When asked what the most difficult thing about learning the language, most people studying Japanese will probably say kanji––that was generally my answer too, at least until recently. Half way through my fourth year of study, it’s really starting to sink in just how troublesome the “simple” grammar can be. Er, okay I give up on trying to make this sound like a moderately more formal post. Anyway, I’m still shit with kanji and vocabulary, but the nice thing about kanji and vocabulary is that, on the whole, they’re really fucking easy to look up. Quirks of the grammar on the other hand, not so much. These are largely translation related frustrations as I’m in a translation class now, but I didn’t really notice a lot of this stuff until I had to translate it. Some things are more this-is-easy-in-Japanese-but-doesn’t-English-well, others are more of the this-causes-serious-issues-in-comprehension variety. (inb4 I make ignorant and egregious errors because I’m a shit student)

RELATIVE CLAUSES

Okay, so I actually think the way relative clauses work in Japanese is pretty cool (basically a whole sentence just works like an adjective–yeah I realize that’s effectively what a relative clause is, but the way RCs are used in a sentence in Japanese is almost *exactly* like an adjective). The annoying thing about relative clauses in Japanese is that they’re heavily abused and it’s not uncommon to see like 4+ embedded within each other.

So, if you were diagraming a sentence (idk if anyone else does this, I do all the time because linguistics and it makes sense to me) in which you put parenthesis around clauses, you might end up with something like four open/close-parenthesis in a row. This gets annoying because it can become very difficult to first, disentangle all of the relative clauses and figure out where they all go, and second, figure out how to put it into English. On some level, it reminds me of how we’d often end up with sentences that looked something like this in Latin class: “Caecilius, having been doing something or other, verb-ed.”

A sentence with no subject and no verb is a perfectly ‘legal’ sentence in Japanese.

Yes. You can have sentences with no subjects and no verbs in Japanese. Really, this isn’t so much of a problem in Japanese as it is in attempting to translate Japanese into English. It’s not so bad when you have a sentence with assumed subjects and verbs (as is often the case), since you can just fill in the missing information from context BUT it is far from uncommon to have sentences like this where the subject and/or verb are intentionally left ambiguous–and that doesn’t English well.

A relative clause + it’s head on it’s own is a totally reasonable sentence.

Essentially, this as a standalone sentence: “Bob, who was sleeping.” (it’s even worse when it’s attributes and not verbs, or really really long relative clauses)

I guess this could probably be thrown in under sentences-with-no-subject-or-verb, but I see this structure all the time and I hate hate hate hate it because it is so easy to understand in Japanese but so fucking hard to put into not horrible English sometimes.

It is possible to switch subjects mid-sentence with no explicit indication that this has happened.

This is one of those things you’re only likely to discover 3 sentences/a paragraph later when you realize the last chunk of text you translated makes absolutely no sense. I think this aspect is an annoyance mainly because this is totally illegal in English. For me at least, as a native English speaker, it’s really easy to forget that a mid-sentence subject switch is even possible. I’m kind of curious about the precise rules on this in Japanese, might have to dig around my linguistics textbooks to see what I can find.

On a side note, they really should teach some of this stuff with linguistics in language classes–like the devoicing of certain vowels for example, language teachers will inevitably say “you kind of just have to know, you’ll figure it out as we go along,” but the linguistic rule is so simple: い and う are devoiced after unvoiced consonants (which is *super* easy in Japanese since voiced consonants have a dakuten on them!)

Narration in fiction is fucking weird.

Okay, so outside of the story we’re translating in class I’ve only read a few bits of Japanese fiction in other classes and parts of the 00 novels (most of the stuff we read in 3rd year was news articles and the like). But, assuming that there is but an incredibly minute possibility that Enchi Fumiko’s 猫の草子 and the Gundam 00 novels have anything in common stylistically beyond general conventions of Japanese fiction, the way narration works in Japanese is fucking weird. Basically, if you have a third person, presumably omniscient, narrator there is often little to nothing to distinguish between the narrator and the character’s/s’ thoughts. Again, this is totally not cool in English (well, far from not cool it’s not really even possible considering how subjects work in English).

This is a lot like the last one in that it’s really easy to not notice when the narrator switches off into a character’s internal thoughts until a ways later when you realize either a) wait a minute, why is the third person omniscient narrator displaying strong emotions/giving opinions about things? b) shit, was that a personal pronoun not in a quote or in a sentence ending in と思った? c) something else doesn’t make sense. The same kind of problem occurs when coming out of a character’s internal thoughts and going back into narration (I usually miss it until there’s an explicit 3rd person reference and then I have to backtrack and guess the transition).

Hm, I know I had some other things to add to this, but I think five whines is good enough for now. I’ll probably go back and put in more proper examples when I’m more awake (assuming my cold actually lets me get some sleep today).

This has been bugging me for the last couple months so I thought I ‘d whine about it to get it out of my system.

SciFi seems to be on the beginnings of an upswing these days now. There’s even been a resurgence of some spaceship based tv series (probably thanks at least in part to BSG), however questionable their quality might be. So, I dunno, as an SF fan who grew up in the 90s (the ‘golden era’ for TV SF if you ask me), I’m getting hopeful.

But then I keep seeing/hearing marketing and/or interviews with creators to the effect of “It’s technically science fiction, but we think we’re better than that, so don’t think of it as science fiction, we’re tackling serious issues/normal people can enjoy it/etc.” The fuck is up with that? On the SRSBSNS side of things we have Battlestar Galactica. I’ve seen a number of little specials talking to the cast and crew about the series and they almost always make a point to belittle science fiction as a genre–because Battlestar Galactica is tackling real, serious issues and SF has never done that before! Aside from obnoxious continuity issues and spotty characterization it’s this sort of thing more than anything else that fuels my dislike of BSG. Since when has SF not tackled “serious issues”? Hasn’t that been a staple of the genre from, really, pretty early on? Sure there’s plenty of pulp and cheap thrills in there too, but that doesn’t mean it’s incapable of being taken seriously. It’s a popular genre for tackling touchy issues because it’s easy to use an SF context to remove the issue a bit from the real world so it can be approached from another perspective. Even TOS, as campy and ridiculous as it was at times did all sorts of “serious” and groundbreaking things, but I guess the BSG crew is too good to associate with the likes of Star Trek.

Speaking of Star Trek, that brings me to the other side of the coin: the attempt to rebrand SF as something “not just for nerds, but normal people too.” On some level, I can appreciate wanting to get more people to see a SF film from both an economic and I-like-SF-and-you-should-try-it-too perspective. But why do they have to stigmatize nerds? I don’t recall any comic book movies launching ad campaigns to say, “comics: not just for nerds anymore.” I dunno, I think comic books are less accessible to the general populace than SF just from an availability perspective (there’s probably a better chance that, assuming you’re old enough, you’ve seen an episode of Star Trek or one or more of the Star Wars movies, etc than you’ve read an issue of Batman–I dunno, maybe I just don’t know the right people but I can’t remember anyone in my schools, boys or girls, who read comics, but we all watched Star Trek at least occasionally). So what is it that made SF into a nerds-only thing? I mean, I really don’t know what it was in particular. I guess the media stigmatized it or something, maybe? Because for the life of me I can’t think of how exactly we got to this point. Again, in my elementary school at least (isn’t this usually where this sort of thing happens?), everyone watched/knew about Star Trek and it wasn’t especially nerdy. TNG/DS9/VOY were popular primetime series at the time. 

