What Ars Goetia Demon do you think would fit Orga Itsuka ? Example Mika-Barbatos, McGillis-Bael, etc.
Thanks for the question, anon! Man, it's been so long since I've gotten an IBO ask; I'm so pleased. :D As to your question, this one's actually surprisingly easy. See, a while back I drew up a pile of notes for an IBO/Persona fusion fic that would have involved AU versions of the main cast getting Personas matched to the Ars Goetia demons, including characters that never had Gundams or even mecha in the canon. I never wrote more than a few scenes of it, but I do still have all the notes! So have Orga and his Goetic partner!
Orga Itsuka — Agares. For our upstart leader of Tekkadan, Agares, Duke of Hell, who returns runaways, makes staunch men flee, and tears down established authorities. That last trait is obvious enough for the group of boys that does so much to shake the power structures of the world, but Tekkadan also has a number of routs of supposedly-superior opponents to their name, from the Gjallarhorn assault on CGS when no one expected other than that Third Division would go out there and get slaughtered, to the Dawn Horizon attack, where Tekkadan is so vastly underequipped but still emerges victorious. As to the runaway thing, I believe it’s intended in an ominous way—forcibly returning those who have fled possibly legitimate mistreatment. However, Tekkadan is itself a haven for runaways and strays, so I prefer to tie it to the way Orga builds a family and a place to belong for all those orphans and outcasts in his care. In this sense, Agares’ power over runaways guides them to a more “proper” home.
Want more? I got more. Hit the jump!
Kudelia Aina Bernstein — Buné. Another Duke, Buné grants eloquence and wisdom, speaking true answers in a high, comely voice. For Kudelia, whose impassioned speeches cause governments to take note of her and stop entire fleets from attacking her allies, he’s a strong choice. Buné is, of course, not the only demon who grants wisdom nor eloquence, but he also has associations with the dead, enlisting them into his ranks, making him the most distinct choice for Kudelia, from whom the children who die to advance her cause are ever on her mind.
Eugene Sevenstark — Mathim. Yet another Duke, Mathim can teleport men wherever they need to go and teaches astral projection. The teleportation ties into how Tekkadan’s second-in-command is frequently left in charge of commanding the Isaribi and given full command of the Hotarubi, but more significant is the astral projection—Eugene is the only person in the show fool enough to use his Alaya-Vijnana hookup to route his consciousness into a full-sized starship. A connection to a demon who assists in astral projection is as good an explanation as any for his continued survival with no ill effects from the neural overload.
Biscuit Griffon — Marchosias. A Great Marquis of Hell, Marchosias is another truthful sort, like Biscuit, who is quite poor at concealing unease and frequently willing to speak up about his reservations. Marchosias is, further, strong and reliable, and hoped to return to Heaven after a passage of time, though he was unable to. This makes for a cutting parallel with Biscuit’s willingness to leave Tekkadan entirely to return to his sisters, and the early death which prevents him from having to follow through or not on that choice. (Marchosias has also, between the times of my taking fic notes and the writing of this post, been assigned as the main character’s Gundam in the Venus-based gatcha game. I’d gone to some effort to avoid assigning anyone to a demon that already had an extant Gundam in the show/spin-off material unless it was their own canonical Gundam, but alas, it was bound to happen eventually.)
Atra Mixta — Seir. A Prince of Hell who is indifferent to evil, being of a good-natured temperament. For Atra, surrounded by people much more prepared to resort to violence than she, it speaks to her loving, generous character. Moreover, Seir brings abundance, which parallels well with Atra’s role as cook and, eventually, mother, as well as her epilogue seeing her settled down on a farm.
Ride Mass — Allocer. For Tekkadan’s amateur painter and part-time designer, the Grand Duke Allocer, one of many demons who teaches the arts. For the black-jacketed, bitter youth who guns a man down in a bathroom stall, the burning-eyed knight who induces men to immorality.
Dante Mogro — Valefar. A Duke again, Valefar tempts men to steal and ensures good relationships amongst thieves, traits that speak to Dante’s cheerful nature despite his circumstances and his gleeful embrace of his role as Tekkadan’s hacker.
Chad Chadan — Ipos or Buer. I never made up my mind on this one. Ipos, a Prince and an Earl, grants wittiness and valiance, and can answer questions about past, present and future. This makes a good reference to Chad’s implied-by-the-canon inclination to seek out information in his off-time, and certainly to his brief turn as a Getter Robo character unexpectedly bold performance against Hashmal. Conversely, Buer, a President of Hell, teaches philosophy and heals all injuries and infirmities. The philosophy tack has the same angle as Ipos’ wittiness, but the healing would speak to Chad’s jaw-dropping ability to survive everything the show throws at him—the bridge fight at Edmonton, the bomb in the conference hall, specifically drawing the attention of a mobile armor, the hail of gunfire that takes down Orga, and every other assorted major and minor combat between those more specific events.
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A few quick notes on Mikazuki, Akihiro and Shino, who, of course, already have their Goetic familiars!
Barbatos finds hidden treasures and grants speech with animals. He’s matched to Mikazuki, who pilots a glorified power cell to a triumphant victory and a sea-change in the fortunes of himself and those he cares for, and who probably gets called a space rat more times than anyone else, and certainly carries the bulk of those space rats’ ambitions.
Gusion reconciles friends and grants honor and dignity. He’s matched to Akihiro, who is lead to a reunion and, at the very end, a reconciliation with his younger brother, and who claws himself up from being Human Debris to Tekkadan’s second ace, who carries himself with a diligent sternness.
Flauros is associated with revenge against one’s enemies, as well as being a chatty bastard who will happily talk about many topics, including himself. Further, he is capable of warding his summoner from temptation, but will only do so if specifically asked. Flauros is really just amazingly well-chosen for the gregarious, hot-blooded, cheerfully boastful and perpetually horny Shino.
