ExoSquad S1E5: "Resist"
"Resist." Conveniently, the story has created a situation in which resistance is actually the easy rather than hard choice. Everyone gets to be a hero.
Well, like I said last time. ExoSquad has one episode left in which to convince me it isn't just some stars-and-stripes-fascist shit. Let's see if it can do that.
The first wave of neosapiens destroyers and heavy e-frames outflank and destroy two of the five terran carriers right at the start of the battle. The remaining carriers get their own e-frames out and start pushing back, destroying most of the attackers, but then a second wave of Martian ships close in. This one has capital ships of its own, including the Olympus Mons itself. The fighting is intense, but the terrans are just too badly outnumbered at this point. They manage to get some e-frames close to the Olympus Mons and score some hits, but they're only able to inflict superficial damage before the Martians' own point defences and e-frames pick them off.
Aboard the Resolute, Marsh is being marched off to execution even as the ship buckles and shakes under the impact of enemy missiles. He demands to be allowed to hop in his e-frame, but they tell him that he can't do that, he needs to be executed right now, maybe next time. Suddenly, his captors are shot with stun pistols from behind and fall away, leaving Marsh free. His team has decided to mutiny with him, and they brought him his flight suit and equipment.
Not quite what I was predicting, but close enough.
...wait a minute.
They're talking about how they need to hurry out there and try to make as much of a difference as they can as fast as possible. But...other terran e-frames are already out there fighting. We just saw them exchanging fire with the neosapiens attackers, and even taking out some of their ships.
Abel Squad came here to rescue Marsh instead of going out there and fighting with everyone else.
I get that not having their squad leader in battle with them reduces the team's effectiveness. But still, compare that loss of effectiveness with the amount of combat time they spent rescuing him when everyone else was already out in their e-frames, fighting. Yeah.
This could make sense if their plan was to free Marsh, and then bring him up to the bridge to stage a more violent and successful mutiny and try to save the fleet by retreating or something. But that's not what they're doing. The entire team, including Marsh, are now heading straight to the e-frame hangar. So, nope.
Anyway.
Up on the bridge, Marcus is freaking out and crumbling in disbelief as another of his five carriers goes down, leaving him with only two. He freezes up again, just like he did when they first got the bad news from Earth and had to abandon the pirate-hunting operation.
It's a hard life, being the token incompetent obstructionist who everyone else bounces off of. Being put in a position of power and authority that you never could have possibly gotten yourself into, just so you can be out of your depth before the others swoop in to relieve you. Mad sympathy for Captain Marcus here.
One of the bridge bunnies reports that a hangar just depressurized. No, not from enemy fire, it's been opened from the inside. Wait...why would their hangars NOT be depressurized already? Didn't they just launch most of their e-frames into battle? Well, he makes contact with the missing e-frames, and demands to know why Marsh is out fighting the enemy instead of being executed.
So...did he order the rest of Abel Squad to NOT take part in this battle, if he's surprised that their hangar is open?
As he whines at Marsh for not respecting his authority while the Martians are literally shooting his ship apart, the unnamed neosapiens nurse pushes a wheelchair-bound Admiral Winfield onto the bridge. He's conscious again. That was timely. Maybe there really was something to that reversed-polarity console explosion in sickbay after all.
Startling Marcus out of his stupid argument, Winfield demands to know what the hell happened to their escort fleet. Marcus stammers out that they're still twelve hours behind the carriers. Disgustedly talking over Marcus, Winfield orders him to launch all remaining e-frames. Marcus sheepishly walks back to his own console and does so.
As in, they still have unlaunched e-frames.
As in, Marcus didn't launch the Resolute's own e-frames at all. The ones we saw fighting back a minute ago were from the other carriers, not the flagship's. That's why they were alarmed by the hangar door opening.
Marcus just...didn't launch the fighters from the main carrier that he was planning to rely on to win this battle with. None of them. For seemingly no reason.
...
This show was praised for its "serious and adult depiction of warfare."
By those fucking standards, "Der Fuhrer's Face" is a gritty WW2 drama up there with "Saving Private Ryan."
...
Once the rest of the mechs are loose, Marsh gets in touch with Winfield and tells him that he thinks he has a plan to save the two last carriers. He'll need half of their remaining e-frames to follow his lead, while the rest should return to the hangars to try and escape with the ships. He's going to make a suicide run on the Olympus Mons. With that many e-frames all coming at their flagship, the Martians will have to turn all their attention to defending it. Which should give the two last carriers the window they need to retreat and regroup with the escort fleet.
