fuuon

[fuuon]

Zettai Karen Children final thoughts

I read the entirety of the manga in about three weeks, and enjoyed it very much. It��s been a while since I last read a manga that was so consistently high-quality (for the most part, at least). I have a few minor complaints, but overall, this was unexpectedly a very well-written, captivating story.

The good:

The art. It starts off as simple “retro” style, but considering that the manga ran for over 15 years, it’s not surprising that it eventually evolved into something much more polished and impressive. Comparing the first chapters to the later ones, I still think both styles are good-looking and distinctive.

The manga is obviously very long and depicts the main cast in three major stages of their lives, yet there are no actual time skips. You watch the characters grow in real time, which allows for very natural development.

Another thing I liked is the pacing, particularly how the plot is comprised of smaller independent stories which are marked by common titles. While the overarching story arc definitely exists, dividing it in such a manner keeps the story digestible and not overly info heavy per chapter. (This is less prevalent in the final story arc, which I will address later.)

The characters. Almost every single one of them is likeable, believable and interesting; their psychology also feels very convincing, particularly the depictions of trauma. The main cast is charismatic and nicely developed, while side characters stay relevant throughout the story. The author often draws from known tropes and archetypes, but still manages to give his characters distinguishing qualities that make them stand out.

The comedy. It’s not easy to make me giggle, let alone laugh out loud, but this manga did both on frequent occasions.

The fanservice is not too much in your face and doesn’t distract from what’s happening. Most of it is focused on female characters, but it’s also worth noting that the manga doesn’t shy away from showing shirtless men.

The bad:

Towards the end of the manga I noticed an increasing amount of repeated panels, namely closeup panels being copied from other bigger panels. They appeared up to a few times per chapter, which I don’t think should be happening to this extent (or at all, preferably), though I can imagine the reasons why the author resorted to that solution (deadlines, most likely).

Spin-off characters (Andy and Yuugiri) received really weird treatment. Their mother story, “the UNLIMITED”, requires no prior knowledge of the ZKC manga, yet if someone was to read the last arc without watching “the UNLIMITED” first, I feel like they’d be very confused with the Blue Star Foundation. It gets even worse that the organisation and its members have very little impact on the manga story, which is SUCH A SHAME. It could have been a great opportunity to expand on these characters after rather poor development they received in the spin-off (yes, they were main characters and I still feel like they got nerfed by a bad script). The Foundation should have their own IMPACTFUL story arc. If you aren’t going to do that, why put them in the manga in the first place? They contributed nothing. (Let me guess, Andy was a very popular character as reflected by the popularity polls, so they wanted to spike up the sales?)

Related to what I said earlier about the pacing, the final arc suffers from changing the formula at some point. It drags for too long before we finally get to the bad guy. If the main villain is supposed to feel threatening, we should have more story related to him than just a few glimpses (it was well executed in the second arc where Gilliam had enough screentime to be interesting, but for some reason the final arc neglected him in favour of having him brainwash everyone, so most of the time is spent on fighting the brainwashed allies instead of the actual enemy).

That one time every main character got a nice summary of their role while Aoi got reduced to having small boobs. Yeah, I didn’t enjoy that part.

[fuuon]

❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･Gorgeous Birthday IV°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

[fuuon]

❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･Gorgeous Birthday III°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

[fuuon]

❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･Gorgeous Birthday II°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

[fuuon]

Will we ever get anything quite like Code Geass again?

I don't think it's possible.

Code Geass is Japanese nationalist propaganda disguised as a global political drama, disguised as a military mecha show, disguised as yaoibait, disguised as a teen melodrama, disguised as a high school romcom, disguised as a Pizza Hut commercial...

...except those layers aren't layers at all, but are instead comingled in a giant snake ball of insanity.

The lead writer, Ichirō Ōkouchi, only ever worked as an episode writer for other shows prior to Code Geass, and never took the helm of an anime series ever again. And it shows. [EDIT: Several people have pointed out his other lead writing credits to me. So I misread Wikipedia—sue me. I maintain that this guy is a better episode writer than he is a lead writer.]

The minute-to-minute pacing is impeccable from a mechanical standpoint, with tension and stakes rising to ever-higher peaks, balanced out by the slow simmers of the b-plot and c-plot. It keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat at all times. Meanwhile, the large-scale plot is the most off-the-wall middle school nonsense I've ever seen, continually surprising the viewer by pulling twists too dumb to have ever have been on their radar—and therefore more effective in terms of raw shock value.

"Greenlight it!" was the mantra of this anime's production. It must have been. It has, in no particular order, all of the following:

Character designs from CLAMP, the foremost yaoi/BL group in Japan at the time—for characters who are only queer insofar as they can bait the audience, and only straight insofar as they can be more misogynist to the female cast.

