#I realized I design my characters like I have a personal vendetta against the animators | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rwbyconversations · 4 years ago

Text

RWBY Volume 7 Review

Two weeks out from Volume 8 and I finally cared enough to write this. Go team I guess.

Part of it came down to my feelings on Volume 7. It’s a complicated season that’s made me realize a lot of my overall feelings on RWBY as a series, particularly a lot of the less flattering feelings. Volume 7 is just... frustrating in general, as for all the good that it does have, and it does have a lot of great elements to it, it’s let down by a frustrating script and writing choices that feel distinctly amateurish, especially as the series moves on and gets better and better looking each year. There’s elements and kernals here of great character writing, season-wide arcs that land in a really good way and get me emotionally invested in the characters. But on the other... Ren only has two hundred words the entire season and you can tell!

Volume 7 is a season of dizzying highs, some of the best moments of the entire franchise... and some of the series lows. It’s a season where there’s no production reason for its shortcomings... it just comes down to an awkward script that focuses on the wrong elements far too often. Let’s talk about that. In a very long and drawn out manner.

Thanks to @jamesbranwen, @h-e-m-o-goblin and @retro-riffraff for help with GIFs and consultation on this review.

1) The Good Stuff!

A) Atlas is very pretty!

I cannot stress enough how on a set level, Volume 7 is leaps and bounds above the other seasons in sheer environmental detail and setting dressing. Mantle has a great atmosphere with its New York influences, the smog covered backgrounds and oppressive streets and alleys. Ironwood’s office which is deliberately designed to evoke astronomy themes to represent James’ love for the stars. The cold oppressive atmosphere of the Schnee Manor and how Jacques has begun warping it to glorify him with only lip service paid to Nicholas in public. Penguins!

There’s a lot of great set design work that went into this season and the crew deserve props for it. Genuinely.

B) Ironwood’s arc is the best character arc in the entire franchise

Yeah just wearing my heart on my sleeve there, I fucking love Ironwood and his character arc here in Volume 7 is the best written arc of the show. I simp for the tin man who just wants to do the right thing. This one season of content is better than a lot of the series-wide material being honest. I went back to James’s big volumes in the last month to rewatch the show and it’s interesting to see the early seeds in retrospect for where his arc goes. His need to protect everyone he can and the brutish measures he considers necessary for such an act, his conflicting loyalties towards Ozpin that manifest in both frustration at Oz’s seeming apathy to the growing conflict, but also desperate desire for validation from Ozpin that what’s he doing is the right call. After the Mistral seasons set up James as going off the deep end following Volume 3, having him open the season with an earnest smile, an immediate apology for the team’s arrest and trusting them with his plans for Amity and Salem is a jarring but pleasant surprise. He’s not been slacking off, he’s been trying to keep the world together in the way he thinks is best. He lets his guard down around the heroes and we see the good man underneath, which makes the moments where he raises his walls hurt all the more. While Em and Merc are still probably my favorite characters period, James is absolutely my favorite character in Volume 7 and Top 5 favorite characters series-wide. I’m very eager to see where he goes from here. He also rocks the beard and fixed his T-Rex arms so James came out of the washing machine that is Volume 7��s costume design. He truly is the Best Boi, and I cannot give Jason Rose enough credit for his performance this year. He hit every note of Ironwood’s character perfectly and I wish the fandom would give him more credit for giving James as much life as he does.

Oh, and as the obligatory comment on mlm rep that I am known for getting obsessively weird anon hate over: IronQrow hug nearly had me crying on a convention floor from how goddamn soft it was. Remember conventions? Ah good times.

This just... hits me... ya know? Seeing him lower his guard so much to come in for a hug just shows how isolated he’s let himself become to let himself have this moment of contact... Godamnit James. Also this is the second time after Martial Arcs that two guys hug and I really liked their ship for the following hiatus.

C) Soft Qrow hours are nice

Qrow’s a good guy, he went through a lot of bad stuff in Volume 6 but now he’s on the other side and purged his voice of the demon within. I think Volume 7 was a very good year for Qrow overall. It was great to see him interacting with more characters his age and lowering his own guard. His moments of letting the facade drop around James and Clover especially are great expansion for his character. Jason Liebritch hit the ground running as Qrow and gave him a far more dynamic range than I think Vic could. While I wish Qrow going off alcohol had been given more of a focus as it’s kind of done off-handedly that he’s gone cold turkey and otherwise doesn’t get brought up barring his revulsion at the wine in the Schnee Manor, he overall had a great year. And trust me I’ll get to the fights later, I have a lot more I can say about the bird boi there.

D) I liked the Ace Ops!

I was ambivilent towards the Ace Ops on first watching. They’re kinda underdeveloped in the context of the season at large and most people immediately pegged them as a miniboss squad/fodder for Salem to kill. But in rewatch they do still get to shine, if not as brightly. They’re very enjoyable. Clover especially is just really fun in retrospect, I love cocky fighters in general, and he was infectiously enjoyable (I’ve already covered the FG stuff in the past, not doing it again). Marrow came a close second because... well it’s Marrow, he is The Best Boi. Harriet got points for being a punchgirl which is always cool, I liked how her Semblance was shown and being cocky while being able to back it up is always a win. Elm and Vine are tied for dead last, I like the body diversity Elm introduces with her muscles and Vine... existed... but overall I think with the time they had, they did get to establish themselves well. I wish I could say that about their relationship with Team RWBYORNJ but this is the Nice Section so we’ll leave it there for now.

