(CR) Planet With

[orion]

So now it's Sealing vs Pacifist faction with the 3rd entity watching from the sidelines?

I'm wondering if the Dragon wasn't set up to kill off Sirius so the Sealing faction could kill it off. If they had all those psychics ready, why couldn't they just knock him out and put him in time out until he regains his composure before the Dragon destroyed the planet?

[Kanon]

Yeah, I think the Dragon was set up as well. They probably thought he was too powerful and needed an excuse to get rid of him. Not sure what, but I'm pretty sure the Generalissimo is scheming something.

The Siriusians really were warmongers and went as far as invading other planets, including Ginko's (who turned out to be a Princess despite being dressed as a maid). Of course, that doesn't mean they had to die. And I guess this episode confirmed Soya is indeed the last of his race.

I didn't expect Benika and Yousuke to join the sealing faction. It looks like they've awakened their psychic powers. I took Nozo-san being unaffected by Shiraishi's brainwashing as another sign humans are starting to awaken. The real surprise, though, was the appearance of a third faction. The oldest race in the Universe, which has evolved so much they don't have bodies anymore. What do they want with Soya?

[Haak]

Oh boy Season 2 is off to a flying start. No brakes on this train, that's for sure.

We finally learn what exactly happened in the past. The Dragon's stark madness is displayed in brutal fashion as well as Snoopy's infuriating reluctance to act. Sensei thinking the Dragon was worth rehabilitating after committing genocide on a literal world scale was a bit odd but I guess some people have that viewpoint. Maybe I'm just a backward Earthling that can't choose the Evolution of Love. XP

I guess humans have psychic powers after all, though there's not a lot more given to us than that.

Also, that flashing bitchslutwhore Shiraishi can go to hell.

[BWTraveller]

I didn't get the impression Snoopy was unwilling or reluctant to act. Even what he said sounded like he found the situation convenient. He'd judged the Dragon to be violent and hopeless just as he'd judged the entire species of Sirius. By refusing to intervene, he got to see a species he rejects destroyed and then gets to use that destruction as evidence to execute an ally he also rejected. And all while maintaining his "evolution of love" façade and keeping his hands clean.

My guess with Paradise would be that they are the only ones who approach what you can really call "adults" (by the "taking a gun from a child" standpoint), and they expect Souya to play an important role in proving to Nebula that there's more to this than just "you're either love or power". Sort of like Sensei was doing, hoping to get Souya to grow up and demonstrate that Love resided in them as well, thus persuading the Dragon to repent his judgment, they want Souya to wake Nebula up to the problem with judging all to be one or the other, or even demonstrate to them that their "peaceful" alternative of mass lobotomy really aren't any better.

One thing I'm kind of curious about is just WHY those two decided to join the Sealing faction. I wouldn't put it past those guys to have deceived and manipulated them, or even using their hypnotic powers to convince them.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by BWTraveller

I didn't get the impression Snoopy was unwilling or reluctant to act. Even what he said sounded like he found the situation convenient. He'd judged the Dragon to be violent and hopeless just as he'd judged the entire species of Sirius. By refusing to intervene, he got to see a species he rejects destroyed and then gets to use that destruction as evidence to execute an ally he also rejected. And all while maintaining his "evolution of love" façade and keeping his hands clean.

I appreciate that there is a strong possibility that it'll be revealed along these lines. The fact that we never explicitly saw what led the Dragon down the dark side is something worth considering, because it may even be a possibility that there was some manipulation involved. And as we've seen, the Sealing Faction have plenty of experience in manipulation.

I just felt like pointing out that even the most innocent interpretation of Snoopy's actions is still incredibly damning.

[4th Dimension]

Yeah. I don't either think Dragon was a setup. And we know, or can infer what drove Dragon off the deep edge. Hearing that the Siriusians have invaded Riel. Presumably this was the last straw in Dragon's mind so he decided to purge the problem.

But yeah, Generalissimo probably found it quite convenient. I'm not sure he would have liked to loose support from a wild cannon such as Dragon but still someone that was more likely to side with him rather than the Pacifists, but he did explicitly wait until the crime was complete before acting.
One way this could possibly be defended was if he needed time to gather forces, and they couldn't begin to stop the dragon if Siriusians opened fire on them too. But that's kinda a weak argument.

