...Control, this is Pilgrim One...
...our way back from... ...to the asteroid...
It was at this moment on the last mission of Ace Combat 7 that Ace Combat fans all across
the world went crazy and new players were like: who is this woman?
And now it's time to explain why Kei Nagase is back on a spaceship, but first of all who
is she?
Well, Kei Nagase is basically a living meme inside the Ace Combat community.
It's the name of a character that appears in Ace Combat 2, Ace Combat 3, Ace Combat
04, Ace Combat 5, Assault Horizon, Ace Combat 3D, Ace Combat Infinity and also in the novel
Ikaros in the Sky.
And now she's back in Ace Combat 7.
And you can also see her sister Reiko Nagase in the Ridge Racer games.
Basically this is not only a joke inside the Ace Combat games but also in Bandai Namco as well.
Now the Nagases on this list are sometimes different and sometimes same, they just appear
at different times in different games.
In this case, the Nagase that appears in Ace Combat 7 is the same one from Ace Combat 5,
where she is one of the main characters in the game.
Back in Ace Combat 5 which takes place in the year of 2010, therefore 9 years before
the events of Ace Combat 7, Kei Nagase belonged to the Wardog Squadron of the Osean Air Defense Force.
Ace Combat veterans already know the story behind the Wardog Squadron which later became
the Razgriz Squadron, but to put it simply to new players, Kei Nagase was a key member
of this squadron which pretty much single handedly changed the course of the war against
Yuktobania and later also against the country of Belka.
[You should be familiar with Belka, right? Because they did nothing wrong!]
Now one thing you should know about the Kei Nagase from Ace Combat 5 is that she really
loved this book called A Blue Dove for the Princess which is basically a fairy tale inside
the universe of Strangereal.
[And you can check my other video that I made about this book right here and even get it
for yourself, it's available for download in multiple languages!]
This fairy tale talks about story of the Demon of Razgriz which is very important in the
story of Ace Combat 5 since it becomes the name of the squadron later on.
And she had this very strong passion for this book and at the same time she really was someone
who really believed in peace and world harmony.
That is why she was so anti-war and you get to see that a lot during the game.
Another thing you should know is that Nagase absolutely loves space exploration, that's
why she talks so much about the Arkbird which is this spacecraft from the Osean Federation
and she even talks to Harling!
Remember that guy you killed in mission 4 of Ace Combat 7, the President of Osea?
She meets him in mission 8 of Ace Combat 5 and proceeds talking to him about the 'bridge
to space' which later became the space elevator that we see in Ace Combat 7.
With that said I think you get a clear picture that she really enjoyed space exploration
and that she was one of Harling's supporters in his goal to promote space exploration while
using money from the military budget.
And to summarize the story of Ace Combat 5, let's just say you team up with Nagase and
some other friends in the Wardog Squadron and you fight off some Belkan guys
[that did nothing wrong],
that were manipulating the conflict.
And in the last mission of the game you have to intercept a satellite packed with nukes
that is bound to hit the Osean capital city of Oured - and you have some pretty nice fireworks at the end.
But here's the thing, whenever you have an Ace Combat game usually the ending has a very
mysterious tone.
You don't know where the characters go, you don't know what happens to them and that's
kinda the thing fans have been eagerly waiting to know: what happened to Nagase after Ace Combat 5?
And here we finally have the answer now that she's back in Ace Combat 7 and the details
after Ace Combat 5 have been made public at the Ace Combat book Aces at War that was included
in some collector's editions of Ace Combat 7.
The details I'll be talking about here come from the short story from the book called
After the Blue Dove, which was written by Sunao Katabuchi the same writer of Ace Combat 7 and also Ace Combat 5.
After the Circum-Pacific War, which is the one depicted in Ace Combat 5, Nagase actually
became a writer of books.
Her first book to be published was A Blue Dove for the Princess, remember that I just
mentioned from Ace Combat 5?
