(L) Shingeki no Bahamut ~Virgin Soul~ (S2)

[scififan]

Originally Posted by Wandering Soul

So El really is dead. I am surprised that they went through with it, but I suspect that he'll be back soon. Can't blame Jeanne for snapping though. She's ready to raze Chaorice and his kingdom down to the ground, which will understandable isn't what I think El would have wanted.

hmmmm....
It's seems everyone is expecting El's coming back after a Good Friday.

I am more interested about Jeanne's new transformation. Even demon knows she is going to kick rears, see how Lucifer is moved when Azazel mentions her name. We just don't know if her battle mode will meet expectations. Hopefully, I will not be disappointed with the next episode's action.

Although I like Jeanne's anime original design, it lacks armor. Comparing to Bahamut's Jeanne and Granblue Fantasy's Jeanne, anime Jeanne looks serious. Instead of the innocent looking face, she looks determined.

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Jeanne from Bahamut

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Jeanne from Granblue Fantasy

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By the way, Jeanne's new outfit reminds me about Alicia's attire, except Alicia's cloth doesn't expose skin as much.

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Alicia's attire

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Originally Posted by funny dialogue

Azazle: Don't use a book to hit me.
Lucifer: I am the demon.

[willyvereb]

Originally Posted by Skaddix

Speaking of Retcons...I still don't get how the humans beat the demons in a war when the superweapon wasn't even ready back then.

By just walzing into the capital without the Demons able to do anything? The only reason Dromos was activated against the Gods is because El was a miraculous McGuffin that could disable all human magic and magitech at once. Without that?

Stab. Stab. Stab.
They were entirely powerless and this is after El basically annihilated the heavy hitters of humans like those dragon barges or the hundreds of giant golems.
Just the Onyx Soldiers versus several times of their count in god warriors turned out to be a one sided massacre. EP19 also shows why gods don't seem to have giant units like humans or especially demons do. They are just so powerful individually it doesn't matter. Charioce even sent companies of hand-picked demon gladiators against the god warriors and they died with trivial ease.
If such foes can be trumped by the Onyx Soldiers what do you think the chances of the demons would be in comparison?
None.
See? That's why Lucifer was busy doing nothing.

[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

I think the whole gender thing was just to give Nina some kawaii points for cluelessness.

Maybe, maybe not. The set-up was way too elaborate for a simple gag, what with both the official sources and the dialogue avoiding the word "shounen" and whatnot. There's a reason why so many viewers were confused, too. Obviously he was a boy, and maybe in the end it really was just a gag and nothing more, but I'm sure there was a point during development when it was more than that.

Originally Posted by willyvereb

EP19 also shows why gods don't seem to have giant units like humans or especially demons do. They are just so powerful individually it doesn't matter. Charioce even sent companies of hand-picked demon gladiators against the god warriors and they died with trivial ease.

For what it's worth the demons have giant units mostly because the normal, garden variety demons aren't very powerful at all, they're mostly just large and strong, maybe have a bit of magic, but that's it. (Aside of the dragons, I guess. Dragons are technically in the mazoku group, but they're clearly distinct from demons...) It's the high level demons like Azazel, Cerberus, Lucifer or Beelzebuth, the ones with powerful magic who are just as strong as the gods. It's just that there seems to be fewer of them, and from what we've seen so far most of them will happily let the foot soldiers do the fighting for them. Look at Azazel disposing of the demon gladiator without any effort, even with the magic collar on, or slaughtering Lucifer's guards in this episode. He's insanely powerful, just bad at being effective. Plus Virgin Soul seems to go out of its way to power him down and make him not use his abilities to their full extent, for the sake of the story... at least so far. But if you check the relevant episode in Genesis, he literally laughed off Kaisar and Favaro's combined attacks - they needed Jeanne and her holy spear to take him down, and even that didn't kill him.

