I’ve talked, previously, most notably in my review of Guilty Crown (And the Audio Commentaries) about the difficulty of having a genius character, particularly a genius with superior tactical and planning skills germane to the story they’re in, in a major protagonist role. However, despite the difficulties, it is actually possible to have a schemer character be well-written, effective, and not bring the show down around them. I submit as evidence Ikta Solork, and Alderamin on the Sky.
Briefly I’d like to provide a picture
of the common problem. You have a character who is supposed to
possess a dizzying intellect, and you wish them to be engaged in a
field of their expertise. Now, most writers are probably not
themselves transcendent geniuses able to both see through these
situations from a grounded perspective and invent a win that makes
sense from that angle, so there is a solid temptation to ‘cheat’ (as
necessary as it is) and provide the schemer character, hand-waved
with vague “deduction”, “preparedness”, or “planning
ability”, with critical information that would rightfully be
unknown to them, on which they can act or retroactively have acted in
the past in order to secure victory against apparent odds.
I would argue, in fact, that there is a
degree to which this is necessary in writing. It’s not to be
expected to “method act” the process of coming to a complicated,
engaging solution – rather, a writer may often start with the
solution and work backwards. Executed well, the strings being pulled
can be hidden, and a delicate mechanism shown off to disguise or
explain away the artificiality. People love to see an intricate
machine do its thing, especially if there’s a tension of possible
failure at any given step. Just look at the game Mousetrap.
However, all too often this is done
poorly. The genius character will, instead of establishing
credibility, strain what they have with extremely precise future
knowledge. Rather than showing us a struggle to cover all bases and
adapt to the situation like a good heist or a Rube Goldberg machine,
they surprise everyone except themselves with the sudden arrival of
something that had to be readied in advance but that the audience was
given no context and probably no setup of any kind for. These
characters, the poorly-written geniuses, come off as prescient rather
than intelligent, and all too often quite smug about it. They become
infuriating rather than fun to watch, and because you never see any
hitches that might exist in their machinations, they remove drama
(since you know they’ll be rescued by some unrevealed element from
any sort of hazard) rather than adding it with the drama of watching
the plan go off with hitches along the way. I’ve heard these
characters referred to as “Batman” characters but I prefer to
liken them to Tzeentch (of Warhammer fame) to express the kind of
damage they can do and the frustration of the “Just as planned”
moments.
Because of how common and infuriating
the bad versions are, I get a little worried when I hear that a
protagonist, especially a main protagonist, is supposed to be a
genius strategist or planner, and that goes double in military
fiction, fiction with a deadly serious tone, and double again or more
for ones are visionaries, imperious of attitude, or smug of demeanor,
since the most common successes are none of those things.
But, now and then, a character will cut
through my general cynicism regarding the quality of writing for such
figures and remind me of why it’s okay to like geniuses and planners
and how entertaining they can be when they’re done well. Ikta
Solork, the main character of Alderamin on the Sky, is one such
character.
Alderamin on the Sky is essentially the
story of Ikta Solork’s military career, in a world vaguely
reminiscent of Napoleonic Europe (or slightly earlier) with the
addition of some faint magic in the form of little spirit partners
that attend many of the characters. Or, at least the early bits of
the career that were able to be told in twelve episodes.
It’s a career that he starts out not
intending to have: he’s offering to help his friend, Yatori, through
entrance exams for the officer post she wants, and in exchange she’ll
ensure that Ikta can get a nice desk job as a librarian, which is the
kind of thing that he wants. Things get complicated, though, when
the ship they’re on is sunk. On the way out, Ikta dives to rescue a
girl from drowning, hauling her onto the lifeboat with Yatori and
some other (new) friends. The small group is initially stranded
behind the border of an unfriendly nation, with the complicated
problem that the girl is none other than a princess of the same
nation of Ikta and the others, who likely wouldn’t be peacefully
repatriated if captured attempting to cross the border back to their
home country. Luckily, the border is very near and Ikta is capable
of coming up with a con that gets everyone across without causing a
massive international incident, the first of many sequences where he
has to use the few tools at his disposal along with some
outside-the-box thinking in order to, metaphorically speaking, get a
square peg to go through a round hole. For their bravery and the
massive boon of returning the princess safe and sound, Ikta and the
others are granted knighthoods. It’s a great honor that happens to
come with full proper membership in the military as an officer, which
is exactly what Ikta didn’t want.
