ExoSquad S1E2: “Seeds of Deception”

A "last time on" clarifies some things that actually weren't established at all in the pilot, or that I completely missed. For one thing, the pirate clans aren't based out of the Ceres belt at all, but rather the rings of Saturn. That does explain why the battlefield is full of small asteroids rather than a smaller number of large ones. On the other hand, they should be mostly ice rather than mostly rock, but still! The other thing is that the He-Man looking pirate warlord's full name is now given as Jonas Zembacca. There was an M in there after all, and now there's a first name to go with it. Okay, also good to know!


Our story resumes with Bronsky's damaged e-frame being rescued from a pair of opportunistic pirate skiffs by Takagi, so that ended up being a pretty artificial cliffhanger. Hell, his e-frame is suddenly fully functional again too. Meh.

Anyway, space shooty continues for a while, and then we return to the bridge of the Resolute. Admiral Winfield is wincing at the damage reports from his ships and trying to get their own heavy weapons lined up on the nastier pirate ships while the eframes keep them pinned down. Suddenly, that reporter just ambles onto the bridge in the middle of battle and starts nosing around. Winfield demands to know why the hell security let this civilian into the room during a literal life-or-death battle, and furiously orders him to be thrown back out.

After a stunt like that, this guy will be lucky if Winfield just confines him to quarters until they can get rid of him instead of throwing him in the brig. As they're dragging the moron away, the Resolute suddenly rocks and shakes violently as the pirates destroy the pair of frigates screening it and start landing shots on the flagship itself.

Fortunately for the assorted cretins aboard the Resolute, Abel squad has managed to wriggle themselves free of the melee and locate Zembacca's own flagship. The pirate cruiser is very defensively built, with a compact, heavily-armored chasis containing the bridge and vital systems. By that same token though, its weapon batteries are far-flung and exposed. While the rest of the squad draws fire with evasive actions, Takagi gets in close and destroys Zembacca's laser cannons. His e-frame gets clipped by one of the big guns while he's doing it though, disabling it and also stunning the pilot due to feedback in his frame's neural interface. Bronsky just barely manages to hit Takagi's suit with a grappling hook and tow it away before more pirate skiffs or Zembacca's point defense systems can finish him off.

I guess Orsky is good for something after all.

On Zembacca's bridge, damage reports come in. With that last attempt to destroy the enemy flagship foiled, and most of the pirates' own large vessels crippled by e-frame counterattacks, his underlings are imploring him to order a retreat. At first, Zembacca holds the pirate clan chieftains responsible for botching the ambush, and thinks they deserve whatever they just brought on themselves. However, he manages to get ahold of his temper, and irritably orders the pirate ships to disperse back out into the rings and cloak again. They'll regroup later.

He doesn't seem all that sure about the "regroup again later" part, to be honest. I feel like he's afraid his reputation might have suffered enough today that he might not be able to keep the other chieftains' respect, let alone their obedience. But, as Firstmate Mustache consoles him, "where there's life, there's hope." Dawwww.

The pirates scatter and vanish into the ring, their leader's impressive tactics proving just not quite enough to make up for the exofleet's tech advantage. The alliance fleet has taken a hell of a lot more damage than they'd have ever expected to against mere pirates, but that's probably the hardest part of the campaign out of the way now. Especially if the pirate clans really do abandon Zembacca's cause because of that failure.

Back on Earth, the dumbass reporter's update is on TV. His summary is at least accurate; initial resistance much tougher than expected, but the fleet was still victorious. Now proceeding to sweep Saturns rings and moons to unearth and snuff out pirate bases, as initially planned.

There's a scare cord as the camera flips around to show Governor General Phaeton watching the report. Villain frame him all you want, show, dude hasn't done anything to make me dislike him. Anyway, I guess he's on Earth's surface at the moment. Wonder what he's doing here?

