#Am I Actually the Strongest Episode 12 Plot

[animenga2023]

Am I Actually the Strongest Episode 12 Preview Trailer Animenga

[angelicyoongie]

hi ^^

I'm finally more concretely baaaack!! & I finally found time to properly dedicate to your amazing work!!

how are u doing? summer basically finishing so I hope you'll enter last days of summer/early autumn well rested, healthy & w/ no regrets <333

I finally caught up to Abundance & i'm soooo happyyy, i've missed this fic soo much xd

every ch left me w/ so many thoughts, sooo much excitement & just an overall sense of satisfaction at how smooth & rewarding your writing style & narration style are!

so i may ramble a lil bit abt it now if u don't mind XD (u don't have to read all of it or reply btw, no pressure ;D )

1st of all i wanna recognise how usually it's harder to keep tabs on multiple characters, even more if they are all important & heavily involved in the plot (esp in ff that are poly or w/ multiple different kinds of relationships & relations between characters ) but you've done nothing but a great job at handling this! each character gets their time, their moments, their own space & pace for development & involvement in the plot & it all feels very balanced!

definetely not in order '^^

i also wanna scream at the idea of the pack-mark?? i thought i loved already the hybrid concept but this just elevated it o the next level! & the difference in the mark being platonic or romantic & it being also different from the concept of mate-mark?? i can't wait to see how this puzzle piece fits into the canines arrangement in the future

returning to the 1st point, to strenghten my love w/ your writing style there's also the way u write the mc!! istg i'm this close to start crushing on her instead lmaoo. no but the way u wrote her feels way more natural & genuine than an air-head type or a perfect-never-makes-mistakes literal angel type, she feels like an actual proper developed character that is human & obvi makes mistakes but that is also a good person that has a pretty strong sense of responsability/duty, is very mature & level headed (finally an mc that doesn't behave/think like a 12 y.o lmao). i love how even tho she still learning & doesn't know everything already, she always tries to take the better choice either based on her judgement or by seeking to learn more abt the hybrids by asking them directly, w/out shame or fear to ask them abt themselves & hybrids in general.

wrds cannot emphasize enough how grateful i am that she’s not simply just flustered all the time & getting ping-ponged by the guys, she is her own person 1st & takes srsly her own responsibilities & actually wants to treat them as just any other human person while also accommodating & recognising their diff hybrid needs instead of just being all a condescending “omg, they’r so hot, omg their so cute” all the time. she wants to learn & respect their natural instincts & doesn’t fault them 4 having them but also wants them to wrk through the ones that may be harmful to others around them.

onto the last point above, i can't help but appreciate the constant in the story of hybrids not being able to simply wish away their strongest instincts or miraculously gain control over them simply bc of their love 4 mc’s .NO, there is an actual learning curve & episodes of dealing w/ shame,guilt & sense of helplessness, of predators feeling uncomfortable at feeling or having felt certain instincts as their relations w/ the preys change & evolve( as an example)

but at the same time in the build up of the story, the hybrids instincts are never used as plot device to excuse/justify actions that cross the limit (incidents/hybrid on hybrid crimes, agression, violence & the fact that even tho jin & jk were in rut/pre-rut, they were still adamant abt respecting mc boundaries & consent & not " get their way" & simply blame it on “instinct”bs .-. that was refreshing to see lmao)

in your wrld building, i really love how u handled the characterisation of the roles of prey & predator in hybrids & didn't go w/ just usual/easier expected stereotypical depictions. even tho there’s a difference between predators & prey, they still clearly have a consciousness & an important inner emotional reaction at seeing 1st person the reality of prey hybrids, they’s not just animals & they’s not just jerks/assholes, they are actual ppl that had each their own struggles, traumas & lessons & that up until now where only used to relying on their pack to survive or themselves (case of rogues etc) & drive off anybody else to stay safe but not all of them would go out of their way to hurt prey hybrids, it depends on the personal level & not all of them will be swayed off their feet & fall head over heels for the 1st prey hybrid they interact w/, w/out even getting to know them & later trust them & develop normally a closeness to them.

talking abt trust...

after the nth hurt, esp the predators(namjoon,jimin) have learned to surround themselves w/ walls & to not get attached easily & it’s very interesting to see their different inner fights in trying to let go of that while also struggling w/ the need to still feel safe & in control, 2 things that ‘till now they got by keeping to themselves & to their packs.

& although there have been multiple instances in which nj starting doubting mc or started feeling that safety slip away & started pulling back, or jimin & the others were in denial to their own feelings & pull to get closer to other hybrids outside of the pack & lower their guard, after a pretty difficult process & many mistakes it’s slowly starting to happen!! at a pace that i’m sooooo glad u actually took time & effort to develop in a way that feels very natural & curated! i’m sure that it’s not easy to write like this at all & every ch is different & sometimes the wrds don’t feel right or they don’t come etc but i’m just so incredibly happy that u continued to persevere through that in this fic bc the results are a damn masterpiece!!

ALSO,TESTIMONY TO YOUR SHARP & AMAZING WRITING SKILLS:

i nearly lost my mind at your description of nj inner turmoil w/ primary colours(blue & yellow) that clash & then merge into his confused uncomfortable state (murky green) . i literally kept re-reading that part bc it was just sooo pretty 😭

...tumblr doesn't have yellow so let's just pretend XD

& the subtle hints & nj fear of repeated rejection? i’m not sure if maybe i’m interpreting it wrong & it’s not smth that he already had to deal in the past but i’m looking forward regardless.

& the way no part of the plot gets neglected?? hello? bc while all of this is going on w/ the hybrids, mc’s life outside of this bubble is taking turn after turn w/ her wrk & it’s getting sooo interesting,soo intriguing w/ all the dots connecting & the mystery getting bigger & more rabbit-holey😍😍😍

& can i just say that i never trusted hajoon from the beginning?!!! his reaction to mc saying they don’t investigate money laundering bc it’s more of a “officer/investigator” job & him finding it amusing almost like he knows she’s technically already doing that w/ the other company but she just confirmed that the law firm can’t find the necessary info by themselves so other ppl get involved like investigators & informants …. & then the overlap of the 2 cases?? the cliffhanger?? the 3 names popping up again?? & she might have fallen into a trap & just fed hajoon the ones that might have worked w/ her to testimony against the shady company involved in hybrid trafficking... or actually hajoon found a way to frame those 3 to make it harder 4 their testimony to be believable in case they get involved to help mc w/ her case against Lim's. or maybe it's smth else entirely & i'm off my rails XD

we still don't know that much abt hajoon or mc's informant & there's always the possibility of a mole being at the law firm, maybe even somebody that knows mc closely, doesn't attract much attention & regularly looks through files,appointments & schedules😳 now i'm just freely speculating off my head XD

lastly bc i don't wanna exaggerate w/ the walls of rambling (might be too late tho so srry abt that😅), i'm absolutely knees deep infatuated w/ the little details/quirks/facets of personality u give each hybrid:

namjoon's intimidating edge being softened thanks to his clumsiness & puppy-like moments, jin's softer & more attentive way of subtly asserting his role as alpha/hyung, tae's simple often straightforward natural sweetness & inclination of being curious & playful, hobi's unexpected strenght & comforting sweet personality that often acts as a damper in intense moments, jk's perseverance towards more indipendency & his struggles w/ self-worth, jimin's stark contrast between how he carries himself in front of others & his own inner insecurities & fears of abandonment, yoongi's new perspective on love & it simply adding up not substracting at admitting his crush on jin & helping jimin accept his own changes in his emotions & feelings toward the other hybrids.

i have soooo many more but i don't wanna push it😫

in the end i just hope u had lots of fun & feel proud of how this series is turning out! obvi as always no pressure & make sure to take your time & continue writing when & as long as it feels right^^

hello!! thank you so much, i'm doing well 🥺 i hope the beginning of autumn is treating you well too! i'm sorry it took me so long to reply to this ask but the truth was that i didn't want to share it just yet, lol 😭 this ask arrived in my inbox just as i was trying (and failing) to begin writing for abundance again. i kept psyching myself out, thinking that my break had been too long and i wouldn't be able to capture the essence of the characters anymore – so what was even the use of trying if i was only going to fail? but then this popped into my inbox and it just made me feel so.. seen. you pointed out and acknowledged so many aspects of the story that i love and feel proud of, and it was truly the boost i needed. i've been coming back to this almost every day as i've been writing, so i just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart 💖💖

i will say that having eight main characters is a puzzle that doesn't always line up, but i do try my best to make up for it whenever i can! if a character isn't very prominent in one ch, it's likely that they'll get more attention in the next or that i'm "saving" them for a bigger scene that needs more build up. but i'm glad you think i'm going a good job at juggling all of them, tysm :')

i always try to think of ways to add a little something extra to my stories, something that makes it feel like it's not just a direct copy of every other fic in that trope. dividing the boys into predator/prey packs and giving them different marks (platonic/romantic) was such a 'simple' but effective way of introducing a lot of drama and conflict into the story. i'm a slow burn girlie at the end of the day and i knew that the pay off of all of the packs becoming one would be that much sweeter if they actually started off truly disliking each other and not just becoming lovey dovey after two chapters.

i'm honestly so ecstatic that you love the MC so much, that makes me so happy!! it's taken some trial and error, but i've tried my best to create a MC/reader that makes realistic choices and is someone that the majority might be able to see themselves in. she's not perfect, she makes mistakes and she feels horrible when she does, but she also tries to fix things when she messes up and doesn't just expect them to work out on their own. it just doesn't make sense to have an MC that knows everything about hybrids when she's never owned one before (or really had any interest in them) so part of the challenge for her is to actually learn about their needs in relation to who they are as people and not just assume that she knows best because she's fully human.

thank you!! i've really tried to balance the human and animal part of them as much as possible in this fic. they may have instincts and knee-jerk reactions to situations that are fueled by their animal DNA but that doesn't mean that their human brain completely checks out. it was important to me to show that much like the MC, hybrids can have prejudice too, and that they can learn & grow over time. i'm so happy that you pointed out the fact that their instincts are never used to excuse their actions – that was one thing i didn't want to happen. like i said, they're just as much human as they are animal, so it's not a valid reason for them to ignore morals or boundaries.

yes! i didn't just want to slap a predator label on some of them and go "okay, you guys are scary and mean" and make the preys meek and docile for the entire story. they still have individuality and personality regardless of if they're classified as predator or prey. they have all had different experiences that have shaped them into who they are but that doesn't make them heartless or incapable of change. the predators have never noticed how much their biology affects prey hybrids until they met jinkook, so it makes sense that their guilt would eventually catch up with them when they stop thinking of the preys as competition that needs to be eliminated.

trust is a big part of this fic and it manifests in so many different ways! they're all finally beginning to open up and understand that they're safe, and i think it's especially satifisfying to see namjoon and jimin finally let their walls down :') there were times that i was worried i was going to slow but i really do think that this pace was necessary - there was just too much that needed to be unpacked and adressed for it to happen any sooner. and no, it has definitely not been easy, but it does feel more than worth it when i get such a lovely review as this 😭

i'm so happy you pointed out that scene with joon, bc i really liked using the colours to represent his emotions!! and you're not interpreting it wrong, it's definitely a big fear for him!

i know that most readers are only here for the boys and not so much the mc's work, but i really do think it adds to the story! there are some connections coming up that have been slowly been hinted at throughout the story so far, so i'm excited for that to come together soon. hajoon is very sus and you're right in not trusting him 🙈 i'm not going to say what it is exactly, but you are indeed on to something regarding the case 👀

i can't have my babies be one-dimensional! i put a lot of thought into making sure that each character had its own strengths and weaknesses and how that would affect them in different ways. truly, thank you so much for recognizing all of the hard work i've put into developing the story and the characters, it means more than you know 😭

i cannot thank you enough for leaving me such an incredible review/comment, it has made me cry (happy tears!) every time i've looked at it and it has helped me remember all of the things i loved about writing the story. i'm truly so so grateful 💖💖💖

[ecargmura]

Metallic Rouge Episode 4 Review - Verde The Phantom

Metallic Rouge’s strongest points are characters and animation while its weakest aspect is the story. It’s already been four episodes yet I have no idea what the heck is going on. Important details are shown but never told—I feel like the writer is expecting the viewers to dissect everything going on without explaining. Maybe I’m too stupid to understand? Regardless, I am not dropping this because I don’t really like dropping shows. Maybe it’ll get better, who knows?

From what I can tell, there was a bit of an invasion in the Nean community. Soldiers attacked and took some of the Neans prisoner. Rouge is suspected to be Yuval’s murderer. Naomi suggested she escape, but she refuses as she wants to stay to let Verde find her as she believes someone associated with him is a mole.

It sucks to see so much oppression with Neans. Given that this could be only 12-13 episodes long, Nean rights probably won’t be dived in too much as a topic, I feel like. I mean, Rouge is a Nean herself, but it does feel weird to see her fight for other Neans when she’s rather detached from her own people. However, people like Lion do exist. They could either be supportive or could be someone who betrays his own people for selfish purposes. While I still do feel bad that he got killed, he did kind of deserve it.

Naomi shows that she has combat skills. Her kicks are strong enough to catch Giallo off guard. I do like that she has self-defense skills. Though, it does make sense why she doesn’t use them as much as her opponents are either crazy people or androids who are much more powerful than her. Other than that, I do like how Naomi essentially mimics Rouge in that she sees a human and a Nean duo and asks them to help her get into the community. This time, she meets Ash Stahl and his Nean assistant. They’re on the lookout for the red Nean, aka Rouge.

I actually did NOT see Afdal being Verde. It makes sense when thinking about it, but given that I was trying to comprehend the plot, so the foreshadowing flew over my head. Verde reminds me of the Pokemon Scyther because of the green body and the knife-like hands. I feel like having him die feels more saddening as he has been present since Episode 2.

What I learned from The Case Study of Vanitas is that anything circus related is NOT to be trusted. The pig-tailed lady is definitely not to be trusted at all. Will Naomi and Rouge be reunited? What did you think about the episode?

[mandareeboo]

SU Music Rankings

Bc I can and I wanna start some Disk Horse rip. These are all in order of preference, with explanations, etc. It’s a long bitch. That said, I’m not counting little short jingles or small joke songs like Little Butler. This is the meat and potatoes of SU music- just under 30 songs. I might do the rest if people like my takes lol.

I scored it mostly on three bases- how dear it was to my heart, how much/often I relisten to it, and also what it means to the plot. That said, little fun songs don’t automatically go farther down than big, plot-heavy songs either! It’s a strange little balance.

Special Note: I don’t dislike any of this music! I love SU and that includes its bumps and glitches. I just pick favorite children lol.

1.) Change

Was there ever a more Steven moment than when he wiped the blood off his face and kissed it into sparkles? I think not. 

If “Be Wherever You Are” is an ode to young Steven, then this is teen Steven’s. Talking about change, and how much and how little it can do. How he holds his arms up for Spinel to hug him, so trusting. How he seems able to just. Break into soft tears at will, and not to be manipulative- it’s just his kind nature. The warmth in his voice. Fuck yesssss.

2.) Change Your Mind

This song is only fifty five seconds and it’s EVERYTHING to me. It really felt like someone was speaking the words I’d always held deep inside of me, unsure of how to say. It feels like a goodbye to someone who never really loved me. 

As much as I enjoyed Future, if this was the finale of SU, I would’ve been perfectly okay with that.

3.) Drift Away

This song gave me legitimate shivers the first time I heard it, and it still haunts me to this day. Spinel stayed, and waited, and all she got was a transmission thousands of years later. Fuck.

4.) Here We Are In The Future

THE MOVIE IS SU AS ITS BEST AND I WON’T BE SWAYED ON IT. Steven being a teen who loves his weird family but is growing just a bit sarcastic to their drama. The adorable love he and Connie share. His slow realization that he will always be working, always have things to do, is both somber and real. The Crystal Gems won’t be safe with one epic battle. They’ll be safe with years of hard work and love. HIS LITTLE HANDSHAKE WITH AMETHYST.

This is a helluva bop and a great way to summarize the main character’s backstories.

5.) Let’s Only Think About Love

Did ya’ll know that Zach Callison killed his throat with that last note? He gave his all for this performance in a vocal range he no longer comfortably do and by god did it SHINE. The FLAIR. The FORESHADOWING. All of the Gems all being awkward about Rose and Steven trying to bring them to the present. Peridot having a mini-existential crisis in a cute yellow dress. I love Zach Callison’s normal singing voice but man is that a fucking bop. Nothing will ever beat it.

6.) Here Comes A Thought

This bad boy helped me out a LOT with some mental issues I was dealing with in high school. I was unmedicated, unsupervised, and full of anxiety. I’d have break downs when I tried to speak about certain things. I couldn’t function. This song inspired me. It helped me feel okay with my intrusive thoughts.

And the episode! -chef’s kiss-. Once again bringing up the morally gray area of training child soldiers. Connie expanding her social group. Steven’s trauma hauling ass in that second half. The ANIMATION. Stevonnie’s gorgeous singing voice. GOD yes.

7.) It’s Over Isn’t It?

Just barely squeaking above Stronger Than You, this ballad is everything gorgeous. The whole episode is. I think Mr. Greg stands in the top five of my episodes for the entire show. It even got nominated!

There’s just so much about this song that I love. The gentle melancholy of Pearl’s voice. How the crew had to redo the shots for this bit bc Deedee went so fucking hard. The hard cuts between Pearl, remembering the love of her life, and Steven, who has begun to feel like he took her away. I’d recommend this song to anyone, regardless of what they do or don’t know about SU, simply bc it tugs so many heartstrings of love, loss, and responsibility.