[willyvereb]

Originally Posted by kuromitsu

For what it's worth the demons have giant units mostly because the normal, garden variety demons aren't very powerful at all, they're mostly just large and strong, maybe have a bit of magic, but that's it. (Aside of the dragons, I guess. Dragons are technically in the mazoku group, but they're clearly distinct from demons...) It's the high level demons like Azazel, Cerberus, Lucifer or Beelzebuth, the ones with powerful magic who are just as strong as the gods. It's just that there seems to be fewer of them, and from what we've seen so far most of them will happily let the foot soldiers do the fighting for them. Look at Azazel disposing of the demon gladiator without any effort, even with the magic collar on, or slaughtering Lucifer's guards in this episode. He's insanely powerful, just bad at being effective. Plus Virgin Soul seems to go out of its way to power him down and make him not use his abilities to their full extent, for the sake of the story... at least so far. But if you check the relevant episode in Genesis, he literally laughed off Kaisar and Favaro's combined attacks - they needed Jeanne and her holy spear to take him down, and even that didn't kill him.

Ah, I rewatched a bunch in the last few months. Yeah, they completely abandonned the idea of "only enchanted weapons can threaten gods and demons" or just they are perhaps more widespread now. I mean damn, Anatae underwent a whole industrial revolution in those 7 years. Golems are now ridiculously common, mage support is given anytime they expect resistance (see the prison escape) and their overall production quantity just skyrocketed. Making enchanted anti-spiritual weapons common for soldiers wouldn't be such a stretch.

At first I wanted to say that El might be vulnerable to regular weapons because he's half-human (Nina certainly doesn't enjoy an immunity unless transformed) but then you have early scenes where archers shoot at demons or even Azazel without magic boost... they are bound to expect these to be effective. Even when in case of Azazel they still weren't a threat. Azazel regardless had to defend himself against Charioce and Kaisar's swings when they fought.

This is also why I am not worried about humans in general. They are a major power now and even removing Charioce, Dromos and the Onyx Soldiers wouldn't change this enough to force Mankind into another subservience or worse threaten them with annihilation. They must be treated as equals.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by kuromitsu

And I guess we're not supposed to think too deeply about why Sofiel didn't just take Mugaro back to heaven, no way they don't have magical healers there. (Dammit, Sofiel.) And aren't angels supposed to disintegrate when they die? Why is Mugaro's body still there! It has to be because he'll come back, right?!

I was really angry with Sofiel during El's death. Really, the best she could do in the situation was provide a shoulder for Jeanne to lean on? If Sofiel isn't a god herself, she's the closest thing to one. Yet she made no effort to tend to El. It was infuriating to watch.

[seiftis]

Originally Posted by Mistyclear

Do the creators hate Jeanne or something?! She cannot catch a break. If the creators were trying to make Alessand sympathetic with his suffering over what he did to El, I'm not feeling it at all.

They really hate her somehow At this point, I don't see a good ending for Jeanne either. Didn't play the mobile game, so who knows yeah

Poor Jeanne

[zalem]

I refuse to believe Mugaro is dead. I need to see them burn or bury his body before I believe it! ;-;

Originally Posted by Kanon

When Alessand finds out about El's true identity, we see him having a flashback to when the boss of the Onyx knight told him he was worthless. This is the real reason he killed El. To earn his place as one of the Onyx knight and prove himself worthy. He didn't do it for the sake of humanity, but for his own personal advancement. He's the worst kind of scum.

This. The guy is lower than scum. He murdered a child for his own personal gain. I don't care that he feels bad about it now. Doesn't change that he is the scum of the earth.

[willyvereb]

El/Mugaro might be sweet and it's sad to see him go but calling him innocent is quite a stretch. He stoically watched as thousands die when the gods descended down on humans, an action he directly enabled by blocking magic/magitech on the human side. They didn't try to pacify them or anything nice, they outright murdered anything they saw. As ironic as it may seem El's kill count is thousands of times higher than Alessand's.

Would this make Alessand's action justified? Define what you mean justify. Do we understand why he did it? Yup. Do we support it? Fuck no!
But it makes me sick when people make "acceptable targets" and pretend actions involving them doesn't count.