There is also a faint possibility, for those that expect the worst out of Doggo, that he was planning something that would be out of the Path of Love, and if that was so, he definitelly wouldn't want to have a loose cannon with his own conception of justice rolling about who might take presumed tarnishing of Nebula's ideals lightly.

Those two. While I wouldn't put it past Shiraishi to have brainwashed them, she REEEALLY is trigger happy on that. Then again she has been washing them since the beggining. It just didn't work on the Director. But anyway, I wonder what happened to them that might have driven them to this.
In the ED we see all of the other characters reflected in MC's mask, and at least for those we know it shows their dream, what Sealing faction's robots or something would show them.
For these two, for the girl we see her crying. And for the glasses one, we see him with his glasses shining asuming a sinister pose. So inside they might be the opposite of their outward selves. Girl is scared or scared by something in the past and nowhere near as cool operator as she appears. And the guy... well shining glasses are a common trope for not good things....

What I want to know is what would FIGHTING over humanity PROVE about anything. Like it made sense to fight people who had those vials to take it away from them. But what would being STRONGER prove about weather or not Humans are capable of being lead down the Path of Love.
To me THAT sounds like the real trap. To me that sounds like playing to the Generalissimo's propaganda. That sealing humans and Sirians is justified because they react violently to everything. And try to solve everything with it. Hell Generalissimo even GAVE Humans power to speed them along the evolution line. Sirians were DEFINITELY a lot further along given their tech level and mastery of their powers.
I presume his goal here is to give humans guns, tell them their fate will be decided in a gunfight, and when that escalates claim that it is all as he was saying all along. That humans can't solve anything without a gunfight. They didn't even try to renegotiate.

[Applehell]

Originally Posted by orion

So now it's Sealing vs Pacifist faction with the 3rd entity watching from the sidelines?

TBF, it was already there even before it got to this point. The Grand Paladins were more side-show and were probably created to justify sealing all of humanity and convince other psychic humans to join Sealing Faction.

What is interesting here that it will be the non-humans (Pacifists Faction) who choose preserve things as they are despite being victims of unchecked evolution against humans backed and manipulated by the Sealing Faction.

Originally Posted by Kanon

I took Nozo-san being unaffected by Shiraishi's brainwashing as another sign humans are starting to awaken. The real surprise, though, was the appearance of a third faction. The oldest race in the Universe, which has evolved so much they don't have bodies anymore. What do they want with Soya?

I'm pretty sure Shiraishi's brainwashing will work on you regardless if your a physic or not as we saw with Soya.

Honestly, I feel like the real reason it didn't work was becasue Nozo has classes on.

Originally Posted by 4th Dimension

What I want to know is what would FIGHTING over humanity PROVE about anything. Like it made sense to fight people who had those vials to take it away from them. But what would being STRONGER prove about weather or not Humans are capable of being lead down the Path of Love.
To me THAT sounds like the real trap. To me that sounds like playing to the Generalissimo's propaganda. That sealing humans and Sirians is justified because they react violently to everything. And try to solve everything with it. Hell Generalissimo even GAVE Humans power to speed them along the evolution line. Sirians were DEFINITELY a lot further along given their tech level and mastery of their powers.
I presume his goal here is to give humans guns, tell them their fate will be decided in a gunfight, and when that escalates claim that it is all as he was saying all along. That humans can't solve anything without a gunfight. They didn't even try to renegotiate.

As I mentioned above I think Generalissimo's pass that point and that real purpose of the Sealing Faction supporting the Grand Paladins was to do just that. Now the SF is just acting on it.

[serenade_beta]

Yeah, I can't tell if Nozo-san's resistance to the hypnosis is foreshadowing or just a joke on her glasses.