8.) Stronger Than You

Did you realize this episode aired SEVEN years ago? This bitch was what got me into SU! Hearing about Ruby and Sapphire made my little gay heart so happy inside, and then getting a whole song confirming that they were a couple, that their love powered the strongest Gem on the team? Aaaaaaaaa

To this DAY I get excited when I hear Estelle start singing. This song is timeless. This song will live in media history. God I fucking love this song.

9.) Other Friends

I’m not the biggest musical person, so I hadn’t heard of Sarah Stiles before her casting as Spinel, but JESUS CHRIST the lady went hard. She went SO fucking hard. Sarah Stiles started on 100 and somehow just kept CLIMBING. You can just hear the sheer manic energy building in her voice, the anger and resentment. 10/10 Sarah Stiles is a queen.

10.) Independent Together

This made the list entirely bc the crew was like “you’re gonna get a himbo ass Steven-Greg fusion singing with Opal while Garnet flies across the moon on Lion while floating” and I am forever thankful to them for it

11.) Who We Are

Bismuth deserved more songs. ‘Nuff said.

12.) Peace and Love (On the Planet Earth)

It Could’ve been Great is EASILY one of my favorite s2 episodes. I love the entire concept of this song. Of Steven making music to reflect how much Earth means to him and his family. Of him teaching Peridot some self-care. Also Peridot’s singing voice is really cute and squeaky. 

I know it’s silly, but I would’ve really enjoyed a flip around of this in Future! Like Peridot reminding Steven how much he loves music, that he needs to take time to relax for himself, maybe with a new verse or just a remix of the original song!

13.) Something Entirely New

I watched this episode as it aired, and I legitimately almost cried. I love Charlyne Yi’s voice so much ya’ll- her raspy, not perfect singing voice against Sapphire’s deep soothing lull is great.

And to have Ruby and Sapphire’s meeting be the way it was- for Ruby to bemoan Sapphire losing Homeworld, to being stuck with a single Ruby, while Sapphire is a noble who has always been taught everyone in her “caste” is vitally important (and has, in her own mind, taken that to mean every Gem, as she should) and how they come together and make each other happy. Good shit good shit.

14.) I’m Just a Comet

The fact that Greg’s music career never really blasted off pisses me off to this day bc Tom Scharpling’s voice is fucking BUTTER. Also the song really feels like a jab at his parents now that we know the kind of dynamic he had growing up. “This life in the stars if all I’ve ever known” is definitely him wiping away their existence after reminding them (and himself) the things they used to say about him.

15.) Do It For Her

This episode. This fucking episode. This episode got me permanently hooked on SU. I’d just binged season 1 and was kinda meh about it overall after the bop of Stronger Than You. “Oh,” I thought to myself, foolishly, “I’ll probably just casually watch this from time to time.”

Like three days later Sworn to the Sword aired and that was it. I was hooked! Pearl’s gentle training song turning darker and darker, Connie’s accompaniment from nervous to determined to fully into such a toxic mindset. The fact that SU had the BALLS to discuss the repercussions of training child soldiers, now and later. This episode was everything to me, STILL is everything to me.

Six years and well over 100 fanfics written later, I think it’s safe to say this show swallowed me whole and never let go.

16.) System/Boot.pearl_final(3)

I debated putting this on the list because it’s not anything crazy important, just a way to show things are Wrong, but I had to do it entirely bc Pearl is so damn SALTY.

Like telling us about the Gems makes sense, she felt like she was given a duty, but she went so damn petty. WHY is that Ruby alone. Gross. This Amethyst is a trash dump. Wtf are you people.

17.) Full Disclosure

This episode really feels like a turning point for SU. Before, the show had its dark moments- but now we’re in the thick of it, and it’s not going away. Full Disclosure felt like an rebuff to the idea of returning to any normal we’d established in season 1. Gems are actually a giant species now. Gems tried to kill us now. There’s this Yellow Diamond bitch who got namedropped. Something about a Cluster. 

The song itself is BALLER, with its ingenious use of Steven’s ringtone and photos as he tries to decide whether to clue in Connie on all this nonsense. Meanwhile we, the audience, already know damn well Connie about to yeet some common sense into him.

18.) What’s the Use of Feeling Blue?

I’mma admit it- I’m a Yellow Diamond stan. I’ve always loved her- her anger, her poise, her hardworking nature. I actively argued against the “Yellow Shattered Pink” theories back in the day. But, man, when this arc leaked? I got so overexcited I was too jittery to watch it for like two days. It’s easily my favorite arc of the series. The sheer alien nature of the zoo, the Famethyst, and absolutely Patti Lupone’s beautiful ballad. Goddamn. Yellow singing to Blue to try and help her regain her old status, the warble in her voice as she reminds Blue she misses Pink too, the movement of the bubbles as she talks about attack. It gives me shivers to this day. FUCK.

19.) Tower of Mistakes

This is, fun fact, that only SU song I have completely memorized. The story itself is kinda funny! See, we lost internet at my house for a solid 5 to 6 months when these episodes aired, so I only got a very brief window to view them all. But this was the first Amethyst song in a long while, and I didn’t want to forget it! So I keep replaying it in my head for ages. And that’s still definitely a thing.

Anyway will never not be sad that this entire song was about making it up to Garnet for Amethyst’s perceived slights with Sugilite (which was a two-way road), only for Garnet to pressure her into fusion later when pissed and never discuss it again bc Garnet probably never thought twice about it and Amethyst has the emotional openness of a clam that’s just been told its ugly. Helluva way to make someone feel like shit, G. Helluva way to bottle that shit, Ames.

20.) On the Run

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Amethyst! Needed! More! Songs! 

The dichotomy between Steven’s play and Amethyst’s honest desire to run away from home is so well-done, especially when you consider a lot of Steven and Amethyst’s actions are playing together. The song is also near and dear to me simply bc it’s my favorite Amethyst episode to exist (well, maybe second to What’s Your Problem, but not by much). Moments like these are all the proof I need that they were right to fuse first.

21.) Be Wherever You Are

This tune really just feels like an ode to who Steven was as a kid. Trapped on an island with no way home, and he’s just happy to be with his friends. The stars are beautiful and not oppressive. Also that one animatic with Lars and the Off Colors playing in the Homeworld Kindergarten to this music was iconic and made this song get stuck in my head for a solid month.

22.) Familiar

I ADORE how the crew use bright neon colors to show how alien Homeworld can be. And Steven recognizing that the Diamonds treat him how the CGs used to, and how prepared he is to “fix” a broken family. It’s a soft, gentle tune about melancholy. Also the Pebbles are beautiful.

23.) Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart

Such a cute little love ballad, but every time I listen to it now I just imagine the heart attack Rose must’ve had at the line “And if we look out of place/Well, baby, that's okay/I'll drive us into outer space.” like there’s a Vietnam war flashback if I ever heard one

24.) What Can I Do?

I’m kind of neutral on this one? Rose and Greg both have great voices, but the song itself lacks many lyrics. I think it was definitely a good way to show Rose’s flaws in thinking.

Also, I’m shocked they managed cram that much vaguely sexual innuendo into two minutes, followed by how Not Hetereo that dance between Rose and Pearl was, and not get their asses chewed by it. You go guys.

25.) Cookie Cat

I love a lot of the vibes this song has. The lyrics are so damn prophetic, but they also sound like the kind of weird 90s commercials I grew up on. It’s been like two decades since I saw the Shirley Temple commercial but I’ll be damned if I don’t remember “Animals crackers in my soup! Monkey and rabbits loop-de-loop.”

26.) Giant Woman

I am. NOT the biggest fan of Steven’s original singing voice. I feel bad saying that, since it was just Zach Callison as a kid, but he never jived well with me for some reason. So I wouldn’t listen to this on the fly. 

The song itself is still really good though, with all sorts of fun animation of Amethyst and Pearl being bitchy to each other. It’s a bit sad in hindsight to see tiny Steven trying to get his moms to get along. Ahh, season 1.

27.) Strong in the Real Way

This song has SUCH a strong start. Pearl reflecting on Sugilite’s problems, but the show making sure to show us that Pearl’s lack of enthusiasm towards her also lends itself to jealousy as well as just general malaise. How much she cares about Steven, and wants him to grow up strong. 

And then Steven just kinda. Ruins it? I appreciate his enthusiasm for tryna bulk up but to take what was starting as such a rich, personal song and broadcasting it to random strangers just makes me a bit sad. Almost a bit angry on her behalf?

28.) That Distant Shore

I KNOW this is gonna create some discourse, but I’m just not the biggest Lapis stan. I love her voice. I love the visuals of the song. And I get why she felt afraid and needed to flee.

But Lapis never got to take responsibility for her own actions. And, in the end, the song feels hollow to me- because we all know she’ll never talk to anyone about it, know she’ll burst back in and destroy the barn, and no one will ever question it. I like Lapis a lot, but I feel like her arc never was fully finished. She never got help. She never learned to feel safe.

29.) Dear Old Dad

I’ve yet to meet a single human being who likes this episode tbh. There’s some great discussion about what kind of parent Greg is from it, and what kind of dynamic he has with the Gems that he felt he had to fake an injury to hang out with his son. Honestly the first half was fine and dandy. It’s just that then they Greg just went out of his way to drag Steven away from missions and such. It never jived well with his character before or after.

Also, is it just me, or does Zach himself sound like he hates the song as he sings it? There’s no passion or heart in his voice. It sounds like they told him to read off cue cards and he did. Tom Scharpling’s best attempts didn’t save this one for being a skipper. But the episode, unfortunately, isn’t, so it gets a spot on here.

[narahairline]

not necessarily a doodle prompt but like. since your characterizations mean the world to me id really love to hear what you'd do if you got the chance to write boruto :]

tysm!! im so happy they resonate with u!! 🥺🌻✨

my reply got way longer than expected so im gonna put a cut

also took this more seriously than necessary but my god. do i have opinions on this.. 🤪

tl;dr pretty much nothing the writers are doing gbhfjsdk just have it be ninja adventure slice of life

tbh theres a lot of things i feel just.. dont really work about the entire concept of it as a sequel

imo its pretty apparent that theyre struggling to form a cohesive plot based on a series that didnt have the most cohesive writing/worldbuilding/lore to begin with and there’s the whole issue of trying to shift focus on a new set of protagonists when the old ones are considered the strongest in their universe and literally killed a god. it leaves the writers with no other options than going even bigger and bigger (like idk. implanting boruto with aliengod.zip) and at some point it just feels.. very out of proportion and like the writers are struggling to bring it all together in a way that makes sense 🤔

not to even mention the original series theme of revolution resulting in... none of the systems changing... the protagonists complacency in the very systems that traumatized them, that became their drive to fight for change... idk its so disheartening lol

as for what i do think would work, its probably short stories or arcs 🤔

little snippets of their life like the hokage inauguration short, which i think showcased the best of boruto lol juxtaposing their everyday life with them all just having these immense powers, having the older and younger generations conflicts intertwine, showing them adusted/adjusting to a different life entirely

also really liked the anime’s mitsuki arc since it linked established conflicts from the original series to those of the newer generation in a way that doesnt alienate the viewer if they havent seen naruto. focused on processing the war and how to move forward, change things for the better, trying and failing. what it means to be human and what it means to create life. worked really well imo.

but yeah more of that basically!! how has the world changed, what remains, how are the systems changing; focussing the legacy theme on the last 3 generations instead of the otsutsuki

for example i really like the parent/child training filler episodes or the idea with the internships and differing career options lol (tho i still think they shouldnt make kids work full time jobs at age 12 but what do i know)

so basically just more of that!! and more actual change lol. when they said they hadnt done a single thing for ame in those 15 years.. oh rage. theres kids living in sewer systems.. literally killing themselves for an organization promising them the change they desperately want... sounds familiar 🤔

you know (boruto spoiler!!) maybe konoha deserved to have kara snatch some of jiraiyas corpse dna idk

all that being said i still think the best option for a sequel wouldve been one set ~5 years after the end of shippuden. have team 7 lead their own teams. have kakashi be hokage if there really has to be one. theyre still relevant, can still show their powers without taking away from the new teams developement too much. put more focus on how the world is changing after what happened with pain and the 4th war. show how theyre rebuilding and reforming the systems that lead to those events.

[mitsuhasnolifebutwatchesanime]

I’m usually never disappointed in anything I’ve seen from studio bones because I know the teams that work on their shows work extremely hard to do what they can. This anime has a lot of History to it too, the director of free and banana fish? Gorgeous animation and designs? Hilarity? A banger of an OP AND ED? Honestly Sk8 the Infinity was just a Good Time.

Our story follows Reki, a high schooler in Okinawa who is OBSESSED with skateboarding, and the new Canadian transfer student, Langa, becoming friends because of skating. Reki takes Langa to the underground skateboard scene S, where Langa, after being taken away from snowboarding in Canada, is introduced to skating in such a way, it makes him want to keep going and get better.

S is also filled with lots of interesting side characters, like Joe, Cherry, Shadow, and yes, even Adam. These people looked at skateboarding and were like “but what if it was like WWE?” Anyway…

While it’s not the strongest in the story department (looking at you failed political subplot!), in the character, animation, and comedy department? Just, great marks all around. Sk8 is RIDICULOUS with some of the nonsense it pulls, but it pulls it in a way that makes sense in context, and never lets you rest from it. The scenes outside of S are also just really fun, funny and wholesome. I just love the character interactions and chemistry.

Am I mad that certain things didn’t happen? Eh, not really honestly. It did the best it could in it’s very limited 12 episode run-time, but honestly, if this went longer than 12 episodes? It might’ve gotten into some trouble. Sometimes, short, sweet, and open ended is good. Would I say no to more Sk8? No???? Except season two and onward of Free just....(this I think is more a fault with the writer than the director. I’m mad with ALL of the character development they ruined in Free season two, I’m sorry). I think Sk8 would greatly benefit from a movie or some OVAs that aren’t recap, but I think it’s charm might be lost if they put more weight into a more serious plot. In general, I think a lot of the problems with the story were when they leaned too heavily on serious plot. The misunderstanding/jealousy subplot was okay, but it dragged on for sooooo many episodes.

Another thing I don’t think enough people talk about is I LOVE the setting for this anime. Very few anime get set outside of Tokyo, and Okinawa is such a melting pot of culture! It makes for a great background, very colorful and enjoyable. It reminds me a lot of tsuritama (which hey, if you want another wholesome sports anime with "friendship", watch it) even though I'm pretty sure it was set in Enoshima which is an island neeeeaarr….Shikoku? Not in the Okinawa region. Plus all of it’s love given to the actual theme of the show, skating. As someone who used to play the Tony Hawk N64 game a LOT as a kid (but the only time I “skateboarded” I ran over my thumb with my full body weight ouchie!), it just felt fun seeing the way S was set up and all the cool ass moves people pulled.

And I think the two main things people have been arguing about a lot was the whole iS ReNgA cAnOn?! And SEND ADAM TO JAIL-- I like that they queercoded a lot and left it up to interpretation. I’m sure they had studio and network heads breathing down their necks to not be explicit, but there is nary a heterosexual explanation for anything. And ya I wanted to see Adam in handcuffs in not the sexy way. I’m not like 100% mad what they did, but like, it sorta made the entire political subplot wasted. A twist I didn’t like was the whole “haha, you THOUGHT she got the warrant to arrest him but she DIDN’T bc the politics in this city are corrupt af” ya, just, probably could have been cut out, but also this is a sports anime where grown adults put on costumes to do ridiculous anime skating illegally, I wasn’t expecting an award winning masterpiece.

I already mentioned it, but I really do like the quality of the animation here. I think it’s definitely what sets Bones apart from many other studios, and in general, probably what saved Sk8 from feeling generic. The animation is dynamic, the colors pop, and the settings are gorgeous and detailed. It just makes me happy to see so much care and details put into it. Just the flipping physics of skateboarding alone are cool to see be explained and animated. Does it pull some sports and BS of humanly impossible feats? Yeah, but they look flipping awesome, combined with everything else, I think it just makes it a good time. Also DAMN I LOVED that compilation in I think episode 2? Of Reki just showing Langa many videos and magazines about skating. It just added another layer of realism to it.

Overall tho, I’m gonna rewatch this one A COUPLE times. It was just a good time, and I will gladly watch more if it comes out, but in the meantime, I can entertain myself with this for a while.

[sz-amare]

7. My Top 15 Anime List

I have watched a lot of anime in the past four years, but one thing that gives me great enjoyment is ranking my top anime. Here I will rank my top 15 favorite anime, along with some honorable mentions that couldn’t make it. However, I won’t be going too in-depth on the analyses; I just want to give you a general idea of why the particular anime is where it is on my list. In general, I rank my anime depending on a combination of factors: 1) how brilliant I find the anime to be written, 2) if the themes resonate with me, 3) if it is categorized in my favorite genres, and 4) my general enjoyment level. Anyway, to the list.

 Number 15

One Punch Man

When I first watched One Punch Man, it seemed nothing more than a mindless comedy anime. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot, but I found it to be forgettable. But one day, I heard that the genre of One Punch Man was seinen, which made no sense to me. It had no dark and mature themes, and as I mentioned, it was nothing more than a senseless comedy. But then one day, on a whim, I watched One Punch Man again. And I REALLY enjoyed it. I still laughed a lot, but something felt different to me this time. I actually felt like I had a deep connection with each of the characters. The story seemed to be more structured and enjoyable this time, and finally, I could actually see the themes that One Punch Man was trying to explore. It made sudden sense to me that One Punch Man is indeed a seinen and that it had a lot more to it than on the surface. Of course, the difference in experience is because of my new understanding of anime and the experience I gained.

