Vandread/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why don't the Mejalians know about the nature of the rest of humanity? The Tarakian government imposed a falsified history to justify its all-male civilization, but Meia's flashbacks are to a society that appears to be a liberal democracy with intact records of Earth's past.
    • At the end of the series, it seems pretty clear that the "liberal democracy" isn't quite as liberal or democratic as it seems. They throw Magno and her crew in prison to shut them up so they can't reveal the truth...
    • At the first episode of Second Stage, it is implied from crew member conversation that Mejalians were raised under the belief that men are a pile of bacterias, which goes along well with women's nature in general to be clean
  • None of the human colonies in the galaxy have dropped in on Earth in a century. It takes less than a year to get there -- no-one was even curious?
    • No, it took the hyper-advanced Nirvana about nine months to get across a (fairly small) sector of space. Going to Earth would be a long-term trip, at best.
  • The harvesters only harvest one type of tissue/organ from a population. Surely the people they harvested the blood from also had skin, spinal chords, junk, etc.
    • Supposedly each of the planets was made the "ideal location" for a certain body part, for example, Tarak and Mejare are perfect for harvesting reproductive organs due to their general lack of use in their original owners. Also, Earth people aren't exactly trying to be very efficient. They think they'll be living forever, after all.
  • The series is overall very solid, but just one little thing bugs me, the final three episodes of season one. Does anyone else feel that some of the characters in these three episodes really act out? A lot of the girls go from generally not minding the men to being outright hostile, good people like Parfait helping them. Worse still BC and Magno do not step in for the longest time, letting the women basically mutiny and cripple the ship, without a single reprimand or intervention. Even if they don't feel fond of Hibiki and the others, surely they realized that the three were almost vital to the Nirvana's functioning, and had showed no sign of rebellion at all. It really just feels to me that the writers wanted to enhance drama and just randomly reset all the women's morals to achieve this.
    • This. So much. Conflict Ball is the only explanation.
    • My reasoning was that BC and Magno were just being generally hand-off. Magno has proven several times that she would prefer to let her crew work things out on their own. If she had forced them to work together, it might have come to a head worse later. Don't forget that when Bart shows up on the bridge, she just says "you're late." She knew everything would get fixed.
  • Two things really bug me about this series enjoy it though I did. First, Misty! Why does she exist? She serves no purpose to the plot, she doesn't have any special abilities, she doesn't help anyone or anything. they try and make her a contender for Hibiki's affections but that gets dropped in favor of her being paired with Meia, sorta, and was unnecessary in the first place. There is no reason I can see in all the story for the existence of her character. The other big thing that bothers me is the entire harvesting plot itself. Earth, why? You have sentient living alien power sources and borg like machine colonies not to mention transforming mecha! In the face of this, how is your medical technology so far behind that its more reasonable to go colonize dozens of other worlds for the sole purpose of in the future harvesting one specific organ type from them? Instead of oh... I don't know, vat growing clones? you don't even have to vat grow whole beings! Just the parts you need! Perhaps in the future the immortal humans require regular doses of dog raping to stay immortal?
    • It wasn't Misty, but the data that came with Misty that was important (and later re-used to cripple one of the Earth capital ships. ) Likely she's just an excuse to add to Hibiki's harem of unwanted affection while making Dita jealous and find her true feelings. As for the body part harvesting, it doesn't make logical sense, but that gives the pirate crew an urgent sense of purpose to return, and not be Star Trek Voyager.
      • Quite simply, humans are easier to put together by unskilled (but fun!) labor than trying to grow an entire body (transplant immunological factors aside, apparently Earthlings got around that). Given how polluted earth is, they may not be able to create clean areas without vast expense. Since there are a whole lot of humans already happily breeding, why not gather? It also seems to me the whole plan was only come up with once the red paksis was discovered making automated self-reproducing fleets possible.
  • When it's first mentioned that Earth is going after Majer and Tarak for their "reproductive organs", Bart panics. How did he know what they were?
    • Instinct.
    • They combine DNA to create babies. DNA has to come from somewhere.
      • It's obvious. He read Duelo's baby book!
  • It's been stumping me for years: There seems to be no consensus whatsoever as to how a few certain proper nouns are supposed to be spelled. Tarak is also spelled Taraak, Mejere could also be Mejerr, Mejale, etc., and the Paksis might also be spelled Pexis, and Paeksis. It's just one of those little things that gets to me.