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I agree with the defiance angle as well. It's a perfectly logical reaction (not that I'm saying this show applies logic very well).

Emotional trauma is always felt differently from person to person, so it's very difficult to call out any one character's reaction as unrealistic.

In her mind, Ange is refusing to accept the situation she's in. It comes off as a defensive mental block. She's in total denial. It's almost like she thinks all the things that are happening to her are happening to someone else.

IMO, that's also why Coco was so important in this episode. I didn't see her as a trope at all. She was the one person re-enforcing Ange's delusion that she was still the princess, still better than everyone else. She was her biggest fan, and her last remaining symbol of innocence. .....and then Ange watched her die horribly right in front of her.

I'm guessing that's going to bring her back to reality more effectively than anything else that's been done to her thusfar.

If Ange had shown some sort of change of attitude after having that single instance of rough treatment at the end of episode one, I would have called bullshit. If, for some bizarre reason, we want to look at this show through a filter of psychological realism, I think it takes time and an accumulation of horrors to truly break somebody down.

I find Ange's attitude as a former princess who has not yet accepted the reality of her situation to be quite credible, actually.

Vaisaga wrote:

leatherhead333 wrote:

If a prisoner is brought is subject to a cavity search he/she has done something to allow such a thing to happen.

That's exactly what happened. However you may view it by our world's standards, it was entirely justified in-universe. It was a warden dealing with an unruley prisoner.

leatherhead333 wrote:

Making her stay like this for so long gives her more time to be violated I suppose but a character developing through such means over a long period is just plain trashy.

It's only been two episodes. And if it was supposed to be some sort of fetish fuel, then it wouldn't have been portrayed as something bad, which is how both cases with Ange were handled. This is even more apparent since it's juxtaposed next to scenes of consentual lesbian shenanigans.

So how should Ange have been in episode two? Because to me defiance + something bad happening = more defiance is perfectly logical to me.

Doesn't matter if it was in universe. That doesn't make it not assault in our world which is why it can be considered uncalled for. If you had a cavity search performed on you and it turns out you were cleared of any wrong doing you would be able to take action against such a thing.

And honestly Vaisaga I think you are either REALLY naive and just don't want to see these obvious hints or you were implanted as a seed by the producers to present their shitty writing in some grand psychological light. Either way kudos bro.

Do you really not see the signs here? Did seeing the screen pan over the attempted rapist as she chills with her other lesbian prisoners not cue you in? Or the fact that Norma's are only female for "reasons"?

Rape fantasy isn't exactly something new to anime and it's quite odd how you couldn't pick up on this since it's judging from the next episode preview it's going to happen again. Why exactly does this ALWAYS need to keep happening if the character isn't going to develop in any significant fashion from it? This incident with Coco as cheap as it was is probably the first step in changing her attitude so why would the rest be necessary if she was just going to shake it off? There is a complete lack of validity to any of what's happening to her.
If you take the rape scenes out WHAT CHANGES? Absolutely nothing. So please don't pretend like them throwing this in here is some necessary element that adds to her situation. It isn't. And is one of the only things holding the series back in my opinion.

Ange's attitude would be fine if the show she was in didn't want some hentai elements mixed with it's storytelling Wink

Again, as a whole, everything makes sense.

The terrible things happening directly to Ange she was able to deny completely, showing how far her mental block is.

Yet the terrible thing that happened to someone else (Coco) that was essentially the avatar of her denial was probably the trigger that starts her breakdown.

I thought it was actually pretty clever.

But unless I'm seeing the next episode preview wrong she's still in denial. Guess we'll have to see. But that's besides what I was pointing out. A think denial is a nice human element, heck I loved Kankei from Tokyo Ghoul for that very reason. However, I simply don't see most of this as necessary to get that point across. It doesn't make the the issue at hand have more presence nor is is needed.

leatherhead333 wrote:

Doesn't matter if it was in universe. That doesn't make it not assault in our world which is why it can be considered uncalled for. If you had a cavity search performed on you and it turns out you were cleared of any wrong doing you would be able to take action against such a thing.

Good luck getting that official charged with anything sexual, though. Unless she made some sexually charged comments, or performed the search with a dildo or something you'd be hard pressed to prove it was anything other than a routine search.

