Yeah, you're right according to the Type-Moon Wiki page for Fragrach:

 

If Fragarach is activated before Miya's attack then there is no way to attack with her strongest attack, from behind or otherwise. Fragarach is a fire and forget weapon. As in you activate it and it acts on it's own from then on. The only chance Miya would have had is if she took the Fraga by complete surprise outside of battle.

Miya's probably very strong by Nasu terms. The problem is there is just WAY too many things in that universe that side step strength or completely negate it entirely.

 

I kind of see Shirou frying Matsu's brain when he explains that.

 

The fact that Fraga knew to use one of her three Fragrach's on Miya shows that she did her homework. She knew that Miya was the most dangerous Sekirei there and was prepared with a weapon that can counter any attack, regardless of how powerful it was.

This is where the advantage of a surprise attack, and a pre-planned attack comes from. She was ready. I don't think Miya would have been able to catch her off guard.

 

This is not update, sorry. Also, severe tl;dr. Skim down to see the abbreviated review.

I watched the Sekirei anime and enjoyed its light-hearted tone. There were tits and there were fights, along with a harem. Not the most brilliant situation, but a nice little time waster. I might check out the manga, the world semi-interested me.

Then I remembered this little story had been posted quite often on DLP, so I gave it a spin. When I read x-overs I like to be familiar with both universes.

That being said, damn am I glad gabe put in so much explanation to the Nasuverse magic system or I would have been completely lost on the battles. Holy Fuck that is complicated as hell. I only watched the F/S N anime, so many of the intricacies are lost on me. It's usually enough to enjoy the fanfiction based on it. Not in this case apparently. LOL.

Onto the review, now that I'm done pontificating.

Plot.

Basically follows the anime. Phase 1....Phase 2...etc. The major differences stem from the protaganist being changed, which was very nice to see. Kuno and Haruka not getting freed resulting in a disappointing battle royale. Kuu meeting Shiina was good and his sister...I'll get to characters in a second.

The basic plot is not actually, or focus rather, is not on the Sekirei Plan, but on Shirou adapting to his flock. So far it has been handled well, but his weaknesses as writing certain characters really shows. Yet, it may have been his characters that he chose that is causing it. Not sure. The reveals have been great, too. His angst not too over the top, and the reactions mostly believable.

What I really like is how he has changed things from the anime. I always saw Minato having these awesome chicks and he just sits on his ass fiddling his dick. It was rage-inducing at times because he could wtf;pawn half the damn city, made worse when the plot called for this super-beings to become weak females reliant on luv. ::gag:: That was what I didn't like about the anime. Gabe fixed that for me. Shirou being a badass does not hurt either.

Characters.

I'll start with Shirou. He's a great protagonist because he thinks things through, he's talented but does not give himself enough credit, is incredibly hard on himself, yet is still nice and kind. The Path of Shura(sp?) he's walking is great in my opinion. His two swords fit him marvelously. The only gripe I have from him would be at times his Mary-Suish tendencies. They're not a deal-breaker, but at times he comes off as being right too often. It seems the plot steers its way to him be that way most of the time. I understand some of the reasons behind it, but I think it is not the situations, just how Gabe writes him at times.

The Sekirei. God I wish he had not relied so heavily on their characterizations from the canon world. They were two-dimensional there and are the same here. All of them suffer from the same two-dimensional gag/quirks repeated ad-nauseum. It's really irritating. I wish to God he would have fleshed them out in his own way. Musubi(sp?) he did to an extent, but only to explain that way she acted, not to give her depth. Akitsu is awesome as his shadow, but the forgetful thing got old quick. Her holding his swords like babies was a great moment for her, but I haven't seen something like that since.

Yukari. God she's fucking hilarious, but man I wish she had more going for her. She seems only there for a laugh, and I do laugh, but I wish there was more than just a manga obsessed little sister.

Miya. The only one he has given real depth to. She's changed as a person since her first scar, seeing how dangerous some foes can be. He's basically took her canon character and with different situations fleshed her out. I really liked her here, mostly. Her sometimes talking to Shirou gets my Mary-Sue bells chiming. Her 'eeping' at his hannyo, or whatever, was grating. Surprise and fear caused her first reaction to it with her dead husband. Her 'eeping' here would show her frightened of it, when I think she would be more surprised.

Writing.

I really, really, really, wish he was a better writer. There is no other way to say it; he needs work. I'm not talking about word-choice here. He can put together a sentence quite well actually. I was impressed numerous times with word choice and a lot of his phrases were great. Especially, in that last fight scene.

