• Quoth my friend, prior to starting the DVD: “No way they can wrap this up satisfactorily in three more episodes, particularly when they spent the last DVD dicking around with comic relief.”
• Wow, the music choices for the beginning here, where they’re recapping Karin collapsing are kind of… odd.
• Star Seed, huh? Clearly the main villain is Sailor Galaxia! Or something.
• …so during the bit where Shizuha and Mikaze are sneaking into the evil conspiracy lab to rescue Karin, Shizuha flashes a little gold button at the guard, who is shocked and lets them past despite his suspicions. Did my friend and I miss something, or is this completely unexplained?
• My friend reminds me that the stuff about Shizuha and licenses didn’t come out of nowhere, but was mentioned way back on the first DVD. I completely forgot about it, probably because it doesn’t get even a mention on DVDs 2 and 3.
• Quoth my friend again: “I think we’re thinking harder about this show than the creators did.”
• So… what was the deal with the evil conspiracy anyway? They show too much emotion to be infected, I think, but their motivation for apparently wanting the alien’s vaguely defined plot to succeed is never really explained. (They go to the point of trying to stop the Meteor Sweepers from intercepting a fragment that would hit central Japan so it’s hard to see them as anything other than willing collaborators.)
• Incidentally, we finally see a male on the orbital station! Huzzah!
• The attempts to call back our main characters when the comet changes course seem kind of silly. It’s established that if the comet hits it’s the end of human life. Anything is a better idea than just letting it past.
• Quoth Mikaze (paraphrased): “I can’t die here; I’ve got too much left to do!” Quoth me: “Unfortunately, physics does not care.”
• Okay, so I’ve still got a bunch of questions about Karin, namely: Accepting the idea of preserving the one apparently non-taken over infected person for study, and even letting her loose for a better experiment toward coexistence… why in the world would you put her or let her get into a position where she’s given countless opportunities to reveal that she’s a sleeper agent and infect Earth’s defenders and a position where she’s likely to be re-exposed? What triggers the infection flaring up again? How much of her pre-infection persona survives, or are we dealing with an alien that happens to think she’s Karin? Just why do the other infected care so much about recovering her?
• For that matter, how was Miharu infected, and how did she avoid detection for so long? There might be no way to detect infection, but surely the sudden, drastic change in personality would set off a warning flag that would prevent her from becoming commander of an orbital station?
• Unless CEMA is completely under the control of the collaborators, of course, but then they could have been much more effective in general. All the orbital staff could have been infected easily, for one.
• Shouldn’t CEMA – assuming non-complete domination by infected people – have had some sort of contingency plan for the orbital stations getting infected? Even if the non-collaborators had no idea about infection, surely there would have been some sort of mission sent up to investigate the stations.
• My friend mentions that the series was too short for the story they were trying to tell. I think it could have been done in thirteen episodes if they’d been more focused and not packed the entire actual plot into three to five of them.
• It would be really interesting to see a fanfic that told the whole story from the perspective of the orbital station and the Comet Blasters. Lots of nice potential for creepiness as the crew gets infected one-by-one…
• I guess I can kind of see why Steven Den Beste calls this a sports anime, but I’m not sure I agree. Closest to watching sports anime I’ve gotten is watching Prince of Tennis and Hikaru no Go over my sister’s shoulder, but it seems to me that there’s an element of… competition, I guess, that Stratos 4 is lacking. There’s bits and pieces of it, with the girls’ minor rivalry with boys at the beginning and the Meteor Sweepers vs. Comet Blasters thing, but that’s never really the focus.
• Speaking of Steven, a while back I recall he mentioned that one of the most often and annoying “I know you’ve said you’ve considered and rejected, but I think you should try this anime anyway” e-mail types he got was people trying to get him to watch Stellvia. I thought this was kind of odd, since while I knew Stellvia was well-received I didn’t think it really had that much of a vocal fanbase. Having seen Stratos 4, I think one reason for this oddity is that the two are really very similar shows. (Though for at least one stretch, Stellvia is actually way more of a sports anime than Stratos 4 is.) Which isn’t to say Steven would like it, of course – I seem to recall fairly heavy doses of high-school-type angst in the middle of the show, which he’s expressed an aversion to.
• I, on the other hand, remember very much liking what I saw of Stellvia in fansub, and watching Stratos 4 has left me with a strong desire to get the rest of the Stellvia DVDs and finally see the ending to it.
• I was very, very surprised that the ending didn’t involve the girls using the prototype aircraft they’d been rebuilding to take out a comet without Comet Blaster support.
• My final rating on Stratos 4: B- or C+, depending on how charitable I’m feeling. Entertaining, but the general looseness of the plot (in particular the inadequately explained antagonists) keep it from reaching its potential.

