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No, she was just rounding off. Season 2 was a year after season 1, season 3 was three years after that, and season 4 was actually a year and a half, not a full two years, after that.

You make it sound as if Zala wasn't as bad as the Titans, but who's really worse? The guy who kills a few million people who have made a conscious decision to oppose him, or the guy who nukes the billions of people living on Earth with a giant gamma ray cannon because their parents didn't have them genetically altered before they were born? And of course, there's all the collateral damage that comes with hitting the Earth, that you don't get from gassing a colony. I think Patrick Zala might not seem as bad because SEED didn't play it up as much as Zeta did with the Titans' crimes, but if you compare goals (genocide vs. political control) and methods (actually, I guess poison gas can be pretty painful too, but it's hard to ignore all those exploding bodies), Zala's pretty bad. I mean, obviously they're both bastards, but it's hard to say the Titans are worse than Zala.

BitComet does seem to be working now. I usually use BitTornado.

Am I the only one getting a "got bad file info" error on the second ep? First one downloaded without incident, but the second torrent doesn't work for me.

Did anyone else notice a number of similarities between the death of Paul Raines and the death of Terri Bauer? I'm sure it's just coincidence, but there are a lot of correlations. Jack and Terri had been separated, Jack had been seeing someone else (Nina), then they got back together. Audrey and Paul had been separated, Audrey was seeing someone else (Jack), then Audrey and Paul were getting back together. After getting caught up in terrorist business that should have had nothing to do with either of them, Terri and Paul were both brought to CTU, where they were supposedly safe. Then the situation suddenly changed, for Terri because she realized Nina was one of them and for Paul because the doctors at CTU are apparently incompetent. So then Nina, the girl Jack was seeing, grapples with what to do and ultimately kills Terri, and Jack, the guy Audrey was seeing, tries to help but ends up signing Paul's death sentence. Of course, the most notable dissimilarity is that Nina iced Terri on purpose and Jack was obviously not happy about having to deny Paul medical treatment; and also, that Nina went and shot Terri herself, but Jack only indirectly killed Paul by making the doctors treat the other guy instead. But I just thought the circumstances of the whole situation were incredibly similar. When you see Jack reaching out to Audrey in the preview for next week, I imagined him trying to talk to her by saying something like "I understand what you're going through," just with having gone through Terri's death...and then I realized he understands a lot better than just that. Like I said, certainly it's just a big coincidence, but I still thought it was kind of notable.

Yeah, I have to agree it wasn't all that shocking to see Kira make Athrun his bitch once he got serious. They've never been on equal standing. Turning Shin evil is a pretty cool idea, although after you've spent this much time with him as a protagonist, he'd almost have to turn back at the end, and that would be a little bit too much like Star Wars for my taste. But we'll see where they go with it. The episode overall was pretty cool, particularly since it was just total chaos. But there were a few things that kind of bothered me. What the hell was Archangel doing the whole time? In episode 23, they at least fired their cannons a few times to protect Minerva. Here, they fired into the water in front of the Orb fleet once, then just kind of sat back and watched. Same for Kira, what was he doing? After he took Athrun out of the picture, he just kind of hung out. I didn't get the impression that it would take him a terribly long time to fly over to the Orb fleet and settle Shin down, but it never happened. It seemed like the writers just kind of forgot about people as the episode dragged on. They wanted Minerva to get messed up, but they didn't want to shoot down Archangel, so they just ignored that it was there at all. They wanted Shin to go to town on the Orb fleet, but Kira was owning everyone that stood in front of him, so they just kind of pushed Kira to the side after his fight with Athrun was over. They didn't have these characters doing what their established personalities dictate they probably would, and they didn't write in anything to explain why, they just...forgot about it. It kind of bothered me throughout the episode, because every time Murasames were swooping in or every time Shin took out another ship, I was expecting to see the luminous green beams of Archangel's Gottfried or Freedom's beam rifle trying to save the day, and it never happened. I don't necessarily mind that they didn't intervene, I just didn't think it made much sense, so it was a little sloppy on the writers' parts not to explain what the hell they were doing while all this was going on. Also, having Shin learn the error of his ways by meeting the wife and children of a pilot he killed would just mean taking a page straight out of Victory Gundam. That was one of my favorite parts of that show (around episode 40 or so, don't remember exactly since I last watched the show two and a half years ago), but I'm not anxious to see Destiny do exactly the same thing. Hopefully they can come up with something a little different if they intend to straighten Shin out.

Afterphase is just a little five minute epilogue tacked on at the end of the final DVD. There is only one, and it's nothing particularly notable.

