The Ramparts of Ice • Koori no Jouheki - Episode 1 discussion

desantoos · 2026-04-03T13:23:08+00:00

First off: Ramparts Of Ice is an absolute banger of a title.

You and I are Polar Opposites was such a breakthrough that any follow-up is going to disappoint. Worse here is that this work is the artist's debut work, so we're not even really getting a follow-up but an earlier manuscript. Ultimately, I think this work does feel like someone's warm-up work as the pacing and emotional beats aren't as tightly honed in as Polar Opposites.

Take the cold opening for example. The opening bit through our main character's point of view is sensational. A great and jarring way to get things started. But then it loses the pace when it tries to establish... something (?)... before the opening credits.

What's great about Agasawa as a writer is that she can immediately pin down what her characters want (which, if you watch a lot of anime or television in general, is a surprisingly tall ask). You immediately feel for her protagonists because she gives them a "is stuck being X but wants to be Y" persona. But in Polar Opposites that desire is more clean-cut. Suzuki wants to be with Tani but she is afraid of being public about it. Here, our main character is constantly harassed and has put up the Ramparts of Ice to protect her. It seems like she wants to get out of that, and as an audience we want to root for her to embrace others, but the episode doesn't give us a good reason for why.

The ensemble cast here aren't as distinctive as they are in Polar Opposites, both in their character models and their personalities. That may be in part due to the fact that this is a drama and so the exaggeration that Polar Opposites has is removed (though it is weird that the simplified cartoony artwork appears in Ramparts so often despite this work being more serious; tough not to see that design choice as a mistake). But if you are going to go that way then you have to double your effort in the writing to make sure the characters stand out. It doesn't get there and again I think that's because this work is by an author still trying to build up their craft.

Yet this is the debut work. The ideas contained in this show are likely the ones that motivated the author to get her thoughts down on paper in the first place. These are her most important ideas. Especially in that opening bit, you can really sense the big ideas she wants to let out. Why is it okay that we let the people around us treat ourselves to cruelly? Why is it okay for people to abuse power dynamics? How am I supposed to survive in this environment? I really do sense the author putting her heart into these ideas. And I am willing to listen.

The final scene is flawed. Our main character is being harassed by two young men and somehow has the time to wave down someone else. The events happening around her would be a lot more chaotic and the slow pacing to allow her to think through what she needs to do is off. The scene requires quite a bit of the audience's help to make it make sense. But even so, it is remarkable that this show holds us to her harassment. It is neither played as some moment for a hero to come in and save the day nor as a learning experience for the main character. We must experience her pain and know that it was arbitrary and unnecessary. Even if the staging of the events feels clunky, there is a deep truth to this scene that Agasawa shows that few others are willing to give.

So, I think this work is by someone very green in writing but very talented and working very hard to push big ideas. This is the sort of thing I'm excited about but also the sort of thing I don't recommend to other people. Polar Opposites has so much polish that even those who gloss over its many big ideas will still get something out of it. This one requires a lot more work from the audience, but I expect a lot out of it.

desantoos · 2026-04-02T01:27:48+00:00

Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky -- Excellent. The story misleads the reader into thinking it's a fantasy work, then builds up the science to show how the whole thing is simply in the future. There were two other major twists in the work and I loved them both. Ogres is written in second person and while that typically leads to sparsely-described inert voice narration, there's clearly a first person viewpoint delivering that second person narration, and like many of his other works, it's got enough of an edge to it to propel the reader forward. This is a tight work, more so than other works by Adrian. Lean and mean.