Not as much as many did, I'd say, but I’m not entirely without complaints. I have a few quibbles--and mostly quibbles that are easily addressed, at that--and a small handful of more serious issues, though nothing that even comes close to breaking the show for me. Under a cut, this one!
I wish Chad could have gotten more to do with his own branch to head. But the severity of what happens to him contributes, I think, to how indebted Makanai is to them, and that owed favor is what saves their entire organization in the end. Truly, Chad's good karma overfloweth.
It would have been nice for Kudelia to have more to do. But Kudelia doesn't get much to do because she outgrew Tekkadan, not the other way around. She's simply playing a more grown-up ballgame than they are--than they insist on, in fact, because Orga and McGillis are, in some ways, cut from the same cloth, and Kudelia has more vision than either of them.
I wish we could have gotten one solid scene on how McGillis and Isurugi crossed paths before the show tried to cram twenty episodes of retroactive characterization into one deathbed gasp about an underprivileged colonist backstory. I mean, it worked for me--I love Isurugi!--but that's because his character type is so up my alley that he's practically breaking into my house. It would have been nice if more people could have seen the appeal, is all.
For more serious complaints, I'd say I really only have three--two a matter of characterization, one a plot issue.
The shameful lack of anything for Almiria to do. I've talked about this extensively here, so just go read that and know--yes, I'm still annoyed about it. Easily my most major complaint about the show on the whole.
I really think the series would have benefited from Rustal being given just a little more attention. I remember the debates when the series ended about whether Rustal was ultimately a more-or-less well-intentioned man who was determined to take down a fascist threat to peace like McGillis even if it took using some unscrupulous methods to do it or whether he was a corrupt monster who skated out the end of the series in a Villains Win ending because the director had a truly ridiculous chip on his shoulder about the unacceptably besmirched morality of his (oppressed) (disenfranchised) (teenaged) (outnumbered) (maladjusted) (take your pick; they're child soldiers) main cast. Did Rustal see the writing on the wall with Gjallarhorn and glided it into a controlled fall that he cannily arranged himself to be in charge of or did he actively sabotage it so he'd be the only person running it in the end?
I don't need a sob story or anything, and it wouldn't take much! Frankly, I think his manly adult friendship with Galan Mossa and his speech to Gaelio (or Iok? whoever) about how McGillis uses the history of Gjallarhorn while trampling on the reality of the people who built that history is, like, two-thirds of the way to a fully coherent character. Just one more concrete moment of him showing a sincere belief in something (even if that something is his own advancement) would have done it, and would have made him a figure better capable of crossing ideological blades with McGillis.
I don't have any problems with the way Naze and Amida went out, not really. They were astounding, foundational badasses and they got a send-off that reflected that. They were adults who made their own calls, saved countless lives, built a (transport) empire that will live on after them, lived and loved with a passion and intensity that we should all aspire to.
Lafter? That one hurts a bit more. I appreciate that she's such a huge badass that she had to be gunned down in public because no one was going to be able to take her in a mobile suit. I really appreciate that she was given the space to come to a mature, adult decision about which she valued more: a prospective romance with a man she'd fallen for and who respected the hell out of her in turn, or safeguarding the family and work that Naze and Amida had given their lives for. I love that she chose the latter. I think the whole arc is consistent with the foreshadowing and the characterization of everyone involved. But.
But.
But there's no getting around that Lafter is an explicit, unambiguous, dictionary-definition, Gail-Simone-blog-post FRIDGING. And that one's always going to taste a little sour, no matter how much else I like about the Turbines and how the show handles them.
Belated Yuletide post (+a bit of Macky/Gaelio meta)
Hey all, I just wanted to drop a note to those interested that I did, in fact, do one Yuletide fic this year--just the one, as I was trying to avoid the three-month writing binge and subsequent dry spell as I also have intentions to try my hand at the worldbuilding exchange this year. It is, perhaps, a bit more in line with my general interests in fic anyway. But! In the meantime, have this:
In Sublimation Found: Of ghosts in machines, and trying not to dwell on the past.
Season 2 era Gaelio and Ein bond emotionally despite having only one body between them. McGillis and Isurugi, meanwhile, are light years apart despite being closer than ever physically. (Features mental links, semi-explicit sex, and dubious applications of McGillis's authority.)
(Below the cut: a few paragraphs of rambling that's about the fic but also about how I see McGillis and Gaelio coping with their dramatic season 1 break-up and how their struggles to process the loss of that relationship impact their respective relationships with Isurugi and Ein.)
I've had my approach to Gaelio and Ein--namely that they get closer as their circumstances get more dire, so by the time the second season rolls around, they're quite intimate indeed-worked out for ages, but it was fun to get McGillis and Isurugi down in writing. We never really see what their first encounter was like such that someone with as many secrets and as much paranoia as McGillis decided to bring someone as stoic and unassuming as Isurugi into his confidence. I'm endlessly fascinated by that, even as I know their affections are terminally unbalanced.
I see McGillis as someone with a nasty tendency to sabotage his own relationships because he doesn't expect them to last and he wants to make sure he comes out on top in the end. Isurugi, meanwhile, has a colonist's self-worth complex and is never going to push for more than McGillis offers even as he also won't turn those offers down. On the one hand, this makes a very stable relationship for McGillis, who badly wants people he can rely on, but on the other hand, that same undemanding nature is also deeply alien to McGillis, and so often leaves him cold. While he can't admit it to himself in so many words, McGillis loved Gaelio, so here we see him trying and failing to keep Gaelio out of his thoughts. Despite sundering their relationship entirely of his own accord, McGillis proves to miss Gaelio terribly.
Gaelio, too, is struggling with the loss of the relationship. He always wrestled with feelings of inferiority to McGillis and has now gotten a particularly cruel demonstration of how little all his efforts to earn McGillis's regard amounted to. However, he's much better adjusted than McGillis, and more open with the subordinate who wants to help and support him, besides, and so he's not anywhere near as mired in his own head as McGillis.
