Bookblogging pt.2.5
Mar. 23rd, 2006 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaMore short Yukikaze summaries, stories 3-5:
3) "Unknowable Battlefield": Rei is forced to play babysitter and guide to a brash journalist/writer/military affairs pundit named Andy Lander(?), who is basically your classic toxic American - complete with jingoistic, nationalistic, USA-uber-alles political stance. XD;; One has the vivid impression of having seen this guy as a talking head on Fox News... Anyway, Lander has a bone to pick with FAF's trans-national or is that post-national stance, or maybe they're not flag-waving enough about defending the planet or something. He thinks they're consolidating their own power base in order to turn around and re-invade Earth. Rei is saddled with him due to being voted Least Likely To Answer Questions by the brass.
The sightseeing flight takes a turn for the bizarre when Yukikaze is swallowed up by an invisible WALL and ends up in an alternate landscape/dimension full of black-and-white seaweed fields and copper antenna coil trees and plexiglass landing strips and... yeah. As they're exploring Lander makes the mistake of trying to touch a bubbling organic swamp and gets his hand lopped off at the wrist. They return to Yukikaze and find her being hovered over by a JAM craft. Rei drives it off with a machine gun(!), has Yukikaze neutralize the jamming/hacking signals keeping them there, pinpoints the JAM base and blows it up with missiles. This sends them back to "reality", literally in the air where they'd begun.
(The whole sequence was in ep.4 of the anime I think? Only the setup was different.)
I found this story rightly horrifying, because the aliens in Yukikaze really are alien. They're not just tentacle monsters in mecha space suits going GWAR WE WILL CONQUER FOOLZ. It's like the X-Files where you can't even begin to work out what the technology is for and what their intentions are, only that it's not healthy for humans to be caught in the gears. And as Rei puts it in the next story, "Sometimes you get the impression they're thinking, 'Hmm, what do you reckon those organic blobs milling about the machines are for? Do you think they're important? Nah, leave them alone, it's not like they're doing anything.'"
4) "Indian Summer": the Banshee IV and Tomahawk John story. I always felt this episode was a bit contrived (I would've bought it better if they'd been acquainted for, like, longer than 24 hours), but it comes off better in the book because NO GREEN GOO. Srsly. What happens in the book is that Tomahawk has a mechanical nuclear-powered heart and a complex from being refused entry to various countries due to having a tiny uranium reactor in his chest, which makes him feel like a second-class citizennot like hailing from a Yukon reserve has that effect already. While in the Banshee the JAM don't attack Rei or even Tomahawk himself, they attack his heart - thus confirming Rei's suspicion that they don't regard human beings as proper entities. ^^; Tomahawk expires heroically and Rei escapes in Yukikaze (after a nightmarish bait-and-switch when he jumps in the cockpit and starts the engine, then realises he's in the wrong room and it's not the real Yukikaze XD).
5) "Fairy - Winter": not in the anime at all. Not so much about Rei as about... one First Lieutenant Amata Mamoru of the snow removal brigade, bitter, alcoholic and freezing his ass off, since despite its jungles and deserts and dinosaurs Planet Fairy turns into CANADA as soon as winter rolls around. XD;;; Ironically I feel this is the best story so far, in terms of concept and execution. I suppose if you were a paranoid thinker you might be able to guess what was happening but the ending gave me a shock, I actually sat there and went :0 at the air for a while. ...Though much of my emotional investment was due to TOTAL AND COMPLETE SYMPATHY for Lt. Amata; Rei might have a tough time of it but at least he gets to fly a superplane, his day job isn't driving a SNOWPLOW in -20C weather. Kanbayashi-sensei describes the Sisyphean hell of snow removal during a storm in such vividly accurate if not loving terms that one can only assume he's done a bit of shoveling in his day. As a Canadian I read with keenly horrified interest. They can't even sand or salt the airstrips because it would get sucked up into the planes' engines and clog them!
(Manon, I wish you could read this, you would totally grok it I'm sure. XD)
This is also the Jack-POV story, which is a point in its favour. XD The plot is that bitter, alcoholic, jaundiced-in-both-senses snowplow driver Lt. Amata is one day awarded the Mars Medal (highest FAF honour for bravery in combat), out of the blue. The decision comes from High Command and no one can tell how it happened or what it was for - he's never even been in combat. Acquaintances make fun of him, the other snowplow drivers ostracize him. At wit's end and in failing health, he has a nervous breakdown in front of Jack as he's clearing the snow from the front driveway of SAF HQ, and Jack like the nice person he is undertakes to nose around and try to figure out where the SNAFU occurred. He ends up talking to a computer that doesn't have Lt. Amata's best interests at heart.