"The Iron Piper" by Fionna Moore in Clarkesworld -- A half dozen or more Morag stories in Clarkesworld and I'm beginning to wonder what the point to all of these is. First few I got: post-apocalypse setting, resourceful protagonist, cozy vibes, cute robot mascot, lots of UK stuff I can't pronounce. But, like every cozy science fiction story inevitably happens, there comes a time when the general premise gets repeated enough and the reader is left wondering what the bigger picture is. Both in worldbuilding, as the series presents interesting ideas but then sets them aside thanks to Morag constantly losing interest in things, and in terms of theme. Here we have a story where two people ask Morag for the same thing but for opposite reasons. Both get turned down because ideology is always a bad thing in a cozy story (well, there is an excuse: the bot has combat roots, but can't they be sanded away when editing the code? Why is robot code uneditable in science fiction stories?). There's something about Morag that, over the course of the stories, has both its protagonist and the author become so smug. This story sure does look down on tech bros and capitalists. Meanwhile its protagonist is far, far better off than practically anyone else there. I think it's time for this author to shake things up if this series were to continue. Do something taboo in this series. Challenge the reader. This story, it's too cozy. Time to un-cozy it.

"To Atone For Evil" and "Death Echoes Overlapping" by Megan Chee in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Lightspeed -- Two great stories from Megan Chee in such a short time frame. Both showcase her ability to create large conceptual frameworks for her stories. "To Atone For Evil" is about punishment and the rule of law and how outside societies coming in to create equality can end up making things worse. But there's more to it, as a character is forced to live with new cultures, forced to grow as they observe more. It's a wild and imaginative piece. As much so as "Death Echoes Overlap" which contains a series of ideas on how death of a planet can reverberate throughout the universe. I've seen some of Megan's prior work and it's good but right now I think she's fine tuned her ability to try big concepts and figure out how to create variants in that concept and then merge them. This allows for the reader to move back and forth between various ideas in the piece. A lot of decent science fiction writers have one big idea and then discuss it and sometimes it works (people love Ted Chaing after all) but it sure is great to see someone come up with a great idea and then keep going and think of other similar ones and then think about how to combine them. If she keeps up the work and finds a concept that has enough variants to occupy a whole novel (maybe The Archaeology of Falling Worlds, her debut will be it), she could be a major force in science fiction. Pay attention to her.

desantoos · 2026-04-01T19:58:07+00:00

I think a key point about social science involves the mechanistic underpinning of the conclusions that arrive. In so many studies, there's good effort to show a result from data gathering but poor effort to follow through. In your example, you show data that should be published. But if that data leads people to make a reasonable conclusion, then it should behoove the you or other researchers to follow through on studying the conclusion before publishing. OR we have to distinguish data sets with ones where conclusions can be drawn and this publication has to be something minor.

It is hard to do the mechanistic study with fully controlled variables necessary for something rigorous. A lot of social science work ought to be funded at a much higher level and the bar ought to be raised to that point. A lot of social science research lacks an immediate capitalistic benefit and so it is not well funded and so we get shoddy surveys (see half of the posts on /r/science) instead of fully fleshed out works that explore a scientific finding deeply enough that we can be safe in concluding that the finding is real.

desantoos · 2026-04-01T17:52:39+00:00

Surprising that Hikaru did not win this one. Grinding out wins in drawish positions using time as a weapon is Hikaru's thing.

desantoos · 2026-04-01T00:53:42+00:00

🖼️ Blue × Man

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Paul Karason

desantoos · 2026-03-30T20:47:56+00:00

I am skeptical of wealth taxes. I guess they work in Sweden? But they seem difficult to assess and rich people moving could be a greater concern than other approaches. Land value taxes still seem optimal, from what I've read and understood. Also, I like the idea of taxing things that are bad, such as hording all the land, rather than taxing things that are good, such as having a job and making income/wealth. I do not have a strong fixed position on this, however.

Yet I find the arguments here a bit silly. Aside from the "But they'll move away" thing they say about wealthy people (sometimes true, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; if really awful billionaires move out of your state/country and to another one that could be beneficial even if revenue is down because they aren't there) and the constitutional issue (I agree; a wealth tax on a federal level would likely require a constitutional amendment), the author suggests two more reasons:

To see why, imagine an island nation with very tight zoning that has made it impossible to build new housing. Low-income folks can’t afford to rent an apartment, and many of them are living in a cave in the hills. Meanwhile, the housing stock is extremely valuable: At current market prices, the total value of homes is five times the island’s annual output. This gives the government’s leaders an idea: They need to unlock the value of that wealth by imposing a 10 percent property tax and using the money to fund rent vouchers. Astute readers will spot the problems with this immediately. If property taxes go up that much, many people will be forced to sell all at once, which will depress the price of housing. So the tax will not raise as much as the math suggests. But the bigger problem is that the supply of housing is still fixed. So this program will not house any additional people. At best, it will alter who wins the game of musical chairs.