Ever since I saw that the Gundam Café in Akihabara was selling official, licensed teas with the Bauduin and Fareed family crests on them, I knew I was going to write this post someday.
The calls below (other than the two canonical ones) are based on a sort of ambiguous blend of what I think a café might pick (On the Menu), what the characters would think of their family tea in a world with more surviving tea culture than I suspect the IBO world actually has (Tea Culture), and stray facts that influenced my picks or that make fun parallels (Supplementary Notes). I’m tempted to go back in and make bonus picks for Ein, Isurugi, and Julietta, but for now, I’ll try to keep on-theme.
Bauduin Family Blend: Earl Grey.
On the Menu: Bergamont's rich floral scent belies the strength of the black tea brew with its piquant citrus twist; in the same way, the Bauduin family's comfortable affluence masks their intense dedication and trained skill.
Tea Culture: Gaelio is surprisingly fond of tea for a soldier, likely due in no small part to his sister's tireless efforts. His palate is not terribly refined, but he can certainly taste when a brew has turned bitter and isn't afraid to say so. Takes his tea with a lot of milk. Gallus leaves the milk but takes a dash of sugar, and likes his teas brewed strong. Almiria has weaned herself off of both milk and sugar when drinking with company, wanting to seem grown-up; though she secretly does prefer a splash of milk added, she nevertheless has the most refined palate of her family.
Supplementary Notes: Earl Grey has a storied history that, despite all its associations with high-class luxury, has some outrageously fake elements to it. I enjoy the way this echoes how very prepared Gaelio and Almiria both are to flush their family fortunes straight down the drain the moment Earth taboos or paternal authority conflict with their personal desires. Those kids look like nobles, but deep down, they are far more attuned to their own emotions and goals than they are advancing the family's standing in the peerage.
Fareed Family Blend: Darjeeling.
On the Menu: While the labeling of Darjeeling is strictly regulated and monitored, the tea itself is a mild, soft black with faint floral notes. This juxtaposition echoes both the Fareed family's meticulous intelligence and their talent for the delicate art of social maneuvering.
Tea Culture: McGillis has done enough reading, and is attentive enough to social cues, that he can fake it, particularly for Almiria, but his palate is actually quite poor. He can take or leave tea as a drink--he actually prefers coffee--but weird tea classism is exactly the kind of frivolous luxury he loathes on principle. Iznario, on the other hand, is quite discerning.
Supplementary Notes: A fun fact about Darjeeling: While the bulk of black tea in India is cultivated from the local variety of the Camellia sinensis plant, assamica, Darjeeling derives from the Chinese type, sinensis. Literally--early Darjeeling tea was grown from seeds smuggled in from forbidden provinces in China, because the East India Trading Company was getting desperate. I am delighted by the way this parallels Iznario's propensity to more or less steal children to advance his own ends--of course we all know how he came by McGillis, but Carta and Almiria's ties to the Fareed family echo the methodology as well.
Issue Family Blend: Matcha.
On the Menu: The Issue family puts a great deal of stock in tradition and ceremony. Our matcha--rich, astringent, and demanding--is a perfect match.
Tea Culture: Carta, with her strict personality, would be startlingly skilled with the whole matcha process, though it would have taxed her patience mightily as a young child. She would be smug bordering on intolerable that she drinks it straight, unlike that thin, oversweetened nonsense Gaelio favors.
Supplementary Notes: Probably the least likely in-universe call, as Teiwaz and its associated members are the ones hanging onto most of the Japanese culture in the setting, rather than Gjallarhorn, with its European trappings. However, I can't resist drawing the parallel between Carta's fondness for (even reliance on) established battle strategies, her kitsune tails and kabuki makeup, and matcha, that most rigorously, performatively Japanese of teas. If I didn't go with matcha, I probably would have gone with a good quality white, but the delicacy and subtlety of white teas didn't really seem like Carta's bag, and we don't have any other family members to compare to.
Kujan Family Blend: Masala Chai.
On the Menu: An Assam-based blend, this bold black tea is warmed by cloves, ginger and nutmeg. It reflects the Kujan family's reputation for producing leaders whose strength and easy charisma win the unflagging loyalty of their followers. Sweeten liberally with milk and cinnamon for the young or young at heart!
Tea Culture: Iok's father, a man of such legendary prowess and charm that he had a generation of soldiers prepared to die for his children, probably drank this mostly straight, adding milk to sweeten it a bit when he was sharing it with his men. Iok, who has the taste palate of a spoiled nine-year-old, likes it so sweet that the family cook has secretly taken to leaving the Assam out entirely.
Supplementary Notes: Iok is actually the person in the cast most likely to know his way around a Japanese tea ceremony, if his talent for kanji calligraphy is anything to go by, but chai's particularities--a widely social drink, and one whose production varies so hugely recipe to recipe that some of them don't even bother with tea leaves at all--make it an easy call for someone like Iok, whose charisma and passion make it easy to miss that someone left all the authenticity in his father's cup. Iok is also the most "exotic"-looking of the Gjallarhorn cast, and chai is exotic enough that it's spread overseas under a name that in its own language just means "tea," making it a likely call from our hypothetical Gundam café looking to find something that's foreign-sounding but not so obscure that it's unmarketable.
Elion Family Blend: Russian Caravan.
On the Menu: This green/black tea blend--oolong, keemun, and lapsang souchong--is famed for its characteristically smoky flavor. Bold and complex by turns, but with a mellow finish, this nuanced brew matches perfectly to the Elion family's dauntless yet urbane heir.
Tea Culture: Rustal, like McGillis, has little investment in Tea Culture, though in his case it's more because he already knows what he likes and has little interest in exploring other flavors as a weird rich person hobby. Exasperatingly set in his ways, he makes no secret of the fact that he thinks his family brew is a superior tea, and is happy to lean into the star-faring romance of its characteristic flavor blend (see below).