Well, I will say that this show's well thought out approach to space combat tactics remains a positive highlight. When it isn't getting Marcus involved in them, at least. This makes sense militarily, is readily comprehensible to the audience, and also is a heroic sacrifice that comes across as both noble and necessary. Heroic sacrifices in these types of stories often seem poorly justified, and this one really doesn't (again, aside from the detail of Marcus having gotten them into this situation in the first place, at least).
Winfield approves the plan, and signals all e-frame squad leaders to follow Abel Squad's lead. So, Marsh rallies half their mechs, and they charge the enemy flagship. The other half head back to the carriers to hopefully live to fight another day.
Also, while leading the charge, Marsh tells them all to concentrate fire on the Olympus Mons' bridge if they manage to get it in their sights. In his own words "Let's make Phaeton regret ever leaving Mars."
How does he know that Phaeton is aboard the flagship in person?
I guess it's a reasonable-ish inference, assuming an intercepted transmission or two, but still. The way that the information's been presented enough, it's enough of a leap to give me pause.
Well, however it is that they knew Phaeton was aboard the flagship's bridge, it's definitely the right target to make a diversionary suicide run at. The enemy fleet has to defend their head of state now, not just their flagship. Phaeton is stunned by their attack, and isn't sure what the hell to make of it at first. Nevertheless, it does force him to refocus all his forces onto interception duty before his own bridge can collapse around him, which buys the surviving carriers time to escape. Captain Marcus doesn't understand what just happened until Admiral Winfield explains it to him after the fact, because of course. Winfield thanks Marsh for his sacrifice, and vows to use the opportunity it granted to liberate Earth and Venus before they leave communications range, with the e-frames fighting to the death behind them.
Only...instead of all getting killed, Marsh, his squad, and several other surviving e-frames withdraw as well once the carriers have escaped, and just descend to Earth's surface in a controlled landing. None of the Martian forces chase them. Or even shoot after them, really. Like, they just meander out of the dense melee without any interception or pursuit.
-___-
The Martian fleet is still mostly together. They were shooting all the guns they had at those e-frames a second ago. They're pointedly NOT abandoning those targets to try and chase after the carriers. They just seem to stop existing for a few seconds so that Marsh and Co can survive and keep being in the rest of the series, and then start existing again immediately afterward.
Still, the combustion trails the e-frames leave as they undergo atmospheric reentry are at least pretty. So that's nice I guess.
Phaeton hails his generals on the planetary surfaces and tells them to speed up their timetable for consolidating Martian power and infrastructure on both conquered worlds. With at least two carriers and a good number of escort ships on the loose, they aren't in as secure a position as they'd hoped they would be after that engagement.
That means they have to make sure they put those terrans to work good. Apparently. Because terrans are useful at performing the kind of menial labour that the neosapiens are entrusting them with amirite?
I thought that making them work was just a spiteful ironic punishment, but now it seems like Phaeton thinks he actually needs this to fuel his war machine in the longterm. Which um...well, maybe he means a different kind of work than what we saw in Chicago (ie, stuff that would be absolutely trivial for neosapiens, but extremely slow and inefficient for terrans). Maybe. Hopefully. Because otherwise, this is just nonsense.
Down in what's left of Chicago (which I gather is the capitol of Earth at this point. It could have made that clearer before now, but I guess the emphasis on that city always sort of implied it), General Shiva is setting up headquarters in the city hall building. Chicago has been renamed to Phaeton City. Which is extremely petty for Phaeton to have done, but also incredibly cathartic. After the way the "sister cities" debacle went, I have trouble imagining myself NOT doing this in his place lol. Shiva is having a meeting with the mayor who we met previously, and said mayor comes across as practically eager to help reorganize his city in the service of the conquerors.
Like, downright babbling excitedly at how he's sure he can find the most cooperative and pliable terrans for their purposes, and how he can come up with special privileges for collaborators to motivate them to help police the rest.
On one hand, this is a hell of a lot more realistic and less hyperbolic than "shove literally everyone on the entire fucking planet into concentration camps."
On the other, the choice to do this with the pseudoprogressive mayor is...telling. Obviously, we should have known this man was a traitor at heart from the moment he made milquetoast both-sides-y overtures of friendship to the neosapiens. And being mean to a racist cop too, that's the biggest red flag that an elected representative can wave.