Number 14

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is probably one of the most unknown, underappreciated, and underrated anime on this list. Someone recommended it to me, and I had never heard of it, so I assumed it was a mediocre anime. But when I watched it, I had so much fun which I hadn’t felt in many months. It is a training shōnen anime where the main character tries to learn martial arts. That is all I want to say for now because I don’t want to spoil anything, so go watch it. I highly recommend it.

Number 13

A Place Further than the Universe

I don’t see many people talking much about A Place Further than the Universe. But, I must say, it is absolutely phenomenal. It is, hands down, the most inspiring anime in existence. The basic premise is a high school girl wanting to do something significant in her high school life. I won’t say anymore because, again, I don’t want to spoil this anime, and I recommend you check it out if you need inspiration in your life. Let me just say that it is now an aspiring goal of mine to visit Antarctica.

Number 12

Plastic Memories

I made a whole analysis on the previous post so go check it out. But for a quick recap, the life lesson I learned from Plastic Memories has permanently changed my behavior for the better. I found it to be the saddest anime I have ever watched.

 Number 11

Steins; Gate

Once again, I have already made an analysis on Steins; Gate, but this time I only covered the first episode. I also ranked Steins; Gate a 10/10 so that must mean that the rest of this list must contain masterpieces. But to be honest, that is not really the case. You see, to me, even if I consider something a masterpiece, the enjoyment factor plays the most significant role in ranking high on my list. For example, I found Death Note to be brilliant, but I really struggled to enjoy it and therefore, it is not ranked that highly. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Steins; Gate, but I just enjoyed the rest of these anime way more. Anyway, if you want to see why I loved Steins; Gate so much and why I find it so brilliant, check out blog post 4.

Number 10

Berserk (Manga)

Almost everything I found In Berserk is brilliant (except its adaptations, that’s gas station toilet). Guts is a 10/10 protagonist, Griffith is a 10/10 antagonist, the cast is a 10/10, the story is a 10/10, AND THE ART!!! Holy shit!!! I can actually picture an entire museum dedicated to each panel of Berserk.

 Again, the only reason this anime is not any higher is simply because I enjoyed the others on this list so much more. However, I am yet to review any analyses on it so there is a possibility that it will bump-up several places higher when I truly understand the brilliance behind it. Great read though!

Number 9

Haikyuu

I LOVE Haikyuu. Each season gets progressively better and better. It has a lot of controversy around it because of its fan base and because it’s a sports anime. But to be honest, I find Haikyuu to be a better shōnen than My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, and most other modern shōnen anime. It has its amazing moments, its cast is amazing, the character development is amazing, the themes are amazing, and the antagonists are amazing. I am not bluffing when I say that the antagonists in a Volleyball anime are better than the antagonists in many shōnen anime (I’m going to develop haters before I can even develop fans). I plan on making an essay on what most shōnen strive for yet fail to achieve, and Haikyuu somehow delivers.

Number 8

Oregairu

Best romance. Hands down. Oregairu, or SNAFU, or My Teen Rom-Com is Not What I Expected (yes, so many titles) is a masterpiece in its own right. If you are a guy and you watched Oregairu, don’t act like you didn’t imitate Hachiman a couple times. He is a beautiful protagonist, which most of us guys relate to. His inner monologues result in us treating them as gospel. The sub-text is confusing as fuck, but end up making sense in all sorts of ways once decoded. Yukino is best girl, but man I love Yuigahama almost just as much. The general enjoyment I got out of Oregairu is so far through the roof that I once forced myself to stop watching it so that I could savor the show a little more. It is a little difficult to get into at first, but you will most likely end up enjoying it.

Number 7

Re Zero

This is the most recent addition to the list. I often don’t add anything new to my list; I just switch the places between some of them. But ever since season 2, Re Zero jumped significantly in rank. It is the best anime of 2020 (including sequels), and I enjoyed each episode to the max. I was considering adding Re Zero to my top 10 since the first half of the second season finished, but I was a bit hesitant because I am easily affected by recency bias. But my love for Re Zero would just not die down: my love for it grows after each episode airs. It is the only anime on this list that I watched weekly other than One Piece. I actually prefer watching a series I love weekly rather than binging it all, except for One Piece, pacing is constipation (slow and painful). Other than the vast enjoyment I got out of Re Zero, the main reason it made it to this list is because of the light novel comparisons I watch. Aninews is my favorite source. He compares the episode to the light novels, mentioning what was left out and further describing the emotions and thoughts of the characters. He tends to release the “Cut Content” videos a week after the episode airs, but the content and quality are incomparable. I found the videos to be so amazing I am basically just as excited for the weekly videos as the Re Zero episodes themselves. If you love Re Zero, the Cut Content series is a must watch.

The fantastic details and emotions the light novels are able to portray are stunning. I decided to read the light novels recently, but the only issue is that I am very short on time. But for each novel I complete, I will release a post on it.

Number 6

Mob Psycho

Although I said I found Haikyuu to be better than most modern shōnen, Mob Psycho is hands down the king. Its quality far surpasses all modern shōnen and a lot of older generation shōnen too. Funny thing is, I believe Mob Psycho’s primary genre is slice of life, not shōnen. I also believe it to be the best take on an overpowered protagonist. One of my favorite things is that Mob, who is the strongest esper we have seen, seems to be so weak. That is exactly how he should be portrayed; he is still a child with mental challenges that he is constantly trying to overcome. The themes that Mob Psycho explores are some of my favorites. The animation is a bit weird at first, but after watching it, you suddenly realize how brilliant it is.

(Honorable Mentions)

Attack on Titan

I am going to get a lot of hate for not including this in my top 5, let alone my top 15. Attack on Titan is still releasing episodes, so that opinion may change soon but let me be clear about one thing: Attack on Titan is a masterpiece. It is absolute greatness. The hype and enjoyment I get out of Attack on Titan are out of this world. But, a) the enjoyment feels a bit short-lived for me personally. It is a fantastic week after airing, but I tend to forget about it the next. b) Attack on Titan is simply not my type of show. Again, I do love Attack on Titan. Again, it is a masterpiece. And again, it may bump up a bit after a few episodes release, but as of now, Attack on Titan isn’t in my top 15.

(Honorable Mentions)

No Game No Life

Similar to One Punch Man, I thought No Game No Life was an anime for senseless fun and enjoyment. But then I watched the movie. The movie is canon to the light novels, but it is irrelevant to the plot and only contributes to the understanding of the world. However, since I watched that movie, I felt the world of No Game No Life to be more realistic. Of course, a world where games resolve all sorts of conflicts like war is ridiculous. But after watching the movie, that ridiculousness somehow turned to reality. The world of No Game No Life became fascinating to me, and what seemed like dumb games began to turn into political machinations.

(Honorable Mention)

Magi & Yona of the Dawn

All I have to say about these two anime is that they seemed to be very fascinating premises and concepts, but the anime sadly stops for both. I am considering reading the manga for both of them sometime soon, so this list may change once I do.

Number 5

Hunter x Hunter

If you like shōnen, I don’t see why you would hate Hiatus x Hai—I mean Hunter x Hunter. The only thing it slightly lacks is a strong main cast, which many people like anyway. Otherwise, absolute perfection. They have most of the best villains in all of anime: Hisoka, Chrollo, Meruem… How can you not love Meruem? And the way he parallels with Gon but in the opposite direction: just perfection. The arcs are hard to rank because they are all perfection in their own right. The best power system in anime is nothing short but perfection. If it weren’t for the Hiatus, it would be ranked fourth. I doubt it would scratch my top three.

Number 4

Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I know I kept saying perfection when talking about Hunter x Hunter, but I actually believe that Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the perfect series (Note: I am not saying that no one can love it and that it has to be your #1; obviously there are preferences. I’m merely saying that it perfectly crafts what it is trying to portray). The only two arguments you can bring is that the beginning is weak. But if you watch the 03 version, there are no issues whatsoever, in my eyes. Keep in mind, when I say it is the best, I mean from a narrative standpoint. Yes, the animation isn’t the greatest, and the gags are kind of bad, but from a general narrative standpoint, it is the best writing I have ever seen. The plot was brilliant and well-crafted. The world is beautifully bound by their power system: alchemy. The philosophical discussions and themes it explores always have you thinking. The characters are very likable and are all top tier characters. The mysteries keep you in a cycle of confusion and excitement. Since I love science and chemistry, alchemy was so fascinating to me. This show is definitely well-deserving of the number one rank in My Anime List.

Number 3

Kill la Kill

After listing a lot of the best anime/manga with the best stories and narratives, I can see why someone would be upset that I brought up Kill la Kill. This one is certainly the odd one out. However, remember me mentioning that the enjoyment factor is the biggest decision maker in my list placement? Kill la Kill gave me the most enjoyment out of all the anime on this list, even more significant than the obvious #1. I didn’t find anything to be all that brilliant in Kill la Kill, and I can completely understand if someone hated this particular show. But there was something about Kill la Kill that made me feel nostalgic in a weird way. It also gave me one of the weirdest yet most immense feeling of satisfaction I have ever felt. I love Kill la Kill.

Number 2

Konosuba

           Okay yeah, this one is also the odd one out, but it is a little more acceptable. I find Konosuba to be the best comedy anime of all time. Not necessarily because it is the funniest anime (I think it is the funniest but comedy is subjective), but instead because, unlike most comedies, like Nichijo, the characters in Konosuba are absolutely brilliant. Kazuma is one of my favorite characters of all time, Megumi is best girl, but I still love both Darkness and Aqua. Their interactions are absolutely entertaining on both a comedic scale and a general enjoyment scale. Their assholeish-type relationship reflects my relationship with my friends (we are complete assholes to each other, but we also love one another).

Not only that but from the comedy focused anime that I have watched, the plot in this one is actually delightful. The Konosuba movie is my favorite movie of all time, right after A Silent Voice.

Number 1

One Piece

If you read a couple of my previous posts or recognized my profile picture, you probably knew that One Piece is my favorite anime of all time. My love for One Piece is so extensive that I would rather forget all my experiences with anime than forget my experience with One Piece. One Piece inspired me and changed my life. Not in the typical way where I learned a life lesson from the story like Plastic Memories, but simply because I found the writing to be so brilliant. So it was more that Eiichiro Oda, the author of One Piece, inspired me. The characters are the best I have ever seen, the villains are well crafted, the world-building is literally the best in all of fiction, the build-up is fascinating, the questions from the mysteries somehow keep piling over, the symbolism fleshes out aspects of the anime even more, the backstories make characters more relatable and understandable, the general dynamic flow of the world feels like reality, the themes it explores are great learning experiences, the originality never ends, the hype moments keep you energetic for more, the foreshadowing is so phenomenal to the extent where it shouldn’t exist, and the general planning of the story makes it obvious how amazing of an author Eiichiro Oda is.

This series has been airing weekly for nearly 22 years now, the manga for 25. How in the world is Oda able to create this monster of a story, planning certain elements a decade or two in advance? This is brilliance. This is beauty in writing. And I want nothing more than to create a masterpiece of my own.

Final Notes

Emotional, I know. I believe my list here is a bit diverse in terms of genre: shōnen, seinen, romance, comedy, sports, slice-of-life, and mystery. I think it’s a great thing to widen your horizons a bit by exploring various types of genres. Anyway, there are many anime I haven’t watched that could easily replace and dethrone some of the anime on this list. I plan on watching and reading Hajime no Ippo, Gintama, Vagabond, Oyasumi Pun Pun, I”s, etc. I heard these anime/manga are considered the best for their respective genres by many people, and I will probably finish reading and watching these anime/manga in about six months. So I will make a top 15 anime list once again around that time.

If you have any questions or you want to discuss something, feel free to ask in the “Ask Me Anything” tab on my Tumblr page.

[evakuality]

Druck, s5 episode 10 - belated thoughts and overall season impressions

I really like that Nora is still being shown with her symptoms here.  She’s reconnecting with people, and letting people know things about what’s happening, but that doesn’t magically fix everything.  And it’s good that she takes the chance to talk to them a little bit about everything.  It does feel a bit sudden in a lot of ways - she was just anxious about telling the therapist all this stuff and being labeled crazy (I assume - that’s certainly the vibe she gave off) and now she’s super happy to tell the girls all this stuff.  I’m happy that she wants to and feels like she can, but it also feels quite quick.  But that’s the nature of something like this, I guess.  Everything needs to be resolved now.  The whole business with the merch is weird too, with the way she just goes ‘yeah sure, I’m emotionally numb so I’ll draw lots and lots of pictures on lots of things.’  Again, the girls are nice about it, but I guess she feels a bit guilty because it was her who stuffed it up so it feels like there’s some pressure there, even if they don’t mean it.  And ugh, poor Ava when Kieu My turned up - I mean I get that most of this group don’t necessarily know how bad the whole thing was for her but it feels really weird that the focus is on Fatou’s nerves here rather than actually dealing with some of the bigger and more serious stuff that’s floating around with this.  I know it was more the others, but we know from later that this was pretty shitty for Ava.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - I really hope the bullying gets addressed properly and not swept under the table.  The fact that Nora is still happy to be around these people after her experiences with Constantin and Ismail makes me wary.  But I do still have hope that all this will be worked through.  If they are combining the squads (and it looks like they are), then they can’t have this unresolved, not when it’s such a big thing for Ava (and should have affected Nora more if she hadn’t been so numb to everything).

I understand why they have this scene with Kiki about being allowed to stay in the flat by themselves, and I think it’s goods that they deal with all of that (the way Kiki came running as soon as she felt she was needed - it’s not good for her, as they all seem to realise and I’m glad everyone is getting to do what’s working best for them), but it felt very rushed (I suspect I may say that a lot about this episode - it’s all stuff that needs to happen and it’s already quite long, but it feels too fast for me).  And the same with Nora’s comments about therapy.  She says she quite likes it and wants to continue and yet we didn’t see that.  What we saw was a very closed off and belligerent Nora who was only just starting to thaw in that session.  And yes she has a reason to make it all seem more cheerful than she really feels, but it’s still very abrupt as a change.  This is probably the only time I haven’t found a scene with this family compelling and that’s a bit of a shame.

And another rushed moment.  There was a lot shoved into this one clip (Josh, merch, a bullying session, a concert we never heard of til now, a random half-baked apology from Constantin) - for some reason, the show thinks Ismail and Constantin still need to be assholes for no reason.  I mean, clearly it’s designed to show that Kieu My is ‘better’ than they are because she engages and is willing to do ‘12 year old stuff’, but again, if we’re connecting these two squads then this sort of stuff has to stop.  I know I get worked up about this, but it really bugs me.  This behaviour is childish and I’m finding it boring to watch.  Even the apology from Constantin (which does seem sincere) isn’t enough to balance how stupid this ongoing behaviour is.  Hopefully they deal more with that later too and don’t just drop it.  My other take away from this: Nora has to draw 76 things already????  This is going to take forever and I have no idea how she’s going to manage that alongside her classwork.

Oh, I love this little mis-matched table and chair thing they have going on.  It’s so cute and I feel like it really perfectly fits them and their vibes, you know?  This whole friendsgiving idea is so cute and I love that they took what Ava was saying and tried to do something nice for her.  They really are a sweet group of kids.  And her face when she saw it is just ... perfect.  Ugh, when am I getting my Ava season?????  This little conversation between Nora and Josh is very good, too.  You can feel him trying and how hard it is for them both.  I do wish they had dragged this part out a bit longer, either pushing the original break up to earlier in the season or by spreading this into another one, but I like that they’re showing this part.  It IS awkward and difficult to be friends with someone you have feelings for and good on Josh for saying that he just can’t do it.  It hurts and it’s hard, but honesty really is key.  And that, for me, is the biggest thing Nora has had to learn this season.  You can’t hide behind a face and expect things to be okay.  So all these moments of honesty that she’s facing and dealing with, those are so important to her growth.  And then we end with the girls supporting each other which I also really love.  They are all super adorable!

This last clip is also nice.  I still think this sudden ‘live concert’ coming out of nowhere in this last episode is a bit rushed, but the execution is cool.  Ava and Fatou are adorable together and I need a lot more of them singing.  I’m not 100% feeling the thing with Josh and Nora, which is kind of ironic, but it is cute.  I just wish this had all been given more time.  In fact these are the things I wish had more space: the Cash Queens reunion/reconciliation (it needed more conversation/discussion), the Constantin/Ismail/Kieu My stuff being dealt with in more depth (though hopefully this is coming), the Machwitz siblings deciding to live together and Kiki being okay with it (that one needed another clip or two, I think), and the Josh/Nora reconciliation.  Some things have been done really well.  I do think Nora’s mental health was done well, and I liked that it makes clear in this episode that she isn’t totally well and doesn’t expect to be in the near future.  Having said that, I’m not a huge fan of the ‘minute by minute’ idea being moved here.  In some ways it works (this is about a mental illness, after all, and so it fits in that way), but in others ... that’s so iconic for a specific situation and this doesn’t fit in with that one.  Even needed it in a very specific way, and Nora needs something, sure, but I don’t think quite nails her specific needs and I wish they had thought it through for her a little more thoroughly.

Overall, I like the episode.  My biggest issue with this episode is that it’s trying to do so much in such a short time.  Every clip has so much packed into it that nothing really feels like it has time to breathe.  I assume there’s a reason why they’re sticking to 10 episodes, but I wish that either they didn’t have to or that they had paced things more evenly through the season.  The great strength of Skam and Druck is, I feel, that everything is allowed to be paced as it needs to be.  That things happen in a way that gives weight and meaning to lives in a way that isn’t dramatic and isn’t overwrought, but which shows truths about people and their lives.  That this episode hasn’t been able to do that in the same way is a shame.  It’s the ending; it should be the strongest one.  Having said that, I think the friendsgiving clip manages to do exactly that and I love it for it.  It is my favourite clip of this episode and one of my favourites of the season.  This probably feels negative and like all I’m doing is criticising the episode and the season, but that’s not true at all.  