The next arc concerns Ikta’s time in
what amounts to basic training, as we start to see more of what he’s
about and more of the problems with the Empire. Ikta, unlike many of
the smug jerk geniuses, is kind of a screw-up most of the time. He’s
almost unforgivably lazy (according to a narration, some day earning
the title of “the Invincible Lazy General”, though that’s not as
backhanded as it might seem), he’s a major womanizer with a
particular weakness for older or even married women, and in physical
exercise as you would expect a soldier to be competent in, he’s
rather substandard. On the Empire side, their military culture has
some badly messed up points: members of the armed forces, up to
high-ranking commanders, are routinely expected to carry out even
impossible, suicidal orders without question, marching vast swaths of
men to their deaths with execution as the reward for reassessing the
situation on the ground. Demotion and death also await anyone who
questions the general (lack of) tactics, or who returns without the
resounding victory the politicians wanted, no matter the odds they
faced. The empire is no place for tactical retreats or even
reasonable goals.
Naturally, this is a situation and
culture that Ikta chafes under, in part because his own father (a
believer in things like science and progress that core Imperial
culture scoffs at) was a victim of the same situation, but also
because he is who he is, having no desire for glory and little
interest in governments or ideas rather than individuals.
This ultimately comes to a head when
he’s put in command of one side of a war game training exercise, on
which there quite a few things staked. For one, Ikta’s sniper friend
has been bullied by his older siblings, who are leading the opposite
force, and Ikta wants to show them up. For another, his assigned
second found out that Ikta was sleeping with her (married, supposedly
unknown to Ikta) mother and largely turned his squad against them,
resulting in a wager where she and the others will accept him as a
commander (rather than in name only) if and only if he can manage to
deliver victory in the exercise. And, by the exercise scenario as
intended, Ikta’s force is completely set up to be slaughtered, since
the “Suggested” engagement is insanely unfavorable. If that
wasn’t enough, Yatori, usually Ikta’s right hand, is drafted as a
sub-commander on the opposite side. Through this arc, the bullets
may be paint, but the cost of failure would be very real.
And we get to see, in detail, with both
moments of seeing the machinations and moments of surprise, how Ikta
turns the scenario around. The rules forbid him from abandoning
heavy equipment for his team that would make it difficult to fight
and doubly difficult to fight a guerrilla war, so he “establishes a
supply depot” which for his purposes amounts to the same thing.
His forces also avoid the intended battlefield, setting up elsewhere
in the exercise area, infuriating his opponents even as Yatori
reminds them, already exhausted with the fact that no one will listen
to her about how Ikta plays, that it was only a suggestion, not an
order. When the sides do encounter each other, a river between them,
Yatori suspects foul play from Ikta, but her superiors for the
exercise disregard her input, go in without having the situation
scouted, and get put on the back foot when Ikta’s forces
counter-charge across the river, using logs hidden beneath the
surface. What was supposed to be a crushing victory for them, with
the “losses” in that engagement, turns into a struggle to
“survive” and save a little face, which they don’t do
particularly well at, the ringleader of the brothers in particular
getting very salty when he’s paintball sniped out of the game.
Ikta takes this opportunity to extol
the virtue, as he sees it, of being lazy. In an interesting bit of
outlook, he sees “laziness” as the motivator for human
achievement, great landmarks like irrigation and the wheel having
only come about because someone, somewhere along the line wanted to
be lazy, and worked smarter to avoid working harder. In a sense, his
ideal of laziness is about efficiency, achieving the best results
with the least work rather than being overly concerned with methods
or, especially, tradition.
If you don’t like Ikta by the end of
that speech that explains why he’d probably be honored to be called
“The Invincible Lazy General” in the future, I don’t know what to
tell you.
As something of an embarrassing
post-script to the arc in how little it connects, though one that
does get us a few good character moments, Ikta also manages to save
the princess again: she came out to observe his victory, only to get
ambushed by some ex-imperial insurgents, angry at their former
commander being ordered to his pointless death (a cause Ikta agrees
with) and using any tool at their disposal to attempt to take out
their frustrations on their powerful (a result Ikta forces himself to
stop, for the sake of people that matter to him and because he
doesn’t approve of using an uninvolved girl as a hostage). This, of
course, gets him some extra unwanted accolades and reinforces the
precocious crush from the princess that began with the first rescue.
The next arc begins a series of
scenarios that consumes the rest of the show, seeing Ikta and company
deployed to a peacekeeping force on Himalaya-esque mountains
inhabited by an ethnically different subculture of Imperial citizens,
the Sinack. There’s significant unrest in the region, which it turns
out is being inflamed by the military commander overseeing it,
General Safida. He’s been subjecting the Sinack to mistreatment
somewhat on the sly (including stealing and holding in bad conditions
their little spirit buddies) in the hopes that they’ll rebel, an
insurrection he thinks he can put down quickly and easily for
political clout.
