For the carrier to operate without maneuvering thrusters is categorically stupid. I do hope that they have something to deal with solar flares, and large spacial debris. It would have been interesting to see Sumeragi make a run for an asteroid field with a 3720 to 1 chance of successfully navigating it, but alas she was resting on her laurels. Since the HRL is using a multi role transport as the mainstay of its merchant marine I agree that they could have been used to set up a minefield, though mines a cheap enough defensive measure. I am surprised that Sumeragi also never instituted a continuous CAP. As carriers go Ptolemios is pretty low tier, at least Admiral Ackbar’s cruiser could generate 3-D maps for planning.

Christina deserves to be shot like a snake, if only Commissar Tieria would implement Order No. 227 (Not one step back!) and Order no. 270 (There are no prisoners). Christina’s cowardice cast a shadow over all that she has done and all that she shall.

@physics152
Good one, but you forgot to mention the lack of a company cook and that company meals not only cost more than 2 minutes with Boss Wang, but that it has destructive powers greater than the Teriyaki MRE.

@rollchan
Thanks.

@Anon
Mines can be adjusted and designed to be detonated under certain conditions such as mass. I am sure that since we can make mines to day that distinguish between vehicles and people that in the future we can modify mines in a similar manner. Mines aren’t nearly expensive as out fitting a company. Though they are incredibly expensive to clear.

As for Sumeragi’s cautious approach, she was not very good at being cautious besides timid commanders don’t win battles especially those with a raving coward taking up valuable oxygen.

What Kyrios/Virtue faced were carriers that Sergei emptied before when he dispersed his troops. And I agree with you that his aim was to make Kyrios/Virtue slow down in caution.

About supplies, I was talking about food/water actually. We know that energy should not be a problem. Also, I think you misunderstood CB’s energy generation (some fansubs seem to translate wrongly in the past). There are only 4 GN drives and all were fitted into Gundams. Ptolemaios doesn’t have energy generation function (or perhaps there is in smaller non-self sufficient scale) and has to draw energy from Gundams every once in a while when they dock. And so, Ptolemaios needs to save energy by cutting unnecessary power and not constantly deploying the shield.

Gundams cannot fight for a long time because it is manual. I think you are forgetting that the pilots need go to the restroom aside from sleeping and eating (12 hours without restroom break is quite a torture - although they might use drugs for this problem). And from the situation, this time even with 4 of them, Gundams are having problem, they cannot last long with less gundams deployed, especially now that Sumeragi knows HRL’s motive is to capture the Gundams. It seems that Dynames cannot fly properly without his leg generator which means that it is pretty useless now. And with Ptolemaios saving energy and trembling with every attack, Ian and the Haros will have a hard time doing maintenance (they might not be able to do so for fear the tremble will make them accidentally hit some delicate machines).

It seems that crews’ stations can’t overlap in function (I’ve been wondering why Caeli couldn’t just arrange split screen function when covering Felt and Christina’s shifts so he won’t miss the signal, but that seems not the case) so Sumeragi has to sit on Christina’s station she wants to takeover her. And seeing that Christina was typing non-stop when deploying the shield, it is safe to say that the designer failed to put in important function such as shield into a simple button press that will take less attention if Sumeragi takes over Christina’s station. Can’t agree more about Christina (please add in that she failed to believe in her comrades), although let’s not talk Japanese stereotypes here ^_^.

In hindsight, I think the cargo containers that slowed the Virtue and the Kyrios down were originally used to create the minefield. The two ships would remain on the ‘flanks’ until the HRL felt the Ptolemaios would make its stand - at which point they would disperse their cargo (space mines) on their interception course towards the two Gundams. The Virtue and Kyrios pilots probably assumed that because there were carriers at those two locations, a mobile suit force was not too far behind, forcing them to take extra caution and slowing down their advance to the HRL’s rear.

In my mind, supplies couldn’t possibly be an issue for the Ptolemaios, considering that the ship’s energy output is strong enough to generate that anti-beam shield - the same kind of seemingly limitless energy output that allows the Gundams to perform as well as they do. Unless Sumeragi felt she couldn’t keep the Gundams on rotation duty - cycle two Gundams out for a 12 hour shift, keep the other two in the bay for refuel and repairs, repeat - because of a lack of on-board supplies or limitations that weren’t explained, I don’t see how she could just keep the HRL strike force at bay; especially since getting closer to the Gundams = getting closer to being shot by the Gundams. The only other possibility is she didn’t think her Gundam pilots were up to the job - which is likely, considering that Setsuna F. Selei is an awful shot and Lockon couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn in the episode.