Personally, I don't care that much, but...you know, there is a reason the episode summaries were posted white text on white background.

And here I thought it would be hard to top the sheer ugliness of the first Justice...

Nu-Freedom's railguns appear to not fold infront, instead sticking down further like the railguns/hip weapons on the GuAIZ R do. If you look carefully, behind the hand is a grey shape that coincides with the rear block of the railgun from Freedom. Due to the inability to see either end of the railgun, it's hard to say of the colored sections that tip either side of it are still there. EDIT: The black colored block appears to still be on the end of the rear block. No sign of the red part, though. Anyone else anxious to see if we get an MSiA of this guy? The design is definitely growing on me now that I know it retains its railguns atleast.. This is why we need to see a better view, though. In the earlier pic, the one that was grainy as sin but at least gave a full view, they don't even look like the same weapon as they do in this newer pic. As people pointed out then, they look more like VSBRs than railguns. If you look at Freedom, even folded up, its railguns extend nearly to its ankles. So I have to think there's more changed here than just not folding. They're too big not to fold up. What we can see in that picture of Nu Freedom only extends about as far down as the folded up railguns on Freedom. Since the rest of the folded up unit isn't there, they look slimmer, which also makes them look longer...but we can't really tell that from that pic. They certainly look unfolded, but unfolded railguns at that angle would be going straight into the ground (well, there is no ground in the picture, but it also doesn't really seem posed as if it's in mid-flight, so I dunno). Also, the entire railgun unit (including the part of the MS frame that houses it, along with the beamsaber above it) looks smaller and more compact on Nu Freedom.

Something doesn't look right about those railguns.... They're definitely different. It's much easier to see in a side-by-side comparison. The ones on Nu Freedom look slimmer and longer. The black and red strips at the top are gone, and the panel that's outlined along the front edge is higher up. The whole back half of the railgun is gone. It'd be nice if we could get some actual lineart, though. These few images we've got so far aren't great. It's difficult to compare, particularly with Destiny obscuring part of the shot.

Sure it's small but in terms of technology and scientific know-how they at least on the same level of the Alliance. Look at the upgraded Gold Frame, you do not want to screw with that unit and it's upgrades were carried out by Orb. In the last war the Izumo-class was second only to the Archangel-class. Sure Lowe had his computer helping him, but he was still a Natural piloting a mobile suit long before the Alliance got their Daggers rolling out and Kira creating the OS for Orb. What the Alliance wants is their technological ability, not nessesarily their military capability. I'm thinking that Orb is basically an analog for modern Japan as envisioned by the director. Or maybe I'm reading into things too much... You're not reading too much. Fukuda has said before that Orb is a stand-in for Japan. When you consider the economic and technological power Japan could bring to either side of WW3, for example, you can see why Orb is so important even though it's a small country with a small, but technologically advanced military.

I have to wonder how anyone who could suffer such a monumental lapse in concentration in the middle of a battle ever got into FAITH.

I mostly (but not exclusively) listen to newer, 90s/00s stuff, largely indie rock. Some of my favorite bands, just listed in alphabetical order: Andrew W.K. The Arcade Fire Babyshambles The Bravery The Darkness Death Cab Electric Six Franz Ferdinand Go! Team Interpol Joy Division/Warsaw The Libertines The Mars Volta Modest Mouse Muse New Order New Pornographers the pillows Pixies The Postal Service Radiohead Rage Against the Machine The Shins

I kind of doubt it. A single machine, no matter how big and powerful it is, isn't going to do a whole lot of good against widespread rebellion. More likely, it's designed to ruin PLANT's day. Space colonies are fragile and aren't difficult to take out, but terrestrial civilization would pose quite a challenge to one machine. Besides that, the Cosmic Era world seems to have largely progressed past traditional racial divides so that the only important one now is Natural vs. Coordinator (actually, the same goes for most Gundam shows...racial tension, where it exists, always seems to take place along artificial boundaries, be it Natural/Coordinator or Oldtype/Newtype). The people in Eurasia are probably only considered Naturals, not Slavs or whatever. So if they're calling it a genocide machine, it's probably designed to take out Coordinators. That would be in line with what we saw in SEED (ie, each side going all out to wipe out the other with some sort of superweapon), as well as what we've seen so far in Destiny. Djibril thinks everyone will settle down if they can just wipe out PLANT and end the war, so I doubt he'd waste time putting down rebellions that he believes will burn out anyway as soon as the war finishes up.

http://202.239.72.116/2/src/1111557090619.jpg The giant Gundam is not Colossus, but Destroy Gundam. So in other words, Destiny now holds the crown for worst ever Gundam name. It seems to be an Alliance machine. I don't read Japanese myself, but apparently somewhere in that description it says something to the effect of, "One can say that it's a genocide machine." So I guess we'll see later on how a single Gundam can carry out genocide. (Edit: Just occurred to me that if it's the Alliance carrying out Coordinator genocide, all they really need is one Gundam with a ton of nukes, so I guess it's not as outlandish as it seems.) I'm sure Gunota will have more info on this momentarily.