There was no sexual component in her motives, unlike what happened in episode 2.

leatherhead333 wrote:

Do you really not see the signs here? Did seeing the screen pan over the attempted rapist as she chills with her other lesbian prisoners not cue you in? Or the fact that Norma's are only female for "reasons"?

So what am I missing, exactly? It shows lesbians in a consentual relationship. What's wrong with that? I think you're the one not picking up the cues. If you compare it to what happens to Ange you'll see that for one it says "this is okay" and the other says "this is not okay."

leatherhead333 wrote:

Rape fantasy isn't exactly something new to anime and it's quite odd how you couldn't pick up on this since it's judging from the next episode preview it's going to happen again.

I read a lot of hentai manga so I know how rape fantasies work. Typically they're one of 3 senarios. 1.) Guy as the viewpoint character assaults girl but it turns out she always loved him and is totally into it. 2.) Guy(s) as the viewpoint character(s) rapes girl(s) and gets away scott free. 3.) Girl as viewpoint character gets raped and while she hates it at first she eventually turns into a mind broken cum dumpster who loves being violated.

The common element here is that in the end it all works out 'for the best.' The outcome is a positive thing. In both cases involving Ange so far it's clearly been not okay. She didn't come out of it going "You know that actually felt good!"

As for why it's included at all, it's just to hammer home the 'reality' of her situation. Because news flash: this stuff happens in prisons. Surely you've heard of "prison bitches" and "dropping the soap." To not include it would be like like having a war movie without anyone dying.

Yeah I'm just going to call you naive Vaisaga because it seriously baffles me how you think the industry works. They don't just put lesbians/gay angles in a show most of the time to depict it as "oh this is like in real life guys so we are totally within reason for doing this". Sorry to break your little fantasy world but that's not how shit works. Why do you think all the Norma's are female for unexplained reasons? That should have been the biggest cue right there. A bunch of female only fighters locked up in cells to fight giant dragons. Yes surely this will lead to NOTHING ambiguous! Oy vey Rolling Eyes

When you are writing a story treating touchy elements with care is essential if you want to avoid one sided criticism. Rape is a serious issue and they are not throwing it in to depict how prison really works. That's the mindless statement not to different from other things I've seen from you multiple times to justify villains shitty reasons for being evil or a character for acting a certain way.

Now when I see violence, rape and death I want it to be very closely related to the plot that is progressively linear in an expansive fashion, as well in direct correlation to the evolution of the characters, but it also has to have an more important aspect. That aspect being that it delves profoundly into the psychological aspects, not only on the individual, personal, adaptive level, but in addition as well as from multiple points of view from different sociocultural niches involving things such as rationality, reactionary psychology, even denial and most importantly many types of adaptation to ones surroundings.

Ange being assaulted did NOT advance her character in such ways. She would have attempted to run away without it. Don't give me that bullshit that "oh it happens in real life". That's NOT why they put it in there but something in your head seems to delude you into thinking it's trying to be realistic or some stupid shit. It's just another cheap/crude attempt at being dark with no substance which allows for a intellectually and/or psychologically immature show to try to take itself seriously while including rape cause "reasons". The one thing that WAS necessary was her meeting Coco even though it would have been nice if the writers didn't make it clear "This girl is a plot device". The 2nd assault? Completely meaningless. It's inclusion didn't make improve change anything which is why it was completely worthless to the series.

Trust me, if their intent was to include that stuff just to be all dark and edgy they wouldn't be so half assed about it. All the guards at the prison would have been men, and Ange would have been assaulted by them the whole way, none of this "stopped at the last minute" stuff.

Is that stuff pointless? Maybe, maybe not. But it's not out of place given the setting and context, and most importantly at no point does it try to say "Girls raping girls is awesome, isn't it?!"

Vaisaga wrote:

...and most importantly at no point does it try to say "Girls raping girls is awesome, isn't it?!"

Perhaps not, but the show is clearly trading in on that prurient, exploitative, "women-in-prison" B-movie kind of thing. I fully believe we were meant to find Ange's manhandling by Ilsa, SS She-Wolf to be titillating.