He muses to himself that with the exofleet occupied for longer than expected, and more ships likely being sent out as well to reinforce it after those losses, now would be the perfect opportunity to do a thing. Do the thing, Phaeton. Do it.

Cut to a sports bar in Chicago. Some obnoxious drunk guy is mad that there aren't sports on, due to the post-battle news report taking precedence, and he picks a fight with a very swole looking guy who's watching intently. Swole guy wins the fight. Bartender gets mad and threatens to call the cops unless they leave now. Swole guy says that he is a cop, and shows his badge before tossing the bartender some cash and leaving as instructed. Um, okay. Then, cut to elsewhere in the city, where a political event is happening. It looks like Chicago is declaring itself a sister city to Maginus, the capital of Mars.

The mayor of Chicago is giving a speech, which contains the following words spoken in the following order:

““For fifty years, since the suppression of their unfortunate uprising, the neosapiens have lived in peace with the terrans. We’ve put aside the hatred and suspicion of the past, and learned to accept each other as brothers.”

He does not mention slavery. The banner he's standing under as he gives the speech looks like this:

Beautiful. -__-

The mayor finishes his speech, and then yields the mic to Phaeton, who has come here for the occasion. That's surprising. The leader of an entire planet coming here just for a sister city declaration? Weird, but okay. Maybe if Chicago is the capital of Earth or something, I guess. Anyway, meanwhile, that cop who was at the bar before arrives at the scene and takes up position alongside his fellow officers doing security for the event. His particular interest in the fate of the exofleet's mission is revealed to be down to personal history with said fleet. One of the other cops asks him if he's been trying to get the military to accept him back as an e-frame pilot again, and he just looks sadly down at the pavement.

Wonder what he was discharged for. Apparently, stealing your mech and joyriding it through a country's sovereign territory isn't enough, so this must have been pretty major.

The focus returns to Phaeton starting his speech. The crowd claps as he takes the podium, but most of their faces look a little harder than before. Phaeton thanks them all for giving him "such a human welcome."

Oof. His voice is just radiating veiled outrage and contempt. He manages to keep his face from showing anything, though.

Before he can start his actual speech though, some (mostly old-looking) people in the crowd start screaming at him for being a murderer and a terrorist. The logic behind this being that he is a neosapiens, and that neosapiens did in fact kill a number of terrans during their revolt half a century ago. The mayor sends some cops to drag the troublemakers away.

As he leads them off, the former pilot bar cop quietly assures them that he hates neos as much as they do, but come on, they're just making a scene. Meanwhile, Phaeton tells the crowd that he understands the hatred and anger, and doesn't hold it against them, but it's important to look to the future rather than the past. His tone of voice is...well...very carefully controlled would be the best description.

And then, an assassin tries to shoot Phaeton, and only fails because the bar cop sees the guy at the very last second and tackles him.

The assassin manages to knock him off and tries to get up and run, but bar cop tackles him again. This gives the other officers time to close in and arrest the guy, but it also means taking a bullet himself.

It's an actual bullet, btw, not a laser like most cartoons of the era used due to censorship policies of the time. A human shooting another human with a firearm. Wonder how they got away with that? Maybe the fact that they don't *quite* show it happening onscreen has something to do with it. I'm kind of surprised they took that route instead of just making it a laser though, especially considering that laser weapons have already been established in this setting.

Maybe they just wanted this scene to feel more "real," in which case I think it succeeds at doing that.

Jump ahead to what looks like the next day. Bar cop's left arm is bandaged and slung; just his arm then, he got lucky. He's in the mayor's office, being thanked for his heroic actions. Phaeton also came to thank him, and jovially says that it's a good thing his left arm was the one to get shot, so he can still shake his right hand.

Barcop glares at Phaeton, and refuses to take his hand.

When asked why, he says that foiling the assassin was just him doing his job and upholding his oath. He'll never forgive the neosapiens for what they did to free themselves from slavery more than a decade before he was born, and he'll certainly never shake one's hand.

Phaeton finally has had it, and lets his feelings show for the first time since his introduction.

