I'm going to be honest, that's also kind of lame. There's too much of popular perception of mecha being only battletech, transformers, or megazords, and having them replace their Gundam style machines with that last one is really damn annoying.
Though even counting all the nanos as alive, we still lost a ton of cast. When you don't have a big cast list, losing one main and I think the majority of the secondary cast makes things trickier.
Though even counting all the nanos as alive, we still lost a ton of cast. When you don't have a big cast list, losing one main and I think the majority of the secondary cast makes things trickier.
Frankly RT is so wrecked there's not much to do, and even something that could help (split off RWBY from the rest).
The wrecking of Genlock was a different style of wrecking- Zaslav just buries everything, Genlock S2 was still an attempt to make something, just people with cheap, stupid ideas about shock and were ignored to their own detriment.
Ok, so decided to read the comic, as my reason for passing it over ('the next seasons never take license comics into account') is now more boon than minus. Japan is part of the polity, but blockaded by the Union (a largely non-shooting blockade, team genlock coming in is unusual and causes a stir) which is in turn protected by walls. It's government is called the Japanese Polity, like, it comes across as a separate thing (i.e. Polity is a government type in a sense rather than a unified force- though most of the crew expect namedropping Marin would have weight). General Anno (who Kazu used to work for as an aid) has a lot of control over things. That said, while there's some heavy handed military power, the bulk of citizens seem to be living it up at normal Polity standards of living, in peace. They have some prototype weapons they can't quite get working (it works, just not ideally) and are hoping genlock tech will help complete it, and they aren't above strongarming.
We have a Union speech of intent!
"For far too long, the Great Union of the Fourth Turning Republics has watched you revel in childish individualism. We have watched you celebrate your heroes while your forgotten are trodden underfoot. We have watched you put peace before unity.
"It is tragic to us that you have not changed course. It is sad, so very sad, that you have brought vanguard weapons to these shores and spilled union blood into the vast sea, rather than submit to the will of the global majority.
We would transform your cities with our nanotechnology, but you built a wall to keep our aid at bay. Rejoice, then, for such sadness is at an end."
(then specific plot event stuff follows)
This appears to be from an actual Union bigwig, and Brother Tate he's not. Far more about their ideology. Definitely S2 incompatible- both Union ideology there, and the mere fact team Genlock felt ok to leave the front says a lot too.
Similarly, there's a Polity speech-
"The Polity is not a place. The Polity is an idea. It is a dream, of free citizens uniting, and adapting, to answer the threat to the greater good."
Fairly major spoiler to comic-specific plot-
Also, Weller has some more skeletons in the closet- there were some prior genlock candidates who... didn't work out exactly, and is explained as how he found the precise limits of uptime. Not exactly his fault it did, but has an interesting result.
The Union blockade ends up pretty wrecked and their surviving forces retreat, abandoning the blockade.
When I looked at this as a digression that would be ignored by the main plot, it seemed dismissable. Looking at it as the main continuation of the plot? It's pretty darn good! Not perfect, but in terms of loyalty to the story, it's much closer, and the big complaint of spinoff material, "Oh no matter how big it looks it's not gonna matter," is an utter non-factor.
Just watched S2. It was gripping moment to moment but after finishing it I can see what people mean about it being kind of incoherent and dissonant not just with S1 but itself.
Other people have covered things like the handling of sensitive topics lik LGBT or religion issues but there are also sizable issues with mechanical verisimilitude. In S1 they came up with a clear ruleset for why they needed humanoid mechs piloted by quirky young adults and what the limits of those mechs were. We see similar rules for the nanotech. We get a good sense of what the broader capabilities of the setting are and what passes for cutting edge.
In S2 they seem to forget those rules. You have stuff like a fast mobile city that can burrow and has energy shields above and beyond even that of the walkers from S1. That's three completely new gamechanging techs combined that weren't so much as hinted at prior. Or nanotech being able to instantly disintegrate people in a flashback to the events of S1E1 when it pointedly didn't do that in the actual episode, as well as just being basically magic in general.
Just watched S2. It was gripping moment to moment but after finishing it I can see what people mean about it being kind of incoherent and dissonant not just with S1 but itself.
Other people have covered things like the handling of sensitive topics lik LGBT or religion issues but there are also sizable issues with mechanical verisimilitude. In S1 they came up with a clear ruleset for why they needed humanoid mechs piloted by quirky young adults and what the limits of those mechs were. We see similar rules for the nanotech. We get a good sense of what the broader capabilities of the setting are and what passes for cutting edge.
In S2 they seem to forget those rules. You have stuff like a fast mobile city that can burrow and has energy shields above and beyond even that of the walkers from S1. That's three completely new gamechanging techs combined that weren't so much as hinted at prior. Or nanotech being able to instantly disintegrate people in a flashback to the events of S1E1 when it pointedly didn't do that in the actual episode, as well as just being basically magic in general.
Good to know. Are there any other details or issues you'd like to discuss? There's a notable lack of people who actually bit the bullet and watched the thing, and discuss stuff other than the big deal-breakers and select clips.
To me the biggest "wat" in terms of season 2 just ignoring the rules set up in season 1 was Uptime. Like, it was a massive constant plotpoint in season 1, and then in season 2 the whole team spends most of their time uploaded. It doesn't even really make sense that they are uploaded, they already have a VR system that isn't full gen:lock uploading.
Good to know. Are there any other details or issues you'd like to discuss? There's a notable lack of people who actually bit the bullet and watched the thing, and discuss stuff other than the big deal-breakers and select clips.
I approve of it having a transhumanist-positive message, given how many cyberpunk works have "cybernetics eat your soul" as a literal game mechanic. In fact all factions are in favor of transhumanism. The problem is that Side A wants to paywall immortality, Side B is indifferent to how their method seems to destroy individual identity, and both sides start discarding ideas like consent to being uploaded or those uploads being modified and copied as the conflict escalates.
The protagonists eventually develop (well more stumble upon) a version that combines the "full coherent personality upload" of Side A with the "flexible nanomachines as a body" of Side B. With the endseason subtext being that once they beat sense into the two factions that eventually enough people consenting to the proper transhumanist treatment will eventually shift the ratio of "organic humans damaging the planet" to "transhumans repairing the planet" and ensure that transhumanism is a choice not an obligation or escape.