Supplementary Notes: The smoke flavor today comes from the lapsang souchong, which is dried over pine smoke, but folklorically, it was thought to have been imparted to the tea by the smoke of campfires on the long trek through Mongolia between China and Russia. As the admiral of the Arianrhod fleet, Rustal is the member of the Gjallarhorn cast who does the most traveling in the black depths of space, and so the imagery of strong-flavored brews to push back against the cold felt like a natural match. Additionally, while Rustal isn't canonically of any particular nationality, he does share his ash blond hair shade with many an anime Russian, which also influenced this match.
Baklazan Family Blend: Silver Needle.
On the Menu: This most rarified of white teas features a profoundly delicate flavor with just a whisper of natural sweetness. The skill, care and discernment involved in its production speak to the Baklazan family head's light touch and keen insight, honed over his many long years on the Council of the Seven Stars.
Tea Culture: Lord Baklazan sticks almost completely to white and green teas; even oolong is a bit over-strong for his palate. He's blind, and so finds quite enough to savor in the milder, more nuanced cups of the traditional Eastern teas. He's a bit busy to mind his family's tea brand on his own, but there's an underling on the family payroll whose only and entire job description is "tea master," who Nemo is relieved to say he's unlikely to outlive.
Supplementary Notes: We know precious little about Nemo Baklazan, other than his very particular design--even his being blind is blatant supposition on my part--but someone in that council room after McGillis's coup looked around at a room full of dudes in full riot gear and decided, "Despite the implications of those worryingly large guns, McGillis actually can't force us to side with him." Between Nemo, Gallus, and Lord Falk, I'm willing to bet it was Nemo, suggesting a prudent, cautious, but ultimately insightful man. I also wanted to have a proper white on this list somewhere, and he definitely looks the type to have the most refined tastes in Chinese teas. Silver Needle is, not coincidentally, also the most expensive white tea, which feels appropriate for one of the oldest and most influential men in the solar system.
Falk Family Blend: English Breakfast.
On the Menu: A blend of Ceylon and Assam teas with an added earthy Kenyan, brewed to stand up to all the milk or sugar you could add as an indispensable part of the classic full breakfast. Our stoutest black, this tea reflects the Falk family's pragmatism and resolve in the face of the changing times.
Tea Culture: Probably the member of the Seven Stars with the greatest active interest in where his household is procuring its tea, Lord Falk always has time to offer his opinion on a cup--Almiria found him to be quite the educational resource, on the few occasions they ever spoke. He has a generous, adventurous palate, though he feels most at home with traditional blacks.
Supplementary Notes: Oh my god, you guys, we know basically nothing about Elek Falk--he doesn't even have Lord Baklazan's distinct design! He has a big medallion of the sort that you sometimes see on Anime Popes, but there's no indication that organized religion figures into Gjallarhorn's affairs, and even if it does, the dude who responds, "That's just a fairy tale!" to claims of Agnika's soul animating Bael does not strike me as a likely spiritual leader. He seems interested in getting to the bottom of mysteries--he's one of the voices pressing for continued investigation into Galan Mossa after the Silent War--but those are literally all of the characterization cues we get for him. I don't want to sit here saying, "I picked English Breakfast because he looks like a guy who never skips a good full breakfast, if you get my drift, hohoho," but, like, if the shoe fits...
i realized mika's the only one of the tekkadan boys to have a specific thing he wants to do outside of fighting- farming- which is kinda ironic considering he's been called aimless. so do you have any ideas of what the other boys could/would like to do as a profession/career outside of fighting (not counting what they actually ended up doing in the epilogue)? doesn't have to be for everybody, just for whoever you can think of. thank you :)
I got this ask ages ago and have been periodically rolling it around in and around other things, but I put it in front of myself again today and finally typed out a response. Below the cut, some thoughts on what these boys would be doing if they had, not only all survived the series, but done so in a way that left them free to pursue whatever ambitions or talents they might desire or discover.
Most of them.
Lets start with the inner circle and work our way out.
I think Biscuit (whose survival is probably the reason everyone else is alive in this hypothetical AU of ours, because he would have an aneurysm before he let Orga join hands with McGillis Fareed) could be good at practically anything he puts his mind to, and therefore, what I think he should probably do is go to school. He obviously values education–he spent lord knows how much time endangering life and limb to earn the money to put Cookie and Cracker through school, and clearly admires how far Savarin’s schooling took him in life. As to what he might study, there are a number of ways that could go–agricultural sciences to help his Granny Sakura with the farm, business to pick up where Savarin left off, possibly a social science so he can find a job in all the inevitable restructuring that Mars’ new government will be doing.
Eugene, more than anyone else, strikes me as wanting to find someone to settle down with. Unlike Shino, who talks about women solely in the context of his sex drive, Eugene is interested in romance. And while he doesn’t seem to have had much luck with that in IBO’s canon epilogue, in a more peaceful time, it’s easy to imagine him devoting more energy to dating. Without Tekkadan eating up his attention, whatever career he finds a way into–possibly bodyguard work still, or maybe an office job like Zack’s–would, I think, be just a way to help support a family.
Akihiro, unlike most all of the boys, already has a girl who’s interested in him, and if he survived this show for this AU, I see no reason to not imagine the Turbines did also. Lafter plainly was never going to leave the Turbines to be with him, of course, but if there was no Tekkadan to protect… I don’t think Naze would be very keen to break his girls-only rule, but every chick must leave the nest eventually–perhaps Lafter and Akihiro might be entrusted with protecting/leading another branch of the business? Given the size of the organization*, there must be other battleships doing the transport business/transport protection thing. Or they could just accompany whichever shipment Naze directed them towards.
That is, though, probably kind of a longshot. Tekkadan Inc. or no, Akihiro has strong feelings about protecting his family, and where I think that’s most likely to leave him is actually in Dante’s place in the epilogue, helping run the orphanage and taking care of children. While I don’t know that gentleness and empathy will ever come easily to him, he would be able to relate with the stories of the many ex-Debris children that orphanage is implied to be seeing post-outlawing-of-legal-child-trafficking, and it would be a way to both honor and grapple with the memory of Masahiro.
