#I feel like this whole season was a whole letdown

[bleach-is-yummy]

Okay was it just me or was the wedding between Amaya & Janai done really badly.

Firstly, I just like to say I’m not deaf but over the last couple years I’ve been trying to learn ASL, through college courses and personal research, as I think it’s a really important language for a lot of people to learn. I haven’t been the greatest at it but I’ve been learning more and more steadily as well as learning a lot about the culture through both my deaf professors and some firsthand experiences from other deaf people. 

Having said this watching Amaya and Janai’s wedding this season had me absolutely stunned by how terribly they did my girl Amaya. Don’t get me wrong Ive hardcore shipped both of them since they’ve met but the accessibly of that wedding was just awful. It was so bad I had to go back to Amayas Wikipedia page to make sure I didn’t misunderstand and she was just mute as it would have been impossible for her to have understood anything that was evening said throughout that entire wedding.

No one was signing to her! At first I thought maybe Gren was in her line of sight signing from the background, but then we saw him step out from behind her meaning no one was signing or interpreting for her that entire time! That’s not even to mention that her wife, the person that she is going to swear herself to didn’t even bother to sign her vows meaning that she had to lipread the entire time! I have learned from firsthand accounts that lip reading is an incredibly inconvenient and inaccurate way to have a conversation with people who cannot hear! For God sake, her own interpreter didn’t even sign his speech!! he even had to read out her speech to her wife meaning not only does Janai not speak sign language the primary language her wife uses, but also cannot read it for the most part as well.

Now I probably cannot sign or understand sign that much better than Janai can but then again I am not marrying someone who is deaf! Why did the show runners not have her at least get a rudimentary grasp on the language her wife speaks. If it was an issue with the audience understanding what was being said then why didn’t she just sign along with her speech? I’m am in absolute awe because they usually handled Amaya’s deafness really well but for this wedding it was handled so poorly. She was even facing away from most of the people that were talking making it impossible for her to have gleaned any amount of information from anyone. She had people talking in front of her and she had people talking to her while their mouths were covered or while they were looking down. 

I don’t know if I’m blowing this out of proportion or misunderstanding things, but I feel like this wedding could’ve been done so much better if they made it accessible for both parties involved. To me it didn’t feel romantic. It felt like something they put in because the audience wanted these two to get married. It wasn’t something that I was awing at despite shipping these two for so long I really wanted this wedding to be something great and beautiful but the whole time I was just yelling at the screen because how could this be romantic for Amaya, she probably couldn’t even make out most of the things being said. No steps were taken to make this feel like an accessible wedding and it just ruins that whole scene for me. 

[falsecardigan]

No bc I agree with everything about this. I truly want to believe that everything wrong with the season five finale will be somewhat rectified in season six. Especially because we have almost a year until it airs. It won't be able to rectify the fact that Adrien wasn't there or the fact that he will never get the closure his character so desperately needs. However it can have Marinette actually think about what she's doing and have her change her mind and have her tell him (obviously as Ladybug). I'd rather it not narratively cause problems because it does upset me that this was one thing that genuinely had nothing to do with relationship conflict and it never should have been but all I want at this point is for Adrien to stop being left in the dark. It's been an ongoing theme in the show since season two and there are so many episodes showing why that shouldn't happen (especially in season four) and yet it keeps happening. The truth might hurt for him to hear but he deserves to know and I really do hope Maribug tells him because the absolute worst thing that could happen is someone else tells him.

ok since i’ve really only whined but not actually explained my reasoning lol, here is my take on the s5 finale. (this is long, sorry)

I think we���re all on the same page about the idea that gabriel being seen as a hero, by all of paris but especially adrien, is icky. and on top of that it does not feel good that marinette is supporting that lie, even if it’s out of love for adrien. most people are assuming this issue will be resolved somehow in 6, probably by lila exposing the truth. cool. that’s my hope as well. but even if that’s the case, i still dislike the framing of his wish and what the surrounding context seems to imply about it.

it is not my assumption that gabriel’s wish included green initiatives and a reformation of the parisian school system lol. I assume that his wish was to exchange his own life for nathalie’s. but as we know, wishes literally rewrite reality. the fact is that paris improved after his wish, so it is still related. he remade the world, and the new world ended up better. It all supports the idea that his wish was a good thing—a noble sacrifice that redeemed him in some sense. my impression is that even if (hopefully) he is exposed as hawkmoth, the actual wish he made will still be framed as admirable. obviously marinette found it noble enough to agree to lie to everyone about gabriel’s identity as hawkmoth.

which brings me to another pain point: the fact that gabriel essentially won the long battle against ladybug and chat noir. i’ve heard arguments that he didn’t win because he died and how is that winning? he got what he deserved in the end. but imo, he just put himself out of his own misery, because he was on the brink of death anyway because of his cataclysm wound, and he basically escaped having to face any emotional consequences from his literal terrorism and child abuse. and even if you don’t consider that a win, you also can’t consider marinette’s end of the deal a win either. her goal was to prevent hawkmoth from unifying the miraculous and making a reality-altering wish. which is exactly what happened. so she failed her mission. ladybug lost. and to me it’s sort of bizarre that the narrative seems to be framing that as a good thing? ladybug lost, but the new reality that resulted from it is so much better than the old one, and she is actively choosing to lie in order to protect the seeming goodness of that reality.

marinette is lying, of course, to protect adrien, which does not feel out of character. we’ve seen her do this before. but it is frustrating to me for precisely that reason. the final battle was meant to highlight how much marinette has grown over the past five seasons, but her choice here highlights the ways she has not grown. starting with syren in season 2, she has witnessed how much it hurts chat noir to be left in the dark and how it weakens their partnership. in that case, she convinced master fu to let him be in the know, and trust was restored. but then she continued a habit of keeping things from him, putting more and more distance between them, till it culminated with kuro neko in s4—a total breakdown of the ladynoir partnership, where chat noir renounced his miraculous. i would have thought that marinette would learn from that experience and realize that keeping people in the dark is harmful and that even if the truth hurts, adrien has a right to know it. but she once again made the decision for him, and when he finally finds out, it will be all the more painful to know that the person he loves and trusts most in the world lied to him. i actually really appreciate that marinette as a protagonist has such a good heart but is still such an imperfect character, so i want to respect this choice as a manifestation of her flawed but good intentions. i just can’t help but be really disappointed that after 5 seasons of making the same mistakes again and again, she has apparently not learned from them, which makes me feel she has not grown the way the writers say she has.

her facing hawkmoth alone for the final battle is supposed to be a sign of that growth—and yes, I can see how she has grown a lot in confidence and capability since her shaky debut as ladybug. but i also feel that her flying solo defies one of the central themes of miraculous: that in the fight against evil, good people need to stand together. just think of the difference between the s4 and the s5 finale. in strike back, ladybug is broken and sobbing because she has lost the miraculous and feels like a failure who is all alone. but then she is buoyed up by her faithful partner and all of paris, who express unbreakable faith in her and vow to stand by her side. that was so powerful! showing that she doesn’t have to be alone, and she’s not supposed to be alone, and that part of being a hero means accepting help and working with others to achieve good goals. this message was a major part of marinette’s character arc in s4 and it’s something that was introduced from the very beginning and has been supported over and over in the show. but then in “re-creation,” she has no team, and she doesn’t need one. which … good for her, I guess? But then why did we have 5 seasons of “you and me against the world” if in the end it was always going to culminate with “I'm sure we can figure out a solution if we work together. You … and me”—referring to Marinette and Gabriel, while Adrien is literally locked in a blank white prison hundreds of miles away?

it just really kills me that in kuro neko, adrien gave up his ring under the assumption that chat noir was not needed—that he was entirely useless to ladybug. and then the narrative proved him right. ladybug did not need chat noir to defeat monarch. she just needed his ring. the writers confirmed in their recent commentary that they had planned a bug noire fusion from the beginning, and they intentionally sidelined adrien so that could happen—they even had to figure out an excuse for why he wouldn’t be there. so they traumatized him with nightmares of destruction and fear of akumatization to ensure that he would once again give up his ring and conveniently remained locked away while bug noire faced down monarch alone.

you could argue that it’s better for adrien to have missed the final battle anyway, since facing his own father would just be even more traumatizing for him. i understand that. (that’s the reason i liked that in the owl house, it ended up being just luz vs belos, and hunter did not have to face him again.) but at the same time it feels so narratively unjust that chat noir—who has been fighting against hawkmoth by ladybug’s side since day 1—has zero part in seeing his mission through to the end. even though it’s all about him. because while marinette is the protagonist, adrien is the connecting piece of the whole story. it’s always been ladybug vs hawkmoth, and adrien is in the middle of them, because he’s both ladybug’s partner and gabriel’s son.

you’d think, logically, that as the connecting piece, Adrien’s decisions would be vital to the plot. That he’d have the power to tip it either way. but instead he is completely stripped of his autonomy—literally, because he’s a senti, and also symbolically in the narrative, because he’s simply removed from the equation. Like, he’s still central to the equation but he has no say in it. It’s all about him but he’s not even present. Everyone is fighting for him but he can’t fight for himself. Everyone is speaking for him but he doesn’t even have a voice.

the finale kind of sets up marinette and gabriel as narrative foils of each other, showing how they have the same motivation—to make adrien happy. and they make the same decision to protect that goal. which is interesting, sure, but also kind of effed up to me? i’m not sure what to take from the idea of the protagonist mirroring the antagonist in this way. that’s been done loads of times, but in this context, for a child audience, i don’t know what to make of it. what kind of message that is supposed to send to the children who are the primary audience of this show? ladybug is a good guy, and in the end, she’s just like the villain because they both love adrien and want to protect him. so that’s why she agrees to tell everyone the bad guy was a hero. ????

that gabriel/marinette parallel leaves adrien to parallel emilie, which makes sense and is fitting but also just sort of … depressing and again, lowkey effed up. that adrien ends up with the same narrative role as a corpse in a coffin. almost, like, macguffin-esque—a thing that motivates the agents of the story but has no agency itself. despite him being so central to both sides of the main conflict, his decisions don’t affect the outcome. because he doesn’t have the option to make any. because he’s not even present. both gabriel and marinette made a life-altering decision for adrien, thinking it was best for him, without considering that what’s best for him is to know his own story and make his own choices. him getting the rings was somewhat relieving, but it also felt like kind of a slap in the face. because it’s like, “look, adrien’s free! he has his amok and no one can control him anymore!” but, like, how free is a person who is living a lie? will he ever experience true autonomy, or will his life continue to be dictated by the decisions others make for him? will the narrative give him decision-making power or will his role continue to be symbolic?

one thing that makes this all extra dissatisfying is that Adrien literally does not have the option of getting closure with his father, because he’s dead. maybe a dramatic reveal in the middle of the final battle would not be the best way to go about it, but now he can’t have any sort of closure. in the owl house, it didn’t feel necessary for hunter to be present in the belos takedown because he already had his confrontation with belos in graveyard possession scene. belos tried to physically control him, and hunter broke free, and spoke his mind, and as traumatizing at is all was, it was good for him to be able to do that. it would’ve been so nice if adrien also had that opportunity. if he did break free from his father’s control, either by overcoming akumatization or the control of his amok somehow. or if not that, if he were just able to have one honest conversation with his father about emilie. like he did with his alt self in the paris special. it was so significant for the writers that bug noire detransformed and spoke to gabriel as marinette. why couldn’t adrien have done that? Marinette is the one to tell Gabriel that Adrien wouldn’t want him to make the wish and hurt someone else, that Adrien has made peace with his grief, that he has learned to cherish his mother’s memory without living in the past. wouldn’t that be even more powerful coming from adrien himself? if adrien was part of that final confrontation just as himself, we could even still have bug noire play a primary role.