So what you're asserting is it was wholly unrealistic that Jack and Paul could run into a few Muslim Americans who DON'T want to blow things up and are pissed at those who give their whole religion a bad name?

Sorry for the semi-late response, I know this was asked a page and a half ago, but whatever. Anyway, I get my raws from l33t-raws. They take longer to come out than Saiyaman, but the quality is much better. I haven't been watching Saiyaman Destiny, so I don't know if maybe they've gotten better, but I remember the quality of their SEED raws was awful. If you need speed, go for Saiyaman, because they'll be out a couple hours after the show airs. If, like me, you can stand to wait until Sunday or Monday to see some decent quality, go with l33t-raws. The actual body looks much better, but I still hate the wings. Red and black color scheme just doesn't work for me.

From the previews it looks like Curtis might not make it out alive. Considering that Tony can take credit for saving the live of Audrey, whose father has final say in CTU's budgets, I don't think it's too far-fetched to say Tony's got the right person backing him to get his old job back... What I meant about Curtis was that he wouldn't crack, not that he'd come out of it intact, like Chase managed (they even reattached his arm, as you probably recall). Chase has so far endured more than any other character on the show, but he never cracked, and he encouraged Jack to do whatever needed to be done (ie, cutting off his arm). I suspect Curtis will be pretty good, too. But if he ends up with a bullet in his head, there's not a lot he can do about that. As for Tony, I'm just saying...well, consider. It's been a while since I watched season 1, so I don't really remember what happened there. Season 2, he assaults Chappelle and goes around his superiors to try to help Jack on his own little renegade mission. Season 3, he feeds misinformation to CTU agents in the field, directly facilitating the escape of a terrorist who was holding the country hostage with a highly lethal virus. He's lucky to be out of prison after that. Then he spends 18 months becoming an unemployed alcoholic. ...and now he's back on the job. It just doesn't add up terribly well. Like I said, I'm happy to have him back and I'm willing to look past it, but if you just consider how this kind of situation would be handled in reality, it doesn't really work.

I totally called the Paul Raines plot twist almost a month ago. So I'm kind of proud of myself for that. Not sure whether or not Marianne is actually dead. On the one hand, they did keep the camera on her for an awful long time. A relatively unimportant character gets axed and her corpse gets more screentime than any of the major characters who have been killed off over the past three years. On the other hand, she did look fairly dead. We'll see what happens. Had the same feeling about why they didn't just cut off the cadaver's thumb, but I guess it makes sense. Mutilating bodies is probably against CTU policy. The fact that Jack has done it in the past means very little. I expect Curtis to hold up as well under torture as Chase did last year. So far, Chase has proven himself to be the hardest character on 24, even moreso than Jack. But depending on what they do with Curtis, he might outdo Chase. I dunno...maybe he'll lose both his arms? As for Behrooz icing his dad...once again, a dumbass character lets his emotions ruin a CTU investigation. Granted, that guy probably would have been damn near impossible to crack, but there's a reason Jack didn't just shoot him in the face when he first dropped in. They wanted to take him alive. Stupid kid. I'm not quite sure I buy Tony getting his job back. I think it's gotta be a little more than a good word from an employee of the Secretary of Defense to give a man charged with treason a crucial job maintaining national security. But whatever. It's still good to have him back. I'm not a big fan of the new cast. Incidentally, I just have this feeling that we're going to see Michelle soon. Overall, it was a good episode, possibly the best of the season so far. Looking forward to next week.

