If this is what the Japanese spend their time on, no wonder they wish for Number 1 status in everything.
And achieve it in many fields.
The song in its original version.
The AMV for the anime is here
Really good composition on that one if you ask me.
This shows the older Suzumiya and Storm Vanguard of the Valkryies, their backstory, how they grew up, and what ultimately became of them and their friends.
Those unfamiliar with the individuals in question, won’t know what happened from the video. But I do, and it’s very touching.
As you can see in the photo, these are 4 students at an academy. The girl with the flowery blond hair is Haruka Suzumiya, HQ coordinator (3rd in command of the Valkyries). The one with the purple silk hair is Storm Vanguard 1 (Mitsuki Hayase: 2nd in command). These two are class mates on the same level and thus graduated at the same time. Their male friends, however, graduated one year sooner being in a higher level, and were commissioned as officers in the war against the BETA. Suzumiya and Hayase are very competitive, but also close and dear friends. To the point where they shared the same taste in men and fell in love with the same person. Who then got commissioned ahead of them in the que. Being commissioned themselves and meeting him afterwards, was their motivation. To finally settle the matter between the 3 of them.
Takayuki Narumi and his male classmate friend fought in the Hesperus Operation to retake the mainland of Japan, Yokohama, from the BETA hive that had spawned there. During it, a new weapon was decided to be used, one developed by the Americans called the G-Bomb, and evacuation orders were sent out to all ground forces to leave the battlefield. Narumi disobeyed that order and continued to fight, because the anti-air defenses were taking out the forces deploying the weapon. As you can see in the vid, he charged past a lot of enemies and successfully eliminated enough of the anti-air defenses that two G-Bombs were deployed successfully, leading to the Hesperus Operation’s victory and the retaking of the mainland, culminating in a full seizure of the Yokohama hive. He, of course, did not survive the gravitational explosion.
I greatly respect both Haruka Suzumiya and Mitsuki Hayase, since they were the superior officers of the protagonist in Muv Luv Alternative. They provided a lot of morale and emotional support, as well as discipline and tradition. That’s a lot of things weighing in on people, but they showed how to pull it together and keep on fighting.
Martial Arts, like any other human field, has its lemons.
When I first read/watched Fate/Stay: Night, I had never encountered the particular Japanese form of story telling it contained. I was familiar with time paradoxes and loops from Star Trek, and they were certainly interesting in a time, causality, and quantum mechanics perspective. People have done some work on alternative worlds such as historical fiction or alternative fiction. It was the first time, however, that I was just blown away by the sheer verisimilitude and impact of this mode of story telling. Fate/Stay Night is basically 3 stories that all start from the same space-time coordination. The same day, the same location, but because the characters made a few different decisions, it branched off into one of the 3: Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, or Heaven’s Feel. What was most well done was that these stories are told in order. In the beginning of the game, you are given some seemingly inconsequential choices. But none of them matters because you’ll always go into the Fate story line or die. Only until you finish Fate and get to the end, can you then loop around start a new story, and proceed to Unlimited Blade Works. It was very surprising. I was like, “Oh, Fate was a pretty good story. Some things I wasn’t too sure about, but generally very nice”. Then I went to Unlimited Blade Works and I was like, “What more can they do with these characters and settings, isn’t it getting boring now”. Well, I spoke too soon given my inexperience with Japanese visual novels. There was a whole heck load of more stuff to discover and read, because Fate was only… an introduction. Only an intro, even though Fate took tens of hours to finish reading and had a great beginning, interesting middle, and moderately satisfying ending. Stuff I would expect from a really good American tv series or book… but there’s 3 of em. And each one is better than the one before, in terms of expanding the characters, their motivations, the world, and the plot. Something my mind had trouble encapsulating and comprehending. How is this kind of art and craft possible.
Visual guide
A lot of wiki links concerning FSN is full of needless spoilers. But this one is very clean. FSN being the first visual novel I ever experienced, yet also the one I have yet to reread, occupies a special place in my memories.
Another result of Thanksgiving gifts.
I only found this out years later after I started training.
They are having their annual, but with a twist this time. Great time to get the material if you were ever hopping for a more economic approach.
No matter how you cut, the Russians weren’t kidding when they said ‘he who controls the past, controls the present’.
This is some of the stuff people play around with in Minecraft.
Playing this visual novel for the third time, reading it for the third time, is especially gut wrenching since I know how it all ends. This allows me to form more logical and emotional connections between events and what characters say. Many things are perfectly explainable, once you think about them or have advance knowledge. Often times, those things were hidden on the first or even second play through. This is a very complicated story to tell, with many characters and personalities. But it is a noble story. Instead of people’s personalities conflicting with each other, and throwing the entire game plan into the loop as we see often on Hollywood movies, Alternative is a story about human nobility, sacrifice, and love. That includes many of the characters, even most of them. Even the villains are, prototypically in Japanese style, more complicated in their motivations than might seem. Although the primary enemy is left relatively mysterious until the end. How a team of humans work out their personal issues and collect themselves into a cohesive unit in order to defeat that enemy, is how the plot can generally be read. This will require motivation, hardship, and surmounting challenges.
Alternative is the third plot line in Muv Luv, the conclusion of the story begun in Extra and Unlimited. It is made by Age (Wisdom in Japanese) and there is currently no English port or translation, other than unofficial ones (fan based) by Amaterasu.
A lot of people, depending on their mental and emotional maturity, can get torn up by this story because it has so much impact, verisimilitude, and emotional connections. I remember reading March to the Stars by John Ringo and David Weber. The ending to that one left me unsatisfied, depressed, and unsure of my emotions. If it wasn’t for that, ML Alternative might have been an even greater shock than it was.
|
Traveler Comments