The best thing about this show.
Aside from its sheer awfulness there’s one thing about Guilty Crown that’s been puzzling me from the start. I actually mentioned it on one of my earlier posts on the show, but decided not to go too much into it as I suspected there being some kind of elaboration further on that would make me look like a twat. But the 13th episode finally broke the camel’s back.
What I’m confused about are the mechas of the GC universe, called Endlaves. As we know they are remotely controlled from a pod the pilot lies in, located in either a front line command vehicle, or the local HQ. With all the “locally” piloted mecha designs around this kind of approach is somewhat fresh, and makes sense – I’d imagine a bipedal war machine would be pretty tight on stuff like weight and room for equipment, so piloting them remotely would have its advantages. Like pilot safety. Oh wait a minute…
Throughout the show we see pilots writhing in pain when their mechas are getting beat up, and I could somewhat swallow that with the explanation that the feeling of pain essentially contributes to situational awareness, and more importantly the kinesthetic sense. However the paralyzing pain of being impaled through chest would only be disadvantageous, and for whatever reason the Endlave pilots apparently experience this. Worse yet they can actually die when their machine is defeated, as implied by the above conversation between Tsugumi and Ayase. My reaction as follows.
So the remote piloting in GC universe has no contribution to the pilot safety, or at least the connection must be cut to prevent injuries or death from happening – in which case it won’t allow any more efficient use of the machinery. And then we have the downsides of the concept to consider – sensitivity to signal jamming, hacking, possible control lag, and pilots located in static pods that may be compromised especially when placed in a front line vehicle – remember how easily Shoe managed to infiltrate one and have his way with the GHQ ace pilot inside. I appreciate the fresh idea but for heaven’s sakes Guilty Crown, at least make it somewhat plausible.
Then again this Team Rocket Iteration #569876 was the Villain of the Week…
Oh well, I guess this is all just an empty ramble anyway since the show has driven itself off a cliff displaying such lack of hesitation that I’m forced to think it’s deliberate. Too bad DxD has already taken the cake as the best worst show of the season. As for the rest, what I said way back when still holds true:
[...] its character cast is so utterly insipid and standard with a Shinji-clone protag, main female with the personality of a cardboard sign, a mentor character whose “brilliant” plans are just complete nonsense, and a bunch of bad guys probably borrowed from Team Rocket. In this regard Guilty Crown is even worse than Shana – it tries really hard to be flashy and cool, all the while being a stale pile of colorless, odorless mass.
God damnit noitaminA, get your shit together.
They’re copying Baldr Gate with the pod controlling mecha.
In Baldr Gate, if you “died”, your head would explode.
LOL
I haven’t watched GC since the first episode, but I’ll take a guess and say that that “pilot taking damage while controlling mecha” thing is purely a remnant of the Neon Genesis Evangelion heritage. That was, if not the first, at least the first one to popularize that idea and it has been used extensivily since that in real robo genre (heck, that idea was even shoehorned into Escaflowne of all things). And as with everything that comes out of Evangelion, it shouldn’t be thought about too much. In the case of GC it’s propably that the director thought “Okay, I’ve ripped off Code Geass enough, what other thing could I steal from? Evangelion, yeah, that was a pretty popular show”.
Really? Out of all of the show’s faults, are nitpicking about THAT?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YourMindMakesItReal
It’s an almost universal trope in sci-fi settings with VR, or cyberspace, or other simuations. It keeps the fights dangerous, while also giving an option to exit from them.
Besides, having to cut the connection to save a pilot is a disadventage, compared to not having to cut it, but it’s a huge adventage compared to 100% of the defeated pilots dying. You might as well complain about fighter jets that have ejection seats.
I don’t give a damn about whether it’s a trope or not. The show uses it in a fashion that makes it look downright stupid and illogical – though at least in line with its general tone I suppose. And yeah, I could complain about a whole lot of things about GC that actually matter, but I’ve done that twice already and there isn’t really anything new to add.
Or mechas having ejection seats like Code Geass, or the motherfucking Battletech? Seriously if they wanted to portray the danger you speak of, this would have been a lot better solution.