Overall I really enjoyed this season, particularly the sibling dynamics and getting to know the new girls.  It has its flaws, but so do my absolute favourite seasons, and I think it’s a really nice entry into a new gen and some new characters.  The mental illness plot was good to see and I really liked some of the decisions they made around showing its build up and how it affected Nora.  The lighting chosen, the framing, some of the shots they chose - it all built that part up very well.  And while the resolution to it did feel a bit rushed, I do like the acknowledgement that it’s still part of Nora and she’s going to be dealing with it into the future.  And while I’m not on board with Kieu My being the love interest until and unless they address the bullying properly, I do like that we have plots already brewing for next season.  Ava is clearly not cool with it (that whole ‘you deserve better than her’ thing she said to Fatou), and Fatou was clearly thinking she had a chance until the Freindsgiving business and so things are set up for the new season.  It’s a really decent intro to the new era, and solidly sets up characters while telling a story that is good and even compelling in places.

[staysuki]

squid game episode 5 reactions:

1) yes teamwork go guys. i wonder if anyone else are gonna copy their strategy. there’s always that certain disadvantage with going first

2) gihun really setting in with the guilt of blood on their hands (technically)

3) ms. no.240 being a chaotic neutral/good queen i see, but she has a point. “dear God we worked together as a team to send people on your side” I CANNOT WITH HER SHE’S SO FUNNY. still, i’m a bit done with the edgy girls but it’s nice to see more female charcaters here. she makes sense though, no.001 and sangwoo deserve praise 😤😤😤

4) HAH UNDERDOG TEAM. YA’LL SURPRISED HUH. WOOHOO.

5) so are these guys selling organs? i don’t understand the whole side plot with the masked guys but then again, i’m not really paying much attention to that :D. i haven’t seen mr. hwang in a while tho, i kinda miss him

6) yes, sangwoo is very cool. LMFAO ALI BITING BACK WITH THE ATTITUDE BUT 212 RLY GOTTA HIT MY BOY WITH THE IMMIGRANT FILES. THAT HIT HOME 😭💔 let him live. why are you kicking him out, he’s the strongest man on the team, did you see him swinging that largeass beam around last night.

7) “we’re all equal here” sangwoo is a politician. what a straight edged guy this character is, i love him. and he’s so big brain catching up on that part where the gangster team probably knew the game ahead of time + 212 already being suspicious of the doctor hmmmm. i love sangwoo sm, me thinks i’m into the brainy types. i hope they dont die grrr but they probably will

8) mr. 101 going to gihun to psyche him out but our MC really pulled the reverse uno card on him and made him paranoid WE STAN. this man’s EQ is on the roof, he’s so good at reading situations.

9) ali and sangwoo best pair. a power couple honestly. these two will die together in a final stand i can feel it

10) i am so disinterested with the secret masked people smuggler arc, i do not care about these people at all. it’s simply just mr. hwang but even then, i like, do not care at all. the power dynamic is so funny though, they need the doctor but they keep threatening him.

11) more gihun backstory, that’s so sad, i wonder what that attack meant. we haven’t really learned much about his previous job aside from the fact that he used to be a driver(???) maybe he was in the military? like we know he wasn’t able to make his wife’s labor because a guy died in front of him, they made it sound so mundane but that trauma flashback sequence is so heavy. oh they were having a worker’s strike, that’s even worse omg.

12) i hope mr. 001 doesn’t die from the fever, thats such bad timing but it makes sense, even for the others, once the adrenaline dies down, the fatigue will catch up to them.

13) mr. hwang almost getting caught oh no. i’m kinda getting into the whole smuggler arc now but ngl the fact that i can’t see their faces makes it harder to commit, i’m only rooting for mr. hwang. maybe it’s a way to not overload the characters too much(???). oh no the doctor got scammed.

14) what if detective hwang’s brother is actually a masked worker and not part of the games? 😤 or idk, that would be too good to be true for him.

15) the doctor is gonna die, he got too cocky, he couldn’t play the long game. sure, he’s needed but like, wth man.

16) mr. hwang got found out but damn he’s so good. go point that gun bestie 😭♥️. but the reveals of their faces are so anticlimactic.

17) “we can still fix this” pLEASE

18) ok so his brother is dead— oop nevermind, it’s a different body. oh well, i still think his brother is either dead or a worker. either way, go get your body count mr. hwang.

19) i know they have moles and everything but damn they’ve really spent all that time just running around and talking— oh nevermind they got found out.

20) i hope mr. hwang doesn’t bite off more than he can chew and that he gets out of here safely. highly doubt it but i’m rooting for him now. also these people are disgusting. MR. HWANG CAN MURDER IN COLD BLOOD, I AM SO IN LOVE WITH HIM.

21) equality huh. this guy is so weird omg i cannot. they got what they had coming though. oh no sirens going out, this ain’t good. also no.28 and 29 are gone, they’re gonna catch him 😭 hwang please live ily. HIS BROTHER WON 👀 his bro’s probably a worker now idk man

[buddha-in-disguise]

We finally have an original trailer for next weeks Supergirl episode (5.14).

Now usually I’m more than optimistic to see the new trailers or teasers, but after not only the debacle of 5.12, but other problems that have been identified before that; the fact we are rapidly running out of episodes (still unconfirmed if it is 20 or 22, although 20 looking likely as the date for end of filming is confirmed for 17th March), that no original trailer was shown immediately after the 100th episode (that has generally been well received by fans & critics alike, a considerable improvement), I am actually being cautious/worried over the whole thing. Why wait a full week to drop the trailer, instead of riding on the high of the 100th episode? I'm not one for trying to read things into anything, but it feels as if they might've decided to re-edit the trailer after 5.12 exploded in their face so badly. Of course I could be wrong, but with William in the episode it is possible he was in the trailer, and it could've once again become a whole level of backlash (more about William later).

Anyone who knows me will tell you one of my defining traits is I’m a pretty optimistic person. I like to be pragmatic, so I don’t get bogged down often with concerns of what might happen, rather my perspective is, let’s see what happens. I was of this mindset right up until Crisis with Supergirl. I still feel that 5a was by far the strongest part of the season, which normally I find isn’t the case with Supergirl. Usually I find the second half of a season is where Supergirl generally is at its best - where it can finally pull together the strands it has been playing with in terms of main plot line from episode one. By about episode 12 or so, we begin to get an idea where it is heading. That not only hasn't happened this season, with episode numbers dwindling fast there seems to be no way they can pull back from some of the honestly calamitous decisions that seem to have plagued much of the midseason.

I was relieved to see that the promo photos show a Dansen moment.

I am though also not entirely sure we're going to get anything that is meaningful between Kelly and Alex, as the background, synopsis and other photo suggest that they get caught up in the VR world. I have a horrible gut feeling, just as they're about to make out at Obsidian (some workplace making out hello, I'm here for that), there is an explosion (as per trailer), then the fallout from that.

Don't get me wrong, we've had so little of Kelly, and Dansen in general it will be good to see them onscreen together, and working in a hostile environment as a couple; especially as we haven't seen much of Kelly beyond Obsidian or wielding the shield. I hope her army training, alongside Alex's military training with the DEO actually get to be a tangible plot point.

As an aside, remember the little video clip Azie posted just around Christmas that had the Dansen fandom collectively falling down in incomprehensible piles of goo? While the quality isn't great, there is no doubt those outfits match these. So Azie threw one hell of a tease our way beyond what we thought! I do hope that means we genuinely see more than a moment of Dansen, but again Azie has spoken or posted about scenes she has filmed or have been part of the promo set of photos, only for a lot to not make the final edits.

So below are some of the other promo photos for the episode.

My concern is once again we see William at CatCo alongside Franklin. Which infuriates me, because (as I've said many times, this absolutely isn't because if Staz), but why is William once again there, when Nia is a journalist? Yet they pop Franklin in the shot - a reoccurring character certainly, but either remove William, or remove Franklin and allow Nia to be back as a journalist in Catco. Her actual job! I know we get the following episode (15) that is Nia centric, but as with Kelly, Nia's screen time has been so ridiculously low for an established main cast member, that I find it impossible to understand why they couldn't have at least allowed them screen time in these circumstances.

But no, again William is the journalist. Even Franklin is a journalist. Nia is MIA. I'm beginning to think she doesn't even know what CatCo looks like anymore.

It's the imbalance I (and many others) am finding so annoying this season. Imbalance that wouldn't take much to address if they'd just changed scenes a little, without disrupting anything of note of the storyline.

So I decided to check main cast numbers, and it made for interesting reading. Last year had 9 main cast listed. This year it is officially 12. We can argue that James wasn't in many episodes, but he did feature quite heavily before Mehcad left. The same could be said for The Monitor, who is listed as main cast up until Crisis.

Equally Lex Luthor isn't listed as a main character, but considering his screen time since Crisis, I've no doubt he might as well have been. The same for Malefic, who was pretty heavily used prior to Crisis.

So even if we subtract James and The Monitor, and only add in Lex Luthor as a replacement we are still on a higher number of main cast from last season.

Honestly, this for me has been a big part of the problem, with trying to fit in too many characters at the expense of previously established cast. Add in that William's story has made absolutely no sense since Russell died, especially since Nia and even Kelly could've handled the same storylines; it just seems a complete mess.

This isn't about who you ship or who you prefer as a character. Everyone is suffering because of the uneveness of it all. Alex has no cohesive story so far (even though she has a good amount of screen time). Kara and Lena have the screen time, but it also feels really clunky of late, and getting ridiculously drawn out; although I'm hoping since the 100th we'll see it begin to smooth out. The Danver sisters, Brainia, Dansen, even Lena and Kara (whether you view it platonic or as Supercorp is neither here nor there on this and I'm not about to get into arguments that are not relevant to what I'm trying to say here), J'onn with Alex and Kara, Nia and Kara, Brainy and Lena; the list goes on. Every single interaction seems to be suffering.

We all invest in characters, but overall it feels like a mess of unnecessary pairings (Lex and Brainy, Kara and William primarily) or cast additions that has detracted from all characters, and the crux of the story seems to have been lost in the midst.

I really want Supergirl to show us otherwise, but this is about the 3rd or 4th time I've written similar posts, and there has been no or little forward momentum. Time is now against the show as much as the problems it has generated, and there is no way sidelined cast will be able to pull the numbers back up, even with centric episodes like Nia in 5.15. Will Kelly get a more centric episode that doesn't revolve around her brother? Nothing suggests she does, so she'll lose further ground, which in turn means so will Dansen. Brainy has been used a lot, but again at the expense of all the previous pairings the viewers were invested in (whether it was Alex and Brainy, Brainia, Brainy and Lena or to a lesser degree Brainy and Kara).

But hey. Don't worry. William is here to save the day and the girl. *sarcasm, in case anyone wasn't sure*.

[strxga]

Thoughts & Review on V7C12

This is my personal review for the latest chapter of RWBY. I tried to keep my points objective and organized, and to not take too much time discussing each, and I would sincerely appreciated if it could be given a read. Thank you if you do read it.

Well. It’s finally happened.

After a hazy but relatively positive start, I can say that Chapter 12 is yet another tipping point in a direction. The last chapters of Volume 6 were certainly… A lot, but compared to this one, Volume 6 pales in comparison. This one is… A doozy for several reasons. Let me preface by saying this: I love this show.

I sincerely adore it and the characters, and the reason I’m writing this think piece is precisely because of that. Because it could be so much better, it could be truly a love letter towards Fantasy, anime, and its fandom… But the writers specifically seem to not know how to balance that… But enough ranting. Off to the meatier sections, which I will progressively go from what I liked the most to what I liked the least.

Penny & Winter Scenes

This was, by far, the best written scenes in the episode, and coming from an unlikely pair of friends. Penny has always been emotional despite being a robot while Winter, despite being human, has always acted mechanical. This episode provides a nice contrast between the two, with Penny emphasizing with Winter and trying to get through to her only for Winter to refute her claims, but doing so with a sadness to her face because deep inside she knows James Ironwood’s plan is flawed. In a way, one acts as the other should, but doesn’t. Their awkward but working friendship makes that its mold and comfortably rests atop it.

It’s flawed, but realistically, it’s the best option to take over having to fight Salem with depleted and exhausted forces. The two play off one another marvelously, and this keeps up until Cinder’s entrance (which is another point I’ll discuss later) and the entire time they keep up this great dynamic. Penny asking if it’s going to hurt Fria to transfer her Aura directly to Winter, only for her to once more act as Penny’s foil and say that it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is following orders and keeping the Relic and Maiden Powers safe.

Team ORNJ Scenes

Thankfully this time, it doesn’t take an entire episode to figure out where Oscar is. Frankly, there isn’t much to talk about here, but what little there is of it is good! A problem is established, and then it’s swiftly solved by Neopolitan’s confidence only for everything to fall apart when the real Oscar appears, confirming he wasn’t taken away but had been actually fighting solo against Neopolitan for the lamp.

It establishes he’s no longer the wimp he once was and is making full use of Ozpin’s cane, but I honestly do feel like it was mostly a cat-and-mouse game with Neopolitan stealing the lamp and him chasing after her, because I don’t think he could’ve beaten her on his own. Team ORNJ then sets up to fight Neopolitan, spicing up the fight between them that’s going to take place in the upcoming chapter.

(Upcoming) Neopolitan vs. Team ORNJ

There honestly isn’t much to talk about this regarding on what happened in the episode, but what it did amazingly is set up the fight. We know Neopolitan is an experienced fighter, and strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Cinder without her using her Fall Maiden powers. We also know that Jaune and Ren aren’t the strongest fighters, but they can still hold their own, and them accompanied by Oscar who is slightly below-average but still powerful enough to hold his own and Nora who is, now that Pyrrha’s gone, the strongest member of what remains of Team JNPR, I think the battle between them and our favorite ice cream girl is going to be a highlight of this season, especially with how it was set-up.

Cinder’s Entrance

This is when we start to get into the ‘meh’ section of this episode. Cinder is usually compelling in small doses, but extremely dull, boring and irritable in extended scenes due to how confident, smug and self-assured she is despite her multiple failures ever since the Fall of Beacon. But from a writing perspective, she was amazing. She showed how fearsome she is yet again and that her cleverness is part of her character and not just a plot device. She sent Ironwood into a paranoia and then tracked Winter knowing he’d send her after Fria.

Now, the only thing I don’t get, but this might be just me having forgotten, is if there was one point in which Cinder actually learned Winter was the next candidate to be the Winter Maiden… After all, prior to this point, Cinder had never met or encountered Winter or even less have known of her affiliation with Ironwood in the sense that she is her second-in-command. I have difficulty following that thread of logic… Unless Neopolitan told her at some point? I don’t know. Not knowing is what makes me ‘meh’ about this scene.

Clover, Qrow & Tyrian’s Fight

Taking away the connotations and context from the fight and looking at it purely from a choreography perspective, the fight was amazing and showed all of the fighter’s individual styles and strengths. As per usual, Tyrian was shown as crazed and psychopathic. There is no rhyme, reason or logic to his moves, and therefore there is no pattern or proper way to attack other than improvise. Qrow was versatile in using both his hand-to-hand skills and Harbinger to get the job done, but who stands up the most to me is Clover.

Clover really shows why he’s the leader of the AceOps. He was strategic in using Kingfisher to constantly tie-up Tyrian a few times (I cannot remember if he caught Qrow though) and managed to actually keep up with both of them for a long time! Had it not been for Tyrian’s interference while Clover and Qrow spoke, well… I’ll mention that later. But the point is, Clover was an absolute king in the battlefield and despite his weapon being a fishing rod, he was able to use it tremendously.

Furthermore, what surprised me the most is the fact Qrow and Tyrian worked so well together. They made-up for each other’s flaws whenever Clover had one of them against the ropes, and this surprises me even more considering the fact Tyrian was responsible for Qrow’s closest brush with death. It was… Surprisingly bittersweet.

(Upcoming) Cinder vs. Penny & Winter

Nothing much to talk about here given that this hasn’t yet happened, but as per usual Cinder is flaunting and showing off her power while severely underestimating her opponents. It has been approximately three years since she last saw Penny and since she was rebuilt stronger than before, not to mention the combat experience she’s accrued defending Mantle from the Creatures of Grimm and the occasional bandit and the like.

Winter has also presumably gotten stronger since then, but the scope of her abilities are still unknown since she only engaged in combat once and it was against Qrow all the way back in Volume 3. There’s so many ideas up in the air regarding this upcoming fight that nothing’s stopping me from theorizing Fria will wake up and use her Winter Maiden abilities to kick the snot out of Cinder.

But I am looking forward to what the fight has to offer. I don’t think any of them will die though. Cinder is still too important to the plot as are Penny and Winter for as long as the setting is Atlas.

Clover, Qrow, Robyn & Tyrian Scenes

Yeah. This whole encounter was… It wasn’t exactly ‘bad’ but I felt like the characters here acted completely out of character. Well, sans for Tyrian of course, given that at his core, he is simply a psychopath.

Clover has always been one who acted as one of the most morally-upstanding member of the AceOps as well as the one who was, arguably, given the most screen time. But for some reason, this episode had him betray everything he stood for and wanted to arrest Qrow even though Qrow… Well, what did Qrow even do for Ironwood to want him arrested? That’s another minor nitpick I have about the situation. But with how closely Clover and Qrow had bonded, you’d think he’d try and make sense of the situation instead of acting as a drone even though before he had never done so.

