Magic and Technology of MGLN

[Kha]

[randomOCthoughts]

Looks like not only Sakura Zaki had to assume a false identity, tie her breasts, and dress like a man, she also had to wear a red contact to legitimise her rule. No wonder she's so inwardly desperate for someone to see her as she is.

[/randomOCthoughts]

[Avatar_notADV]

Kha, wrong thread? ;p

Ark, thanks much for posting translations. This sort of thing's always welcome.

Comments, hm...

- The booklet makes it clear that the distinction between "air" and "ground" isn't purely "can you fly". Basically, you've got to meet performance standards to get put in a position where you're expected to be able to engage in high-altitude flight - not unreasonable, really. So there's plenty of ground mages who are capable of short bursts of flight, or at the least of not dying from falling from a high place, but they either lack the power, the knack, the training, or the certification that would swap them over. (And there's a difference between "a ground mage" and "a mage serving with the Ground Forces", of course - a good chunk of RF6 is perfectly capable of flight, but they're all part of a Ground Forces outfit.)

- Saint Church like Buddhism? Not doctrinally, but in the sense that it's moved away from a particular set of religious instructions and towards veneration of the founder of the church.

- I don't read as much into the autobike entry as Ark does. Presumably, they're used by the civilian (i.e., non-mage) market, where military-strength shielding devices just aren't available.

- As far as the difference between magical and non-magical weaponry, keep in mind that for all that Nanoha can pwn the hell out of things, we don't know of a single case in which she's -killed- anything. You can say "oh, well, she can choose whether it's a magical or a physical effect," but I'm not sure that holds up against that shot which Nanoha fired off at Quattro... penetrated several layers of Cradle deck, blew the hell out of Quattro, kept going, eventually exited the vehicle (! - that's armor that even Hayate couldn't just hammer under!) It's true that Quattro's a combat cyborg and probably tougher than she looks, but oy! It's definitely not unreasonable to think that maybe there's something about the magic itself that tends not to kill people.

What about the IS? Hard to say. Subaru hammered Cinque hard enough, even through the barrier, to knock her out of action for the rest of the series. Nobody Nanoha whacked needed that kind of treatment.

Then again, Vice needed extensive repairs against Lutecia, and she uses more-or-less conventional magic, and isn't nearly as strong as the show's powerhouses either. So maybe it's a philosophical thing after all, and mages "can" take it easy on people but they don't have to? Hm.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

- The booklet makes it clear that the distinction between "air" and "ground" isn't purely "can you fly". Basically, you've got to meet performance standards to get put in a position where you're expected to be able to engage in high-altitude flight - not unreasonable, really. So there's plenty of ground mages who are capable of short bursts of flight, or at the least of not dying from falling from a high place, but they either lack the power, the knack, the training, or the certification that would swap them over. (And there's a difference between "a ground mage" and "a mage serving with the Ground Forces", of course - a good chunk of RF6 is perfectly capable of flight, but they're all part of a Ground Forces outfit.)

Definitely.

- I don't read as much into the autobike entry as Ark does. Presumably, they're used by the civilian (i.e., non-mage) market, where military-strength shielding devices just aren't available.

Well, I wrote that to pop the bubbles of people that were trying to use this to prove some mega-powerful fields (see this thread).

Besides, it is fallacious to assume that "milspec" must automatically be better than commercial products. It is well known that due to the need for hardening and the need to accumulate a reliability record, civilian computers often have performances as much as ten years ahead of those in military hardware. For another example, the PASGT that's used in American forces until recently is nowhere near at protective as a Level IV vest (in fact, IIRC it is like Level 1 equiv or thereabouts in the kind of threats it is meant to stop).

[Avatar_notADV]

Yeah, but remember a lot of Mid magical technologies require mages. Tea doesn't have to worry about how Cross Mirage is getting power; it's getting power from her. A non-mage driver won't have the same luxury. Certainly, if that driver happens to be a mage, and carrying around an intelligent device, they probably don't have anything to worry about either. But everyone else has a definite use for the automatic safety features offered by an autobike, huh? ;p

I take your point, though; that sort of thing is evidence that Mid does -not- have widespread, cheap, non-mage-generated field generators. There might be a non-mage version that exists, but it's not cheap enough to put in civilian vehicles...

