#I already have a japan obsession (probably starting with anime) but now I’ve added another East Asian country lol

[princess-starscourge]

I think TGCF gave me a China obsession

[charmspoint]

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT ABT THE BSD MANGA ILY THANK YOU I FEEL LIKE MY OPINION IS FINALLY VALIDATED WHICH IS: BSD has turned meh. I have become indifferent towards the plot due to the fact there are no real stakes - I feel like the OP characters like Dazai will always have a solution with a deus ex machina feel to it, making it impossible for me to care. With the recent chaos happening in the manga (I too gave up on the manga a year or so ago!), I was baffled to find out I could no longer enjoy it. My memory is poor, and I can't really pinpoint it at the moment, but BSD just... doesn't engage me as it used to. Keep in mind I was an obsessive fan of it and analyzed it to the tiniest details, but all of my great love for the series has long died, sadly. But! I am glad to hear you feel similarly about it because, yes, the potential was there, but it got terribly wasted.

Bruh don't I feel it, me and @autumn-foxfire have like monthly bitch sessions about the state of bsd at this point. I was also super invested in it in initial arcs (Up until the guild arc ended) and then slowly started petering off only to drop it the first time around the hunting dogs introduction. Then after some time i was like okay ill go give it a second shot, came to the vampire arc went 'wow this is really fuckin stupid' and dropped it again. Idk will I pick it up again, maybe I'll just stick to being an anime only, even tho I also have problems with some adaptation things but that's BESIDES THE POINT.

Please click under for The Point

The thing about Kafka is: He's really good at coming up with interesting concepts and ideas and REALLY BAD at executing them in any sort of satisfying way. Like, when I say I only like bsd until the end of the guild arc, I don't mean it was perfect. It could have handled it's female cast better, it would have been fun to see more mafia and agency team ups besides soukoku and shin soukoku, I still don't get why shin soukoku is supposed to be a replacement in training since Dazai and Chuuya still work together perfectly and even if they hate each other they hate each other less than Akutagawa and Atsushi AND have way more experience fighting together but that once again is besides the point. The point being those arcs of bsd were SATISFYING. We got introduced to two organizations, seen them butt heads and then have them forced to work together against a common enemy. It's very simple but it's effective and it's satisfying.

And then the rats struck.

While up until then bsd wasn't perfect it was fun and had lovable characters and an interesting plot and engaging dynamics. Rats arc wasn't horrible per say, the idea of the cannibalization was really fun (Though I think Kafka should have used it to get rid of Mori, nobody fuckin likes Mori) but this is where we slowly get introduced to what I think are two main failings of Kafka's writing: That he's unable to handle characters properly and that he likes writing smart things but doesn't know how to write smart things.

Kafka has a very, very bad habit of INTRODUCING TOO MANY FUCKING CHARCTERS. Every arc is a new massive group with like a bunch of members, one of who may actually end up being fleshed out before they are inventiblely replaced by another large group or maybe two why the fuck not. The mafia and the guild left lasting impressions on me and I can still name all the main members but fuck me if i know a single rat aside from Fyodor (AND ILL GET TO FYODOR). Kafka feels like someone who's idea of rising conflict is 'introduce a bigger enemy each time' and it's just so annoying. Chapters and arcs end up centering around these groups of new characters while old characters, who we loved the manga for, just fall into obscurity. He almost had me in the hunting dogs arc by giving Yosano a backstory. I was so excited! I was like!!! finally development for the agency!!! But that barely went anywhere did it. I've talked about this with Foxy but it really feels like Kafka is just BORED of the og characters and is trying to silently sideline them for his new shiny characters. When's the last time we saw Chuuya again, you know, the ex partner of one of the series protagonists? The next predicted mafia head? Is he important? Foxy tells me Dazai's been sidelined too, fUCKIN DAZAI, for a good while I was sure Kafka liked Dazai a lot better than Atsuhi for protagonist and now he's getting sidelined. I know bsd is still really popular in japan but at this point i think it would have been more merciful for Kafka to just end bsd and start a new manga with new characters instead of doing whatever weird metamorphosis this is turning out to be.