I actually would have lightened up on this show a good bit here, thanks to what appears to be a more politically plausible depiction of conquest and social reorganization under a vassal regime than I expected. All it had to do was make the collaborator-in-chief some random politician who we just saw in the background once or twice. But, having the mayor be a Quisling, and framing it in a way where we're obviously supposed to have seen his earlier behaviour as signs of treachery to come, cancels out all of the goodwill this would merit and then some extra. So, still a net negative. -3 fascism points for colonial politics, +4 for the mayor, net +1.
Cut to an abandoned farm a couple dozen miles from the city, where Abel Squad (and seemingly ONLY Abel Squad. We saw some other e-frames escape to earth with them, but they've since returned to their nonexistent quantum state) have taken refuge. They've hid their e-frames in the barn and are trying to decide what to do next when a Martian light frame flies overhead and orders them to lower their weapons and stand down. Since they only have pistols onhand at the moment, they do as ordered. The e-frame lands, and reveals itself to contain one of Acab's sewer buddies. I guess they either fixed that frame they damaged in the factory ambush, or they've stolen others since then.
Marsh is happy to find armed human resistance, and starts out friendly, but Sewer Buddy isn't having it. ExoFleet's failure to make so much as a showing until after it was too late is hard to forgive, and the resistance is really eager to have someone to express their displeasure at.
So, he brings Abel Squad back to the Chicago outskirts under e-frame gunpoint. It's kind of a wonder he didn't just murder Masala on sight, honestly.
Meanwhile, at the little base that Acab Cell has set up in what looks like a subway station or something, Acab himself is watching a news broadcast. And mumbling darkly about how he knew the police officer being interviewed on TV would sell out, but he didn't think they'd sell out this quickly and completely.
It's the same officer who tried to make him apologize to the mayor and the governor-general after the incident that got him fired. Yet another person trying to make him stop being racist who turned out to be a total traitor, just like he always knew she'd be. At this point, it's very clear how you can identify traitors ahead of time.
...
Okay, guys? This is not bothsidesy liberal brain rot. This is not dumb trope-following. If you still think the show doesn't know exactly what it's doing at this point, then I really don't know what would convince you.
...
This newscast ends up being one of the most nonsensical things in the entire show so far. It's like someone just took a bunch of paranoid sound bytes from 90's era conservative radio and mashed them together with zero regard for how they fit the context. First of all, we're told that all baseline terrans are required to go in and get themselves "registered" at administrative centers being set up around the world. Despite, you know, pretty much everyone on Earth being a baseline terran, making this completely redundant. Upon registration, they will also each be fitted with a subdermal microchip that allows them to be tracked and monitored at all times.
If I were still wondering why the InfoWars crowd are fond of this show, I'd stop wondering now.
This information is mostly delivered by Mayor Bothsides, along with the insistence that the purpose of all this is to aid in Earth's postwar recovery, and the reminder that failure to comply will make you an enemy of the state.
So yeah, that sure was a thing.
Acab, who seems to have become the unquestioned leader of the resistance offscreen since the last time we saw him, is eager to yell at the ExoFleet survivors for being useless when they're brought to him for that purpose. Seriously, they explicitly brought them here under armed guard just for that. Marsh starts to ask this shmuck exactly who he thinks he is, but Masala advises him to perhaps try a more diplomatic approach.
Acab responds to that by saying that he's had enough neosapiens "diplomacy" at this point. And asks Marsh why the hell he even has one of the vile blueskins with him if he's supposed to be on humanity's side.
Masala responds to this with infinite, selfless patience and humility, like a good minority should do. Marsh at least has the decency to get slightly indignant on his behalf, but only slightly.
Burns, whose life Masala saved back on Enceladus, gets a little more impassioned in his defence. Saying that he risked his life against the Martians just like everyone else did, and showed no sign whatsoever of wavering loyalties. Acab brushes off the significance of Masala having risked his life for them. What is "life" to a neosapiens? They'll just grow a dozen more for any one that dies. There's no such thing as meaningful sacrifice for them.
...
Okay, Marsh? You and I have had a strained relationship throughout the show thus far. You made an extremely bad introduction for yourself back in the pilot, and since then it's been pretty dramatic ups and downs. But, Lieutenant J.T. Marsh, man. If you just fucking kill this guy, I will forgive you for everything and continue rooting for you henceforth.
...