i get that adrien being part of the battle is a risk, since we saw in chat blanc one option of how it could play out. but we also saw in the collector another potential way adrien might respond to learning that his father is hawkmoth—charging into battle by ladybug’s side. especially if he was given time to process the idea beforehand. it’s not impossible. you’d just have to compose the scene and its buildup a different way. so honestly it feels sort of lazy to just remove him for the sake of ease? and also sort of a waste of narrative potential? the villain being the father of one of the main characters is such an interesting plot element. imagine if luke skywalker did not ever face darth vader. if he never even learned that vader was his father. or if he learned that fact after vader’s death, which was the result of a confrontation he was not present for.

of course, i know adrien is not the protagonist. marinette is. and of course i want her to be empowered by the story. but i’m getting a little tired of what i see as kind of cheap feminism in ML. like, girl power for the sake of visibility so the writers can pat themselves on the back about it, if that makes sense? this show does have so much good feminist power with a strong female lead who has realistic flawless and a big heart, who overcomes self-doubt and other struggles, and who has proven time and again to be a smart, capable leader who has earned the trust of everyone on her team. but all of that sometimes feels undercut by the narrative treatment of adrien—like he has to be put down somehow to elevate marinette. ML has subverted gender roles in a lot of ways by having ladybug lead with her brain while chat noir follows with his heart. and adrien has a lot of other strong feminine associations—the focus on his physical appearance, the expectation of perfection and obedience, his soft and gentle nature, his romanticism, etc. And one of the biggest ones is all the ways he is trapped, all the ways he is pushed down and made to be submissive. they even depict him as a princess locked in a tower, with marinette as the knight in shining armor to save him from the evil dragon (his father). with adrien in that traditionally feminine role, it would have been empowering to see him to take a leading part in his own liberation. instead, he was locked away both literally and symbolically in favor of a solo bug noire confrontation, so marinette could look like a girlboss in her cool new outfit, taking on the bad guy all by herself, even when it would (imo) fit better with the themes of the show and her own character arc for her to fight alongside her partner. but as Thomas Astruc said, “She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?” (X) it just makes me feel that the writers cared more about the cinematic value and feminist brownie points of that battle than its narrative significance—which i feel could only be increased by adrien’s participation. “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing” … and that is all adrien was allowed to do.

i think a lot of fans at this point are just assuming that whatever feels dissatisfying/off will be fixed in s6. they’re trusting that the writers have a brilliant master plan that we just have to be patient and wait to see come together. idk, maybe i’m just tired. or a little jaded. i think there will be a lot to enjoy in s6, but i’m also prepared for disappointment. i honestly did not love many elements of s4 as well as s5, and i had expectations that weren’t fulfilled there either. i’ve felt let down by the writers many times now, so i expect that many of their future choices will  resonate with me. but i still love ML, and I am eager to see how everything will unfold. i’ve also read a lot of other analyses of the s5 finale, and there are great points being made on many sides. this is just my personal interpretation and opinion. i did not like the finale when i first watched it, and after sitting on it for months and trying to evaluate my feelings and look at it logically, i still do not like it lol. if you do, great! this isn’t intended as a personal attack on anyone—just me expressing my two cents, which ended up being more like $20. thanks for bearing with me if you read all this ✌️

[brucebocchi]

Ranking 2024 anime, Pt. 2: #40-31

hey, this post is also available on my ko-fi, so please check it out and consider tipping/donating as i do this for free and am currently between jobs. you can find part 1 of the list here. thanks!

Alright, on we go to the list proper. The first post was probably whiplash-inducing, going from a bunch of shorter stuff I loved to whole seasons I hated, but we can only go up from here. I watched a lot of anime this year, as the numbers indicate, so there's a little positivity to be found even in the lower rankings.

As always, OPs are linked in the series titles. Watch them, they're almost all great.

40. Metallic Rouge

One of the biggest disappointments of the year, one which I didn’t think could be outdone (and I’ll get to that one shortly). Metallic Rouge had so much going for it as a Studio Bones original for its anniversary, and managed to fumble all of its promise and goodwill in slow, agonizing fashion. 

It’s a shame, too. Metallic Rouge still looks awesome; the character and mech designs are excellent, the space-cyberpunk aesthetic is undeniable, and the animation can be terrific when it counts. The story, on the other hand, is so completely asinine that I was sick of this show before it ended. I’ve mostly forgotten what even happens, partly because it was that infuriating to keep up with, and partly because I feel like the writers forgot too; the bulk of any actual story felt backloaded into the last two or three episodes because they focused too hard on vibes for a while. I think they were trying to go for some “G-Witch by way of Detroit: Become Human” something or other, but all of it rang hollow. I’m still not sure whether it needed more runtime or better writers. Probably both.

Not worth your time. Just watch the OP and imagine a better show than what we got.

39. Mysterious Disappearances

I’ve thought so little about this show since it went off the air that I don’t really have anything new to say. Looks pretty lousy most of the time, not that interesting, oddly horny, and the plot structure gets kind of cloying after a while.

I know I harped on that last point when I reviewed it at the end of the spring season, but something funny happened after I did. Back in July, I mentioned that I took issue with the formula of “we encounter a paranormal anomaly, it’s identified as a yokai or urban legend, we learn its tragic backstory, our protagonists give it closure, and we move on” because it felt manipulative after I realized that it happened with every arc, and then I went ahead and read DanDaDan, which basically does exactly the same thing but a hell of a lot better. Comparing a middling work like this to DanDaDan of all things feels unfair, but they cover pretty similar ground. Maybe it’s sharper writing, or maybe it’s just a more engaging work. Who’s to say?

I’d also said in my review that Mysterious Disappearances unintentionally gives off the vibe of a poorly-archived mid-2000s series, but I hadn’t realized just how right I was: It turns out that studio Zero-G just went ahead and made up its own ending even though the source material is still ongoing. Better shows did the same this year, but the studio and I seem to have the same level of faith that this anime’s ever coming back.

38. My Deer Friend Nokotan

Honestly? Fuck this show.

I’ve already gone into what I did and didn’t like about Nokotan after it went off air a few months ago and I don’t care to revisit that while it’s still relatively fresh. Not nearly as funny as it pretended to be, yet still not even confident in its own sense of humor. The OP's still a bop (calling it "Shikairo Days" was a genuinely great joke), and a small handful of gags do land, but not enough to prevent this from being a massive disappointment.  At the same time, Nokotan was still somehow not the biggest letdown of the year.

37. Uzumaki

This was the biggest letdown of the year.

When an anime adaptation of the legendary Junji Ito horror manga was first announced in 2019, it was hard not to get excited. Even when I’d mostly fallen out of anime fandom, I knew damn well who Junji Ito was and I knew Uzumaki. Adult Swim was funding the project, a prestige studio in Production I.G. was handling the animation, and they even nabbed Hereditary composer Colin Stetson for the score. Ito’s manga is famously very difficult to adapt well, and it looked like we finally had a project being taken seriously. Delays and radio silence in the ensuing years were disappointing, but I was willing to be patient if it meant everything was being handled right. When the trailer dropped this summer, it looked like it would be worth the wait.

And for one glorious episode, it seemed like everyone’s patience paid off. Uzumaki’s debut episode was one of the most visually arresting pieces of animation I’ve ever seen: The entire look and feel was faithful to Ito’s inimitable style, from the meticulously detailed linework to the stark black-and-white color grading of his manga’s pages. On top of that, the animation itself was absurdly good; the process of rotoscoping 3D motion capture seemed arduous, but the end result was beautifully lifelike for a story where that quality could only serve to instill further terror. Several of the most iconic images from the early chapters looked incredible in hi-def motion. Sure, the pacing was a little fast, but this was a four-episode miniseries. We could deal. This was just too good.

And then came the second episode.

I’m not going to over-elaborate or relitigate every single thing that went wrong here, because it’s a lot. Uzumaki was in development for a long time, and that five year gap between announcement and release included several detriments to the production process, not the least of which being COVID, animation production changing hands between several studios, and new leadership for Adult Swim’s parent company that now favors profit over product, especially when it comes to animation that doesn’t involve DC characters. Plenty of us figured that all of these delays and a run of only four episodes meant that they had the time to hammer out all the issues and give us the best possible product. That, unfortunately, was not the case.

Responding to complaints about the decline in animation in the second episode, executive producer Jason DeMarco (who, to be blunt, has overseen several mediocre-to-awful anime products released under the Adult Swim brand, including my bottom-ranked anime of 2023) claimed in a quickly-deleted Bluesky thread that there is indeed a higher-up to blame and that they were left with an ultimatum to either drop Uzumaki after just one episode, let it go the way of so many other Warner Bros non-releases under David Zaslav’s disastrous leadership, or release the whole miniseries in its half-baked state. They went with the third.

So, what we got was an uneven, often sloppy work; another mediocrity to throw on the pile of failed Junji Ito adaptations. All goodwill established in the first episode is soon undone by wonky character models, uncanny walk cycles, and movement that looks like PNGs being dragged across a background at the most inopportune times. Plenty of viewers, myself included, were willing to overlook the accelerated pacing after the first episode, but that issue was thrown into stark relief by the second when entire chapters of the manga began playing out simultaneously, and one was even reduced to an afterthought for a cheap “scare” at the end of episode three. 

Not that I thought Uzumaki necessarily needed a full 12-episode season for a proper adaptation or anything; Ito’s output can often be light on story, and dragging it out too far risks losing interest. What makes Ito’s stories actually work, though, is a proper sense of setting and space to let tensions rise. That didn’t entirely happen here; while the atmosphere of Kurozu-cho does plenty resemble what we’ve seen from Ito’s pages, and Stetson’s atonal saxophone does a lot of work to raise the level of unease, things just kind of happen. Few things really get the chance to land as intended, in part due to the production quality cheaping out at climactic moments.

This was the last anime I finished this year even though I’d watched the first two episodes after they aired and it went off the air in October. I was looking forward to the last two episodes that little. There are still bits and pieces of great animation and faithful adaptation here and there, but not enough to regain any goodwill from the second episode’s wheels visibly falling off. Maybe it’s finally time to declare Junji Ito’s works unadaptable once and for all. 

Definitely watch that first episode, though. At this point I kind of wish that’s all we’d gotten.

36. Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!

Straitlaced Nice Guy moves to a new town, laid-back gyaru from his class immediately takes a liking to him, a couple other girls enter the picture, shenanigans ensue, and a slow-burn romance begins in parallel. Nothing special on paper and nothing much more special than that in execution. The setting is lovely, though, and it really made me want to visit Hokkaido one day. Nicely done, tourism board.