[Dengar]

Originally Posted by BWTraveller

As I said we clearly have a different definition of injury. To me, a person doesn't need to bleed, scream in pain, or show any signs of personal discomfort or biological effects to be seriously injured. If for instance a person was placed against their will into a situation where their darkest pains and desires were paraded before their face and then twisted into an obviously fake fantasy where it turns out well, bombarding them with the things buried deepest, until they are transformed into something they're not, I'd call that a really bad injury. And I certainly would call BS on the lines they're saying. This isn't taking a loaded gun from a small child, this is handicapping that child so that (s)he is no longer able to even hold a gun, while ignoring the variety of other things the child is no longer able to do. You can be hurt and not know it.

Actually, these guys remind me of Naoi from Angel Beats during his villainous start. Yuri was motivated to a significant degree by her resentment and regret over the memory of her little siblings being brutally murdered while she was powerless to stop it. It was painful, but it was something vital to who she was. Then Naoi comes along, grabs her, and uses his powers to reach in and try to overwrite that memory, completely erase the events from her heart so she'll have nothing left to hold her in limbo, even while she screamed that it wasn't real. The only difference here is that the mechanisms we'd seen to this point were dummies set up to give people a chance to fight back, and several of the people were able to break out and break the device assaulting them before it could finish the job. With the old man it was clear that the device would continue to bombard the victim with images and words as long as it remained operational. As I understood the words of the dog, the real thing is worldwide and designed so you can't escape or destroy it, you can only surrender.

Ultimately, despite not literally affecting anything biologically, this technique reaches in, finds the most crucial parts of what make you you, and take it away, leaving an empty shell behind. I for one have a hard time calling that "nonviolent"; I'd call it something that goes beyond "violence" to such a level of violation that violence would be almost merciful in comparison. If you cannot see this, then yeah I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. But seriously how can you say a person was not harmed when they were crippled like that? I honestly cannot understand the logic behind such a statement.

I'm not arguing whether one is worse than the other or not. I just view these two things as completely different things entirely. Like, they're not even on the same axis.



Anyway, it appears Nebula isn't even a race, but an organization. So the equivalences continue to get more and more false.

[4th Dimension]

Given these two's ready accpetance of the sealing plan, I wonder if this puts their withdrawal from the Paladins in new light, as soon as they(she) heard Director's aims...

[BWTraveller]

Originally Posted by Dengar

I'm not arguing whether one is worse than the other or not. I just view these two things as completely different things entirely. Like, they're not even on the same axis.



Anyway, it appears Nebula isn't even a race, but an organization. So the equivalences continue to get more and more false.

I didn't merely say it's "worse" than violence, I said it's something that goes beyond violence. There's a difference. What they do is still injury, but it's on such a fundamental and profound level that the word "violence" doesn't do it justice. But claiming from that that it's apples and oranges is fundamentally incorrect.

And how the heck does their being an organization make it more "false"? Hypocrisy doesn't require an absolute 1:1 relationship. An organization that puts a person through severe pain and suffering and excuses it by saying that person would otherwise have committed violence against someone else is still hypocritical. The exact type of pain the person suffers and the way they experience it may be different, and it may be a large group of loosely associated colleagues/coworkers, but the act of inflicting injury to prevent the possibility of someone becoming able to inflict injury is still hypocritical. It doesn't matter if the exact nature of the entity is different, any more than it matters if the level of violation is different.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by Dengar

Anyway, it appears Nebula isn't even a race, but an organization. So the equivalences continue to get more and more false.

I honestly have no idea why you're so determined to basterdize the definition of hypocrisy so that you don't have have to recognise a clear cut case of one but whatever helps I guess. Apparently "organisations" are allowed to not practice what they preach as along as they strictly define their morals for races only. Still sounds a lot like cherry picking but okay sure...

[Kitsu Breaker]

I honestly want Souya team lose, he is motives were superficial and just take the only power that humanity had to defend herself.
This aliens barely know about sovereignty.

[BWTraveller]

Originally Posted by Haak

I honestly have no idea why you're so determined to basterdize the definition of hypocrisy so that you don't have have to recognise a clear cut case of one but whatever helps I guess. Apparently "organisations" are allowed to not practice what they preach as along as they strictly define their morals for races only. Still sounds a lot like cherry picking but okay sure...

Especially since this "organization" consists apparently of all the races that have obtained the "Evolution of Love", meaning it's made up of lots of races.

