Simoun/Headscratchers

Simoun

 * What's the deal with Angulas? Every Plumbum priestess we see in the series reveres the Simoun sibyllae, to the point where most of them are traitors waiting to happen. Angulas seems no different, but she blows up half the Arcus Prima anyway. (It would have been easy for her to confess the plot and defect -- she was unsupervised.) And how did she end up in the ancient Simoun later on?
 * Perhaps it was her twin.
 * Angulas doesn't kill any of the sibyllae, so I don't think what she did really contradicted anything, they may revere the sibyllae, but their country is still the enemy.
 * Plus when she blew up the Simoun, it sent her back in time to either during when Limone taught everyone else the Emerald Ri-Majon or just after. How she crashed there, and who her pair would've been is a mystery though.
 * Why doesn't Dominura become an 'Eternal Maiden', even though she performed the Emerald Ri Maajon with Limone? Was it all just a lie anyway? Or didn't she and Limone love one another enough? Some closure on this would have been nice.
 * (Possible) Answer: Check the WMG page for this show.
 * That doesn't answer the question at all. It just says who Dominura or Limone might turn into, not why it happpens.
 * Oh, I see what you're getting at now. I thought by "Eternal Maiden" you meant . You have a point that we don't really know why the effects of Limone and Dominura's Emerald Ri Maajon were different from
 * It may not have been during the main events of the series, but it clearly seems to have become so in the five years that follow. (Saishou no ai, indeed.)
 * Also, one of the DVD commentaries says that Dominura and Limone's relationship is supposed to look criminal.
 * A related question: what's the difference between the two forms of the Emerald Ri Maajon (black hole sucking in lines vs. glowing ball of light), and what did Aaeru and Neviril do differently to create the latter?
 * Not get crashed into?
 * How exactly is it that Yun (and Onashia) can talk to dead people?
 * When do they do that?
 * How far into the Spring do you have to go to activate it? What happens if you just dip your toe in, but don't try to wade toward the island?
 * Is it really the water that does it?
 * How did Yun get to the island in the Spring without getting wet?
 * She climbed the rocks at the sides, which took her quite some effort.
 * Sure, but the rocks don't look like they go all the way to the island. Or is there a rock bridge in back that we don't see from the usual camera angle?
 * How do foreigners choose their sex? We know about Simulacrum and Argentum; how does the rest of the world do it?
 * Apart from these two we only know about Plumbum and judging by their proximity to Simulacrum (both geographical and ideological... erm, religious), they might have obtained a diplomatic right to use the Simulacran Spring in exchange for something.
 * This actually gets answered a few episodes in - they have gender assignment surgery while babies, or so, as the soldier who captures Limone and Aaeru tries to explain - which is why they desperately were wanting to win and take over Simulacran.
 * But, that only explains it for Argentum, not Plumbum.
 * How do the Argentians survive in that hellish country of theirs? Do they all live underground with only some sealed domes and industrial facilities on the surface? And how did they choose sex before they developed their surgery/hormone cure technique?
 * The Argentians probably had to bargain with Simulacrum for a right of passage to the Spring before their science advanced enough. I can also imagine that the master race attitude of Simulacrans (visible clearly in the series) mightily pissed them off, adding psychological factor to the war. And as for their survival... a human being can adapt to any crap.
 * Why isn't the Spring totally crowded with people ready to choose their gender? Any sizable population would lead to thousands of people every day.
 * Perhaps Simulacrum has a very small population, maybe only a few thousand people.
 * This assumption is strengthened by the fact that their forces seem so limited. All we see is two Simoun carriers and a single platoon of infantry (without any support weapons, at that). Never do they deploy more conventional flying craft, or even use flak cannons against all those Argentian flyers. Curved-trajectory weapons seem completely unknown to all parties.
 * There is also the fact that everyone has only one name. The only real-world cultures that still eschew the use of family names are those that have so small a population that it does not become too impractical. For instance, on Iceland only a small part of the population has family names. Patronyms are used, but people are listed in the phone book by their first name.
 * How did these anthropoid beings evolve? What kind of evolution could lead to a mammalian species in which the sex change that is needed to perpetuate their existence needs access to a specific location (at least initially) to take place?