Anyway–I’m starting to lose my train of thought–what the hell is wrong with people these days? And I wish it was just BSG and the new Trek movie in this ‘trend’, there’s all sorts of other shit like Lost and it’s “it’s scifi but we’re pretending it’s not because sf is for nerds and noone would watch it” thing, Stephanie Meyer’s garbage like Twilight, “vampires for people who don’t like vampires,” and The Host “scifi for people who don’t like scifi” (why would you want to read sf if you don’t like it?), shows like Defying Gravity–it’s not scifi, it’s a soap opera in spaaaaace, because girls don’t like scifi, so let’s take a nifty SF premise and gut it so we can have a new gimick for cheap who’s-sleeping-with-whom drama and now certain acclaimed authors denying that their work is SF because SF isn’t taken seriously/being stigmatized seriously right now for whatever reason. 

I dunno. It just makes me sad and angry that it has to be like this. I want my 90s SF baacckkk :{

Just another msc stuff post, as usual this is largely either stuff I’ve been talking about on /m/ and that sort of thing. If any of this is rambley and incoherent, I’m sleepy so I blame it on that. 

This time on 00 Potpourri:
Topic #1: Why Regene is probably not the final boss.
Topic #2: Tau drives getting Trans-am is nothing to freak out about.
Topic #3: Why don’t the Innovator suits have Trans-am if Billy could come up with it in a few months?

Possibly more to come later, but I’m taking a nap now. 

Topic #1: Why Regene is probably not the final boss. 

So, a lot of people seem to like the idea that Regene’s gonna Fucking Ribbons Fucking Ribbons and/or has some kind of elaborate keikaku that’s gonna go doori any minute now. 

As much as I like Regene, I really honestly can’t see him doing anything of the sort. The main reason being that it just doesn’t seem to fit in his character (or at least what we’ve seen of it). At his heart, Regene’s primary characteristics are probably selfishness/self-preservation and curiousity. The only time we’ve ever seen Regene take any sort of explicit action he seems to be motivated by either: the desire to troll the shit out of Ribbons, pure curiousity or both:

 ->”lol, Twin Drive~“ : Regene seems to use this as a sort of insult almost, the main motive being to piss off Ribbons (and if there’s a reason beyond that, it’s to get him riled up/throw him off kilter)

 -> Questioning Ribbons: Here’s the curiousity thing coming up. Regene, up until the party, seemed to be continually hitting on trying to determine Ribbons’ intentions (oft using his little “insult” as an attempt to knock free some information–interestingly he seems to cease this entire line of thought after the “insult” loses its effect). But he hasn’t taken any action oustside Ribbons’ orders (aside from his “unnecessary ”action re: Tieria, I’ll discuss that next)–of course you could argue that we just haven’t seen any external actions (and no, the Wang meeting doesn’t count, he was almost certainly there under Ribbons’ orders). Anyhow, my point is that Regene doesn’t seem to have any reason for his questioning aside from satisfying his own curiousity and determining his situation. Even his monologue after the party didn’t really tell us much of anything, which is why I’m inclined to say Regene wants to find out what Ribbons is up to just for the sake of knowing what he’s up to (well that and making sure he’s not going to become cannon fodder–naturally this is more of a leap in judgment that’s really just my impression/feeling about him since I can’t really give a concrete reason for why I think this is the case exactly–oh yeah, and I might totally end up coming up with a reason while I’m writing this so if I do, there a reason!).
tl;dr of this point: Regene wants to know what’s Ribbons, what’s Veda and what’s Aeolia. His reasons are not terribly clear, I assert that it’s out of curiousity and self-preservation.

-> Regene’s “unnecessary” action: We still don’t know what action of his was “unnecessary.” It’s entirely possible that his entire meeting with Tieria was outside the scope of Ribbons’ instruction. Regardless, Regene’s interest in meeting and antagonizing Tieria is probably curiousity again and trolling (Regene just loves fucking with people, does he really need more of a reason?). It’s possible that Regene intentionally wanted to piss off Tieria and turn him against the Innovators–Regene’s recent comment about Tieria being against them being “wonderful” is pretty interesting in this regard. Initially, my thinking was that Regene just trolled Tieria to dick with Ribbons (see their “fight” in ep 9) and see what kind of person Tieria was. But the idea that Regene is happy that Tieria’s against them is interesting to say the least.

Anyhow, my point is, Regene is only motivated out of his own desires for the most part. He isn’t concerned with other people as far as we’ve seen (he didn’t give a shit about the Memento Mori killing people, he doesn’t seem to have an Innovator superiority complex or anything else resembling a grand philosophy or anything). Regene is primairly concerned with himself. I believe most of his curiousity about the plan stems for concern for his person–like I said before, he doesn’t want to be turned into cannon fodder. In saying that, Regene is clearly not a blind follower of Ribbons/Veda/Aeolia like the other Innovators seem to be. Even Tieria was like that at some point (well, minus Ribbons of course), so I think it’s reasonable to assume that Regene was probably similar initially as well and from there, since he’s decidedly lacking in faith for, well, anything it seems, something had to have happened to change that (again, assuming Regene wasn’t just “born” cynical). 

Regene is decidedly obedient to Ribbons (again, the only overt action he’s taken outside of Ribbons’ instructions was the thing with Tieria and his occasional snarks at Ribbons if that even counts), but obedience is not the same thing as trust/belief/following/the-word-I’m-trying-to-think-of-is-on-the-tip-of-my-brain. And it’s this obedience that makes me think tha Regene’s quite concerned for his own well being. He isn’t opposed to poking at Ribbons and messing with him, but he knows his boundraies (he never directly attacks him or disobeys orders) and I think it’s largely out of the desire NOT TO DIE and nothing else. I’m starting to think that his motives for his “unnecessary” action were partly to get himself grounded again so he wouldn’t be chucked out into battle where he’d likely be killed (except we know he wouldn’t because he has Tieria plotshield). Ribbons seems to trust Regene with certain sensitive tasks that he doesn’t seem to give to the other Innovators: picking up Louise in the S1 epilouge, going to Tieria (which he admittedly fucked up albeit probably intentionally), and now keeping an eye on Wang. I think Ribbons is generally aware of Regene’s attitude (that he’ll pretty much follow orders unless he sees an opportunity to have some fun), and knowing that trusts him differently than the other Innovators–Regene’s more “innovative” since he’s more independently minded than the others and at the same time Regene’s concerned with his own well being more than the plan or anything which is someething Ribbons can take advantage of to keep Regene in check. 

Earlier I proposed a theory (relating the second-to-last paragraph mostly) that Regene was initially a faithful follower of Veda/Ribbons/the plan and then SOMETHING happened which caused a crisis of faith in him. I think this is increasingly plausible explaination for Regene being the way he is: Not having any other options like his brother, rather than having a massive identity crisis and going against the Innovators, Regene just becomes cynical and more self-centered. Since he has no one else to care about, in discovering that there’s something fishy/not magical/etc about the plan and/or his comrades he has no reason to hold them in particular regard, especially since the attitude of the plan and Ribbons’ and whatever seems to be that the Innovators are superior to humans, but expendable–notice how no one really gives a shit that Bring’s dead–on the other end of the spectrum is Tieria who had something to grab onto during his crisis of faith, when he lost Veda to depend on and believe in he still had his comrades, Regene only has himself. Anyhow, here we have Regene, self-centered and lacking in any guiding philosophy or motive beyond: 1) entertain myself and 2) don’t die. And from there I cannot imagine that Regene has any sort of plan for controling the world like Ribbons who has a fucking God complex. However, I can totally see Regene shanking Ribbons if he was forced into a situation where he had to act–basically, if Ribbons corners him Regene’s gonna fuck his shit up without really giving it a second thought, but it’s not because Regene’s concerned about humanity or the plan or world domination. Nope, it’s just because to Regene, Regene is more important than Ribbons or any goddamn plan. As long as he doesn’t feel like his person is being threatened by Ribbons and his machinations, Regene will remain loyal (to a degree, again he’s not about to take a bullet for Ribbons but he’ll hold a gun to Wang’s head for him).