I suspect story #5 marks a turning point, and from here on out it will be more serious/angsty. I'm already a couple of scenes into story #6, it's where Yukikaze does the awesome backflip shot. XD
3) "Unknowable Battlefield": Rei is forced to play babysitter and guide to a brash journalist/writer/military affairs pundit named Andy Lander(?), who is basically your classic toxic American - complete with jingoistic, nationalistic, USA-uber-alles political stance. XD;; One has the vivid impression of having seen this guy as a talking head on Fox News... Anyway, Lander has a bone to pick with FAF's trans-national or is that post-national stance, or maybe they're not flag-waving enough about defending the planet or something. He thinks they're consolidating their own power base in order to turn around and re-invade Earth. Rei is saddled with him due to being voted Least Likely To Answer Questions by the brass.
The sightseeing flight takes a turn for the bizarre when Yukikaze is swallowed up by an invisible WALL and ends up in an alternate landscape/dimension full of black-and-white seaweed fields and copper antenna coil trees and plexiglass landing strips and... yeah. As they're exploring Lander makes the mistake of trying to touch a bubbling organic swamp and gets his hand lopped off at the wrist. They return to Yukikaze and find her being hovered over by a JAM craft. Rei drives it off with a machine gun(!), has Yukikaze neutralize the jamming/hacking signals keeping them there, pinpoints the JAM base and blows it up with missiles. This sends them back to "reality", literally in the air where they'd begun.
(The whole sequence was in ep.4 of the anime I think? Only the setup was different.)
I found this story rightly horrifying, because the aliens in Yukikaze really are alien. They're not just tentacle monsters in mecha space suits going GWAR WE WILL CONQUER FOOLZ. It's like the X-Files where you can't even begin to work out what the technology is for and what their intentions are, only that it's not healthy for humans to be caught in the gears. And as Rei puts it in the next story, "Sometimes you get the impression they're thinking, 'Hmm, what do you reckon those organic blobs milling about the machines are for? Do you think they're important? Nah, leave them alone, it's not like they're doing anything.'"
4) "Indian Summer": the Banshee IV and Tomahawk John story. I always felt this episode was a bit contrived (I would've bought it better if they'd been acquainted for, like, longer than 24 hours), but it comes off better in the book because NO GREEN GOO. Srsly. What happens in the book is that Tomahawk has a mechanical nuclear-powered heart and a complex from being refused entry to various countries due to having a tiny uranium reactor in his chest, which makes him feel like a second-class citizen
5) "Fairy - Winter": not in the anime at all. Not so much about Rei as about... one First Lieutenant Amata Mamoru of the snow removal brigade, bitter, alcoholic and freezing his ass off, since despite its jungles and deserts and dinosaurs Planet Fairy turns into CANADA as soon as winter rolls around. XD;;; Ironically I feel this is the best story so far, in terms of concept and execution. I suppose if you were a paranoid thinker you might be able to guess what was happening but the ending gave me a shock, I actually sat there and went :0 at the air for a while. ...Though much of my emotional investment was due to TOTAL AND COMPLETE SYMPATHY for Lt. Amata; Rei might have a tough time of it but at least he gets to fly a superplane, his day job isn't driving a SNOWPLOW in -20C weather. Kanbayashi-sensei describes the Sisyphean hell of snow removal during a storm in such vividly accurate if not loving terms that one can only assume he's done a bit of shoveling in his day. As a Canadian I read with keenly horrified interest. They can't even sand or salt the airstrips because it would get sucked up into the planes' engines and clog them!
(Manon, I wish you could read this, you would totally grok it I'm sure. XD)
This is also the Jack-POV story, which is a point in its favour. XD The plot is that bitter, alcoholic, jaundiced-in-both-senses snowplow driver Lt. Amata is one day awarded the Mars Medal (highest FAF honour for bravery in combat), out of the blue. The decision comes from High Command and no one can tell how it happened or what it was for - he's never even been in combat. Acquaintances make fun of him, the other snowplow drivers ostracize him. At wit's end and in failing health, he has a nervous breakdown in front of Jack as he's clearing the snow from the front driveway of SAF HQ, and Jack like the nice person he is undertakes to nose around and try to figure out where the SNAFU occurred. He ends up talking to a computer that doesn't have Lt. Amata's best interests at heart.
I suspect story #5 marks a turning point, and from here on out it will be more serious/angsty. I'm already a couple of scenes into story #6, it's where Yukikaze does the awesome backflip shot. XD