The thing he needs the most work on is his exposition. He used far too many god-damn words for the story he is telling. I probably skimmed half the frickin' fic and lost no content in reading it. Recently, a conversation between Shirou and his flock consisted of shit I already knew, but he was explaining to them. Paraphrase that shit and move on. Maybe mention a few reactions in a general sense.

He has a problem of stating and restating people's reactions with clever turns of phrase. Entertaining a few times, but annoying in every exchange. I also hate when he has Shirou go into info-dump mode in the middle of dialogue. It kills the flow of the scene like nothing else. Add to that he too often tells me what the character is saying, reiterating what was implied by their words, instead of showing me. Some authors struggle with it, he seems to use it as a crutch. It's not just once or twice, which is no big deal. It's every time someone talks, Shirou has to break it down for the reader, even when it was obvious to me what they were implying.

He also needs to trim the fuck down on the inner-monologue. Seriously. That's mostly what I skimmed to be honest.

Crossover.

He did a great job so far melding the two worlds. Nasuverse is pretty rich, from what I read on the wiki, and this actually fits into that world pretty nicely. The powers seem even and he focuses on mental issues being the discrepancies and not power-levels like most. So as a crossover, this has succeed marvelously.

So in short.

The plot is the dynamic of Shirou with his flock which has been interesting to see, but falls short when relied upon by two-dimensional characters. The characters need a lot more depth to them, save Miya, but Shirou himself is pretty fucking awesome. Gabe needs work on his pacing, exposition, show don't tell, and inner-monologues. Crossover is has worked.

So. 4/5, because despite my gripes, the plot does work because of Shirou, the writing is far better than the average writer on ffnet. Plus, I've been glued to this fic for the past two days. .

 

My reaction to most of that review is "yes", and "god, yes". Your criticisms and praise are pretty much spot on.

I think he's been doing okay with Akitsu and Homura.

Gabriel's been trying to flesh out Matsu, but most of his use of her seems to be as a lever for Shirou's relationship with the rest of the flock.

QFT. I'd note that he didn't always do this. It's a more recent development in his writing style. It is a deadly accurate criticism for the last few years though.

The conversations where every line of dialogue is broken up with several paragraphs of inner-monologue is something that I find incredibly frustrating. Occasionally I'll read a line of dialogue and wonder 'what were they replying to, again?'

That he has. There've been a few Nasuverse canon fumbles at moments, but nothing I've had trouble ignoring. Admittedly, I've got no experience with Nasuverse beyond the FS/N game and the wiki.

Yep.

While we're critiquing In Flight, there's another area that needs to be brought up, and that's the occasional logic hole.

1. MBI turns a Japanese city into a militarised police state and the rest of the people of Japan are just happy to let that happen are they?

2. MBI had its own staff on the DNA machine's Do Not Fly - Terrorist Watch List? I could understand that precaution if they wanted to stop their personnel from leaving the country, but even the CEO was on the list.

3. There are millions of people with hi-res video phones and camera phones, especially in Japan, but somehow MBI have been able to prevent every single one of them from uploading public Sekirei fights to 2chan, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.? With the very large number of hi tech devices and stupidly fast wireless internet infrastructure in Japan, some remarkable footage should be leaking from the city like a sieve.

4. Shirou's never been curious to find out what happens to terminated, but not dead, Sekirei. He can track Sekirei via the satellite system [the same way that Matsu searched 90% of the city for Tsukiumi], and can probably use the spinal column tracking chips too. He's supposed to be on guard against MBI being evil, but he never asks the obvious question.

5. The biggest logic hole, or at least the most annoying by far, is the "wiser" character's reactions to the Unlimited MBI cards.

Shirou doesn't want to use them because MBI tracks their usage:

Does it really matter if MBI knows what brand of tooth paste you buy? Why doesn't Seo buy a new car, or at least have it reconditioned by a good mechanic? Heck, Seo can't even cover food bills at the moment. MBI knows where your Sekirei are, they know where you shop, they already monitor your private bank accounts. If you're careful, then there's not a lot of useful information that they're going to uncover by tracking your MBI Card use that they don't already know. The same goes for Shirou. He's wasting time that he could be using to train himself and his Sekirei. He's earning money that he already has access to via the MBI Card.

5b. Let's say that the characters have a good reason to be paranoid about MBI tracking their MBI Card use.