Glaring like the face of death itself, he turns around and storms out of the office, ignoring Mayor Dipshit's protests. Mayor Dipshit then turns to the unrepentant-looking barcop and tells him he's off the force.

I'm starting to get a pretty good idea of what this guy got kicked out of the military for. I guess getting kicked out of one service still wasn't enough for him.

...

This show really wants the audience to want all the baseline terrans dead.

Seriously. Give me one terran - just ONE - who isn't a massively petty, spiteful, jingoistic dickhead. Or hell, even one who at least expresses some self-awareness and introspection about it. And no, Mayor Bothsides with his mealy-mouthed denialism doesn't count.

I think the most WTF thing about all this is that the neosapiens uprising was fifty damned years ago AND unsuccessful. Like, if it was something that happened within just the last decade, I could see most of the terrans still being gripped by wartime propaganda and grieving the fresh losses of family and friends. But...fifty years? For a revolt that didn't even succeed?

To be fair, the fact that Mars is being treated as essentially "the neosapiens planet" at this point in history MIGHT imply that there was a successful campaign of genocide against the terrans there. But, the backstory we were given in the pilot specifically said that the neosapiens were enslaved again after their failed rebellion, not that they were just contained on Mars after conquering it. Obviously something must have led to their emancipation in the half century since then, but if that something had been another, much bloodier revolt that ended in the terran population of Mars being wiped out or something, you'd think people would be griping about THAT instead of the failed uprising that preceded it.

So, the only conclusion I can come to is that the rebellion was crushed, neosapiens emancipation happened through nonmilitary means at some point since then, and now - literally more than a generation later - most terrans are STILL so asspained about that failed rebellion that theere sight of a neosapiens will make half of them lose their fucking minds.

The sheer degree of spite-based pettiness here is hard to comprehend. And sure, this is a cartoon meant for children, but still...the decision to make the uprising that damned long ago had to have been made.

...

Anyway, cut to the Resolute's sickbay, where Takagi and Bronsky are both recieving treatment. Bronsky's minor injuries from the pilot were further aggravated by combat stress from the pirate battle, and then further aggravated when he fell over in the shower this morning. Goddamnit Bronsky. Takagi, meanwhile, has suffered brain damage from his neural cybernetics shorting out, and is still unconscious.

Lieutenant Marsh comes in to check up on the two of them, and to sigh and shake his head when Bronsky informs him of the shower incident. On the other hand, Bronsky is cleared to leave sickbay, but he prefers to stay with the unconscious Takagi and wait for him to wake up. For all that he's generally unlikeable, Bronsky's mancrush on Takagi continues to be cute.

Meanwhile, Admiral Winfield and Captain Marcus have been analyzing the Saturnian system for signs of pirate activity. There are many bases embedded in the icy moons, but the largest and most active of them is hidden beneath the surface of Tethys. That's probably Zembacca's stronghold, and should be targeted first. As soon as repairs on the eframes and repairable spacecraft can be completed, they'll move on Tethys.

Cue annoying journalist guy hassling whatsername the engineer as she tries to patch up Abel Squad's frames.

This fucking guy lol.

Meanwhile, Marsh is reviewing the footage from the last battle, taking notes on things that were done wrong and how to improve in subsequent battles against this particular enemy. Marsh is a good squad leader, even if he's not a terribly reliable underling.

Then, we return to Chicago, with that idiot cop - now named as Officer Napier - in the hospital. He's trying to get up from the bed, despite the doctors begging him to please let them finish healing him. He gets a visit from a CPD captain, who comes bearing good news. The mayor is willing to not force his discharge if he makes a face-to-face public apology to Governor General Phaeton.

He refuses. The officer knew he'd refuse, but she had to relay the offer to him anyway. He then pulls off the medical patches to show how manly and ruggedly self-reliant he is and pushes his way out of the hospita, ignoring the doctors pleading with him to not do this to himself. At the door, one of his fellow officers tells him to please reconsider, this is exactly like the actions that got him kicked out of the military. Lol, of course. Napier just tells him that he can't do that, and then marches off into the rain, arm still in a sling.

