(L+CR) Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai

[gecd]

when this anime ends I ll got myself full of aircraft knowledges and aviation jargons )

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

Ah, some nice old-style dogfighting where the only weapons planes have are machineguns, the only instrument they have for detecting enemies is the unaided eye, and little girls are the deadliest creatures in the skies.

Lots of aircraft porn for plane-otaku, especially in that startup sequence.

Saw on MAL that the director for Girls und Panzer is working on this. So I guess we can expect some awesome things and some technical stuff on the planes too.

[Ithekro]

So what aircraft have been in the show so far?

Also, what's up with the setting? What happened and why is there a living dodo bird?


EDIT: (I think this is what I saw)

Ki-84 for the guys (correction N1K-J fighters) for the guys
Mix of Ki-43 and Ki-43 II for the girls
A6M for the pirates.

It seems Hobby Link Japan has aircraft model kit for some of these planes in show colors already coming out within months. The main group planes in 1/48 scale and the pirates in 1/144 scale.

[frubam]

This feels like, for lack of a better term(don't usually watch these kinds of shows), "Valkyrie Chronicles with airplanes", if that makes any sense.

Overall decent episode. The dialogue was a bit too spitfire fast for me though, so I hope they tone it down next episode.

[felix]

Originally Posted by frubam

This feels like, for lack of a better term(don't usually watch these kinds of shows), "Valkyrie Chronicles with airplanes", if that makes any sense.

"Tales of Valkyria Airplane Chronicles"

[Ithekro]

We have a few weeks before the other shoe drops. Sort of like Girls und Panzer started to bring people in at episode 4. This show already got the air combat bit going, what we need to characters (they're on it already) and the backstory plus plot. We got this setup, but no clue what happened, and it seems like that would be super interesting (sort of like how the High Schools in Girl und Panzer are on city-sized ships for their own reasons.) We we got Zeppelin cargo ships and mercenary pilot groups for reasons and a world that seems like it has a very unusual mix of technologies.

[Lukes YGO & WS on YT]

Spoiler for Episode 2 Comments/Feedback:

These girls definitely don't mind getting into arguments and fights, Chika even fighting with crutches, all the girls seem to have fighting ability, maybe they all learned some kind of martial arts.

Ah god what a woman they have to protect lol, I definitely feel sorry for the captain.

Interesting how the enemy has advanced aircraft and good tactics, maybe someone rich who has a grudge against Julia

I was also impressed by the teamwork of Kylia & Chika.

Ha ha take that you stuck up lady, she was obviously impressed by the performance by the disgusted look on her face, she left the room pretty quickly.

[Ithekro]

Interesting additions.

Spoiler for Episode Two world setting thoughts:

The political setup seems to be somewhat complex (though the guy flying a Ki-44 while still in his business suit seems oddly out of place).

The air pirates are likely not in this case. I suspect political rivalry. Either factions, or city-states/alliances are forming and fighting over trade.

I'm not sure if I caught it correctly. The 'event' was 80 years ago? And some cities seem to be abandoned once whatever they has as their product dries up (the one they fly over I think was the one that use to make hard liquor, but I could be wrong.)

Also...Ki-61 Hiens!? Tony? That's pretty advanced (for Japan) considering the engine is a licensed copy of a German engine (Daimler-Benz DB 601Aa) as the Kawasaki Ha-40. That's a rich person's plane right there.

[Dop]

I do really love the dogfight sequences which just seem so well made. Even the heat distortion from the engine shows up in some of the shots.

There's still a lot happening in the background of this show we've not yet been told about, whatever it was that happened to bring this situation about, and the last shot of the episode was quite chilling.


If you watch one alt-reality aviation show this season, make it this one.

[4th Dimension]

The suit in the cockpit thing.

This is starting to kinda annoy me. These are supposed to be the actual military so you'd expect them to be have proper gear unlike those idiots from the last time.

But it seems that the show doesn't care much about anyone who isn't our MCs or probably isn't a girl. It seems any male pilot on the airfield is just there to job so the MCs can save the day. Like here where 30 enemy planes wasted two greoups of pros in seconds and then 6 of ours took 30 on, broke them and suffered no casulties or hits. Well if they were hit, these were the planes from the "safety is last thing on our mind" and "GOT TO TURNFIGHT HARDER" days of Japanese plane design, so they likely would have gone up like a torch.