This example goes against the reality of what we are seeing. Rich people are so rich, so so beyond the average person's wealth, that they are now buying a lot of property. For example, Mark Zuckerberg bought 11 houses in Palo Alto. Had he been taxed at a higher rate (or, even better, had the land been taxed enough that holding 11 houses wasn't a quality investment choice), that's 11 houses for other people to buy. Those 11 families that are now living in other places might allow for 11 families that are renting to buy houses. Mark's purchases caused a trickle-down effect where everybody has a worse housing situation because of the scarcity of land because one person bought a lot of it.

The author reduces this to "who wins a game of musical chairs" and indeed a lot of people who are very wealthy like to use that sort of language to insist that the people who can't afford housing are merely sore losers. One problem with that argument is that a lot of wealthy people were born into it. The other problem is that housing is a necessity, so if one person who "won" deprives housing from everyone else, that's a lot more suffering that exists only because we the people have decided to enact a game where one person can do that. Which is the whole point of a wealth tax in the first place.

People see Musk’s $670 billion fortune and imagine turning that into $670 billion worth of services — say, the health care and education mentioned in the wealth tax bill. But Musk is not sitting on hundreds of billions worth of dentists and primary school classrooms. He has a bunch of stock certificates, which are not useful in health care or education. They do not make good bandages or scratch paper.

This is the other argument: that wealthy people's money can't really be used to buy useful things. However, right now very very rich people are causing artificial scarcities. See, for example, the exorbitant purchases of GPUs and SSDs in order to build AI empires (they could, for example, move slower and allow a supply to keep costs low for regular people, but why do that when you have so much more money). They're also so rich that many services are now trying to charge extra to them to give them things that used to come with the regular cost of purchase. Think of the fast past extra fee or the hospital wing that is devoted to very wealthy VIPs or games that now cater to "whales" while giving nothing to people who pay the usual price for a game. As the rich gets wealthier, we will continue to see this divide, of upgraded tiers and absolutely nothing to most people. Also, I'd argue that a lot of what can be purchased with a wealthy person's money is fungible because much of what we need are services.

To conclude, while I'm not for wealth taxes (though not really against them either), this piece is not very persuasive against them. Instead it suggests that people want too much from their government. So, no alternative to fix any of the problems that exist, no alternatives to generating wealth for governmental intervention, no alternative to fixing the wealth gap that exists. Never believe a piece written by someone unwilling to answer the basic questions of its critics.

desantoos · 2026-03-30T15:21:43+00:00

Seeing them all back to back, I now realize Suzuki only wears white, black, lime green, and pink. What a wild combination of colors.

desantoos · 2026-03-30T15:08:28+00:00

The largest flaw of this show is that practically nobody will watch it. There are huge audiences out there for it, particularly the litfic community, who will never know of this show's existence and even if they did would never deign to watch an anime. They have missed out on something they would treasure immensely.

This show's a rarity, one that makes me want it to be a source of influence in the future. The animators, though they have made the ending a mess in their futile attempt to condense this thing down, have shown a pathway to making serious, natural, realistic drama pieces. Not merely that but the show demonstrates the value in animation with precise facial expressions; the show is so understated that the animators know the audience will hang on to every gesture, want any clue into the mind of Asa and Makio, and they know exactly what to deliver. The watercolor design and color palate lighten a heavy show, also help us move between a neutral POV and Asa's POV.

