Quote:
Originally Posted by Keroko
S
And of course he's going to rant on the flaws of the machine. He's a test pilot. His entire career is based on finding faults in mechs so designers can fix them. Yet Yui seems to be blissfully ignorant of that fact, and instead orders him to change to adjust the machine. Dur? The entire reason he was brought in on this project was to be a test pilot. She just nuked his entire purpose here. And when he decided to do his job and gave feedback on the machine, rude as it was, what was the response? "Deal with it. We can handle it, so can you."
Er... no. Just... no. You don't ignore feedback of the test pilot you brought in for that purpose. And no, the flaws of the machine do not "make sense." Like Tk said a few posts back, if a pilot has to fight the machine as much as the enemy, the designers of the machine have done a bad job. Saying "but well, with MORE TRAINING! you can learn to overcome its flaws!" is not an argument. That's not even sidestepping the issue, it's outright ignoring it.
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This might be a question of interpretation, but when I watched that scene, I didn't see Yuuya making reasonable comments as a test pilot about the mechanical qualities of the TSF, but Yuuya refusing to say "I'm not familiar enough with this control set-up to pilot this well," so he just went ahead to say the equipment is crap rather than admit there's anything he can't do. That is to say, the main problem he seemed to be having was the over-delicacy of the controls, but from what his friend was saying, that doesn't seem to be a "design flaw" but a deliberate choice by the Japanese TSF system designers. That is to say, ten or twenty years ago, the Japanese pilots were off fighting BETA and complaining, "Hey, the controls on this thing are too insensitive for me to make the quick, delicate movements I need to make to do what I want!" so their design wonks tinkered with the control set-up for the Imperial army so that their mecha would best suit the tactical fighting style of their troops.
But then again, this is why I want to see Yui try to fly an American TSF, to see if she can immediately grasp its control set-up. I'd anticipate her trying to dodge, not exerting enough force to make the TSF move, and getting hit, or trying to delicately dance around enemies and running smack into them. This isn't about pilot skill level or about which set-up is objectively superior, it's about two different militaries having completely different tactical paradigms and having equipment which they feel best suits them.
If you ask me, Yui's real problem here is that on some level she seems to be convinced that because Yuuya is half-Japanese, he should somehow be able to pick up on those differences quickly
and fight in the tactical style of a Japanese Imperial Army pilot, that she's decided for whatever reason ("she's a racist bastard" springs to mind, but I don't think we're supposed to assume that about a lead heroine so I'll set it aside for now) that Yuuya "isn't Japanese enough" for his genetic heritage, ignoring the fact that there's no reason why he rationally would be.
Edit: Yeah, I'll third the motion. Let's have more Cryska and Inia screentime
while Yuuya and Yui are getting their character development to be less jackassy (preferably
away from each other, where they're both apparently fine).