[4Tran]

Originally Posted by Wesley84

It was stated in the first series. They were created by "Mother Fortress" in other words God, they were programmed to explore space, they rebelled, immediately regretted having killed God, and went about conquering the universe to give their existences purpose. The royal Houses are actually formed along the specialty programming for the Abh to better handle space exploration.

While this describes the Abh nature quite well, this isn't the reason for the war that takes place in the anime. That war was started by the Allies in order to curb Abh expansion.

Still, you do have a point in that the author originally meant to make the story much more balanced between the Allies and the Abh, and that the Banner shows (and presumably the novels as well) go too far in glorifying the Abh. After all, I recall a line of dialogue where the Abh predicted the war to go on for one or two centuries, while the show itself shows off a series of uninterrupted Abh victories. To Morioka's credit, I've heard that he planned to write a novel (or short story) from the United Mankind's point of view.

Originally Posted by Skyfall

Hum ... so their desire to conquer all actually has been stated within the show ? In such case i apologize for my comment being too rash, as it was my memory failing me.

As Hypernova stated, the invasion of Hyde in the very first episode was indicative of the way the Abh operate.

Spoiler for Further clarification from the novel:

The invasion of Hyde was the catalyst that led the Allies to believe that their choices were either to go to war against the Humankind Empire or to be encircled by Abh expansion. The novels go on to talk about how the Abh only attacked systems that were unaffiliated with the Allies, but that their conquests threatened the Allies' ability to expand in turn.

Originally Posted by Hypernova

It was pretty obvious since season 1, and that the male protagonist's planet was forcibly annexed. Their whole stance on conquest is pretty much the same as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere during WW2.

Nope. It's the same as Manifest Destiny .

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Not counting their original sin, they've started one war in their multi-millenia long history. (The one against Jinto's planet.)

Are you sure about that? It seems to me that the Abh didn't have any compunction against attacking whomever they pleased, that they were extremely interested in expansion, and that the logical conclusion would be that they'd attack all the time (as long as it wasn't one of the Allies).






On a very different note, does any novel reader have any concrete estimates as to the size of the Abh wartime fleet? I've heard of numbers up to 100 million ships, but that seems very farfetched, especially since their maximum wartime output seems to be in the order of 50,000 ships per year.