Questions


Hi , I watched most of this show, but some things bothered me

Is it possible this show took itself extremely serious? Like in the last episode, they put 'end of book one' on screen (or is it actually from a book) Anyway I always felt they were really trying to hard to become an epic story

Okay, the second thing is perhaps expectable : Invasion 'America'. Sure, America is the super power on earth. Sure, aliens will realise that, if they are clever and really want to take over. But I don't expect them to say (in English!) to each other : "Soon we will conquer America". They don't travel thousands, or even billions of lightyears, to conquer America (and do they mean America or the United States of America then?....)

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How is that taking itself "extrememly seriously?" It wasn't meant to be a comedy or a parody of anything; it really was intended to be a fairly long-running series. Book was just their phrase for season or story arc, as it were, and there were supposed to be five.


That second statement I can't really help you with, as I don't know/remember quite what they were thinking with that. I want to say it had something to do with America's (The United States of) massive stockpile of weapons, especially those of the nuclear variety. At other points in the series, however, the concern is for the future of Earth and not just one country. ("Earth is a war-like planet with weapons of mass destruction, most of which are in this place called ‘America.’
The only thing Americans respect is superior force.")

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But there aren't five seasons right? Or are there? And is there a book really?
Still I think this show could have lightened up once and a while. Don't you think so that they were really pushing it to be epic?

Hmm I must have missed the nuclear weapons thing.

Still the title was weird. It really doesn't make you expect an alien series, rather a series about communist or terrorists invading USA.

I stick with the original remark : what country in America? Bolivia, Mexico, Canada or Urugay? But that is not a thing that only occurs here.

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Correct. The show was cancelled after only season one. There are two official novels available, both by Chrisite Golden: one spanning the first half of the animated series, and the other is her version of what happened after Rita and Cale first met.

I do believe they were trying to be epic, yes, but the show also had numerous humerous points. I'd have to agree with you as well about the oddness of singling out one country on the whole planet, but it was somewhat justified.

Typically --and this may just be because I live here-- America is shorthand for the United States of America. Thus, the invasion was of the U.S.

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I don't recall any humorous points in the show. It's not that I want a serious show to have extremely hilarious points (have you ever seen mister satan in dbz?) , and it would have been weird in a dark manga like the kenshin ova to see someone get a sweatdrop at the back of his head, but on the other hand : ever seen the animated show gundam wing (the one with trowa and heero etc) : it never has any comic relief and it comes over quite pretentious


Yeah I know, I was being ironic. It's just a thing Europeans etc like to do, when speaking of dollars we like to ask : canadian dollars?
That's what you get when a country has a name like that. I've also never heard of USA-er or UK-er.

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It was a pretty dry wit most of the time. Look it up on Wikiquote; there are serious and humerous quotes there.

Tch. I should've known. :)

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A group of friends and I discussed this series a while ago. It was quite an international group, since we were classmates in an exchange program...
Most of us felt that the show had great potential, for even if the animation wasn't that great, the story was quite interesting.
However, even the name itself was maybe too focused: Invastion "America"?
Maybe it doesn't make any noise for people who are from/ live in the USA; but for people from other countries, it is dificult to take it seriously when everything's about conquering America. It's as if the Tyrusians asumed that by conquering the USA alone, the entire Earth would be automatically conquered.
It is only sensible to think that, even asuming the USA was the most powerful/influential/well-armed/whatever that made them the bigest threat for the invasion, the rest of the Earth wouldn't just stand with their arms crossed while they were being conquered, and even appropriating USA's whole weapons and such, there's no way that would be enough to fend agains all the other countries united.

Then, we had the theory that maybe they intended to conquer all earth countries one by one, while other countries remained oblivious. But they were making no secret of their attacks! Also, where was the rest of Earth people while USA territory was being torn apart by meteors? They didn't even show any interest.
It was too much as if the USA was the only country in the world. So it's a bit difficult for people outside the USA to actually buy a story that, while good, talks about Earth and other planets but royally leaves most of Earth-people out.

Then there's the subject of the word America.
When you don't go out of your own country, you tend to assume a lot of stuff (believe me, I've learned from experience). Some scottish and welsh people will rip your head off if you call them "English". They insist they're Brittish, and NOT English.
The same happens with America. As far as most people in the world take it, America is a continent and not a single country. I remember a conversation with a circle of friends about what would be the right word for people from the USA in English. It was quite a mess; one of my friends (from the USA) sugested they could be called "North American". But then, Mexico and Canada are also part of North America, and Canadians are even farther North. At the end, we made up a lot of words, but none of them were usable (too silly, too complicated and such), so our group stuck to just saying "from the States".
Funny thing is, in other languages the problem doesn't exist. The Chinese language makes a diference between America as a country (Meiguo) and America as a continent (Meizho), and call people from the USA Meiguo-ren. Spanish language calls USA people Estadounidense, which translates as "United States-an" or something like that. Complicated stuff!

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