Or some good old-fashioned slave boxes, sometimes colloquially referred to as prison cells. :3
Or some good old-fashioned slave boxes, sometimes colloquially referred to as prison cells. :3
You don't want to keep a whole foreign army in prison cells in a nation already suffering from a serious lack of food.Originally Posted by neflight86
Did I mention that slave boxes, properly implemented, address both potential issues of population and protein by being communal?
...let's hope they buy their freedom... There's not much moral high ground in further starving your nation...
Episode 12
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I wonder how harshly the empire could treat Elfrieden under these circumstances, considering Elfrieden is still paying the empire a considerable sum for the sake of fighting the demon invasion. At the end of the day it was Amidonia that attacked. If the empire wants to stop human nations from fighting amonst themselves, it can't very well go as far as reward Amidonia for that failure of an invasion. All those soldiers lost and resources wasted could have been used to fight the demons. If the empire indeed does clearly side with Amidonia, it sends a message to everyone that at least attacking Elfrieden is perfectly okay. That would lead first to Elfrieden not paying a single penny anymore to the empire to help in the war against the demons, but it might ultimately mean that countries would also fight elsewhere, believing that stretching the rules is probably okay.
Logically the empire would just tell Elfrieden to go back home. Amidonia's king is dead, so it might already serve as some kind of a punishment. Maybe the empire will also assume that Elfrieden looted the whole Amidonian capital for anything worth gold, so a monetary compensation has been handled sufficiently as well.
However, since this is anime, I'm not holding my breath for logic or anything.
If I recall, the non-aggression pact was only for specifically signed participants. Was Elfrieden undersigned? That being said, your points stand. Infighting is unfruitful right now as would be sending a detachment to deal with it from the front lines. Elfrieden has already displayed that it is not seeking to expand its borders, so I expect a diplomatic slap on the wrist from the Empire.
Overall, while exciting, this whole conflict felt a bit too clean. Nothing was really lost, but I guess that could be chalked up to the brilliance of our adolescent king. This arc did establish and maintain some decent tension there for a bit, so I can't really complain, but I still wish he had some 'room to grow' in his leadership; not just his harem.
13
No major faults to the end (aside from the non-ending), I'll call Realist Hero a very solid show. It kind of did what I was hoping Slime would stick more to- Here's a nation in need of competent leadership; now that we've conquered another land turns out they were starving, too- gotta fix that, and so on...
It not gonna blow any minds, but the characters acted within their character throughout and navigated the (admittedly simpler) geopolitical conflicts deftly and never felt like they were wasting my time. Recommended.
Yeah, I was happy to see the Empire didn't rush in with haste. It seemed like the Empress and her sister instead had acknowledged Kazuya's competence and didn't want to make things too difficult for him. Yet at the same time the Empire needs to make sure the treaty is honoured, even if it means they might technically need to choose the offender's side.
I could watch another season of this. The most interesting thing to see would be Kazuya meeting the Amidonia princess. She seemed like the only intelligent person in the Amidonia royal family.
She'll get her second sneeze soon enough; looks like another season was confirmed for this winter.
Episode 12 was a bit of a crash, episode 13 was okay.
I did like this show more than I should. I wish they'd focus a bit more on the actual changes. I find these "television show stuff" stupid and uninteresting.
Building a new port and implementing new laws and all that kind of stuff was more interesting.
I also found them stupid and uninteresting, but realistically they would be a masterstroke. That being said, there's no way the rulers of that world wouldn't already be using them to control and brainwash the population. It's just the tired isekai trope that the locals won't even use their own resources properly before the mighty Japanese man tells them how to do it.
14
Negotiations are going about as smoothly as could be presumed when one side doesn't have a foot to stand on. The obvious seeming resolution is giving the kingdom back to another member of the family, perhaps one of the female variety... who's been in a few scenes last season making a point of how much more shrewd, merchant like and competent she would be in the role... If only such a ojou existed...
Yeah, too bad she's being so shrewd she's completely avoiding interacting with anyone, thus making her a non-player.
A very good point. I had all but forgotten her already. Regarding what DarthEnder said, perhaps there will be people, locals or otherwise, who can actually recommend her to Souma.
The best part of the whole episode indeed was kicking Julius out of the room and negotiations. There's nothing to negotiate with a person who is only begging others for help, without any power of his own. Such people can only act as tools for those actually in power.
Episode 15
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Seems like Souma didn't suggest a requirement of having someone not guilty of a (lost) offensive war in charge of Amidonia. Seeing how well Souma got along with Jeanne, it seems to me he could have afforded to throw it on the table. Demanding reparations in gold is kind of funny seeing how right now they are still working to make Amedonia a better place, sparing no expenses. And he even complained about the place being a dreary military dictatorship before. Yet if he now demands money, it would return to that shitty state. It makes me think he's, in fact, planning to make fools out of both Julius and Jeanne by having Amidonia revolt against Julius.
Isn't he having the Empire pay the money though?
I understood it as wanting the payment in the empire's currency. Kind of like in our world international trade is often handled in US dollars even between countries not using the US dollar as their own currency. I suppose it was to force the empire to get involved by acting as a guarantor of sorts: Amidonia needs to borrow the money from the empire to pay the reparations (in the empire's currency). So, if Amidonia turns out to have problems paying, it's the empire that needs to find a way of getting their money back. Plus, Amidonia isn't as likely to try to delay payments or find loopholes if it's, in fact, the empire they owe money to.
I suppose Empire's money holds value in all mankind countries too. It would be easy for Amidonia to pay with their currency and manipulate it in a way the sum is of no value afterwards.
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
I doubt they use fiat money, although I don't really remember. So, whatever the currency, it's basically the weight of gold/silver that matters. But of course Amidonia could reduce the amount of gold in their coins to try to fool Souma. It would be quite desperate, naturally. However, by having the empire as a proxy, few tricks remain available for Amidonia.
My asumption is that if he specifically asks for that currency, it's to protect against currency manipulation.
But maybe just having the empire emblem coined is enough, Amidonia would not try to forge that and the empire is involved.
But to me, coins of the same gold weight and purity do not hold the same value. You can't go lower than their gold weight, but you can go higher.
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
The idea of a standard coin for a country was to remove the need to keep weighing gold/silver when a purchase was made. You knew that a gold ducat of a particular country or city-state would have a certain amount of gold. However, if a particular greedy king suddenly decided to make their coins lighter or dilute the gold/silver with less valuable metals, it could result in a lack of trust. In this series' case, Amidonia wouldn't probably dare to try anything funny with the empire's coins, but for Souma it could be even more important to keep the empire involved, whether the empire wanted it or not.
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