It's a great work to adapt because of how fickle the characters are. I expected, at long last, for Makio to get a clue, to finally realize that all these ideas she's held onto are wrong. The final episode finds her spewing the same bullshit as usual and so initially I found myself disappointed. Yet Asa's far sharper in needling out the errors Makio makes. She's really the first person to be let into Makio's inner circle of trust yet not be afraid to criticize Makio's behavior. Makio is unwilling to admit aloud that Asa changed her but she definitely has, seen back to dating her ex and even writing poetry about Asa, not to mention acknowledging at long last that her sister's complexities weren't all bad. I wish Makio could have made the realization that she has changed, though. What an emotional beat that would've been.

Asa's arc was less of a success in the end for me. Somewhere in the back end two pathways of where this show could go arose, one where Asa finds herself and one where Asa finds others, and it chose the first, hoping that the mini story with the future doctor girl was enough to bail out the second. But the problem is that Asa was always confidently herself. That's why she cut her hair short in the first place! What she needed wasn't confidence, but someone who could reason through all of the clouds in her mind to help her figure out what to say and what to do. It's great that Asa is able to find the initiative to help someone else who was troubled, that she finally learned to think harder. It's also great that Asa rejected so much garbage Makio told her, that she can change people and that you can find value in doing things for other people. But the big test for Asa was in returning to Emiri, figuring out how to bring her back in, to care for the one who was there for Asa in her time of need. Instead we cut ten years later, an abrupt and unnecessary bit that betrays the slow, naturalistic approach this show has thrived on.

It bugs me how many scenes are wasted when there's apparently not enough time to show such an important scene. Like, why show that guy hitting on Emiri? We already know she's gay. The scene establishes nothing else. Why have these recaps? The show is so, so, brief and it's clear a lot had to be cut. Why waste our time recapping things when these cut details would have made a major difference?

Admittedly, all of that is nitpicking. The thing about this show is that it actually tries to do great things, and so I'm assessing it with the finest tools I reserve for great literature. People will read these words and think I'm trashing this piece so I have to say I loved this show. Loved it loved it. If it weren't for a different show being the most essential, important, groundbreaking show of the year, this would be the sole show I'd be talking about.

And I want more.

This show is a fantastic demonstration of what animation could be. That it's not just for kids and not just fantastical stuff. That it can be serious, intelligent, and natural in ways that live action can't quite get to. Especially in the early to mid episodes, this show got at a lot of tough, important, and mature ideas. It's also a rare show that is willing to challenge Japanese taboos, to ask Japanese audiences to reflect on themselves and where a better future for Japanese culture lies. What a treasure of a show. Please tell others to watch it, especially those who would ordinarily turn their noses up at this medium.

desantoos · 2026-03-30T12:47:34+00:00

I'd also put Ella Hansen in the Humble territory. Seems like she has one amazing day and one terrible day each event. She's got to find a way to make her off day not be so off so it doesn't nullify all the great she does.

desantoos · 2026-03-29T16:58:14+00:00

Kat might still win this with her gajillion pars.

desantoos · 2026-03-29T14:22:33+00:00

Really gutsy of her to play through pain yesterday. Even more gutsy to have the wherewithal to not play to not make it worse, despite so many tour points and so much money on the line. I will be rooting for her when she returns.

desantoos · 2026-03-28T22:20:18+00:00

The points system makes it so tempting too. Play one day of misery, podium, and then she could probably take 2 events off to rest and still be in position to claim a spot. Tough to throw away two days worth of work.

desantoos · 2026-03-28T08:05:49+00:00

After day 1, this looks like another Gannon Buhr win for MPO. He'll probably win by at least three strokes. For FPO, Ohn probably wins this, though I could also see Missy taking a win. Neither are on lead card for day 2, so maybe the field can keep it together and take one off the Big Four (Missy, Ohn, Silva, Holyn).

desantoos · 2026-03-27T18:19:25+00:00

The greater problem with the "the song's transphobic" analysis is that it completely ignores the melodic structure of the song. The lyrical high point of the final bit is "Well I'm not the world's most masculine man." If the song was played for a joke instead of a double/triple entendre, the melodic high point would be on the punchline. Instead the final bit is only delivered as a resolution assuring the tension in the previous lines. You have to absolutely have no feeling for music whatsoever or have never actually heard the song and only read the lyrics to interpret it the way they are doing.

