Okay, so here's the thing...
In my latest project one of the worlds my SI visits is going to be Infinite Stratos. It will be somewhere midway through the story, and he'll be bringing a VF-4 Lightning to the party. Basic premise is that Chinese IS pilots react poorly, kick off a knock-down drag-out fight that goes like a gauntlet of prolonged duels that lasts until someone realizes he's been trying to establish communications. Oops.
Skipping the political shenanigans, he eventually winds up teaching a special class for National Representative Candidates at the IS Academy: Outside Context Problems - Recognizing and Adapting to the Unknowable.
Now, I have watched the two season of Infinite Stratos that are available, and I have just started reading the light novels (I think Baka Tsuki's translation could use a little work - it might be fine for subtitling an anime, but it does not flow well for prose)... but I could use some insights all the same.
Fist of all is Phantom Task. No ideology and no allegiance to anyone. They seem to serve no one but themselves. If this is the case, then what is their goal? Money? It can't be as simple as "We does it for teh EVUUULLLZZ!" Or could it be that this is just the IS equivalent to a Japanese biker gang?
And then there's Madoka Orimura - Ichika's twin sister. (!?) What the hell is this girl's beef? Why was she separated from her family? Does it have to do with why they were abandoned by their parents?
And finally, my biggest sticking point... Freakin' Tabane Shinonono. Super-human feats of strength, speed, agility, and durability. Utterly immune to poisons. Processes data like a computer. And, most importantly, she controls every single IS core on the planet. She rubs me wrong because when I see her all I see is a cutsey and female version of Quincy Rosenkreutz. (The only difference seems to be that she's got a soft spot in her heart for Ichika and Chifuyu... but then, she goes ahead and gives Madoka an advanced IS knowing full well that she's out to commit fratricide, so yeah...)
So, here's what I've been working out on my own so far...
Re: Phantom TaskIf the IS Academy and the Alaska Treaty are MITHRIL, then these guys are AMALGAM. They appear to be well financed and are highly trained. They also seem to have no compunction against harming innocents (i.e.: bomb on a train full of IS Academy students and possibly other bystanders). At first blush I would say that their goal is to better mankind through adversity, however we have only seen them stealing advanced ISes at this point - everything else seems to be just collateral damage as far as they're concerned.
Re: Madoka OrimuraI can't quite place my finger on this one. Thus far, it is said that the Orimura parents abandoned their children. I'm starting to suspect that this may not necessarily be the case. Either she's got a genuine issue with her sister (and by extension her twin brother) or there's some horrible misunderstanding going on here. Given how Chifuyu is reacting, I don't think there's any sort of misunderstanding.
Re: Tabane ShinononoLike I said above: freakin' female version of goddamn Quincy! I think I recall hints that before she revealed IS to the world that she actually had a weak constitution. It would not surprise me that, given the feats we see her perform, the Tabane we see is not the real Tabane, but an IS 'puppet' of hers that uses the same disguise ability as Autumn's arachnid IS. This would also explain the Rabbit Ears.
Plus, there is what she has done with IS technology. She has weaponized it, then pulled a 'War Games' on everyone by hacking just about every ICBM on the planet and sending them all to Japan only to have her best friend, Chifuyu, disable every single one in the first IS ever made, thereby causing the Alaska Treaty to happen (the best move is not to play). The whole thing is pretty high-handed, even by my standards, but we haven't even gotten to the best part yet.
Now, this is a bit of color commentary on my part, so please bear with me here. The overall tone in the light novels is that women, after the advent of ISes, have pretty much taken over and all within a decade, simply because only women can pilot ISes. Tabane only really pays attention to three people in the world: her sister, Houki; her friend, Chifuyu; and her friend's little brother, Ichika.
Now, Ichika is the only male in the world that can pilot an IS, and he suspects that Tabane was actually the one that moved the first IS he encountered, and not himself. Which would mean that the inability of men to pilot ISes is not really a bug, but an honest-to-gods feature by Tabane herself... who has also made the IS cores into Black Boxes that, by mandate of the Alaska Treaty, no one is permitted to mess with.
Of course, this means that Tabane Shinonono is performing social engineering on a grand and insidious scale. Palpatine would be impressed.
But we haven't even gotten to the best part yet.
In the first season of the anime, the fight with the Silver Gospel IS seemed... interesting. The Rogue IS actual flinched and showed signs of fear. This would indicate self preservation that goes beyond simple programming. I suspect that the IS cores are not simply AIs, but infomorphs locked into these blackboxes and restricted to operating the ISes for their human pilots.