And that’s more than enough of that, I think.

…all right. So I do write and anime blog and write fanfiction. So by definition I do have too much free time.

Anyway, on with the cover image, the cut, and then… an unordered list of my thoughts!

• Holy shit! It is Space Lesbian Disease. Well, okay, I’m sure that they don’t actually care about the gender of the victims, and it just happens that the orbital stations are staffed entirely by young, attractive women, but still… Space Lesbian Disease. Sheesh.
• Which reminds me… shouldn’t the obvious clue about the footage from the orbital stations being faked have been that the spokesperson after the “interruption” was male? I know they haven’t explicitly said that the station was female only, but we’ve seen lots and lots of shots of large groups of the crew and they were all female…
• I’m curious as to the initial vector of infection, though. The activity surrounding fallen comets suggests that it might be exposure to fragments of the comet, but then one would expect Space Lesbian Disease to first show up in areas where a comet strike occurred, not out in space where the people are separated from the comet by hard vacuum. I suppose it could be some sort of energy rays from the comet…
• Couldn’t the (presumed) aliens just design the comets to fragment in the upper atmosphere and disperse their payload that way, though?
• My friend suggests that Karin was first infected in the briefly flashed-backed-to apparent space accident, and that SEELE… err, the shadowy conspiracy placed her in the Meteor Sweepers knowing this for some nefarious purpose.
• That wouldn’t surprise me, but I hope not. It doesn’t much match the sudden change in Karin, and there’s been nothing so far that even hints at there being a possibility of the existence of any remotely sane reason for anyone to want to sabotage the Comet Blasters/Meteor Sweepers. (A conspiracy covering up the existence of aliens and Space Lesbian Disease, though, I could totally buy.)
• While it was telegraphed fairly obviously from at least the second DVD on, I am still somewhat surprised at the whole conspiracy/aliens angle. I wouldn’t have expected it from Steven Den Beste’s description of it as a sports anime at the core.
• You’ll note that all my commentary is pretty much on the last episode. While there were some amusing bits, the first two episodes on the DVD just generally felt kind of wasted, particularly given that this is a thirteen episode series. It would have been nice if they’d worked in a Shizuha or Ayamo-focused episode by now.
• It also probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea to have a more Karin-focused episode before she fell pray to Space Lesbian Disease, so that we’d see more of a contrast.
• I also could have sworn that Mikaze’s sister was one of the Comet Blasters, but it seems not. Huh.
• Despite this DVD containing the hot springs episode, the amount of fanservice seemed to drop from last time. I only caught one panty shot (in yet another reminder of why , anime to the contrary, skirts would probably not be uniform wear in a low-gravity environment.
• This list seems fairly negative glancing back up at it, but I did enjoy the DVD. Maybe I should change the tagline from “Yet Another Pointless Anime Blog” to “A Whiny Anime Blog.” Then I can whine about how I talk too much about what I don’t like again!
• Wait, I just did. Quick, something positive… umm… the scenes with the infected crew of the orbital stations were nicely creepy.
• I’m kind of curious how this is going to wrap up in three more episodes. Then again, there are 10 OAV episodes following it, it seems. Doesn’t seem any but the first two are licensed, though.

I think that’s enough for now.

