[25th Anniversary Rewatch] Mugen no Ryvius Episode 16

**Rewatch Host**

Yesterday’s comments had a lot of potential future comments of the day. Keep those guesses coming!

Okay, a lot of you, espectially zadcap, are fixating on the Berkovich/OSB faction wanting to destroy the Ryvius, and then capture the Ryvlus. Lest it continue to ruin the experience for you, let me suggest (a not necessarily correct) hinto towards a rationalization: [why capture instead of destroy]>!Something materially changed since the initial sabotage of the Liebe Delta.!<

* Juli’s defending Blue????

Man, Kouji can’t get a break. The bridge looks down on him for waffling on the rebellion. Yuki’s gonna give him a beating because Lucson (falsely) says he started the rebellion. Just like when he thought (wrongly) Kouji put Yuki on their team. Fortunately, Ikumi knows Kouji is not a man of action, and talks Yuki out of the idea.

* Wait, could that be true? Yuki came here following Aoi?
* I really wanted to use this a Team Blue shot, but Son was already taken “out of the picture”.
* “strong will of the people” do we have Jacobin tribunals coming me? #mugiwait
* I guess you need points to get medical treatment
* part of Kouji’s harem 😀
* FINALLY. Juli is captain. But she really doesn’t want the job.
* Point system remains in place. She tries to make it more egalitarian, but ~~her cabinet~~ the elite won’t have it.
* “We’ve been working hard for Ryvius” AND (almost) everybody else has been working hard to keep Ryvius running, too!
* We rejoiced too soon. Juli is a figurehead. This is the Stein administration.
* if you don’t want to do it, JUST SAY NO. #taigaheadache
* It seems without the guards, people are turning lazy again. They just get their points in “other” ways. So unfair for those who work.
* “go ahead and deduct my points” “I don’t need them anyways”

I guess it’s fair to say that Pink Girl echos the thoughts and feelings of those on the ship. It was fairly easy to guess (not for me) but here she disarms Blue by literally reflecting himself back at himself.

I think, as a first timer, I had lost patience with the mystery girl by the time we got to Saturn. I don’t think I recognized that she was echoing the emotions of the ship. It seemed more like narration to me. But, as she was echoing the thoughts of 500 people, it was completely disjointed. I just didn’t get it.

The old guards got beaten but survived. I guess we can chalk this up to a Stanford prison experiment.

The new guards: Radan, Radan’s disciple, Emerson, Lilith, Johnson. The dregs of the ship.

Yuki finally articulates at least some of what drives his intense disgust for Kouji.

Honestly, sure, give the vital guarder pilots special privileges, they *are* special, and vital. But so are the sub-room solid programmers. Nicks really should be getting more than 4 points a shift.

**First timer, subs**

* Someone must have been taking the Space Media course, they know good propaganda when they see it.
* [The People Deserve **To Know!**](#protest)
* I’m not sure Charlie has it in him to be the hero here, but I wish him good luck.
* Y’all suck at dogpiling.
* [](#azusalaugh) Everything comes together to foil these brothers’ relationship.
* [Gods, Please No!](#KUSOTTARE) Oh thank heavens.
* That seems like a phenomenally shitty first aid system.
* Ribbons needs some Apples to recharge.
* Please don’t fall for the guy who held a gun to your head.
* Finally. Best political decision made in the show so far.
* [Turns Out Entrenched **Interests Are a Thing**](#elves) You can still set the wage, the optics are what’s killing you.
* Y’all had probes? Why didn’t you probe Mars?
* Spock really going for that scheming vizier life.
* [Toxic Love](#anko)
* Why does this ship even have those… foot locks?
* How many times are going to have to repeat this? The brothers hate each other.
* Yep, there’s that guilt by association rearing its ugly head.
* Oh god, the stalker is going police.
* [She’s Doing It! **Conversations!**](#SPORTS)

**QotD:**

1) As many people said when it first showed up, just switching to an all incentive system would be a huge boon.

2) This is only mildly more toxic than your average Shoujo romance. I have to assume it’s based on something.

3) She a zealot doing zealot stuff. This will all make sense once we know their doctrine and dogma.

4) Satisfied.

5) You don’t know me! A heartless bureaucrat would be an upgrade over the previous ones. Seeing so much leadership upheaval will cause him to become overtly paranoid.

6) Most people just don’t want the responsibility. Hundreds of lives depend on her decisions. Plus, the whole figure head deal.