If you watched this and were put off by it, I don’t blame you; I probably would’ve been too if I hadn’t decided to read ahead in the manga. I will say this, though: If you liked Hokkaido Gals even a little, read the manga. It’s a minor investment, but if you can get over the halfway mark, it gets surprisingly good and has a really lovely ending. 

The anime, on the other hand? Meh. Doesn’t look super great and didn’t have enough time in 12 episodes to overcome most of the issues the source material had to move past to get to what made it worthwhile. It would take another season or two to get there, and that probably isn’t gonna happen. Great OP, though (I'm starting to repeat myself, I know). Just read the manga.

35. No Longer Allowed in Another World

Boasting one of the most audacious premises for an isekai I’ve ever seen, No Longer Allowed in Another World doesn’t shy away from the implications of an Osamu Dazai isekai, has the dark humor to match, and provides some fascinating commentary on the type of person who tends to consume wish-fulfillment isekai. Unfortunately, the presentation was a little lacking and threatened to lose my attention several times. I think the idea is much better on paper, to the point where I might test that theory and go read the manga.

34. The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

The next dozen or so anime in the rankings fall into a category of either “well-made anime that I found kind of frustrating” or “middling anime that I kind of enjoyed.” The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic is very much the latter. It’s a standard isekai on paper; demon king, special powers, what have you, but it has a likable cast and laid-back vibe for much of its runtime that made it pleasant enough to watch.

As I said after the winter season, I really liked that Wrong Way spends a lot of its early story ensuring that the protagonist expends the time and effort necessary for him to become the hero he’s meant to be instead of the narrative just handing it to him from the start, which instantly sets it apart from most other wish-fulfillment isekai. It’s far from the best-looking anime I watched this year, but it has a mid-00s throwback look and feel to it that works more to its benefit than in Mysterious Disappearances. Nothing groundbreaking and a little too backloaded, but an enjoyable enough experience and one I’m looking forward to seeing come back. 

The only really upsetting thing about this show is that Atsuko Tanaka (Major Kusanagi, Bayonetta, Kainé), who was tremendous as the intimidating Captain Rose, is no longer with us. She was an exceptional talent with an iconic voice who will be sorely missed, and future seasons of this show won’t be the same without her.

33. Go! Go! Loser Ranger

Though not a bad anime by most metrics, I still consider Loser Ranger a minor disappointment. It mostly looks great, and “what if The Boys was a sentai series” is a killer premise, but the story so far is extremely frontloaded. Almost too much happens in the first four episodes, and then the bulk of the last arc of the season takes place in a goddamn parking garage. I’m still annoyed by that. Still looking forward to season 2, but I wish the debut season had been 24 episodes to avoid the sour taste in my mouth.

Did you hear that echo? Yep, that's me telling you to watch yet another OP. Easily the best part of the show and one of the best of the year. Tatsuya Kitani can't keep getting away with it.

32. Astro Note

2024 turned out to be a banner year for Rumiko Takahashi’s older works making their way back to modern screens, and one of those entries wasn’t even hers.

Astro Note is an overt homage to Takahashi’s less-famous romcom Maison Ikkoku, which ran parallel to Urusei Yatsura for most of the latter’s run. Like Ikkoku, Astro Note follows a down-on-his-luck young man living in a boarding house full of bizarre miscreants who only stays because the manager is super pretty. Unlike Ikkoku, and unbeknownst to our protagonist, said manager is actually an alien who is practically turning the house over to find a secret alien MacGuffin.

This show looks lovely and has a delightful cast and some surprisingly moving subplots, but it’s nothing too special otherwise. There are some fun creative flourishes here and there, like the alien stuff shown in flashback being made to look like an older space opera anime, but aside from a very fun turn near the end of the season, Astro Note rarely rises above the level of simply “pleasant.” And that’s fine, but it doesn’t quite live up to the material it’s aping, and what we’ve ended up with is just a nice distraction. 

I’m so glad I finally decided to read Maison Ikkoku though.

31. Shangri-La Frontier, second cour

It’s been a running joke for me that the more I watch Shangri-La Frontier, the less I’m sure whether I like it or not, and now with 25 episodes in the tank, I’m less sure than ever. The back half of the debut season improved on a few of the things that annoyed me about its first cour by focusing more on the high-quality action and introducing minor stakes to the proceedings, and then everything else surrounding it made it feel no less like I’m just watching a guy playing a goddamn video game, and the stakes still mostly seem to amount to "he wants to be good at it."

You may notice that I didn’t include the second season in this review, and that’s because I flat-out didn’t care to pick it back up. I’d been busy during the fall season and continuing a show I didn’t enjoy that much just wasn’t a high priority. It’s continuing into January, so there’s time to catch it while it airs, but I’m still not in any hurry.

[niraves]

I really love this silly little procedural drama. First of all for the crazy rescues, the tsunami arc was the best opening disaster and it still is, I love the funny episodes like Jinxed, Ocean's 911.

Secondly, I love the characters, especially the 118. I didn't like Bobby much at first but he's grown on me and now I like him too. I love Chim, Hen, I feel very indifferent about Eddie to be honest but I don't really have a problem with him. (His "fans" on the other hand...)

BUT Buck is my favorite and I'm having a hard time forgiving the writers and Oliver for basically butchering his character. Not just because of Tommy, but right now I hate how they're handeling this whole situation. This was a huge opportunity, by giving Buck a love interest that works. And now the show suffers from it.

Also I think the show is suffering from moving to ABC. The beloved side characters are gone. Where is Sue? Linda? Carla? Ravi? I could go on...

Yes, we most likely wouldn't have Bi Buck if the show stayed on Fox but the best seasons aired there. This season feels like a letdown so far. I know we are only on episode 6 but it doesn't feel like things will get better. We can only hope that the backlash is enough for Tim Minear to reconcider his choices and make something better out what's left during the hiatus.

I'm having a hard time letting this show go, it was the highlight of my weeks for months now since I discovered it on Disney+ (and pinterest lmao).

I hope my rambling made sense, english is not my first language and if nothing else comes from this week's suffering at least I got to practice the language lol.

[ddejavvu]

idk if you’ve been asked this before but what are your thoughts on reid lashing out at jj about the whole emily thing in season 7?

my thoughts are that it's too complicated to say i'm on either one's side </3

JJ fucking pissed me off with the later Jeid storyline but I liked her at the beginning of the show -> onwards until p much right there, so I tried not to let that letdown influence my retrospective on the s7 situation.

JJ was following highly classified, highly important government orders. Her boss told her to keep her mouth shut for safety reasons, and as someone who's seen countless friends and family members suffer because intel got loose, I can understand why she'd adhere so firmly to the guidelines. She was a good agent.

However, Reid requires stability and consistency in his environment, as he is at a high risk for slipping back into his addiction + developing symptoms of his mother's illness (which, if i remember correctly, were teased but never actually confirmed in him. My point is, he's an at-risk individual who was thrown into grief). I can completely understand how finding out that the shoulder you cried on for months and months and months was actually lying to you about the source of your grief would make someone angry. I actually think he deserved to be angry, he had the right to be angry, but then things become muddled when you ask me if i think he had the right to be angry at JJ.

Personally, I think I'd initially feel very betrayed if I were Spencer, even if i worked it out later. But again, JJ was following orders to keep Emily alive, and if she had confessed and compromised the undercover operation, Emily would have been killed.

I think, in the actual scene, JJ had absolutely no right to tell him that if he was a better profiler, he'd have been able to figure things out. I thought it was a really low blow for her, especially knowing that he'd been so devastated over his friend's 'death'. I understand that his anger caught her off guard, and she felt unjustly blamed, and I might have been upset or torn too in her position. But the way that she handled it was highly unprofessional and something a petty teenager would say and then reluctantly apologize for once they discover their actions have consequences.

I think that Reid basically pouting during work hours and letting his personal feelings affect his work (y'know, saving lives) was also highly unprofessional. However, the issue was that the entire situation revolved around his work in the first place, and Emily just like slipped right back in?? so he had zero time to process anything and I don't know if I'd be able to separate my feelings from my job either.

I don't blame Spencer for not feeling like he could trust JJ/his team after that, at least not as deeply as he used to. I don't blame JJ for feeling hurt that Spencer took his anger out on her rather than the general situation/even Hotch who gave JJ the orders, and told Spencer he was responsible for it.

it bothers me when Spencer stans will demonize JJ for it while refusing to acknowledge Spencer's missteps, and it pisses me off when JJ likers use it to call Reid a petty toddler without considering his feelings on the matter. All in all, it was a complicated, messy situation with no completely right or wrong side, in my opinion.

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

The Owl House Series Finale Thoughts, part 1

So, now that I’ve had time to vent and gather my thoughts I can say that The Owl House series finale, was a letdown. 

There were strong elements: the animation, the voice acting, the music, all incredible. I do deeply appreciate the hard work and talent the crew brought in making this show and how many people have felt represented and seen by the show’s inclusivity and themes. I feel that this show will be beloved and remembered for a long time.

However, I feel like the show made critical errors that actually undermined what it set out to do. Before I get into my thoughts, let me explain how I got into this show:

I happened to stumble upon the show because it looked neat and heard that the show creator also worked on Gravity Falls, another show I enjoyed. The first season was fun; bright, clever, and you could tell it wanted to tell a larger story with deep and meaningful themes. Season 2A was also fun and it had begun to depict a darker, more mature world. I didn’t think too much of the show, it was just fun, a typical kids’ cartoon show with good storytelling and memorable characters. Nothing really grabbed me about the show.

Until Hollow Mind.

Long-term fans will remember people being disappointed by the episode because they became attached to Fanon Philip that had appeared during the hiatus and we got something completely different in canon. How did this seemingly sweet young man turn into Emperor Belos? Turns out, he’s just a dick. A huge, murderous dick with a hero complex. 

I wasn’t there for Fanon Philip but what drew me to Belos was that in HM, his apparent backstory was in the literal background of the episode and it sparked my imagination. I joined the fandom because, like many, I wanted to know what Belos’ deal was. Many talented and creative people came up with long and compelling theories about the Wittebane brothers, speculation that was further fueled by the grimwalker reveal and Caleb appearing in Belos’ memories in King’s Tide. That speculation grew and people wrote whole fan fics and drew art depicting the trials and troubles of the Wittebanes. 

I became invested in the Wittebanes because their story was so tragic: two orphan boys who grew up in a cult, essentially forced to participate in witch hunts in an adapt-or-be-hanged situation, only for the elder to actually see the error of his ways and leave his younger brother behind, making him think he had been bewitched and that it was his duty to save him. 

We got more scraps of information in Thanks to Them, the most important being how the brothers only had each other and became witch-hunters to fit in. In For the Future, Caleb’s apparition appears--whether a ghost or hallucination is unknown---above his specter is a bloody knife, Caleb stares accusingly at the wretched, shambling remains of his younger brother. Philip lashes out angrily accusing him that it was his fault and that he “tried to save his soul.” This is a highly interpretive scene, and many thought it implied Belos’ deeply buried guilt and how he always lies to himself to justify his actions. All the while, deep down knowing the truth.

With all that in mind, what did we learn in Watching and Dreaming? What made this young man who ventured out to what he thought was literal hell to rescue his brother? His only family? Only to kill him in a fit of madness and spend literal centuries trying to recreate the brother of his childhood, to erase his original sin, all the while descending into madness and depravity?

