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Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1
Date: 2018-08-29 03:07 am (UTC)Quick thoughts:
- I'm going to need a chart for all these characters. There are so many! IDK if I can keep track of all of them! I already forgot everyone's names!
- I actually thought we'd get the one of the enemy crash-landed and stranded in the Holy Land as a prisoner but nope! They all died. LMAO.
- Poor pink-haired girl ): She's 100% going to blame herself for her gf dying, and buns girl (in my mind I mentally classified her as shonen Usagi but she probably has a name, that I also immediately forgot) will have to heal her heart. Buns girl's badass, though ("You can stay there and pray. I'm gonna FIGHT", aw hell yeah).
- The cgi is a little grody but the Simoun are very pretty! Probably rife for an porny AU where they have to have sex on the ships instead of just kissing the ball thing. I also really dig the OP and ED.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-29 05:55 pm (UTC)Here are my (non-spoilery) notes as I watched the first two episodes:
- OH SHIT I'd forgotten how much I love the theme song. All the music is great.
- Huh, I've watched Simoun through 3 times now, i think, and it hasn't registered before that our first scene and first impression of the world is from the enemy's POV. Cool.
- MAGIC FIGHTER JETS POWERED BY YURI I will never get over this. I love it so much.
- Fuck. Amuria. I wish we got to know more about her. She's so intense and it's obvious why younger Neviril was crushing from the start. I would have liked to see more of how Neviril grew from there into the famous leader of the Sybyllae - but who is still very much enamoured with Amuria, and gets swept up in her fervour. WHICH IS NOT A GOOD THING.
- The whole emerald ri majon disaster was so confusing the first time watching. On top of all the worldbuilding details and new terms being thrown around, coming into a new conflict that is new to the characters as well as to the audience, it's a lot.
- Paraietta omg. My fave. I'm so into her everything. Poor angsty loyal knight with all her unrequited ~pining fuck I love it.
- The conflict between the girls as priestesses who use the simoun to worship, and the government basically going 'welp you guys are soldiers actually so go kill people' is so interesting. Especially when you introduce Aaeru to this, and she isn't a holy priestess...
- I actually find Aaeru's brashness kind of off-putting in the first few eps. I'm always glad when she integrates more with the team and like calms the fuck down a bit. I do like how pushy with Neviril she is, though. No one gets in Sybilla Aurea's face (except Amuria clearly did, but then she loved Neviril, and Neviril loved her, so it had a different context) and then here's this backwater low class kid who doesn't observe rank and doesn't tiptoe around her. It's not a magic cure for Neviril, because N is in the midst of serious trauma and grief. But Aaeru's a breath of fresh air for everyone. I love her for that even when she's a little too extra.
- Neviril's relationship with her own image is always fascinating to me.
- The Spring is so weird and eerie. I love the design of the ruins. And then whatever is up with Onashia. Yeah, so, I STILL HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT ONASHIA.
- Damn, Elif's story, it's so short and it just hits so hard. It was an interesting choice to give us the deets on how gender works in this world through this bit character, and then having it be this thing that, for Elif, is ultimately meaningless. Nothing has changed, and its devastating.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-29 06:20 pm (UTC)Huh, I've watched Simoun through 3 times now, i think, and it hasn't registered before that our first scene and first impression of the world is from the enemy's POV
I always register it on rewatches, but then I always forget about it and it really is very cool. I wish we got more from the enemy footsoldier (footpilot? whatever, not the priestesses, who have their own thing going on) POV, because what we see the few times we see it is VERY INTERESTING. /nonny who was pitching the canon on FFA a post or so ago and remembered to explain "in the world everyone is born female, in the country there's the Spring..." aaah, I'm spoiling, aren't I?
- The conflict between the girls as priestesses who use the simoun to worship, and the government basically going 'welp you guys are soldiers actually so go kill people' is so interesting. Especially when you introduce Aaeru to this, and she isn't a holy priestess...
My favorite thing about this show!
- I actually find Aaeru's brashness kind of off-putting in the first few eps. I'm always glad when she integrates more with the team and like calms the fuck down a bit. I do like how pushy with Neviril she is, though. No one gets in Sybilla Aurea's face (except Amuria clearly did, but then she loved Neviril, and Neviril loved her, so it had a different context) and then here's this backwater low class kid who doesn't observe rank and doesn't tiptoe around her. It's not a magic cure for Neviril, because N is in the midst of serious trauma and grief. But Aaeru's a breath of fresh air for everyone. I love her for that even when she's a little too extra.
Yeah, Aeru is honestly way too genki for my taste as an individual; I'd like her a lot less if it weren't for her relationship with Neviril, in its various aspects. Not because it changes who Aeru is, but rather because she's shown to be written this way because of how it affects other people, not always in a good way, rather than as a viewer appeal thing. (Neviril is always going to be my favorite anyway - and Paraietta, plus the Mamiina and Rodoreamon thin.)
And yes, the music for this show is fantastic.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-30 06:32 pm (UTC)Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-29 11:54 pm (UTC)- MAGIC FIGHTER JETS POWERED BY YURI I will never get over this. I love it so much.
Nice. I'm going to remember this phrase next time I want to rec the show to someone.
Also hard seconding:
- Neviril's relationship with her own image is always fascinating to me.
