Did I miss something? I don't recall hearing even one good thing about the Loroi. The first word we ever got about the Loroi, from refugees fleeing from the Umiak, is that the Loroi are even worse than the Umiak, and have a habit of total genocide. So the Loroi were established as, if not evil, at least not overly concerned with being good, right from the start.yasotay wrote:Oh dear. Maybe the Babes in blue are not as goodie-two-shoes as we are led to believe.
When we first see the Loroi, they'd rescued our protagonist from certain death and started asking about his health and comfort, sure. But immediately after we learn that they're Loroi, those talks take a sinister turn.
Then there's the information extraction scene itself, which, despite not being deliberately sexualized in any way, did sorta involve an immobilized naked victim's person and sense of wellbeing getting thoroughly violated through a series of not-quite-sensual physical contacts with malice aforethought in a manner that demonstrates and reinforces the attacker's power and the victim's helplessness.
It's sensible in its proper context. The Loroi legitimately need information that they had just cause to suspect him of withholding and had no other timely and certain method of gaining said information. But the image and impression are still those of a powerful personal violation. Enough so that, were Alex a female character and the Loroi a bunch of male aliens, then that scene alone might've established the Loroi as the story's villains more or less regardless of who destroyed the Bellarmine. I know that being touched and mind-read is nothing compared with what innocent bystanders in, say, the 30 Years' War could expect from any of the combatants, but for the main characters of a relatively clean and family friendly cartoon (which is how I see Outsider), I think it's still well within villain territory.
So, the Loroi had crossed a boundary that most PG-13 villains don't cross (largely because most villains are not capable of forcible mind-reading, but still), before 30 pages had passed. For an encore, they add a little physical abuse. Beryl subsequently apologizes... for perhaps having said something that might have offended him. So my human impression is that even nice, cute Beryl might not quite get that hurting people is wrong, and Tempo's apology for whatever might have happened in her absence feels perfunctory at best, and that smile in the last panel really isn't selling it. Again, it all makes sense and works for the characters, for instance Beryl was plainly trying to protect both parties involved from one another and defuse the situation, but since it's so hard not to think of the Loroi as humans and judge them by my own norms it still creates an impression of a basic lack of empathy. And that elevator revealed that the Loroi have some frankly terrifying capabilities, married to their apparent lack of respect for the value of life. As audience members we all know that only a few Loroi have any telekinetic ability at all and only very few of those have it to any appreciable extent, but as far as Alex knows, even the nice girl who brought him his new shoes could smash him to paste by thinking hard at him. The fact that we as the audience know better than this is balanced by the fact that we as the audience know that the one person onboard who appears to have the authority and will to offer him any protection is the one person onboard whose purpose is manipulation and deception. Then there's the Loroi tendency to decorate with images of skulls, and how so many of the Loroi have looked pretty much openly hostile, and how even their closest trusted allies seem to regard the Loroi pretty negatively. The Loroi are, all in all, probably the most terrifying captors Alex could have, in-universe. At least with the Umiak he wouldn't be able to see how pissed they are at him. Stillstorm in particular seems dead-set on maintaining the ancient human warrior-culture custom of turning friends into neutrals and neutrals into enemies.
I realize there are a bunch of reasons why the Loroi might not be such bad people. In the context of real human behavior towards suspicious parties during real human wars, Strike Group 51's treatment of Alex is practically saintly. The situation Strike Group 51 (and the Loroi Union in general) is in is pretty extreme. Beryl is the Loroi we've had the most contact with, and she's adorable and kind as can be, if... awkward. Tempo seems to have done all that she possibly could to protect Alex and help him out, regardless of her occasional adoption of aggressive tones and postures for negotiation purposes. Even Fireblade looked sympathetic to Alex for one whole panel, though that's really not enough (yet) to make up for her apparent satisfaction after she smacked him around to show him who's boss (to appearances, Loroi attitudes towards males are exactly like those of Victorian men towards women, rather than like idealized Victorian attitudes). But these are comparatively small things, downright subtle when put beside all their outright hostile acts and aesthetics of villainy (wherever the Tempest doesn't bristle with guns, it menaces with spikes. Fact: bad guys get better ships.). The Loroi have had too many small humanizing moments to be total space monsters, but, so far, they've just been small and momentary, not enough to get them out of the antagonist role. Not yet.