Turns out he’s a dick. A huge, murderous dick with a hero complex.

“You assume Belos’ goal comes from a genuine place,” the Titan tells Luz. And seemingly the audience because fans wanted to see this story, this foundation to all of the horror and trauma. To understand how a man becomes evil. 

Well, according to the show, he’s just like that. Luz attempts to reconcile Belos’ goal of saving humanity with her own and wonders if their morality is really so different. Silly human, the Titan says. Your goals and motives are genuine, he’s just delusional and evil. So you can take comfort in the fact that your enemies’ goals are just self-serving, but yours are the real deal. 

Sorry but this is lazy.

You can’t say people are complicated and then turn around and say actually, no some people are just delusional and power-hungry and we’ll leave it at that. It seems that, in the universe of The Owl House, only good people are complicated; Lilith cursed Eda because she was desperate to get into the Emperor’s Coven but then she spends the rest of the time trying to cure her sister. Amity bullied Willow, but only because her parents forced them to no longer be friends, Hunter was the emperor’s right hand man, but only because he’s an abused teenager. Meanwhile, the villains of the show don’t have their motives given such depth, they just act in selfish and petty ways because they just are. 

I wouldn’t be bothered by Philip’s flat characterization if the show did not waste so much time giving us hints and clues that there’s actually more to him. What a twist! The villain you thought had greater complexity is just a Standard Villain, how genius! Such clever writing!

If he’s going to be simply a metaphor and not a real character then don’t tease us with a story that suggests otherwise. Keep your story clean and concise. Don’t dangle a potentially amazing storyline that aligns perfectly with the protagonist’s only to yank it away.

This is a waste of the audience’s time and squashes what could have been a wonderfully twisted and dynamic villain. But the show wasn’t interested. It's much easier and more comforting to just say bad people are just bad and never explore why. You could never become the villain because you’re good; don’t bother worrying that you and the villain have the same goals because his aren’t genuine!

 Remember kids, people are complicated. Unless you’re a villain. 

[snowblack-charcoalwhite]

Somehow even the stills tell a better story than the actual scenes. I always think "this will be good" and then when I watch the scene in question, it turns out to be less emotional, intense or engaging than I thought it would. Aemond /Aegon and Alicent/Aemond scenes from e6 come to mind. This whole show is a huge let down.

A letdown indeed (mostly). For now I've been truly enjoying (characterwise) only Gwayne, Alys and Simon Strong (which, given the number of characters in the show - and the fact that all of the named above are minor ones - says a lot). Trailers, previews and stills do look more interesting and exciting that the actual show, too. In general, it feels to me that the best thing about season 2 of HotD was the promo campaign.

Generally speaking, I (just like many other TG fans) would prefer for both of the scenes you mentioned not to be in the show at all. But since we ended up where we did, I have to say that IMO the scene with Aemond firing Alicent within the context of the episode turned out to be not as bad as I expected. Ewan and Olivia acted it out beautifully, and Aemond dismissing his mother didn't feel as out of place as it could have felt. The misogynistic bit about "domestic pursuits" felt cringey though. But, of course, Aemond just has to disrespect women on top of everything else.

As for the scene between Aegon and Aemond... Oh boy. Amazing acting, once again (I don't think I have ever felt more afraid of Ewan's Aemond than in that moment (pure chills) and Tom's portraying of pain, fear and vulnerability was fantastic). But why the literal sadism? Aemond could have even still threatened Aegon but verbally - and that would did it just fine. Were the writers so eager to show Aemond's growing detachment from humanity or just how much he hates Aegon?

Anyways, there are two more episodes of cringe left. Let's brace ourselves.

[zalisok]

TUA Rant #2: Pacing

Spoilers ahead:

I also want to talk about the pacing of the show: it was odd.

The first episode was already a bit odd for me: they took quite a long time to introduce the characters, but it didn't seem like enough. A bit contradictory, but still. 5 years passed snice the last season and some changes seemed pretty sudden. I want to know more about Diego and Lila's budding tension, Viktor being bad at dating, Klaus becoming a germaphobe (which lasted for, like, 2 episodes. I get that it's linked to his powers but it was still a bit disorientating), Luther becoming a stripper professional dancer. But with 6 episodes I think they did try to do the best they could, and I'm not going to give them any more shit about it, I do understand that it's hard.

There were scenes that didn't need to be there. The scene where they were puking in the van. It went on for a long time (in my mind it was, but it was probably a minute or two). And the Five and Lila scenes oh my god that plot point took up so much time and went absolutely nowhere except hinder the main plot. Like what was the point.

Klaus' (and Allison's) sideplot went absolutely nowhere. It was interesting to watch and I was invested, but it didn't help push the main plot like Klaus' sideplots usually do. It was just there.

Diego and Luther's sideplot did link back to the main plot, but only for a bit. At least their dynamic was fun to watch (Maybe I'll do a post for all the characters a bit later).

I was cool with the first four episodes. I was genuinely interested in a plot and there was a feeling of suspense, a mystery to be solved. I thought the plot points above would link back to the apocalypse somehow. But they mostly didn't, and that was a bit of a letdown. There were so many parts that were just irrelevant, and when you have limited runtime, that's not ideal.

And in turn I feel like a lot of plot points that needed to be expanded upon just WEREN'T. And a lot of it had so much potential and were genuinely interesting to me.

For Jennifer: why was she in a squid? Why did she have durango in her body instead of Marigold? What happened to her family? I want to know more about what the Cleanse actually is. Why does it appear the way it does? Why does it get bigger and bigger? Why did the reaction of two particles create a Lovecraftian horror-esque creature? Why is it named "The Cleanse"??

For Abigail and Reginald: what exactly happened when she synthesized the particles? Why did she synthesize the particles? i want to know more about her and Reginald. Is she an alien as well? Why can she change skins? And why is Reginald an alien? How did he manage to get a whole village under his control? What was his school for wayward boys? And why did that memory machine ever exist, what kind of technology is he cooking in his basement?

For the Umbrellas: Why did their powers return the way that they did? Some of them changed a bit, some of them didn't, some of them got extra powers. Was there any explanation for that? I feel like I have a lot of questions that weren't answered.

And the subway! The idea of it is so cool and it has so much potential. I wish it was explained more.

The ending was really hasty to me. The death scene was way too sudden. The Five deli scene was out of place (to me), though it was interesting to watch. It was like BOOM i guess we all have to die now. It didn't land well.

I do feel like the pacing would have been done better if there were 10 episodes. Some aspects of the show would have been made better. I also think some of the show's plot was sacrificed for comedic scenes. I always enjoy a fun scene but personally, I don't think that should have been the main point of the season. If they didn't have the time to really expand upon the new plot points to make a complete narrative they shouldn't have added so much in.

[cloudmancy]

not to rekindle old discourse if you've moved on, but i was listening to you & @kindlespark's interview on the complicated women podcast / have enjoyed reading your fhjy posts and wanted to ask your thoughts on why the beginning of the season felt so promising to you? i enjoyed the premiere and the premise of the stresses of 11th grade/the rat grinders as foils, but as the season continued i started to feel disillusioned - it seemed less and less like an interactive/collaborative story (cassandra's death, fig's quest to rehabilitate ruben, the ratgrinders being really hard to find/interact with in general) and more of a tour through some unsatisfying callback easter eggs (i simply don't care about porter and it kind of felt like not even emily did). imo the ratgrinders were set up to fail as a narrative concept ever since the bad kids got mad at them for grinding and brennan just sheepishly grinned and shrugged at the camera, and while i share your disappointment that there was no coming together/addressing the root academic injustices that plagued both the bad kids and the ratgrinders, i don't think it was as surprising to me, as the season had already felt too filled with bits/joking around to be that dramatically tight - ironically, i think they got too bogged down in roleplaying scholastic tedium. i tend to come to d20 with a mindset of like, this is primarily a comedy and if they end up producing a satisfying narrative arc, great (and they certainly have achieved this in the past), but i don't think it's a coincidence that most d20 seasons are regarded as having unsatisfying endings - i think it's an incredibly hard thing to do in a ttrpg setting, even for professionals, especially so if their instincts are more towards comedy. they are great artists and improvisers, but evidently that doesn't mean they can't fail to cohere, and i think this season suffered from a lack of investment in narrative all around - brennan not being as flexible with the plot as he's been in the past, the players i think (some anyway) feeling a little tired of these characters and playing them as more chaotic/violent than usual (kristen's random nudism, fig's truancy, gorgug's hatred/bullying of maryann, fabian threatening to skin ivy). idk, i'm just rambling at this point - my overall message is that i'm in agreement that the finale was a letdown, but i'm curious as to how you thought the promising themes interacted with the story/performances in the earlier parts of the season, cause when i look back at it i don't see a unified vision, just some individually interesting pieces that never seemed to fit together, and i don't think i just feel that way in hindsight, but am open to other perspectives (disclaimer that obv this is all opinion and subject to debate)

here are sam's thoughts on it!

ok my thing is that 1) i love porter as a villain and i don't think the twist takes away from his character; i think brennan tied him to ankarna REALLY well and with genuine thought. the lore drop scene in the temple was genuinely chilling and very very cool to me and brennan clearly set up a lot of lore around it that was interesting and not just funny bc fig thought he was bad the whole time. i think porter is a great character and had the bad kids engaged with his philosophy of rage and not had ice feast completely nullify his threat he could've been a really compelling villain. 2) i genuinely had hope for the rat grinders because of brennan's insistence to make npcs like eugenia talk about them as foils, the fact that they used to be the high-five heroes, and the fact that he made them closer to unwilling participants than actual villains. seemed like genuine threads of complexity that the bad kids just didn't pick up on, but i also clearly was fooled bc that brennan didn't react to fig's attempts to convert ruben shows that he wasn't really prepared to have the final battle as anything but tbk vs trg 😭 i think the downtime system was actually really fun and effective at portraying both scholastic tedium while also embellishing the themes (rage tokens!!) 3) this probably wasn't made clear in the ep but i didn't expect d20 to write a perfect thematic story about addressing systemic injustices; i just wanted them to give me any kind of thematic acknowledgment in the battle at all and not just with ankarna. i am very aware that im always reading into the subtext of d20 seasons--that lament is more for the subtext that Could've Been. i agree with you about everything you've said wrt ttrpg settings and lack of narrative investment, but i had higher hopes because fhsy and tuc are so much better with their themes and the themes brennan appeared to be setting up seemed so… obvious to me…. it had me ignoring all the red flags 😭

[ultraericthered]

Slept on the final season of TDP 2 (Mystery of Aaravos) after having watched it yesterday. The season's overall quality was thankfully closer to the previous one than Books 4 and 5, even though there were some serious, serious issues, particularly in the home stretch.

I watch the show mainly to be entertained and even engaged by what it offers, but what really struck me with this season is how I really do love the ideas behind what it's giving me even when I do not so much like the actual writing and execution at all. The whole outcome with Everkind was the perfect example: the idea of the old world having crumbled and burned utterly so that then rather than rebuild, you build something new and greater in its place? In the mid-2020s, that REALLY speaks to me in a way it might not have in the 2010s. It's a great direction for the narrative to take and, for now, close out on. Shame the journey to reaching that point didn't really do it justice.