After leaving the hospital and marching sullenly through the rain, Napier sees some kids spray painting graffiti on a wall, and his cop instincts compell him to start screaming and chasing after them even though he's got zero legal authority anymore. Also, his sling is gone, but it doesn't seem like much time is supposed to have passed, so I guess he just decided he was too manly to need it and threw it away. He trips on a piece of garbage and falls while chasing them, which he blames on the painkillers they put him on. Lol wow. One of the graffiti artists turns back to try to help him, but then recognizes his face from the news and wisely bolts.

Grumbling to himself, Napier gets to his feet and tries to stumble away...only to be just barely missed by a speeding hovercar and knocked to the ground again in his haste to jump out of the way. Hahahaha holy fuck instant karma on this motherfucker. Even better, the aircar in question is actually a hover-limousine, with Phaeton and his attendants in the passenger seats.

Red lipstick looks really weird on a neosapiens, I must say.​

Noticing some interesting graffiti, Phaeton has the driver stop so he can inspect it. He locks onto the image of what appears to be a neosapiens face with horns. One of his attendants hisses about how these terran vermin won't dare to mock them anymore, soon enough. Phaeton himself, meanwhile, is sort of amused by the prospect of a neosapiens offshoot with horns, and muses aloud about how that could actually be a useful bio-aug. Oh my god he's an SV shitposter I fucking love Phaeton more every time I see him. Then the hover limo drives on past, and the camera focuses on Napier picking himself up and dusting himself off with an intense expression on his face as dramatic music plays.

I'm not sure if the implication is that he heard Phaeton and his attendants having that conversation or not. If he did, well...honestly, I'm not sure how incriminating what he overheard actually was. The one neosapiens lady with the lipstick did ramble about the terran vermin being about to recieve a lesson in humility, but with tempers as high as they RIGHTLY should be at this point it's very easy to attribute that to hyperbole. Or her talking about Mars doing some sort of economic weight-throwing to force the other planets to respect it a little more. We know that Phaeton IS planning a war due to the OP, but nothing in this scene makes that a necessary inference.

Also, Napier would be reacting with that embattled, hateful expression even if he overheard them arguing about which flavor of ice cream was the best. So, really, it's impossible to tell if he heard anything they were saying, or if he just caught a glimpse of blue skin through the window.

Back to the Saturnian system. Admiral Winfield wants to hang the fleet back in the rings and send some eframes to scout their approach vector to Tethys and get a look at any pirate ambushes or defenses they have set up. Captain Marcus tells him that that shouldn't be neccessary; after their big ambush failed, the pirates are probably in the process of evacuating their bases and fleeing to elsewhere in the system. If they delay the fleet's advance even longer by doing a cautious scouting phase, the pirate clans will probably slip the net and then just rebuild as soon as the fleet leaves. Better to come in fast, tank any minor ambushes Zembacca might still be able to set up after the beating his forces took, and bomb his base out of existence with their capital ship weapons.

Winfield starts to argue against that, but then stops and looks unsure.

...

I will say, the space combat strategy aspects of this show are really well done. Not in the sense that they're realistic or "hard scifi," as they obviously aren't, but that I can actually understand the logic and considerations of each decision being made. Both in the battles themselves, and in the planning scenes like this one.

This show isn't nearly as well-regarded as milsci as anime series like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, but the war-focused-details of it are a hell of a lot better at least in the early episodes of each series.

...

Torres sends another video to her family on Venus, telling them about the dangerous scouting mission she and the other eframe pilots are about to depart on. Guess Winfield decided to stick with his plan A after all. Then, the squad are preparing for takeoff. Takagi is conscious again, and the brain damage turned out to be temporary, but he still hasn't recovered enough to fly again. Bronsky has, but at this point I don't think he'll stay that way any longer than he did the last two times lol. So, Takagi wishes the others luck, and they head off to see what the pirates have defending the Tethys facility.