As you see in the game, that book had some missing pages that Nagase was trying to complete
and after war she was able to publish it in a limited, very small run.
Although I don't know how it works, Strangereal doesn't have copyright laws?
Despite the small print run, Nagase actually got a letter from a fan or her books.
It turns out that this fan was actually an editor on a major publisher who offered to
publish her works in this big company.
This editor also asked Nagase to make a sequel to A Blue Dove for the Pricess but Nagase
replied that she couldn't do it, she had seen too many horrible things during the Circum-Pacific
War and she described herself as a tired dove.
Fun fact: During the Nagase's career as writer she was eventually able to publish 4 books.
One of them was called 'The Twelve Colours of the Sky', now I don't know what the book
is about but that's the name of the book.
Coming back to the story, when the editor was trying to persuade Nagase to write a sequel
to A Blue Dove for the Princess, the editor insisted in an in-person meeting so she could
talk to Nagase.
Nagase said yes to the meeting and was able to meet the editor.
Now this editor has a very interesting story because she was also involved in the Circum-Pacific War.
She had a PR job in the Osean army with the unfortunate duty of taking care of the casualties'
list from the battlefield and sending the reports back home.
Obviously this is the kind of job nobody wants to do and this person, this editor, was able
to take it quite well because she didn't know the people that were getting killed...
Until the day when she name on the list of her sister's husband.
As you can expect, she got traumatized after this incident and after the war she went to
work on children's books in search of a better tomorrow for future generations.
After meeting in person and sharing their experiences and memories from the Circum-Pacific War,
Kei Nagase and the editor became very close friends and their work relationship
continued for a long time.
Eventually the editor invited Nagase to come attend the birthday party of her daughter
who was one-year old.
Now it is at this birthday party that things get really interesting because that is where
Nagase was able to meet with the editor's husband who was an astronomer.
Also at that party was the husband's father who was quite a famous individual:
Jonathan Payek (I hope I pronounced that correctly),
who was the man who was working at the Seals
Bridge University back in 1994 and who was the person to first discover the Ulysses asteroid
that came to hit Strangereal in 1999 and caused so many wars, destruction and suffering.
And now <> for some dramatic reading.
These astronomers continued to monitor the asteroids, at dinner Nagase casually dropped
the question: "Have you observed anything interesting lately?"
The astronomers remained silent, an uncomfortable silence with the two staring at the flames
of the birthday cake.
They didn't blink.
It was at that moment that Nagase realized why the President of Osea had invited her
to join the Osean astronaut program: another asteroid was in collision course with Strangereal,
a threat that would repeat the tragedy of Ulysses.
[END OF DRAMATIC READING]
From my understanding of the book, the discovery of this new asteroid
that was bound to hit Strangereal was kept secret from the general public.
And the Osean Federation already had a plan to avoid another Ulysses disaster, instead
of building railguns which were done in the past and generated many wars afterwards, Osea
planned to launch a deep space mission with the goal of intercepting and either changing
course or destroying the asteroid on deep space, more notably, close to the asteroid
belt in the solar system.
This mission would be accomplished by a spaceship called Pilgrim One which was going to be captained
by Kei Nagase herself.
This deep space mission was launched in 2012 and after 7 years, Kei Nagase returned to
Strangereal on November 1, 2019 after saving the planet one more time.
And that is why she is back in Ace Combat 7.
NAGASE: We're on our way back from our seven-year mission to the asteroid belt.
I can't tell you how proud I am to be the first to lind in deep space...
...Wait, what was that transmission?
This is Captain Kei Nagase... Of the spaceship Pilgrim One.
The ocean of stars in our galaxy is finally within our reach.
To the pilot who generously gave us a place to dock, we are forever grateful.
The universe lies ahead of us, waiting to be discovered.
And now, at last, we have a gateway to ascend to it. Over and over again.
It's all coming together for me. Today was the day, the moment of her return.
I salute the pilot, who gave us all a future.
To Skies Unknown...
The path to mankind's vast future remains standing, Granddad.