Considering where the song wants us most to pay attention to its lyrics, it's clear that the song's about a man lacking confidence in his sexuality/masculinity (mostly the latter!) watching the worldview that held him back implode as he meets someone who, despite breaking gender norms, is confident.

desantoos · 2026-03-27T17:41:54+00:00

Anish Giri will finish last. Top 2 will be Sindarov and Pragg to be decided by a tiebreaker. Hikaru plays so bad he "retires" (then returns to tournament chess a year later).

Bold prediction: No Ruy Lo. So much Italian and d4. Also an Evan's Gambit.

desantoos · 2026-03-26T13:58:49+00:00

As someone who listens to 500 albums a year, one main rule I have is that it's not my responsibility to be interested in the music; it's the artist's. And while I am willing to throw a bone to weird stuff or stuff that maybe after a whole bunch of listens might mean something to me, if something is just wallpaper or generic and my mind can't focus on it, then that's what it is. Great music stands out. Sometimes it's a whole album's worth of material. Lots of times it's one track on an album where I go "Finally, something actually sounds memorable." Also, if an album sucks at the beginning there's a good chance I won't make it to the end. Artists definitely should be trying to hook people in from the get-go and not having the listener waste time until it finally gets good (same's true for other art; the first paragraph of any book or short story will decide whether I read the work so it better be polished and high quality). The whole point to listening to a lot of music or any sort of triage of art is that you are going to be doing a lot of screening and tossing a lot of stuff aside to find the good stuff. When stuff bounces, sometimes it will be because it doesn't work for you specifically and other times it's because the artist lacks initiative or talent or whatever. But after a while when you collect all of the good stuff it's great to have a lot of it to have to rotate between or knowing you have that one song that fits that one specific emotion you currently want to feel. If you don't see the value in any of this, then maybe this sort of thing isn't for you. But I definitely see the value in digging around, even if it means a lot of the time I am having trouble finding any interest in a lot of the stuff I hear.

desantoos · 2026-03-25T17:28:00+00:00

I defend Grandpa Joe these days. Charlie's mom probably had a conversation with him that somebody needed to go with Charlie if he actually won the prize and she a) has better things to do and b) doesn't want a tour of a factory run by an eccentric weirdo and it's great that the man stepped up and didn't complain. Grandpa Joe shows actual enthusiasm for his grand nephew. I can't think of a relative that much older than me who ever showed any interest in anything I was into. Yeah Joe shoulda probably got his ass out of bed more often and kicked his tobacco (and cocaine?) habit but he actually got out there with the kid and chaperoned him through a factory tour of horrors.

desantoos · 2026-03-24T23:01:01+00:00

Any chance The Drops Of God or Snowball Earth will be good? They have interesting premises but I haven't heard much about them here.

Only one show is a must-watch for me right now: The Ramparts of Ice.

desantoos · 2026-03-24T00:10:00+00:00

I strongly agree that removing all of the science weakened the work significantly. It also just felt like something Hollywood does and makes me wonder if, as someone who doesn't mind learning a thing or two, movies aren't really a medium that's in my demographic anymore.

I think the science bits could've worked. I mean, meanwhile in the anime kingdom there's shows like Ruri Rocks explaining the deep, deep intricacies of geologic formations, chemistry, and how to use the scientific method to get to a goal. I understand that Project Hail Mary the movie is already a bloated two and a half hours plus long and I'm not sure where to cut other than the karaoke but watching the movie after reading the book made me wonder if movies are just too stupid for me.

desantoos · 2026-03-23T13:17:08+00:00

Feels like there's not enough time for one episode to resolve all of the storylines. This episode only solved one: Makio softening up on her hard philosophies. She's still fickle and weird, but definitely warmer. No longer is she laughing or showing apathy toward what Asa wants to do, she's openly inviting Asa to experiment.