So all that Kikitik-27 really had to do to not seem any worse than the Loroi at this point was show up without eating any babies. Even if he'd destroyed the Bellarmine, that could've been explained as a totally pragmatic concern regarding the Bell's friendship message transmission potentially compromising their operation, which could variously be played as cold villainy or cold necessity (just as the telepathic interrogation scene could have been played a lot harsher or a lot more moderately than it was). And he could have tried to bring his overwhelming force to bear to destroy Stillstorm's fleet the moment the opportunity was presented. In such cases his acts would be weighed by the audience against the Loroi having perpetrated equally cold acts against Alex personally in the name of their mission, and most of the time personal antagonism is the more compelling of the two styles of evil.
But Kitkat-27 didn't merely show up, he isn't just calculatedly attacking, and at the moment we haven't much proof that he destroyed the Bellarmine.
(Beryl's statement that the enemy only breathes to deceive sounds naive; it's probably true from her point of view, but consider what that point of view would have to be. Judging by the Loroi reaction, Umiak commanders have never previously contacted the Loroi in the field, and Umiak nonmilitary personnel aren't really going to be walking around talking to folks in Loroi space. Beryl wasn't even born when the war started, so pre-war contact is out. Just about the only type of Umiak communication I think Beryl could be familiar with is wartime propaganda, and of course that's going to be nothing but deceit).
Instead, Krikkit-27 opened communications with his hated enemy, carefully explained that further bloodshed here would be a tragedy for both parties, and offered terms that could easily be this war's equivalent to Sherman's terms to Johnston--terms so generous that Congress attacked Sherman for being too soft on the South, terms so generous that Johnston later died to properly honor Sherman, or so the legend goes--in language that suggests a genuine respect for his enemy's lives and accomplishments, and a genuine sense of tragedy at the pointlessness of death beyond the requirements of duty. So Kittykat-27, unlike every Loroi we've met, has shown outward signs that he thinks it is wrong to hurt other people unless you absolutely have to. If we can take Tictac-27's words at face value, then, having done his duty, he is willing to extend what mercy he can to his enemies; he seems the white knight of the story so far, throwing into contrast the casual brutality demonstrated by the Loroi warriors. So when it turns out he's being underhanded, it'll hit twice as hard, whereas just straight-up antagonism would merely put him on even footing with the Loroi.
And his strong words, like "murderous raiders," and "responsible for countless murders?" Looking over the timeline, yeah, it could easily be true. The Loroi were conducting extensive raids into Umiak-held and Umiak-aligned civilian areas, and did start the war's anti-neutrality policy and commit countless murders over its execution, and for all we know the Storm Witch could have been at the forefront of every major Loroi-conducted anti-civilian act. We don't know. Only the Loroi and the Umiak would know.
I think that part of the story is going to be Alex slowly, slowly learning to overcome the extremely negative first impression the Loroi make. It's more interesting to watch a relationship change and develop than to have it clearly established from the first y'know? It's obvious that the Loroi are going to take a very long time to learn to trust Alex, and I think it should take Alex at least as long to come to the point of trusting them, since, well, they come off as, if not monsters, at least a bunch of space jerks.
Maybe what humanity has to offer them is some good PR lessons.
). This is a morally ambiguous war but #27's comments makes me feel that only one side feels that this is a war of extermination, while the other would be content with disarming the threat. I doubt the Umiak would drive the Loroi/their allies/coerced allies/slaves to extinction and I doubt they would occupy major Loroi worlds; instead I see the Bugmen isolating their enemies and preventing them from assembling another fleet. 
The Loroi are kind of like an older version of western civilization, still trying to climb its way out of a dark age, but not having much success while in a state of total war.
