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I didn't understand what happened at the sixth episode. Can you explain me the point listed below?

  • Why did 256 guardians come for the rescue? Why so many, and why 28 of them?
  • Why did the guardians break the law by rescuing them? What is wrong with the rescue? Why does it become unlawful? Why didn't the command center plan the rescue beforehand? Where they abandoned there officially?
кяαzєя
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hkBattousai
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2 Answers2

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This is speculation.

Point Number 1. Shizuka was already past the point of no return. Which literally means she went past the point where she and Nagate would have enough fuel to return to Sidonia. This is a very real and very deadly result for all of the knights. Even so, Nagate went after her. In addition to him being a hero, his actions gained the respect of everyone, so they left to rescue him.

Point Number 2. The guardians are supposed to guard, not leave the mother ship. By leaving to rescue them, they left Sidonia open to attack. Rescue cost resources, most obviously fuel. Rescue of people past the point of return opens up the risk to Sidonia even more because of the time the rescuers are away. The rescuers can get attacked themselves, and it takes time and resources to replace every knight. So yea, they were officially abandoned because the risk and cost outweighs promoting a new cadet.

EDIT: the number was because each squad has 4 members, so there were 64 squads present. I'm not sure if this answers your question because I'm not sure what's so strange about the number.

EDIT2: The significance of the number 256 according to @krazer:

That's the the smallest tactical unit in the Ancient Macedonian army, which was the 256 men syntagma/speira. Take note of the parallelism structure and organization between Sidonia, it's Garde, and ancient city states

ton.yeung
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  • updated my answer – ton.yeung Oct 05 '14 at 21:27
  • So, there is no scientific reason behind the number? Like the distance they could reach would be logarithmically proportional with the number of guardians? – hkBattousai Oct 05 '14 at 21:38
  • As far as I know there isn't any reason like that. My understanding of the event is that the entire force decided to disobey orders out of respect for Nagate. – ton.yeung Oct 05 '14 at 22:37
  • I think this is not a speculation. It was mentioned explicitly that Hoshijiro was outside the range where she can catch up to Sidonia. – 絢瀬絵里 Oct 06 '14 at 08:32
  • @hkBattousai You're right to take note of the number 256, because that's the the smallest tactical unit in the [Ancient Macedonian army](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonian_army#The_Foot_Companions), which was the 256 men syntagma/speira. Take note of the parallelism structure and organization between Sidonia, it's Garde, and ancient city states. – кяαzєя Oct 07 '14 at 16:51
  • About the large number of guardians, it might be the case that a large number of machines in formation will save energy as opposed to moving separately. I vaguely remember this being mentioned either in the anime or in the manga. – nhahtdh Dec 08 '14 at 12:51
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256 is also the amount of numbers that can be represented by 8 bits of data (1 byte) It seems like the japanese like this kind of numbers, in an Evangelion episode, they claim that the S2 engine could had failed by 32768 possibilities, not considering sabotage. The number 32768 is the amount of numbers represented in 15 bits of data, or the maximum represented positive number in 16 bits when using one bit for the sign.

fsr
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  • I really doubt it has anything to do with number of bits here, though we don't really know if the author is actually influenced by this number. – nhahtdh Mar 22 '15 at 19:42