Rooster Teeth's gen: Lock

This is the second time Cammie has said fuck. The cut to her demanding to be let go was really funny.

I also liked the way she had to volunteer first and the other two immediately volunteered on seeing the result.

Cammie still proving to be my favorite pilot. Also, it seems that the mechs are designed to be modular. The muscly boney EVA/Guyver-looking design is the stripped down main body, and the boxy design is like a standard loadout. Fascinating.

Also, the Doc's comment about having only had enough time to design one frame gives the possibility of more customization down the line.

And damn those things must be made of some super resilient material to stand up to all the falling and tumbling.

And MBJ's lines sound a bit more natural in this episode. Seems like he's getting more used to voice acting.

Edited by danime91 on Feb 2nd 2019 at 7:44:21 AM

They're definitely made of Unobtainium but I think it's less super-hard and more the shock-absorbent type of resilience, the inside frames make me think they actually use artificial muscle to move instead of pneumatics.

It's kind of a Required Secondary Power for a mech to be able to stand up reasonably well to being knocked over, and that seems to be true even for the BattleTech style mechs used by the Vanguard.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 3rd 2019 at 5:42:10 AM

x3 - Dr. Weller said as much, which is why he sounded disappointed the completed Holons they had for him all resembled mass production Arm Slaves from Full Metal Panic rather than something more distinctive. Judging by the OP, he's going to be giving them all more distinct touches as the series goes on.

My cautious optimism holds firm three episodes in. I'm presuming the next episode will see the team sortie for the first time, and that's where the real test, in and out of universe, begins.

Edited by Beatman1 on Feb 3rd 2019 at 1:57:28 PM

I wonder if Valentina is going to be shown as some kind of Cunning Linguist considering she told Kazu how to say her name with an ending particle. That'd probably be a logical thing for an ex-special forces resistance operative.

Yes, but the Union is explicitly called a "monocultural movement" at one point, which implies it holds a right wing ideology; perhaps they're more "Dark Enlightenment" style neoreactionaries rather than fascists or right wing populists.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 3rd 2019 at 8:10:29 AM

So there is one extra Holon frame, curious as to who gets it.

Also amusing how Cammie was “Yo you read manga” just cause Kazu is Japanese & he’s like “Man I haven’t read that shit since I was a kid”.

If the extra Holon frame goes to a character that's already been revealed, my bet's on Chase's sister.

...so I guess their earpieces don't do Russian or Farsi?

"Longshanks" - so Tennant's character is supposed to be English. I guess that makes more sense than the alternative, but there's some definite Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping.

While the idea that we've been tricked into siding with the Polity is an interesting one, I doubt it, only because the Union was pretty clearly targeting civilians in New York. While I don't think they'll be exactly alt-right, I suspect that when we do see what makes Union sympathizers tick, we'll be getting Trump/Brexiteer parallels sewn in to the standard jumble of negativity whose only coherent end is to make them easy for the heroes to kill (so grab a balaclava, kids).

Edited by TwinBird on Feb 4th 2019 at 12:10:41 PM

Dr Weller is quite the manipulative bastard it seems. Looking forward to seeing how that plays out in future episodes.

So we got color coded team members, somewhat shifty, bespectacled mentors and villains sabotaging communications networks as beats used before in RWBY.

Edited by windleopard on Feb 4th 2019 at 12:53:05 PM

Episode three was pretty decent. Some characterization for the new team, some setting up stakes for the plot, some showing off the robot. All the characters are pretty archetypical right now, though they may grow out of that eventually, and the execution is generally good enough that it doesn't bother me... except Cammie's "teen gamer nerd" schtick, which I find grating. Like, yes, you know how to code and enjoy playing video games, that's great. You don't have to act surprised that other human beings celebrate by drinking beer instead of playing video games.

I appreciate the fact that they showed trained veterans in conventional mechs can wreck the new kids in their holons, the idea of "normal" people still having valuable knowledge and skills to pass along to the special main character people appeals to me. The sequence where Chase shows them how it's done probably wasn't as impressive as they were hoping, though, but it wasn't too bad.

At this point I still really want to know more about the Union. What's their deal in general? Where did their giant army come from and what exactly can their nanosmoke clouds do? What have they been doing on the east coast now that they've occupied it for years? All of these are pretty basic questions and the fact that it's going to be (at least) four episodes in before any of them are addressed is a bit obnoxious.

From what we've seen so far, the nanobots wreak havoc on organic matter. That's about it, really, since vehicles and possibly even suits can be sealed against nanohazard, meaning they can't effectively chew through metal or plastics. And apparently they cause some complicated permanent damage when they do, since Chase can't get regen treatment.

So we don't know much about them. For all we know, the purple people eater clouds are only the general purpose combat/terror nanobot and they have some other, more specialized models.