[Kikaifan]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

... anyway, first things first, the translations.
http://arkhangelsk.987mb.com/MGLN/mglnsdic/index.html

"To the ancient Belkan kings that lived in a time of war, as "Holders of the Sankt Kaiser's bloodline", they wish to survive, and beyond anything, to be an "Excellent Weapon." To this end, genetic manipulation was used to create the Defensive "Sankt Kaiser's Armor". That Vivio was attached to Nanoha only because Nanoha was one that would "protect herself and someone to learn from" is something that caused Vivio much doubt, uncertainty and tears."

If the armor was developed for the Saint King's descendants Vivio, as a clone of the original Saint, shouldn't have it.

[Jimmy C]

Original, as in that Saint's genetic data she was created from. Not the founder of the Belkan royalty.

[Keroko]

Jimmy's right, Vivio is a clone of the last Saint King, not the first one.

[Kikaifan]

Wait, so all the kings of Belka were called the Saint King? I was under the impression that the Church venerated a specific person, not the whole Belkan royal line.

[Comartemis]

I always figured the Kaiser worship thing to be similar to Japan's Imperial Family, where the whole line is supposed to be descended from a higher power and worshiped as gods on Earth.

There's no canon evidence for this that I can name, but I suspect if we looked into Vivio's family tree we'd find a survivor of Al Hazard close to the roots. At the least, it would explain how the Belkan Empire had access to a supply of Lost Logia, as the SSX "History of Belka" translation seems to indicate.

[Kyral]

@Kikaifan
Your impression was right. the church is worshipping a single person, not the whole Sankt Kaiser line.

They worship the last Sankt Kaiser who unified the war torn old Belka and brought finally peace to it's remnants.

But after this the ancient empire of Belka was no more and Midchilda became the main power and the Saint Church was established to honor the achivements of the Sankt Kaiser (Or so I interpret the "History of Belka".).

[Nagumo]

Originally Posted by Kyral

@Kikaifan
Your impression was right. the church is worshipping a single person, not the whole Sankt Kaiser line.

They worship the last Sankt Kaiser who unified the war torn old Belka and brought finally peace to it's remnants.

But after this the ancient empire of Belka was no more and Midchilda became the main power and the Saint Church was established to honor the achivements of the Sankt Kaiser (Or so I interpret the "History of Belka".).

Just adding my two cents here.

I imagine that the articles owned by the Sankt Kaiser are regarded as holy items.

Moreover any significant quotes/texts/words spoken and written by the Sankt Kaiser are regarded as articles of faith that followers regard as holy text.
Also I've discovered in the SSX there appears to be bibles (not The Bible) written in ancient Belkan and psalms describing past events. I imagine any holy text would be like a mixture of history, biography of the Sankt Kaiser with perhaps personal input by the Sankt Kaiser.

Any image of the Sankt Kaiser would be regarded holy and worthy of worship if it depicts the Sankt Kaiser accurately (I note that there isn't a lot of idolatory in the Church we've seen from anime or manga except for the Shroud that may bears an image of the Sankt Kaiser since it is based off the Shroud of Turin).

Also I've discovered in the SSX there appears to be bibles (not The Bible) written in ancient Belkan and psalms describing past events. I imagine any holy text would be like a mixture of history, biography of the Sankt Kaiser with perhaps personal input by the Sankt Kaiser.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

"Rise my friend..."


Got something to check out here. If those here recall the cradle's launch, and the diagram Chrono had on Mid-Childa's two moons, and their funky orbit... it drove us nuts.

Well. I was fooling around with a program called celestia and had orbit paths turned on... I happened to check out the Sirius system... I found something rather interesting about their orbits.

A little more searching, and I found a more, balanced orbital pattern.

Spoiler for Click and look:

Just imagine Mid-Childa itself sitting in the center of its moons while they orbit about like that.

[Comartemis]

...why am I not surprised that you guys would make a big deal out of lunar orbits?

*Comar recites the MST3K Mantra and goes back to lurking*

[Keroko]

Well I'll be damned, they did think something through after all.

[arkhangelsk]

Most interesting.

[Kha]

So that means both moons have the exact same mass and timed orbit in order not to send Mid's seas into a maelstrom... I'd like to say that this support them moons being aritificially made by Belka in my opinion, but the Sirius star system is clearly isn't man-made (or alien-made)...

...I think?

[Avatar_notADV]

If I'm not mistaken, the term for that kind of orbital pattern is "Kemplerian rosette". There's a similar pattern for various numbers of moons, and the pattern functions the same whether there's a planet at the center or not. (Niven had a discussion of this in Ringworld...)