Looks like IMDB's info about Michelle returning in this episode was bad, which I suppose explains why they took it down (although now it's back up even though she clearly wasn't in this episode). But now that we know she's still working for division, I definitely think we're going to see her in the future. Not sure what's going to happen with Tony, though. I doubt that they just stick together for a few episodes and then Tony goes home. So I see them either working Tony back into CTU somehow (though I'm not sure why CTU would take back someone who worked against them, no matter what the reason), or Tony's going to die this season. Just my own thoughts on it. I really like Tony, so I'd rather it be the former than the latter. But if there's anything we've ever seen on this show (particularly in the third season), nothing's sacred and no one is safe. If they could kill off Sherry Palmer, Ryan Chappelle, and Nina Myers, and write Tony, Michelle, Palmer, and Kim off the main cast all in the same season, killing Tony off in a guest-starring role certainly isn't a stretch. I didn't expect Audrey to get back to CTU safe and sound, but the reason I didn't expect it was the previous week's preview showing Tony with Jack at the helicopter. So when Jack gave Tony's address to Heller, I was pretty sure Marianne was going to somehow intercept the info and get there first, thus dragging Tony into everything (foreshadowed earlier when he said he didn't want to be dragged into it). But when the car left the house without incident and Tony offered Jack his help, I figured nothing would happen to Audrey. She already IDed the guy in the video, which is the only reason they tried to kill her last week, so they really don't have any reason to care about her anymore. Hard to say why the sniper didn't take out Jack and Tony. Could just be that he didn't know who they were and he was only told to take out the other guy and get the hell out, so that's what he did. Considering where the bullet hit the guy, it seems like the sniper should have had clear line of sight to them even after they ducked behind the car, but we saw him taking off as soon as he got the shot off, so I guess Jack and Tony just dodged a bullet (literally) when he decided they weren't worth the extra time it would have taken to kill them before escaping.

How kick ass was that? I knew he'd end up calling him or Chase. But then again there isn't much Chase can do with only one hand. What IF Kim was the one that came in blasting? BUT it also seems they caught the wrong mole. Chase's hand was presumably reattached. He was in surgery at the end of season 3, and Jack said that doctors were pretty optimistic. Even in real life, it's quite possible to reattach a severed limb if you do it quickly enough, so I imagine that Chase still has both hands. Tony was no big surprise. It was confirmed quite a few weeks ago that he'd be coming back for last night's episode. Other spoilers for anyone interested: Michelle is probably coming back for the next episode. I'm not sure what the info was based on, but IMDB has taken it down, so I guess it wasn't ever confirmed. But I wouldn't be shocked to see her next week. After all, they also don't have Tony listed for next week's episode and we know he's going to be on. Also, Palmer is returning for the last six episodes, although under what circumstances, your guess is as good as mine. I really wouldn't be shocked if every surviving character of any importance gets at least some screen time during the season, Kim and Chase included.

It'll probably turn out to be nothing, but I have my suspicions about Audrey's husband. There was something off about him when he was talking to her on the phone. Plus, he evidently doesn't live in LA. He managed to catch a plane to LA from wherever he lives and then get to CTU from LAX (roughly 20 miles apart) in the short time since this whole thing happened? Heller was kidnapped at the end of the first episode, but he obviously wouldn't find this out for a little while still, so say he leaves in the middle of the second episode, then there's the actual travel time involved. I guess if he has connections to catch the flight quickly and with no hang-ups, and if he's flying from somewhere relatively close by, it works. But it just seems really suspicious to me. It seems like a bit of a longshot, but then again, this is 24 we're talking about. And if the writers are willing to tie Heller's own son to the plot (even if it's unwittingly), I have to imagine Audrey's estranged husband is fair game too. Guess we'll find out in due time either way.

Something else to note in episode 14... there's been some speculation as to whether or not the shot of Strike Rouge in the OP meant it would actually be in the show or if it was just like Astray appearing in the first SEED OP. Episode 14 provides a brief glimpse of Strike Rouge in the Archangel hangar, so it seems it does still exist and is going to be used. Haven't been keeping up much with Destiny talk and rumors, but as far as I know, that's not old news, so I thought it worth mentioning.

Actually, the Spanish and Japanese R's are basically the same sound, and they're distinctly different from the English R. The English R, as someone pointed out, is formed with your tongue at the back of your mouth against the velum. The Spanish and Japanese R, as the weblog that was linked pointed out, is the single-tap R that's pronounced by hitting your tongue against the alveolar ridge directly behind your top row of teeth. It's something like trying to pronounce the English L and R simultaneously, but the sound is actually represented in English with the double T or D (as in the Eddy example, or the example that was popular when I learned Spanish phonetics, "pitter-patter"). For an English speaker unfamiliar with Japanese phonetics, the best way to print a pronunciation for "Mi-ri-a," would be, in my opinion, "Mittia." For a Spanish speaker, you really don't have to alter the spelling, as he'll pronounce "Miria" with the same alveolar R that the Japanese use.