Sumeragi didn’t really need radar because there should have been a radar screen on her command seat (wasn’t there big radar dashboard on the wall?); but even if the big screen demanded her attention more, you can’t have Christina scaring the crew shitless during a life or death situation. It was surprising and it was stupid. It was also stereotypical for a Japanese staff to depict a female crewmember in that way. Just because the Gundams are the saviors of the show doesn’t mean the viewer should be subjected to panic attacks by the ship’s crew. Christina was pissing in her pants as a dramatic effect for the show, highlighting the need for the Gundam pilots to pull a victory out of their asses. As a character development it was disgusting, and as a depiction of a dedicated member of a militant organization which has fought a guerilla war for months it was offending, vulgar, and nonsensical.

Perhaps Sergei spread those to cut off Kyrios/Virtue route to Ptolemaios force them to fly to Soma’s area (since HRL’s suits are slow and perhaps with more traps there) - this makes Kyrios turning to Soma’s team more understandable. But this also means dividing his own troop, as the group that finishes first cannot quickly back up the others due to mine field. Well, I don’t think the writers think this much anyway, we’ll see more next ep.

@Soulshard: the ep clearly states that CB tried to shake HRL’s trackers off, but couldn’t (my first reaction was if I were CB, I would run and hide in Union’s area, as HRL cannot venture there without political repercussions, and I bet HRL would not want Ptolemaios to fall into Union, so they won’t say anything about CB being in Union part of the space). Since Ptolemaios is slow, I find Sumeragi choosing to fight is very understandable.

Firstly, from CB side: CB might not have enough food/water to run into deep space (which is why they park close to the elevator for steady access to supplies - their storage capacity might not be enough for parking further away, which might also be the reason why they can only have limited staff in Ptolemaios while Ms Wang can have rows of maids/agents on earth, etc). Ptolemaios shield might not extend to the back, which means CB can’t afford to show its back in a chase situation - hint from Sumeragi positioning of the ship in the battle.

Then, from HRL side: HRL has much more resources than CB. Before their pilots were out of fuel and food, they will have the second/third waves coming (whatever hourly shift they want to use). The reason Sergei can so easily sacrifice carriers after carriers even though his troop might not have enough fuel to go back to the elevator after battle is because carriers can be easily called to pick them up. Don’t forget that they are fighting close to HRL’s elevator. In long battle, CB will lose, which is why Sergei seems to be dragging the battle by focusing on dodging more than attacking. CB has no choice but to smash every suit (and reinforcement) before they can have their merry way out and they have to do it as fast as possible. CB can’t have Ptolemaios runs while the Gundams stall HRL because HRL might have the resources to stall Gundams AND chase Ptolemaios at the same time, plus Ptolemaios is totally useless (no weapons, pfft).

Also, Sumeragi cannot man Christina’s station because she’s busy thinking/watching the situation (supposedly). Assume Sergei and Sumeragi in a pro chess competition, how could you expect Sumeragi to concentrate if she has to do record keeping too (and note that chess competition is a poor comparison as is very slow compared to a face-to-face battle).

I bet Christina was chosen by Veda for her leet hacking skill. The bigger question is that why did Christina join if she doesn’t even have enough courage/resolve (and to think that she can happily shop before war several eps before - one would think that she can keep her cool in war situations).

1. The whole ‘Christina’ bit has been covered - but for an organization that has a stealth carrier big enough to house four Gundams, including the Obese Gundam, own four Gundams, keep up with their maintenance and upgrades, retain a global intelligence network, and finance the musings of our beloved Bond villain, Ms. Wang, then you’d think hiring a few extra hands wouldn’t hurt the pocket books.

I mean look, if CB is clever enough to employ Haros as maintenance repair bots, they can obviously be used for other means - personnel on the bridge, space probes, alarms across the ship, cocktail mixers, etc etc etc. The lack thereof highlights either ineptitude or laziness.