Introducing new characters isn't a bad thing of course, but bsd has become mcdonalds of new characters. They are cheap and disposable. I can't feel anything for them because I know nine times out of ten they'll barely make any impact and they'll disappear as soon as the new group slides in. When adding new characters you should do so while knowing what role those characters will play in your plot, what will they bring. If a character is just there to waffle around until they get shoved away they should probably be cut because they are wasting time and space. AND YOU SHOULDN'T SIDE LINE YOUR CORE CAST FOR UR SHINY NEW CHARACTERS YOU'LL GET BORED OF IN COUPLE OF ARCS ANYWAY, ARE YOU A TODDLER???

I still think that bsd could have been SO much better if instead of focusing on the next big evil group they just focused on shifting tension between the agency and the mafia. I mean they've had to team up for the guild and then they immediately got thrown into the cannibalization. It would have been interesting to see them pull against and pull towards those ties made during the guild arc when they are forcefully pitted against each other again (and decide that killing mori would be in everyone's best interest). Instead we got, idk I already forgot what the rats arc ended up being about, atsushi and aku team up again yadda yadda yadda, Chuuya gets done dirty and never recovers, Fyodor ruins Dazai

SO ABOUT FYODOR. As I said, Kafka strikes me as someone who REALLY likes to write geniuses and who wants people to think he's super smart but also has no idea how to show his work. At first this was okay. We had Dazai and Ranpo who were very good at pushing the plot along and sometimes you'd get explained how they got to that conclusion and sometimes you didn't but it usually wasn't a big deal. But then the writing became more and more and more of 'well he's smart so he figured it out so just trust me' without actually explaining anything and as you said, it ended up feeling boring, unengaging and very deus ex machina. You know what Kafka's writing reminds me off? That video about how Sherlock is so happy to stroke itself to how smart they look while never showing their work, you know the one. Kafka likes writing smart characters but doesn't actually know how to write smart characters so instead of giving us reasons and clues and explanations to how they come to some conclusion, how they predicted or planned or whatever, he just goes 'oh well they are super smart so they figured it out'. I don't think I need to explained why this is bad, annoying and unengaging writing. This is why i say Fyodor ruined Dazai for me, Dazai was fine as a genius but then they had to pit him against Fyodor who's another genius and things just got ridiculous. You know how in that sherlock video the guy points out the one scene that encapsulates every irritating thing about sherlocks writing. This had been it for me and BSD (thank you Foxy for helping me find the panels)

THATS NOT HOW CODES WORK, THATS NOT HOW ANYTHING WORKS, THEY WOULD JUST BE COMING UP WITH TWO DIFFERENT SETS OF CODES HERE. Even if they were both smart enough to remember every conversation in detail, how on earth are they supposed to 'guess out' what the other means. How are they supposed to confirm or deny that's what a certain word means in a way that can be understood, how can they even guess what the word the other guessed is IF THEY ARE BOTH TALKING IN CODE. KAFKA'S ANSWER: THEY'RE MONSTERS, THEY ARE JUST THAT SMART, NO NEED TO EXPLAIN IT BECAUSE THEY ARE JUST THAT SMART AND THAT'S YOUR SOLUTION AND THAT'S BULLSHIT. This scene broke bsd in half for me and honestly made me dislike Dazai for a long time (I got better), but it honestly shows so well how Kafka wanted to make his characters so smart he actually made his manga really fuckin stupid, ruining very good and interesting concept he had started with.

In the end, Kafka writes how I wrote when I was 15. With no idea where the plot is headed, adding new characters and situations whenever it strikes his fancy whether they work for the story or not, ending up just flopping around plot holes and fizzled out character arcs and boring ass writing. And that's fine for a 15yr old writing fanfiction. It's not fine for a presumably grown ass published author of a relatively popular manga.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[helloanime247-blog]

Tag!!

Thanks so much for the tag @akatsuki3519 and @yuratchkaplisetskys!! :D It really was a lot of fun to do!! :D

Name: Rachel

Nickname(s): One of my friends calls me Ray....and actually now that I think about it so does my sister. However, she only ever calls me this when she is being super nice to me......and as you've probably already guessed she's rarely EVER that nice to me!! :P XD Some people also call me Rach!  

Height: 172cm (5′8″).....However, I might be a little bit taller!! ^^' My goal was always to reach the colossal height of 6 foot, but my genes failed me!! I'm still a little bit salty over this fact! :P

Ethnicity: Irish

Favourite Fruits: Kiwis, blackberries, bananas, melons, pears and passion fruit! I love (nearly) all types of fruit....though!!