While that’s already something of a
humanitarian crisis, things are not so simple for Safida nor for
Ikta. The Sinack do start rising up against their Imperial masters,
but they fight as a frustratingly effective guerrilla force that
Safida can’t just squash with raw numbers the way he wanted to.
Further, it seems the conflict may also be backed by the Empire’s
main rival, the Republic of Kioka, giving the Sinack an edge in
critical moments.
Ikta befriends a junior soldier shortly
into his time under Safida’s command, sharing a couple conversations
and an interest in books with her. While Ikta is given a tour in the
dungeon for, frankly, plenty of legitimate reasons (during which he
learns about the Sinack spirits) she’s deployed outward as part of
Safida’s offensive. Her troops arrive at a fort higher in the
mountains, which is mysteriously empty. Ikta, once released, is
given command of a relief force, heading up to rescue said embattled
expeditionary force.
Ikta, who has been in the mountains
before, knows what’s going on: the Imperial soldiers are being
afflicted by altitude sickness. Unable to fight, the normally
outnumbered Sinack can actually slaughter their foes. Thus, Ikta is
presented with a hard choice: hurry up and run headlong into the
trap, or take the mountain in stages so his troops can adapt to the
thin air.
He picks the latter, defusing the issue
for the future, but arriving too late by far to save his new friend.
When he finds the body, it’s a low-key but powerful scene: he didn’t
know her all that well, and acknowledges as much, but Ikta was always
more about saving people rather than “missions” so it still hits
him quite hard to know he did his best and still lost a friend like
that.
In any case, the offensive against the
Sinack begins, for our main characters, in earnest. And in a sense,
it’s a war they’re fighting on many fronts. Against the Sinack,
since the horrible situation demands it. Against the shadowy Kioka
forces that are making life harder, and against Safida’s colossal
incompetence and mismanagement that created and continues to worsen
the situation. Time and again, Ikta and his friends are forced to
turn around a bad scenario just to survive, and Ikta isn’t happy in
the least with the fact they’re having to fight this conflict at all.
The reveal that the leader of the Sinack Resistance is someone he
was friends with as a child doesn’t make it any easier. The Imperial
forces, though taking heavy losses, do have an overwhelming
advantage, and ultimately push it far enough to crush the home base
of the Sinack, taking the leader captive and starting to engage in
the good old “rape and pillage” before Ikta and company use what
authority they’ve got to regain order. Still, the “victory”
isn’t much of one.
Especially since the bigger play comes
into view with the show’s last and best arc. A crusade force from
the “Holy Aldera Empire” arrives, intent on wreaking vengeance
for Safida’s mistreatment of the spirits, beings they see as holy
messengers of God. Assisting them, and possibly masterminding the
whole scenario, is a young Kioka general who is Ikta’s opposite:
relentless to the point of having a reputation for never sleeping.
The Aldera/Kioka joint force is absolutely overwhelming for Safida’s
men, and Safida gets the opportunity to withdraw, leaving Ikta in
command of a sacrificial speed bump of a rear guard. Ikta’s mission:
buy enough time for the main force to complete an ordered retreat and
survive. For this he has the most freedom he’s had since the mock
battle, but also the toughest opponent he’s ever had, a fellow genius
with vast resources.
The episodes covering this arc are a
delightful cat-and-mouse game of tactics and counters. Ikta can’t
win, but he doesn’t have to; he only has to live long enough. To
help gain enough forces to even do that, he makes an apology to the
Sinack, going so far as to joint-by-joint cut off his left pinky
before his old friend, their leader, in a show of humility and
obeisance that’s at once theatrical and calculated, and painfully
earnest, getting her appreciation on a personal scale and her
fighters to help resist the Aldera. The fact that the Aldera have no
love of the Sinack and would happily destroy them along with the
Imperials also probably helps. From there, it’s a matter of what
Ikta refers to as “Blind Chess” where he has to guess the moves
of his opponent that he can’t observe from the ones he can, and must
attempt to find a weakness in the opposing forces.
Over a long sequence, Ikta spends
everything to slow the methodical, precise advance of the Aldera
under the Unsleeping General’s command, before ultimately using
everything he’s got in a direct confrontation with his foe. He
counters the Kioka snipers, holds up the Aldera main forces as much
as possible, and ultimately abuses his opponent’s distaste for a
chaotic engagement and unwillingness to gamble to bluff him into
offering a few days of cease-fire, in which Ikta’s surviving forces,
along with the main force, can complete their retreat in peace.
