So Schwarzesmarken ends and the cheesy speeches not withstanding it not a bad ending. The Stasi are dismantled, West and East Germany have joined forces and things are looking up. However it turned out we have some causalities. The first being that white haired girl pilot whose name I can never remember and Irisdina. Not much fanfare was give for miss white hair but Irisdina got the full works. She has the satisfaction of taking out Axemann and died overlooking the birth of a new Germany. All of which is touching…if it wasn’t undermined by how she died. I give credit to her for beating the hell out of Axemann while handcuffed but she truly was screwed over when her teammate arrived with a gun and threw it to her. Instead of that teammate you know…shooting Axemann herself. It’s really hard to feel for a death that could have so easily been prevented and no matter how I try to rationalize it I can’t see any reason why she would have thought throwing the gun was better than shooting it. You can’t say she wasn’t acostumed to firearms because firearms training is a requirement for pilots. Those previous seconds shouting and throwing could have so been used to save her life and I am pretty annoyed that girl doesent hold any guilt over this.
Beatrixs goal is revealed to be a desire for Germany to sacrifice all personal identity in order to become a well oiled machine for the sole purpose of destroying BETA. Thus saving the world at the cost of East Germany’s individuality. Meanwhile Katia puts forwards that East and West Germany should put aside their differences and fight BETA together and with both their powers combined they would truly prevail. Beatrix dismisses this as idealistic nonsense and here’s the thing. I agree. Katia’s plan is really not a solution but more of a optimistic approach. That said I don’t find Beatrixs plan much of a solution either. At most her plan would end up with the same result as Katia’s which is not winning the war but rather prolonging the impending defeat. Simply put, these two people have truly no idea just how doomed Humanity is. For you see the BETA have Humanity on its last legs at this time and they haven’t even brought out the big guns yet. It would take some massive world leaping timey wimey stuff to score what could be considered a victory against them. So when hearing all this talk about hope and such I can’t help but pity these fools. I read the visual novel, I know what you face and you don’t stand a hope in hell. So all that’s left is the final battle and I find my thoughts on this series to be mixed.
I really like your Schwarzesmarken analyses’s. They’re measured and definitely better informed than most of what I see on other sites. I’ve been reading up on a lot of SM to try to fill in the holes that the anime has left.
As for character goals, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Katia’s goal is idealistic nonsense that would get everyone killed a couple of months after the epilogue (http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/muvluv/images/9/97/0EC3A585.png/revision/latest?cb=20121228175657).
Beatrix’s goal, however, wasn’t about winning so much as buying time for the rest of Europe to flee and get its crap together. A lot of the LN readers have also said that her plan was as much about saving Europe as getting revenge on East Germany for destroying her life and committing suicide (apparently Iris’s brother was her childhood friend/romance and the only person who made her happy so his death broke her).
I’m really looking forward to the translated VN though. A lot of people apparently say that Schwarzesmarken isn’t a very good adaptation, and looking at some of the translated material, I have to agree.
Thanks. As a fan of the series I felt it was necessary for me to cover it on this site. I am interested in what the anime left out but my plan is to try and forget most of it so I can read the Visual Novel as blind as possible. A translation of the Schwarzesmarken visual novels is practically guaranteed in my opinion after the huge success of the Muv Luv Kickstarter. But it will take a year or three for that to happen and by then my memory of this anime will be quite foggy. If they do a Kickstarter for Schwarzesmarken you can bet I will put down another 300 euro to see it done.
I seen some of that in Beatrix in the anime but there’s simply too little to guess her full objective. She really didn’t get enough development. Her and the rest of the cast.
I am certain this is a poor adaption. I say this anime would make good fanservice for those who have read the VN and would like to see some scenes animated but I wouldn’t recommend it. Like the Dangan Ronpa Anime; it’s essentially the cliffs notes of the game and an inferior experience.
Degica posted the first part of the Schwarzesmarken Visual Novel English translation to their Steam Greenlight page. If you want both VNs, you should definitely vote for its approval and buy it when it comes out at the end of the year.
Also, Iris was the one who got shafted the most in the character development department. She’s one of the main heroines, but side characters like Gretel get more development then she does. Beatrix is best girl, but she has a whole story exclusively to herself to play main heroine/love interest.