Thoughts?
In my latest project one of the worlds my SI visits is going to be Infinite Stratos. It will be somewhere midway through the story, and he'll be bringing a VF-4 Lightning to the party. Basic premise is that Chinese IS pilots react poorly, kick off a knock-down drag-out fight that goes like a gauntlet of prolonged duels that lasts until someone realizes he's been trying to establish communications. Oops.
Skipping the political shenanigans, he eventually winds up teaching a special class for National Representative Candidates at the IS Academy: Outside Context Problems - Recognizing and Adapting to the Unknowable.
Now, I have watched the two season of Infinite Stratos that are available, and I have just started reading the light novels (I think Baka Tsuki's translation could use a little work - it might be fine for subtitling an anime, but it does not flow well for prose)... but I could use some insights all the same.
Fist of all is Phantom Task. No ideology and no allegiance to anyone. They seem to serve no one but themselves. If this is the case, then what is their goal? Money? It can't be as simple as "We does it for teh EVUUULLLZZ!" Or could it be that this is just the IS equivalent to a Japanese biker gang?
And then there's Madoka Orimura - Ichika's twin sister. (!?) What the hell is this girl's beef? Why was she separated from her family? Does it have to do with why they were abandoned by their parents?
And finally, my biggest sticking point... Freakin' Tabane Shinonono. Super-human feats of strength, speed, agility, and durability. Utterly immune to poisons. Processes data like a computer. And, most importantly, she controls every single IS core on the planet. She rubs me wrong because when I see her all I see is a cutsey and female version of Quincy Rosenkreutz. (The only difference seems to be that she's got a soft spot in her heart for Ichika and Chifuyu... but then, she goes ahead and gives Madoka an advanced IS knowing full well that she's out to commit fratricide, so yeah...)
So, here's what I've been working out on my own so far...
Re: Phantom TaskIf the IS Academy and the Alaska Treaty are MITHRIL, then these guys are AMALGAM. They appear to be well financed and are highly trained. They also seem to have no compunction against harming innocents (i.e.: bomb on a train full of IS Academy students and possibly other bystanders). At first blush I would say that their goal is to better mankind through adversity, however we have only seen them stealing advanced ISes at this point - everything else seems to be just collateral damage as far as they're concerned.
Re: Madoka OrimuraI can't quite place my finger on this one. Thus far, it is said that the Orimura parents abandoned their children. I'm starting to suspect that this may not necessarily be the case. Either she's got a genuine issue with her sister (and by extension her twin brother) or there's some horrible misunderstanding going on here. Given how Chifuyu is reacting, I don't think there's any sort of misunderstanding.
Re: Tabane ShinononoLike I said above: freakin' female version of goddamn Quincy! I think I recall hints that before she revealed IS to the world that she actually had a weak constitution. It would not surprise me that, given the feats we see her perform, the Tabane we see is not the real Tabane, but an IS 'puppet' of hers that uses the same disguise ability as Autumn's arachnid IS. This would also explain the Rabbit Ears.
Plus, there is what she has done with IS technology. She has weaponized it, then pulled a 'War Games' on everyone by hacking just about every ICBM on the planet and sending them all to Japan only to have her best friend, Chifuyu, disable every single one in the first IS ever made, thereby causing the Alaska Treaty to happen (the best move is not to play). The whole thing is pretty high-handed, even by my standards, but we haven't even gotten to the best part yet.
Now, this is a bit of color commentary on my part, so please bear with me here. The overall tone in the light novels is that women, after the advent of ISes, have pretty much taken over and all within a decade, simply because only women can pilot ISes. Tabane only really pays attention to three people in the world: her sister, Houki; her friend, Chifuyu; and her friend's little brother, Ichika.
Now, Ichika is the only male in the world that can pilot an IS, and he suspects that Tabane was actually the one that moved the first IS he encountered, and not himself. Which would mean that the inability of men to pilot ISes is not really a bug, but an honest-to-gods feature by Tabane herself... who has also made the IS cores into Black Boxes that, by mandate of the Alaska Treaty, no one is permitted to mess with.
Of course, this means that Tabane Shinonono is performing social engineering on a grand and insidious scale. Palpatine would be impressed.
But we haven't even gotten to the best part yet.
In the first season of the anime, the fight with the Silver Gospel IS seemed... interesting. The Rogue IS actual flinched and showed signs of fear. This would indicate self preservation that goes beyond simple programming. I suspect that the IS cores are not simply AIs, but infomorphs locked into these blackboxes and restricted to operating the ISes for their human pilots.
Thoughts?