Some other stray thoughts:

- Aside from ending up surprisingly less of a physical, magically powerful threat than he was hyped up to be for all this time, Aaravos could do no wrong for me from start to finish. He's always been the best creation to come out of this series and that's only been proven more true with each season of his saga. He is not only a fantastic and effective main antagonist, he's such a fascinating and layered character on top of that. In a way, he didn't even totally lose in the end - all of the archdragons save for Zym are now gone and the world is left in shambles and changed forever as a result, which could make his later work easier. Really hope we can see him again, even if in seven years.

- I love Claudia's character, but her story has just been one massive letdown after another ever since TDP Book 3. With that said, I think I slightly prefer where this saga left her off compared to the previous one. The infuriating butchery of Terry and breaking him up with her notwithstanding, her self-acceptance of who she is, what she wants to be and what she decides she needs to do with her life even if it doesn't hinge upon her bio family has at least left her with more sanity and clairity than the Azula copycat she'd been turning into. Plus, she's finally rid of her shitty father and we know for a fact that Aaravos loves her, which is why she's now his faithful disciple. Whatever she's getting up to out there, I am 100% rooting for her.

- In general, I think TDP 1 had a stronger conclusion despite the story having to get rushed in order to reach it, as it wasn't left on a note where so many threads were still loose and unresolved. But on the flip side, the hooks for a continuation being written in as an organic part of this saga is kind of preferrable to seeming to end it very conclusively only to throw at us a last minute stinger that turns out to be how the next saga opens up anyway. So it's like one lesson was learned here: let's not see a cut to years later until we get there.

- I am very confused by how the archdragons' deaths were handled. Two of them were straight up murdered in very agonizing ways, while the other three (one who was kind of already dead) sacrificed their lives. And as we skip the immediate aftermath of the latter, we are given ZERO time for grieving. Zym had to lose both of his parents all over again and it is followed up with NOTHING out of Zym except a humorous scene where he starts speaking words for the first time in Dante Basco's voice. This combined with the earlier death of an elf (Karim), which is comically brief and moved on from quickly after a small display of grief from his sister, suggests that non-human characters dying just don't get to hold the weight that even the death of fucking Viren was allowed. Suddenly, humans are not considered inferior by the narrative and it's Xadian lives that don't matter! Huh? Wasn't it the other way around before? So much mixed messaging!

- Lastly, I don't know how to feel about the sheer AUDACITY to wait until this seventh, potentially final Book to drop the confirmation that King Harrow's soul got switched with his bird's, at a point where said bird has flown the coop. It's like Aaron Ehasz was trying to leave us with a "Where. is. my mother?" moment, forgetting that doing so does not give any guarantee that there will ever be a follow-up.

[spopsalt]

Hi!!

This will be a bit more of a personal rant / ramble about spop if that's okay!

So like I was around 11 when the first season of spop came out. My sister followed Nate and was very excited for the project so we watched it, and we both really liked it!!

So each time every season came out we watched it and came up with fan theories and all that jazz! Keep in mind, we never really rewatched seasons in between. So we watched season 2, waited around half year and then watch season 3 when it came out. So we never watched season 2 again in between those months. This makes it that you forget some things, but that was alright.

I think this is the way the show is meant to be watched. It was enjoyable, we came up with theories, we came up with ships, we bonded with the characters. Season 4 was my favourite season because of all the tension and drama!!

And then well, season 5 was a bit of a letdown, but yeah sure! That's fine, y'know. I am not a shipper at all, my sister is aware at this point that her ships are never really popular so she didn't have her hopes up (she ships glimmadora). She also followed Nate so she knew that he liked c//a and stuff.

Anyways, when the show was finished, people really started watching it because of the lgbt representation. This always felt weird to me? It didn't make sense? I didn't watch Spop with the idea in mind that c//a would become canon in the end. Which made the show a whole lot easier to watch.

I also felt like.. it wasn't really the point of the show at all? There was just a kiss at the end that was about the romance the show had gotten, I didn't get it (im aromantic asexual so maybe that's why).

I have a lesbian friend (they/she) for example, who watched the show for c//a. Which is fine, they really like it and they relate to c/tra, due to trauma and stuff. It's just that it felt so.. weird talking to them about the show. Because everything about the show kinda felt like it was about c//a for them? Just like how you anti-spop blogs talk about how c//a shippers can make any scene about c//a. That's how it felt. Now I didn't really mind, but it felt odd to me.

Either way. At some point, me and my sister finally convinced my other sister to join our rewatch. Which was,, tough. Well, it was alright, in the sense that, I just focused on my favourite characters and (platonic) relationships. (Entrapta! Scorpia! Glimmer!! Adora!!! :D!!)

But the c//a kiss at the end made me physically cringe. (Literally)

I don't really have a point to make! I just believe that Spop isn't meant to be binge-watched? I feel like? I really really enjoyed my first watch, and I have very conflicted feelings about it (due to nostalgia too. dt being the first enban ive ever seen on tv?? mindblowing!!).

I like it. But also as an emotional abuse survivor, it also is just.. tough. All in all it's just, a bit, disappointing?

I guess that's it :) that's my ramble.

I'm not sure if anyone has any similar experiences, as pretty much everyone I know watched it after all seasons came out and it has risen in popularity.

Have a nice day!! Love ur blog

Awwwww thanks for your kind words, also it's ok, the ask buttons says "Rant with Me!" for that reason, I love hearing rants! But yeah, I personally was never that big of a fan, but it's good that you like it! But yeah the representation is definitely bad, the only bisexual character get in m x f ships, which is fine, ofc bisexual people don't have to date only people of the same gender, but...they never show attraction towards other people of the same gender?! The only bi characters get in m x f ships, one of them was extremely rushed, and one of them was creepy considering it looked like an adult dating a teen. Also the main couple is literally just a victim falling back into the cycle and kissing her sister who literally gave her trauma.

[animebw]

Short Reflection: Fall 2023 Anime

Is it fair to call 2023 a disappointing year for anime? Maybe it's just that 2021 and 2022 were both so above and beyond that coming back down to normalcy from that peak feels like a letdown. But man, between a mostly uninspiring winter lineup and summer being possibly the single worst anime season since seasonal watching started being a thing, there's been plenty to complain about. Thankfully, there's been plenty to appreciate as well, and while this fall season hasn't been truly transcendent, it's at least left us with a slew of worthwhile anime to close the year out. So let's sift through the rubble and rank all the shows I finished to see which ones ended as true must-watches, which are still worth a look, and which you can skip without missing anything.

Firefighter Daigo (1st Half): 4/10

So, remember Space Brothers? Remember how wonderfully that show balanced naturalistic character building with the excitement and beauty of exploring a high-stakes environment like space? Have you been looking for another show to hit that same sweet spot of grounded maturity and tangible whimsy that makes your childhood dream job feel more achievable than ever? Well... guess you better keep looking, because Firefighter Daigo is not that. There's some beautifully nail-biting tension to the rescue sequences themselves, expertly stacking one thing after another going wrong as our protagonists are forced to think on their feet to save lives under the most pressure imaginable. But the characters are utterly bland, the production is boring on a near-inconceivable level (man, remember when this guy directed a single good-looking episode of To Your Eternity and completely failed to live up to that potential ever again?), it wastes over three minutes each episode on recap footage, and it take such a bizarre, condescending attitude toward its one female character that the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. It's an overly cheesy puppet show playing at being a real story, and I will not be sticking around to see if its second cours improves in any way.

Stardust Telepath: 4.5/10

Man, I'm frustrated I didn't like this one more. I always appreciate Cute Girls anime that put this much polish and energy into their adaptation, and the concept of socially awkward Umika Konohoshi wishing she could escape this planet to make friends among the stars, only to find her place on earth on her journey to reach there, has all the makings of a coming-of-age masterpiece. Sadly, it's done in by the simplest of failures: melodrama overdose. All the attempts at heartstring-pulling are so overbearing and browbeating that every moment that tries to drag tears from your eyes just leaves you exasperated instead. It completely lacks confidence in its ability to touch your emotions on the quality of its writing alone, so it smothers you in sappy speeches and ear-bleeding Feel Sad Music until you feel like you're choking on the stuff. Not even the top-shelf yuribaiting between the two leads can wipe the frustration away, and I'm about the easiest mark for that kind of stuff as you can imagine. Someone get this forehead-touch almost-kiss telepathy into a better show immediately!

I'm in Love with the Villainess: 4.5/10

I honestly feel back about being so down on I'm in Love With the Villainess. Lord knows I'm always complaining we need more isekai with an actual point to make, and an unapologetically queer take on the shoujo villainess trope that actually has something to say about the lesbian experience amidst the romantic goofery certainly fits that bill. Except, well... I already watched this show when it was called MagiRevo. And when it was called Mage and Demon Queen. And in a world where those two stories basically perfected the "lesbian disaster courts a closed-off tsundere" isekai-adjacent fantasy yarn, there's nothing this show can offer that hasn't already been done so much better. Well, okay, the conversation in episode 3 exploring the pushy protagonist's complex self-loathing relationship with her own queerness was certainly unique, but you end up spending the rest of the show waiting in vain for it to do something that interesting ever again, only to be met with overly tropey writing, cliches, and unexpected swerves into problematic WTF territory instead. There are good ideas here buried here, but it needed a better studio to refine it to the point it needed to be, and it got stuck with Platinum Vision instead. What a shame.

Uma Musume Season 3: 4.5/10

At this point I have to wonder if even Uma Musume is getting tired of its own shtick. It's been three seasons and an OVA of the most melodramatic sports anime histrionics imaginable, and all that shouting and wailing has to get exhausting after a while. And while season 3 is still every bit as overblown and overbearing as the franchise has always been, it also feels like it's poking fun at itself for taking this nonsense so damn seriously. Two characters have a sappy emotional heart-to-heart while furiously paddling a paddleboat. Former protagonist and resident crybaby Special Week's tearful speeches are basically ignored by everyone else in the cast as they keep talking over her and tuning her out. The running gag of the Overly Serious Race Commenters get upstaged by a pair of even older, more seasoned Overly Serious Race Commenters. Hell, even the fact we only get a single idol performance at the very end seems to hint at just how weary this story's become of its own conceit. Uma Musume has always been an overthought, overdesigned mess of a show, so bloated on anime nonsense and ill-matched tropes that it rarely manages to capture anything real amidst the corporate plasticness of it all. But I'm not gonna lie, there's something equally hilarious and depressing about seeing it finally start to admit its own pointlessness.

Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions: 5/10

How good does a show have to be at character banter to make up for a failure of writing in pretty much every other respect? That's the question Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions seems willed into existence to answer. As a snappy buddy-cop comedy between an eccentric genius detective and his beleaguered straight-man sidekick, it's every bit the equal of 2011's Sherlock. As an actual mystery thriller... it is also, sadly, every bit the equal of 2011's Sherlock. I could watch the titular Ron fail upwards through his case-solving conundrums dragging the hapless rookie detective Toto with him all day. Their chemistry is infectious. It's just a shame the actual detective work is so hacky and contrived, cheap solutions to mostly dull mysteries that never give you that "Aha!" moment of seeing the puzzle pieces come together. And the overarching plot involving prestigious detective academies, shadowy criminal syndicates, and bizarre involuntary hypnosis powers feels like it purposefully ignores every opportunity to explore any ideas deeper than basic shonen moralizing. I might still pop back in for season 2 to enjoy more wacky hijinks between the leads, but if you're looking for something to scratch your mystery itch, give this one a pass.

