The refrigerator has finally kicked in on Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars. There's one deus ex machina -- small, easy to miss, but very critical to the plot. It happens at the end of the first episode, but it's perhaps still a spoiler so I'm putting it below the fold and inside a spoiler box. Also, in discussing it and its ramifications, I reveal other, bigger spoilers.

Muryou and Asougi watched the Tokyo attack from the top of the tallest building near where the space ship was. Of course, the Shingu appeared and destroyed it. Apparently all four of the Chosen were involved in that response, and it's made clear later that when that happens, Shun and Hachiyou and Moriguchi's consciousness go along for the ride, although it's really Nayuta who fights the battle.

So Moriguchi spotted Muryou and Asougi on top of the building, which was obviously a curious thing, and when he later saw Muryou at the school, he recognized him. He wanted to know what was going on, and being a hot-headed idiot his means of finding out was to call Muryou out for a fight at the school. All that is fine.

The one contrivance in the series is that at the very end of the first episode, Harumi finds out what's going on and runs to get help to stop the fight. She doesn't run to one of the teachers who are in on the secret. She doesn't run to Hachiyo. She ends up running to Hajime, and she asks him to stop it.

That's critical to the plot, because that's what gets Hajime involved. He sees Moriguchi and Muryou using their power, which leads to Nayuta attacking him, which ultimately leads to him figuring out who she is, and eventually finding out that she's the one who can become the Shingu. It all begins on the roof at the beginning of the first episode.

But why would Harumi run to him for help? It's true that he's the class representative for the class Muryou is in. But even so, she doesn't really know him at that point, and why would she not instead go for Yamato (the teacher in that class, who himself has power and is in on the secret) or to Hachiyo?

Given that Hajime is an outsider, and given that it was pretty obvious Moriguchi was going to be unleashing energy blasts, you'd think that Hajime would be just about the last person Harumi would go to for help.

It's a very small contrivance, and of course it's at the very beginning, but it is a small flaw, just a bit of tarnish, on an otherwise shiny and clean storyline.

Or is it? There's a debatable question: Was Hajime deliberately selected, or did he fall into his role by chance? If it was chance, then this is the chance event that started it all, and it's a character break by Harumi. If he was selected, then it means someone (Setsuna?) prompted Harumi to go to Hajime for help in that situation.

I'm afraid I have to come down on the side of "chance" and "character break" here.

If you respond to this with spoilers, enclose them with spoiler tags: (spoiler)Your prose here(/spoiler) except use square brackets instead of parenthesis.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in at 04:25 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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