Do these characters live in a capitalist society or not? There's about a million and one ways to convert money from a card into cold, hard cash. MBI can't track cash. No one can.

Go and buy jewellery, precious metals, precious stones from one jeweller and resell them to another. You might only have a 25% conversion rate, but that's still a hell of a lot of money that you've just pulled from your unlimited MBI card.

Shirou was going to use his MBI card to lease a house before he came across Izumo Inn. Why the hell doesn't he do that? Lease a house on the MBI card, and just lease it to someone else for cash. There are always people looking to rent a place for cash and are happy to do it off the books.

Go and buy the groceries for all of your neighbours/strangers and have them pay you in cash. Discount it if you have to. You'd have happy housewives lining up at the register all day waiting for you to pay for their groceries.

Buy big box items, white goods, etc. like you're furnishing a home, and then onsell them out of the boot of your car, at a swap meet, in the local classifieds, eBay, etc.

Buy a pallet of bottled water [or any other consumable] and then sell those boxes at a heavy discount to corner stores and mini marts. There are always small business owners looking to cut costs anyway that they can.

Gambling. 'nuff said.

Honesly, laundering money from a credit card when you don't care about the conversion rate is too easy. How do all of these "smart" people [Miya, Shirou, Seo] not see this? If MBI cracks onto one method, then there are plenty of others to try that are harder to detect. If Shirou thinks that MBI will just cancel all of his cards in response, then he only needs to pull off one big laundering operation rather than lots of small ones.

Seeing Shirou ignore the unlimited MBI card annoys the hell out of me. He could at least buy some precious stones for Rin, or try and mimic the way that she stores magic in them. If Rin ever finds out that Shirou had unlimited funds and then never bothered to use them or take advantage of the situation, she's going to be pissed. On top of everything else that she'll be pissed about, that's no small thing.

/looks up at the rant.

That's been bugging me for a while. <_<

 

^ That. I think a lot of the reason he has not addressed the loop-holes for people seeing what was going on is he is relaying way too much on Sekirei canon, from what I can tell, none of those issues were even addresses in the anime. Just hand-waved away. Which is what I think is the source of a lot of his problems.

One thing I don't agree with is Seo not using the card. He comes off has having no scruples, but that is not true. He is altruistic at heart, and I can see him forsaking the money because it comes from the corporation that got his best-friend killed. Shirou not using is retarded.

And yes, in the next few chapters I think he should begin to teach his Sekirei because the truth has finally come out.

 

I haven't read/watched Sekirei, so I didn't know that MBI had got him killed. I suppose that makes some of my logic criticisms unfair too. If they're not [yet] addressed in canon, then it's a bit unfair to expect Gabriel to address them here.

Which of the logic holes were hand-waved in canon? I'd assume the no protests for city seizure, and no internet leaks.

That'd leave the CEO on the terrorist watch list, Shirou never tracking terminated Sekirei, and the MBI card phobia, right?

 

Yeah, the city closure and the internet leaks weren't addressed in the anime, but may have been in the manga. None of my search into it yielded either. Shirou should be using it based on his personality somehow I would think. In the anime, Miya said it was the one card she would not accept. And that is related to her husband's death with MBI.

Seo's best friend wasn't assassinated, and the details haven't been released, but it's implied MBI CEO might have prevented it. Either way, Seo blames MBI for what happened.

That explains Miya and Seo not using it. The rest I'm really not so sure on. I think it was implied in canon the others were using it, sekirei and ashikabi.

Also, terrorist watch list? Don't even remember something like that in the anime. huh. I think that is something Gabe introduced just so Shirou could connect with his mother. Which was pretty original. In the anime, Minato--the protagonist--is already living in the city and failed the college entry exam twice. Still would like Gabe to have a reason behind other than plot-convenience, which I think is the case here.

The last I think is tracking the defeated Sekirie, which Gabe I think should address eventually. Maybe Shirou already has and we don't know about it, like his other plans of escape and ending the other bigtime ashikabi. In the anime, it was never addressed, but keep in mind, the anime is only on the second season and the manga still isn't finished.

Though from the research is wouldn't be difficult to figure out it will end. Given the type of anime it is. Just be glad Gabe is putting some realism into it. Also, I won't spoil anything for you, but there's some big shit that the CEO has his hands on that explains the tournament, just not his motivations for it. I'm infinity curious how Gabe will address that here. Can't wait for phase 3.

So I think that addressed all your concerns? I'm pretty scatterbrained right now, so sorry if this seemed all over the place.