They encounter a couple of pirate skiffs on the way over, and win a brief firefight, though Marsh's attempt to procure a surrender and take prisoners to interrogate fails when the last skiff opts for self-destruct rather than capture. That's awfully principled, for pirates, but if these are actual clan-based societies that also happen to do piracy then it makes sense. Before the squad can push on any further though, they receive an order to return to the fleet. Marsh finds this to be a pretty insane order, since they only scouted far enough to let the pirates learn that they're scouting without getting to actually find anything. In fact, it sounds exactly like something the pirates would say if they spoofed the exofleet's comm codes and were trying to throw the exofleet into disarray via fake orders. However, the order gets confirmation in the voices of both Captain Marcus and Admiral Winfield, so Marsh has Abel Squad return to the Resolute with the others.

Back aboardship, Marsh asks the officers what that was all about. Captain Marcus yells at him for being uppity. Admiral Winfield just calmly explains the logic of his decision. Marsh still finds it baffling, especially to be made after the scouts already left the hangars.

Winfield looks unsure again, but ultimately says that he's made his decision. They'll be closing on Tethys and bombarding the base as soon as its section of the surface is in their sites.

Cut to the Tethys base, where Zembacca is being informed of this change in the enemy movements.

He looks skeptical for a moment, as if this is too good to be true. When his underlings inform him that no, really, the capital ships have withdrawn their e-frame flights and are coming at them head on, he's visibly relieved that his enemies' stupidity is granting him a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of the pirate clans.

He orders his men to warm up those capital-grade missile launchers that they've been sitting on and raise the turrets out of the ice.

These aren't modern or elegant missile batteries, but they're BIG ones, and he has enough of them that he's confident he can win a shooting match against a mass of large ships coming in blind. Once again, this guy does NOT fuck around.

End episode.


Hooo boy.

Like I said, this show is very good at the shooty-laser-explosions and spaceship-go-zoom stuff. Better than some more "mature" media that tries to do similar stuff. As I said before, the production values are also quite good for its era.

But, it's also a fascist show.

Not politically-confused-and-accidentally-kinda-fash like LGH. Not too-stupid-to-know-what-words-mean-woops-i-did-an-authoritarianism like RWBY. Actually fascist. Holistically. Perhaps even knowingly.

It COULD still be that the show is setting things up that way only to turn things on their head and have the main characters experience an "are we the baddies" revelation. It could also be working toward a nihilistic dystopian sort of "this society is so corrupted that everyone in it, oppressor and oppressed, is jut irredeemable now," though I doubt a SatAm cartoon would try to go there. But, so far, this is just unironic, unapologetic fascism.

Strong men who don't care about the rules are always right. People who DO care about the rule of law, like Captain Marcus ad Mayor Bothsides, are shown to produce nothing but bad ideas that cloud the judgement and impair the ability of the strongmen to do what must be done. There's a slave race who MUSTN'T be given equality, because they will destroy us if given a chance. Rules that restrict the strongmen's ability to trample on them are foolishness at best and treasonous sabotage at worst. Mayor bad. Cop good.

I was willing to forget about that "pilgrimage to Olympus Mons" thing and attribute it to tonal confusion, but at this point I don't think I can. Remember, they weren't just unilaterally using the military hardware entrusted to them for pointless territory violations. They were doing that while fantasizing out loud about reconquering it.

The way that the setting was explained in the beginning, it sure seemed like the terrans were in the wrong. I thought it was obvious that the terrans were supposed to be in the wrong. But so far, the story seems to be doing everything it can to flee that seemingly very clear and simple conclusion in favor of a different one.

Like I said, this might be about to turn on its head in the coming episodes. If so, then great. If not, then...well, I guess that after sitting through so much crypto shit the honesty is at least kind of refreshing?