Suisei no Gargantia - Episode 9 Discussion / Poll

[bahamut zero]

Anyone notice these similarities?

Spoiler for Gargantia, NGE:

I also got quite the sense of humor:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/-Ud0Bi9OYcE

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[jzmagic]

My prediction on the ending:
Lido destroys the "ancient" tech hidden in the ocean and lets Earth remain isolated from the war between the squid people and alliance, dying in the process.

[DwArD]

Woke up in the morning, was watching the latest episode while my eating breakfast....*20 minutes later*.....I nearly choke on my own breakfast.

I did not expect this episode to turn out this way. It's just so sad that this happened. I do not care what happens to those two factions (I think by now it's safe to call them that) in space but everything is just so peaceful on Earth now. I expect Ledo's relationship with Chamber to change in the upcoming episode. I still don't get it, with Chamber's capability, it is obviously capable of acting on it's own when exposed to certain conditions. This means that Chamber do not need to obey Ledo at all. I'm not surprised if in the future Chamber suddenly deem Ledo as unstable and unfit to carry on his duty and proceed to overwrite all his commands.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by jeroz

No matter who camout as victor between the GA Hideazu war, human wins. How's that for a happy ending?

I say that Hideauze are at best transhuman and not of the best kind.

I can't help but remembering how in EP1 they attacked the quantum bombs and made them explode, That was basically a suicide attack which wasn't strictly necessary, especially considering that the alliance was already retreating.

This suggests that the Hideauze have basically even less care for individual rights than the Alliance.


An ending with the Hideauze dominating the universe would be as much as happy as a Star Trek ending where humanity prospers as part of the borg.

[Theo]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Whatever my final take on Gargantia as a whole ends up being, I must say this:

Well-played, Gen, well-played.


This time, you really did have many people believing that the show wasn't going to get all that dark. But now we get very dark and intriguing revelations to say the least.

Are you not suffering?! Are you not SUFFERING?!

Is that not why you are here?!

[Guardian Enzo]

Gen has given us the Daleks vs. The Committee of 300. As always in his universe when it comes to authority figures, "A pox on both your houses".

[ThereminVox]

Originally Posted by DwArD

I did not expect this episode to turn out this way. It's just so sad that this happened. I do not care what happens to those two factions (I think by now it's safe to call them that) in space but everything is just so peaceful on Earth now. I expect Ledo's relationship with Chamber to change in the upcoming episode. I still don't get it, with Chamber's capability, it is obviously capable of acting on it's own when exposed to certain conditions. This means that Chamber do not need to obey Ledo at all. I'm not surprised if in the future Chamber suddenly deem Ledo as unstable and unfit to carry on his duty and proceed to overwrite all his commands.

The only reason I don't fully expect Chamber to be a huge obstacle is that Ledo has already quite sufficiently stirred the pot. If the whalesquids are as sensitive and responsive to threats as episode 7 suggested, then any trouble Chamber causes will just be piling on the primary problem: Ledo may have just inadvertently repeated a tragic mistake and started a human vs. human turf war.

Clearly it won't be easy for Chamber to adapt. Hell, his first instinct was that the recovered data must be enemy propaganda. Being programmed to accept certain things as objective fact, can sure skew your concept of probability. So yeah, he could absolutely be a problem. But we've seen a few interesting sequences of Ledo and Chamber acting as a unit, and Chamber deferring certain decisions to his officer. This may be another disagreement that needs to be worked through, or it could trigger a GA fail safe. Hard to say.

[TimeSkip]

This is very interesting? I like how this plays out.

I wonder if the Hideauzes were genuine aliens, would they all be willing to coexist

Originally Posted by Irenesharda

Both sides are evil really. The Alliance are warmongers, but the "Evolvers" were just as bad doing horrid illegal human experimentation, and were fighting the alliance just as hard. Both sides wanted to strand the other to death on Earth. Both sides (at least the ones in space) are just as evil as the other and can both continue this war for all time if they wish for all I care. I'm through. Once I finish this series I will never be looking at again.

To be specific, the evils are the higher-up from both sides not the ones dying in the battlefields. Those who dies without knowing the truth are victims as well.

You can see that once Ledo learnt the truth he questioned his lifelong duty

To say that "they can both continue this war for all time if they wish" is kind of ignorant or uncaring.

[Guardian Enzo]

I see one potential path to redemption for Ledo in protecting the Earth from what's effectively the future, as this has effectively become a time-travel scenario. While they haven't advanced much in conventional terms, the descendants of the Evolvers and the Continental Union on Earth have achieved a sort of peace their spacebound cousins didn't. The whalesquids live in their environment, and the humans in theirs, and effectively they leave each other alone (or did, till Ledo arrived to upset the balance). Keeping them from being drawn into the endless war between the Hideauze and the Galactic Alliance could be Ledo's ultimate task.

[ReddyRedWolf]

At best Pinion's brother was killed for entering the nursery... At worst a symbiont forcibly merged with him.

Images

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[Funkatron]

Originally Posted by ThereminVox

The only reason I don't fully expect Chamber to be a huge obstacle is that Ledo has already quite sufficiently stirred the pot. If the whalesquids are as sensitive and responsive to threats as episode 7 suggested, then any trouble Chamber causes will just be piling on the primary problem: Ledo may have just inadvertently repeated a tragic mistake and started a human vs. human turf war.

Clearly it won't be easy for Chamber to adapt. Hell, his first instinct was that the recovered data must be enemy propaganda. Being programmed to accept certain things as objective fact, can sure skew your concept of probability. So yeah, he could absolutely be a problem. But we've seen a few interesting sequences of Ledo and Chamber acting as a unit, and Chamber deferring certain decisions to his officer. This may be another disagreement that needs to be worked through, or it could trigger a GA fail safe. Hard to say.