 

Story's finished?

Now maybe he'll have time for Ruinous.

 

Nice review, I agree with most of the stuff.

I think he was kinda limited in trying to make his Sekirei into interesting characters. Not only are the canon characters he's basing them off horrible as you said, but their role. The whole "Ashikabi-sama is my everything and I want to fuck him" and all that kinda makes it hard to get in good character interaction. Potentially why his interaction with Homura and moreso, Miya is a lot better to read. Uzume too to a lesser extent (I liked the whole mutual respect thing he had going for her).

It's part of the reason I'm really hoping Saber and Rin get introduced - it will mean some good characters apart from Shirou entering into the equation again.

I also agree completely with what you were saying about his having to write out what should be obviously insinuated. And reactions for every single character in the room. You can write them collectively.

I do, however, like a bit of the inner monologue of Shirou. I usually would hate it, but for some reason, I enjoy reading about how Shirou analyses the Sekirei world with his Holy Grail War mindset, and how he explains things in the Sekirei world with the Nasuverse.

Don't necessarily quite agree with that as being a plot hole.

It's very possible that the system gave a flag due to the fact that Minaka Horito's location was already accounted for: in the MBI headquarters. Then when Shirou's DNA is scanned in as Minaka's, the system quite easily sees the conflict in information and alerts security.

Arguably, if they have as much power as they claim they do, they could put up some levels of controls. Filters on all major fiber links going out of the city. Maybe they control the service providers who control the satellite links too.

I'm sure a lot of people would be very suspicious at what the hell is going on in the city, but if they locked it down well enough, it'd stop at just the MBI doing shady shit - MBI seized control of the city, but no news on Sekirei or the plan.

I'm sure governments agencies would have ways of getting information in and out, but they already knew about the Sekirei, and its in their interest for that information to remain a secret at the moment.

It's still not exactly a completely plausible explanation, but we are dealing with a fictional organization here which is supposedly all powerful, and more importantly - on the forefront of technology.

Your comments on the MBI card are a something I didn't think of, and a good point. It seems silly in the anime that none of them are making use of the card. And even more so with Shirou, who seems to immediately try to get a level of understanding about the rules, and what he can and can't do. And there were no rules against doing exactly what you said either.

I guess you could argue that just like Shirou is well versed in combat strategy, but completely lost when it comes to technology, he's similarly not as knowledgeable in money laundering techniques. It's a bit of a cop out, but yeah.

Though it wouldn't explain why Higa Izumi, being a rich businessman, hasn't made use of it already. Or at least, I don't think he has.

Well, to be fair, I don't think we really see how the outside world is reacting to this. There's nothing to really suggest that there's not a big uproar outside of the city, since we only really see what's inside the city.

And we know why governments wouldn't be trying to take it back by force - we after all see in the first episode of Season 2 of how easily Miya wiped out entire armies with a few swings of her sword.

 

I think Shirou's choice in not using the card is wellfounded, well according to him anyway. I mean, it might not look like much, with them knowing what kind of a toothpaste you use. However, Shirou was thinking of leaving the city in a moments notice, if things got too hot for him. Then there is the fact that there isn't much recorded history about him, which even Matsu couldn't find. And even little tidbits of information about him can verywell be used to track him down.

 

Then send someone else to do the shopping.

 

There needs to be a scene with Yukari coming in with bags of new manga/clothes/whatever and calling Shirou an idiot for not using the credit card.

 

Meh. It seems to be more the principle of the thing than anything practical, if you ask me.

 

Another heartbreaker incoming:

 

Thanks, Sin. I'll admit to being slightly disappointed every time I received an update email from ffnet which wasn't for In Flight. It looks like we may be waiting for several weeks.

 

Strange, after all of the latest updates where I learned that he can't write emotions worth a damn, I stopped caring about this story.

 

Yeah my interest with this story has fallen to around the same level as his previous fic. This one was a bit better in understanding the different concepts of Nasuverse but that doesn't really help the fact that his chapters are now a fucking chore to read through.

 

In a word, I'd say: inconsistent.

The measures of quality in this instance would be:
1) Adherence to Nasuverse/Sekirei canon
2) Characterization
3) Plot Development/word count
4) General Writing Quality

Every single one of those points can be described with that one word. Regardless of the inconsistency, though, I'm going to keep reading. I like FSN, I like Sekirei, and I've already devoted this much time to reading In Flight, so I'm definitely going to see this through.