Soo, I'm kinda starting to get really miffed about this...

ON THE OTHER HAND

This was a MUCH better fight and even though it was one sided, at least the enemy wasn't developmentaly challenged and actually maneuvered. Still I'm not sure their planes were made to do turning fights with MCs planes...

[Ithekro]

I don't think there is a proper military at all. It just a bunch of city-states with hired mercenaries of various types.

The enemy had a clear advantage at the start, but since it was the first group that took the brunt of it, the general dogfighting tend to take away the advantages that type of plane would have over the girl's planes. At that point its more down to their skill than to the planes. They are suppose to be really good (thus not just MC status, but also they have a fairy impressive kill list stated with just five of them). They did seem impressed by the enemies skills were better than what they are use to fighting, and where it rich man's fighters.

But that also suggests that the skill level of most pirates is not all that good to begin with and the last two groups have been relatively skilled compared to most.

[Ithekro]

Weird idea I want to toss around.

Could whatever have happened to Earth have dried up the Oceans? And were these towns are now the floor of the Pacific Ocean (or the Philippine Sea for that matter). What would that due to areas that were once at "sea level"? Place that would now be maybe 4 km or more above the new low ground areas? Place like Tokyo for example. Or former islands like Guam that are next to a hugely deep trench?

What would that do to air pressure? Would it get colder up at where sea level use to be? Would these aircraft have trouble with with service ceilings? Probably not since planes like the Ki-43 were rated for over 11 km above sea level. So even if the "sea level" has dropped by 4 - 8 km, they could still operate. Its just can people operate on the ground up there?

A lot of questions that don't have answers because we don't know the extent of what happened, or even were this is happening. Only that there doesn't appear to be any large bodies of water, lots and lots of wasteland looking area, and airships are the primary means of commerce. They are likely not in Japan...I don't think there is anyplace that flat in Japan without a large body of water. It could be someplace in Asia or even Russia (there seems to be some semi-Cyrillic going on on the airships, posters, and dart board). The ocean floor is just my idea due to how odd the terrain looks.

[4th Dimension]

Still for most of them to be destroyed in a one sided head on encounter is a bit much for me. You'd think that in a head on engagement they'd be able to take out some of the opposition. This is of course discounting that they seemed to have flown level straight at the opposition rather than try to gain energy advantage or avoid head on.

As for water drying out, I'd have to ask where the f did all that water go then? They ARE suffering some sort of global catastrophe. If you removed the oceans the water could only go into the atmosphere, which would mean it's REALLY cold, or maybe into ICE, which would mean we are under the Ice Ball scenario with mile high glaciers or more covering most of the temperate regions.

Not to mention that I'm not sure you could plant on the former sea floor due to all the salt.

As for the letters, I'm pretty sure they are going for the mixed writting systems. The name of that friendly ship had Г and G right next to each other, both of which are pretty much the same letter sound (in my language) just one from different writting systems. Also note the "title" of the book madame was reading? Apart from being gibberish, notice ネ and エ both of which are Japanese kitakana just placed for no region in the middle of Western alphabet text.

What I'm wondering, if we are going for the mixed Earth thing, why are all the planes so far specifically Japanese WWII aircraft? And will we see other nations planes.

Oh and is it just my subs, or did they for some reason decide to write all caps ALL the names for no reason?

Also, I have this sneaking suspicion the names of the characters might be refferences to planes too... But I don't think it checks out completely.

[Liddo-kun]

Watched episode 3:

So it's 30+ pirates vs. 10+ planes of the girls and the escorts. Amazing skills to be able to handle that many.

I just hope they do not delve too much on this bickering between team mates thing. I had enough of that watching Sora to Umi no Aida.

[Magewolf]

Originally Posted by Liddo-kun

Watched episode 3:

So it's 30+ pirates vs. 10+ planes of the girls and the escorts. Amazing skills to be able to handle that many.

I just hope they do not delve too much on this bickering between team mates thing. I had enough of that watching Sora to Umi no Aida.

Actually I think it was 36 high tech(relatively) fighters vs 6 girls since the other military escort did nothing but get shot up.