Robyn went from a pragmatic and understanding leader-like figure to, well… Whatever that was. I sincerely can’t understand her character because she isn’t cohesive at all. The only trait about her that remains is her loyalty to Mantle… But that’s it. One moment she’s against Ironwood, the next moment she’s siding with him… Then she sides against him and then once more sides with him. It’s honestly very boring and for someone who is supposed to be based on Robin Hood, she’s never done anything Robin Hood-esque. Even her aesthetic doesn’t match him. She feels like an incomplete character and the only side of her we see is a temperamental, indecisive leader. She couldn’t even tell it wasn’t Penny who attacked her at the election party even though almost every single part of her, weapons included, are bioluminescent. It’s frustrating, really. She should’ve known something was wrong from the get-go when Ironwood gave the order instead of immediately resorting to blind anger.

Qrow… There has never been an instance in the show when Qrow reacted with direct violence ever since Volume 3 while he was drunk. He saw Robyn attack Clover first and decided that he was going to attack Clover when he was the one being assaulted. Robyn and Qrow, as far as I know, never even had a single interaction together one-on-one, and even if he did, he’s always been one to stand against wrongdoings despite his shady demeanor. It honestly sucked seeing him being so out of character this entire chapter because he is a fan-favorite and for good reason. He has had a good amount of development. But he acted on violence instead of simply sitting down and having a talk with both Clover and Robyn. It simply didn’t make sense to me.

AceOps vs. Team RWBY

Just like before, I will focus entirely on an unbiased analysis of how this fight went and criticizing the things that particularly stood out for me whether bad or good. I’ll also be dividing this into subsections because it’s going to be a more direct and easier way for me to do so, and in case anyone’s reading this, that way they can skip ahead to their favorite fight. I watched this battle several times in an attempt to breakdown as best I could. So, let’s start with the main show and the one we saw the most of:

Ruby Rose vs. Harriet Bree

Arguably the most balanced fight out of the four short ones we saw. While I am apprehensive of aspects such as Ruby’s Semblance being able of breaking through iron barricades so easily despite never having alluded or shown her Semblance doing something like that before… I can give it a pass if anything because it made the environment more malleable. Despite that, however, I did like the fast paced match between the fastest members of their respective teams. It’s a very fast battle, but we can see it fully and what we see… Is a fight in which Ruby is on the defensive the entire time, and a battle she should’ve completely lost.

Ruby landed exactly zero hits on Harriet. Zero. Well… Not entirely. She does push Harriet down once but Ruby… Isn’t good at hand-to-hand combat and it’s been shown time over time that she’s not very physically strong so I’d hardly say that counts as a hit… But it does happen. Yet we’re supposed to believe that she was taken out by running into an ice wall created by Weiss at the last moment and that her Aura broke from that? Harriet landed exactly 5 very powerful attacks on Ruby and yet her Aura never even budged. I find that hard to believe. First Ruby got kicked on the face with enough strength to send her flying towards an elevator and break the doors off the wall.

Then he got double-kicked by Harriet on the gut and sent flying back. Then she got punched right on her back by Harriet’s weapon, Fast Knuckles, which are basically Yang’s gauntlets. An attack like that should’ve, at least, done significant damage to her Aura given it was strong enough to buckle her legs and crash her against the floor, which in and of itself should count as another impact given how hard she hit it. Then after that, Ruby got headbutted on the face by Harriet and then choked on the neck by Harriet with her legs and once again slammed with tremendous force on the floor. But her Aura is unscathed for some reason?

Then in comes Weiss, puts an ice wall in front of Harriet for her to crash into, and somehow that takes her down and breaks her Aura. Objectively, this battle was amazing, but Ruby never even once had the advantage. Ruby should’ve been knocked out by Harriet when her Aura broke, but for some reason… That didn’t happen. Good choreography, however.

Weiss Schnee vs. Marrow Armin

I frankly can say this one was expertly choreographed as well. We finally get to see a fight in which Weiss gets to use her Semblance at its full capacity, and this time she doesn’t abuse ice dust only. While it’s still in the vast majority of her attacks, she also relies on fire dust, which does add a degree of excitement and a fresh take to her battle style. Not to mention she now isn’t as reliant on the Arma Gigas only. It was a good balanced diet of everything Weiss can do! There still was very little of her in actual close-quarters combat, but that’s never been her specialty. She’s more of a mid-ranged fighter than anything else with lots of tricks and gimmicks. As for Marrow– well, Marrow… Could’ve made things so much easier if he had used his Semblance effectively.

When it comes to the battle itself though it was… Very lackluster on Marrow’s end, but then again it is heavily-implied by Harriet that he’s not fighting seriously at all and was purposefully holding back, so perhaps the fact he was defeated so easily really isn’t that hard to believe considering his heart wasn’t on the fight and even then he still put up a good fight. But like with Harriet… I find his Aura breaking so easily to be… Weird? He only got hit one time by Weiss’ homing fire dust… Flames? Bullets? Rays? I don’t know what to call it, but he got hit just once with Weiss’ dust and I don’t really count it as a hit but he got pushed to the wall once, but nowhere with near the same intensity as Ruby getting slammed and thrashed all over the environment by Harriet.

But ultimately while it is a nice fight… Again, I find Marrow going down to a single attack borderline offensive and humiliating for one of the members of the AceOps, but then again this was the only battle that felt like a member of Team RWBY deserved to win, and that’s saying something given Weiss’ battle track record isn’t exactly the cleanest and she’s lost the most fights out of any Team RWBY member when it comes to one-on-one encounters.

Blake Belladonna & Yang Xiao Long vs. Elm Ederne & Vine Zeki

Honestly, this is probably the best fight out of the ones regarding Team RWBY vs. the AceOps. It is nice to see this fight’s choreography because it was quite enjoyable. It was very dynamic and there was a lot of movement which made it flow just like a river of water, but there were also… Lots of inconsistencies regarding the character’s power levels and how they performed in this fight, especially regarding Elm and Vine who, from an objective standpoint if one sits down and analyzes the fight as I did, it’s also easy to tell that… Elm and Vine should’ve won.

While it’s disappointing that we didn’t get to see Vine’s weapon in this final bout, we did see Blake and Yang working together as well as Elm and Vine despite their personality conflicts. There really wasn’t a lot of team coordinating, but both sides performed admirably. Yang & Elm with their brawn and ferocity as well as Blake & Vine with their strategic minds and nimbleness. Now… While I can only praise the dynamics, the battle was, again, stacked against Blake and Yang. Like I did with the battle between Ruby and Harriet, I went through this one thoroughly and counted the amount of hits each character received.

Yang landed a total of three direct blows against Elm. A punch to the face that sent Elm staggering back a few steps, and then she didn’t land a single hit on Elm until she punched the ground with her Semblance, destroying it and sending her flying, but this doesn’t count as a hit because Elm wasn’t harmed when Yang did this. She was only sent flying in mid-air and then Yang and Blake both delivered a single attack on Elm before she fell to the floor, shattering her Aura. Now, we know Elm is basically the Yang of the group, except bigger, stockier and presumably stronger, so with how tough she’s been portrayed up until now, that she was defeated so swiftly surprises me… Especially when she herself beat Yang down to the point her Aura should’ve broken as well.

First she headbutted Yang, knocking her off-balance and later swinging her hammer with enough strength to send Yang, the strongest and bulkiest member of Team RWBY, flying a considerable distance with her massive hammer. This didn’t happen just once, twice or thrice though. Elm hit Yang on the chest with Timber, her hammer, four times, and every single time she was sent flying. We’ve seen the ridiculous feats of strength Nora Valkyrie’s performed with Magnhild. Well, Elm is at least twice stronger than Nora. The fact Yang’s Aura never even budged despite getting hammered on the chest with the heaviest and most powerful hammer we’ve seen in the show is beyond me. It doesn’t help that she got also hit directly by Vine with a rock the size of her entire body and pushed back. If anything, Elm and Yang’s fight is the most balanced one so Elm being defeated is not the issue. The issue is how despite receiving double the punishment, Yang’s Aura never broke while Elm’s broke with just three hits that didn’t pack the same punch and power all of Elm’s attacks which connected did.

Now regarding Blake’s encounter with Vine… Like Ruby with Harriet, Blake landed a total of zero hits against both Elm and Vine. Coincidentally, however, Blake also was also hit the most in this battle to the point her Aura actually did break. Why only her’s though is not something I can answer. I could describe how Blake got hit, but two of those times she got crushed by Vine’s Semblance and slammed against the wall twice, the second time enough to break the wall as well, and the one time she got hammered on the chest by Elm with enough strength to send her several feet on the air, which likely hurt a whole lot since every single one of Elm’s hits pack two massive punches. Now if any of you are curious about how many hits Vine took before his Aura broke…

It was one. He got sent flying to the ground by Yang and his Aura broke. I don’t count the explosives that detonated near him because he was using his Semblance to hold onto them, reducing the explosion’s power and size, but it still destabilized him and sent him careening to the air for Yang to grab. But Yang’s explosives aren’t exactly the strongest anyways so even if they did do some damage, it was still extremely minuscule damage for his Aura to break from a single hit like Marrow’s did. It was honestly disappointing, especially after we got to witness how strong they truly are by perfectly fighting against a Geist in the earliest episodes of the Volume.

My overall rating of the fight is that, objectively, it was amazingly choreographed… But the power level in RWBY is still awful and largely-irrelevant, since there is no instance in which Team RWBY will actually lose a fight even if throughout the encounter they are taking more hits than their opposition. This is an issue they still need to fix…

Team RWBY’s ‘Plan’

This one is… Upsetting. Even more so than the above because, at this point, Team RWBY is devoid of any and all potential consequences of their actions, and frankly I’m tired of it. Ever since Volume 6 their ‘plans’ if they can even be called that, have been compromising even more things for the sake of their so-called righteousness. In Volume 6 they endangered all of Argus and attacked an entire military base, and to this day they’ve suffered exactly zero consequences for their actions. If anything, they got rewarded for their criminal activity by getting a free pass to Atlas. Ironwood didn’t even look in their direction after they did that too. All for their selfish righteousness too, which in most occasions isn’t even right. They just do whatever they can even if it comes at the cost of other’s safety as long as it serves them

Now they even refuse to even see where Ironwood is coming from. They don’t offer him help, all they do is judge him and criticize him both to his back and in front of him and only side with him when it benefits them. They are, physically, mentally and emotionally incapable of sympathizing with others yet they want others to sympathize with them and their hypocrisy only continues to go rewarded. The narrative is very obviously in their favor and attempts to sway the viewers into thinking Ironwood is the villain for… Doing the only few remaining things he can do to try and keep not just Atlas and the Mantle survivors safe, but all of the world. They don’t even bother to see his point. At no moment during that confrontation do they go ‘we see your point and where you’re coming from, but that’s just playing into Salem’s hands and we can’t do that.’ No, all they do is yell at him and tell him he’s wrong, that he’s an awful person.

They don’t see the greater scheme. All they see are their own lofty ideals. They physically cannot save all the people of Mantle. They physically cannot keep the Lamp and the Staff, and they certainly, at this point in time, physically stop Salem if she is coming. They need ships to save the people of Mantle, they need to be on guard duty to protect the Staff and the Lamp. They need to keep Fria safe to keep the Winter Maiden powers from being robbed, but how are they physically going to do that? By ‘standing their ground?’ That is such a nonsensical, idyllic solution. They can’t do all of those things, but somehow, someway, they are ‘right’ because they want to do ‘the right thing.’ Except. There is no right thing thing to do. Not everything is as black and white as they want it to be. And every single time they do this and experience zero consequences while reaping many rewards for their hypocritical and catastrophic reckless decisions, the more faith I lose in the writers and the show.

Team RWBY defeating the AceOps

Like I said above, this was something I really didn’t enjoy… As I’ve mentioned above, it seems Team RWBY’s recklessness and inconsiderate behavior that endangers far more lives than they save will always go rewarded, and here is no different. I’ve gone through the battle several times and the only fight which deserved to be won by a member of Team RWBY was Weiss’ battle against Marrow, and this was largely because Marrow was holding back and implied he could push Weiss more against the ropes if he wanted to. Not to mention that it was due to Marrow’s hesitation Team RWBY even had a fighting chance. Had he used his Semblance at the very beginning he could’ve frozen all of Team RWBY where they were and have them apprehended immediately because they’d be unable to move.

Besides that one, the only other one who could’ve gone in Team RWBY’s favor is Yang’s fight against Elm, but even so it was… 75/25 in Elm’s favor. But the proof is in the animation, and it shows Elm landing far more attacks on Yang than Yang ever did on her, but since Team RWBY’s victory is required for the plot to progress, they were able to defeat the AceOps. Blake’s fight against Vine and Ruby’s fight against Harriet is not something I can even justify if I tried to do so because it was entirely one-sided on the AceOps’ favor. I try to give a lot of leverage to the show and its writing, but I cannot suspense my disbelief for such a one-sided fight, especially when the AceOps dished out punishment after punishment for Team RWBY and none of their Auras broke nor did they look even remotely tired while the AceOps all went down with two-to-three hits that I find hard to believe would take down the most elite Hunters in all of the Atlas continent.

We don’t know the AceOps’ members’ age, but what we do know is that they’ve been serving directly under James Ironwood for years now, and as the most elite, that makes them the strongest military platoon in all of Atlas with several years long specialized training years under their age while Team RWBY received not even a year of formal training at Beacon Academy and fought some Creatures of Grimm on the way to Mistral, had very limited and minor training under Ozma/Ozpin and then had small bouts against Salem and Raven’s forces in the Battle for Haven. Then after that they faced off against more Creatures of Grimm on the way to Atlas except for the one time they teamed-up to fight against Caroline Cordovin’s Colossus. Compared to the AceOps’ rigorous daily training and constantly having to carry out extremely difficult tasks under Ironwood’s leadership, Team RWBY’s training really pales in comparison.

There are many other ways that Team RWBY’s physical, mental or emotional strength without having them win fights they don’t deserve, because at this point it simply feels like no matter what happens, no matter how gray the situation the writing team behind RWBY attempts to portray, the narrative always tries to portray Team RWBY as being in the right even though for the past two Volumes they have been wrong in their methods without suffering any consequences. It’s exhausting and frankly, not good writing. I understand this is said a lot, but in this case, it can really be attributed to bad writing. Team RWBY doesn’t have to win every fight, they don’t have to always come out on top. They don’t always have to be right. And they most certainly don’t have to always be at the center of everything. That’s what side characters are for, side characters that they rarely use at all but keep around and keep increasing the amount of side characters for the plot. It’s overwhelming in all the wrong ways.

By the way, it was Team RWBY who attacked the AceOps, not the other way around. They could’ve stood down, they could’ve calmed down and realized they were in the wrong in this scenario, and Harriet herself said it first. They decide what happens next. Ruby draws out her weapon and escapes the room, forcing Harriet to chase her. They were the ones who forced the AceOps into acting, not the other way around. But the next moment Ruby is begging Harriet to team up with her to fight Salem even though a moment ago she was challenging Harriet to a fight because of her arrogance and unjustified massive ego. At this point, Ironwood might be paranoid and making bad decisions, but Team RWBY certainly poured gasoline all over his paranoia.

Qrow

I think most of the FNDM can agree that what they did with Qrow makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There are a lot of things wrong with his character this chapter. For starters, at no point since he was introduced did Qrow try to solve the problems he faced with outright violence. He always preferred the diplomatic and peaceful approach because that’s what Ozpin taught him to do and what he genuinely believed was the right step today, because violence leads to panic, and the panic leads to Creatures of Grimm… Except in this case where he… Decided to rely on violence.

But the greatest offender was the fact he teamed up with Tyrian of all people– that’s right. Qrow willingly teams up with Tyrian, the same person who has tried to slaughter both Ruby and himself and has successfully murdered dozens of innocent civilians for his own amusement to attack Clover… What? Then he has the audacity to blame Clover for what happened and feels awful when, to no one’s surprise, Tyrian betrays him and stabs Clover with Harbinger when it was him who knocked out Clover’s Aura in the first place.

It’s awful, and I can understand why so many Qrow fans are enraged by this, because even I was and I don’t relate to Qrow that much. Just as the meme goes, ‘everything happens so much…’

Clover’s Death

Didn’t need to happen. Literally that’s my entire point on this section. It didn’t need to happen, it shouldn’t have happened, and this was RWBY’s writing team attempt at shock for the Volume. Because Qrow is just not allowed to have happy endings or friends. Qrow has no rights mourning Clover’s death when he himself was the direct catalyst for it to occur in the first place. But there is something else that is horrifyingly atrocious in the writing department going on with Clover in the last moments of his death. Seconds before getting stabbed with Harbinger, Clover states that he would trust Ironwood with his life… Then, all that changes right after he is nearing the end of his life.

The moment he realizes his life is fading away, once again, Clover goes against anything and everything he stands for by wishing Qrow good luck when the other claims he’s going to make sure Ironwood takes the fall for what happened, when Ironwood is doing nothing wrong. Ironwood keeps getting painted as the villain even by his most loyal soldier, the one who claimed he would trust the general with his life, but that ultimately doesn’t matter based on the show’s writing. Clover previously also talked about how Ironwood was doing the right thing by making the toughest decisions, the decisions that realistically could and would save thousands of lives unlike Team RWBY’s lofty goals.