The whole deal with the Union is other than Not!Sinclair we have no human face to the enemy. We’ve heard platitudes about monculture and uniting the world, but there’s no face, no voice to associate to this foe. At least end the season with a speech from their leadership, even if said leader is an obvious Expy of a current political ideology, which I’m going to bet dollars to donuts is the case.

We won’t know much of the world/political stuff because Gray is focused on the characters first. I think we’re gonna wait until next season.

Really? Eh, I'm going to have to rewatch these episodes again. I mentioned before I'm struggling to hear the dialogue (I'm partially deaf). I must have missed it. The subtitles on Rooster Teeth have been really annoying — although the gen:LOCK ones aren't as bad as the RWBY ones were.

I don't think that's been brought up in the episodes so far, unless it's in one of those Freeze-Frame Bonus shots of the various computer screens. Might be something said on Twitter or other side material.

Yeah, I've been going into gen:lock blind without having watched any of the trailers or ads or anything and I'm pretty sure there's been literally no information on the Union's motivations or organization. Why are they invading New York? Where are they invading from? How is their nanotech so much better than everyone else's? None of that has been addressed at all.

No, it hasn't. Everything we know about them as an enemy is essentially through the eyes of civilians and boots on the ground. Even the bit about "monoculture" is from a Newsweek interview, with a lot of assumptions about them just that.

You know, as generic as the mechs look, there's at least some divergence from mecha genre Cliché Storm that I'm rather liking. All of the pilots bar Cammie have military backgrounds and are full adults, which is a nice departure from the Improbable Age of your typical mecha cast.


Then the Super Prototypes prove to be fairly useless in the hands of novices, while the rank and file BattleTech style mechs are shown to be surprisingly effective in the hands of veterans rather than falling into the typical Red Shirt Army role.


Thus far the Union is the part of the show that really feels lacking; Rooster Teeth seems to struggle with villains; RWBY took 6 seasons to flesh out any of the villains beyond being nebulously evil, and while I doubt Gen:Lock will be that bad about it, it could easily be a while.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 6th 2019 at 9:01:15 AM

From what I've seen of it, the show seems to be much more character-focused than world-focused, at least so far. Maybe we'll get some real in-depth worldbuilding later. I certainly hope so. This show has me pretty well intrigued, but as has been pointed out in this thread, we really know very little about the Union, which- to me at least- makes them come across as kind of generic. Sure, it's early days yet, but that's really not something you want in your primary villains, ideally.

Though that reminds me, we don't know much more about the Polity either. Way I see it, the show's gonna have to dive into the history between these two political entities at some point, otherwise this whole conflict will just come across as tremendously contrived.

Edited by Gault on Feb 7th 2019 at 8:05:01 PM

So this week brings us a training montage/info dump on gen:lock (namely why it's time limited, overclocking is a thing but cuts down on time, you can age out of it - one of the battletech pilots was a potential candidate but just too risky), confirmation that Valentina is genderfluid, our first look at the enemy mech in the OP (poor Cammy), and if I'm not mistaken, a blink and you'll miss it shot of Chase's sister in OzEther.

Also Kazu knows how to make a decent breakfast, and went to the Kazuma Kiryu school of street fighting.

Oh, and Cammy gets her hands on software and stuff for how to customize holons, but I'm sure that won't come up any time soon.

Edited by TheAirman on Feb 9th 2019 at 11:23:52 AM

Dat 1:48 Kazu

We'll always miss you Monty.

Val's in-game avatar is literally David Bowie. Sadly, I really don't feel like Yaz pulls off Blake's look (even if her hands were same colour as the rest of her skin).

From what I've been told about the USMC, only 2/5 personnel playing video games in absence of other orders is highly unrealistic.

Cammie is not a morning person.

They did a real great job with making Cammie's predicament freaky, and giving her a logical reaction to being essentially temporarily driven blind.

Once again the Union comes across as more like a Grey Goo scenario or Rogue AI/Borg situation than a conventional authoritarian regime.

Nice episode, and some much needed info on how Gen:Lock works.

Also, poor Cammie; you can really tell how she's the one with no military background.

They also mention that the Union tries to minimize collateral damage; that's actually consistent with what we saw in the first episode; despite the Sink the Lifeboats thing, their nanotech didn't target civilians who stayed down. It seems like their MO is about control, not just random slaughter, and they want to capture the human capital and infrastructure intact. So a hint of Pragmatic Villainy, nice.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 9th 2019 at 3:49:57 PM

Something this show seems to enjoy is justifying a lot of the tropes in mecha anime that get taken for granted by viewers. Why younger pilots? Because brain chemistry makes older pilots a potential risk at this stage of development. Why have a pilot with issues killing? Because she’s one of a few that are compatible with the tech. Why have Ace Customs? Because if these things are literally being used as bodies, well, the human body is not a one size fits all model, as anyone who’s walked down the street can tell you.

But we still don’t know what the Union wants, let alone how they got the technology to make a Viper II knockoff. I’m happy, the fight choreography was pretty good, but we still have more questions than answers.