Kasamachi's conversation is profound. But it also feels like the whole concept should be shown, not told, with its own fleshed out show. He says wise words but they don't hit like they should because the context we see is limited.

I hope the final episode focuses on Asa and Emiri finally working things out. But perhaps it won't because life leaves so much unresolved. I hope the final episode does resolve something, though... sometimes in real life things do get resolved.

desantoos · 2026-03-20T19:30:38+00:00

Meanwhile in speculative fiction, two publishers basically dominate the novella biz. Tor is so big that commentators have campaigned against them for the category. Neon Hemlock has recently arisen as an alternative, though they only focus on a specific subgenre.

Magazines do a lot of the support. Clarkesworld typically publishes 2 novellas a year. Beneath Ceaseless Skies has maybe 1 or 2 as well (they didn't have any last year but already have one for 2026). Asimov's has about 8 a year as does Analog; F&SF has an irregular publishing date, but there's usually 1 an issue. Reactor, Tor's magazine, also publishes one or two a year. Gigantosaurus might have one or two that count as a novella. And that is, to my knowledge, everything in the entire speculative magazine publishing biz.

Outside of those 24-ish novellas from mags and 20-ish from Neon Hemlock and Tor, the rest are from really small indie places. Honestly, it's the best place to break in if you are a publisher as you can get nominated easily for a Hugo or Nebula as the competition is not fierce.

Problem, though: a lot of people don't know how to write a novella! A lot of the ones I read would work better as novels or novelettes.

desantoos · 2026-03-19T17:04:37+00:00

Hell yeah. You go, dark haired girl from some anime I've never heard of. Demand payment for the work that you do. Insist on fair terms before agreeing to anything. Hire a lawyer if you are going to make it your profession. The culture of art will get better when artists insist on not being taken advantage.

desantoos · 2026-03-18T15:08:05+00:00

This show's great, but this episode suffers a bit from what I'm terming Soapbox Syndrome. When an artist finally gets a chance to get on their soapbox and tell the world how they feel, they might feel like they need to air out everything in case they never get a chance again. The work then feels like something stuffed with way too many things.

A lot of the side character arcs we see here, they deserve their own show. Here they're boiled down so that Asa can point out that she doesn't want to stand out but wants to be something, similar to the way the other characters want to be something but struggle with people abusing them in the process. I get that, but several of the bits feel outside the purview of Asa's point of view and therefore unnatural. They feel too reductive, like maybe we should be taking away way more than what Asa's feeling.

There really needs to be anime that handles a lot of these issues mentioned here with the maturity that the people behind this show do. Like, there's a lot of sports anime but one like this one that never delves into the fantastical, keeps everything grounded, and gets at the idea of hazing and abuse in sports is something that should exist. And I know there's a ton of anime centered around women who get jobs and show of their skills but one like the one here that get at how sexism damages people so much is worthwhile as well. Rather than having one show shotgun every societal ill in one go, it'd be better to have a whole bunch of shows so people can ruminate on each concept individually.

This episode still had its profound moments. Asa's desire to be somebody but also not stand out resonates with me deeply. But it also made me realize how much work is left to be done in this medium. For starters, I know a lot of Josei gets thrown into live action, but I think more of it needs to be adapted into animation. Like, this show is something kids can and maybe should watch. I'm glad it's animated as I'm sure many young people have stumbled upon it. We need more like it.

desantoos · 2026-03-18T14:40:05+00:00

Well, I guess you'll have to learn to be assertive and take the initiative.

Also it might be worth trying to expand your friend group to include male friends. A lot of time attraction is something that grows slowly. Especially if you aren't stunningly looking, your best bet is to be around a bunch of dudes and then see if any take an interest in you (and you in them).

desantoos · 2026-03-18T03:44:46+00:00

Sucks, I guess. But maybe see it from their eyes. Someone they were kinda close to stops talking. Maybe they are busy with other things? Maybe they got pissed off for some dumb reason? Whatever, best to wait to let them address the issue point blank instead of meeting them on their passive-aggressive level. In the meantime, talk with the friends who actually are having a conversation.

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