As with the previous DVD, an unordered collection of my random thoughts, though this time written shortly after watching instead of weeks later.

• Mikaze does indeed get a bit more likable this time around, probably due to the fact that things are less exclusively focused on her.
• All the talk about how the Comet Blasters/Meteor Sweepers organization isn’t the military does kind of raise the question of why this isn’t a military (international, but still military) operation. And why there are emotionally unstable teenage girls as pilots.
• The investigatory committee scenes are… interesting. I’ll reserve comment until we inevitably find out The Terrible Secret of SPACE. Err… what’s really going on, rather.
• I’m not sure whether time just dulled our memory, but the level of completely unapologetic fanservice seemed to rise significantly this time around…
• Of course, the Comet Blasters team are all jerks, it seems. Such a surprise.
• My friend and I are in complete agreement that the episode focused around Admiral is by far the best episode thus far.
• We are also in complete agreement that Admiral is no Earth cat, but is instead a spy for the alien invaders.
• Oh, yes, the alien invaders. Well, I assume that’s what they’re hinting at. It’s obvious that something is up, and that’s the obvious answer.
• This show really does remind me of the first half of Stellvia. I really do need to finish getting those DVDs so I can rewatch and finish that series…
• Man, the sudden lesbian rape subplot came out of nowhere.
• My friend and I have therefore reached the conclusion that the aliens’ evil plot is to use Space Rays to turn all of humankind into homosexuals, thus dooming us to extinction. The atmosphere blocks out most of the effect of the rays, but the minor, sustained dosage has lead to the gender segregation we see throughout the show. The “meteors” are just an excuse to get more humans into space and further exposed to the Space Rays. Also, Karin was infected when she blacked out at the end of the last DVD.
• I would post a thought about it being odd that no one seems overly concerned by that, by the way, but the last next episode preview hints that they’ll be addressing it shortly.
• They actually test-fired the engine for the old space-plane they’re renovating! I’m pleasantly surprised.

And I believe that’s about it for now.

Anyway, back over the holidays I was shopping at Best Buy and saw a box set of Stratos 4 going for a mere fifteen bucks. Since Steven Den Beste said nice things about it and the character designs were attractive, I figured it was worth that. So, a few weeks back I dug out the first volume and watched it with a friend.

And now, much later, I’m going to post a collection of random thoughts, mainly for the purpose of having a recent post up here. Potential spoilers for the first DVD after the cut.

• Steven Den Beste is really, really right when he talks about this series not making too much sense if you think about it too hard. Even setting aside the basic premise of the series, the method for dealing with the threat of comet bombardment seems more than a little obtuse.
• Apparently, the world of Stratos 4 – or at least the Comet Blasters/Meteor Sweepers organization – has very strict gender segregation policies, given that every pilot team we see is single-sex.
• At least from DVD 1, I have no clear concept of how the teams we see really fit into the organization. Okay, so we’ve got four person, two-plane teams… but the girl’s team is all made up of trainees while the guy’s team has two kids and two adults. And the adults wear a different uniform. And all the Comet Blasters we see are female, but the male kids seem to be competing to be Comet Blasters too…
• All save one of our core cast of four seem interesting and likable. Sadly, the exception is Mikaze, the apparent main character and the only one to have any real focus on her thus far.
• Why – apparently – don’t the male students have to work a second job too, anyway? Well, because they wouldn’t look good in Chinese dresses, but besides that…
• To quote my friend’s response to the announcement that there was no loss of life from a failed interception where the comet hit a small-seeming, populated island because everyone was evacuated: “No fucking way!”
• That leads into one reason why I’ve yet to get around to watching the second DVD: I’ve really low tolerance for characters that cause major disasters (and realistically, large loss of life) by being willfully stupid and disobeying sensible orders.
• I am fairly curious, however, as to how they justify Mikaze ever getting to fly again…

And that’s about what comes to mind right now. Hopefully when I watch the second DVD, I’ll get around to posting before I have a chance to forget the details…