Derma would probably end up in about the same place he does in the show–assuming Akihiro doesn’t get adopted by the Turbines, I think Derma would follow him to the orphanage. He had been more directly under Dante’s wing in the series, of course, but for a lot of reasons, I don’t think that the same things that would appeal to Dante in civilian life would hold much interest for Derma. He doesn’t have Dante’s knack with computers; he doesn’t share Dante’s itch for fame. But he does have a load of self-confidence issues that make him exactly as likely to relate to orphan ex-Debris kids as Akihiro’s losses make him. (It’s also the case that Derma is the Tekkadan kid who’s the least explored outside of being a child soldier, so I’m inclined to err on the side of what the show points him to rather than make things up wildly, which is essentially what I’d be doing otherwise.)
Returning to the main group, Shino is easy; in a scenario in which he isn’t a paid civilian soldier, that guy has got “stunt show pilot” written all over him. I doubt Mars’ entertainment industry is so well developed that they need or can afford to hire mobile suit pilots for TV/film work, but I bet the planet can support something more like the Post-Disaster equivalent of monster truck derbies. They’d probably involve old/restored mobile workers, rather than the expensive military hardware that is a proper mobile suit, but I certainly don’t put it past Shino to showboat around in a decommissioned Flauros from time to time.
Dante, always grouped with Shino in combat, would probably follow him here. In a peaceful epilogue, Dante easily could have an entirely lucrative (and possibly illicit) career with his computer skills, but I think he’d finding sitting at a computer all day to be unfathomably boring the more like an actual desk job it became. Compared to the measure of fame Shino would be making for himself, it’s obvious which Dante would go for. Also, with two people with mobile suits, they could possibly get some kind of MS boxing circuit going. I think that would be a very longterm project, more suitable for when things calm back down and there are all these mobile suits around collecting dust.
Yamagi is a mechanic–he’s one of the few characters with job experience other than “soldier,” and there’s no reason to expect him to change streams from the canon to this AU. However, I think Yukinojo and Merribit would have encouraged him to go work with Shino’s pit crew/show team before too long, if he ever held a job down at Kassapa Factory to begin with. He and Shino are, almost certainly, dating on the side. Just, like, fill in Shino and Yamagi for the Special Feeling umbrella meme.
Ride is another gimme. He has an obvious artistic streak, the evidence of which is painted all over the Isaribi, the Tekkadan complex, and the orphanage building. If he didn’t need to fight (and while he was pretty gung-ho about it originally, I have to think the trauma from Hashmal and the agriculture plant is going to be long-lived), it’s very simple to imagine Ride getting nudged into pursuing art in a more professional way. Especially if Kudelia’s new government is subsidizing such things.
Chad is another one that I’d like to see in school. There are several instances in the series that impy he’s doing serious amounts of research/study on the side–he’s constantly shown asking pertinent questions or showcasing some skillset or bit of knowledge that he has no business having access to based simply on what we’re explicitly told about him. Given that, it’d be interesting for the others to convince him to set aside the helper ant mentality and go learn something he thinks is interesting. While Biscuit has family needs to guide his academic choices, Chad could really get into anything. I would slot him into a field that involves research but also quantifiable knowledge–history, for example, or psychology, rather than e.g. theoretical physics. I kind of love the idea of Chad getting access to a bunch of banned books via Kudelia or their Teiwaz connections.
Takaki seems on-track to wind up in politics, if not as a politician himself, then as the sort of lobbyist or aide that any notionally democratic government runs on. Given that he bailed out of fighting by choice, this seems to be his chosen path in any case. He’s also likely to make a hell of a diplomat when he gets older and picks up more confidence in himself.
Aston is so rooted in his self-image of “soldier” that it’s difficult to imagine what he might want to do outside of that field. We do know a few things about him that could give us a direction, though: he’s observant (noticing more about Fuka’s schoolwork than her own brother), he’s relatively prudent and cautious (his teamwork with Vito, and his reluctance to wildly charge McGillis), and he’s a mediator (between his quartet back with the Brewers, and again between Takaki and the other Earth Branch boys). So what kind of career could combine those traits with his gravitation towards military settings? Personally, I think he’d do really well as a crisis negotiator–a specialist brought in by police to help with hostage situations and other threats of e.g. domestic violence, terrorism, suicide, and so on. Of course, the trick there is less getting certified for that job than it is finding a group to work alongside–while I can see him joining an Arbrau/Edmonton police force, it’s much harder to imagine him being able to get a job with Gjallarhorn. In any case, assuming he can manage to find an avenue for said work, he’d be great at it.
This brings us to our Season 2 newbies.
Hush I would mostly see following Mikazuki into farming. Not just to be following Mika, mind, but because Hush’s motivation, beyond a big ol’ chip on his shoulder about the Alaya Vijnana system, is much the same as so many others–to protect and provide for his social circle. If he’s provided an avenue for that that isn’t constant endangerment of life and limb, I think it’s what he’d go for. And farming is helping to provide for a great many people, some very directly–the fact that he can still be around to help Mikazuki is just a bonus.
Zack joined Tekkadan because of their fame, rather than out of real necessity–so what exactly did he think was so cool about Tekkadan to begin with? Given his reticence about actual combat when he comes face to face with it, perhaps it’s more the “spitting in Gjallarhorn’s eye” aspect than the feats of badassity? Given that, what could he do that would scratch that itch? Well, he’s a hell of a programmer, and has Dante available to teach him anything about hacking he doesn’t already know. I think he’d be very happy being one of those whistle-blower internet Ariadne activist types, finding secret information, info on cover-ups, or details on corruption, and providing proof of such things to the world at large, particularly given how government-controlled the media is in the setting.