Arknights: Perish in Frost: 5/10

Now that's more like it! Sort of. Almost. Okay, look, for the first half and change of its run, the second season of Arknights manages to be every bit the improvement on the first season I was hoping for. It streamlines the plot to keep a constant, propulsive forward momentum, pushing its characters forward and keeping the narrative lens focused so it can do justice to all its major players. And it pushes all those disparate factions on a collision course with each other that leads to constant, meaningful consequences and character building, aided by a production that hits its high water marks far more consistently than season 1. It feels like Arknights has shaken off the bloat and become the best possible version of itself, a dark action season with some genuine muscle behind it... at least until we enter the final stretch and the pacing goes absolutely out of control, speeding into a brick wall so fast and recklessly that you're barely able to understand what the fuck just happened by the time it's over. It's shockingly rushed, to the point you feel like you're watching someone recite the Wiki at you while skipping over all the connective tissue that would make these plot points make sense. It's a frustrating end to a season that came so close to being good, and I can only hope any future installments never make that mistake again.

Undead Unluck (1st Half): 5/10

Undead Unluck is host to one of the single most bonkers sci-fi settings I've ever seen, anime or otherwise. From what starts feeling like just our world with some supernatural freaks and weirdos causing havoc, it gradually reveals itself to be something more akin to a nightmarish cosmic RPG in the hands of a mad god, where none of the rules of our world can be taken for granted and reality is only ever a hair's breadth away from turning on its head. It's a deliriously creative premise to build a shonen battle manga out of, and I can't wait to see what other insanity the writers can milk out of this setup. Which is good, because otherwise, hooooooooo boy this one does not get off on a good foot. What fucking genius decided the main duo's dynamic should be built around the guy molesting the girl to make her powers activate? In what universe was building a love story out of that sexual harassment a good idea? I'm sorry, but when you've mistaken a swaggering half-naked dude-bro casually trying to outright assault his partner as cute hot-and-cold couple banter, you have officially lost the plot. Can somebody break into Shonen Jump studios and teach this company how to write a proper romance one of these days? Deku and Uraraka can't carry the whole genre on their back, guys!

Migi and Dali: 5.5/10

Is Migi and Dali a good show? I honestly don't think I could tell you. What it is, is utterly bizarre in everything in does, yet somehow kind of makes it all work? It's a Diamond-is-Unbrekable-esque off-kilter small town murder mystery, with a pair of identical twins pretending to be one kid to fool their new adoptive parents as they search for the person responsible for killing their mother years ago. The whole thing plays like a pitch-black parody of stereotypical suburban life, finding the cracks in the facade of normalcy and ripping them open until your only options are to laugh wildly or cringe wildly at the resulting desecration. And you will do plenty of both all throughout as it ping-pongs from accidental twincest to toddler play to to not-so-garden-variety abuse to Excessive English and basically everything in between. If there's an aspect of your stereotypical boring, domestic family experience that Migi and Dali can twist into a grotesque mockery of itself, it'll do just that and then some. The unfortunate side effect, though, is that it can be hard to tell where the line lies between intentional commentary and just being gross and uncomfortable for its own sake. And when that threatens to veer into some really misogynistic territory in the final act, it becomes even harder to stomach. Still, I can safely say I've never seen anything quite like this show, and considering the manga's author tragically passed away recently, you can't help but respect the people making it for honoring her memory this way.

Shy: 5.5/10

Shy is one of the rare manga I've read before the anime came out, inspired by a friend who came across it at random and it became their favorite manga of all time after just eleven chapters. I wasn't quite as swept away, and I don't think it's maintained the level of quality its first couple arcs had, but man, there's something special about this one. Which is why I am personally begging you not to watch the anime and go straight to the manga, because this adaptation really doesn't do justice to how electrifying and soul-enriching the manga can be. Masaomi Ando's a good director, but his penchant for paneling and stylistic insert shots, an aesthetic which works wonders on heavily atmospheric mood pieces like Toiled-Bound Hanako-kun and Scum's Wish, is completely at odds with the needs of a straightforward superhero battle series. The manga's artwork has this wonderfully sketchy, explosive quality that makes every action panel feel like a rush of cascading moments; here, every action scene quickly descends into a mess of moving jpegs and awkwardly placed insert frames that cripples its ability to wow you. There's enough of the manga's triumphant spirit preserved that it still shakes out decently- the orphanage arc that closes out the first season is wonderful enough to survive any imperfections from page to screen- but if the story of Teru's struggles and self-actualization touched you at all, you owe it to yourself to check out the source material to experience this story in its best form.

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really Really Really Really Really Love You: 6/10

Listen, you know me. You know how much I despise the harem genre. There's barely a single example of the form I consider anything above mediocre slop. So how did a show with this premise manage to get into my good graces? By understanding one simple fact that so few harem anime seem to realize: if you want something this inherently stupid to work? Embrace the fucking stupidity. Throw caution and common sense and good taste to the wind and just go absolutely bugnuts. Why settle for a scant five or six barely interchangeable waifu bait when you can have one hundred distinct and memorable personalities? Why waste time on cheap melodrama that nobody cares about when there are fourth walls to break and scenarios to push far beyond their logical extremes? 100 Girlfriends knows that the only proper form for this genre is sheer anarchy, going so far over-the-top with its jokes and setups that it's impossible not to get swept up in the sheer audacity of it all. And somehow, by imbuing this madcap nonsense with just a drop of sincerity, it actually makes you care about Best Boy Aijou Rentarou and his ever-growing posse of romantic partners as a strangely healthy polyamorous support system for each other. It's far from flawless and good lord is it problematic from top to bottom, but if you can vibe to its particular brand of earnestly empathetic chaos, it's an experience like none other.

Overtake: 6.5/10

Overtake is the most frustrating kind of anime: a really good show that's constantly threatening- but never fully succeeds- at being great. It has all the pieces you could want! A masterful production from veteran directer Ei Aoki that brings the world of Formula 4 racing to life with tactile, lived-in lushness. Characters who breathe far beyond the confines of the screen, rich with inner life and complex relationships where you come to love the rivals just as much as the scrappy underdog protagonists. A story that tackles genuinely moving and mature ideas as it explores what it means to give your all to something, even when the risks may be too horrifying to reckon with. It's as perfectly positioned for greatness as you could ask from a sports anime... and yet it never quite takes off the way you want it to. It's just missing that little extra something to push it over the edge, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what that might be. It's still absolutely worth a look, but as much as I liked it, I'm gonna be stewing over why I didn't love it for a while.

The Ancient Magus Bride Season 2 Part 2: 6.5/10

Alright, that's more what I was hoping for. After a frustratingly slow and plodding first half, the back half The Ancient Magus Bride's second season finally starts paying off all that torturous setup and reminding us that when it wants to, nothing goes harder than Chise's tale of trauma, abuse and recovery, especially now that she's the guiding light for another girl crawling out of pit much like the one she was once trapped in. It's genuinely powerful watching her try to help Philomena out from under a painfully familiar burden, struggling save someone like her while she's still struggling with the scars her own darkness has left on her. And whenever it's focused on that, it's as good as The Ancient Magus Bride has ever been. It's just a shame that whenever all that potent character drama gives way to fae-on-fae magical showdowns, it's some of the ugliest, clunkiest, most poorly staged action in all of fall's lineup. It utterly fails to capture the sense of eldritch awe and wonder this series' magic invokes, leaving it feeling like a shell of itself even when everything else is operating at full capacity. Hopefully, future seasons will take the time they need to bring that aspect up to par, because a series this steeped in the haunting grandeur of its aesthetic cannot afford to cut corners on that aesthetic.

Spy x Family Season 2: 7.5/10

Do my eyes deceive me? A Yor-centric arc? This show finally gives one of its nominal protagonists a turn in the spotlight after ages of underuse with a big, lengthy, consequential story that lets her shine like never before? It's like Christmas came early. I've been up and down about Spy x Family over the course of its run, but the cruise ship arc that dominates this season is everything great about this show operating at the top of its potential, and god damn is it marvelous to watch unfold. If only it was this good on a consistent basis, it would be an easy shoe-in for one of the greatest anime of the decade. But you know what? As long as it keeps delivering highlights like this, I've got nothing to complain about. At this point, Spy x Family has comfortably settled into being a reliably entertaining action-heavy family sitcom with lovable characters and occasional moments of greatness, and if that's all it ultimately amounts to, well, there are far worse things to be. Just please, for the love of god, keep Yuri off screen as much as possible.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: 8/10

So cards on the table: the live action Scott Pilgrim vs the World movie is one of my favorite films of all time. It's such a perfect explosion of geeky awesomeness from one of our greatest living directors, managing to push the medium of live action closer to anime than it ever was before or has been since. So the prospect of seeing the original comic actually made into an anime was very exciting to me. How cool would it be to finally see the source material that inspired this movie brought to life, never mind with Science Goddamn Saru pushing the animation into overdrive? But much to my shock- and eventual delight- Scott Pilgrim Takes Off had much more exciting things in mind than simply slapping a decades-old comic series on screen. Instead, it's something closer to an Evangelion-style Rebuild, taking a sharp left and remixing the story and characters with the perspective of a more mature creator, reckoning with his successes and failures alike as he re-assesses the story he was trying to tell and what parts of it still hold value today. It's Scott Pilgrim as told by someone who's outgrown the transient young adulthood central to the narrative, taking stock of his past from an older, wiser perspective and making amends where he fell short before. And as much as I might have liked a straightforward adaptation, what I got instead was so exciting and fresh that I can't complain. If only every anime was this willing to get creative with its source material.

The Apothecary Diaries (1st Half): 8.5/10

Say a prayer and set off some fireworks, folks: the shoujosei renaissance is here! After a years-long drought, the anime industry is finally remembering that stories targeted at women and girls are also worthy of high-profile prestige adaptations instead of settling for barely animated table scraps. And of all the breakout hits we've had this past year and change, none have slapped quite as hard as The Apothecary Diaries, a historical Chinese mystery drama that marries fascinating courtly intrigue with a bitterly honesty exploration of how the lowest rungs of society- women and poor people especially- are systemically crushed by the structures that govern their world. As hilarious as this show can be, it's also unnervingly frank about the darkness the Emperor's courtesans and their servants must reckon with as pawns in a patriarchal society. And it drives that message home with a truly wonderful protagonist in Maomao, a girl who just wants to keep her head down and get through life without drawing unwanted attention from the forces that could easily squash her like a bug, but has too strong a moral compass to look the other way when she sees the people around her suffering from those same injustices. It's the story of a powerless person using all the tools at her disposal to keep the world's cruelty at bay, and watching her struggle to win what small victories she's capable of against such an overwhelming power structure makes for some of the most gripping television I've watched in quite a long time. And if the second cours is even half as good as good, it will still earn its place among the years' best.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (1st Cours): 9/10

The big fantasy adventure is over. The demon king is dead, the world is at peace, and the heroes who defeated him slowly grow old and die in the new age they ushered in. All, that is, except Frieren, a near-immortal elf with such a long lifespan that a human's life is a mere drop in the ocean for her. But with the passing of her former party's leader, she realizes just how much the short time she spent on that adventure have affected her. Ten years- a mere millisecond in the life of an elf- has changed the way she sees the world more profoundly than she ever could have dreamed. So she sets out on a journey to retrace the steps of that adventure, to reconnect with her memories of the old friends she's only now realizing she wished she got to know better before it was too late. Along the way she picks up a couple of those friends' young disciples to join her party, walking reminders of the past she left behind and the future that awaits her. And through their travels, she slowly begins to understand humanity and her place within it... and all the experiences she will carry with her long after they've faded into mere memory.