It -could- occur naturally, but it's pretty unlikely. That said, it's not the only orbital pattern that could happen, and we don't know anything about Mid's tidal structure. For all we know, it's as bad as it is in Aria. Heck, they could be small, low-mass moons, for that matter...

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Kha

So that means both moons have the exact same mass and timed orbit in order not to send Mid's seas into a maelstrom... I'd like to say that this support them moons being aritificially made by Belka in my opinion, but the Sirius star system is clearly isn't man-made (or alien-made)...

...I think?

Extra solar systems are full of instances that contradicts what the common man thought as set in stone as far the laws of astronomy goes. Hell, even our own solar system have such things. A planet orbiting a pulsar? It exists. A Jupiter-like planet orbiting so close to its sun that its atmosphere evaporate and leave a trail seen from space? Wiki Osiris. In our own solar system, Venus is a planet that spin so the Sun rise at the west and set at the east, its day being as long if not longer than its year. And Uranus' axis is nearly at 90 degree. So yeah, universe can do shit that no man can even conceive.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Keroko

[spoiler=Ark]

Ah, so that's where it came from. I apologize for the confusion, what I meant was 'assuming bullets in Nanoha are animated at the same speeds as real bullets'

I should have worded it better, my mistake.

All right, while I wait for the episodes I need today to copy, I'll go over this.

If they aren't Terran bullets, they don't have a reference to reality except for what we see them do. If they aren't animated at the same speeds as Terran bullets, we'll assume they are slower. Period.

How about the point where you started talking about Belka not being a close combat magic style at all, and then fabricated something about that all being what people remember?

Here's what I actually said:

It is very easy to expand Belkan enchantment to medium range just by changing what it enchants, and it is less difficult to train someone to use a gun to reasonable proficiency than a blade, so a lot more training and a lot more training material went in that direction. Hundreds of years later, Belka ended, and the scraps left mostly showed close-combat training (due to the laws of probability), or the stuff about marksmanship were simply not associated with magic, and thus Belka got a reputation for close combat, which may not be completely the case (note again, that the fastest and longest ranging shots actually seen in the show both belonged to Belkan users )

Somehow, when this passes Keroko, it becomes "Belka isn't a close combat magic style at all." Anyway, note how no canon (to the best of my knowledge) went ignored or just cut off here. Even in a hastily thrown out solution, I make sure to take into account and fully accept the observation that modern Midchildrans opine that Belka is a close combat art (BTW, note that when Chrono first described Belka, it just aruteido (somewhat; to some degree) ignores the far fight) and my theory had to work with this fact.

If I were Keroko, I'll just pretend this stuff didn't exist, or just claim they didn't think hard enough about this and thus it shouldn't count.

Or what about the tons of people crashing into concrete you keep ignoring? Like Erio in episode 11, no 'distance barrier' there. Or Subaru in episode 16, or Nanoha in episode 24, if your 'distance barrier' theory is correct, then there should not have been a nice Nanoha-shaped dent there.

Let's go in Reverse Order:

For Ep24, you've actually done it before. My response here: http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost...postcount=1064. One can also infer a high possibility that were we actually allowed to see Nanoha flying into the wall, it'll turn out much like Ep11 and Ep16. But anyway.

Ep11 and Ep16 can really be dealt with like Ep24. But I suppose a more specific approach is superior. So, Ep16 first.

Ep16 used a Combat Cyborg, and had enough sound for VTLing. Subaru flew to the wall in about 9 frames (39828-39836). Her height as she hit the wall was about 240px on the 896x504px film. Say she's 150cm tall, and in that case range on impact is 5.89m (at 160 it is 6.29m), so let's say 6m since her range wasn't exactly zero in the first frame. 30/9*6m=20m/s. That's pretty fast but given the fact the wall gave way, her head hit the wall later (she hit torso first), and there should be enough time for the brain to have decelerated enough she'll have survived (if groggy, as we can clearly see, thus meaning whatever defenses were up were close to the limit, which does not bode well for her survival odds had it been Fate's impact ~10 times faster), and her body is half mechanical anyway so she has some survivability bonus there for her body too. If anything, the biggest problem is the wall. Should it have cracked like that under a 20m/s impact by a soft body (Subaru's frame might be hard, but the exterior should be relatively human) - might say something about the wall as well. Next.