And so, that’s why I don’t think Regene is the final boss. It really boils down to a sheer lack of motive or desire. Regne doesn’t give a shit about the world or humanity or anything. Regene just wants to sit around and watch TV and mooch off Ribbons and maybe find out what evil keikaku Ribbons has going on because that’s fun. He might do something eventually. He might be concerned about Tieria (honestly, Tieria’s the only person I can see him taking any sort of interest in aside from himself since Tieria is in a sense an extension of himself–I can kind of see Regene’s self-centered feelings of self preservation extending to Tieria because they’re twins, which reminds me, in my old theory that still seems to make sense even though there still isn’t much hard evidence to base it on, I suggested that maybe the SOMETHING that disillusioned Regene was discovering information about Tieria and how he was considered expendable, thus triggering disillusion with the plan since if Tieria, his twin, is expendable surely he is expendable too).

tl;dr REGENE IS NOT THE FINAL BOSS BECAUSE HES A LAZY NEET.

Topic #2: Tau drives getting Trans-am is nothing to freak out about.

For some reason, some people are freaking out about the idea of the Tau drives suddenly becoming hax with Trans-am (which, first of all, I think is really silly since everyone’s always bitching that the Gundams are overpowered because they have Trans-am hax but now the grunts getting that evened out is unacceptable? WILL NOTHING SATISFY YOU /m/?!)

First off, only Masurao, a highly experimental machine, has Trans-am capabilities. And next, we get into some highly speculative stuff on how Tau drive Trans-am probably functions:
 1. Tau drives run off batteries and convert that electricity into GN Particles
 2. Trans-am in the real drives functions by increasing particle output for a period somehow (presumably dumping everything in the condensers and/or releasing all particles rather than just filtered ones–we’ve never gotten a proper answer on this yet as far as I know) after which the unit’s particle output decreases severely as condensers are recharged and however the rest of the filter theory worked goes
 3. The Tau drives’ particle output is limited by their charge; that is to say, unlike the real drives which are (nearly) perpetual energy devices which require no external energy input, the Tau drives can only produce particles as long as they have electricity 

So the main conclusion from all this prior to the Masurao’s appearence is that for a Tau unit to “Trans-am” it’d use up all it’s particles (and thus energy in the battery) and then plummet to the ground / be dead in space because it has no way to replenish the particles after the energy’s used up. 

Presumably this isn’t the case for the Masurao either because:
 a. Giant/super efficient battery, more engergy = more particles = longer operation time = can dump a lot of particles for a while and still be okay at least enough for basic function/recharging
 b. Some kind of energy generator, a nuclear reactor or something (even though nuclear technology is supposed to not exist in 00’s world because of Veda’s dicking with history)
 c. Some external, continual or re-charge-on-the-fly energy supply 

Personally, I think it’s c, especially given that the Masurao’s bunny-eared antenna look a lot like the Enact’s head which, as I recall, had a microwave  reciever in it so it could get energy directly from the orbital ring. So here we have the Trans-am energy drain solved. 

But why isn’t this something to worry about as far as HAX for the grunts go? Aside from Masurao being one of a kind for the moment: ELEVATOR DROP. It’d easily cripple the key component in making Tau drive Trans-am feasible (assuming c is correct), the energy supply. SO NO PROBLEMS THERE.

Topic #3: Why don’t the Innovator suits have Trans-am if Billy could come up with it in a few months?

Ribbons knows about Trans-am and we can assume he knows the basics of what it does, so why doesn’t he implement it in the Innovator suits? I think there are several reasonable explainations:

1. Ribbons has a fucking god complex. He doesn’t think he need any fucking Trans-am to beat the stupid humans.
2. Ribbons haet Aeolia. He especially doesn’t need any of that old man’s shit to defeat stupid humans.
3. Ribbons, being not a total idiot, probably thought the same as us, that Trans-am is impractal for Tau drives and there are perhaps better ways of utilizing the Taus’ energy output than dumping everything into a one-time-per-battle power up.
4. The details of Trans-am and whatnot are probably not in Veda since they were a surprise in the GN Drive’s black box that Aeolia left for PLAN B, so Ribbons doesn’t really know very much about the mechanics of it. Despite how smart he may think he is (and also 1&2 would explain why he might dismiss the idea outright before putting much thought into it) perhaps the problem required more thought than he was willing or able to put into it and Billy had the help of his genius professor’s notes and being batshit insane and out for revenge by any means necessary that Ribbons decidedly did not have. 

Basically, I don’t think it’s terribly unreasonable to think that Ribbons didn’t investigate Trans-am capibilites for Tau drives. (I mean just look at how smug he was about the Gadessa’s abilities in ep 9). Also, I suspect that Revive and Hilling’s new suits that popped up in the new summaries will be Trans-am enabled assuming that the elevator drop doesn’t happen before that and/or I was wrong about the Tau energy supply.

So, I’d been thinking lately about Regene’s more recently visible SRSBSNS side and decided it might be interesting to examine how Regene speaks in different situations (mainly depending on who he’s talking to and tracking his attitude change over the first 9 episodes). Honestly, this is largely a very silly waste of time, but I’m bored and I think linguistic analysis is fun, so there (I could totally turn all this shit in to an epic honors thesis if I didn’t have such a meh GPA). 

First up, data. Every line Regene’s spoken so far.
(To clarify, each conversation is numbered and then each line in the conversation is numbered, so if I mention (3-1.2) I’d be talking about Regene’s second line in the first conversation in episode 3. The other participants in the conversation are noted by the conversation number just so it’s easier to see.)

Unfortunately, the data’s a bit skewed in some areas since Regene has only had one monologue line (if we’d be using speeking-to-one’s-self as a gauge of ‘true’ personality vs. the personas used among different sorts of company) but anyhow. [EDIT] Conclusion’s done, you might want to just skip to that rather than reading through all the “work” unless you’re a linguistics-fag and find that shit entertaining. 

Episode 2 – Sentence Endings

(1.1) -るんだい？　だ
plain form + explanation (seeking) + WH-question (masc., informal); plain copula

(1.2) だね
plain copula + agreement (seeking) 

(1.3) -る?
plain form (with rising intonation) 

(2.1) だ？　は
plain copula, arguably the は isn’t ending a sentence since it’s the result of right dislocation:
     「なんだ？　あのシステムは」
       >「あのシステムはなんだ？」(replaced in the sentence)

(3.1) だい?
WH-question (masc., informal)

(3.2) ない？　が…
plain form, negative (with rising intonation); ellipsis 

Pronouns / Honorifics

(1.1) リボンズ⦰
first name only, no honorific 

(1.3) ホーマー・カタギリ⦰
full name, no honorific (until I do a more in-depth analysis of honorific usage in the show as a whole, I don’t know worthwhile this datapoint is–just off the top of my head I believe it’s a bit odd/sporadic, so until I determine a baseline this doesn’t mean much)

(3.2) 君
masculine (speaker) 2nd person, @Ribbons 

Other

(1.1) へえ～ 
aidzuchi/backchannel (sorta, if we assume that before he makes this noise Ribbons showed him something over their telepathic link that we weren’t privy to; otherwise just ‘interjection’ might be a better description)

(1.1) すてき
word choice; すてき is kind of girly/childish, isn’t it? I mean, just look at the gloss for it: “lovely, dreamy, beautiful, great, fantastic, superb, cool, capital” 

Episode 3 – Sentence Endings

(1.1) だい？
WH-question (masc. informal) 

(1.2) るかな？
plain form + wondering (informal)

Pronouns / Honorifics

(1.1) アザディスタンの姫君
I’d never heard 姫君 until Regene used it (not that that’s really saying much but anyhow). Translating my DS’s Japanese-Japanese dictionary entry on 姫君 and 姫 to figure out the nuance difference:

姫君
The title of an aristocrat’s daughter. Particularly the elder daughter’s title.