El was a sweet kid with a tough life which warped him. He was many things but innocent he was not. He was right on the path to redemption, to become something great. Alas it never happened and he died when it was the least expected. It was tragic and infuriating. But pretending he was blameless does not sit well with me.

[drawr]

Originally Posted by seiftis

They really hate her somehow At this point, I don't see a good ending for Jeanne either. Didn't play the mobile game, so who knows yeah

Poor Jeanne

Guess they want to be consistent with the tragedy of the real life version She had a lot of suffering in granblue as well.
Can Rita zombify El?

[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by drawr

Can Rita zombify El?

I don't think she'd want to? As she noted to Kaisar at one point, it's a mystery as to why she is not a mindless monster; her zombie powers certainly turn everyone (and everything, even a dragon at point) she bites into mindless zombies. She probably wouldn't want that to happen to Mugaro.

Plus in Virgin Soul she seems to have forgotten that she even has this power. During the prison break-out I was shouting "USE YOUR ZOMBIE POWER!!!" at the screen, but it never happened. I guess this is coming from the same place as Azazel's strongest negative qualities being heavily toned down from the start. Probably it's because they need to be more unambiguously sympathetic in this series. You wouldn't want your good guy character turning people into brain-munching zombies (even though she totally did that in Genesis, more than once).

Originally Posted by willyvereb

El was a sweet kid with a tough life which warped him. He was many things but innocent he was not. He was right on the path to redemption, to become something great. Alas it never happened and he died when it was the least expected. It was tragic and infuriating. But pretending he was blameless does not sit well with me.

He was just a kid, though, who barely had any idea of what he was doing, plus he was being manipulated by Gabriel at the time. Later on, after he had some time to reflect on things, he changed his mind and decided to approach things in a different way. I don't think he was warped at all. Self-centered, rash and thoughtless? Maybe, but then again, he was a young child (who had spent the past two years having Azazel, of all people, as his role model...).

On the topic of being self-centered and rash, I wonder how the current situation will play out. (I mean, I have a good guess but the show might just do something else.) This situation is really bad, and has potentially terrible consequences for everyone involved, and here I mean all races, not just individuals, and the moral high ground of the anti-Charioce alliance(? is this an alliance?) is pretty damn shaky.

[Skaddix]

Slavery, Attempted Genocide, General Warmongering, Free Speech Suppression, Torture?

I don't think the alliance is currently lacking in Moral High Ground.

I am sure if the alliance wins they are just going to put Jaune on the Human Throne. She will end slavery sign a treaty with the Gods and Demons and every goes back to S1 Status Quo.

[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by Skaddix

Slavery, Attempted Genocide, General Warmongering, Free Speech Suppression, Torture?

Slavery - Still wasn't him but the general human population, at this rate why not slaughter all humans. Notice how none of the human characters actually give a crap about the demon slaves, at least not enough crap to help them. Also, if one person can be made responsible for the rest of the group he arbitrarily represents, I continue to wait for an answer on how the demons lording it over humans for all those centuries, and the gods not really caring other than giving power to Jeanne and leaving her to deal with all that on her own, is any better.
Attempted genocide - I still don't get this one, but whatever.
General warmongering - you mean the part where Azazel & Jeanne incite a potentially devastating war against an enemy who they know has the fantasy equivalent of a WMD, out of purely personal interests - knowing fully well that their respective leaders are unlikely to stop at just destroying that particlar enemy?
Free Speech Suppression - As in...? I didn't see him ordering the guards to make Nina shut up when she was giving him a piece of her mind in front of his entire court in the first cour. Not to mention this is a fantasy medieval non-parliamental monarchy, "freedom of speech" is not exactly a staple of those. I don't remember anyone in the group as much as mentioning "hey, he's a dick and also he suppresses free speech!" Because it's not something they actually care about.
Torture - You do realize that the alliance (let's call it that) includes Azazel, right? I also haven't seen anyone in the group much as mention "hey, he's a dick, also: torture!" Because... fantasy medieval monarchy, blah blah blah. In Genesis Jeanne was set to be burned at the stake and that was the old king. It would be massively hypocritical for them to claim that they care about it now, considering that even Kaisar was never shown to give a damn during all these years.