I'll admit, there are times I like being an anime hipster. There's something inherently indulgent, if not exactly healthy, of feeling superior to a mass-market piece of entertainment that you're too Smart and Intellectual to be fooled by. But sometimes, you just gotta call a spade a spade. Sometimes, the weeb consensus gets it really, really right. Yes, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is every bit as self-evidently spectacular as everyone says it is, so on-its-face magical it's almost kind of insulting. It's a quiet, meditative fantasy exploration of grief, longing, the passage of time, and what it truly means to live a fulfilling life when everything you cherish within it must one day fade into nothing. It's poignant and intimate on a level that's hard to describe, yet equally grand and majestic whenever it wishes. It's also one of the funniest goddamn shows I've watched in a while, with jokes that hit from unexpected, awkward angles that left me rolling on the floor. If his work on Bocchi the Rock hadn't already proven it, this cements Keichirou Saitou as one of our greatest modern anime directors, a master of melding tones and moods and imbuing every shot with vibrant inner life. It's almost disappointing whenever it leans into action; as spectacularly animated as its battles are, it's those quiet moments of grace and warmth that truly make this show something remarkable. Bottom line, Frieren is a runaway leader for 2023's best TV anime, a show we'll be talking about for decades to come. I can't think of a better high note to start 2024 on.

Dropped:

Shield Hero Season 3 (4 Episodes)

My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-Rank Adventurer (3 Episodes)

[wellcomeoneileen]

POST 1/? ON PROCESSING QAF

The show’s ending was more sad than bittersweet to me. I really love heart wrenching and bittersweet and knew QaF would be, so I was surprised at how perturbed I was at Brian’s ending.

Many, many people have thought long and hard on this, so please accept this thought train as more of processing for myself and less as me thinking I’m adding something new/profound to a fandom I literally just joined.

There was a thematic letdown to the whole season and a technical letdown to the very last few minutes. Combined, I left with a sour taste in my mouth.

This post regards the thematic letdown, and the technical letdown can be found in this tag/later post as well.

The show built up to Brian’s big come to Jesus moment for four seasons, then went sidewise in season 5.

That’s because what I thought was his come to Jesus moment and what the show did were totally different. I never felt monogamy or settling down was the core issue for Brian in his view of self or in his relationships with other. I thought it was clear that was a proxy battle, and we were leading up to the bigger, real self-examination.

However, in this email from a show-writer, I think the writers really did see Brian as primarily needing the journey of romantic love, instead of needing an overhaul of his whole worldview: https://queerasfolkfans.livejournal.com/2034990.html

They seem to think Brian was a mostly happy guy, needing to better appreciate romantic love. He grew in that regard, and from it, learned to apply that to other relationships too, and then chose to still not place romantic love as his priority, but at least understands why it was important to have experienced romantic love. That’s not a bad arc, actually. That’s also…not Brian’s story?

My personal key issue, and what I feel like was many other fans, is not that he started and ended the show single, dancing, and proud to be different. The issue is that he started and ended the show lost, hurt, and unhealed.

Why did S5 treat examining his upbringing as something that wouldn’t matter?

Why did S5 end with Brian saying he would visit Gus all the time, Michael saying he wouldn’t, and Brian resigning himself to that?

Why did S5 tease us with Brian and Ted, but didn’t give substance to their friendship?

Ironically, it was the show that gave all of Brian’s conflicts, inciting incidents, and motivations be wrapped around his romantic arc. This shortchanges the viewers. The show writer may say viewers are ignoring Brian’s own wants by wanting him in a relationship, but the show itself didn’t let S5 Brian really have any depth unrelated to Justin. Even growth unrelated to Justin himself had Justin as some sort of impetus.

In S1, Brian only cares about his job and sex, and to a lesser degree, the gang. He gets more and more perspective as the show goes on. Critically, he loses both his wealth (Stockwell firing) and sex (testicular cancer) before season 5. The natural next question for S5 to tackle is, okay, if life isn’t exclusively about money and sex, what is it about?

Because the show didn’t allow Brian to examine this for himself, the obvious answer is Justin, the only other thing Brian has ever been passionate about on screen. But that’s a resounding no in-show. Okay, Michael and/or Gus? Also, the show said no.

So….what does Brian have going for him, then? The show only said “no” they didn’t dig deep enough to say “yes” to anything.

It’s like, the show said at the start, Brian cares only about youth and wealth and those things can’t sustain you. Agreed!

Then, the show said during its duration, romantic love can’t sustain you. Agreed!

But then…it stopped there? What IS sustaining Brian?? It was so obviously set up to have him embrace his community, particularly, Gus, and move beyond the reactionary, traumatized kid he started the show as.

In a good environment, young people can explore several aspects of themselves. Whatever myriad of values they have, they can find outlets for it. And Brian does clearly have several values:

Competitive, creative, problem-solver, likes a challenge, protective, stubborn, a love for flaunting the rules, and a struggle between independence and love of close-knit community.

But the abuse, rejection, and homophobia of his parents did not allow him time to safely explore these facets of himself. He had to quickly cling to whatever would give him positive attention, and he built his life around reactivity to what his parents valued.

He did not get the chance in childhood to deeply know himself. Season 5 would have done well to allow him to explore more of himself, and detach himself from simply doing things he parents would hate, and discover what he, regardless of what they may think, does love. He was primed to do in S5. But they just had him react out of fear more. His wild lifestyle and his settled down lifestyle were both fear-based reactions to trauma in his life.

He took up with tricks out of fear of losing Justin to Hollywood, then he proposed out of fear of losing Justin (and Michael). I would have loved to have seen Brian be allowed to make choices without being put in a corner first. That would have been wonderful character development and allowed more depth to him.  AND if those choices weren’t relationship focused until the end of the season, even better. The whole season could have been “If I am no longer THAT, then what am I?” and it didn’t have to have relationship drama until the end for a grand finale.

Ironically, the show itself was only reacting instead of finding their own stance, just like Brian. They wanted a character who wasn’t only into his romantic love. But they never said what he WAS into. 

In S5, they were perfectly setup, but totally fell short of completing Brian’s arc. He starts the show prioritizing sex and money. He does seem to learn that’s not sustainable. He wrestles with prioritizing romantic love, and the show says that doesn’t suit him. And yet, at the end, Michael and Gus are in places that Brian can’t really touch. So, we don’t know what exactly he should prioritize. What’s his new value set? His worldview? Literally, what will he does with his time now??

By all means, allow Brian to live a non traditional life! But they wasted time with going back and forth on MARRIAGE instead of letting us see Brian try and fail and learn what a life looks like not centered on money, sex, or childhood trauma.

Next posts will detail what I think are reasonable plotlines for S5, the small technical issue for the big last scene flop of S5, and will dive deeper into my thoughts on Brian’s value system that I mentioned in passing here :)

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 27/02/2024

Beautiful Dreamer

Season 7 Featured on: The Year of Grand Dad Sound Selection [Side B] Also on: Now That's What I Call Quality! 3

Ripped by minindo

Over the course of this month, I've been having what's best described as an inner battle with myself over which rip from the One Direction takeover of Season 7 to feature, which was really not something I was expecting when the event first began. The timeframe around 9/11 on SiIvaGunner is typically where some of the channel's most subversive and fun events happen, such as the Metal Gear Rising-themed event of Season 4 Episode 2 as described in SUNGORE, or the Not Funny Didn't Laugh day of the Season prior that gave us Sex - Steve Harvey. To just dedicate a day to One Direction instead? To me, it was a little bit of a letdown.

And then, I heard the rips. Oh LORD, the rips.

A lot of my disappointment really came from without giving it a chance, since I lacked much of any connection to One Direction as a band - like Justin Bieber in BELIEBERDANSEN, like Sean Kingston in Crazy Noisy Beautiful Girls and Take You To The Desert, these pop sensations were names I'd probably heard whispers of now and then, but didn't really have any sort of emotional connection to. But over the years, the SiIva rippers have gotten so EXCEPTIONALLY good at twisting my perception of preexisting music completely on its head through their sheer creativity and proficiency - and it was those factors that, after a LOT of rumination, has led me to pick Beautiful Dreamer as the debut rip for One Direction on the blog. To say that it blew me away would be an understatement.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first: Lucid Dreamer is a track using the 3/4ths time signature, a far less standard rhythm than the 4/4th time signature that most pop music, What Makes You Beautiful included, uses. This difference in time signatures between songs makes the mashup process far more of a challenge, and overcoming that challenge is thus a sort of accomplishment. Hoopache back in Season 1 garnered quite a bit of attention back in the day for this very reason, and time signature manipulation in general is what makes rips like He4rt4che and 4SGOR3 such fascinating listens. This isn't even to mention how Touhou music in general, and Lucid Dreamer not excluded, has a very distinctly hectic, melodically rapid-fire feel to it - one that ripper minindo has shown excellent understanding of prior with rips like Nostalgic Blood of the Gregg ~ Old Source, but now had to take to a whole new level.

With Beautiful Dreamer, minindo came out fucking swinging, and left several of his fellow SiIvaGunner members/contributors in absolute awe in the comments. "i think this rip just created a new genre", says current channel manager MtH, while the team's very own Touhou expert Princess Sylvyspirit of NIGHTMARESCAPE 〜Unrestrained HyperCam 2〜 (Final Boss Phase 2) fame declares it her favorite Touhou rip on the ENTIRE channel. Her own analysis brings up several excellent points I agree with: compared to the days of Hoopache, the adjustment to 3/4ths time done here feels incredibly seamless, with several small manual tweaks to the instrumentation of What Makes You Beautiful that obscure its 4/4ths origin incredibly well. But the most important part Sylvy points out is of course the the highlight of Beautiful Dreamer; the additions minindo made to make the rip truly go above and beyond.

Sure, the rip already bangs as a mashup on its own terms, One Direction's vocals going from a solo to a quintet with the chorus of both songs, as well as becoming pitch-shifted to Lucid Dreamer's melody at the same portion, creates a fantastic sense of buildup and energetic release, a hype that drives the first chorus - but past that chorus, the song suddenly comes to a slower-paced section. A section COMPLETELY new to Beautiful Dreamer, an addition of flavor done by minindo himself. The section is impressive in its own right, but its utilized here as another form of tension buildup for the second chorus, whereupon it practically SOARS back into the song with an added heaviness to the volume and mixing compared to the first chorus.