Blood- wrote:

Vaisaga wrote:

...and most importantly at no point does it try to say "Girls raping girls is awesome, isn't it?!"

Perhaps not, but the show is clearly trading in on that prurient, exploitative, "women-in-prison" B-movie kind of thing. I fully believe we were meant to find Ange's manhandling by Ilsa, SS She-Wolf to be titillating.

I will concur with Blood- on that but I see it as a feature not a bug. I was actually a bit disappointed when we didn't get to see if Captain Zola could tame Ange in the ready room. (my bet would be she wouldn't be able to.)

As it is I would further bet that Zola won't ever be able to follow up on it before Ange goes all Private Benjamin on us and ends up meeting the handsome hunk that appears in the opening credits.

Aside from that I am tired of seeing the word misogyny being thrown around in topic threads by people who wouldn't recognize real misogyny if it bit them in the ass. At least they are doing a disservice to people who have to deal with it for real. Cross Ange is actually a fairly conventional mecha story that has a salacious girl-on-girl fantasy emphasis (so far but the odds are that will fade) that will appeal to some percentage of men and some percentage of women. If you aren't in that percentage good for you but that doesn't justify you accusing the other group of sex crimes.

Blood- wrote:

I fully believe we were meant to find Ange's manhandling by Ilsa, SS She-Wolf to be titillating.

If it was meant to be that way, then they failed miserably Laughing

Pixiv barely has anything, whereas there's been a huge flood of Build Fighters Try art (and G Reco to a lesser extent).

And yeah, it seems some people think misogyny = anything bad happening to women. I sure as heck don't look at this show and think "Women sure are inferior to men, aren't they!"

I would think Pixiv not having anything largely reinforces Blood's hypothesis. How often do they use hentai characters?

I think you don't see anime as engineered, which is fine, but I don't think it would kill you to understand that a lot of people do see it that way, and that your "well, these things happens" attitude is entirely nonresponsive to the points being made.

Vaisaga wrote:

Maybe, maybe not.

Blood- wrote:

Perhaps not, but the show is clearly trading in on that prurient, exploitative, "women-in-prison" B-movie kind of thing. I fully believe we were meant to find Ange's manhandling by Ilsa, SS She-Wolf to be titillating.

HaruhiToy wrote:

I will concur with Blood- on that

HaruhiToy wrote:

Aside from that I am tired of seeing the word misogyny being thrown around in topic threads by people who wouldn't recognize real misogyny if it bit them in the ass.

Was anyone even arguing about that here ? I don't see the show as misogynistic but then again if you think about it only women are Norma's and since they are considered trash in society........yeah it's a bit twisted but someone coming to that conclusion doesn't seem all that far fetched to me. Still I hardly think that's the case.

leatherhead333 wrote:

Now when I see violence, rape and death I want it to be very closely related to the plot that is progressively linear in an expansive fashion, as well in direct correlation to the evolution of the characters, but it also has to have an more important aspect. That aspect being that it delves profoundly into the psychological aspects, not only on the individual, personal, adaptive level, but in addition as well as from multiple points of view from different sociocultural niches involving things such as rationality, reactionary psychology, even denial and most importantly many types of adaptation to ones surroundings.

But it was pretty closely related to the story and the rabbit hole Ange has fallen into. After she tries to fight back out of her situation using the power she held before she finds herself the one dominated by someone else's power. The power she thought she held with a letter is completely ignored and a random request from a captain is quickly allowed. We learn that with all they have, sex that is essentially rape is allowed, and as Ange scratches beneath the surface we find that some of them are just broken, the lifestyle can take things from them.

Ange's disgusted spit at the end shows that she is still far from broken, how the events from the end of the episode affect her differently is to be seen.

leatherhead333 wrote:

Was anyone even arguing about that here ? I don't see the show as misogynistic .

I guess you haven't looked in on the Episode preview thread or the Daily Streaming reviews thread in the Talkback forum.

Among snide little passive-agressive postings in the vein of "who's got the dirty work of reviewing this one" there are plenty of statements about whomever likes this must be sick.

Key has put himself in the target there (he must be sick, according to them) but he's a big boy and doesn't need my help. Actually I am looking forward to seeing how he handles it.

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