The only two vague excuses that I can think of are that the damage comes in part from noise and power surges being dumped into the link due to Endlave damage instead of actual excessive pain signals, and/or that for some handwaving reason it’s impossible to screen out or limit bad inputs over the link to the pilot. (The grimmer version is that it’s possible to filter the link but that doing so degrades the combat effectiveness of the Endlave to some degree, so everyone decides that it’s better to have powerful Endlaves and lose a few pilots every so often.)
I think one can handwave away the lack of something that monitors pilot vital signs and automatically cuts the connection by saying that such an automatic cutout system can’t act fast enough to deal with lethal damage. In many situations (like when Ayase is force-ejected in the first episode) the lethal damage happens in a single strike and by the time the system could react it’s too late; the vital signs spiking are the pilot’s body reacting to the lethal feedback and the pilot is effectively dead (or badly damaged) even if they haven’t stopped twitching just yet.
(In fact I have a vague memory that one of the enemy pilots from the first episode is auto-dumped from his pod too late to do him any good, when Shu destroys his Endlave.)
You know they should have hired you to write the scenario for this thing.
The point is not that it’s “a trope”, but that it’s a very common one. You might as well complain about characters having colorful hair, or how impractical mechas are to begin with.
It might be true, it’s just not very relevant about GC in particular.
Also, Endlaves are basically unmanned combat drones, whose real-life military appeal is that you can have your machine being shot to pieces without injuring the operator, even a scratch. Heh, they said that Second Impact caused therapists to go extinct. Maybe Last Christmas did the same to all half-sane military designers.
I’ve been questioning this since episode 2, when her Endlave got destroyed so she can moan and boobs-jiggle without being “tainted” by bruises and blood. Maybe. just maybe, the writers went through something like this:
Writer1: Hey, I doubt anyone of you has played Mass Effect, but they got this interesting character design, a cripple ace-pilot. Let’s make one ourself!
Writer2: Oooh, oohh. Turn him into a girl so we can have her boobs jiggle whenever her mech got damaged!
Writer1: Oh yeah, sexy….wait, if we want her mech to routinely got damaged, how is someone without functioning legs supposed to survive outside her mech with all the enemies around?
Writer2: …
Writer3: I got it! Make her mech remote-controlled so she’s actually safe inside the base!
Writer2: Then we must find a way so she can still recieve the pain. We do want the jiggles and moans, don’t we?
All: OF COURSE!
BLOGISTA GUULUU ULISEVAA ÄÄNDÄ :–DDDDD
@Alterego-X
That’s what a trope means anyway. It’s relevant to GC in how the said common element is implemented, which is obviously half-baked as the general style of the show tends to be. Using common tropes is one thing, using them badly is another. When I find some detail giving me a nagging feeling like this, it’s a mistake right there that deserves to be mocked just as much as any of the (numerous) others. This is nitpicking compared to many other faults in the show, I admit that, but I can’t be the only one who was bothered about it.
@Tiresias probably solved it all for us. /thread
It just feels like reading too much into it.
Like two years ago, when the Internet started to realize that James Cameron’s Avatar is full of shit, and then everything was all about of how it was completely “stolen from” Dancing with Wolves, Pocahontas, Dune, Ferngully, and The Last Samurai, AT THE SAME TIME, and how ridiculous it is for aliens to have human-like faces, and similar nitpicking.
This particular element wasn’t particularly badly implemented. Yeah, it wasn’t explained how it works, but sci-fi outside of novels very rarely explains any technology to begin with. The Matrix didn’t really explain why death in the matrix means death IRL, either.
It’s just strange that apparently bad stories are expected to have HIGHER logical standards than good ones.
Matrix said the mind makes it real and its so fast paced you dont pause to wonder. Gc gives no explanation.
@Alterego-X
It’s cute how you make it sound as if GC is actually a masterpiece and this little post is just people’s way of trying to find it’s faults. This is motherfakkin’ Guilty Crown for God’s sake – this little nitpick is just an icing to the insult cake.