姫
1. A eulogistic name for a girl. 
2. An aristocrat’s daughter.  姫君.

So… not terribly informative, I don’t know what the nuance is precisely, but generally longer = more polite. 

(1.2) 彼ら 
3rd person plural, masculine (referent–though in the plural it can be neutral too, like “guys”)

Episode 5 – Sentence Endings

(1.1) -る…か
plain form + pause + question marker w/o rising intonation

(1.2) 考え？　ヴェーダ？
nouns, no copula (this could be considered a shift from his previous pattern), rising intonation 

(1.3) リヴァイヴ・リバイバル…
name, no copula, ellipsis

(1.4) 者？
noun, no copula, rising intonation

Pronouns / Honorifics

(1.2) 君
masculine (speaker) 2nd person, @Ribbons

(1.3) リヴァイヴ・リバイバル⦰
full name, no honorific 

Episode 7 – Sentence Endings

Note: This is the first time Regene speaks outside Ribbons’ presence.

(1.1) だね
plain copula + agreement (seeking)

(1.2) -るのさ
plain form + explanatory + strong statement

(1.3) だからさ　タイプ
plain copula + reason + strong statement; noun, no copula or SFP 

(1.4) イノベイター　リジェネ・レジェッタ
noun, no copula or SFP; name, no copula or SFP

Episode 8 – Sentence Endings

(omitting the lines that are repeats from 7)

(1.3) そうさ
aidzuchi + strong statement

(1.4) 感応能力
noun, no copula or SFP

(1.5) 直接リンク
noun, no copula or SFP

(1.6) 老化抑制
noun, no copula or SFP

(1.7) だ
plain copula

(1.8) -なかったのかい 
negative, past, plain form + explanation (seeking) + Y/N question (masc., informal) 

(1.9) だね
plain copula + agreement (seeking)

(1.10) -るよ
plain form + strong appeal/intent

(1.11) 統合
noun, no copula or SFP

(1.12) 統一
noun, no copula or SFP

(1.13) -る
plain form

(1.14) 全ぼう
not sure (corruption of 全部 maybe?), I’m throwing it in the noun, no copula or SFP category

(1.15) -くのさ
plain form + explanation (giving) + strong statement

(2.1) だ
plain copula

(2.2) ね… 
ellipses + agreement (seeking or you could argue that he’s agreeing with his last statement)
     > そう　変革という波が必要だね… (the line with the omitted section replaced)

(2.3) 伴う  -たじゃないか
plain form; past plain form + negative (copula) + question (confirmation seeking)

(2.4) -る
plain form

(2.5) -た
plain form

(2.6) -る
plain form

(2.7) 導こう　
plain form (volitional)

(2.8) として…　
conjunction + ellipses (right dislocation from 2.7):
     > ティエリア・アーデ、同じイノベイターとして共に人類を導こう　 

(2.9) ないよ　-る
negative plain to-be + strong intent; plain form

(2.10) -るのだから
plain form + explanation (giving) + plain copula + reason (の seems kind of odd here, I know it’s up to personal preference a lot of the time, but isn’t it んだから? dunno what that ‘means’ though)

(3.1) ですよ
polite copula + strong intent (Note: this is the first and only time Regene’s used the polite copula)

(4.1) だよ
plain copula + strong intent

(5.1) -た
plain past form

(5.2) か…
question marker, w/o rising intonation

Pronouns / Honorifics 

(1.7, 2.5, 2.6) 僕たち
1st person, masculine, informal, plural

(1.7) イオリア・シュヘンベルグ⦰
full name, no honorific

(1.8, 2.5) 自分
reflexive (@Tieria)

(1.9, 2.5, 2.10) 君
2nd person, masculine (speaker), informal; @Tieria

(1.14) イオリア
first name, no honorific  

(1.15) 僕ら 
1st person, masculine, informal, plural (different plural marker, as far as I understand it there’s no semantic difference between -ら and -たち, I wonder why he switched?)

(2.3, 2.4) 君たち
2nd person, masculine (speaker), informal, plural; @Tieria + Ptolemy crew 

(2.7) ティエリア・アーデ
full name, no honorific 

(2.10) 僕
1st person, masculine, informal (Note: first time Regene makes a singular first-person reference)

(5.1) イオリア・シュヘンベルグ
full name, no honorific

(5.2) リボンズ・アルマーク
full name, no honorific (Note: this is the first time Regene references Ribbons by his full name, I believe this is indicative of an emotional distance shift–when Regene’s speaking to Ribbons he uses Ribbons’ first name to indicate closeness and camaraderie)

 Episode 9 – Sentence Endings

(1.1) だよ
plain copula + strong opinion

(1.2) さ
strong statement

(1.3) のに
even-though (particle), ellipses

(1.4) ツインドライヴシステム
noun, no copula

(1.5) ものか…
noun + (no copula) + question marker, w/o rising intonation

(1.6) 遺産か
noun + (no copula) + question marker, w/o rising intonation (Note: pacing-wise he gets cut off by Ribbons here even though he finished the sentence)

Pronouns / Honorifics

(1.1) ティエリア・アーデ
full name, no honorific

(1.1) 君
2nd person, masculine (speaker), informal; @Ribbons

(1.3) 僕 
1st person, masculine, informal 

(1.6) イオリア・シュヘンベルグ
full name, no honorific

Conclusions

I already addressed the point of Regene’s speech style in the first few episodes in this post: Ribbons & Regene Linguistics tl;dr so if you want a more detailed explanation of that stuff, go read that post. In the first three episodes (oh yeah, and I totally just realized I missed that one line of Regene’s from the first episode but fuck it it’s in that old post and there’s nothing new to it), Regene’s speech is characterized by being decidedly: masculine, informal and rather friendly (toward Ribbons). Additionally it has a somewhat childish feel to it. In episode 2 it’s worth noting that Regene finds Ribbons’ (seemingly only) sore spot–the Twin Drive System–and he tries using it again in 9.

In his dialogue in episode 5 we see Regene starting to get frustrated with his ‘cute’ (for lack of a better term) persona when Ribbons shuts him down again (“Is it your plan or Veda’s?” – “Who knows.”)–he’s not making any progress in prying into Ribbons’ plans with it. Looking at his hesitation in 5-1.1 before adding the か to make it a question–he’s hesitant to be so direct. And also in this dialogue, we see that he obviously isn’t terribly fond of Revive (not so much in the text but in his reaction and intonation).

