[Hagoshod]

Originally Posted by Darthtabby

The really important point about Dezo's post however is that he was one of the newcomers whom the first two episodes were written to provide an introduction for. And apparently he appreciated the episodes, thought they generally did a good job of introducing important aspects of the setting (minus a few issues he didn't think were properly explained -I'll admit to cutting that part for brevity) and thought he'd have been lost without them. I'd say this indicates that the writers and director chose a good approach.

"One person said they thought it was good, therefore you must be wrong when you say it's bad."

That's the argument you're making right now.

Originally Posted by Darthtabby

I know I certainly enjoyed watching Die Hard on Yukon base.

Too bad I was saying the problem is the BETA just utterly stop being a credible threat after the timeskip. Yes, the last few episodes have things of some sort happening, but the main conflict they try so hard get you to care about is the human terrorist plot to take over the base. The BETA become full-time supporting villains in a story that started out by drilling you on how the BETA are the single most vile, dangerous threat to the human race. I tried to indicate this earlier when I used my trying-to-be-Ribbons-Almark comparison, but the show totally loses me when goes off on some bullshit Cold War espionage tangent and never comes back.

I don't give a shit about Master.
I don't give a shit about Master throwing the dagger at the map of Yokohama.
I don't give a shit about Master's fleet of automated Robo-TSFs.
I don't give a shit about Master's magical Innovade ability to brainwash Cryska and Inia.
I'm a LITTLE concerned over Master ordering the assassination hit on Yui, but that's just because the first two episodes trained me to empathize with Yui and associate her as the main heroine of the story.

There is nothing you can do to get me invested in the conflict with Master because in the back of my head I'm just sitting there constantly going "Uhhh.... so we're going back to that whole thing about aliens eating everyone in Japan at some point, right?"

And yeah, I know the VNs have the coup d'etat arc and human vs. human conflicts in Muv-Luv aren't a new thing and that's what everyone is comparing this to. Here's the thing, though: One, I hated the coup d'etat arc for many of the same reasons (on topic of slamming the plot into a brick wall for two hours and forcing some really obnoxious hamfisted anti-America xenophobia down your throat). Two, as bad as I thought it was, at least the coup d'etat came in the middle of the bigger picture and the writers remembered "Hey, oh yeah, we still have that giant looming alien threat thing we introduced earlier we need to resolve" and the Marimo stuff kicked off right after that.

And again, this is all due to the first two episodes of the anime being completely out of place as the introduction to the TE story. If the beginning of the series had simply spent its time setting up that we were watching a show about test pilots doing test things on a test base and built up its own villains from there, I wouldn't have anything else on my mind and the whole problem would have been avoided.