Thing is, even with all the shitty things that Charioce did actually do, the thing that spurred Azazel & Jeanne into "THIS IS ALL-OUT WAR!!!!" was the death of someone they loved. And that's Azazel and Jeanne who are at least emotionally invested in all this, but Lucifer and Gabriel? Lucifer was more concerned with sitting around and waiting for the times to turn better than protecting his people (how difficult would it have been to set up spies, aid, etc.? But nah, books are better). Gabriel only cares about punishing the insolent human who turned against her, and to fold humans back under the gods' influence. (Yet, after the Bahamut incident she was clearly more concerned with licking her wounds than protecting humans from rampaging demons, yet she expected humans to revere the gods.) Add to this that for all his flaws Charioce is, in fact, innocent in Mugaro's death, so there's this huge, earth-shattering battle brewing over what is essentially a misconceptio. And sure, Charioce did enough bad things that whatever happens to him won't be undeserved, but "uh, actually, guys? turns out he didn't do this particular thing we went to all-out war with him for... but er, he totally deserves it anyway!" is not exactly a respectable argument when you're waging a righteous war.

Originally Posted by Skaddix

I am sure if the alliance wins they are just going to put Jaune on the Human Throne. She will end slavery sign a treaty with the Gods and Demons and every goes back to S1 Status Quo.

Everything else aside... you do realize that the status quo in S1 was pretty damn bad, right? That's why things got to the point they are now. And if you think slavery didn't exist back then you need to rewatch the show, because in the very first episode you have goons hunting down women to be sex slaves (and potential torture/murder victims) for the local demon summoner bad guy.

[Skaddix]

Chaorice already had a kill order out on Mugara so sure he didn't specifically tell Allesand to go kill the kid but he has made it clear before he wants the kid dead. Nice Try.

Chaorice is King, if he wanted to crack down on slavery...he crack down on Slavery. This isn't democracy where poor Chaorice was overruled by Parliament.

[MgMaster]

I expect Azazel to be the one to find Alessand and not Jeanne. Jeanne would execute him on the spot or something but there's no1 better to give him what he deserves than Azazel ~ would be pretty fitting.

Jeanne should seek out Chaorice to finish him off, assuming Nina doesn't end up being the one to do it.

That or he'll just get all his lifeforce drained out of him by that stone before either of 'em get to him, lol..

[Skaddix]

The problem is we have seen Chaorice fight once and it wasn't impressive Kaiser basically 2 v 1 against a weakened Azazel and full health Chaorice and won easily.

[SeijiSensei]

Just a reminder that the OP shows a team of Nina, Favaro, Kaisar, Azazel and Charioce. That's still an unlikely combination unless Jeanne plus the gods are the enemy. And won't Bahamut be showing his snout sometime soon as well?

[Skaddix]

We have what 3 episodes to go so unless they want a new big bad out of nowhere Bahamut pretty much has to be what Char wanted Dromos for....not to mention Favaro keeps having Amira Flashbacks.

[haseo0408]

Originally Posted by Skaddix

Chaorice already had a kill order out on Mugara so sure he didn't specifically tell Allesand to go kill the kid but he has made it clear before he wants the kid dead. Nice Try.

Chaorice is King, if he wanted to crack down on slavery...he crack down on Slavery. This isn't democracy where poor Chaorice was overruled by Parliament.

At the end of the day Charioce is true responsible asshole for this hole mess, it matters little why Allesand did such a horible act, the fact is that the king is the origing of all this missery. The status quo in season 1 was bad but I take it any day compare to this hell hole of a world he created, not even humans want him anymore, they live in fear to open their mouths to express their opinion.

Even if he has done all this to prepare for a great threat why didn´t talk to the gods about it? Hell anyone would have been fine! But now play time is over, Chariose must di and he will die, there is no way the demons, gods and human rebels are going to let this monster walk away from this even if the theat to the world is real.