In episode 7-8 we see Regene away from Ribbons for the first time. With Tieria he shifts into a moderately more forceful mode of speech (lots of really quite assertive SFPs as opposed to questions; the only instance of よ prior to this episode in Regene’s speech was in the first episode in a ‘new information’ mode rather than being especially forceful or assertive)–one thing to note is that it’s difficult to determine his motives here: is he acting like this because Ribbons told him to or not? Was he even supposed to contact Tieria like that? At this point, we really don’t know aside from that he did something “unnecessary.” Ultimately, I’d say his interaction with Tieria is pretty similar to his ‘cute’ persona with Ribbons, but more assertive and on some level more self-centric (that’s a terrible half assed attempt at getting at whatever word I’m thinking of but can’t remember, but point being in 7-8 while talking to Tieria it’s the first time we hear Regene refer to himself as a singular entity (“I” not “we”) though it was in conjunction to Tieria, which is potentially interesting but there’s not enough data to make much more out of it yet). 

We see that assertiveness, perhaps triggered by Ribbons having given him some more freedom (I doubt it really, unless you take that to mean that Regene’s just starting to make his next move now because that), carry over into 9 where he continues to use assertive SFPs and references himself but with Ribbons now. AND he takes the opportunity to rub Ribbons’ sore spot again, but is frustrated when it doesn’t work this time (I dunno, I just love how that scene played out–”Regene, you fucked up my party” “Not my fault.” “…..” “Hey, remember that Twin Drive thing that you didn’t know about? What if-” “No one cares about that anymore Regene.” “……”).

Anyhow, I skipped over some important points from 8:
1) Regene uses polite form with Wang. (Who was, in turn, using some SRS keigo with Regene) This is another one of those things that’s potentially interesting but there really isn’t enough to go on to make any even vaguely reliable conclusion. 
2) When speaking to himself, Regene refers to Ribbons by his full name. As I mentioned in the point-by-point analysis, I think it’s indicative of psychological/emotional distance (as opposed to respect, which is admittedly a type of distance but it’s different). Regene does not feel loyalty or camaraderie to/with Ribbons. This’s been pretty implicit in a lot of his attitude throughout, but I think this is just a moderately clearer hint at that. 

And… um… that’s all I’ve got right now. I’m really tempted to go back through Ribbons’ likes from S1 and compare them to S2 because that could be interesting (the thing is, the Innovators have just about the right amount of lines that doing this isn’t so incredibly time consuming but there’s still good data to work with–even when they don’t have a lot of lines, they’re always very information-packed). 

(I was just gonna tack this on to 009 Speed Translatin’ again again, but it’s long and stands on it’s own decently so if you want more context go read the first bit of that post)

After reading some Japanese blogs I think I’m wrong. Still seems weird to me… Fuck this is really bothering me, I don’t understand the syntax at all and I only found one example in my Japanese Linguistics text that ha–oh goddamn you Tsujimura, it’s syntactically ambiguous? Fuck.

Lemme explain myself (well this is more for my benefit than anything but whatever):

p207 of An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics discusses how the following is syntactically ambiguious:

(2)     akai     hon-no        hyoosi
          red      book-GEN   cover

There are two interpretations associated with the phrase in (2): one reading is the cover of a red book, and the other is such that the cover is red and the book itself is not necessarily red.

This all sounds really dumb because chances are you’d describe a book with a red cover as a “red book” right? Well taking a look at it structurally you can see how it applies to Hilling’s line in question:

(3)     [[akai hon]-no hyoosi]      ”the cover of a red book”

         [akai [hon-no hyoosi]]      ”a red cover of the book”

(syntax trees omitted because I’m not in the mood to try rendering them in text and I think the above is plenty clear)

Now, admittedly the example sentence is just dealing with an adjective, but ultimately a relative clause acts the same as any other noun-modifier. Here’s what Hilling’s line looks like in proper linguistics-breakdown-style (I’m dropping the last part of the sentence because it’s got nothing to do with the issues in the primary NP, and I’m sorry if I’m marking dearu wrong, that fuck Tsujimura didn’t include any examples of how you notate the copula in my text and I’m having a hell of a time finding anything useful online):

戦闘        用            である        私の             出番        　
sentou   you           dearu        atashi-no    deban    
battle     purpose    COP          I-GEN          turn

And from here we get to the syntactic ambiguity (the translation choices are rather awkward to illustrate the relative clause–we don’t really use them like this in English):

[[sentou you dearu] atashi]-no deban     “The turn of I whose purpose is battle”

[sentou you dearu [atashi-no deban]]     “My turn, the purpose of which is battle”

Sooo… Syntactically it’s ambiguous as to whether Hilling is explicitly a battle-unit or if she was just talking about her turn to go into battle.

Er… To clarify my earlier comment about Japanese blogs–I was reading the latest entry on this artist’s blog and she commented on the line saying “‘For the purpose of battle’* she said. I wonder what types the others are. But, even though Hilling’s so cute she’s specializing in combat and whatnot, that contradiction** is really cute.” (*keeping that phrase literal just to be clear as to what phrase I’m talking about, **literally “gap” in katakana, there’s a better way to translate that, I know it, the English word is just eluding me at the moment…) So, that’s how one native speaker interpreted it (modifying “atashi” rather than “atashi-no deban” from what I can tell). 

Anyhow. This is why Japanese is driving me crazy.

[EDIT]

Forgot to add that wouldn’t a syntactically more clear phasing be (assuming ‘atashi’ is the intended target or the RC):

戦闘        用            である        私は             出番が        　
sentou   you           dearu        atashi-wa    deban-ga    
battle     purpose    COP          I-TOP          turn-NOM
“As for me, whose purpose is battle, [my] turn…”

Using the attribute construction that I rarely hear used (oh no, native speakers don’t use “no” for attributes at all, remember: 像は鼻が長いです。–”Speaking of Elephants, [their] noses are long.” not 像の鼻が長いです。–”Elephants’ noses are long.”)

Because I don’t want to do my homework right now. This is probably going to mainly concern the preview. 

[EDIT] Added another theory.

Topic #1: Tieria’s Shower Scene

What’s there to theorize about this you may be wondering? His longer than normal hair of course. There are several plausible explanations, I think (from the smallest leap to the largest, more or less):

1. QUALITY
2. Flashback to after the party in 8.
3. It’s a dream/hallucination/etc.
4. Flashback to some unspecified time in the in-between years (and for whatever reason he hasn’t cut his hair for a while, maybe he was in despair mode for a while and let himself go, maybe he decided not to cut his hair until he got CB back together, I dunno, this is all pretty baseless)
5. Tieria’s hair grows really fast.
   a. This is normal. He cuts it every day.
   b. It’s not normal, perhaps due to purple disheveled II doing some mindfucking.
6. Flashback to Tieria’s activation (dunno why his hair would be noticeably longer than in the OP shot but throwing it out there anyway).

Other things: My first thought was that it looked like Tieria was having one of those quantum-brainwave-headaches. Perhaps purple disheveled II is dicking with him and maybe Marie will pick up on it and be less useless.

Topic #2 Purple Disheveled II

Obvious things:
 - It’s Revive’s twin (well, more likely than not)
 - Wearing a red/salmon jacket. 

Conclusions/thoughts:
 - Might be a female-identifying Innovator since s/he’s wearing not-grey and according to the writers only the women and Meisters get to wear colored uniforms. It also seems to go with the male/female pairing of Innovators (of the two pairs we know of for certain, both have a male/female voice actor pair and Hilling and Ribbons are pretty opposite in terms of gender presentation, Tieria and Regene are pretty similar though so I dunno how well the pattern holds, I guess you could argue that they developed differently since they haven’t been together much at all)
 - Probably won’t be alive/with Ptolemy-CB for very long (maybe this is what prompts Tieria to reveal the Innovator secret?). I have no doubt that this one is a spy/saboteur rather than a defector like some people have speculated (I mean, it’s possible, but having a character ‘defect’ when they’re introduced is highly suspicious if nothing else). 

