Tytania Episodes 16-17 (Almost Famous)

Fan Hatches A Daring Plan To Get Some Money For The Honest Old Man Crew.  Will He Be Successful?  Tune In To Find Out

Man, what a let down this arc was.  Here we has what looked like an arc that was going to be the first good one since Lira got reintroduced into the story, but they managed to cheapen it during the last few minutes such that what should have been awesome and very good instead becomes mildly retarded and merely decent.  I’ll tell the story of what happened now.

First of all we start back up again with Salisch being put in charge of the operation to capture Hyulick.  This was actually reliant entirely on Jouslain’s recommendation however since as everyone has noted Salisch had completely failed to obtain any results on his last sortie and Idris was absolutely confident that he could defeat Fan in one engagement and had yet to be given a chance to prove himself.  Salisch however still had the right to vengeance to cling to and Jouslain and by extension Ajman (because I’ve noticed Ajman seemingly just does whatever Jouslain suggests and it makes me wonder if Jouslain hasn’t just become the shadow leader of Tytania) agree, so Salisch is back on the job.  Of course Salisch doesn’t know the first thing about planning as Jouslain has noted.  He may be brave, but he’s like Max from Advance Wars, all brute force, no foresight whatsoever.  He’ll have to get lucky if he’s going to capture Fan.

Ahh….There’s Some Engrish For You Folks

Meanwhile, Fan has set in motion his own plan to get himself turned in, collect the bounty for himself and escape so that the Honest Old Man can have some war funds.  This plan hinges on the fact that the Tytanian garrison on Estar is completely and utterly incompetent, and is lead by a fool of man named Commisioner Valti who comes across as having worse tactical prowess than even Salisch.  Fan’s plan is nonetheless risky, but workable and I thought it was actually quite an interesting little story.  Quite the gutsy move from a guy who has been doing nothing but sitting around on his ass for the last 15+ episodes but for a brief act in taking down Alses.  I guess I should be thankfully.

Anyway the plan is to have Mahdi (holder of the sole comedic moment in the entirety of Fan’s side of the story in everyone wondering why he showed up late, Miranda joking that he probably got stripped clean at the casino, and then him showing up in a wifebeater to show that this actually did happen) impersonate a bounty hunter who will then give Fan up to Tytania for the reward money, meanwhile the Honest Old Man will give up their position as a distraction so that it can then blast off and rescue Fan from the compound.

Everything goes according to plan at first, Mahdi turns Fan in, collects the down payment on the bounty and goes off to gamble a little bit since it’s compulsive for him.  Meanwhile we are introduced to the sole competent memember of the Tytania garrison in Kyle.

Holy Crap A Tytanian Soldier That Is Actually A Worth Adversary And Who Has Some Common Sense?  Check Out Those Shades Kyle Is The Man….Or At Least He Will Be For The Next 4 Or So Minutes Until…..

Kyle like any supervisor who has a clue is immediately suspicious of how this small time bounty hunter managed to capture the man that Salisch’s entire fleet had failed to even spot up until a few moments ago. 

I’m going to digress to briefly talk about that.  Here we have another example of just how incompetant Tytania has been portrayed as being for the last few episodes.  We learn in one scene with Idris that he had actually already known where Fan was this whole time but had failed to share the information or even to act on it.  It’s hard to believe how obsessed this guy is with making everyone else look incompetant that he’d withold information so vital to the security of Tytania’s interests, but it’s not exactly out of character for him either.  I can’t help but wonder though that if perhaps the 4 dukes had been working together instead of against each other to capture Fan if they wouldn’t already have had him in their custody now.  I guess this shows how the Tytania system is becoming entirely counterproductive to their actual interests in all of it’s focus on credit, pride and honour instead of getting results as fast as possible.  Maybe they could use late series Suzaku Kururugi on their side or something.

Anyway, so Kyle is suspicious and he has his men tail Mahdi and it seems he’s on to something now….sigh, I wish this character had stayed this way throughout the episode.  Meanwhile Miranda leaks the information as to the Honest Old Man’s wherabouts and of course Valti stupidly has almost his entire garrison rush out to surround the ship, only for it to blast off and head for the compound.  Should I even ask we he wouldn’t requisition some air support to keep the Honest Old Man from taking off like that?  No, that would probably be expecting to much from him.