 * For that matter, it seems odd that all members of the species would develop features that are only retained by the breeder sex ("female"). From an evolutionary perspective it seems wasteful that those who become seeder sex ("male") would develop "curves" and then have these features atrophy after making the switch. Naturally, this has little to do with creating a plausible alien biology and a lot to do with lesbian fanservice.
 * The first point is a case of Truth In Television -- real humans actually are all female in the womb until a certain point in their development, when a different set of hormones get released for boys; without the hormones, the fetus would continue to develop as a girl. Some fetuses are even immune to the hormones, leading to women who are genetically XY.
 * It would be more correct to say that foesuses are gender-neutral up to a specific point in their development, and default to female if they do not get the correct "male" signals.
 * True enough, but this species goes beyond that - they actually develop the secondary sexual characteristics that only the breeders retain permanently. And they aren't human anyway, merely human-like.
 * In other words, the people who chose to be men go through puberty twice - from immature female to adult female, then from adult female to adult male. Yipes.
 * Truth in Television -- real people who change gender actually go through precisely that. (Except for the lucky few who go on hormone blockers before puberty, of course, and transition as adolescents.)
 * I find it unlikely that the pre-Spring females have experienced puberty in the same sense as humans do. They gain female form, but most likely not true female functions, namely fertility.
 * As for the second point, the trigger age when the Daikuurikans had to choose their sex was originally 15, not 17, which makes a lot more sense. They apparently changed it to get a bishoujo series with enough nubile teen fanservice to draw in more than just hard-core science fiction (and yuri) fans.
 * Surely this is a fantasy series, rather than science-fiction?
 * Sci-fi/fantasy is a tricky distinction, but I'd say the way it was presented leaned more toward science fiction (it had zeppelins, cruise missiles, and tanks for god sake!) and the one piece of "magic" was even in series portrayed as quite probably just technology they didn't fully understand. (Any sufficiently advanced technology...) Hell if you look at it even the "magic" in question is nothing tons of science fiction hasn't done before hell with a bit of wriggling the entire thing could probably fit into say Stargate as a planet of the week. I mean SG:1 and SG:A have already done the entire Stable timeloop thing like three times, and Neviril and Aaeru? Totally ascended.
 * The head mechanic retains large breasts two years after going to the spring. The footsoldier Floe takes a fancy to does not seem to be any older, but does not retain such "attributes". Was he perhaps very flatchested at the time of going to the spring?
 * Wapourif reabsorbs his breasts near the end of the war (Morinas points this out); Mastif could have been less busty when he was a girl, or he could just have been a few months older than Wapourif.
 * Can those who have not chosen a permanent sex be successfully impregnated?
 * Apparently not; that would be the obvious change that would happen when one becomes female.
 * Almost certainly not. I would make the presumption that the pre-Spring females are only "female" in the sense that ant drones are; practically neuter, despite of external appearances.
 * On a tangent: the fact that they are near-human rather than actually human may explain how they can fly high while sitting in unheated and unpressurized cockpits: they are simply more resilient to cold and low oxygen levels than humans. It is also possible that they actually have blue and purple and aquamarine and other such strange hair and eye colours.
 * I always figured that Simoun was set in some far future, and their bodies were *engineered* to work the way they do. Leaving aside details like "if you can do that, why not fix things like, say, death" and related issues, there was a definite After The End vibe.
 * It's explicitly After The End; the Simoun are relics of an apocalyptic war, and we actually see . We know that Daikuuriku isn't Earth because there are two suns in the sky; the remaining question is whether the planet is an abandoned space colony, or whether the Daikuurikans are the planet's native species.
 * This would make quite a bit of sense, especially since it appears that if a person doesn't go to the spring  This also would explain why only people who haven't had a sex assigned can use the Simoun since the idea that the original creators designed them so only children could use them seems kind of silly. I'm guessing that the spring is a failsafe (intentional or the accidental result of something else) that reverts people back to a more human state.
 * Was there the Spring in the time before time where two certain Sybillae land? I mean, did they still have "normal" reproductive cycle back then, or was it already as messed up as it was by the time of the Simulacran-Argentian war?
 * Given that the children seen all seem "feminine", it is likely that they were like that the whole time.
 * How come no one inquired after the Simile pilot carrying home? Man, that was an awful scene. Having finished, I still have the question. None of Chor Tempest tried to visit her grave or otherwise inquire? I would've expected at least Roatreamon to do so or Guragief to feel guilty and spill it.
