Quote:
Originally Posted by Shiroth
Also, there is a war going on, though these characters don't seem to know that, and just carry out this high school love situation instead. It just doesn't work.
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I don't know... it works for me? We look at war as being this great abstract seriousness where heavy foreboding feelings of impending tragedy permeate the air at every turn. And yes, there's certainly some of that. But these people are just civilians who were thrown into this situation and haven't really had a chance to grow up normally. To them, this is just part of life -- it's what they do. And, at their age, they may not have really come to terms with what this all means. I don't see this great dichotomy of a high school romance taking place in a war-like setting when they've made it clear that these are not, by any means, fully-trained soldiers. That's why the real military shows such contempt for them. They're portraying the characters as every-day people whose real lives are a long ways away from this war -- Alicia as a baker, Welkin as a biologist, and so on. So why
wouldn't they have sophomoresque love problems? There may be "more important things to worry about", but being close to the one they love is also important to people at their age (especially if they don't know what the future will bring).
As for Welkin's arrested development... well, that's the way they've presented his character from day one, so I don't find this so surprising. He's intellectually smart, but socially inept, and
completely inept when it comes to women (as we learned from the stories of his college days). Plus, Alicia is a woman under his command who, in his mind, probably deserves better than him. He's thinking like an introvert. Here too, although I totally agree that it's frustrating in some ways, I don't think it's some great inconsistency beyond simply being a well-advertised character flaw that has been played up in the show.
I guess it just comes down to being able to suspend your disbelief and accept the premise the show is giving you. I personally don't see it as being much more or less believable than any other shounen romance plot, but it's probably just me... Like I said, I'm not at all trying to say that people are wrong to feel the way they do, just wanting to point out that there's another way of looking at it as well.