Er.. well, I’m just going to leave it there for the moment. Possibly more later.

[EDIT]

Topic #3 MISTA BUSHIDO

Now, if I’d started writing this right after I woke up this morning, it would probably be more coherent (this was one of those I-was-pondering-things-while-half-asleep things). It made a lot of sense at that point but it’s probably pretty out there now… BUT ANYHOW, I propose the following:

Mista Bushido is another of Ribbons’ agents (that is to say, aside from the fact that the entire A-Laws operation is under Ribbons’ control, Bushido’s got some kind of more direct relation to Ribbons). I’m thinking a deal-with-the-devil kind of situation since he’s got his fancy license-to-do-whatever-the-fuck-I-want just like Revive but he’s not necessarily under Ribbons’ direct control (more like, Ribbons wants him in play, in the A-Laws, so he gave him his special license/whatever–possibly extending to Ribbons having recovered Graham from the fight with Exia at the end of S1, but that’s more of a stretch). Anyway, I had other evidence when I was half asleep this morning but I either forgot it or made it up because I was half asleep so… yes.

Since I can’t concentrate on my homework, I figured I’d write some tl;dr on 00 since that usually settles me down (my brand new, top-of-the-line computer turned into a piece of shit over the last couple weeks somehow and it’s driving me fucking crazy–that, by the way, is my big excuse for not having drawn much in the last few weeks, on top of the costume design project, Photoshop is really painful to use right now). Anyhow! Post-8 thoughts, mostly about Innovators and the usual shit. And have a screenshot from the preview because… sexy Innovators?

Regene

This week’s big Regene-question is what was it that Regene said/did that went over the line for Ribbons? Obviously he did something he wasn’t supposed to do. But what was it?

• Contacting Tieria (at all? directly?)
• Using quantum-brainwave-telepathy to talk to Tieria
• Telling Tieria about Aeolia’s plan
• Provoking/taunting Tieria
• Something else?

Either way Ribbons is not happy with what he did. Regene is probably grounded now, but I get the impression he knows it and took the risk anyway. Regene’s preparing to make some kind of move, but as usual we have no idea what it is still. I think he’s trying to protect Tieria though, hence the especially creepy approach/etc to put him off joining the Innovators (though if it wasn’t for Lockon it probably would have worked). I wouldn’t be surprised if Regene goes rogue soon. 

Also, Regene’s got himself a bunch more deathflags this episode. If he goes down he’s taking a lot of shit with him though–I can see him sacrificing himself for Tieria/whatever his plan is.

 The “Plan”

There are so many fucking plans going on it’s becoming difficult to keep track of. Here’s what I think is going on:

Aeolia’s original plan (according to Ribbons and co.)

1. CB interventions eradicate war (in-between step: CB is destroyed)
2. A-Laws control humanity
3. Humanity moves into deep space

Assuming this is actually Aeolia’s original plan and not just Ribbons’ revised plan, of course. I think during S1 when Aeolia’s body and the Veda core were tampered with the plan shifted to a backup plan which Aeolia had devised ahead of time (this would include Trans-Am and the Twin Drive/etc, especially given that the Twin Drive was something not in Veda and that Ribbons didn’t know about).

Regene keeps posing the question of whether Ribbons is actually following Aeolia’s plan or not. I think I’m inclined to agree with one of the guys on /m/ who said that Ribbons is doing his own thing but within the bounds of Aeolia’s original premise (perhaps so that he can blame whatever he ends up doing that’s all evil and horrible on Aeolia–he doesn’t seem to like Aeolia much at all so using his plan to destroy his image and achieve his [Ribbons'] own goals seems like it’d be a pretty sweet deal for Ribbons).

Then of course there are outside factors like Wang (who seems to be working with Regene, I kind of think Regene’s just trying to cover all his bases–I’m almost inclined to say that Regene has no grand plan but is mainly concerned with self-preservation and I do think he has some kind of related interest in Tieria).

The Mirror Scene

So, we have Hilling Care, Tieria and a mirror that gets shot in this episode. Was that the ominous mirror scene from the ED or perhaps foreshadowing of it? If the mirror scene ‘happened’ this week I make the following predictions:

• Revive’s the first Innovator that’s gonna buy it, probably in episode 12 or 13 after O-Raiser comes online and OO starts wrecking shit.
• Hilling’s next.

If it’s meant as foreshadowing, I think the Innovator-splinter cell thing might happen. Hilling is interesting though… Well both him and Revive seem pretty loyal to Ribbons. But then again Revive seems more of the type just giving lipservice to Ribbons, and Hilling seems a touch psycho so I guess it’s plausible. I dunno how they’d work with Regene though…

Innovator =! Supersoldiers

For the last time idiots, they’re organic robots. They’re not modified humans, they were designed and ‘built.’ STOP BITCHING THAT EVERYONE’S A SUPERSOLDIER. THEY’RE NOT.

Um… I think I had other stuff I wanted to write about too buuut I’ve lost my train of thought and I’ll just toss in that I’m really excited about where the story’s going right now and that we’re getting MOAR INNOVATORS next week.

First, Innovator’s names in katakana (pulled mostly from the Japanese 00 wiki since I can’t find the original magazine scan they were announced in to reference), the current prevailing Romanization of the name and my attempt at IPA (going by the way it’s written, we haven’t heard how Regene’s last name actually pronounced yet since we haven’t heard it/etc–I realize that katakana is a phonetic script, but it’s weird where some words are concerned):

Ribbons Almark 
リボンズ・アルマーク
[ɺibo̞nzɯ äɺɯma:kɯ]

Regene Regetta 
リジェネ・レジェッタ
[ɺidʑe̞ne̞ ɺe̞dʑe̞t:a]

Revive Revival
リヴァイヴ・リバイバル
[ɺivaivu ɺibaibaɺɯ] (alt.[ɺibaibɯ])

Bring Stabity
ブリング・スタビティ
[bɯɺiŋgɯ sɯtabiti] (alt.[sɯtabiʨi])

Anew Returner
アニュー・ リターナー
[äɲjɯ: ɺita:na:]

Hiling Care
ヒリング・ケア
[çiɺiŋgɯ ke̞ä]
(alt. phonetic transcription is mainly to characterize how it is/is probably actually pronounced despite how it’s written, like ヴァ becoming バ when it’s actually spoken/etc, it depends a lot on the speaker; also IPA and Japanese don’t always agree with each other–and by that I mean I’ve got a few textbooks that talk about representing Japanese in IPA and they don’t all agree on what IPA character is most appropriate for certain sounds (especially the r’s, oh god the r’s….), so I’m going a much with Wikipedia as I can since it’s more or less in the middle)

The main reason I thought it might be good to look at the names in IPA was because honestly the common romanizations for some of them really aren’t that representative of the sound on their own and consequently attempting to figure out what the fuck “Regetta” is supposed to mean is very difficult. 

Regene’s really the biggest WTF as far as name romanization goes. From what I can tell the spelling “Regene Regetta” popped up pretty early on and always had a rather official air to it, but I don’t know where exactly it came from. I have a hard time believing someone looked at the kana and decided to spell it like that though (to me, at least, that spelling looks like it’d be more representative of レゲネ・レゲッタ than リジェネ・レジェッタ–a closer romanization would be something like Rijene Rejetta). Regene I can understand if you’re thinking about a truncated version of regene[rate], but Regetta? Where’d that come from? 