*A Mecha Fan Watches Infinite Ryvius Episode 16:*

– Ah yep, there goes the uprising in full. It’s not surprising at all that a lot of it is the overworked laborers deciding to bum-rush and beat Fuu and the other enforcers with bits of pipe. After all, even if they don’t have guns, sometimes all you need is a heavy piece of metal.

– It really didn’t take long for the Zwei to wash their hands of Team Blue and declare themselves indispensable to running the Ryvius. Even if Team Blue is paying for how badly they’ve been running the ship, the Zwei are certainly happy to reap the benefits and put themselves back at the top of the pecking order again, even if not even moments ago they were working alongside Team Blur. And I don’t care much for Fina lecturing Kouji once again that he needs to let go of the past and not let what happened before weigh him down. Her talking about it here sails past it being a way to try and move forward and right into the territory of refusing to accept any responsibility in the actions they were all involved in. Sorry Kouji, you really did pick the wrong lady to fall for.

– Speaking of people with bad taste in crushes, Juli really did think she could stick up for Blue once Lucson led the other rebelling students against him once the Lift Ship docked. Can’t say that I’m too surprised that Blue’s response to it all was to point his gun at the group to threaten them and then make a break for it. I’m sure that Blue knew in that moment that gun was the only thing stopping him from the mob basically ripping him apart. His best chance really was to just start running. Sorry Juli, but I don’t think you can fix him.

– I think Ikumi really did pick up on why Yuki resents Kouji so much: it’s got something to do with how Yuki feels about Aoi. It’s not the most tactful thing to say when Cullen is standing right next to Yuki, but given Yuki’s reaction to what he said, he’s probably entirely correct. Although since Yuki is dating Cullen now, it probably isn’t a case of just plain being in love with Aoi. And putting that together with how offended Yuki was to Kouji being interested in Fina, I think the situation is something like this: Yuki and Kouji both care about Aoi as their childhood friend and maybe crush, and although Yuki might not feel that way anymore, he’s mad that Kouji has been avoiding the vibes that Aoi has been putting out there and he’s been picking up on. In other words, he could be seeing Kouji as just continuously hurting the childhood friend they both care about by not dating her. It’s definitely an odd situation, but that does fit with the hints we’ve been given so far.

– Finally we’re actually doing something with the Mysterious Anime Girl now that she’s seemingly corporeal now. I guess all the damage the Vital Guarder took during the battle knocked her out of whatever incorporeal state she was in. Although if she really is an alien like the one in the Blue Impulse, I can’t help but why she has a human form as well as presumably being the weird shell-squid thing in a water tank somewhere on the ship.

– You know, I did have some hopes for Juli as the new captain of the Ryvius, but I think she was entirely correct in saying she isn’t qualified for leadership. She’s got the skills, but it’s becoming quickly apparent that she’s easy to defer to whatever the other Zwei want to do. She showed barely any backbone in proposing to get rid of the unlimited ration points the bridge crew has before just giving up on trying to change anything. At this rate, it’s clear what’s going on: it’s Stein’s attempt to become the shadow ruler of the Ryvius. He’s using Juli’s popularity to get people to agree with his decisions, like keeping the ratio point system exactly as it is and using his charted course for the trip while also trying to keep his culpability in the latest revolution a secret. Between Lucson, Blue, and now Juli, Stein has been factor shared between all of them. If anything, nearly all the leadership issues have just been him trying to enforce authoritarian rule on the ship and then throwing others under the bus once an angry mob comes around. It’s been Stein we’ve been needing to keep an eye on, not just the others in the captain’s chair.

– I can’t say that I like the implications of what’s been happening to Michel in her prison cell, between one of the guys talking about her zipping up his pants and her being shackled to the floor. You know, I thought that /u/Vaadwaur was being a bit of a grump about how anime seems to think that teenagers in power will immediately become rapists, but I guess he was entirely correct there. I shouldn’t have doubted his cynicism.

– I get the feeling that Fina’s problem with Kouji agreeing to be the liaison to the Lift Ship isn’t so much about him not moving on from his past issues with others as much as it is that she doesn’t want him out of her sight or control for any long periods of time. With how oddly possessive and controlling she’s being about him and his feelings, Fina is your classic kind of manipulative partner. Also, she keeps on thinking that Kouji has become a changed man, but I also doubt it that she’d like it if he changed in any way that she didn’t personally approve of. Best run from that bridge as far away as you can, Kouji.

