The main character in the story was someone who was picked for this, and refused it. Because he noticed that the people who got it became perfectionists and never finished anything.

I hope the human race never achieves immortality. One problem with it is that it means people like Fidel Castro would live forever. In our world, if there's no other way to get rid of maggots like that we can at least outlive them. But if they are immortal, then what?

But an even more important reason: if it becomes widespread, necessarily that would mean no more children.

And a world without children would be a world not worth living in.

4 "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

The Misenchanted Sword made use of the "unkillable but not unaging" problem, and between Highlander and all the vampire series, the problems of the unaging have pretty much been milked dry. And of course the central problem of Time Enough For Love is giving an immortal a reason to live (and I must admit, as lifelines go, "boinking hot redheads" is a pretty good one).

-j

5

In the anime Strike the Blood there's a character named Vatler who is a vampire and whose main character motivation is that he's bored stiff and looking for things to entertain himself. Sometimes he helps the good guys and sometimes he impedes them, entirely as a function of how complicated and exciting he can make the situation.

6 A space opera series I read a few years ago featured a humanity that had achieved immortality.   They dealt with it by spending centuries or even millennia asleep.  When they woke up, the universe was a different place each time.  Kind of hand-wavey, but at least the author acknowledged the problem. 

7 That's "The City and the Stars" by Clarke.

8 Niven's Known Space eventually got into the ageless range, and not all the characters he wrote dealt with it well.

Banks' Culture had a population which was effectively ageless, but society tended towards "allow yourself to age gracefully and die in the mid-four-or-five-hundreds" though anything from instant suicide to complete functional immortality (both senses) was available.

Unkillable is -hard- for science to do; if you can do unkillable, then at that point any aging you do is purely voluntary.

Ageless works a lot better in an environment where scarcity is at a minimum. Ageless plus Earth-only turns into dystopia scenarios right quick.

9 Yeah. If I were ageless I'd end up sitting here until that Sleeping With Hinako animation that just popped up in Steven's banner came around  again.


That would not be productive.

10 You can see it here.

1

"Fighting Kaiju is a Defense Force tradition!!!"

...Which was apparently said by the senior NCO in the recon unit, judging from the voice.

I do like the little details - like Itami wanting dry boots after going into the well to rescue the elf girl, and the squaddie toting the RPG-lookalike checking to see if anyone is behind him (And thus in the area of the back-blast.) before he fired, much to the exasperation of the rest of the recon group - that showed that someone in production has humped a rifle and a full pack out in the boonies before.

The translation that Crunchyroll uses for our resident loli-Goth is Rory, which I also believe is what the Japanese studio uses.  At least, the series did not drag-out the introduction of the haremettes.

It is interesting to note that Itami is more serious and less amusing in this episode than the rest of the cast.  That did not prevent the medic from letting loose several jabs into the resident otaku in the unit.

2 And yes, modern vehicle suspension systems are great, especially if you rode in an old-fashion wagon.

3 Maybe "Deploy for battle"?

So our friend Puff is a magic dragon, not just a big lizard with unusual biology. I can buy that it's big enough that poodle-shooters won't faze it, and maybe even a Ma Deuce if it hits in the wrong place, but an AT warhead? On something that flies? (Well, it is a red, maybe it's just immune to fire? But HEAT uses superplasticity to defeat armor, not just temperature... so is that a fire attack or piercing?)

Also, "deities that actually exist" is a big, big threat category. Up side, one might like you! Down side, it's a "dark god"...

4 'Battle stations' was the Crunchyroll translation for what Itami said and while Crunchyroll's translation are certainly serviceable, there have been cases that I personally witnessed where you have to wonder about what appears in the stream versus what you hear.

5 What he said was 戦闘良い sentou yoi.

6 Well, sure, but that's always the case, even in really good translations. That goes double for milspeak, which is both a separate dialect in Japanese and a completely different separate dialect in English.

In the very best case scenario, you find something that's a literal translation that also makes perfect sense and matches the terminology that English speakers would use in the same circumstance. It... goes downhill from there.

Crunchy's translation/timing rates were about half what I used to get for timing alone. Honestly, I'm surprised it's even -watchable- sometimes.

Just watched the episode. I would like to order one Rory, please.

7 I dunno. She scares the hell out of me. Anyone who could slaughter all those men while smiling and laughing is terrifying.

8

"She scares the hell out of me. Anyone who could slaughter all those men while smiling and laughing is terrifying."

I'd like to make a spoiler tag link to an image, but I'm too old and stupid to get the hyperlink thingy to work.  Instead, I'll just say this:  a perfect image of what you fear is in the manga:  vol. 3, chap. 22, page 31.  In and of itself, that single page is not a spoiler, but does confirm your impression of Rory.

