Brave Fencer Kirby wrote:Speaking as someone who's only partway through the series (I've been watching it as it goes up on Youtube, so I'm up through episode 9), it definitely feels incoherent to me. Bellri, in particular, seems to do things based on what the plot requires of him, rather than doing things out of any internally-consistent motivation. He seems to be a loyal Capital Guard cadet, but then happily helps a POW escape and then joins up with her "space pirate" crew (ostensibly to gather intelligence on them, but he completely fails to even attempt to get any sort of message back to the Capital Tower, except for one time early on when he goes "oh yeah, Minovsky particles, whoops" and then drops the whole thing), sticks around even when it turns out they're Amerian military, and happily fights against -- and shoots down and kills -- Capital Army units without batting an eye. I realize that the Capital Guard and the Capital Army don't exactly see eye to eye, but there's an enormous difference between opposing an allied faction politically and being okay with killing them.
Basically, Bellri seems to have defected to the Megafauna without noticing, because the narrative takes great pains to avoid the fact that his stated goals and his actual actions are completely at odds, as the plot would fall apart if it did. The story requires Bellri to be part of the Megafauna crew, so that happens, regardless of the fact that it doesn't actually make much sense. Is that an issue that could've been fixed with a longer-running series that had more screentime to devote to it? Maybe, but I have doubts. It doesn't seem like a pacing problem to me. It's not that the characters aren't fully developed, it's that their development doesn't match their actions. Devoting more time to that isn't going to make the dissonance go away.
Bellri's motivations get fleshed out more in the episode where he uses the Reflector Pack.
EDIT: Reread your post and you might be there already. The only other thing I can add is to keep in mind the Capital Tower is actually not in conflict with any of the other factions in the world, so in a sense Bellri isn't really parlaying with a group that's he sees as an enemy. As for the effectiveness of his intelligence operation...well, he was probably in over his head anyways, and got carried away. If you're at the episode where he uses the Reflector pack, he has a small moment where he realizes this. For what it's worth, I do think getting carried away is part of Bellri's boyish nature but YMMV.
As the series goes on you realize that some of the conflict norms are different in RC, but those different conflict norms manifest the most within the Capital Tower and the Capital Guard. The Capital Army is far more sinister, and Bellri's less ambivalent attitude towards fighting with them may stem from that kind of impression.