Chamber's mission is to support Ledo in the extermination of the Hideauze. If Ledo no longer wants to folloew his mission, I can see Chamber deeming him a 'traitor' and therefore no longer follow his commands

[Terrestrial Dream]

Damn... that was a twist. Ledo's development from here is going to interesting one for sure.

[Markerlight]

Gen Urobuchi strikes again! I did not see that one coming.

Did anyone else notice that when the diver touched Elaine Matsumoto's skin, it sparkled like light bugs? And one of Pinion's crew said there were lots of lightbugs in the water after Ledo started slaughtering Whalesquids? I'm guessing the Whalesquids produce lightbugs, and that means that Gargantia/Humans depend on Whalesquids for their basic survival. That could be the real reason why they're considered holy by the Gargantians, having forgotten over time.

[Jan-Poo]

It is actually said in the video that the "symbiont" receive nutrition support from the nanomachine in a process similar to photosynthesis.

Basically whalesquids need to stay wherever the ligthbugs are in order to survive and they probably have a lot inside of them. It's not a wonder that their nest is particularly rich in lightbugs, because they need even more food there.

Since the nanomachines are said to be in symbiosis with the... symbionts (whalesquids)... it can't be excluded that their reproduction is strictly tied to the whalesquids' life cycle.

[frubam]

When I heard Bevel playing the flute at the end, I thought of an ending where Amy would end up as a Hideauze/human hybrid, and Ledo would finally decide to co-exist with his lifetime enemy. That would be a very bittersweet ending…

[Kaoru Chujo]

I don't see the two sides as equally bad, yet. The Evolvers were seeking to remake themselves so humans could survive. The Union was trying to stop them from becoming superior, but had its own plans for escaping and leaving the rubes to die. And the Union attacked the Evolvers even before getting UN approval. (Although clearly the Evolvers, or some country favoring them, did attack the Union's space elevator, and took part in a greater war.)

In space, I didn't see the Hideauze attack without first being attacked. As far as I can see, the Alliance are the only ones trying to impose their will on others. And they have done a great job of imposing it on their own people. I would like to see some of the Alliance ruling class.

Yes, transhumanism could present problems (to bring things back to our present day) but I think to call it some kind of moral outrage is without basis, except if you follow St. Thomas Aquinas, who also is used against contraception, since it is not "natural."

In any case, I am not at all revolted by the idea of becoming a space squid, especially if the alternative would be my demise. And I think that within the next fifty years or so, we will all be getting enhancements of various kinds and think little of it. Tattoos are just the first step.

And I can definitely see the show going in the direction frubam just mentioned. Amy already swoops through the air like a whalesquid in the sea.

[molitar]

I think there idea to evolve appears to have devolved them instead. They are vicious in nature attacking Bellows that time when she did nothing to provoke it in the first place. They have lost all semblance of any humanity except for the embryo stage after the embryo they don't even resemble anything human but a horrible vicious Squid.

I was expecting them to have been man made but not devolved humans. Hateful devolved humans at that they did not need the wormhole at all they could of just traveled on there own but no they wanted to fight evidently forever and used the wormhole to follow the humans.

[Benigmatica]

Originally Posted by Terrestrial Dream

Damn... that was a twist. Ledo's development from here is going to interesting one for sure.

Certainly, and I think Urobuchi did a great job even though it'll be messy!

[Traece]

I think what bothered me most about the Evolvers transhumanism is that they did it in the first place. There really was no concrete reason to choose that path over simply building spaceships and going to a new planet, or even just living in space (hey, they can become the Abh). Instead they chose a very detrimental and complicated process to turn themselves into creatures that don't use technology or really seem to do much beyond existing and propagating in the way of unintelligent life. In a sense that makes it more confusing, because there really has been no indication that the Hideauze are actually intelligent, insomuch as your average creature. Obviously it's too soon to really make a concrete claim like that, but thus far it's observationally questionable.

The impression I got was less that they did it out of need, and more that they did it because they had a convenient excuse available. Granted, from a storytelling point that's not necessarily a bad thing. It wouldn't be the first time people took advantage of a situation to enact their own desires.

[Unknown Soldier]

Well, it explains why Chamber had a map of the Solar System in his databanks, anyways. The Alliance has probably always known where Earth is but kept it a secret even from it's own citizens.

I just wonder, before the Evolvers and Continental Union went to space, they had to construct a wormhole gate to travel via what is apparently mass effect drive. Which is all very interesting, except that don't you need to build a gate on both ends in order to transmit between them? How did the Continental Union build the gate on the other end?

If the wormhole gate to Earth was destroyed, how did Ledo even end up there when he fell through the wormhole that connected the Galactic Alliance fleet and the Evolver base at the very start of the show?

Originally Posted by Traece

I think what bothered me most about the Evolvers transhumanism is that they did it in the first place. There really was no concrete reason to choose that path over simply building spaceships and going to a new planet, or even just living in space (hey, they can become the Abh). Instead they chose a very detrimental and complicated process to turn themselves into creatures that don't use technology or really seem to do much beyond existing and propagating in the way of unintelligent life. In a sense that makes it more confusing, because there really has been no indication that the Hideauze are actually intelligent, insomuch as your average creature. Obviously it's too soon to really make a concrete claim like that, but thus far it's observationally questionable.

The impression I got was less that they did it out of need, and more that they did it because they had a convenient excuse available. Granted, from a storytelling point that's not necessarily a bad thing. It wouldn't be the first time people took advantage of a situation to enact their own desires.

But the Hideous in space have constructed a large beam weapon and used it to fire upon and decimate the Alliance fleet at the start. It's clear they still have plenty of intelligence if they can construct beam weapons. They just don't need ships to fly around in like the Alliance, since they can survive just fine in space without them.