Again - all of this, was for an event where the expectation was One Direction mashups and melodyswaps. Beautiful Dreamer not only fulfills that goal on a baseline level, but manages to be a full-on musical journey, almost as a flex on minindo to show just how good he's gotten from his time on the channel. I don't know for sure WHY he chose One Direction Day to be when he revealed his true power to us all, but I'm immensely happy for it - it, along with a few other What Makes You Beautiful Rips that I may cover in the future, have given me a newfound affection for the song that I didn't know the event would bring me until now. Its the second-coming of the Sean Kingston effect, but with SiIva's most cracked rippers of today at the helm.

[themattress]

Hype and Letdown

Disappointment is a factor in media as it is in life, but it's never worse than when you were actively hyped and excited for the thing that then causes the disappointment. Everyone knows that feeling, and I am no exception, which is why I'm listing examples of it from my life.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: This first example is a strange one as it actually lived up to the hype for the most part. Good graphics, fun gameplay, stellar music, excellent voice-acting (save for Terra and Aqua), and a pretty solid story overall. The problem is that's all surface level. Beneath that surface, this game marked the turning point where the KH series went from a fun Disney/Square crossover to Tetsuya Nomura's personal vanity project, marred by both increasingly complicated lore and increasingly simplistic characters. I felt gutted after I first saw the game's secret ending video, "Blank Points", for I knew the KH I loved was over.

"Absolute Power": The first season of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien had been testing my patience as is, but I felt it might prove all worth it when Ultimate Kevin came along. I loved the evil Kevin 11 in the original series, so him coming back was exciting and I was interested in what ethical dilemmas might arise from fighting him given the circumstances. And then the two-part finale just shit the bed in almost every way possible: characters behaving like idiots, new plot points being thrown in and promptly wasted, an unpleasant atmosphere pervading the whole thing, and an ending where all problems are literally solved with the press of a button followed by the status quo insultingly resuming as though none of this ever happened. This finale made it official: I hated Ultimate Alien, and it retroactively tarnished my opinion of Alien Force too.

"Team Rocket VS Team Plasma!": This climactic two-parter in the Pokémon: Best Wishes anime series was heavily marketed, but then the day after the lead-in aired Japan was struck by a massive earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant meltdown which caused the episodes to be pulled from broadcast and later banned from ever airing due to behind-the-scenes drama. Thankfully, we now have the full scripts and this nifty symphonic short video of all footage.

Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two: I loved the original Epic Mickey for the Nintendo Wii, warts and all, so I was excited for the sequel which promised 2-player co-op and a playable Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Then I played it. And it sucked. Aside from a few inspired moments here and there, on the whole it was one of the worst video game sequels I've ever played. It's so objectively bad, in fact, that it killed both the Epic Mickey series and the studio that made it.

"Endgame": Going in to the first season finale of Avatar: The Legend of Korra, all momentum was going the series' way. And while it wasn't entirely bad - the stuff with Amon and Tarrlok was fantastic, and the battle between Asami and her father was powerful - on the whole it felt like a deflating balloon, with piss-poor wrap-ups to plot threads and character arcs, capped off with a Deus ex Machina that's laughable even by Avatar standards followed by an abrupt, unearned-feeling resolution. Thank God this show got more seasons to improve after this.

Episode N: Team Plasma in Pokémon: Best Wishes lets me down a second time! Ironically enough, I actually like Episode N and hold few objections to its actual content. The problem is that I was hyped up for it being the remainder of the series....not just 14 bloody episodes which is then followed by an island-hopping filler arc to end the series on! As a result, the final episode of Episode N doesn't feel right...the battle with Reshiram at the White Ruins should have been so much more climactic than it ended up being. It's not bad, just...disappointing.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc V - Season 3: For the first two-thirds of this series, I was enjoying it. It was the most fun the anime franchise has been since the earlier seasons of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. But then the third and final season almost impressively managed to flush all that goodwill and potential down the toilet, to an extent where I was officially turned off of any future Yu-Gi-Oh! anime.

The Netflix MCU - Remember the mid 2010s? Daredevil Seasons 1 and 2, Jessica Jones Season 1, Luke Cage Season 1....they were all great, and so for a while it was really looking like the MCU was going to repeat its theatrical success on Netflix. Then Iron First Season 1 happened, followed by The Defenders, and the letdown was palpable to everyone, including me. Only Daredevil Season 3 managed to recapture the magic afterward, while Jessica Jones Seasons 2 and 3, Luke Cage Season 2, Iron Fist Season 2 and both seasons of The Punisher continued this small-screen MCU's downward spiral until it was all cancelled.

"The Final Battle" - Now, I wasn't all that hyped for this since it was the finale of Once Upon a Time's 6th season, which by and large had been pretty wretched and reinforcing my view that the show should have ended at 5 seasons. But this two-part finale still promised to be a conclusion to the whole series up to this point, so I had somewhat heightened expectations. And for the most part, it sadly didn't live up to them. It's not terrible and in some areas it's surprisingly inspired, but ultimately it was only further proof that this show had lost its way.

Love Live Sunshine - Season 2: I adored the first season of Love Live Sunshine, so naturally I was looking forward to the follow-up. And it was good. Sometimes great. But it was a far cry from the subversive brilliance that was Season 1, to the point where what should have been Aqours' biggest moment fell flat in comparison to the more simple victory from Season 1's finale. Mercifully, the Over the Rainbow movie was not only a return to form but retroactively made Season 2 stronger, solidifying Love Live Sunshine as my favorite Love Live series.

Thor: Ragnarok - The title had me hyped, as did the initial trailer. When it came out, critics gave it rave reviews and it made me more excited to see it. But when I actually saw it, I felt underwhelmed. There is a lot of good in it, and the final act set in Asgard is legit phenomenal, but the majority of the film felt like the director and actors doing a SNL sketch loosely based on the Planet Hulk comic storyline, with Thor and Loki often feeling like comedic parodies of themselves much like Luke Hemsworth and Matt Damon played early on, and the poor reception to the lackluster The Dark World used as an excuse to disrespect the traditional Thor mythos. And Thor in Avengers: Endgame and Thor: Love and Thunder is the direct consequence of this, so I'm proud to have never been aboard with it as a creative direction.

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - Here's a funny one for you: the most oft-cited reason for disappointment in this movie, Luke Skywalker and the plotline around him, was actually something that really worked for me! That whole plotline was the highlight of the movie for me and I adore it to this day; people just don't seem to appreciate what it was trying to say, but I very much do. My disappointment with The Last Jedi was with everything else, and how rudderless and meaningless it seemed to make the Sequel Trilogy's narrative. These mostly unenjoyable, bumbling heroes fighting against these more enjoyable but equally bumbling villains in a retread of an old conflict just did not interest me. Episode IX had no hook for me.

Voltron: Legendary Defender - Seasons 7 and 8: In a bottle, many of the episodes in these seasons are still enjoyable. But when taken as a whole, this final third of the series was a letdown that seemed to actively betray much of what had been established before. The actual ending in particular was an absurd clusterfuck that did multiple characters all kinds of dirty.

Kingdom Hearts III - So, I had long since checked out from the KH series, but Kingdom Hearts III was a special case. The hype that came from years in Development Hell was such that not even I was immune; I grew increasingly curious in how the game would turn out. Just like Birth by Sleep, it was all good on the surface level but rotten beneath...though in this case, even the surface level was notably cracked and suffering from issues that no game that took this long to make has any excuse suffering. The DLC made things better and worse.

"Cleaved" - Rowdy C. Moore's thoughts are basically my own. God, what a trainwreck!

Frozen II - The initial teaser trailer made it look like this movie was going to be epic. It was not. Beyond Elsa's new songs and plotline of becoming essentially the Avatar, nothing even particularly sticks in my memory. I can only hope that Frozen III and Frozen IV do better.

Steven Universe Future - Another case of something that wasn't bad, just disappointing as it needed more time and episodes to be properly fleshed out into what it should be. There was way too much in here to be adequately explored and delivered in just 20 episodes, with the finale especially feeling anti-climactic compared to Steven Universe's and The Movie.

Higurashi: Gou/Sotsu - Initially marketed as a reboot, it ended up being a stealth sequel to Higurashi....a work that never needed a sequel. Things only got worse when the culprit was revealed to be a character-assassinated good guy, Umineko and Cicconia elements got shoehorned in despite not fitting, the Answer Arcs all being boring retreads of the Question Arcs, and the finale being absolute nonsense. At least the manga adaptation is decent.

The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero - Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, for all their technical issues, had one of the stronger stories in the game series, so I was excited for the DLC expansion to continue it. The end result, however, makes the game feel like a three-act structure where none of the acts gel together as a cohesive whole. "The Teal Mask" has a great setting and featured Pokémon, but the plot is poorly written and it hamstrings you in a way that makes the characters of Carmine and Kieran frustrating and unpleasant. "The Indigo Disk" spends most of its time in a location that feels way far-removed from the rest in the game and engaging in a mostly filler plot populated by under-developed characters before returning to Area Zero in a visit that doesn't remotely compare to the original and making the big treasure be the turtle Pokémon already used and used better in the current anime, all while Carmine and Kieran continue to frustrate as now does Briar. Game Freak, what are you doing?

Joker: Folie a Deux - The most recent example, which inspired this post. I loved the Hell out of the original Joker, which featured Joaquin Phoenix in an Oscar-winning performance as a Joker origin story in a Gotham City by way of Martin Scorsese. I was initially troubled when a sequel was announced since the movie was clearly a standalone and didn't need a sequel, but all of the casting info, production stills and initial trailer made it look like it was going to be a high-quality film even if not as good as the original. What we actually got was a drawn-out, boring, pointless movie that is actively and maddeningly insulting to the original and anyone who enjoyed it. I genuinely do not understand how this garbage was allowed to be made.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

🍊🐈‍⬛

🍊- Oluwande Boodhari

i love him so so much and he was done so dirty by s2 in a way that’s not entirely explained by the studio forcing them to cut the polycule plot. like the biggest issue is that there’s not enough of him and he doesn’t do much in s2 and that would obviously be fixed if the studio hadn’t axed the storyline he was part of but i’m also confused by why they completely dropped the plot thread of him as a captain/leader and also why they made him so stupid in s2. like the joke abt him not knowing how to pronounce china (and in general the whole joke of the crew not knowing abt china existing) was like… very weird and unfunny. idk zheng said “ur the smart one” in 2.01 and then he just had a bunch of himbo moments and then sadly was sidelined the rest of the season bc wbd sucks ass. the dumbing him down just did not feel consistent w his s1 characterization and i didn’t love it

🐈‍⬛️- Frenchie

quite possibly my favorite crew member. goofy and silly but also smart and scheming. i want him and ed to be best friends (and maybe more…?) so so so so bad, i think abt his very brief and subtle s1 interactions w ed every day of my fucking life. underrated frenchie line: in 1.04 when lucius says he never got to see the world and he’s just like “it’s a bit of a letdown, just sorta rocky and flat, rocky and flat.” the jimi hendrix looks in s2 are so good too especially the tits out emo look and the knife claws. i want to know abt the box in his brain. i also want to know more abt his scientific beliefs.

send an emoji to my ask box and I'll give my opinion on an Our Flag Means Death character