2. And there is a very small chance to suspect laziness in CB (like 0.0001%) - I mean, they probably had an undefeated record for months, the crew probably felt ‘nothing would happen to them’, and Mr. Wild Bear of Russia just happened to catch the Ptlomey with its’ pants down (figuratively speaking). But seriously, what kind of captain - what kind of CREW would leave the radar station unmanned? Do they do this everyday? Is the show telling me that, despite White Dumbasses #1 and #2 holding the bridge by themselves in previous episodes, only the chicks with big breasts actually check the radar? This episode would have gone smoother if they just showed White Dumbass #1 fapping to hentai comics of Lacus Clyne, because at least it would have made sense in a show that has very little of it.

3. This episode raises questions about the crew. You’d think with a terrori- errr freedom fighting organization like CB, this spaceship crew of four plus one captain are all battle hardened veterans of various military branches. But where my playthrough of Call of Duty 4’s singleplayer mode went so beautifully right, Sunrise once again thinks elite military branches are run by civilians that shop for clothes every two days. Christina’s panic attack really caught me off guard. - at this point, I had to ask aloud, where did Ms. Wang get these people?

4. For the past two episodes, I’ve been hoping for the series to turn Sumeragi into a clone of Misato from Evangelion. But even Misato bitchslapped Shinji into combat! Letting Christina continue to shit her pants during live battle was inexcusable - she was visibly scaring the hell out of the rest of the crew. Sumeragi should have thrown her into the hall to shit bricks and man the radar station herself. This is not Gundam Seed, we do not have the background information necessary to choose a reaction other than, “shut the hell up Christina”.

5. Back to the actual battle, in hindsight Sumeragi’s approach to make a stand against the ambush doesn’t make sense. I mean, you see the 2D maps in the episode, you see the flanking, and you see the probes. But they’re fighting in space. Full three dimensional space! If you’ve ever played the RTS game Homeworld, you’d realize that there are more ways to move than up, down, left, or right in space.

The show depicts the Ptlomey being cornered, putting some space station thing as the backdrop where the Ptlomey is sitting. We can make a number of assumptions concerning Sumeragi’s course of action:

- The Ptlomey was cornered with its back to the space station, making retreat somehow unfeasable. The first episode showed that the solar space stations only have mobile suits for self defense, so the station defenses could have been an issue - especially since the Big Three could have added additional defenses to their solar space stations over the past few months.
- The Ptlomey is too slow to flee from the ambushers, which is possible considering that almost everything about CB, from its ship to its maintenance crew to its bridge crew to the immigrants Ms. Wang keeps on her island resort fortress, was obviously done on the cheap.
- The Ptlomey is, for whatever reason, unable to flee away from the Earth.
- The Ptlomey only has its verniers on the rear of the ship - which might explain why fleeing would be unfeasable because it would take time to rotate the ship in the other direction. But it should not have taken that long.
- The Ptlomey is fragile enough for Sumeragi to try to divert the bulk of enemy fire away from the ship. If the four Gundams just stayed near the Ptlomey, the ship would definitely come under heavy fire because the enemy is shooting in its direction.

That’s a lot of assumptions to make for a ship that the audience has never been briefed on in any of the past eight episodes. The essential question here (for me) would be this - why didn’t Sumeragi retreat to space? The four Gundams could have simply kept the HRL at bay until they ran out of fuel or until their pilots were too tired to continue. Remember that the Ptlomey can sustain the Gundams in space, whereas the HRL did not have carriers that could keep them on the chase. Unless there are limits on the Ptlomey or the Gundams we don’t know about, Sumeragi could have flown to Mars and force the HRL to either return to the station or starve to death.

In light of the above scenario, I can only think of one reason why Sumeragi wouldn’t do such a thing: laziness. She saw 30+ normal mobile suits and didn’t see them as a threat - at least, not enough of a threat to justify moving the ship. She was also greedy: she wanted to take out the attacking force in one clean sweep by ambushing them from behind with Gundams, crushing the HRL force between the attacking and defending Gundam groups. She assumed this mobile suit force was as inept as all the other mobile suits her beloved Gundams had stepped on over the past few months.

And although I think the above paragraph was the whole point of the episode, we can all agree that this whole episode reeks of Downs Syndrome.

Hallelujah is not exactly a thinker. He should have sped away, but the Newtype powers kicked in and soon the kill ‘em all guy is going to take over.As for the HRL not noticing Gundams moving up their elevators they ought to come to that conclusion by the end. Since the station needs supplies constantly it stands to reason that they can’t check everything that passes through, kind of like illegal drugs.