 * They were kind of in the middle of a war. Trips to her homeland might not have been feasable at the time.
 * Besides that,  oh, and the war thing too.
 * What happened to Mastif? Did he not survive? Floe seems not to care about it. Which is kinda cold.
 * Fact: Floe is a Jerkass.
 * Would it be possible to hotwire a Simoun?
 * No.
 * Why was one of Aer's eyes red during part of episode 4. Given that its in the DVD version, and is even shown on the DVD's cover it seems unlikely that its simply an error.
 * Might it have something to do with that dude who had just coughed up blood into her eye?
 * Am I the only one having trouble with liking the cast too much? I mean the treatment is favorable to them and pretty much laughs at the military leadership for, you know, demanding that the Sibyllae, basically the entire firepower of the country's military, take the damn war seriously and, you know, try to win it? To at least force the other countries to sue for peace? Oh, you don't want to hurt anyone or destroy that pretty defenseless air base the first time you see it... Yeah, probably thousands will die, mainly civilians, because you wouldn't pull the trigger that one time. Seriously, the Sibyllae are acting like spoiled brats 90% of the time, at least.
 * But, the Sibylla aren't part of the country's military.
 * Not officially, but many of them call themselves warriors at least sometimes (Aer and Neviril do so explicitly, Amuria used to say it according to Neviril), they serve on military ships (the Messis) and they represent basically the only decent firepower of their country. We don't see in the anime any military vehicles like planes or tanks used by their countries. They depend sorely on the Simouns and infantry it seems. But the Sibyllae seem to claim to be warriors when they want, and then deny it and say they merely offer "prayers" to the sky when it's convenient for them. Hence the descriptive "spoiled brats". They unilaterally change their role between warriors and priestesses when it's convenient for them, responsibility to their people be damned.
 * You're forgetting that the Sibyllae were originally preistesses, and their Ri Majons were solely done as ceremonies of worship back then. Then the war broke out, and they were forced to use the power of Ri Majons for combat, as soldiers. Not all the characters can easily adjust to using the power of what used to be their displays of reverence to kill, so they try to hold on to their original purpose, so that the Ri Majons are not weapons, but instead they remain a means to offer prayers. Except this time, they're praying that they will be the victors of battle. Even those who accept the hard facts and call it 'warfare' instead of 'prayers' don't forget the Simouns' original purpose, as vehicles of worship.
 * Alti and Kaimu's relationship. This troper's opinion is that Alti tried to comfort the distraught Kaimu, and Kaimu reciprocated more than Alti imagined she would, pushing what could've been a hand on the shoulder or a sisterly hug into sex. Alti, not wanting to hurt her sister, did not reject her desperate advances and went along with it. But once Kaimu's nerves calmed, she couldn't believe she had committed such a taboo and convinced herself that Alti's trying to comfort her platonically was a full-blown seduction. This makes sense with the scenes we see of Alti pinning Kaimu to a bed and Kaimu tugging Alti towards herself, but then, after an entire series' worth of hatred from Kaimu, she forgives her sibling. It came completely from out of the blue, especially considering how much intolerance she had for her earlier on. How did Kaimu go from bitter and unforgiving to living together with Alti, completely content?
 * I reckoned that they were suffering from the taboo on their relationship rather than the actual event. Sure, they were rather surprised (to say the least), but in the end their mutual affection won out over the demands of their society. It's also indicated that they started talking with each other and worked out their problems.
 * Why don't they use Similes as war planes? Sure, Similes don't have the ability to create real Ri Maajons, but they still are much more maneuverable than the enemy craft, and in the hands of capable pilots they can form a formidable threat (as Aeru and Anubituf prove). They can also be piloted by non-Sybillae, which is a plus in wartime.
 * Why is everybody so cold toward Limone? You'd expect that a sweet young girl among teenage girls would get a lot more attention, invoking the big-sister instinct in at least a few of them. Still, nobody ever gives her a hug or a pat on the head, even when she's visibly distressed.
 * How could the Plumbum priestesses pilot those ancient Simouns so expertly right away? It's made clear that it takes Sybillae quite some time to learn the ropes, but their Plumbum counterparts handle their craft like seasoned pros.
 * How could the Plumbum priestesses pilot those ancient Simouns so expertly right away? It's made clear that it takes Sybillae quite some time to learn the ropes, but their Plumbum counterparts handle their craft like seasoned pros.