Ep11. OK... the screen was sliding left (fortunately with no panning so everything was easy to line up) to follow our two crash divers. It took them ~19 frames to impact (38848-38866). Erio and Caro together were ~357px long, assume that = ~1.5m. The flight distance during those 19 frames, compensating for the motion of the camera works out to be ~832px, so distance = ~3.5m. 3.5/(19/30) = 5.52m/s *3600/1000 = ~19.9km/h. So, they hit the wall at 20km/h, and the wall dented worse than a car's collapsible front bender... Says a lot about Middie walls indeed, and a lot about their chances at survival in a higher speed impact, since those two were rather knocked out by this experience. Hopefully they'll have something other than their BJs on that day...

... In the end, if these were examples of Barrier Jacket protective performance, they do more to limit it (thus helping my thesis) than in support. Of course, such results were fully predicted by physics.

This isn't even beginning to mention that your ranged crash barrier has zero canon support, neither in background nor in visuals, while the defenses of the Barrier Jacket were revealed and explained in the manga to be more then just pieces of clothing, and has the visuals supporting it.

In fact, the barriers never so much as flash as the BJs are penetrated by whips (Precia), airblast (you know), something very soft looking (probably Garyu's cape, Ep11), hands (Ep12 with Sein) ... etc. In all these cases, you'll have to invent something if you want to insist they penetrated a strong defense. And you can't say that there is a need to deduce the existence of such things, except to satisfy your own desires.

My T-shirt has "fields" - electromagnetic ones between the atoms and all, and if I glue a couple of magnets on I'll have a magnetic "field" too. If I smear enough soapsuds on it'll have "barriers" of a sort as well. Joking aside, how many times do I have to tell you that qualities without magnitudes are meaningless, and thus their magnitudes are estimated using observations and physics.

While on the subject, you also draw one exception in the defense very out in the open, and yet when we show you a few examples of high speed, those are 'exceptions' and 'the consistent measurements' say magic is slow.

Do you mean those few low-detail scenes in say Ep2 A's? Remember the VTLing principle. The consistent measures do say that where time is known to be locked, magic crawls. Sorry.

Well, the consistent measurements of Barrier Jackets say that these things are very tough, considering their defensive capabilities were only breached by either high-powered attacks that can slice steel and send people crashing through concrete, or attacks specifically stated to be designed to breach fields and barriers.

Safe of course, the one bug example.

The consistent measurements say that:
1) Mages sometimes have ways of surviving high speed impacts with concrete.
2) Often, they have trouble with moderate speed impacts with concrete.
2) BJs are extremely weak against KE, as can be seen in all the above. This is of course, consistent with their observable form and its physically mandated consequences ... etc.
3) Thus, BJs can't be what saved them when they hit concrete.

So here's my question, which is more valid? Consistent measurements, which rate the defensive capabilities of the Barrier Jacket to be rather high, or exceptions, which rate speed of mage flight and magic attacks to be rather high?

See above. There are several sets of measurements, which together produce the answer.

Please do, I'm curious to see your response on the subject when you've measured the framerates. If they don't measure up, then you'll be ignoring visuals either way.

The Frame Gaping is done. At the time of the white shockwave (11141-11149), there were no other objects that can be used as a distance and/or velocity reference. Considering the (though unevaluable) acceleration that has occurred, I see no reason to deny that a supersonic flight has taken place. Good observation, ATC!

Accurate measurements have never been needed so far. Everyone has used their own interpretations since... forever. I have yet to see serious conflict regarding that. The only comparison we make is stuff like 'is that attack more powerful then Starlight Breaker?' or 'is she faster then Fate?'

Such comparisons have been enough ever since the thread's creation.

Lack of serious conflict? Then why are some people h3xxbusted so badly they had to rewrite major portions of their characters.

You mentioned you ask questions like "Is she faster than Fate?" Well, then you obviously have to first find out how fast Fate flies, would you? And you presumably will go look at the anime to answer that.

The answer is important. For example, yesterday, a supersonic character might have been banned and its creator flamed. Today, thanks to ATC, he might be more accepted. Such discoveries can occur months, even years after the show ends.

Given this, accurate measurements are just an extension of that, to gain the most accurate, the best substantiated solution to that problem. It will certainly be a horrible thing to have banned someone's character because of a mistaken conception of what is canon, and almost as horrible to be wrong in the other direction, wouldn't it? This place already had people here slip by, think they've made something passable, only to be told a month later that they passed due to lax surveillance, and they'll have to redo their character after all. Kind of uh, hard, is it not?

[Wild Goose]

You do realise, of course, ark, that part of the whole "no charecters can be supersonic" is due to your calculations of speed and the like. What was it again? about 200-400mph?