Also, I don’t really get where the thing about Hilling =/= Healing thing is coming from. I mean, I realize that sometimes Japanese has weird standardized katakana words, but google gave me a fair number of results for ヒリング in relevant contexts. And sound-wise that’d be my best guess for how you’d put “healing” into kana anyhow, unless it’s just the issue of a long vowel or somethin- ah, it is, I should have tried that earlier, okay the proper kana for “healing” is ヒーリング, so the spelling’s probably intentionally dicked up (which usually means one of three things: 1) Engrish 2) it’s just name/word corruption 3) ANAGRAMS).

Speaking of dicked up spelling, the kana for Revive’s name is absolutely bizarre to me: リヴァイヴ・リバイバル. Do you see that? In Revive the v’s are spelled with ヴ but in Revival it’s バ. That’s fucking WEIRD. I mean, either is acceptable for rendering the v sound since it doesn’t exist in Japanese but normally you pick one and stick with it through the word/phrase/name/etc. Which again gets me thinking WHY would you do that? Aside from perhaps making the first and last name more different looking (it sounds pretty much the same, well at least when Ribbons says Revive he says it like リバイブ), again the only thing I can think of is either intentional name corruption (either for the purpose of removing the name from the word enough that you don’t make the association immediately or to be representative of some sort of linguistic change during the last 300 years) OR anagrams. 

Anyhow, this was basically a really long post to say “I still don’t know what the fuck the Innovators’ names mean and I DONT LIKE IT” I’m still messing with the anagram idea though, it’s just difficult without 100% certain romanizations (or alternately I could mess with the Japanese but I haven’t tried that yet).

[EDIT]
With Regene’s name I keep getting stuck on the idea that it might be related to the name/word Regine [re'ʤi.nə] (derived from regina, queen). The only real difference in pronunciation (aside from being bashed into Japanese phonology) is the “i” sound, BUT I kind of feel like [ʤi] and [dʑe̞] are really pretty close sound-wise (if you change the ジェ to just ジ in Regene, the sound isn’t really very different at all because of the following [n] I have to go look up if that’s a natural function of Japanese phonology or not (like, the [e] and [i] being assimilated by the [n]? I dunno), because when I say it it sounds the same but I’m not a native speaker)

And then for Regetta/Legetta I keep wanting to think it’s legate, but that’s all wrong because of the deceptive spelling of the name (the g isn’t [g]).

ITP: Chinatits is a spoiled rich kid. Some thoughts on BAWWWji. Why everyone is so preoccupied with how to watch 00. Is it SRSBSNS? Is it full of bad writing? And why the fuck everyone cares so much about whether they should be enjoying the show rather than if they actually are enjoying it or not. Other things that I find annoying and haven’t had a chance to bitch about yet.

It’s probably a good idea to ignore everything past the bit on Saji, it’s all just incoherent bitching after that. Also SRS TL;DR.

Chinatits: Motivations and Why Shit’s Gonna Blow Up In Her Face

As usual for me,  this is coming from a conversation on /m/. Some Anons were arguing about Wang’s motivations, in that she’s so young and doesn’t really know anything about the world and yet has this bizarre desire to change it by any means necessary. Her motivation is so painfully simple it’s easy to miss: she’s a spoiled rich kid. 

The first point is that Wang is very young, even in S2 she’s only, what, 20? Young people are most prone to being idealistic dumbasses (Saji’s a contrasting example of the EXTREME MORALFAG, but more on that later). When you’re young you can put all your faith into stupid ideals that have little to no relation to the ‘real world’ because you know nothing about it (lol, I feel silly writing like this when I’m only 20 myself, but whatever) and consequently those ideals are paramount and much more possible theoretically (the only thing you have experience with) than in practice. The world doesn’t conform to Wang’s ideal of what it should be so she decides that it must be changed. Again, this sort of thinking is generally reserved to youth, you’re notably less likely to see someone in their 40s or even 30s holding such unrealistic beliefs, so rather than her age making the situation less believable, it’s more or less key to it.

Second point is that Wang is a wealthy brat. She probably has never had to work a day in her life and has likely never had to endure any real ‘hardship’ to get where she is (watch them drop some sappy backstory in an episode or two now). This not only exacerbates the idealistic youth problem (in a lot of ways, these type of people are never forced to grow up and/or confront the ‘real world’ so they don’t ever have to leave that mentality), but also gives her BORED RICH KID SYNDROME. What’s ‘bored rich kid syndrome’? Well, basically it’s a problem/pain-seeking drive that seems to plague children of well-to-do families. They don’t have to suffer in their life because their families are wealthy/etc and so they seek out suffering for some reason that I don’t entirely understand (but I am quite familiar with it, having spent 7 years of my middle-high school days in an expensive prep school–I like to think I never succumbed to bored-rich-kid-syndrome, but I’m biased, regardless I saw it happen a lot). Anyhow, Wang is bored and wealthy so rather than turning to the standard drugs/alcohol/ICUTMYSELF/etc bullshit that your standard rich latchkey kid does, she decides that LETS TRASH THE WHOLE GODDAMN WORLD, or whatever her goals are really (we know she wants to change the world, but to what end? I know she’s bullshitted that she doesn’t care how it changes as long as it changes but that’s bull and you know it).

Anyhow as for why she’s probably going to fuck up? Well, mostly it’s because of what she said about the Innovators this week. I think she’s sorely underestimating Ribbons and I get the impression that she doesn’t know who made Nena (namely, FUCKING RIBBONS). I seriously doubt he isn’t already aware of any threat Nena might pose to him and his fabulous posse of couch ornaments and how to combat it. Also, presently her goals and motives seem to be flimsy at best (unless she has a real aim in changing the world, but even then underestimating FUCKING RIBBONS is stupid). 

Well… that was more tl;dr than I’d expected. This is going to be a loooonnng post, isn’t it?

BAWWWWji

First off, I really liked the speech Tieria gave him in 6 and I don’t know about everyone else, but, his crumpling to the floor and wailing was really quite satisfying to watch (CRY LIKE THE BITCH YOU ARE CRYYYYY). Anyhow, I don’t think he’s been unnecessary these last few episodes (and look on the bright side, they’re getting him out of the way early on). In a way I think he’s a nice counterpoint to Wang (both are selfish, idealistic youths). Unlike Wang, Saji is forced to confront the ‘real world’ head on (even though he still hasn’t really gotten there yet–I think it’s pretty realistic how he’s reacting, he just wants to go home and have everything return to normal and not be involved).

One thing that I’ve been seeing a lot is the idea that Saji, for all his bitching and everything, is selfish because he could have done something to help earlier. I think it’s rather unreasonable to say that he’s selfish for not having joined the resistance effort on his own earlier. I’m not saying he’s not selfish though–it’s his moralfaggotry that makes him selfish. He refuses to recognize his involvement in things (like what Tieria said to him this week: whether you like it or not you’re involved now, shitsux but you can’t go home) and insists on lecturing everyone else not because he’s genuinely opposed to what they’re doing, but because it’s their fault he can’t live his normal life anymore. Again, I think that’s a fairly natural line of thought to be perfectly honest (er.. the lecturing moralfag bit is a bit much I think, but he’s dealing with a lot of conflicting ideas and information–war/fighting is bad, but so is people being oppressed by the government, CB is bad because the media says so (rather, that’s the perspective he’s been presented with so it’s natural for him to have a very negative view of them), but they’re theoretically doing something good, the government might be doing bad things but they didn’t do anything to me… etc).

