"The story can only happen so long as all of the character are morons."
I watched Gantz the other night and just started watching Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet and it has only further proven that a anime story can only progress so long as most or all of the characters involved are too stupid to do any thing or use common sense.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet is the perfect example. Humanity is surviving after a massive ice age that forced those with the means (meaning the military and the rich) to see to space and leave every one else behind to freeze. People survived and eventually the ice age ended, leaving the world as a water world where humanity lives on giant rusting fleets of ships scavenging tech from the sea floor and getting power from bioluminescent bugs in the water that generate electricity. As always, there's pirates who keep raiding them for food and stuff.
Enter the MC, a mecha pilot who was part of a space war against aliens (who look like plants and snails) and got thrown through space by a wormhole back to Earth (which they believed was still a frozen wasteland). His mecha is light years more advanced than the Aliens movie style power loaders the people on Earth are using on the ships. They of course think he's a threat and point guns at him but instead of destroying them, he just puts up with it and lets his mecha translate, telling him he's not a threat. After talking a while with some girl (and them still all surrounding him with guns) pirates attack one of their ships and the girl asks him to safe them so he flies out and blows up all of the pirate ships and kills all of the pirates instantly. The people on the ship get scared and say the pirates will want revenge and they tell him killing is a bad thing and how they try to just threaten the pirates to leave them alone (which of course doesn't work). The pirate fleet comes for revenge and while he could EASILY single-handedly annihilate their entire fleet without them getting a shot off, the ship people tell him to just shine a light on their fleet so they can see them at night and THEY can shoot their cannons at them (after telling him NOT to kill any one). A navel battle begins with every one shooting cannons at each other and both sides taking deaths and ship damage until the pirates use subs to sneak mechas onto the other ships to attack them.
I had the pause the thing there because I was so tired of screaming at my monitor. How F-ing stupid are these people? The pirates keep harassing you and stealing from you! The space mecha can kill ALL OF THEM instantly, thus ending the threat forever. Nope, F that! We're going to shoot at them ourselves despite being out numbered and out gunned and OH $HIT! Guess what happened? We're getting blow up and mechas are climbing up the sides of our ships to kill us! Who could have seen that outcome coming?
Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1 said it perfectly "Proportional response only makes sense when the playing field is even. We have a distinct advantage here. Problem is the other side just doesn't realize how wide the gap is. What they really need is a visual aid."
If you let the space Mecha instantly destroy ALL of the pirates, there's none left the threaten you and if some where out there there are more pirates, hearing how their friends all died instantly without getting a shot off should encourage them to leave you alone. That was the entire point of us building atomic bombs, blowing up Japan and telling the world "Leave us alone!" But then we stupidly allowed other countries to develop their own WMD (by stealing out tech) and then you're back to a even playing field stand off of mutually ensure destruction.
So if you're a anime fan, go back and watch your favorite series and keep what I've said in mind. Look at the actions and choices the characters make and nit-pick them, I'm pretty sure you'll find that a lot of the conflicts and story could have been avoided or resolved much earlier and easier if the characters had common sense.
Comments welcome.
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3 months, 1 week ago
25 Apr 2025 03:17 CEST
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