June 22, 2011

Oh the things I think when I'm waking up

Ready? here goes...

In Asobi ni Iku Yo, Eris and the other catgirls aren't the real Catheans. They are advanced androids, and they don't know it. Lawry was the prototype, and the reason Lawry makes Eris uncomfortable is that Eris is beginning to suspect.

So who are the true catheans? Well, they really do look like cats. Aura is one of them. She was inserted into the planet as a scout, and has been sending back reports. And now, with the Cathean mothership in the Sol system, there are a lot of real Catheans on the planet.

They're inside of the assistaroids. The assistaroids are like tiny mechs. Without really realizing it, Antonia's giant assistaroid (which she herself operated) was more realistic than she knew. The small assistaroids are like that, but more sophisticated.

Eris et. al. are not mechanisms; they are biological creations. That's why ...spoiler at the ending... doesn't contradict this theory. He didn't really become a Cathean.

Um, no, I don't really think this is true. But it's an interesting idea, isn't it? Now where's my morning coffee?

UPDATE: "But the assistaroids are too small for a cat to live in!"

Remember how the bridge of the ship escaped into hyperspace? They can do those kinds of things. Each assistaroid has a space-time bubble inside, which is actually rather large and includes full living quarters for the Cathean which is operating it.

Anyway, after long exploration, Aura decided the Earth was ready for a contact mission, but realized that the Catheans in their true form couldn't do it. So she sent back a report to that effect, and a ship full of androids was sent. Eris was the first to reach the Earth, but she screwed up and got lost and also forgot to bring food for herself. Aura had to go out and find her and give her a nudge in the direction of Kio's family gathering.

UPDATE: This makes me think of Larry Niven's "Down in Flames".

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 06:18 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 341 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Well, it's canon in the novels that Aura disappears for weeks at a time...

Now, how do Jens and Ichika fit into this?

-j

Posted by: J Greely at June 22, 2011 07:13 AM (2XtN5)

2

I thought about the possibility that Muttley is a true Dogisian, and Jens is another android. The regular doggiebots are not the same; they really are non-sapient machines.

Ichika is really a human converted into a catgirl. She has figured out what's going on, and that part of of why she's bemused by it all. But she's keeping the truth secret because revealing it would be dangerous (for her) and also because she approves of the contact mission and doesn't want to scuttle the process.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 22, 2011 07:25 AM (+rSRq)

3

Ah.

Muttley is indeed a true Dogisian. But his mech's form as a doggie, and Jens looking like a human except with dog ears, are all in order to be acceptable to humans. The true Dogisians are genuinely alien, exactly the kind of thing that Beautiful Contact was expecting and hoping for.

Oh, and Jens doesn't know the truth, either.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 22, 2011 07:38 AM (+rSRq)

4 Which would help explain why the Cathean/Human DNA is nearly identical.  The androids were probably made from Human DNA (retrieved on an earlier scouting mission, no doubt.)  The Catheans probably make their androids resemble whatever species they're making first contact with.  I like it!!

Posted by: Dave Young at June 22, 2011 07:52 AM (0K+Kw)

5  Seems as if they've been observing the Earth for a very long time, in fact, and have been waiting on the contact mission until humanity reached a certain level of technical and cultural sophistication.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 22, 2011 08:00 AM (+rSRq)

6 Okay, so the true Catian civilization is partially based on magic, something they've kept a secret from their androids in order to maintain control. Ichika was one of the original mission's test subjects, who escaped into the wild after figuring out enough magic. She's been keeping a low profile on Okinawa ever since, but when her observations revealed that their mission was benign, she partially reconciled with them and made a deal with Aura to help things along.  She's still a bit of a subversive, though; they can't be happy that she explained magic to Eris.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at June 22, 2011 08:44 AM (2XtN5)

7

 I buy that! That's nice!

By the way, the reason magic is important is that it explains how a species without hands was able to create high technology: they don't need hands because they're doing it with their minds.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 22, 2011 08:49 AM (+rSRq)

8 "Doing it with their minds", you say? Hmm, has anyone ever actually seen one of these "Orsonians" Eris talks about?

-j

Posted by: J Greely at June 22, 2011 09:26 AM (2XtN5)

9 Sounds a little doubtful to me, honestly. The Catians are clearly interested in a long-term and open diplomatic relationship. Starting it off with a deception that's eventually going to come out could be a diplomatic faux pas. "Hi, we are gorgeous and sexually compatible cat-women" is a bit of a stretch. "We're a race of cats that created android cat-women to pretend to be us and incidentally to sleep around with some of you" is a lot creepier...

In addition, it can't be much harder to make assistaroid-shells and biological cat-women than it would be to make a biological cat-woman assistaroid shell. Why not just cut out the middleman, build a catgirl suit, and drive it around?

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at June 22, 2011 10:55 AM (mRjOr)

10 What I want to know is, if Avatar's use of logic here is killing catgirls, is it the real Catheans, or the artificial ones?

Posted by: ubu at June 22, 2011 02:23 PM (i7ZAU)

11 Avatar, you're no fun. (pbblllblblt)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 22, 2011 02:58 PM (+rSRq)

12 Avatar, you've assumed that this is a temporary deception, when in fact it's been going on for centuries, with no end in sight. Trying to explain things to Kio, Eris was confronted with the contradictions in her story: 70,000 years of social and genetic stasis with a perfect balanced economy, but civil wars within the past thousand years, fought over assistoroids! Was Lawry's ship truly "lost" for 800 years, and was it an accident? How is it that her master "randomly" picked Earth out of all the worlds in the galaxy for their very first contact?

-j

Posted by: J Greely at June 22, 2011 04:01 PM (2XtN5)

13 Obviously I need to rewatch the show. ;p

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at June 22, 2011 04:22 PM (pWQz4)

14 Each assistaroid has a space-time bubble inside, which is actually rather large and includes full living quarters for the Cathean which is operating it.

Oh, great.  The assistaroids are actually TARDISes, which makes the Catheans... Timelords.

Posted by: Wonderduck at June 22, 2011 07:08 PM (n0k6M)

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