Dane is already living a life free of fighting, so it’s possible that, absent Tekkadan being a bunch of criminals, he might end up working at Kassapa Factory anyway, or perhaps going with Yamagi to Shino and Dante’s venture. He’s another big mystery as to things he might enjoy outside of work; for example, he evinces little patience with Hush until Hush starts showing some basic empathy/humility, which leads me to think that close work with people would probably not be his thing. So sticking to work with his hands, I wonder if he, like Ride, would get any mileage out of art? He could snap paintbrushes like twigs, of course, but I can see him being good at something like pottery, and if his pre-show history is as violent as we’re lead to believe, I can see it being relaxing–probably as a hobby, rather than a career, just something he can do on his own time and terms.
So, that’s every–mm? A significant exclusion? A deuteragonist undiscussed?
Oh, right.
So, Orga. What would Orga do in peacetime? Well, that’s difficult to even try to conceive. Orga, like McGillis, is massively defined by both his ambition and his dissatisfaction with the status quo. He’s never satisfied, never content; he interprets Mikazuki’s intense gaze as a challenge, and it never stops pushing him forward, no matter who else tries to tell him he’s going too fast. What could Orga ever do in peacetime? It’s tempting to say that every one of the hypothetical outcomes above was paid for in Orga’s blood, because less than a handful of these people would ever desert Orga if he lived, and while he lived and had people looking to him, he would never stop. In that way, Tekkadan is in a feedback loop that they can’t get out of without a system-redefining change. Looking at his skill set, we again find a bunch of things that suggest that Orga works best as a leader–he’s canny, highly charismatic, a quick thinker, and he has killer instincts, albeit with some Mikazuki-sized blind spots. This is a kid practically fated to be a gang leader–and he’s also oathsworn to the mob, making getting out of that life safely a dicey prospect.
So what is there for him, if not fighting? Purely as an imaginary exercise, he’d be a scary effective community leader. I mean, just imagine being a city representative showing up to a town hall meeting and this is waiting in the front row:
But that’s still pretty mundane. Lets try something really different on for size.
During the season break, Orga is attending some official function at Saisei, lurking around afterward and waiting for a chance to talk to Naze. Out of nowhere, he gets jumped by the fashion equivalent of Saisei’s eccentric mechanic, who insists that Orga’s je ne sais quoi levels are off the charts, and he absolutely must grant her at least one modeling session. Naze, walking in on this conversation, has a huge laugh about it and goads Orga into accepting. And then the whole of the second season gets derailed because suddenly Orga is faced with the argument that sufficiently famous people are also rich and powerful, rich and powerful enough that he could relocate his entire gang to some private satellite around Jupiter if he were so inclined. And maybe it feels immaterial, and maybe it wasn’t the method what he expected, but that doesn’t make the paycheck any less real. The designer tells him in no uncertain terms that if he wants to continue, she will personally talk McMurdo Barriston’s ear off about how he is completely wasting this surly teenager’s God-given personal magnetism.
Orga immediately has a huge crisis over it, because it feels terrifyingly unmasculine and he has no concept of the term “soft power.” Atra loves it, though, and Biscuit thinks it’s strange but effective. Things almost fall through anyway when it comes out that Orga has a whisker implant, but the designer is insistent, so they end up just photo-editing it out and limiting his public appearances, which is just as well, because he finds crowds and fans alike to be extremely uncomfortable.
Tekkadan still do odd jobs for Teiwaz now and again, like protecting Kudelia from Dawn Horizon, but are mostly out of the line of fire when McGillis starts looking around for allies. McGillis, deprived of a Tekkadan he can talk around on joining him, is left profoundly annoyed. How things go from there is a whole new question.
*Allow me to quote from this post:
In the interest of context for the number I’m about to lay on you, the Dawn Horizon group–a band of pirates who have ten ships and are considered sizeable enough that they fill a niche that’s important to Gjallarhorn, and would also be too much a pain to try to oust entirely, have around 2,500 members. Wow! That’s a lot!
The Turbines have 50,000 members.
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Wow, that is a heck of a question, anon. A question, I think, that we don’t really know enough to answer, especially because there’s so, so much packed into the phrase “truly loved.” I hate to admit it about any aspect of the show, but that’s just not a level of conjecture I’m comfortable making and tagging under the auspices of ‘researched meta’ rather than ‘blatant speculation.’
I can give you some considerations to help you draw your own conclusions, though. I’ll put this under a cut for discussion of Almiria, McGillis and the nature of their relationship post-marriage.
o How close was Gallus to his children? How close was he to his parents? Almiria looks to be largely watched over by her maid–is that because her mother’s not around anymore or is there just not a great deal of familial closeness in the Bauduin family/the Seven Stars at large? Was he closer to Gaelio, as the son he was raising to follow directly in his footsteps, or was Gaelio likewise raised mostly by tutors and servants when he wasn’t running around with McGillis and Carta?
o Did Gallus listen to his children? What does it mean that Gaelio thought it better to stay with Rustal Elion than even hint to his family that he had survived the Battle of Edmonton? Is that a statement on Gaelio’s lack of trust, an implication that he doesn’t think Gallus can keep a secret, or was Gaelio just too wrapped up in his own sense of betrayal and whatever advice Rustal was feeding him to even consider contacting his family? And on the other hand, did Almiria ever have any reservations about her engagement? Probably not too many–she plainly adores McGillis–but that just leads us to another problem.
o A huge issue with breezily stating that Gallus loves his children is the matter of Almiria’s marriage to McGillis. It’s one thing when it was just a betrothal–you could put off a betrothal for years–but by the second season, we are by all available evidence post-wedding. Does that mean Almiria and McGillis have consummated? What would the expectation have been, socially? And if that social expectation was that McGillis would wait until Almiria was an appropriate age before–lets call it ‘advancing’ things, does that actually even matter? Surely there’s moral culpability in sending your daughter into another man’s home before she’s of an age where sex would be healthy or safe, regardless of whether or not her husband has promised to wait. How does this decision weigh into “love,” and if it damns the possibility for Almiria, can we automatically assume it does the same for Gaelio?
o Consider the fact that IBO was specifically conceived to be somewhat more “medieval” in execution. Barbatos’s mace is just the most blatant example; are medieval ideas about marriageable age also present? If that’s the norm for the setting, or Earth nobility generally, how does that impact our view? Are we defining by his terms or by ours? If you think that his decisions about Almiria make him a terrible person–a narcissist, an abuser, a neglectful parent, or whatever conclusions you come to–you then also have to ask whether you think terrible people are capable of true love. Do you subscribe to the belief that abusers by definition do not feel love, because 1 Corinthians 13:4-7? Or do you think that abusers can love, but that love is not enough to render an abuser not an abuser?
