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Originally Posted by kuromitsu
I think that's just another example of the writing not being able to handle character relationships on that level. Delving into stuff like that would take up time and would be too complicated to address so they just... leave it out. It's the exact same thing that went on with Amata and Mikono having lunch together and being perfectly in harmony and stuff in one episode and then suddenly Kagura being a tension between them in the next episode, with pretty much zero setup.
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But they have done it in the past. They've done it just fine with Jin/Yunoha, and with MIX and Andy. It took all of five or so minutes with each where they actually confronted each other on the shit going on: Andy confronts and questions MIX for why she is a massive bitch to him (not in those direct words, and this did take about five episodes to actually build up to and reach but they resolved it). Yunoha confronts Jin fairly quickly about his deceptive nature after, quite visibly, showing a fear of him for which he has to act and they reconcile. Characters
have addressed their issues even if the issues don't crop up every episode. (Jin and Yunoha were in perfect harmony one episode then Mykage troll, then friction and resolution. Now, while you're certainly correct that Kagura is like the elephant in the room I think that fact excuses his ability to crop up as a topic rather arbitrarily because... well, he's the elephant in the room. You can ignore him from time to time but not all the time.)
That being said, I think they've handled Mikono/Amata with piss-poor finesse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kuromitsu
Not being able to make the characters communicate is a standard problem in anime writing, though. Take the first half for example, Zessica messing with Amata. Amata is obviously uncomfortable with this but never once tells her to cut it out because that would take the situation somewhere that the writers don't want. Also, Amata can't go and tell Mikono about the whole floating thing because that would resolve the situation and then where would the writers be. Also Kagura's power. Kagura has this huge and hax power and yet he keeps getting his ass kicked for how many episodes, because the writers want to make his reverse speech a surprise... so they make him not use his powers at all. Etc.
So I can't really associate these issues with characterization, because they're just not... "natural" progressions but obvious writing blunders.
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Again, though, they have not had a single issue making *others* interact and communicate through adversity and trouble. (Amata does actually ask Zessica to stop but he's rather powerless in every situation because he cannot do anything when he's airborne. And its not like Mikono didn't know that Amata cannot help but fly for everything, it just takes a few episodes (two, and was only a problem for episode five as six was a fight episode) for it to be quickly resolved. (As for Kagura, if you look back his power would have almost never been useful in the handful of episodes where he appeared: Without the power of Altair/Ianthe, he cannot do the bullshit he did in 13(?) of repairing his mecha from getting cut in half and in episode 6 he never actually has a chance to use his power on Amata because Amata jumps off the building and Shrade interrupts and, as we've seen, Shrade's power completely beats Kagura unless the latter is batshit crazy (which doesn't happen until several episodes later ala Mykage). Aside from that, Kagura's not done much else aside from shout Mikono's name and get tortured.)
The problems of communication are entirely restricted to Amata and Mikono, Kagura has a better time communicating with Mikono than Amata does. Like I said, my complaint (and while you're certainly right that Mikono is not unresponsive) is that the initiative is entirely one-sided and Mikono's swinging around some baffling logic accompanied by less than helpful actions that are certainly not helping Amata. This episode was especially onerous of this because they never, not once, talked with each other about the issues at hand. You might even call it symbolic that Mikono's only talk with Amata this episode was: Let's run away, and then getting jelly. With Okada and Kawamori, who have shown that they know how to write romance and good stories, this whole methodology of driving the tension because Mikono and Amata apparently have their tongues in vices is mind-numbing and is dragging down what I find as an otherwise fun to watch, interesting show.