Koba

Koba

A story about a war between two (actually three) nations for reasons they are not really sure. it focuses on an inexperienced platoon leader and his battle hardened female platoon sergeant, Koba. the 'goodguys' are Russianesque, while the 'badguys' are franco-germanesque. the third country is a mishmash of commonwealth countries and their allies (UK, South Africa, Japan, Korea, Israel). both countries blame the other for starting the war, and are fighting it in the third country that sits between them (like with belgium during both world wars). we get to see characters on the 'badguy's' side, but they are killed off unceremoniously. (basically, they just don’t show up anymore, and if you go back and freezeframe it, and look at the faces of the random background badguys that get blasted away, it’s them).
Other subplots involve a fighter pilot, an intelligence officer, and a tank crew

Tank crew is a basicallya T-90 but without the autoloader, so four people, focussing on the gunner, who is a babby-faced 17 year old draftee whose favorite hobby is bicycling. thing go well for them, until they're in a massive battle, and all of the other crew members are killed by atgm. He survives but looses his legs. when all seems lost, he manages to single-handedly hold off the enemy in what remains of his tank. when he returns to consiousness in the hospital he's told he's been promoted and expected to go back into the field. they slap on a pair of prosthetics and tell him all he has to do is sit in a chair, so it doesn't warrant a medical discharge. he hardens the fuck up. becomes an officer, and when he's in the command centers he wears the metal running legs that go click-clack on the floor to remind the arm-chair officers that there's a war outside their cozy little bunker.

The pilot is a Flanker hotshot, who ocaisionally intersects with CAS and what-not with the MC's platoon.

The war is won when the general on the 'goodguys' overseas the development of the first combat mechs, breaking the stalemate much like tanks in WWI. In the middle country there is a city interected by river that is being fought over like stalingrad. No matter where they pushe forward, as long as one side has foothold in the city, they cannot completely invaed through the rest of the country because of the city's strategic advantages. the General has to deal with either being able to retake the city by any means necessary by a certain date, or the military will just glass it with millions of stranded refuges still living their. The mechpilots are the heroes, and no one gives a shit about the main characters at the end. Emphasis is on making the mech’s as realistic as possible, relegated to a niche role. Something that /k/ couldn’t bitch at. Both the Tanker and the Pilot are recruited into the mech program

The Intel officers deal with intel related operations, and intersect with the other characters and the general when they are required to protect the secrecy of the mech program.

The theme of the show is political realism (the underlying reason for war is international anarchy), and one of the officers in the Belgium-eque country gives a speech about how both sides ravaged his homeland for the most childish reason imaginable: because no one told them not to.
The actual mystery of the plot happens in the background: we see only snippets of it in the context of the platoon’s interaction with the general and with the minor characters
In between the action scenes we get lighthearted scenes of the platoon doing what soldiers do: cute things, playing pranks on each other, sleeping, drinking, and generally trying to distance themselves from the war.

The two MCs have to deal with running away from their past. The officer dumps his girlfriend before joining the military because he’s afraid to have her see him come back in a bodybag. The platoon sergeant was stabbed by some crazed drug addict and put into the hospital. While she was there, her town was massacred in a bombing, killing her family (see: Guernica massacre). She decides to enlist as soon as she is discharged, and hasn’t gone back to the town nor her parents funeral/grave. Because of her stab wounds to the abdomen, she can never have children. feels worthy moments including the Sergeant getting through bootcamp and not having her parents to pin her badge to her uniform, so her drill sergeant pins it and says that he’s proud of her, and hopes that she’ll make a good soldier.

the general finds out the war was started by what were falseflag attacks from the only country that was neutral in the war to make a profit on it -- an always neutral mad dog whore nation like Switzerland (that profited like crazy off the Nazi warmachine)  He kills himself when he comes to grips that he can't let the world know the truth or else war will start all over again. the main character is shot by a sniper who was not aware that the peace treaty had been ratified only ten minutes ago, leaving the audience to decide whether or not he died

at the climax, MC and sergeant are captured by the losing desperate Franco-germans and lined up against a wall with other POWs and are machinegunned. Officer in charge of franco-german squad (that we've seen earlier as a throwaway characters) is the only one to protest about how wrong it is and walks herself over onto the firing line to join the other prisoners. the sergeant throws herself in front of the lieutenant to protect him. out of the pile of corpses, the wounded LT stands up and pulls the wounded sergeant to her feet. The machine gunner reloads and the two of them hold each other in a non-romantic totally platonic way xdddddd not gey. the gunner fires and they flynch. He only gets two shots off, and his machine gun jams. He clears it. Right as he pulls the trigger, a friendly tank with a minsweeping flail busts through the wall and runs the shit over the machine gunners, sending blood and limbs everywhere.