[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by roon

Mamoru is definitely on par with Reiko for me since all I know is his role in the anime. The last bit that was like a pandery idol interview wasn't entirely unwelcome (I realise I like Maria more than I should), but holy crap was that poorly placed. I, too, expected the ending to kick in after Tomiko declares war on Squealer, but then... I suppose they want to milk any more sadness while dropping hints unnecessarily?

Maybe... or maybe not. I mean, I'm sure they want to milk Maria as long as they can (...uh, this didn't come out right ), but after this episode I have a sneaking suspicion what they might be doing and I hope I'm not right because I wouldn't be happy about it.

Originally Posted by roon

This is part of why I'm a little "..." at the last bit with Maria. Just how in the world can you have powers like theirs and not think to just try to find a way to have a child using it?! I know that's not the point of the scene, but my suspension of belief momentarily paused at how /off/ that sounded to me. But I guess their society could shun that idea...

This has come up before ("why do they need bakenezumi if they have power" "they could control the weather and everything") and the thing is, they don't have that kind of power. Or rather, they have the power but only a very select few are able to use it on this level. In school Saki was struggling with repairing a broken bottle while Satoru got congratulated on his mirror and Shun was given that egg (they didn't mention it but only the most promising students are allowed to handle living beings). What Shisei and Koufuu do in this episode is something ordinary people can only dream of doing (and that includes things as seemingly simple as changing the wind's direction), and Tomiko even said that repairing her telomeres was something only she could do.

So in theory it's possible but in practice not really.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Really, Yakomaru's group is now just defending itself.

You would think so, eh?

By the way, we still have only Squealer's word that they're living in a dream democracy where everyone is equal and little bakenezumi pups frolic freely on the meadows and stuff... and Squealer's trustworthiness is questionable, to say the least. Not to mention it's worth thinking about how his supercolony even came to existence.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

The way the humans of this world treat and think of the Queerats is quite disturbing. It's nothing short of monstrous, really. The Queerats are a sentient race, and their leaders are even able to communicate clearly with humans. And the humans treat them like cattle, if not worst than cattle.

Yeah... disturbing, isn't it? And yet so familiar from our own history.

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

I'd like to see this too. To be honest at this point I don't feel anything for these characters. Well, I feel a bit for Saki and the loss of her friends. But as for the town and most of the PKers... I really want them all dead.

So you would have innocents suffer and die for being part of something they never asked to be part of? You would have an entire society, an entire species be destroyed because you don't agree with what they're doing?

Actually, going by that logic we, humanity on a whole, could might as well go and kill ourselves right now. I mean, look at all the horrible things we have done and still do, for things that are ultimately much less important than our continued survival.

Yes, it's a sick society. That's why this is a dystopia. But it's not sick for the sake of being sick. It's a society that's burdened not only by the weight of its ugly past but also by an ever-present danger that might destroy it. What do you expect them to do, throw up their hands and say "our continued survival is not worth this price, let's just die out and be done with it"? "Our people have struggled to survive for this long but we think our society is not right so we'll open ourselves up to danger and embrace whatever happens"? Maybe that would be the nice and honorable way, but I don't think it wouldn't be very human-like... after all, history is pretty much a sequence of people doing what they think is the best in a given situation and then dealing with the consequences, good or bad.

Going to the extremes is simple and rarely helpful, is all I'm saying.