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EP. REVIEW: Schwarzes Marken


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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Mon Feb 29, 2016 11:44 am Reply with quote
Quote:
How quickly she turns frigid and bitchy to an evil degree is a little disturbing, as she apparently has no qualms about arranging the torture of her fellow compatriots in the 666 Squadron


In her defense she does hesitate when initially ordered to oversee the torture so it's not like she doesn't have at least some affection for the 666. Who knows what's she's done/had done to her during the years after her capture. Her switching to yandere mode might just be a defense mechanism.
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Ashminigun



Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Posts: 115
Location: Malaysia
PostPosted: Mon Feb 29, 2016 1:02 pm Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
Quote:
How quickly she turns frigid and bitchy to an evil degree is a little disturbing, as she apparently has no qualms about arranging the torture of her fellow compatriots in the 666 Squadron


In her defense she does hesitate when initially ordered to oversee the torture so it's not like she doesn't have at least some affection for the 666. Who knows what's she's done/had done to her during the years after her capture. Her switching to yandere mode might just be a defense mechanism.


I think she has no qualms torturing the rest of her "comrades" since she only cared about Theo.

That said, since Theo managed to snapped off from his BSOD pretty quickly , I hope he have find the strength and resolve when they meet again soon. I bet Lise gonna berserk when Theo find his step-sister is a lost cause and gone full yandere on MiG-27 Alligator. Youch!
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 29, 2016 1:31 pm Reply with quote
I think Lise is kidding herself if she thinks a) she can keep him safe from the Stasi, especially if he is associated with the resistance b) he'll go back to her after she betrayed him and his friends and tortured them.
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FenixFiesta



Joined: 22 Apr 2013
Posts: 2581
PostPosted: Mon Feb 29, 2016 4:29 pm Reply with quote
zrnzle500 wrote:
I think Lise is kidding herself if she thinks a) she can keep him safe from the Stasi, especially if he is associated with the resistance b) he'll go back to her after she betrayed him and his friends and tortured them.

You assume that Lise is actually a "regular person" with that kind of logic, it is pretty clear that Lise's level of Yandere is going on a race with the likes of Yuno Gasai by this point.
Considering the world is being over ran by literal invading martians, having a murder/suicide is probably among her "things to do" right after making sure all the other woman that even looked at her precious Theodor are either maimed or killed in some manner.
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 29, 2016 8:25 pm Reply with quote
well lise can alwasy cripple theodor so he is no more than a nondangerous toy; so teh stasi won't take his life.
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invalidname
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
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Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 7:19 pm Reply with quote
The Type 94 blog has a new post up, covering episodes 4-7. The main focus there is a comparison of the anime to the light novels, noting what was omitted, what was changed, how the anime is paced, and so on. Perhaps the most interesting bits in this update have to do with how Gretel disguised herself in Berlin to look as unassuming and non-threatening as possible… by copying all of Katia's traits to a T.

EDIT: I hadn't noticed that Type 94 also has a translation of a Newtype interview with Minami Tanaka, who plays Katia. Not mentioned in that interview, but kind of a hilarious detail, is that Tanaka is also one of the Wake Up Girls, which explains her WUG costume in this picture with fellow Schwarzesmarken castmates.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 8:01 pm Reply with quote
Was enjoying this show quite a bit until Theodore slept with Lise. The decision was out of character and his stated justification speaks to a level of manipulation and detachment that doesn't make sense in the context of his relationship with her. Otherwise the way the show raised paranoia about everyone's motivations for the first 5 episodes was really good. Lise's move on Theodore should have tipped him off immediately that she was an agent though, and him sleeping with her really screws up the pathos between the two of them that the show was working with.

I like Katia as a character, even if it's a bit absurd how irrepressibly optimistic she is. Her idealism as a wrinkle in the heavy atmosphere of paranoia conjured by the stasi is pretty compelling, and her big moment at the end of 08 was satisfying. Theodore's "omae wa ore ga mamoru"s are starting to ring a bit hollow after being played like that though lol.
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invalidname
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 04, 2016 8:09 am Reply with quote
I'm so glad to see âge is treating this show with the seriousness it deserves.


Source: the weekly âge livestream on nico nico, as tweeted by @1ktyamaha.
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invalidname
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 9:25 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Frankly, I'm a little surprised that the series didn't drag this climax out for another episode, which leaves me wondering what the show is going to do for its final two episodes

The bigs obviously are the whereabouts and well-being of Irisdina (and how they're going to get to her), the outcome of the coup / civil war (including Katia's newly-revealed identity and whether the West gets directly involved), and whether the concurrent BETA surge can even be held off (making much of this irrelevant if it can't). Enough time and focus has been placed on Beatrix that I have to suspect a showdown with her is next on the agenda.

That said, given the director's seeming enjoyment of extra-textual references -- the post-credits omake in Rumbling Hearts that called out VN material cut from the anime, or the appearance of the Muv-Luv main cast in the last three minutes of Akane Maniax -- I wouldn't put it past him to have the final moments of Schwarzesmarken be a flash-forward to the never-animated second half of Total Eclipse, given spoiler[Theodor's] role in it.
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Zoneflare



Joined: 11 Mar 2015
Posts: 521
PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 4:12 pm Reply with quote
Im starting to wonder who is worse the Stasi or the resistance and how horrible a MC Theodor is.