As Ikta returns to the imperial core,
the Princess approaches him with a mission: She wants Ikta to rise
to the top of the military, and then lose a war to Kioka.
Specifically, he has to lose it badly enough that the Empire will be
forced to reform its ways, but not so badly that the Empire will lose
its sovereignty and independence. It’s a monumental task, but one
that if anyone is up to, it’s Ikta, who’s good with outside-the-box
thinking and not at all pleased with imperial culture.
But, if you want to know how that goes,
you’ll have to read the Light Novels this is based on, because the
show is over and liable to get a second season when pigs fly. Which
is too bad, really, because there’s a lot of strong material here.
First, the not-so-strong stuff. For some reason, I’ve often mentally categorized Alderamin along with Arpeggio of Blue Steel, and they do have a good deal in common. Both are strong when it comes to battle scenes and tactics, though Alderamin is significantly stronger there. Both are weak when it comes to characters. Much like I couldn’t even remember some members of Gunzo’s crew because they didn’t leave any impact, most of Ikta’s friends are very one-dimensional sounding boards for Ikta. There’s Yatori, who’s kind of interesting in her own right as the bridge between Ikta’s modernity and the traditional warrior culture, but the pretty-boy sniper, the fat one, and the cute medic girl really don’t leave much of an impression. How Ikta interacts with them, as well as his second, the Princess, the Sinack chieftess, his soldier friend who dies… those can be interesting, but the characters themselves are just filler. Ikta needs them because he needs someone to be the Watson to his Holmes, and Yatori knows him too well and has too much of a stick up her rear to do that.
That said, I do very much appreciate Ikta’s relationship with Yatori. I mentioned this before, including recently when I reviewed Gleipnir saying that the relationship of the leads there was more like that between the leads here than a Yuki/Yuno dysfunctional romance. Ikta and Yatori are deeply tied to each other, to the point of being able to say things like ‘we two are one’, utterly inseparable in life and expecting to be inseparable in death, but there’s not really any hint of romance in how they interact. Ikta will typically hit on or smooth talk anything with breasts (Exempting the too-young Princess) but he never has that kind of interaction with Yatori. Yatori, straight-laced as she is, doesn’t take very kindly to Ikta’s philandering, but only because it’s going to get him into trouble (and does!) not because she has any stake in him in that way. All the same, they have incredible chemistry, playing off each other well enough that they might as well be part of a greater whole. It’s a deep friendship, which is a kind of relationship I find is sadly uncommon to see in fiction.
Back to the weakness… there is no
point to the spirits and magic. Technically the Spirits are used for
tech here and there and as a plot point for the Sinack and Aldera,
but there’s no reason we couldn’t see familiar period technology and
something more concrete and understandable than the weird god-given
fairy pets as the provocation against the Sinack and Aldera. There
is absolutely no reason why Alderamin, which is mostly played
straight as a period military piece, couldn’t have been set in a
non-magical alternate universe rather than one with magic. And I
love fantasy and magic… but if you bring it out, you absolutely
have make use of it, explain it, and explore it. The Spirits are
just kind of there. What do they represent? Where do they come
from? Even in setting we don’t have real answers to these questions,
only what they’re used for that… frankly, wasn’t needed. And if
you’re not going to use magic well, why include it? Make the world
more contained and constrained so we can focus on the politics and
culture rather than the laws of the universe that can just be left as
“like Earth”.
All in all, compared to Arpeggio of
Blue Steel, I feel like Alderamin on the Sky has a significantly
higher baseline. None of the arcs here were straight-out boring the
way the human stuff in Arpeggio was. The support characters may be
lame, but I can remember at least one or two moments out of each of
them, which is more than I can say for I-401’s crew. On the other
hand, the peaks are somewhat lower. Ikta’s strategies are fun to
watch, but don’t engage the brain and promote deep thought the way
the Science Fiction elements of Arpeggio do.
That said, I do think that Alderamin
is, on the whole, the stronger finished product. I have some deep
reservations recommending Arpeggio, because it has so much of its
critical connective tissue that’s so weak. Because Alderamin is more
consistent, I have no such reservations recommending it. Normally I
like things the other way around, favoring “great but flawed”
over “Consistent but OK”, but Alderamin isn’t just OK. It’s
good. And, in my mind, worth a nice, flat B.