Active Raid

Such a gripping and touching plot about the how the dreams of men ride int giants of steel! All in one episode, no less!

PS: If Active Raid ever make it into Super Robot Wars, we know which unit must be made playable against all logic.

I personally feel the girls are rather Gundam-ish in design. Especially when in uniform.

Also, their faces remind me of the Haganai girls. Especially around the mouth.

Episode 7: Rail wars.

Seriously, Haruka love for trains reminded me of Takayama from Rail wars.

The big message of this show seems to be that politicians and bureaucrats just get in the way. Which is a well know fact.

Missiles in the city. Genius.

Unit 8 Will wear have to change batteries fairly often, but that one went for like forever while emitting that EM field.

Aww, this was such a sad story. Logo's is just a bunch of assholes without a point to their actions beyond being assholes.

Oh wow, judging by the new OP, everyone in section 8 will get Willwears barring the mechanic guy. Did not expect that.

Given that newbie's call sign is Oscar 6 while the other two were Oscar 1 and 2 I thought that it was a given that there were three more Willwear to be introduced for the rest of the team. Though by the sound of it they use specialised units as opposed to the general combat units we've already seen.

Seems that Mythos didn't like Doc's actions when he made the rogue Willwear destroy itself.

The subplot regarding the daughter is a stark reminder that Filipinos of Japanese origin aren't recognized by the Supreme Court.

This episode of Active Rai, a new mysterious Willwear, a blind date gone off the rails, fights over jurisdiction and Sena dealing with his crazy ex. Just delightful.

And we get to see Funasaka's Willwear. He's the team tank by the looks of it. High strength and armour at the sake of mobility.

Oh yeah, I didn't actually expect him to have a Willwear, but I guess they all do.

Why am I not surprised at all that Funasaka's Willwear looks the most like a Kamen Rider refugee?

Also Sena's ex. That's a heck of an unorthodox turn-on there, girl. Is she an S? :P

Akeno Watanabe as Miho. She's not the only one in Taniguchi's show after Sakurai.

I guess that in the Ar verse, the JSDF changed to the USDF.

Or the subbers messed up.

Unless it's been confirmed elsewhere...

Episode 10:

Logos really is old person image of hackers. Malevolent teenagers who can do anything with computers. That's this show villains. That, political corruption and bureaucratic idiocy.

Chief Willwear was pretty awesome. Very, very fast, ideal for battle.

Oh, who could have expected that Bird Is student council president?

It's confirmed that the JSDF changed to the USDF.

The show confirms it too with the latter called "Togo Jietai".

I feel slightly confused again. So the plan is to take over the super computer thingy, and the random crimes were so they could locate it from observing government reaction? And Tomoki gave himself up to throw off the trail, even though police wasn't even close to solving the case? But why did he call Hinata just before that? Also, Mythos getting a new fake family every month seems like it would just draw more attention than anything.

And they are closing the Unit 8 because... seriously what is everyone problem with Unit 8?

So we are getting to the halfway point of the story, guess Unit 8 will have to save the day after all.

Yeah, it didn't really follow. Like the ANN review said for this episode it seemed very rushed and more concerned about forcing things through than actually having the narrative make sense.

Though the return of the Gratuitous English was at least a bit of fun.

My impression is that he wants to mess with her.

Their destructive reputation is why the government doesn't like them and the fact that they prefer the USDF to take the job over from the NPA. And the top leadership of the NPA thinks that the confession provided by "Bird" is all they needed to disband Unit 8.

edited 11th Mar '16 4:44:48 AM by Ominae

I'm pretty sure the fact that Logos has the governor and his staff by the short and curlies has more to do with it.

I reality is shouldn't though. The Governor of Tokyo probably does have a lot of clout, but those calls would be being made in the Diet at the national level, not by the head of any one prefecture, however populous and influential.

Unit 8 appears to be a branch of the local police force, created as a trial for broader police adoption of Willwears. We've certainly never seen them going to another prefecture, or even out of the city. That should put them in the governor's field of responsibility.

edited 12th Mar '16 4:35:11 PM by Iaculus

Even if Unit 8 were part of the Tokyo Metro Police (plausible and I can't remember the exact details), the choice to move authority for policing unauthorised or illegal use of Willwear to the SDF (which is what is said to be happening), is still way outside of his authority and would have to be done with the agreement of the Diet and probably the majority of other prefecture governments since this would have to be co-ordinated on a national basis.

Episode 11:

A country that puts the control of everything in a single system.

A government so incompetent and obstructive that they can't even get their shit together while the country is literally held hostage.

A military that uses Wilwear with online connection while knowing that the whole system got compromised.

Mythos didn't exactly had a lot to contend with, now did he?

To be fair, it was a system consisting of three supercomputers in separate locations plus a backup one for the most important information. Under normal conditions, that would be more than enough of a precaution.

The latest episode provided a good, albeit slightly awkward, explanation for why Bird had strangely contacted Hinata before. In short, he was using her to give Unit 8 a hint and see if Mythos could manage to deal with that.

Regarding the military, they might have assumed their local connection wasn't affected. Which, of course, turned out to be completely wrong.

In any case, I will give the government -or at least the general director of its Japanese Police, the guy with a beard- a small amount credit for actually letting Unit 8 take action. Just perhaps too little, too late.

This was a pretty good week in my opinion. I also liked the amusing gimmick with the apple at the end.

edited 17th Mar '16 8:21:48 PM by Madonis

I want to say that centralising all your vital services in one, easy hackable supercomputer with no thoughts on what to do if it's compromised is unrealistic, but I work in software testing.

If this story took place in the US, student council president would've had some enhanced interrogation already, but Japan is too civilised and hence he can afford to be smug it seems.

But all that "Japan style" criticism this episode feels tacked on. Oh, we'd better give our villains some sort of motivation to make them look a little bit less like complete dickheads. Still dull though.

USDF is not very good at doing their jobs, are they? But again, using compromised systems despite knowing they are compromised? Sadly, not that surprising.

To be fair, I don't think that is "tacked on" because the show has always provided some criticism for the way Japanese government and bureaucracy work. I am fine with that theme.

Admittedly, the villains themselves haven't been very exciting to date. But I do enjoy the situations they create.