Marsh doesn't kill him. Instead, he and Masala try to get Acab to understand that he can't throw away resources right now, especially not trained human resources with technical and combat experience. Maybe he's still plotting to kill him later, when his henchmen aren't looking? It doesn't look like he is, but he might be. I believe in you, Marsh.
Also, when trying to reason with Acab, Marsh and Burns both say that they need to work together and pool everything they can to free the planet from "neosapiens rule." Not "Martian rule," or "Commonwealth rule." Masala is standing right there the whole time, and he doesn't react to this verbally or otherwise.
...actually, screw you Marsh. I'm back on Team Phaeton again. Come on big guy, just land a tungsten rod right on top of this subway station, I know you can do it.
For now, Acab puts them under arrest (lol, old habits) until he can figure out what to do with them. His words, not mine. As they retire to their improvised prison cell, Marsh bemoans the probable ill fate that these jokers are going to meet if they keep going the way they're going. Masala assures him that they'll come around in time, they'll see reason, just be patient.
...you know, at this point I think I might actually hate Masala more than any of the terrans.
So, Acab and friends make a terrorist attack against one of the chip-implantation centers, just shooting wildly at the machine operators and screaming "death to all collaborators" (their words, not mine), the whole nine yards. They cause a little bit of disruption, and Acab even starts making a "join us and resist" speech to the people on their way to be chipped that has a few of them looking interested. However, he isn't able to finish it before a Martian e-frame shows up and forces them to make a humiliating and unphotogenic retreat. Losing two people and getting several others injured before they're able to escape.
Overall, they hurt themselves much more than they hurt the occupation, even just locally speaking.
When they return to base, they're understaffed enough that they need to let Abel Squad help them treat the wounded. Acab sulks about how none of the unarmed civilians tried to help him by...um...I dunno, trying to clog the fully functional live-ammo firing e-frame's servomotors with their own blood and viscera or something. Perhaps, he grumbles, humanity just doesn't deserve to be saved after all.
Marsh, no one is looking right now. You're in juuuust the right spot. Go ahead, just snap his neck, do it.
Marsh tells him that people aren't going to fight a battle that they don't think they can win. Erm...in light of that sentiment, I'm thinking that Captain Marcus might have not been the best foil to Marsh for the first half of this episode lol. Anyway, they need to do something that'll get people's attention and make the resistance look somewhat capable before they can start pulling in more recruits.
Some time later, Phaeton makes a planetside appearance in person in the city he's renamed after himself. Giving some big speech for a mixed neosapiens and terran audience. As his dropship lands and he steps out, his soldiers are all chanting his name in this deep, guttural cheer that goes on and on and reminds me hilariously of this:
While Phaeton is giving a speech that, frankly, sounds just like all of his other speeches, Acab Cell with its new military allies infiltrate the broadcast room where they're televising the speech from. Masala risks his life to impersonate a Martian technician to get them in. Acab tells Masala that he doesn't care how much he helps him, he'd still love to kill him for being a neosapiens, and also he refuses to let him carry a weapon in his presence. Masala grins and bears it.
I remember them saying something about it being forbidden for neosapiens to have weapons, earlier. Obviously there are exceptions to this (Masala is able to pilot an armed e-frame in his capacity as a soldier under the Earth government), but it was brought up more than once. So, think about this scene in the context of that.
Also, Masala needs to have a pistol on him in order to complete his disguise, since the neosapiens staff onsite are all at least lightly armed. Acab still won't budge. Masala still grins and bears it.
Anyway, they seize the broadcast room and do that stupid thing that happens in every other cartoon where they play their own recording on the big screen right behind the person giving the speech.
Acab doesn't even use the opportunity particularly, well. Telling everyone that Phaeton is lying to them, even though he HASN'T lied about anything during this speech as far as I can tell. Yadda yadda, resist, hope, freedom, bla, bla, you know the rest. Phaeton shoots out the screen himself to make it stop when his own people are unable to quickly regain control. Then the rest of Abel Squad flies their e-frames over the edge of the stadium and start shooting into the arrayed neosapiens soldiers.
Did Phaeton really not bring any e-frames or other heavy weapon platforms with him to this event where he's appearing in person in the open air before a gigantic crowd?
...actually hold on a fucking second, we SAW some e-frame escorts landing alongside his damned ship just a minute ago!
What is it with this show and disappearing mechs?