And I want this whole thing to be a fic prompt:
- Fuck. Amuria. I wish we got to know more about her. She's so intense and it's obvious why younger Neviril was crushing from the start. I would have liked to see more of how Neviril grew from there into the famous leader of the Sybyllae - but who is still very much enamoured with Amuria, and gets swept up in her fervour. WHICH IS NOT A GOOD THING.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-30 12:51 am (UTC)Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-31 04:26 am (UTC)And then here comes Aaeru smashing in like YEAH I WANNA BE THE BEST, shonen protagonist style. And she's a soldier from the southern front, which means she sees the war as a war. Her piloting skills are practical rather than beautiful, and she's probably had friends and comrades die herself. It's such an interesting clash, and makes the world of Simoun feel more real than it perhaps would otherwise.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-31 04:53 am (UTC)I totally didn't remember Aeru being a soldier from the south; I thought the implication was that she'd been sent over to Tempest pretty much immediately? What have I missed? I definitely love the difference in attitude, but now I need to know if I should crave backstory fic :D
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-31 05:11 am (UTC)Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-31 08:43 am (UTC)Paraietta is my fave! Her character dynamic is like catnip for me.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-31 10:04 am (UTC)Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-31 10:52 am (UTC)I suppose the conservative argument would be, well, some jobs/roles are better performed by men or women, and if you want to do those things, you CAN be either a man or a woman, so there is no problem. Like, I can see how stereotypical gender traits could be just as codified in this fantasy world. Want to have babies/teach kindergarten/be a nurse? You must want to be a woman when you grow up because those aren't things that men do.
Plus we do see moments with explicit expectations around the choice these girls will face. Paraietta is expected to be a man, Neviril a woman. But I won't go too much into that due to spoilers.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-31 01:36 pm (UTC)I read one person's take which suggested that sexism is the way that society prevents everyone from choosing to be female forever, ie. keep their existing female bodies as they grow up. Which I can kind of get, but at the same time, it's very fanwanky.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-08-31 08:43 pm (UTC)In some ways, I can honestly see it working out that way. In our world, the fact that no one chooses their birth sex can make a powerful argument against discrimination. But since everyone in this world is born into the same sex, and becoming a man or a woman as an adult is something everyone has to choose, it's easier to blame people for their choices, or act like they "opted into" sexism when they chose to become a woman.
As to why everyone doesn't just choose male, then: they may identify as women, they may not want the more extreme physical changes entailed in the male choice, or it could be a spite choice, like "Why should I have to?" I think the narrative is being openly critical of the sexism the characters have internalized, like thinking gallantry is masculine. The fact that there's social pressure to choose based on stereotypes could even have a reinforcing effect. (Which to be absolutely clear, I do not mean in a transwanky way--I don't think anyone, ever, has gone through real-world transition over stereotyping their hobbies or w/e--but transition in our world is very much marginalized, whereas voluntarily choosing a sex is mandatory in this fantasy world, everyone does it, and it isn't harder to choose one or another, so little things like being told your hobbies were always masculine when you happened to be of indeterminate sex might influence you when you had to pick one sex or the other with no biological card-stacking!) Because it's a choice and not really a biologically weighted choice, the social dynamics around it can get weird.
Though I do think that simply having female-like bodies must influence their decisions towards being female a lot too. Not universally, obviously, but it's familiar, it can become a part of their identity, at least for some people! It's possible sexism is justified as a sort of, "If we didn't add perks for being male, hardly anyone would choose it." Which I don't think is true at all (nor does the male/female ratio need to be 50/50 for a stable population) but it's something they might say.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1 AND Episode 2
Date: 2018-09-01 01:09 pm (UTC)Amuria was on the pushy side too, when she and Neviril first met. (Not the same kind of pushy, but still.) She really swept Neviril off her feet with that kiss.
It is interesting that the worldbuilding incentivises choosing being male, since it would be natural for many people to choose female.
The scenes with Erif in and after the spring were chilling. No wonder Neviril wasn't ready to go through the same thing quite yet. I hope Erif will make even a brief appearance later in the series.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1
Date: 2018-08-31 08:39 am (UTC)I like how even the men are voiced by actresses in this.
They shouldn't have been sent out while believing that the Simoun couldn't ever be brought down.
...Amuria was incredibly reckless, wanting to perform the Emerald Ri Maajon straight away. Though things got much more dangerous later, so wanting to try something powerful and risky made more sense. Anyway, RIP Amuria. She owned her screentime.
It's too bad the one with the messy hair and crescent moon earrings wanted to become a man because of wanting to be gallant like Paraietta. Not that it was wrong to make a decision to be male, but why does gallantry have to be seen as male?
I remember Aaeru annoying me in my first watch of Simoun, but I bet I'm going to like her this time around. She knows how to make an entrance. Come to think of it, Neviril annoyed me first time around too, but hopefully not this time.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1
Date: 2018-08-31 03:04 pm (UTC)Had one ever been brought down before, though? They are machines, so of course they can be damaged, but the belief seems pretty ingrained that the 'chariots of the gods' are untouchable/unbeatable. How much of that is propaganda - cause it sure helps for the enemy to be super scared of them - and how much is plain fact. Because no one could damage them until now, when the enemy has built up their technology and firepower to the point where they're capable of posing a real threat.
Re: Simoun Rewatch - Episode 1
Date: 2018-09-01 11:14 am (UTC)