Forum - View topic

REVIEW: Stellvia

I remember really hating Shima, she's constantly causing some massive problem that endanger her, people around her and the entire mission (at some point almost causing the entire program to fail which would spell humanity doom) and every time she get off with light slap on the wrist. I think they were going for "autistic genius" or something like that, but when she repeatedly do things she's told will end badly and they end up exactly as bad as she was told they would but somehow still try again, its really hard not to see her as a dumbass who got a copy of the script. I think she would work if the stakes were much lower, or taken in a much more humorous tone, but as it were I just couldn't fathom why they wouldn't send her back to down to earth ASAP before she'd end up killing someone.

The rest of the show is pretty good, the situation they are in is interesting (although I think the first arc is more interesting than the second one).

This is one of my favorite shows. I recently noticed it on amazon prime and watched it again. Other than low-quality video, its just as great as I remember.
Are you referring to first few episodes when Shima had problems flying because after that I didn't really notice any major mishaps she had that would classify as her "end up killing someone".
There been too much of either unrealistically "perfect" characters that can do everything from first try or unrealistically "failure" characters that fail at everything they do till they they miraculously out of nowhere can do everything perfectly at once that constitute the majority of current protagonists in anime?

It's been quite awhile so exact detail might be wrong but if I remember correctly,spoiler[ after the first couple of in the first few episodes with the flying instruction (which should have been way more than enough to have her kicked out as an out of control spacecraft is essentially a big bullet) she wiped out the server of the whole station (only for some asspull to save her at the end), something else happen during the student fair (or w/e it was) and she again screw up during the big event with the shield.]

It wasn't about her not pulling them perfectly on the first try, it was more about her stubbornly doing unnecessary/dangerous thing in very serious situation and not learning just for the show to go "well actually she scored really well so we'll overlook all the trouble she caused" (I'd very much classify her as a "characters that fail at everything they do till they they miraculously out of nowhere can do everything perfectly"). That could work if they were trying to setup a school play or something and the worse that would happen is that the play doesn't happen. But when failure means the end of humanity and she's not really important and could be easily replace it's hard to maintain credibility in the show and it just felt like she had plot armor.