Goals which by the end of the episode continue being unanswered. How are they going to accomplish all the naïve promises they want to fulfill? From a non-biased opinion and how they tend to solve the writing’s plot holes in past volumes, what most likely’s going to happen is yet another Deus Ex Machina. In Volume 4 it was the ‘random’ troops that just happened to arrive to Kuroyuri on time to escort the group all the way to Mistral and seek medical first aid for Qrow. In Volume 5 it was Blake showing up with an entire militia of the reformed White Fang as well as Vernal, somehow, still living to get that cheap shot in for Raven to have an opening to knock Cinder off the vault’s cliff. In Volume 6 it was Ruby’s empty speeches somehow convincing Cordovin to give them a free ship so they could travel to Atlas even though Team RWBY and company were responsible for everything bad that happened to Argus because of their selfishness.

[blackcatmanor]

RWBY V7 Ch13 Photo Review- The finale

A solid ending that wraps up V7 decently while still leaving good set up for V8.

The good:

Fights

Fights as usual were good. I liked Winter riding a griffin into battle, and I liked the power disparity between JNPR 2.0 and Neo when the writers forgot what power disparity meant last chapter. JNPR 2.0 was clearly no match for Neo, but they only managed to succeed because of their teamwork. The fights this volume were very, very well done. I hope they retain the same fight animation staff going forward.  

More to this point, I thought that Winter or Penny would get the powers, and another Maiden showdown would happen in the Relic Room. I’m actually glad it didn’t. Having the fight stay in the hospital walls was nice. It was a way to force the fight to stay grounded (literally and figuratively) and focus more on cool animation moves rather than just magical beings flying around and smacking each other occasionally like V5 finale. They had a flying bit but it still managed to be grounded to the characters rather than just vague magical beings flying around. Penny’s obvious use of flight and Winter riding a griffin was true to who they are as combatants, and they don’t just rely on some magical plot device that makes them fly around.

James

James has been the strongest Character of this volume, and this chapter was the same. I really liked his quote “All great philosophical points that won’t Matter if Salem wins.” It shows his motivations well, outlines clearly his beliefs, and actually makes a decent argument for doing something that is morally wrong. It was also interesting to see the argument with Oscar go from 0 to 11 SUPER fast, as soon as Oscar accused him of acting out of fear and beginning to say “It’s what we do in fear that shows who we-“ as if to impugn James’ character because of his actions. It was shocking to see him shoot a kid, but his character is staunchly committed to carrying out his plan so it fits. And since Oscar didn’t die it’s still something that James can be redeemed from.

   The good, but

Winter Maiden powers.

Fria’s final stand was really interesting to see. BUT if she was going to be so integral to stopping Cinder, it would have been nice to fully understand how these powers affected her life, who she was before and after she got the powers, and more importantly show what the powers are fully capable of. I hate that we never get to see flashbacks anymore, and the story now exclusively exists in the current day. Even Amber’s flashback was just to the day she was attacked, but at least we got to see how she landed in a coma. It’s frustrating we don’t develop anyone anymore with much-needed background and flashbacks, but obviously we have no time and 20 other characters to cram in and under-develop so…. *shrug*

 Penny getting the winter maiden powers became kind of obvious as time went on, with as much development as she got this volume. However, I don’t totally hate it because it at least means they didn’t bring Penny back just to kill her again, and she’ll probably be an important character going forward. She may even be a big part of the FINAL battle against Salem, since I still believe that the final confrontation will involve having to get the Maidens altogether, PLUS the relics, plus Ruby the silver eyed warrior to beat Salem. I THOUGHT the writers would be kind of lazy and just find ways to eventually give the powers to team RWBY, but now I think this may not be the case

Cinder’s voice acting

Every bit of dialogue Cinder spoke was trash, but her screams of pain upon getting her arm cut off and growing it back, her screams of anguish upon losing the Winter maiden powers and being banished by Ruby and the team were really, really good! It shows that Jessica Nigri is capable of delivering good performances, but the directors and writers don’t give her good dialogue to say, nor do they pull from her a decent delivery in the lines she speaks.

 Watts

Am I glad he’s not dead because I think he’s a great villain? Yes. But am I also annoyed he’s back because it negates Chapter 11? Also yes. So as it turned out, Chapter 11 accomplished nothing, and was ultimately undone by Chapter 12 and 13. At least Tyrian escaped custody because of his own cleverness (And Qrow’s idiocy). But we don’t have any idea how watts mysteriously survived being dropped into lava pits without aura, seemingly unscathed. James’ sacrifice of his arm was for nothing, and it’s SUPER TROPEY the whole “no body, no death” thing. I hate the writers played into that stupid cliché

The bad:

OMG Cinder die already!

I really appreciated Jessica Nigri trying her ass off, but the writers just REFUSE to give her a character. When she started talking I thought the writers were finally going to heed everyone’s complaints and give her some sort of character, but with each sentence I literally groaned louder and louder. No backstory, no motivation, just more cobbled-together edgelord lines about being hungry for power. We already know Cinder wants power- since volume 3. THIS ISN’T CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! Either get a character or die.

 Ren

Ren sucked this volume. And it’s not fair to say he sucked, it’s more like the writing SUPER sucked. They kept having his emotions all over the place- sometimes he’s totally fine and then suddenly he’s SUPER angsty. They didn’t grow or develop it, they just kept randomly looping back to it. I get that V8 is a straight continuation of this volume, so they weren’t going to RESOLVE it, but we don’t even get a set up for these problems, we don’t understand what is happening whatsoever, and they didn’t seem to evolve. It’s just jarring, and him suddenly becoming dumb and thinking Neo/Nora was Nora so he can get hit in the face was just weird. He knew who it was, it was just probably some arbitrary reason for Ren to blame Nora for his inability to focus. *Groan*

Random thought: If the fight between JNPR 2.0 and Neo was just going to end with Neo taking the lamp- why did she even stick around to fight in the first place when she had the lamp before Oscar punched her?

Overall: 7.5/10. It was solid. The character’s actions actually made sense this episode, and no one did anything super stupid just for plot’s sake. The set up for volume 8 was good while still wrapping up the story of volume 7 (I had a weird feeling that the Winter powers would be a cliffhanger but settling on Penny was nice, and RWBY on the run was a nice ending to how things unfolded).

The chapter was slightly hindered by good things having huge drawbacks, like Fria ending up an important climax dues ex Machina despite lack of development, and Watts just coming back again because...of course.

Unpopular opinions for V8:  

JNR should leave

JNR should head to Vacuo for reinforcements in V8 and leave the cast. I think they’ve peaked in usefulness, and now Oscar seems split off and trying to do his own thing they especially won’t matter. It will give the writers time to develop RWBY and Penny and Oscar. They were severely minimized this volume and it didn’t hinder the story at all, so we can actually have them doing their own thing and we can occasionally check on them without missing much. With Ren’s “issues” I doubt they’ll just leave for volume 8 but I wish they would 

Qrow needs to go, too- it looks like he will be a martyr and be locked up in V8, which I would love. If not HE needs to head out to Vacuo to try and get reinforcements. I’m done caring about his character. He’s a one-dimensional pit of sadness that is becoming boring to watch. We actually saw a glimmer of hope that he would become something other than a writer punching bag, but it didn’t happen and the writers insist on just finding new, contrived, and sadistic ways to continually torture him. Oh look- a friend to cancel out your bad luck? BAM, DEAD! It’s getting old, so I just hope to not really see him next volume.

It turns out Salem has been lagging behind because she was picking out her prom dress. 

[thesuitelifeofjughead]

Riverdale Rewatch Review - Season One

Hey guys! So, as everyone knows, there’s like, this big thing happening in the world right now causing everyone to have to stay inside and a lot of people have way more free time on their hands than they know what to do with. I am one of those people. After I finish my schoolwork I find that barely even half a day has passed. What do I fill that time with? Animal Crossing. But also, watching Netflix. 

I’ve wanted to rewatch Riverdale for the longest time, and I figure that now is the best time to do it. 

So, the way this will work, I’ll give my overall thoughts and review of the season, my favorite episodes, and then I’m going to give you a play-by-play of my thoughts while rewatching each episode under the break. So, without further ado:

Overall Review

Looking at the bigger picture of everything I know Riverdale has come to be, I think the statement stands true that Season One is one of their strongest season, if not their actual strongest (Season Four has been climbing up there for me in fav seasons). 

Watching it all together, the drama seemed evenly paced, and everyone seemed to get the same amount of screen time, including characters we barely see anymore like Kevin and Reggie. There are some interesting shots, and I found myself jammin to some of the songs they had the characters sing as well as the background music. 

It was clear that they had a plan, and they knew where they were going. Hints of relationships happened WAY before they became official, and it seemed like everyone was on the same page, which is difficult to say for later seasons (which I will also be making reviews on shortly). 

For only having 13 episodes, Riverdale did an excellent job in it’s first season hooking everyone in to the drama and the mystery, including me. I believe it was after the second or third episode when this blog was created, and I’ve been here ever since. This season is responsible for why a lot of fans stuck around, and for why a lot of fans left. 

Overall, I would say it had amazing storytelling, character development, cinematic techniques, and everything else you could think of. My final rating would be a 10/10. Even if you don’t like later seasons, you can’t deny this one was really good, and had a lot of classic Riverdale moments -insert gif of Jughead saying “I’m a weirdo” here bc I tried to find it but couldn’t-. 

My personal favorite episodes: Episode 6, Episode 10, Episode 13

Rewatch Thoughts

Episode 1: 

It’s so clear right from the start that Veronica likes Archie oh my god

I love Betty Cooper dance parties and I want more of them

Wow I hate Alice from the very beginning

Fred Andrews was the best parent on Riverdale from the very beginning. Period.

Maybe the show is more consistent than I thought. Archie was dumb since season one episode one for lying to his dad. 

Veronica was so supportive of Betty and Archie we stan a supportive friend

Oh my god did we all collectively forget that Archie dated a freaking TEACHER?!

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS MY HEART I love and miss them 

Jughead was such a broody lil boy wasn’t he oh my gosh Betty really did change him for the better didn’t she

“Whatever happened with Betty, just talk to her. It’ll go a long way” We stan a king who wants open communication from the beginning yas Jughead

Episode Rating: 8/10

Episode 2: 

God, the teacher is so manipulative

Oh god i’m gonna have to relive the dark Betty arc aren’t I

This rewatch is just gonna further my love for Jughead. He was the smartest one since day one

WAIT i completely forgot they changed Reggie’s actor oh my goodness

Episode Rating: 5/10

Episode 3: 

there was a mention of Greendale in the VERY FIRST SEASON 

The only good thing Penelope Blossom ever did was punch Alice Cooper and that’s that on that

I love the early journalism relationship between Betty and Jughead

Episode Rating: 7/10

Episode 4:

Ya’ll I miss jughead narrating at the beginning and end of every episode

THE TWILIGHT DRIVE IN. I MADE SO MANY FANFICTIONS SET THERE AWH

Jug was so upset over the drive in my HEART. Jughead had a JOB. Am I the only one who forgot that? 

He called her Betts and she called him Juggy their already in a relationship let’s face it. 

“It’s like my home” AWH JUG IT WAS HIS HOME MY HEART

Ya’ll remember how INSANE the reveal of Jughead’s dad was?

Episode Rating: 10/10

Episode 5:

Why would he have to run away from mommy and daddy? BECAUSE DADDY DID IT JUG YOURE SO SMART

Everyone was so SHADY in season one 

THE FREAKING SNAKE IN THE BOX

This was the episode with Jughead’s stupid cute smile in his stupid cute hat and stupid cute tux my heart

Remember when Fred and Hermione had that thing? Yeah me neither I hate it

Episode Rating: 8/10

Episode 6:

Wow makes sense that Polly joined a cult, she’s so fragile from everything that’s happened to her 

I love the early music in this show

Betty straight up asks Hal if he killed Jason Blossom. OMG Alice goes “You think he has the stomach or that?” UHM hate to break it to ya but your dad is,,, oof

ITS THE HEY JULIET EPISODE AWH

WAIT THAT MEANS

The little “also” and his voice cracks I’m

FIRST BUGHEAD KISS FIRST BUGHEAD KISS

“In the middle of our moment” ICONIC

Episode Rating: 10/10

Episode 7:

the episode in which we find out Jughead is living in the school

“Don’t tell Betty” they’re already so in love I swear

Jughead walking Betty home is literally the softest thing

The farm was a part of the plot from SEASON ONE oh my god

Episode Rating: 7/10

Episode 8:

I’m p sure this is just a filler episode

Oh wait it’s the reveal to Archie and Fred that FP is a serpent

WAIT ITS THE BABY SHOWER SCENE

“It’s totally on my bucket list” we don’t deserve Jughead

the LOOKS Archie got when he walked into that baby shower

Can you believe how normal it became to be a part of the serpents? And in the beginning it was such a big deal? Like Arch, hate to break it to you, you become an honorary serpent one day

Episode Rating: 7/10

Episode 9:

Riverdale season one really be hitting different. It’s so,, innocent lol, and that’s sayin something 

The Blossoms are a cult all their own I’m just sayin

“That was a joke, you hobo” ICONIC

Otherwise known as the episode where Alice throws a rock at a window

The parents really do be acting like teenagers tho

ALSO known as the episode where Veronica rips of her pearls

YOOO remember when Cheryl kissed Archie? That was a moment

Episode Rating: 9/10

Episode 10:

oh my god this is the birthday episode isn’t it

OH NO

lmao Ronnie was Tik Tok dancing before it was cool huh

The movie part of the party was so pure awh

oh god the creepy birthday song

i hate it

I HATE ITTTT

Cheryl arrives to mess shit UP

We love that Bughead took this as a learning experience and Jughead has never had a birthday party since

“In CaSe YoU HaVeN’t NoTiCEd, I’m WeiRd. I’m A weiRDo. I DoN’t FiT iN aNd I DoN’t WaNnA FiT in. HAvE YoU eVeR SeeN mE WiThOuT ThiS HaT oN? THAT’S WEIRD.”

Jughead was so opposed to letting her in my heart

Just let her love you Jug

Dilton’s actor also changed and we just,, let it slide? oof my guys

THE PUNCH. he DEFENDS his WOMAN

the first sign of FP bein a good dad, telling Jughead not to run away from Betty. We stan a father who’s basically responsible for Bughead.

The reveal that Alice lived on the south side was also in this episode. 

THE FIRST TIME JUG TOOK OFF HIS BEANIE

their first heart to heart ya’ll I love them

This is the softest scene point blank period

When I said I hated it before? Yeah I lied I love this episode

The episode where Archie and Ronnie also officially got togther kinda?? Wow so much happened this episode

Episode Rating: 10/10

Episode 11:

Hail our fair RIVERDALLEEEE

YOOO you remember when FP literally was an accomplice to MURDER and then they let him become sheriff? Man, what a time

Ya’ll why did they hurt Jughead so much in the first season my heart

Yo THIS is why they have such good communication in later seasons

he’s being FRAMED

Episode Rating: 7/10

Episode 12:

oh my goodness the tollbooth scene 

OW

The second time his beanie is off

he looks so SAD ouch

He just stood there and TOOK Cheryl’s punches someone save my poor boy

THE REVEAL THAT THE BLOSSOMS AND COOPERS ARE RELATED AH

They watched the videooooo

Episode Rating: 9/10

Episode 13:

The camera work around this table is really interesting. It’s literally circling them at the lunch table. SPEAKING OF LUNCH TABLES, why haven’t we seen them eating lunch at school for like two seasons lol 

“I’m with Jughead now”

God Penelope Blossom is so melodramatic

Can i just say thank GOD Fred never sold Andrew’s Construction

Oh my god the locker scene. The way he cups her cheek and takes her away

Jughead going to South Side High without telling anyone I’m

Cheryl on the ice

Remember when KJ literally broke his arm bc of the dedication to this scene

BURN THE HOUSE TO THE GROUND

the I love you scene my hEART

His beanie is off and the way he says I love you I”M CRYING

Oh god this song

I made so many fanfictions about this freaking scene with the jacket I’m

We all thought it was so BAD to be a serpent and yet they all literally become one over the next two seasons I’m. the fandom had NO IDEA

“Juggy”

The looks they give each other I’m laughing

Cheryl starring into the FLAMES

OH MY GOD WAIT THIS CLIFFHANGER IS SO MUCH MORE SAD NOW NOOOOO. This didn’t age well I’m.

HE SHOOK HIS HEAD HE WAS PROTECTING ARCHIE

But also,, Black Hood Intro? Oof.

Episode Rating: 10/10

-

If you got this far, thank you for reading my rambles! Season Two rewatch is up next!

[asgardian--angels]

Mixed feelings about the doctor who finale.... it was done well for what it was, but not the ideal direction to take it in tbh... 

Firstly, I was expecting something to do with Rassilon or other high-ranking Time Lords using the memories in the Matrix (I was tickled when the Matrix was actually featured) to somehow duplicate the Doctor (and the Master and maybe others) for nefarious purposes. This would have given the Master reason to be angry to the point of destruction. Even this level of genocide on the Time Lords is a bit much for him though, like, he doesn’t love them but no one does, I didn’t think they’d actually just let that happen with no apparent explanation how, and we still don’t have a solid reason why the Master felt the need to go so far. The slight of ‘everything I am is because of you’ is not nearly as strong a justification for his razing as the Time Lords having done something directly to him, using him like they did before - I get that his main thing is people taking control of his own life away from him, but the explanation they offer isn’t the strongest possible option. 