– Big shock, keeping the system the exact same isn’t working out as intended. Of course hardly anyone wants to be an enforcer for the Zwei, they already saw what’ll happen to them if yet more bad leadership decisions get made by the bridge. They’ve only got the absolute dregs left to work with there. And not only that, pretty much none of the simmering resentment about the point system has been resolved either, like we saw with those kitchen workers complaining about how Izumi is getting in good with Ikumi and his unlimited points. Really, all the Zwei have done is used Team Blue as scapegoats to let them blow off some steam while they still reap the unfair benefits of the system they made. For fuck’s sake, all the leadership on this spaceship sucks.

– Finally, we’re getting some insight into what was going on in Blue’s head this whole time. He wanted the power of the Ryvius and the Vital Guarder to take revenge on his siblings and everyone else who kicked him out of Hyperion. I bet the reason why he’s thinking about that enough now for the Mysterious Anime Girl to pick up on is that he’s aware now of how he’ll never get that kind of power back. Although that’s probably for the best, since I doubt he would’ve done anything good to Hyperion if it was still around and if he still had control over the Ryvius and Vital Guarder. Deposing his leadership was still probably the right thing to do, even if the bridge crew is still faltering everywhere else.

– As much as Yuki is being an ass about it, he does have a point about Kouji’s passivity. It was obvious he wasn’t too keen on being reassigned to the Lift Ship, but he didn’t press the issue beyond his initial outburst and just went with it. He really is letting himself just be carried in a direction by others because he won’t stop being Mr. Nice Guy. He’s got the same issue as Juli that way. They really need to learn to grow some backbones.

**First Timer**

Damn, that was a really good episode holy shit. The Ryvius had gone through another change in order, Blue is on the run, and Juli is essentially being used as a figurehead leader as she herself is very obviously not wanting to be a part of this. I have more words to say, but the questions really delve into the points I want to focus on.

**Questions**

> [Q1]Should the points system have been abolished? What would replace it?

I think it should stay personally, they already have a limited selection of materials and while yes everyone should be able to have access to them, it wouldn’t be fair to have some people working their asses off while others are lazing about not making any attempt. Now I do agree that how it was going previously, there def was a too strict sense such as forbidding someone from eating, but I’m not against the idea in *theory*. It’s just considering these are kids trying to survive, an idea like this would be massively difficult to actually pull off.

Also I love they kicked Lucson right the fuck back out. “B-b-b-but muh 24th generation ~~Satoko~~ Hojo clan genes 🥺🥺😭😭” bro get back to scrubbing the toilets.

> [Q2]Does Juli like bad boys? Is it Stockholm syndrome? Is she attracted to abuse?

Okay I can finally talk more about these two. As someone who again loves Good girl x bad boy couples and these two being a prime example of one, the way I view their relationship is, for one, absolutely toxic as of right now (and if they were real people I would absolutely be on Team ‘Juli get the fuck away from him, you can do better’), but I can see it becoming better if they actually communicate with each other and that’s what makes it so entertaining.

On Juli’s end since the question is about her, it’s pretty obvious she does respect Blue, while she may not agree with him on everything, she can tell he isn’t an idiot only interested in putting himself at the top. Prior to Team Blue taking over, Lucson as a leader was incompetent and Zwei was all over the place. He had no clue what he was doing and his actions caused them to lose captives that could’ve been interrogated and give them an idea of what was going on. Blue’s arrival actually led to a shake up in formation and the Ryvius was able to successfully win their battles, which had it been Lucson they most likely would’ve been completely disorganized. While she does butt heads with him and he does threaten her, to her it appears clear that she doesn’t actually acknowledge his threats and sees them more as an act even if they’re messed up. Plus, like I mentioned before she still will butt heads with him, if she thought he would genuinely harm her, she would not be sitting here arguing with him even when he still goes and pulls out that (literal) mini-gun.

Plus, Blue’s attempted betrayal. Unlike the other two though, what makes this different, in my opinion, is that those two were doing it for their own selfish survival, while Pink Girl revealed that Blue attempted this to prove something to his siblings who apparently kicked him out. Considering that Juli was able to find details of his background, while she may not know everything, and she is a teenager, I feel she takes that into account as to why even though he attempted to betray them, she still cares about him. Plus yeah, her type is absolutely bad boys it’s pretty obvious lol.