[Ithekro]

The escorts were 8 planes, and they must have got some of the enemy planes, since we saw eight heading away while the six girls and two of the escorts were heading back to the airships. The girls didn't take out that many of the enemy fighters. We see them take out nine on screen, with at least one of them running out of ammo just before the end of the action. Though we didn't see one of the group in the action much at all (Kate, the one with the white nose cone's plane is not featured in the combat part of this episode, though she's there) The blue nose cone took out one. Pink took out three. Red took out one, and the green and yellow tended to share the remaining four kills.

Note. I think it was just 30 enemy. They appeared on radar in three groups. The escorts went for the middle group, which looked like five, but became 20. The radar operator called out 30 after that. The two flanking groups were probably only five each.

Also the situation smells like a distraction/trap that wasn't after the councilwoman. They didn't make any effort to get to the airships. Just furballed with the escorts and mercs.

[Magewolf]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

The escorts were 8 planes, and they must have got some of the enemy planes, since we saw eight heading away while the six girls and two of the escorts were heading back to the airships. The girls didn't take out that many of the enemy fighters. We see them take out nine on screen, with at least one of them running out of ammo just before the end of the action. Though we didn't see one of the group in the action much at all (Kate, the one with the white nose cone's plane is not featured in the combat part of this episode, though she's there) The blue nose cone took out one. Pink took out three. Red took out one, and the green and yellow tended to share the remaining four kills.

Note. I think it was just 30 enemy. They appeared on radar in three groups. The escorts went for the middle group, which looked like five, but became 20. The radar operator called out 30 after that. The two flanking groups were probably only five each.

Also the situation smells like a distraction/trap that wasn't after the councilwoman. They didn't make any effort to get to the airships. Just furballed with the escorts and mercs.

You are right about the 30. However 3 of the escort planes are taken out in the first pass then 2 more in the second before the girls get there leaving 3. And every time we see one after that they are dodging for their lives with no screen kills. So what the episode shows is the girls basically taking on 5 to 1 odds and crushing them.

[Magewolf]

Thinking about it, this kind of reminds me of the problem I had with the first episode of Goblin Slayer. The newbie party getting slaughtered is supposed to make goblins look dangerous but since the newbies are so incompetent it just makes them look too stupid to live instead.

If they want to make the girls look good then put them in hard fights and show them winning don't make everyone else into target dummies. There should have been 2 or 3 planes on every girl but we never really see that. Mostly we see the girls taking pot shots or getting in duels with an even number of planes.

[Random Wanderer]

Originally Posted by 4th Dimension

Oh and is it just my subs, or did they for some reason decide to write all caps ALL the names for no reason?

According to someone on Reddit, that was done at the request of the licensor.

No, I don't know why anyone would want that.

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

The escorts were 8 planes, and they must have got some of the enemy planes, since we saw eight heading away while the six girls and two of the escorts were heading back to the airships. The girls didn't take out that many of the enemy fighters. We see them take out nine on screen, with at least one of them running out of ammo just before the end of the action. Though we didn't see one of the group in the action much at all (Kate, the one with the white nose cone's plane is not featured in the combat part of this episode, though she's there) The blue nose cone took out one. Pink took out three. Red took out one, and the green and yellow tended to share the remaining four kills.

Note. I think it was just 30 enemy. They appeared on radar in three groups. The escorts went for the middle group, which looked like five, but became 20. The radar operator called out 30 after that. The two flanking groups were probably only five each.

Also the situation smells like a distraction/trap that wasn't after the councilwoman. They didn't make any effort to get to the airships. Just furballed with the escorts and mercs.

So it's 30 vs 14. Well, I guess the escorts did provide some help.. the enemy were firing at them instead of the girls. The girls squad would have gotten ganged upon if the escorts were not there to absorb some of the enemy fire.

Originally Posted by Magewolf

If they want to make the girls look good then put them in hard fights and show them winning don't make everyone else into target dummies. There should have been 2 or 3 planes on every girl but we never really see that. Mostly we see the girls taking pot shots or getting in duels with an even number of planes.

The hard fights would probably be shown in later episodes. We are only on episode 2.

One of the girls seem to have come from the hospital after recover from injury, so that fight that caused the injury must have been a hard one for them.