Then, you have the writers further complicating the Doctor’s own life by making her even more ~special~ and important. They just keep adding layers of mystique and intrigue until the Doctor is the most important being in the multiverse. This sort of thing has happened in a lot of good shows and it’s really a writing weakness. It just doesn’t seem enough for the Doctor to be special and important because she does good deeds and helps people and rebelled against her homeworld - no, she has to be this and that and every answer to every question the universe has ever asked. This makes the Doctor, as a role model, more and more unattainable because it detaches her importance from her personality, and makes it more a circumstance of her destiny/status/birthright. I thought that the Master was going to tell her that the Time Lords did something awful to the Timeless Child, that would make her just as infuriated as the Master. But lols, it’s her instead.

They really played up so much hype for some quality Doctor and Master dynamic development, when really it is a downgrade from what 12 and Missy had. I love Sacha’s acting, but this Master was really off the rails to the point of actually exterminating his people (did the Time War not matter or..?) and using their dead bodies to make unkillable Cybermen. Usually during these plans, something goes awry and he realizes he’s in over his head and that his allies will turn against him, and he bails. Once again, their explanation for what made him go this insane is just... not enough I think for me to justify this behavior from him. There was literally no trace of redemption arc or any comradery. I was really really hoping for the Doctor and the Master to team up against the Time Lords for their grievances, as that’s something we’d like to see and would make character and narrative sense. The problems with their people are shared and can only be solved if they work together. Instead we get another probably-not-dead Master and a Doctor who didn’t really even show any remorse for almost having to kill the Master (it’s characteristic of the Doctor to do everything they can to talk him down).

Lastly, there were a whole lot of questions not answered, the plot wasn’t really wrapped up, and bits still didn’t make total sense. AND WHERE IS JACK FFS. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I still don’t see what explanation they gave for how the Doctor was able to have so many ‘lives’ (which I am taking as full rengeration cycles), unless they mean to say that she has a potentially unlimited ability to regenerate since she is the first Time Lord, or rather, isn’t one at all. This of course comes directly into conflict with Matt Smith’s last episode in which he is granted more regenerations. Did Rassilon and the other High Council members know of the Doctor’s true identity? Who were the Time Lords she and Ruth met - members of the Division, but those who traveled through time? The bits with the Irishman still do not totally come together for me, why were were shown all of that seems extraneous. Is the future where the Cyberwars kill humanity set in stone then and humans are extinct? Did the Cyberium protect the Master somehow and when will it/they show up again? THEY STILL HAVE NOT BOTHERED TO GIVE US ANY INFORMATION AS TO WHICH REGENERATION OF THE MASTER WE’RE DEALING WITH. And where did the Doctor come from then? 

Just a few questions... and we have nine months to wait. Until more Daleks.

[fandom-star]

I was tagged by @esperata and I'm probably going to repeat a few of her ships, but oh well!

Choose 10 ships without looking at the questions:

1. Spones

2. Ineffable Husbands

3. ThorBruce

4. Jedtavius

5. Vir/Lennier

6. Merthur

7. Kitty

8. PeterNed

9. SnowBaz

10. Morgana/Gwen

-----------------------

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6? I don't actually. I've literally only started watching Merlin, series 3 has just started being shown on TV, so very early on. I think it was probab the S1 episode where Camelot was suffering from the drought. 2. Have you ever read a FanFiction about 2? So many! I'm pretty sure they're my second or third most common relationship tag in my bookmarks! 3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr? I have Octavius as my profile picture on my incredibly inactive Discord if that counts! 4. If 7 were to suddenly break-up today, what would your reaction be? I mean... they're currently in different countries, both heartbroken over each other for different reasons, sooo.... 5. Why is 1 so important? Spones is important to me for a few different reasons. First of all, they were my first. I think your first ship is always important to you, because, even if you were in fandom before that, like me, it lets you discover a new part of fandom. Some of it good, some of it toxic, but both ways you learn a lot. Secondly, Spock is an incredibly special character for me, I relate to him in certain ways, so to see people portray him in a coin lex but overall happy relationship just makes me happy and hopeful for myself. 6. Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship? I'd say SnowBaz is actually quite a serious ship. 7. Out of all of the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry? I don't know, I'm struggling to differentiate between chemistry and bond! I think I'm going to go for Jedtavius for chemistry. Mainly because it seems that anyone who has seen the movies tend to go "yeah, the cowboy and the Roman were gay together" and I think that says a lot about that! 8. Out of all of your ships listed, which ship has the strongest bond? I'm gonna take Esperata's answer and say Ineffable Husbands, pretty much for the same reason as well. You don't know someone for six thousand years and not have a strong bond!  9. How many times have you read/watched 8’s fandom? I've watched Homecoming so many times! It's probably my second favourite Marvel movie (after Ragnarok). 10. Which ship has lasted the longest? Spones. It was my first ship and, while I don't really write for them that much now, I still absolutely ADORE them! 11. How many times, if ever, has 2 broken up? Oh, god, they've probably "broken up" a couple of times. Most notably, 1862. 12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8? I have no idea, all of them are idiots! I'd probably say Ineffable Husbands though. I'm not sure why.  13. Did 5 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason? Yes, they did feel like they had to keep themselves secret. Both were incredibly worried about the reception of them being different races, and Vir was wary about the Centauri reacting to him being in a relationship for love over any kind of gain. 14. Is 4 still together? Jedtavius are absolutely still together! 15. Is 3 canon? No, ThorBruce is not canon.  16. If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win? I think Merthur would win. The combination of Merlin's magic and Arthur's knightly skills would definitely put them at a massive advantage. 17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 10’s ship? I'd say Morgana herself sabotaged the relationship when she turned against Camelot. 18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond? Spones. I am incredibly protective of them. 19. Do you spend hours a day going through 1’s tumblr page? I don't really look through search pages. I haven't looked through Spones' page in ages. 20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she´d break them all forever, which ship would you choose?

I'd choose Morgana/Gwen. I don't really ship them as much as the others, so it wouldn't be much of a loss for me.

I'm gonna tag @tallysgreatestfan @convenient-plot-device @in3ffable-husbands @clumsyghosts and @mostly-natm

[precuredaily]

Precure Bonus Day: “Futari wa" Era Overview

Across the last year and 4 months, I rewatched all of the Futari wa Precure branded shows that ran from 2004-2007. These three shows form the foundation of the Pretty Cure franchise that currently spans 16 television series, 27 movies, and multiple stage shows. The end of the FW era marks the beginning of a shift away from the franchise’s roots, so before I dive into Yes! Precure 5 and beyond, I want to take the time to reflect and analyze the past three seasons as a whole. What did they have in common? What aspects did they change? Where did each show succeed and fail, and what common threads are there between these successes and failures?

Hopefully it goes without saying that there will be spoilers, but just in case, I will be discussing each of these series in their entireity, including plot twists and details about their finales.

Futari wa Precure (2004)

Obviously, this is the show that kicked it all off. Toei made this two years after their highly popular Ojamajo Doremi series ended, with the gap year 2003 being filled with a non-magical girl shoujo anime called Ashita no Nadja. I don’t think they meant to start a franchise, and honestly I don’t think they even meant to make it a year-long show. The plot wraps up pretty nicely in episode 26: Nagisa and Honoka have defeated all the henchmen and the main villain and they can return to their normal lives, having become great friends along the way. However, it was popular and the merchandise sold well, so they continued it. At least that’s my theory, maybe it really was meant to be an annual show, but the back half feels extremely stagnant and not particularly connected to the first half. They changed the objective, changed the villains, and the animation quality went down the toilet.

Nonetheless, it established important concepts for this era: most obviously, the two-girl team. It’s in the title: “We Two are Pretty Cure” (there’s a reason you don’t see it translated much, lol) The two girls also come from different walks of life, and would probably not have much reason to interact if it weren’t for being Precure. This first season in particular establishes something of a yin-yang theme with the two. Short hair and long hair, sporty and scientific, middle class and upper class, black and white. While less prominent, this idea of girls from diverse backgrounds coming together will remain a theme well beyond the FW era, to the point where the current (as of this writing) team consists of two space aliens. A key element of the two-girl teams is that they have to transform together. They cannot operate as individuals; they are a pair and they are strongest when they work together. From a writing standpoint, this is an excellent idea that allows for a lot of scenarios that can test and strengthen their partnership.

Another big aspect of FWPC is the supporting cast that flesh out the world. Nagisa and Honoka have friends other than each other, who sometimes have their own story arcs despite not being the main characters. Shiho stands out from this series, as we saw her develop and explore an interest in theater, but possibly the unexpected breakout character was Odajima Yuka. I’m getting ahead of myself, because she didn’t really click with me until her single appearance in Max Heart, but that wouldn’t have been meaningful without her sporadic presence in this show. There are also a half dozen other characters who get a focus episode and then recur in the background throughout the show, and I love the consistency. The girls have love interests and we get to see them wrestle with their feelings. It all makes the girls feel more ordinary, despite their secret lives as superheroes. They have normal lives with normal problems. The girls aren’t the center of the universe, they just happen to be the focus of the show, and there are lots of other people that also inhabit it, going about their lives, whose paths sometimes cross with the main characters’.

FWPC established a bit of a trend for the villain faction: they were fronted by a big, giant monster of literal darkness and each of the subordinate generals has a portion of the macguffin. Each general had a gimmick in how they plotted and attacked, be it brute force, overwrought scheming, subterfuge, or infiltration. The inevitable result of this was that some villains felt more interesting than each other, of course. Pisard and Gekidrago were nothing but archetypes. Poisony had a personality, because she played off of her brother Kiriya, and he had his own arc where he learned to appreciate the good side of humanity. Ilkubo combines aspects of several of them, being extremely powerful and basically the Dark King’s right hand, but for all his gesturing he doesn’t amount to much. The Three Seeds of Darkness from the second half of the show have less going for them. They have personality quirks but they’re not particularly memorable as characters. A lot of their time was spent sitting around saying “We need to find the macguffin.” Their most interesting moment was when they realized that they would be consumed by the Dark King, and tried to betray him (unsuccessfully), otherwise they were just kind of there to pad out the series.

Aside from the down-to-earth nature of the characters and the world, the other biggest element that FW gives us, which the series became famous for, is the fighting. The show’s director, Nishio Daisuke, had recently come off of work on the Dragon Ball series, and he went into Precure with the mindset that “girls like action too.” The combat is physical, the girls kick and punch the monsters rather than fighting with magic wands or special attacks, except for the finisher. This set Precure apart from the crowd and I honestly think it was a big contributor to its early success. It offered little girls something they didn’t often get without branching out into the other Sunday morning offerings, which were targeted at boys. Nishio was good at directing action and he made the fights entertaining to watch.

The major failures of FWPC are some truncated character arcs. Kiriya deserved better than to be forgotten halfway through the series, only to come back as something of a guiding spirit at the end and then die an unsatisfying death. Yumiko (the lacrosse captain) was completely forgettable despite the show trying to make her a notable recurring character. Some of the early guest characters of the week had really lame reasons to exist, like Mayu (the girl who looked like Nagisa). The Seeds of Darkness were utterly lame villains so the second half of the show feels less compelling than the first half. Also, the ending is just kind of strange. Mipple, Mepple, and Porun go to sleep seemingly forever, and Nagisa and Honoka’s graduation feels bittersweet when they think about that and see a boy that looks like Kiriya. I’m still not sure if the ending was so sad because they knew the sequel was coming or despite it, so if it’s the former, it’s a strange choice that only kinda works if they knew that the audience knew that Max Heart would be starting the next week and all the sad stuff would be undone. If it’s the latter, then it’s a bold choice to have a downer ending that was undercut by the show’s own popularity. Either way, I don’t think it was effective given the direction Max Heart took. Without Max Heart I’d consider it strong, but I can’t ignore the effect of the sequel. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Futari wa Precure Max Heart (2005)

Max Heart is an interesting animal. As the sequel to a fairly closed-ended series, it has to invent a reason to exist and uh.... it doesn’t do that very well. The Dark King apparently attacked the Queen of Light before his defeat, and now a few months later she dies and splits into her life, heart, and 12 wills, each of which are marketable in their own way. It essentially turns into another Macguffin quest, but the girls aren’t even actively seeking out the Heartiels, they just come to them. And unlike FWPC’s quest which wrapped up in the first half of that show, they stretch this one out for the entire season, so it gets tiring. That’s my big criticism of MH, but it’s not all bad.

Nagisa and Honoka were enjoyable characters in the first season and I am beyond delighted to get to spend another year with them. This season sees them deepening their friendship as they deal with their new leadership positions in their clubs, offering advice to underclassmen who are struggling with issues they dealt with in the first season, and further exploring Nagisa’s romantic feelings. She finally confesses to Fuji-P at the end of the show, even if he doesn’t actually hear her and consequently nothing comes from it. Season 1 Nagisa would never have gotten that far. Honoka’s development is rather subdued. She learns how to be a good club leader, and in episode 17 she helps push the club out of safe territory for the sake of their passion, but there’s really not much else to be said. She acts as Nagisa’s life coach sometimes when she has anxiety about her future, and helps her confess to Fuji-P, but she really does take a backseat this season next to Hikari. With that said, let’s talk about Hikari!

Hikari is, of course, a new character for this show, and thus her character arc is the most prominent of the trio. She also has more room to grow, since she starts out as basically an empty shell. Even if she is the Queen’s Life, she fully develops into her own person with her own life, friends, interests, and personality. Her overall kindness is probably a side effect of the Queen but she’s still not the Queen. She goes to school, makes friends, gets a job, builds a family, and generally discovers the joy of life. She’s a really enjoyable character to follow, because her journey isn’t just friendship like Nagisa and Honoka’s was, but becoming human. The tragic irony of her character is that the more of an individual person she becomes, the closer the Queen’s resurrection is, which means losing Hikari, and by rights this should form the backbone of the show’s conflict, but they don’t really seem to get this until the last quarter. They raise the question periodically but they don’t give it the discussion it deserves, and that’s a major weakness of the series. They ignore the problem until they can’t anymore. If they had given the audience the sense that this was intentional, that they were actively ignoring the matter, then it could have been interesting. Unfortunately, we never get the sense that Nagisa and Honoka were deliberately ignoring the inevitable question, and it seemed more like they just didn’t care.

As Shiny Luminous, Hikari somewhat changes the team dynamic, but she’s also not just a third fighter like Black and White. She is less combative, except when she has to be, and instead her abilities are more support-oriented. She stays back and activates barriers, slows down the enemy’s movements, and powers up Black and White. Her lack of combat skills means that sometimes Black and White have to protect or save her during fights, which interrupts the flow of battle and can make the fights a bit more drawn out than in the first season. I appreciate what they were trying to do by adding Luminous, and I am not in any way calling her a bad addition to the team, but her particular skills aren’t a very good fit for the style of fights that this show was built on. A lot of times she hides away from fights instead of transforming, making her more vulnerable. It seems like the staff wrote themselves into a corner with that aspect of her, and weren’t sure how to properly utilize her abilities.

The villains in Max Heart are an odd bunch. They’re slightly more memorable than the Seeds of Darkness, but no more competent. Their fights are meaningless, because Baldez is the only one who understands what’s going on with Hikari and Hikaru and the Dark King’s resurrection, and he doesn’t explain anything to the other three, so sometimes they just straight up defy his orders because he hasn’t told them what their objective is. I’m fine with villain infighting but I want there to be a good reason, a clash of ideals or something, not just straight up lack of communication. They have personalities, but that doesn’t play into their fighting styles in any meaningful way. The most interesting thing about them is how they form a family around Hikaru, and try to nurture and protect him while he grows. It brings out the soft side in some of them at home, and causes them to lash out in anger if he comes in contact with the girls somehow. Watching how Hikaru grows and parallels Hikari’s growth was a nice subplot. I’ve never been certain if the audience was supposed to recognize that he was the Dark King’s life before they reveal it in the series, but I really hope they were. Hikaru goes from a carefree kid content with living in the manor to wanting to get out of the house and see more of the world, which leads him into contact with Hikari on a few occasions, spiking each of their innate powers. Since he’s younger, though, he never reaches Hikari’s level of emotional maturity, which actually makes him a little more tragic because he’s just a little kid who unknowingly hosts this great evil. He just wants to do his own thing. Fortunately, in the end he is able to have a life with Hikari and Akane, even after the Dark King is destroyed. Which brings me to.....

Baldez. The final arc where Baldez revives the Dark King and then reveals that he himself now has the power of the Dark King is a neat subversion on expectations. He was always the most mysterious villain of the bunch, he was absent for half of the series and when he was around he played his cards close to his chest. He encouraged Hikaru’s growth by stoking Hikari’s development, and got in the way of Uraganos, Circulas, and Viblis when they tried to defeat her outright. He was a large threat to the girls whenever he did appear, and in a lot of aspects he seems like a precursor to Gohyaan. Ultimately though I can’t say he left a big impression. Most of the time he sat around the mansion saying “They’re developing nicely, the Dark King’s revival is soon....” and rarely set foot on the battlefield. He had no personality to speak of, and didn’t answer to anybody, so he was just flat and boring.