Speaking of the female cast, hoo boy the fanservice. We've all seen anime girls breast boobily, with many cases more egregious than Code Geass, but there's something special about it happening immediately after—or sometimes in the middle of!—scenes of military conflict and ethnic cleansing.

Pizza Hut product placement everywhere, in every conceivable situation. High-speed chases, light slice-of-life scenes, intimate character moments, all of it. Gotta have Pizza Hut.

The anime-only Pizza Hut mascot, Cheese-kun. He wears a fedora.

The most hilarious approximations of European names—which I would love to see more often, frankly. Names like, I dunno, "Count Schnitzelgrübe zi Blanquezzio."

A depiction of China that is wholly removed from any modern reality, with red-and-gold pagodas, ornamental robes, scheming eunuchs, and a brainwashed child empress. There's a character named General Tsao, like the chicken.

Inappropriate free-form jazz in the soundtrack, intruding at the most unexpected times.

A secret cabal not unlike the Illuminati, run by an immortal shota with magic powers, holding influence all across the world, at the highest levels of government. They matter for approximately three episodes.

An unexpected insert scene of a schoolgirl using the corner of a table to masturbate. She's doing it to thoughts of her crush, the princess Euphemia—because she believes Euphemia to be as racist as she herself is, and that gets her off. This interrupts an unrelated scene of our protagonist faction planning their next move, which then resumes as if uninterrupted.

Said schoolgirl, in a fit of hysteria, threatens to detonate a worse-than-nuclear bomb in the middle of her school. She then goes on to develop an even more destructive version of that bomb, and become a war criminal, in a chain of cause-and-effect stemming from the moment she finds out that Euphemia wasn't actually that racist.

A character called "the Earl of Pudding."

A premise that asks us to believe that the name Lelouch is normal enough that he didn't need to change it when he went into hiding as an ordinary civilian. "No, that's not Prince Strimbleford von Vanquish! That's our classmate, Strimbleford Smith."

The collective unconscious, a la Carl Jung, within which the protagonist fights his villainous father for control over the fate of humankind. After this is over, the anime just keeps going for about ten more episodes.

An episode in which a mech tosses a giant pizza.

A gay yandere sleeper agent who can manipulate the perception of time.

Chess being played very badly, even to the untrained eye. Lelouch frequently checkmates his opponent by moving his king. This goes hand-in-hand with the anime's crock of bad chess symbolism.

A fictional drug that can most succinctly be described as "nostalgia heroin."

Roller-skating mecha in knightly armor, and some of the most sickass mecha fight choreography that I've seen.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. This anime is what the average Westerner in 2006 thought anime was, and it was made in a confluence of factors that cannot be replicated. I've never had so much fun watching something that I found so... insulting. Repugnant. Ridiculous. Baffling. I love it sincerely.

Catch me cosplaying Lloyd Asplund at a con sometime, or maybe even the big gay loser himself, Lelouch vi Britannia.

[fuuon]

Von Lycaon

and also drew him with both the proxies because I can't decided, i like both.

[fuuon]

撒呀呀_ on Weibo

https://m.weibo.cn/status/5065871837630431

<OFFICIAL COMMISSION MADE BY LOVE AND DEEPSPACE>

[fuuon]

Wip🐰❤️🐦‍⬛

[fuuon]

[fuuon]

I recently installed that one firefox extension that puts Mr. Beast in the thumbnails of every video on youtube (which is great if you've ever wanted to be plagued with visions of a grinning white devil) and it made me take a second to think about him and that one Polygon article about how he's subsumed everything he is to win at the content game.

I really appreciate how Mr. Beast is, like, a hollow shell of a person. I don't really like him or care for him, but I can admit to a grudging respect for a man who figured out how to play the content game better than pretty much anyone else.

But it just feels right, you know? He's the closest we'll probably ever get to a God of YouTube, and he lost what made him human along the road to divinity. He's the pinnacle of everything the internet has been leading to for the last few decades, the apex of the apex of those ceaseless, soulless engines of churning content.

He has everything and nothing. He who masters the algorithm cannot break it.

[fuuon]

only on tumblr where I can see something like this lmao

[fuuon]

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･Gorgeous Birthday I°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

[fuuon]

Late night thoughts

[fuuon]

[ENG SUB] Shoujo☆Kageki Revue Starlight -The LIVE- #4 Climax

Links: Download (nyaa) | Donate on ko-fi

Contents:

Main switching video (final performance)

Fixed POV (second half of the play part is the 2nd last performance at noon on Feb 28, the rest is the final performance)

Backstage behind the scenes video

I will be translating the Kukugumi interviews from the booklet that came with the bluray when I get the time, I'll add links to those to this post as I do.

Please enjoy the stage girls' Climax! (and pls send me your thoughts if you want)

[fuuon]

·̩̩̥͙＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ One Special Day VI ˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙

[fuuon]

·̩̩̥͙＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ One Special Day V ˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙

[fuuon]

·̩̩̥͙＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ One Special Day IV ˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