I hope the HRL doesn’t get slaughtered since that would mean Soma gets shafted and Sergei might get sacked. I hope they walk away with something useful.

@LockOffStratus
The fan fiction will make it so.

In Gundam you aren’t a veteran unless you have at least one on your face. I hope Soma has a beserker mode too.

Yeah, yeah, I liked that commie SirGay (sp?) guy from episode 1. His scar makes him so a peeling (or so they say). Asides, he fights just like a wild bear, provided that bear wasn’t wild or a bear (or scarred). I predict that his scar will pull through and win him the battle. Any takers? (I called it here first).

Another shock is that HRL didn’t notice a damn thing when CB transported multiple Gundams at once using their elevator (at least Dynames and Exia for sure at the start of this episode). Why did CB transport and repair them at the same time anyway!! Can’t they stagger the schedule? Wouldn’t HRL be suspicious to the exporter/importer company if they are suddenly importing tonnes shipments?

Also, Crusader, you are being biased against CB. I enjoy your nitpick of CB’s mistakes and strategic failures (might as well adding in that Allelujah and Tieria were pretty dumb for expecting the carriers would just keep their suits inside while the gundams shoot them) but Sergei is not without fault. You should nitpick his strategy all the same (no offense, it’s your freedom, I’m just curious about what your nitpick will be).

Sergei must be either a genius to spread the mines EXACTLY at Kyrios’ trajectory or he spread the mines on a wide area, I assume the later. Considering that HRL has more suits, it risks triggering leftover mines more than 1 gundam if Kyrios drags the battle there, plus their suits armors are not as good as Gundams (flash grenades type of trap would do better if they just need to judge the gundams location, but from Allelujah comment about the damage, they don’t seem so). Lucky for him, Allelujah instead turns to their location for fight - which is another question: if Allelujah is worried about Ptolemaios team, why did he turn back to face Soma’s team. With his superior speed and distance, he can easily shake them and regroup.

Also, Sergei didn’t bother to unload suits from the last carrier until Kyrios came, what if Virtue arrives first and snipes the carrier, it’ll be OHKO for 1/4th of the troop. And what is he thinking, trying to capture gundams with nets like in the preview. He needs harpoons for that (not literal harpoons, obviously). Still a long way to go before we can talk “strategy”.

Lastly, so much for HRL’s elite troop. Sunrise doesn’t even bother giving them different hair colors, pfft, not even gradation. It’s the color of doom saying that most of them won’t survive another episode. Well, if next week battles are stylishly choreographed, I will be happy enough.

Because in Soviet Union flag burns you! =P

@Kabitizin
Without a doubt, since everything indicates that Green Haro is also a trap.

@Calawain
Patton would have shot her like snake for misbehaving before the enemy. Crazy Rapist Hallelujah will ride to war for the first time, though I still hope Soma proves her superiority with her snazzy helmet and her dead pan powered mecha.

@manga
They at least have to give 3 minutes. Little blinking lights are not going to call attention to itself, they need an audio warning system that includes a klaxon. A ship is not a ship without the sound of ah-ooh-gah.

We already have Louise and Saji, there are enough cowards as it stands. As I said before she should have been more careful with the budget.

And it feels more like a screwup from one of the coworkers that “offered” to take the double pass… if one of the monitors are blinking red and sounding beep beep beep then you check it out to see what´s wrong… you don´t ignore it. Setsuna was stupid in the last ep, but this for me even more stupid.

Christina freaking out wasn´t a suprise, she´s got the whole aura around her that makes her a chicken when it comes to actual fighting, what´s bothersome is that she almost got her other partners killed… but then again, without a scaredy cat it can´t be said it´s a Gundam show right?

Next ep sounds promising, but with my luck, those parts will just take 4sec of 20min episode

Man, Christina deserves 30 lashes for abandoning her post in battle. You are on a fucking warship, and you didn’t expect to fight? Go into a different line of work, you shame those that died as a result of the Gundams attacking by your cowardice. It’s ok not to freak out when you are directing the killing but when someone bloodies your nose you have a breakdown? Patton would beat the shit out of you.

I am looking forward to loco Hallelujah next week, and maybe pink shirt man will pull out his special sauce and blow his load all over the attempts to capture him. Regardless, finally some good writing.

Oh, you miss it ? Here : “Nuke the USia”. *burns the ugly star-striped flag*
Better now ?