[Guardian Enzo]

Planet With asks more interesting questions that any 100 other random anime put together. But I really think the viewers are sleeping on just how incredibly dangerous and insidious the Sealing Faction is. Basically we're talking about Eugenics, here.

[Dengar]

Originally Posted by Haak

I honestly have no idea why you're so determined to basterdize the definition of hypocrisy so that you don't have have to recognise a clear cut case of one but whatever helps I guess. Apparently "organisations" are allowed to not practice what they preach as along as they strictly define their morals for races only. Still sounds a lot like cherry picking but okay sure...

We're simply disagreeing on whether two things are equivalent. I'm not trying to bastardize anything. I also do not think it's worth my time to continue a discussion with people who would put words in my mouth without even so much as a question mark.

[BWTraveller]

Originally Posted by Dengar

We're simply disagreeing on whether two things are equivalent. I'm not trying to bastardize anything. I also do not think it's worth my time to continue a discussion with people who would put words in my mouth without even so much as a question mark.

I'm sorry if I for one ever seemed to put words in your mouth, I merely seek to understand. But seriously, claiming it's somehow not hypocritical or less hypocritical for an organization to be doing this on account of the fact that it's an organization and their judgment is on a race is a very feeble rationalization. Would a family then not be hypocritical for doing something to a class at a school out of fear that they might do the same thing, simply because they're a family not a school class? Seriously before this I've never heard anyone suggest that hypocrisy is only hypocrisy when there's a one-to-one perfect match between the two, but that's the impression I'm getting (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

[wuhugm]

That glasses girl doesn't even care about the fate of the town and earth lol

MC who is possibly the only one who can save the earth (as far as she knows it) was reluctant to fight and she invited him to run away

MC loves his planet and this glasses discards her planet easily. I really hope this glasses don't win lol

What an annoying existence

[Kanon]

That was such an amazing episode. Classic Mizukami.

I was happy we got to learn more about Benika (nice fanservice, by the way). I don't know what to think about having an actual child with a loaded gun showing up after they made that exact analogy, but it did a fantastic job getting the point across. Her reasons for joining the Sealing faction were made crystal clear. Her doubts, as well. We learned more about Yousuke in the process; his brother, Benika and him were basically in a love triangle.

Loved how Soya realized the Shiraishi he was seeing was an illusion because the feel of her boobs wasn't in the right place
Now that his revenge is over (or so he thought), the full weight of what happened to him finally hit him. His family, his friends, and even the places he cherished are gone forever. Who wouldn't break down?

The Dragon being alive on the dark side of the moon is just weird. How come Nebula hasn't detected him? And why do the people of Paradise want Soya of all people to destroy him? What even is the Dragon to them? Still so many questions.

As for the Paladins, I guess Torai will take the lead and rebuild them. He has what it takes. We didn't really get to see it until now since he was the first to be taken out, and Takashi had such an imposing presence.

[BWTraveller]

I for one don't buy this. I can understand her believing it, feeling that way, but I seriously believe she's wrong, in general and more to the point within the story. The way she put it, it sounds almost like she believes simply having power motivates people to use it in a bad way, that the moment a kid finds a gun in his hands he's going to become a criminal even when up to that point he was a model student. I don't buy this at all. From everything I've seen and heard, there really needs to be a motivation, a reason to want to use that power to do something or a desire to have and use power. I'd suspect that that kid looked normal and passive on the surface, but inside he had a deep-rooted feeling of powerlessness, some sense of being unable to do what he'd wanted to do, and that handmade gun released those desires. It didn't put the desires in him.

This is all the more apparent with Harumi, whom she used as a supposed confirmation of her bias. Harumi didn't explode because she had the power to destroy, she didn't go on a rampage because she could. She went psycho because her dearest friend, someone who meant the world to her, was hurt and she was overwhelmed with feelings. Those feelings would've been there all the same if she didn't have the power. And as demonstrated, it really didn't take all that much to turn her back and cause her "Power" to transform into "Love". Claiming that a person can't handle power and needs to be broken so he can't use it anymore is just an excuse to deal with the fact that she wasn't able to reach the kid at the right time in the right way. It amounts to giving up and saying that these people can't be saved so she doesn't have to feel like such a failure for having been unable to save some.