Here’s what I think:
When Gaelio cuts into McGillis’s broadcast, revealing his face to the world, he names himself specifically as the son of Gallus Bauduin, and the scene very pointedly shows us this:
That’s Gallus falling to his knees, a sheen of tears flashing over his eyes as his breathing goes hoarse and thready. There’s no faking that reaction. If anything, it’s a reaction that would be dangerously vulnerable in the normal cutthroat atmosphere of the Seven Stars meetings.
A few episodes later, we see him in McGillis’s home, trying to collect Almiria, and his tenor there–to my ear anyway–is furious with outrage. He shouts at Almiria briefly, but his words are all about McGillis; he groups Almiria in the number of those who have been betrayed, not those who are doing the betraying. When Almiria makes her stand, though, he doesn’t try to boss her around as her father or physically force her to do what he wants. He just says her name–not disappointed, or angry, but heartbroken, like he’s finally realizing that he has lost both of his children, and for no reason but his own power-plays.
To reiterate a point I’ve made before, I think Gallus loved and raised his children in the same way that he was loved and raised as a child, and that’s really where the problem lay all along.
not any major question but I was wonder what characters do you consider underrated(besides chad)?
Well, first let me distinguish between underrated and underutilized. The former is, I think, a fandom view, while the latter would be characters I think the show itself didn’t do enough with. There would be a bit of overlap between lists, I think, but not much–if the show can’t be bothered to do enough with a character to make them interesting, who can expect the fandom to care?
So this list will be more about characters I think the show mostly did just fine with, and who should get more love by the fandom! And I’m glad you gave me the plural option there, because while I could narrow this down to the single character I think is most underrated (and I’ll flag her when I get there), I’d certainly rather ramble about lots of them.
-All of the Human Debris Whose Names Don’t Start With The Letter A: Dante is competent at things he has no business being competent at; he’s funny, in a very different way than Shino, and his desire to make a name for himself combined with his history suggests a streak of pure defiance that it’s a miracle his Debris days didn’t break him of. Derma doesn’t get as much narrative attention as Masahiro or screentime as Aston, but he’s a keeper anyway. Thoughtful and measured, unwaveringly loyal, and I would bet money that he has a Survivor’s Guilt Complex the size of at least a small moon. And Chad (YES I KNOW) is a hard worker, smarter than he thinks, a complete sweetheart, and also riddled with self-confidence issues, and he does not get enough love.
-Biscuit: He completely dropped out of the fandom’s eye after the first season, and it’s a shame, because I think there’s a lot to be said about how things might have gone if he’d lived. There was talk in Season 2 about how Orga made so many decisions alone–Zack wasn’t close enough to him; Eugene and the others too dependent–but Biscuit would have been that bridge. He’s one of those characters that needed to die for Tekkadan’s rise-to-glory/fall-from-grace story to go the way it did, but I wish I saw him in more AUs. If he doesn’t die, he’s going to be really important!
-Savarin: Savarin was doing his best, okay? And yeah, his best was pretty bad, but he had a horribly well-positioned view of what was going to happen if anything went even a little wrong, and then watched all those exact things go down just like he knew they would. And then he died, and then Biscuit died, and we don’t even know how much Cookie and Cracker ever found out about any of it. What a shame. The Dort Uprising cast are characters that really help flesh out the Post-Disaster timeline as a setting, and speaking as someone who has played a tabletop game in that setting, they’re Good Characters.
-Isurugi: Yeah, he could have used even one dedicated scene before his death, but good lord, even going on what we have, Isurugi is fantastic. He’s stoic but clearly still sitting on a huge untapped well of sentimentality, devoted even when McGillis is giving him absolutely nothing in return emotionally, and clearly the sort who thinks things through at length before deciding on a path, yet once he’s made that decision, he is as constant and unwavering as wrought iron. I’m dying to see more of anything exploring Isurugi, and the emotional investment he’s made in McGillis regardless of McGillis’s reciprocation or lack thereof.
-Iok: Look, I know all the reasons people hate Iok, and they’re all valid. But like… Guys, he makes a legitimate attempt to protect Rustal Elion by throwing himself between Rustal and a dainsleif. It’s hard not to love that kind of genuine, pure–and very, very stupid–devotion at least a little.
-Todo Mirconen: Fight me, Todo is hilarious. And maybe there’s just a little bit more to him than everyone thinks? Like, he’s a bully early on, sure, but I don’t think he’s a coward, per se, so much as he is self-serving to the bone. Remember that, front lines or not, we meet him as an employee of a civilian military contractor. And perhaps he didn’t have much choice in jobs when he was younger, but I think it’s pretty clear by his connections in the second season that he could have gotten out of that life by the time we meet him if he’d really wanted to. I think, despite his appearance, he maybe does enjoy having a modest degree of excitement in his life?
Amida: If I had to pick one character to top this list, it’d be her. I think there’s a very solid case to be made for Amida being the most purely skilled pilot in the whole of the show, but I don’t actually care overmuch about Who Would Beat Batman In A Fight categorizations, when instead there’s a much more interesting case to be made about her and Naze near singlehandedly wiping out an entire sector in which female Human Debris were probably trafficked. Truly, Amida is a light that burns as brightly as the sun. What a champ. What a complete queen. What an exemplar to her women. I wish pixiv could do her more justice than porny doujin and fanart where she’s shorter than Naze.