As for whether he’s going to pull the trigger. My first inclination was that he would, but when I think about it more, I have to go with that he won’t. Mostly because I’m hoping that Saji does manage to reconcile those ideas in that moment and realize that there are ways he can help without having to fight (I desperately don’t want to see him in combat because it’d be stupid, I’d love for him to become a reporter though, that’d be such a waste of backstory if they don’t do something with it). Also shooting down Louise would be kinda cliche and 00’s been pretty good at dodging explicit cliche’s without at least some sort of twist so I dunno. I’ve got faith in the team to deliver something good since so far whenever something’s sounded stupid they’ve pulled it off somehow. 

“I can’t enjoy 00 because I’m too preoccupied with whether it’s good or not BAWWWWWWWWW”

Now, I’m not about to say 00’s above criticism, but seriously guys, why are you so stuck on whether you should be enjoying this or not or what other people are saying about the show? (I say this as I am explicitly addressing what other people are saying about the show, EXCELLENT!). I don’t know how much sense that sentence actually made, but I keep seeing people bitch about basically whether or not 00 is worth their time (is it ‘Gundam’ enough? is it special? is the writing bad? etc etc). Is it really that hard to figure out? If you’re enjoying it it’s worth your time, if you’re not it probably isn’t–SIMPLE.

But no, everyone’s too preoccupied with what everyone else is saying about it and whether they should feel like ‘wasting’ their time on the series or not based purely one either taking it far too seriously (Oooh I’m not gonna write about it on my blog anymore because discussions on animesuki aren’t constructive BAWWWWWWW–no one cares.) or whether the series conforms to their preconceived ideas about what a Gundam series should be (it’s not Gundam enough so it’s bad) and consequently bashing it to hell and back for really stupid things.

Er… I’m still not sure I’m actually making sense–bullet point time!

• No one cares if you watch it/blog about it or not, shut the fuck up already.
• Why does it matter if it’s not exactly like every other Gundam series before it? Isn’t that a good thing?
• Isn’t it more important whether you’re enjoying the series than if it’s accepted as good or not? (To clarify, I don’t think discussion of the series’ merits and shortcomings is problematic in the least, there’s just something about the attitude of the community at present that’s just so fucking uptight that they can’t enjoy something unless everyone agrees that it’s good or some other bullshit.)

Bah, I’m pretty sure that didn’t make any sense. 

Dear /m/,

Bad writing =! The episode focused on characters I don’t like. (Not saying 00’s writing is spectacular or anything, but I haven’t read any even remotely convincing arguments that it’s especially bad which didn’t focus primarily on GOD SAJI IS STUPID STOP WASTING TIME ON THAT FUCK HES NOT IMPORTANT BAADD WRITING).

Stop saying Tieria’s the worst pilot of the Meisters unless you can actually give a reason for it (and no ‘he just sits there and beamspams’ is not a reason since that’s what his machine is designed to do you stupid fucks). I see it thrown around like fact a lot and it pisses me off (oh noes they’re insulting my favorite character!).

You’re not allowed to bitch about the dialect of netslang native to 4chan and subsequently /m/ (seriously, if you weren’t there when the whole ‘Vowels’ nickname started, you have two choices: 1) use it, 2) don’t–no bitching about how Tieria isn’t that hard to spell, it WAS hard to spell back then). If you can’t use it properly, use standard English instead. Trying to import foreign dialects is just gonna get you bitched at, especially if you’re DOING IT WRONG (I’m looking at you Anon pushing “HoYay” in /m/).

[EDIT]

Oh yeah, if I see one more person seriously say that Sumeragi deserves to be brutally murdered for what she “did” to Billy, I’m gonna RAGE like a motherfucker. The fuck is wrong with you people?

Alright, I’m done whining today.

Alright, new spoilers are out so that means theory reassessment time/new theory time!

Spoilers relevant to this tl;dr:

Episode 8 Pure Distortion
A mysterious character Regene appears before Tieria. Tieria is shocked to see another person with the same face as him. Regene leaves behind a word ‘Innovator’ and information about it. Tieria is shaken…

Episode 9 Unerasable Past
Setsuna and Tieria face Sarches’s Arche Gundam. Tieria is furious since Sarches is the one who killed Lockon Stratos 4 years ago. Through Tieria’s words, the new Lockon Stratos, Lyle Dyllandy finds out that Sarches is his brother’s enemy…

tl;dr: QUESTION OF THE NOW: What IS Regene’s motivation? 

Alright, so this question came up on /m/ last night: Does Regene know about Tieria?

Point 1: Regene and Ribbons do not trust eachother.

Point 2: Regene is trying to extract information from Ribbons, but it’s not working (See 1).
Point 2a: Regene seems preocupied with whether Ribbons is driving their plans or if Veda is.

I posed the theory that Regene might have picked up some kind of hint about Tieria (he might know more than that, but let’s just say Regene’s knowledge of Tieria is >= ‘a little’) and consequently is trying to probe Ribbons for information about him. Regene’s distrust of Ribbons stems from his discovery of Tieria. Tieria is seperate from the Innovators and we don’t really know what Ribbons’ plans say about him, but he’s clearly seperate from the Innovators and Ribbons probably doesn’t want the others to know about him (since Tieria functions independently, I can see that it might cause friction within the Innovators re: Ribbons’ position as leader). 

Assuming that Ribbons’ keikaku involves Tieria, Regene might see it as exploitive in addition to Ribbons having concealed Tieria from him in the first place. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that even if Regene is wary of Ribbons, like Tieria he probably has fairly strong faith in Veda (although, again, this is just specualtion) and consequently any little blip in the master plan that’s set off his unease about Ribbons he wants to ascertain whether this is really Ribbons dicking with Veda or if this is just Veda. 

Anyhow, I feel like the mag spoilers for 8 confirm my thinking that Regene knows SOMETHING about Tieria at least. I feel like it’s likely that the events described in that summary are Regene’s own doing and not at Ribbons behest (or rather those are the two reasons I can imagine for Regene to be appearing before Tieria–his own motives, whatever they are, or under Ribbons’ orders, or possibly a combination of the two–anyhow, I feel like Regene might be acting on his own just because of how wary he is or Ribbons). Here’s my thinking right now:

Theory A: Ribbons orders Regene to leak information to Tieria about the Innovators to get him to do something (the timing of the next Ali conflict in 9 makes me almost think that Regene might also drop info about the Innovators connection to him, perhaps intentional to spurr on a fight between the Meisters and Ali again).

Theory B: Regene goes to Tieria on his own. He doesn’t trust what Ribbons is doing and having found out about Tieria decides to drop information about the Innovators. It’s difficult to say why he’d do this precisely other than to further his own movives, whatever they are (we really don’t have any idea of what Regene wants at this point and I’m hesitant to speculate).

1. Alternately, Ribbons exploits Regene’s mistrust in him to instigate the situation in Theory B. Regene believes he’s acting on his own, but it’s really all Ribbons’ keikaku.
2. B could lead into a schism between the Innovators. (Creating another group consisting of Tieria, Regene, Revive and ‘Hilling’ as per the ED shot)

As for Tieria, I have a couple of thoughts regarding the ep 8 spoilers. 1) I think it’s becoming more clear that Tieria doesn’t know about the Innovators (at least, he doesn’t know about Regene, that’s certain from the spoilers, it’s possible that he knows of the Innovators from his reaction they mention, but it’s difficult to say) 2) this is more speculation but perhaps “Innovator” is one of those code phrases that triggers something in Tieria’s mind?

And I’ve lost my train of thought, so I’ll just leave off there for now.