Oh Bal’ami, first you were Psycho Man Estrades bitch, then you were Thinking Man Jouslain’s bitch, then you were Loli Princess Lydia’s bitch, and now you are a Furry Rabbits bitch.  It sucks to be you.

Meanwhile there’s a scene with Lydia chasing a rabbit around only for her to get exhausted in the process.  Bal’ami comes up to her and says he’ll never catch it so he might as well stop trying and she replies that he should try then.  Bal’ami uses some fruit as bait to get the rabbit to come to him and when he thinks it’s captured it ends up scratching him in the face and running off.  Lydia laughs and says that it’s because he let his guard down the moment he though he had captured it.  This is actually a metaphor for the stupid scene I mentioned that ends up ruining much of the intrigue this arc had going, but I want to mention that I still at least appreciate the metaphor for how fitting it is.

Can This Guy Get Anymore Cool….Could He Get Less Cool? Hmmm….

So now Miranda and co head into the prison to rescue Fan and break him out and just when it looks like they are about to make off with the money and make Tytania look like complete fools….Kyle pops up.  In case you didn’t know already, Kyle is the baiter and the HoH crew is the rabbit from the metaphor I just mentioned.  And boy is Kyle confident now, as well he should be as he was the only one to have the insight into Mahdi’s real identity and to have the forsight to track him down in order to find out this information.  What a worthy adversary, he’s even the one who plucked out the old mans vocal chords and Miranda notes this.  What to do, completely surrounded by men with guns on all sides, seemingly no way out, Kyle’s got the upper hand, they’re screwed….

What I Learned From Watching Tytania.  Running Up And Punching Somebody In The Face Beats Gun Every Time

And here’s when the episode just completely loses all of that great tension and intrigue it had been building up.  Like Lira with Alses before her, Miranda just suddenly runs up and punches Kyle in the face while both he and all of his guards just FUCKING STAND THERE AND WATCH!  I mean seriously!  Come on with this one already Tytania!  It was bad enough when Lira did it to help Fan escape from Alses when he had them at gunpoint, but this time it’s an entirely firing squad and Kyle is supposed to be competent and cold as ice.  The rest of the Tytanian soldiers doing nothing to protect their superior officer is bad enough, but we already established they are idiots so it has the absolute minimum of plausible deniability, but are you tell me that Kyle couldn’t shoot Miranda before she knocked him flat on his face?  I never though I’d say this about anything, but the metaphor actually makes more sense in this case then the event it was meant to symbolize.  Oi vey….

The Answer Is That He Could Lose All Of His Cool Factor In Less Then A Second

So now Kyle has been relegated to the same level as the rest of the Tytanian soldiers out of nowhere and has been forced to give the rest of the crew safe passage to escape before being shot dead by Miranda.  However Fan gets cornered on the rooftop and then the Estar army comes in to take him into custody instead.  Fan actually does something slightly heroic here for a change and knocks Mahdi off into the water to give him a chance to escape and takes the blame for the plan going awry.  Next episode he meets Sarlisch according to the narrator.

So there you have it.  I actually really like this arc right up to the last point, and for once Fan’s side actually does something intersting, but I can’t stress enough how awful the resolution to it was.  They built this Kyle character up so much as a worthy opponent who I thought was going to be around for a while only for Miranda to suddenly hulk out and spoil his plan.  I get the metaphor with the rabbit, I really do, but it was just so….basic and out of nowhere the way they escaped.  It gives the impression that any time anybody is cornered in this series they can just make a mad dash and escape from it without any major consequences (sure Fan got captured, but really if this had played out with any sort of logic then the whole crew should have been captured, and really Fan was going to get captured anyway in the long run as he said) and I am sorry, but that is just a really cheap standard for ending tales of intrigue such as Tytania’s.  Now I’m just left waiting to see the Honest Old Man get surrounded by a Tytanian fleet with all guns trained on them and with no logical way of escape but for surrender and for Miranda to just have the ship charge into the flagship and then proceed to that action as a way to escape.

That said this has been the best little arc in the last 5 or so episodes, but it could have been so much more.  I’ll just leave you now with one question that I have been pondering.  If Fan only has command of one ship the majority of the time and has no military affiliation at that, why does everyone still refer to him as the “admiral”.

Rating: Six And A Half Out Of Ten