-Kudelia: Curiously, I think people undersell her pragmatism and why she’s going to be as important in Mars’ future as she is. Kudelia–even in her idealistic early days, and only getting more prominent over time–has a realistic side her character type often lacks, most explicitly laid out in her early talks with Makanai and the situation with Hashmal.
-All the show’s wacky Space Pirates are terrible and yet great. They’re not important enough to the plot for me to begrudge the fandom for ignoring them, but like the Dort characters, they’re a big part of the setting’s flavor, and I love them for that. I hope Dawn Horizon staged a daring rescue of their captain in all Gjallarhorn’s confusion and internal strife at the end of the season. If Kudal Kudan had survived, I would have wanted him and Brooke Kabayan to escape into the abandoned section of whatever mining colony the Turbines dumped them on and then spent the next twenty years hating each other less than they did the entire rest of the universe.
-Makanai’s aide: So underrated by the show that he never even gets a name. I don’t think the show needed to do more with him, but he’s the number one bit character I wish we had a name for, even if just in the credits like Yamazin.
you have made mention a few times of Almiria having an adolescent apocalypse and I was wondering what do you mean by that?
I am referencing two different anime movies with that joke. The first is Char’s Counterattack, the very first Gundam theatrical movie and a sequel/finale to the Universal Century timeline as it existed in 1988. The second is the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie, Adolescence Apocalypse. Utena is a famously feminist work, and deals with some specific themes that I think would be very interesting in relation to Almiria, particularly Almiria in a hypothetical sequel to IBO.
(That’s the short answer; if you want something a bit more rambling and in-depth, hit the jump.)
As far as the Char’s Counterattack reference goes, the general consensus around the IBO fandom seems to be that, if IBO ever gets a movie or OVA for itself, there are really only three things it could be: a prequel about the Calamity War, an adaptation of the spin-off Gekkou novels, or a sequel about how Ride’s activities as seen in the epilogue eventually start getting everyone into a great deal of trouble, presumably set far enough after the climax that Akatsuki could credibly pilot a mobile suit if the plot required it of him. People jokingly refer to the sequel option as Ride’s Counterattack.
I refer to the concept as Ride’s Rebellion, myself, because I like the look of the alliterative Rs better, but I am actually far less interested in a sequel featuring Ride than I am in one featuring Almiria, who I feel is at best underutilized and at worst baldly mistreated by the series in general. There’s an interview around in which a staff member, when asked about where Almiria is in the epilogue, quips that she is “too much of a mess” to show. I’ve seen this interpreted as both a really ominous suggestion about Almiria’s state of mind, and a much more innocuous joke about Almiria being in the middle of an awkward puberty, but I think it’s a profoundly cowardly choice either way.
Almiria is used as a pawn at every turn, jerked around by everyone around her, and even when she tries to exercise her own agency, she’s thwarted–McGillis stops her from killing herself; McGillis dies, rendering her choice to stand by his as his wife moot. And like, obviously her relationship with Macky is not a healthy one, but I think it’s unfair that the series never really takes the plunge on dealing with that, and can’t even be bothered to give us a hint as to how Almiria is dealing with things, 5-8 years on. Where is she living? Did she inherit anything of McGillils’s after his passing? Has she forgiven McGillis? Has she forgiven Gaelio? Has she forgiven anyone? Has anyone ever bothered to take her seriously enough to listen to her about her feelings, rather than just dictate to her how she should feel?
I love the idea that yeah, sure, Ride’s getting into trouble, running with bad crowds and murdering politicians–but Almiria, who is still pissed off at pretty much the entire world about what happened to McGillis, and the way no one will allow her the dignity of acknowledging her stake in that, is a young noblewoman with a hell of a lot more resources than Ride, and a tendency to be overlooked/underestimated. I want her to pick up Todo Mirconen and all of McGillis’s resources from Montag. I want her to plot the assassination of Rustal Elion. I want to see her play the social game better than anyone else in the show. I want to see her and Gaelio have a screaming match and then a breakdown about McGillis and their very difficult feelings about him. I want to see her and Atra meet, because I feel like Atra is the person in the cast most capable of offering Almiria some basic human sympathy.
Returning to the specific title reference, Revolutionary Girl Utena is one of anime’s undisputed masterpieces, and well worth everyone’s time. It builds its surreal comedy, strict formalism, gutwrenching pain–and, ultimately, its hopeful ending–on themes of escaping cycles of abuse; on the harm that patriarchal power structures inflict on men and women alike; on the nature of stories that we tell ourselves and the unreliability of memory.
I feel like all of these are rich threads to look at in conjunction with Almiria. As a young noblewoman rather than a street urchin boy in a deeply gender-segregated setting, she would have to find her own methods to fight, and those would be fascinating to see–and would facilitate giving Kudelia and Atra things to do other than make one (1) dramatic speech at the right time or stand around looking worried waiting for the boys to come back home safe. Likewise, the way McGillis groomed Almiria is unconscionable, but the love she felt for the man must be grappled with for her to begin to heal, and to do so in a way that doesn’t throw the rest of the world back into chaos simply because she’s (for instance) trying to see through his goals as a way to honor his memory and vindicate her own pain.
If we have to endanger Tekkadan’s precious few survivors (the number one reason I fear a sequel is putting a target on Chad’s back again) and all of Kudelia’s hard work because Ride is being a bitter hothead, then I hope we can also get a work that treats Almiria as a person instead of a plot device. I want Almiria to be a mess, not some callow little girl whose pain can be soothed with a pat on the head and a handwave. That is the material I refer to as Almiria’s Adolescence Apocalypse–because when a girl in her position wants to shake the world because of her unresolved emotional issues, then yeah, it could turn out to be a pretty apocalyptic adolescence for everyone.
(And, yes, I also just like all the alliterative As.)