The looks of Kuroneko from "Imouto," the ability of Evangeline from "Negima," and the ethics of Kiss Shot Acerola Orion Heart-under-blade from "Bakemonogotari."  Amazing writing!

9 Thought you guys were talking about Black Lagoon here.

10

It occurred to me last night what the RPG-lookalike that the Recon group was toting around might be, and a quick check revealed the JSDF do use a license-made version of the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle.  And if you look closely at the part of Episode 3, right after the dragon got hit by the Carl Gustav round and before it flew off, you will notice the dragon...Is missing its' left arm.  So while the recon unit can not kill the dragon by itself, they do have the firepower to penetrate its' scales, and that means the massive firepower available at Arnus Hill could easily kill the dragon, even assuming the JSDF has not shipped any heavier stuff (A Hawk SAM battery, for example.) into their position.

11 Mercury had hit the kaiju with some attack moments before the second rocket found its mark, so it is at least possible that she lowered its defense. Few (land based) antiaircraft weapons could deal the kind of damage necessary to reliably take out something that can survive a hit from an anti-tank round. With its fire weapon, this dragon is a real threat to the unit guarding the gate. 
Mercury's art actually gives me the impression of an adult woman dressing as a child. I realize that she might be some sort of catgirl elf or something who ages much slower as a sop to the creepers, but that's not what I'm talking about. Outfit notwithstanding, she seems to be physically older (In human terms) than any of the other female characters except the medic.

This only adds to the general aura of worrisomness that surrounds this person. She's awesome...but she's really scary. At least she enjoys her work...
I am particularly curious about the pantheon of this region's belief system. The kids going on about "YAY! It's the high priestess of the DARK GOD! Rejoice!" has all manner of implications. 

12 I didn't notice that he fired a second rocket, but I guess you're right. As to the gothloli, I was prompted to look at the manga by someone's comment. I didn't look at very much of it but I did read something that indicated that when she became an Apostle (and a demigod) that it caused certain physical changes in her body. The implication is that she may be very old despite looking pre-pubescent. It was stated that she has lost all sexual urges. It was implied that she's ageless.

13

Rory's attack did not hit the dragon directly, it hit the ground before it.  While the shock effect might have done damage to the dragon, and possibly magical effects, the main effect of Rory's attack appears to be startling the dragon so it either slowed down or jolt it into moving into the path of the Carl Gustav round.

Also, the observed result is the dragon flying away without an arm - which is significant damage considering the dragon is not toting a load of ammunition and/or fuel like what a tank or an aircraft hit with contact fused warhead, is likely to have.  It was not going explode into a fireball unless the round had hit it dead center.  If the dragon is stupid enough to attack Arnus Hill, any SAM or ADA units just need to shred the wings (Which it appears to need to fly.) and once the monster can not fly, let loose with the direct fire weapons.

14

You're right! It did hit his arm, and it took it off. I missed that completely!

1 He effectively started it 2 years earlier in college, in a strip called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Academia_Waltz"><i>The Academia Waltz</i></a>.  A couple of the characters plus the dog, later replaced by Opus, carried over to <i>Bloom County</i>, and more than a few strips were repeated based on one collection of <i>The Academia Waltz</i>read.

2

HGA, you can't use inline HTML on mee.nu. You have to use "BBcode". The easiest way to do that is to use the buttons on the top of the comment entry box.

In particular, please follow this link and read it.

3

I thought he tried once already, about ten years ago, and his "conditions" were so onerous that he couldn't get any newspapers to carry his strip. 

That, and after he became a big success, he lost his writing edge and was just another unfunny Doonsbury trying to bag on Reagan and doing a terrible job of it. 

4 Bloom County ran from 1980 to 1989. Then he did Outland from 1989 to 1995. In 2003 he started doing Opus, which ran to 2008, at which point he said he was through with comics.

5 Steven: yeah, I know, but as long as I hit Preview first, it gets converted. This time I spazzed and accidentally hit Post first.

1

TVTropes calls this "male gaze". That last shot is right out of Vividred Operation; someone (I don't remember who) referred to it as "perineum cam".

...and TVTropes calls that shot "Between My Legs".  And makes reference to someone else calling it (the standing version, anyway) "The A Frame". 

2 ...someone (I don't remember who) referred to it as "perineum cam"...

That would have been Mauser in the comments section of my writeup for Ep09 of Vivi Dred Operation.

3 When I referred to "male gaze" I was referring to all of them, not just to the last one.

4 Oh, absolutely.  I was expanding on what you said (that TVT had a page for 'perineum cam', too... and that it's tropey enough to have been called out under yet a 3rd name in a 3rd place...)  I wasn't trying to contradict you. 

This whole show is going to be "Male Gaze: the Animation", isn't it?

5

Pretty much, yes.

It's an extended advertisement for a series of cast-off figurines. The Dark Elf is the first one that's out (NSFW).