Well, since the e-frames that the Martians had just a second ago have all tumbled into negative space, all they have to shoot back with are ineffective small arms. Bronsky the drunk dude even gets Phaeton himself in his sights briefly before his attendants drag him into cover and Abel Squad is forced to retreat before the enemy e-frames exist again. Then the bomb they planted in the auditorium detonates behind them. That's...probably going to send mixed messages to the terrans in the auditorium who your message was seemingly in part directed toward, if any of them survived. Oh well!
After the smoke clears, Phaeton comes back out into the open and assesses the PR damage he's sustained this evening. It's significant, he knows. Terran resistance is going to be emboldened by this. He has Mayor Bothsides executed for failing to ensure the local terran cooperation that he promised.
Bothsides screams and begs as he's dragged away, protesting that he did everything he could, he's been trying to help as much as he can. No use. There's no hope for cooperation with a now-empowered underclass. Don't even think about any such possibilities, it's all a trap.
After retreating to a safe distance, Abel Squad leave their e-frames with Acab Cell and tell them to make good use of them. Acab admits that maybe Masala isn't vermin like all the rest of his people. Heartwarming. Then, Abel Squad hops aboard a stolen ship and take off to try and reestablish contact with Admiral Winfield. The Martians don't detect their unlicensed space launch and blow them out of the sky before they can escape orbit because reasons, just like on their way down earlier. End episode. That's the end of the commissioned ExoSquad reviews.
I think I *can* charitably see where some of the mainstream praise this show received might have been coming from. In the early nineties SatAm milieu, where censorship was strict and respect for the child audience was nonexistent, just trying to do a politically loaded war-centric show AT ALL would have been a bold move. So, I can see how this might have wowed people just based on that. The fact that anime hadn't really taken off among American youth yet also meant that the kind of tactically engaging, high-stakes cartoon violence that Anglosphere kids nowadays take for granted would have been more of a novelty.
...
...speaking of anime. I've seen some other western media critic types complain about how much right-wing messaging there is in Japanese animation. I'm seriously looking side-eyed at those people right now.
Seriously. I used to sort of resent my parents for only letting my siblings and I watch educational programming back in the nineties, but if this shit was floating around at the time then they made the right choice.
...
In my review of the "Mighty Max" pilot, I remember being impressed at how strongly the show implied human death sometimes. Like, there was a scene where a lava monster is charging at a shopkeeper, and then a few frames later we see it burst through the wall behind him in a way that implies it rushed right THROUGH the guy and incinerated him. That's pretty dark for kids, especially in how matter-of-factly it was done, and pretty daring given the media codes of the time.
"ExoSquad" takes it much further than "Mighty Max." Like, this show is REALLY careful to avoid ever showing the moment of death, or unambiguously dead bodies, so you can tell that the censorship was still in effect. When they rammed that neosapiens pilot in episode 4, we just see the forklift push him offscreen and then an explosion, and they never explicitly say the word "dead" or "killed." It was even more obvious in the pilot, when the camera had to caaaarefully steer around the corpses that were heavily suggested to be strewn around the derelict freighter. In trusting kids to not only a) be able to deal with high stakes and dark themes, and b) be able to figure out what it was getting at despite the restrictions, this show does accomplish something that was rare in its time and place.
But, handling mature subject matter doesn't automatically make a piece of media "mature." That's equally true when we're talking about war and politics as it is with sexual titillation or harsh language.
This show isn't mature. Even if it weren't for the repulsive politics on display, I'd call it an unremarkable, immature work in its handling of the characters and plot beats. And, with the addition of said politics, ExoSquad does much worse than just failing to measure up to its aspirations.
Like I said at least once before, I'd actually have slightly more respect for ExoSquad if it DIDN'T try to do the wishy-washy "racism is bad" message while also insisting that racists are totally right and should be listened to. If that's how the show feels, then it should be like the unbound straight-talking manly men it idealizes, and have some goddamned balls. It's less fascist, and more the kind of spineless rightwing liberal who stands juuuuuust a few inches to the left of the fascists and supports everything they do while handwringing over how it wishes they'd be more polite about it.
I could consider "Tucker Carlson: The SatAm Cartoon" some sort of worthy opponent, but this isn't even that. It's fucking "Dave Rubin: The SatAm Cartoon."
...ironically, I envision the sort of people behind this type of media as fitting neatly into the Mayor character's role in the story. Just, it's not a foreign despot with different-colored skin who they're kissing up to with no regard for their own survival.