The resistance has no issues with getting regular citizens involved or even killed and the only one who refuse to become anything like the stasi is the head mechanic when he ordered his men to not kill any of the men they captured.

Theodor shows signs that he would fit in great with the stasi and how twisted his personality is. He used he sister as a tool by sleeping with her thinking that he could control her and when they fought the first time Lise was looking for answers with tears in her eyes and Theodor was plain ignoring her after Pham told him that she needed to be saved from her twisted feelings. He had the perfect opportunity to save her there and even bring her to his side but he failed and someone paid a price with their life. Then that whole thing after saving her when she was at deaths door because he was her brother. BS you slept with her so your big brother card is revoked at that moment. She was now your lover thru and thru.

Lise was my favorite character in this series and I was hoping that things would have turned out differently for her but I guess thats Muv Luv for you.
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hurafloyd



Joined: 06 Oct 2008
Posts: 79
PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 4:20 pm Reply with quote
I dont know why but something tells me Katia arrives at the last moment and stops Theodor from putting a bullet into Lise's head.

I pity Lise from being a victim of the Stasi, even if she herself is an object of enmity for betraying her own brother (and team mates)... I wouldn't mind that, as long as she stays in a sanatorium of course Anime hyper.
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7jaws7



Joined: 17 Aug 2013
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 6:58 pm Reply with quote
hurafloyd wrote:
I dont know why but something tells me Katia arrives at the last moment and stops Theodor from putting a bullet into Lise's head.


Why would it matter? Didn't you see that her left breast was clearly impaled?

I for one hated Lise. She wants her brother to be safe, but the lengths she goes to trying to protect him end up hurting herself even more. Theodor isn't really much better considering how he treated her but at least he had something to fight for that was greater than both himself and Lise. Of course, all of that is thanks to the two best characters in the show: Irisdina and Katia.
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invalidname
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 5:57 am Reply with quote
By the by, my Muv-Luv series panel got approved for Chicago's Anime Central in May. We'll have a couple guests discussing various entries in the ML universe, obviously including Schwarzesmarken, since it'll have wrapped up by then and we'll have had time to think about how good or bad it was in retrospect.

Also in the outline: the record-breaking Muv-Luv Kickstarter and what it did right, whatever we can show of the games at that point (Extra should be out to backers by then and Unlmited might be), Total Eclipse (which unexpectedly got a dub from Sentai last year), and anything âge ends up doing for the 15th anniversary of Rumbling Hearts.

So, hopefully we'll see some of the people from this forum there. It will be listed on the schedule as "Muv-Luv: 8 (Or More) Minutes of Death".
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18135
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2016 8:21 am Reply with quote
Will depend largely on whether or not I have any scheduling conflicts, invalidname, as I will probably be attending in a reporting capacity.

(Now, if anyone wants to find me at Acen, the events I'll be guaranteed to attend are the major industry panels and, of course, Anime Hell. Wouldn't miss that for anything!)
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invalidname
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
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Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 1:52 pm Reply with quote
Episode 11 had a couple of lore points that will probably confuse viewers new to the franchise:

Fortified suits are bulletproof: More or less true. The suits are designed to withstand blunt forces and impaling (but are not invulnerable: see Lise last episode). Their revealing thinness comes from the fact that they can also be optionally shredded by a battlefield medic who needs access to vital organs. More at the Muv-Luv wiki, under Pilot Systems. One of the huge oversights/ironies of the Muv-Luv universe is that the suits leave the pilot's head completely unprotected, something the spoiler[RLF irregulars] take advantage of in Total Eclipse.

Nuclear weapons don't work against the BETA: Well, let's take this with a grain of salt: drop an A-bomb on a bunch of BETA, and of course they're toast. Problem is, nukes are strategic weapons, not tactical, and they've proven unusable in the Alternative timeline. According to the backstory, the first BETA landing in 1973 in Kashgar (westernmost China) met a conventional weapons response from the Chinese and Soviets, who refused outside help in hopes of gaining the BETA's secrets after a presumed victory. Unfortunately, once the BETA established a hive and started producing Laser-class, the loss of air superiority led to a human defeat, and the slow spread of BETA across Eurasia.

When the BETA landed in Lake Athabasca, Alberta in 1974, the US was not about to make the same mistakes, and unilaterally nuked the incipient hive instead. This kept the BETA out of North America, but at the cost of leaving half of Canada uninhabitable, and a "nuclear winter" effect from the dirt kicked up by the explosions, which has lowered temperatures worldwide. By the time of Schwazesmarken, eight hives have been established, so simply nuking them would be an ecological disaster and possible extinction event. So it's no surprise that even Beatrix would be appalled at Schmidt's willingness to use them.

Related: In the visual novels, "Alternative V" refers to a plan to spoiler[evacuate a minimum viable population off the Earth, and then bomb all 26 hives with time/space-warping G-Bombs]. The alternate timeline sequel Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After spoiler[shows what happens when this plan is actually put into effect].
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