The next thing I want to discuss about Max Heart are some continuing storylines. I discussed the evolution of Nagisa and Honoka’s characters, but their friends get some further development as well. Shiho comes to mind, of course. In the first season she flexed her creative muscles by directing the action version of Romeo and Juliet for the cultural festival. In the sequel she goes a step further, deciding that she wants to be a Hollywood movie director, and chooses to incorporate special effects into their school play. It’s not a lot, but since not a lot of the side characters even get a character arc, it sticks out. However, there’s one character from the first series who didn’t get much to work with who suddenly is a lot more interesting when she recurs in this season, and that is Odajima Yuka, which is especially surprising since she only appeared in one episode, but due to it, all her past appearances suddenly make more sense. This is the episode where she, as a high schooler, joins the middle school science and lacrosse teams on their annual retreat, and ends up challenging Nagisa in a game. She gets out there, works her hardest at a sport she’s never played, and goes toe to toe with the team’s star player. They never outright say this, but what Yuka needed was to be challenged, to compete against somebody at her level. In all of her encounters, Nagisa is the only person who can outrun her. Nagisa may be clumsy at times, but she excels at athletics and gives Yuka the challenge she craves. In fact I think Yuka even envied Nagisa’s laid-back lifestyle. It is remarkable to me that the writers brought her back for Max Heart at all, and saw fit to conclude her story. She was never an important character, but she was memorable, largely because of this season. Later seasons with more main characters tend to sideline their supporting cast, so it’s nice that a minor character gets this kind of focus.

Lastly, there was some attempt to develop Akane early on. There was a three episode arc where a man from her old job stopped by and the girls all thought he was trying to pull her back into an office job. In the end, she declined his offer but he was still interested in dating her. She seemed to take to the idea, and there had been some hints that she wanted to get married and have kids someday, but after this arc, her potential suitor was never seen again and nothing more ever came out of it, beyond her effectively adopting Hikari and Hikaru as her children. It would be interesting to see adult romance play out, even in the background. The first season had Ms. Yoshimi getting married but we never saw any of her life outside the classroom, so giving Akane a little bit more spotlight would have been nice. Sadly, this was not the direction the show took.

Max Heart also got the theatrical treatment, and the movies were honestly very good. Famously, it’s the only series to get two movies, because the first film was originally intended to be just a FWPC film. They share a premise of whisking the girls off to a different land to resolve a problem that the locals are having, and they have their friendship tested along the way before coming out as better and stronger friends than before, acquiring exclusive new forms to defeat the villains. These would become signature elements of all Precure movies.

As I said earlier, the ending to FWPC was very finite, and that was strange juxtaposed to the fact that there was an imminent second season. There’s some strange irony, then, that the finale to Max Heart, the final series that will ever follow this cast of characters, feels a lot more open. It ties off loose ends, of course, and Nagisa and Honoka graduate from middle school, but while it’s implied that Mepple and Mipple go to sleep again, and Hikari is gone after reviving the Queen, less than two minutes pass for the viewer before they find out she and Hikaru are living with Akane, and that all their fairies are awake and as energetic as ever. Even though there ultimately weren’t any shows with these characters, there is room for more. Could they have known what the franchise would become? Could they have had any idea that these characters would still be popular 15 years later?

Futari wa Precure Splash Star (2006)

Splash Star is of course the first full reboot. I don’t know why, maybe they didn’t think they could continue the story of Nagisa and Honoka into high school. Could’ve been neat, but I’ll save the “what ifs” for another time. It rebooted the series, and that set a precedent for shows to follow. It keeps the two girl dynamic of course, and the visual similarities are hard to ignore, but those are fairly superficial, and it manages to find its own identity while improving on the ideas of the prior shows. The theme of the show changes from yin and yang to nature, and that affects everything: the aesthetics of the heroines and villains, the objectives they fight for, and most especially the combat style.

Once again, one girl is athletic while the other has a more academic hobby. Saki has two major friends on the softball team where Nagisa had two major friends on the lacrosse team, but Mai’s companion in the art club is less notable than Yuriko was to Honoka. This time they attend a coed school, and their circle of friends includes a couple of boys, as well as another girl who isn’t a member of either of their teams. Splash Star does the best job at managing its recurring and ensemble cast out of these three seasons. Characters are introduced, have their focus episode, and continue to make notable appearances, often hanging out with the main characters. Kenta even helped Miyasako find a hobby outside of being a class representative. They keep the number of recurring characters lower than FW/MH, use them in better roles, and the result is that they’re better developed and remembered. The romance plots are less fleshed out than in FW, but that’s about the only drawback. Also, Saki and Mai’s relationship with each other is much more immediate. Nagisa and Honoka took a few episodes to warm up to each other and only really cemented their friendship after a big fight, but Saki and Mai are fast friends by the second episode, and all attempts by the villains to introduce discord just backfire because they have absolute trust in each other. 

The villains are also extremely fun and memorable. Whether you like them or not, they leave a distinct impression, much like the generals in the first half of FW. They have unique designs, quirky personalities, and at the end of the series we get to see them interact with each other. Karehaan was fairly straight-laced and I don’t like him much. Moerumba has a spicy personality, his problem is his short-sightedness. Dorodoron gets a laugh from me for being so timid. He might have been boring on his own, but he got to spitball with the Kiryuus, which helped him a lot. Miss Shitataare is powerful and cocky but completely inept. Kintolesky was easily my favorite of the lot, being honorable and straightforward and impeccably muscular. Aside from Karehaan’s overall blandness their biggest problem is not having enough cross talk with each other, with that being saved for their revival arc. Later shows do this a lot more often and better, thankfully.

Speaking of villains, however, Gohyaan stands out. He kind of serves multiple roles as both the comic relief of the villains, like the Zakenna Butlers, and as the right hand to the big bad. He spends most of his time sucking up to Akudaikaan, but occasionally he does go out on the field and demonstrates how powerful he actually is. His memorable personality and the twist where he reveals he’s the mastermind all make him a welcome addition. And just to reiterate, that twist had very minimal foreshadowing! Akudaikaan himself was the opposite, very not memorable, he’s blander than the Dark King, and that’s no easy feat. The most interesting thing about him is his physical design, as rather than being an amorphous blob like the Dark King, he has a defined face and a robe. His head resembles a Samurai helmet and a demon mask, and he has fire in his eyes. It’s a shame this theme didn’t really amount to anything.

Michiru and Kaoru’s redemption arc has to be the highlight of the show. The writers took some cues from Kiriya’s similar storyline in the first show but they gave the sisters a lot more time in the limelight, which allowed their characters to be better fleshed out. Over the course of the second quarter of the show, we get to see these girls go from a faux friendship with Saki and Mai into a legitimate one, because they actually listened and learned about the beauty of the natural world. They start to understand what it means to be cared for, to be appreciated for who you are, and not have your value be dependent on what you can provide for someone else. If more villains would take the time to see things from the perspective of the people they’re trying to defeat, they might also understand this, and truly some of them do. We’ll explore several types of redeemed villains in the shows to come, and I look forward to comparing and contrasting them with this. The biggest problem I have with the Kiryuus is that they were absent between episodes 25 and 41, and barely mentioned. Mai and Saki worried for them, and Miss Shitataare gave them hints that they were still alive, but it was sad to see them shoved aside for half the show with no particular explanation being given about what Gohyaan was doing with them. That’s my only major strike against Splash Star.

The fighting in the series is still punchy, but this time the spirits spice things up. There’s bursts of spirit energy whenever they kick and punch, they can concentrate the spirit power in certain parts of their bodies to jump farther, punch harder, and block attacks. As Bright and Windy they have elemental attacks using the light and wind. It’s an evolution of what the first series started, and I enjoy it. Finally, the victories feel meaningful, because every battle they get the reward of a Miracle Drop. Every seven episodes or so they collect enough drops to revive a fountain, and Princess Filia grows more and more complete. There is constant progress throughout the series, so even the slow parts of the show feel meaningful.

Of course, the series got a movie, and it was very similar to the prior two in overall plot: Tension arises between the two, they’re thrust into another world before they can resolve their feelings, the villain takes advantage of their personal conflict to overpower them, they get separated, then they make up with each other and come together stronger to defeat the villain. The closes they get to a movie form in this one is a glowing outline surrounded by the spirits of the zodiac, somewhat bucking the trend, but it’s an excellent movie. That really isn’t something I can say about all of them, so I’m grateful that these early films are so strong.

Splash Star has been described as the perfection of the Futari wa formula, and overall I have to agree. Of the three shows, it is the most consistent in all regards. There’s constant progression, character growth, meaningful supporting characters who you really sympathize with, and a fun and enjoyable cast of both heroes and villains. The first half of FWPC may be more fun, but the second half drags it down. Max Heart as a whole isn’t really sure where it wants to go. Splash Star sets a destination and arrives there at the right time, with some twists and turns along the way. I strongly recommend it to anyone trying to get into the series for the first time.

Unfortunately, despite Splash Star being arguably the best of the three seasons (both Eastern and Western fans ranked it above Max Heart), it tanked in sales after its first quarter, so it was decided that, if the franchise was going to continue, they needed a new look. Thus, they turned to the most enduringly popular magical girl series around for inspiration for their next season. But that’s a story for later.

Analysis

The most obvious shared elements between the three shows is the two-girl team, which they each used slightly differently. In FWPC, it’s the two of them against the world. That’s it. Max Heart switches things up with a third hero, who is not combative, but supports them, and they have to protect her at times, sidetracking their fights. Splash Star goes as far as to introduce two more fighters whose power stems from the darkness but they use it for good. They help the Cures out and the Cures help them out, but it’s Bloom and Egret at the core. The key aspect of this period of Precure is that the duo are regular girls who can only transform when they’re together, and that their powers become stronger when their feelings are in harmony. The shows each explore the pros and cons of this setup, concluding that their teamwork is the most powerful force in the word, and this is quite possibly the best thing to come out of this period of the series. The thing I especially like, however, is that being Pretty Cures means that the protagonists have an especially close bond with each other, moreso than their other friends. Since they have to transform and work together, they more intimately understand each other, and they share experiences their other friends will never know about. They look out for each other in every aspect of their daily lives, they have absolute trust in each other, and they will go through hell to protect each other. Pretty Cure’s most powerful weapon is friendship.

As far as their individual personalities go, Saki tends to be more optimistic than her counterpart. Nagisa is lovable and relatable as all heck, but she had kind of a pessimistic view of the world at times. It’s evident even in their catchphrases: Nagisa always says “I can’t believe this!” while Saki proclaims she’s “In top form!” Neither of them would ever hesitate to help a friend, and especially their partner, but during the daily grind Nagisa is more likely to be upset at her circumstances. Meanwhile, Honoka and Mai are even more dissimilar to each other. Honoka has a scientific mind, she’s very astute and good at picking up details. She kind of struggles with making friends but she tries to help people out, always, especially when they don’t want to help themselves. She puts up with a lot of crap but she will chew you out in the name of making you a better person. Mai, however, is observant but she tends to hyperfocus on one thing while drawing and space out a lot. She is a little timid but not afraid to express when she’s upset. Both Mai and Honoka serve to temper and balance out their more energetic partner, serving as the voice of reason when they get heated, and in general keeping them grounded. I love how, despite the differences in their friendships, both sets of partners help to round each other out and make each other better people. It’s a testament to what a good friend can do for you, and of course the central motif of the shows.

Consequently, other friendships form a big part of these shows, too. The small cast means that the girls have friends besides each other, and in each series we see how the protagonists influence their friends, their friends influence them, and we even get to see Hikari make new friends of her own. Again, all the shows handle this well, and it’s something that will be missed next season, since the larger team size means their friendships are more insular. Having friends outside the team grounds the shows in relatable situations as the protagonists go about their daily lives, hanging out with their friends who become beloved characters and get story arcs of their own. Shiho, Rina, Yuriko, Nao, Miu, Hitomi, Yuuko, Kenta, Miyasako, and Kayo are all memorable and important pillars of the shows. They encourage the leads when necessary, get into hijinks with them, explore their own interests, hang out, and have fun together. This also allows conflicts to be resolved without the Precure. In most superhero media the central conflict of the episode is between people’s feelings or beliefs rather than a physical altercation, but the fight usually resolves things somehow, while in Precure, since the combatants are often not the ones with a disagreement, it instead helps them figure out how to help their friends resolve their troubles.

Since these are the stories of regular girls dealing with regular adolescent issues, love is not a strange subject. Nagisa and Saki each had crushes on slightly older boys in their shows, and they handle it remarkably similarly. They get flustered, embarrassed, and have trouble even speaking to their partner about it. However, Honoka is shrewd enough to discern Nagisa’s feelings, while Mai never learns that Saki has a crush on her brother. The writers even approach their romances differently. Nagisa tends to be more proactive in exploring her feelings. She makes active efforts to make gifts for Fuji-P and confess her love to him, ultimately culminating in that fateful Max Heart Christmas episode where she yells it for all the world (but him) to hear. Meanwhile, Saki tended to just admire Kazuya from a distance, except when he came to her. She got jealous when it appeared he had a girlfriend, but she never acted on her affections in a direct way. I theorized that Fuji-P might actually suspect Nagisa’s feelings, and possibly share them, but he wants her to be ready to tell him. Meanwhile, as far as we can tell, while Kazuya finds Saki interesting, he doesn’t really see her as anything more than a friend. I like these different representations of young love, they show how much or how little of a priority it can have in someone’s life.

Famously, Honoka also got a brief pseudo-romance with Kiriya. She helped him grow as a person, he challenged some of her overbearing ways, but they clearly respected each other. She was distraught when he was taken back to the Dusk Zone, and that was one of the most heartfelt episodes in the entire series so far. There were echoes of his impact on her in the rest of the first series, but I never felt like they explored that story to its full potential, and he was not even mentioned in Max Heart. Mai never got a corresponding love interest, and Hikari’s love was more familial: for Nagisa and Honoka as her partners, for Akane as her guardian, and for Hikaru as the only person who could possibly understand her existential crisis. She learned about romantic love but never experienced it herself, which is fine. Girl has enough to worry about as it is.

The physical fighting pioneered in FWPC set the groundwork for the rest of the series, and you can see it slightly evolve over the course of these three shows. While FW is pure punching and kicking except for finishing moves, Max Heart introduces a character with support spells to help the team, and Splash Star gives the combat a bit of flair and style with the spirit trails and elemental attacks. Each show has carved out its own little niche, and I really think that’s one of the fascinating elements of the series. YPC5 will usher in special weapons, which are a genre staple that the original trilogy avoided. That will become standard for all series going forward, so these three shows with their almost entirely unarmed battles are a true highlight of early Precure to me. They manage to keep the fights interesting, always, it’s not just straightforward sparring. The girls do a lot of jumping around, flipping, fighting in sync with each other or tag-teaming. They always have to find weaknesses in monsters that are designed specifically to be hard to beat. Sometimes they’re fast, other times armored, or they’re heavily offensive, they have special abilities of their own, or the commander is threatening someone else. Always, the heroines find an innovative way to defeat their opponent and save the day in a visually exciting manner.

When it’s not showcasing awesome girls fighting for friendship and love, Precure is about selling toys. Bandai has a long history of designing toys to coincide with Toei’s Sunday morning shows, and they put their experience to work here. Nonetheless, they had some difficulty with the rather nondescript themes of the early shows, so the toys sometimes come across as very out-of-place. The transformation toys are generally cutesy enough to pass, the powerup braces stand out, the mid-season fairy’s compact forms are extremely gaudy (ESPECIALLY the Splash Commune, it’s literally just a computer in a show about nature), and the macguffin storage object of each show (Prism Hopish, Queen Chairect, Fairy Carafe) starts a proud Precure tradition of being a large, expensive toy first and a sacred artifact later. Additionally, there’s at least one object in each show that is Precure-branded merch in the real world which has no combat use and is forced into the plot of one episode before being quickly forgotten. As the years go on, the toys will be more unified with the theme of the show, and we’ll see some new patterns emerge.

One last element I realize that I forgot to bring up before now, but that becomes a franchise trend, is a trademark food and a restaurant of sorts. In FWPC and Max Heart, of course, their food of choice is takoyaki from Akane’s Tako Stand, where Hikari winds up working in Max Heart. Splash Star’s restaurant is Panpaka PAN, the Hyuuga family bakery, and their signature food is chocolate coronets. The restaurant or food stand is always a recurring location, where the girls and their friends often meet to talk and hang out and eat some delicious food. This is certainly not exclusive to Precure, or even the magical girl genre, as having recurring locations saves on the budget, both in animation and live-action, and food is an easy way to get people to congregate. Nonetheless, it’s sort of brought up in Precure All Stars, and there’s some truly great food ahead of us, so I wanted to point out that the trend goes all the way to the start of the series.

Obviously, 2004′s Futari wa Precure wasn’t intended to kick off a franchise, so when it got popular they stuck to what they knew for the second season. I’m not sure why they didn’t take the Doremi approach and keep aging them up a year for more seasons, but perhaps they thought they had exhausted the storytelling potential of the original cast and realized that it had franchise potential if they followed the annual reboot model of other superhero shows. The biggest issues with the first two shows are pacing, which is fixed in Splash Star, and you can see them tweaking and refining the formula in other ways through the three shows as well. If I had to describe this era in a word, relative to the overall franchise, it would be innovative. While the two-girl partnership would take a break for a few years after this, these shows laid the foundation for plot structure, villain organization, toy integration, and combat that would be utilized and enhanced by the rest of the franchise, so it’s cool to trace the roots of many Precure conventions back to their origins. What began as a humble action show for girls meant to sell some toys got popular, and continued past its intended conclusion. It was even referenced in other pop culture of the time.

Powerpuff Girls Z (2006)

The series had gotten the attention of the masses and was a proven success. We got five memorable and lovable heroines, a bunch of beloved supporting characters, some wonderful villains, and even some welcoming food stands. Of course, there were bumps in the road. The series was still finding its footing during this period, and will continue to do so as we head into Yes 5, but without these three shows laying the groundwork for the franchise, I might not be here talking about it.

That’s my ode to the Futari Wa era of Precure, I hope you enjoyed it, I’m sorry that it took so long to get out. Look forward to Yes! Precure 5 reviews coming your way shortly, and remember:

Your best! My best! Ups and downs! Together We are Pretty Cure!