YMMV / Red Sprite

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: While Tatsu's Technicolor Lightning seems exotic, it's actually based on a real meteorological phenomenon where large-scale electrical discharges go off in the sky, often in colors like red, forming ethereal "sprites" of plasma. This phenomenon is also the source of the name of Tatsu's ship and the title of the story, "Red Sprite".
• Complete Monster:
  • Supreme Leader David Atlas is the absolute ruler of the region of Edenia. A warmonger who has taken over most of the world through brutal conquest while keeping his own citizens in line through propaganda, Atlas is concerned solely with bringing the entire world under his fist and crushing all opposition. Atlas has built Edenia on the usage of Thundercore energy; to keep a perpetual supply of Thundercore to power his society, Atlas has codified a system of utilizing Thundercore people as slaves and Human Resources, harvesting Thundercore energy from them until they are reduced to dried-out husks. When Tatsu Frampt interrupts a public speech of his, Atlas angrily orders anyone who mentions the incident to be either shot or sent to concentration camps while having his minions begin a ruthless pursuit of Frampt and his rebels. Atlas personally electrocutes one of his own subordinates into a charred skeleton for failing his orders, simply to demonstrate his cruelty and lack of regard of any human life, Thundercore—which he is implied to be a member of despite his inhumane treatment of them—or otherwise.
  • Lt. Colonel Shepherd discovers a new way to enhance the power of "Thundercore", an electrical substance that powers all of the world's technology. Cultivating children with Thundercore within them, Shepherd intends to use them as slaves to power up everything they can before the children are inevitably drained of energy and remain only as withered husks. When she discovers their location, having been rescued by a kind priest, Shepherd bombs the orphanage, kills the man by crushing his heart, and abducts the children, save for the hero Tatsu Frampt. Later returning to save his comrades, Tatsu sees that Shepherd is using dozens of people for their energy, bound to an airship whose capacity will kill them all very quickly. Showing no remorse and perfectly representing Edenia's callous indifference to the use of Thundercore people, Shepherd is devoted only to her twisted views on science.