[willyvereb]

Originally Posted by haseo0408

At the end of the day Charioce is true responsible asshole for this hole mess, it matters little why Allesand did such a horible act, the fact is that the king is the origing of all this missery. The status quo in season 1 was bad but I take it any day compare to this hell hole of a world he created, not even humans want him anymore, they live in fear to open their mouths to express their opinion.

Even if he has done all this to prepare for a great threat why didn´t talk to the gods about it? Hell anyone would have been fine! But now play time is over, Chariose must di and he will die, there is no way the demons, gods and human rebels are going to let this monster walk away from this even if the theat to the world is real.

Hell hole, wut?
Anatae is more prosperous than ever before, humanity jumped centuries in development under just a decade and demons right now are working for them instead of randomly causing mayhem for 5 straight years now.

The only bad part is for them the fact things are changing and they are unsure about this. And well, this is going to be the second battle in less than a year. But well, prior to this they were constantly at war with the demons which Charioce "fixed" in a flash. Heck, in the 3 years preceding his rule this situation was becoming far worse than before. So how exactly he's making the life of humans worse? You could easily argue that making life better for mankind might not even have been his true intention but the fact remains humans objectively live better. And if you think XVII's rule is oppressive then compare this with XIII who was a paranoiac idiot who could execute you for as much as saying up against him, or he just thinking you were badmouthing him.

So this is the equivalent of declaring pre-2003 Iraq preferable to the USA and expecting people to take you seriously.

Originally Posted by Skaddix

Chaorice is King, if he wanted to crack down on slavery...he crack down on Slavery. This isn't democracy where poor Chaorice was overruled by Parliament.

You confuse kings with gods... in a setting where even actual gods don't give two shits about demon slavery.

A king's power is not absolute. Just like any government they can be overthrown. If Charioce flexes his authority too much against the will of his people things can end for him before he accomplishes his goal. See the situation with Nina and that was just one person. Most kings at least had the freedom to spare their enemies, for Charioce even that was pushed on as an unacceptable thing. He's bound. Furthermore he's focused on something entirely else. He doesn't have time to work on social issues. Heck, he doesn't even have time to fight the Gods or anyone who wishes to face him. He has one objective and that alone. And he doesn't care what happens after it.

[haseo0408]

Originally Posted by willyvereb

Hell hole, wut?
Anatae is more prosperous than ever before, humanity jumped centuries in development under just a decade and demons right now are working for them instead of randomly causing mayhem for 5 straight years now.

The only bad part is for them the fact things are changing and they are unsure about this. And well, this is going to be the second battle in less than a year. But well, prior to this they were constantly at war with the demons which Charioce "fixed" in a flash. Heck, in the 3 years preceding his rule this situation was becoming far worse than before. So how exactly he's making the life of humans worse? You could easily argue that making life better for mankind might not even have been his true intention but the fact remains humans objectively live better. And if you think XVII's rule is oppressive then compare this with XIII who was a paranoiac idiot who could execute you for as much as saying up against him, or he just thinking you were badmouthing him.

So this is the equivalent of declaring pre-2003 Iraq preferable to the USA and expecting people to take you seriously.

You confuse kings with gods... in a setting where even actual gods don't give two shits about demon slavery.

A king's power is not absolute. Just like any government they can be overthrown. If Charioce flexes his authority too much against the will of his people things can end for him before he accomplishes his goal. See the situation with Nina and that was just one person. Most kings at least had the freedom to spare their enemies, for Charioce even that was pushed on as an unacceptable thing. He's bound. Furthermore he's focused on something entirely else. He doesn't have time to work on social issues. Heck, he doesn't even have time to fight the Gods or anyone who wishes to face him. He has one objective and that alone. And he doesn't care what happens after it.

Prosperety bought with slavery, genocide and supresion of anybody who dares go against Charioce commands. Racism is even more common than before and the hatred planted in the gods and demons will last for many generations, yeah, hell hole is putting it midly.