On Blue’s end, while he’s putting on this tough guy act that doesn’t care about others and all that and clearly has some shit going on in regards to his past, it’s obvious he cares for Juli in his own weird ass way. Despite his threats, she’s probably the only one he truly sees as an equal. His group, while close to them, he still keeps himself closed off to; Others, he uses threats to scare into doing things; and then Yuki he beats the shit out of but probably does see a bit of himself in. Juli, on the other hand, the threats he can tell bounces off of her, he’s aware that she knows his past and doesn’t try to stop her or anything of the sort when she finds out, and hell when the rioters came to the Lift, he purposely stopped her from defending him so that the rioters wouldn’t take her as well and went to make his own escape. Hell, even Yuki sees that when he tells Juli why not to go after him. Pink Girl like I mentioned earlier even calls that out that she’s [the one thing](https://files.catbox.moe/2dd9md.jpg) [left that he cares for](https://files.catbox.moe/aahj98.jpg).

Again if they were real people, this would be absolutely red flags all over the place and Juli would be better setting up a date to see a therapist rather than see him, but this long essay was pretty much to say these two would’ve absolutely had an AMV set to Cascada’s [Bad Boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoYLSOcgTeg) back in the mid 00s.

> [Q3]What do you think of Fina? Did she switch sides? Is she clever? A mercenary? What does she think of Kouji? Her words mirrored Aoi’s.

I think she’s very manipulative. All her stuff about abandoning your past and moving on isn’t told in the way of ‘You can’t let your past hold you down, you need to learn to grow’, it’s instead clearly done in a more cult-like way as she made it clear that’s a step of Holy Mother Arne’s and it goes to the point of being abandoned in space away from society is a good thing because of it. If I’m being honest, she gives off more that any side that will prolong them being stuck in space she sees as a good thing. In fact, look at how she reacts to Kouji deciding to do this. He’s never been interested in being a bridge person if we’re being honest, he just kinda fell into the role and went with it. While he didn’t jump at the idea to go to the Lift, he in the end is the one who decides ‘okay I’ll do it’. Not because he’s being threatened or just gives in like how he stayed quiet when Team Blue was being exiled, but because [he takes Fina’s own advice and moves forward from his past](https://files.catbox.moe/v4gf7s.jpg). Esp. considering after how the Zwei betrayed Team Blue, he clearly doesn’t want to keep working for them and he’s clearly uncomfortable around Fina.

What really solidifies the manipulative-ness for me is when she confronts him. She doesn’t try to ask him to understand *why* he’s made this choice or anything of the sort, her immediate response is to bring up [his issues with Yuki](https://files.catbox.moe/6alu7h.jpg) and tell him [he’s not that type of person](https://files.catbox.moe/7wqncu.jpg) despite him doing exactly what she said. Even when he leaves, she’s deciding for him that [he *needs* to part with his past](https://files.catbox.moe/6wf2ms.jpg) and [that he’s just confused](https://files.catbox.moe/kpmp4u.jpg) as if she knows him inside out or something. She isn’t Aoi who’s known him since they were children and has an understanding of what kind of person he is, she’s at most known him probably by this rate 3-4 months. She’s a walking red flag and to bring up those cult points again, now that he’s leaving her grasp she immediately resorts to those views she spoke to him before of to try and reel him back in which as you can tell is pretty much one to one to how an abusive partner acts.

> [Q4]What is your opinion of the progression of the main cast and Zwei characters, in this second half?

Considering they’re all teenagers, I think the cast’s progression has felt natural. Teens are hormonal and not very bright, now put them in charge of 400 others in a life or death situation, of course they wouldn’t make the smartest choices.

> [Q5]You’ve been pretty critical of Stein. Now he controls the ship. How will that work out?

Third’s time the charm (in revolutions!)

> [Q6]Why doesn’t Juli want the Captain’s duties, despite the need? Does she have the right to refuse?

Because she’s now having to care for 400 others and make sure they can all get to safety. While I do agree that Juli is the most logical when it comes to planning, being in charge of a whole group of people, esp. when you yourself were just a trainee before all this shit went down, isn’t just some easy peasy task, and it’s completely understandable she doesn’t feel ready for it. Hell, I do believe she has a right to refuse, but I see why she doesn’t considering truly there isn’t really anyone else who can take the helm that would be *supported*.

[](#thoughtful)

So I don’t really do many comments here besides replies (Sorry, I don’t have time for full comments for this show as I am right now) but since no one else has brought it up, uh… possibly weird question, but [am I mishearing things or did Michelle say “Nii-san” here?](https://files.catbox.moe/jkkje6.mp4) You know, the thing you usually say to refer to your *male* elder sibling.

[Was this a flub?](#niatilt)