Favourite Season: Winter!! There are just so many reasons to love winter! Firstly, Santa Claus comes to town and who doesn't love Santa, right??!! ;) Also, I love how you can turn on the radio and instantly start listening to Christmas songs! Plus I always make Christmas cake with my Mum and it just feels really festive! :D I also love how crisp and fresh the weather is! There is always the chance of snow, but that very rarely comes to fruition! :(

Favourite Book(s):

I'm going to have to go with the stereotypical response to this question and say Harry Potter! I love this series so much and it was such a large part of my childhood!! <3

A Series of Unfortunate Events- I was seriously obsessed with these novels when I was younger, as I read and reread them countless times. In the words of Lemony Snicket.....he would (probably) tell you that these books are filled with woe and misery and at all costs you must not read them, unless you want all of your future dreams to be haunted by the tales of the Baudelaire orphans!! XD 

Any novel written by Anthony Horowitz. I mean this man could write literally ANYTHING and I would read it! I love his 'Power of Five' series and let's not forget the adventures of the junior spy Alex Rider. These books are so creative and fun that instantly you are absorbed into another world. He also tried his hand at writing Sherlock Holmes novels and let's just say that I LOVE them too!

I also love the 'Noughts and Crosses' novel series by Malorie Blackman. These novels really do make you think and I enjoyed that about them,

Lastly, I'm going to have to go with the 'Peter and the Starcatchers' series, by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. I remember my Mum and Dad bought me these books for Christmas, and I'm not going to lie I thought I would hate them! However, now I can say that they are definitely one of my favourite set of novels EVER! Initially, they were meant to be a trilogy, however, I only found out about a year after its release that they had actually written a fourth novel! I was so excited, but I was also slightly nervous that if the book was terrible it may perhaps.....ruin this series for me.....eeeeeeekkkkkk! You couldn't actually buy this book in a bookshop, so I bought it instead from Amazon....and it was such an amazing book, and thankfully it actually added something to the series and made the series as a whole move even higher up in my estimations! :D

Favourite Flower(s): I like roses and snowdrops.

Favourite Animal(s): Okay, I'm probably going to have to go with rabbits, as I'm the proud owner of a really cute and precious rabbit! <3 However, I also love dogs, cats, guinea pigs, horses.....!! To be honest, I really do love all types of animals.

Favourite Beverage: Water, I drink a lot of water....lol! My Mum also picked up a smoothie drink from Tesco the other day and it was so good, I kept going back to the fridge for more...lol!! ^^'

Favourite Fictional Character(s): I have way too many, but I'm willing to narrow it down for the sake of this post, as I don't fancy being here all night! XD

Killua Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter) 

Yuuri Katsuki (Yuri on Ice)

 Rin Okumura (Ao no Exorcist)

 Levi (SnK)

 Yato (Noragami)

 Maou Sadao (Hataraku Maou-sama!)

 Sakata Gintoki (Gintama)

 Sugawara Koushi (Haikyuu!)

 Hazuki Nagisa (Free!)

 Basically any character from Bungou Stray Dog.....in particular Osamu Dazai,    Nakajima Atsushi and Nakahara Chuuya

 Mikoshiba Mikoto (Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun)

 Tachibana Taki (Kimi no Na wa)

 Katsuki Bakugou (Boku no Hero Academia)

L (Death Note)

I'm not sure if I've forgotten anybody or not!! If I have.....please forgive me! XD

Number of Pillows and Blankets You Sleep With: So I have two pillows, one duvet, a blanket and if it's quite cold I have an extra blanket. However, its's quite hot at the moment so one blanket normally does the trick!

Dream Trip: I really really really want to go to Japan. I've discussed it with my parents and they are all on board for going there next year, I seriously cannot wait!! I also want to go to Canada and maybe Russia!!

Number of Followers: Ehhhhhh....22! My blog is really popular...as you can see!! Most of the time I always get those bloody (excuse the language ;)) porn blogs to follow me.....which I immediately block, of course!!  

Song You’re Listening to Right Now: Hmmmmmmm.......I'm currently listening to the ending song from the anime 'Hataraku Maou-sama!'. It's such a summery song and  I would definitely recommend anybody to listen to it!!

Tagging: Emmmmmmmm.....I'm not going to tag anyone, but if you feel like doing it......please do.....as it's a lot of fun! If you do end up doing it, feel free to tag me in it so that I can see your answers! :D