This is one of the best shots of the entire season. I adore it. God I like the Teryx design.

E) God the villains rocked this year!

I am a villain whore. I own that. I will embrace that monkier. But when they’re as cool as this, I feel validated in this Chilli’s tonight. Watts and Tyrian really make the season shine and don’t have a dud scene all season. They have great chemistry together, shining bright in even the weakest or most mediocre episodes. Watts went from “Oh yeah you exist” tier to “Oh yeah you rule” tier. His vendetta against Ironwood feels so real and pre-established, even though this season is the first time it’s ever come up. Watts just ozzes style in everything he does. The animators bring him to life and make every step, every flick of his twist and even just how he moves his eyes all bleed contempt. He’s such a rat and I love him! Chris Sabat finally gets to stretch his wings after a few years playing Watts as just Evil Scientist Guy, and he makes the most of it.

And Tyrian remains an absolute treat. He didn’t get much in V6 but here he takes center stage with Watts and also gets so much impact because of it. All the little twitches, and tilting of his heads, and dramatic gestures, he’s still just so goddamn cool to watch and we even get a little backstory of him. I know he’s irredeemable. But I just want to watch Tyrian kill people and scream. Like hot damn his line “THE GRIMM SHOULD HAVE DESTROYED OUR ENEMIES, NOT MADE THEM FRIENDS!” is so fucking raw. He’s having fun destablizing a nation with his boyfriend!

“You want more chaos than a Grimm invasion?” “If anyone on Remannt can do it, wouldn’t it be you?” There is no heterosexual explanation for how these two look at each other and yes this is me outing myself as a Nuts and Volts fan.

Watts and Tyrian really do become the absolute highlights of the season alongside James. They have a great dynamic and even during their more slower moments there’s so much care and thought put into their every mannerism. Animators, seriously, great job, I love what you did. And their fights... we’ll get there. But they’re so goddamn good.

Look they even run the same! They’re soulmates!

Honorary mention to Salem by the way. She’s only in two scenes but her presence is felt throughout Ironwood’s arc and his growing fear of her and she damn well delivers when she shows up. That shot of her arriving in person is a killer shot to end on as well.

Oh and I guess Cinder and Neo exist don’t they? Eh, we’ll come back to them.

F) Oscar got a character arc!

Finally! He did it! He got an arc that began, continued and ended all onscreen! It only took four tries!

But yeah Oscar had a really good set of scenes in Volume 7. I like him being the first to confront Ruby on the Ironwood lie, bringing up the hypocrisy after their condemning of Ozpin just last season. I like him having a more forward role (outside of not getting to be part of the celebration in episode 4 what the hell guys), and that he’s the big link between RWBY and Ironwood was a great call. Having Ozpin shelved for one more season so Oscar can take center-stage was an inspired choice. I love his dynamic with Ironwood, and how James closing himself off emotionally gets reflected in how he begins slipping in how he refers to Oscar, starting off as treating him and Oz as separate, ending with him gunning Oscar down as he doesn’t care anymore to differentiate the two.

My big issues with Oscar’s arc are that I’m first of all annoyed at the lack of followup on the Oscar stuff from V6, I’m still waiting for Qrow to apologize for punching Oscar guys! I also really wish Neo’s first attack wasn’t offscreen. CRWBY’s cliffhanger fetish meant I got to break out the Offscreen Pine jokes again. And of course, the Neo hallway punch was a bit bullshit.

G) (Most of) The fights are amazing

There’s no punchline. These fights are great, two of them are in my Top 10 Series Wide fights list and at least the duds aren’t Volume 5 bad.

If you’d told me before Volume 7 that Watts would get an extended firefight with James, I’d have felt that a bit cheap as Watts to me doesn’t feel like a fighter, more a planner who hides behind armies of mechanical soldiers. But damn if they didn’t sell me on Watts “You’ve yeed your last haw” Watts whipping out a Glock just to spite James.

This is another one of my favorite shots in the entire series.

Ironwood vs Watts is potentially my favorite fight in the entire series, and if it’s not, it’s easy Top 3 alongside Yang vs Mercury and Pyrrha vs CRDL/Mercury. It makes great use of Amity in the abandoned gravity biome meant for SSSN vs JNPR, with Ironwood and Watts deftly moving around in a manner that very easily could have been difficult to track with the constantly shifting gravity, but the crew do their best to keep it coherent as to who’s where. The credits showed their dedication also stretched into visual continuity, as James and Arthur’s route throughout the Arena was carefully considered so they’d loop around organically.

This is what I mean when I say the crew went above and beyond to keep things clean.

Ironwood vs Watts could have easily failed to impress, given its lack of choreography on the level the series usually does, but the team’s efforts went instead into showing a situation that lets Watts get a dragged out battle: James wins whenever he closes the distance here, so Arthur’s constantly on the run and being forced to tamper with the arena. Great camerawork, a GOD TIER song from Caleb Hyles that I’m still listening to today, and two characters with a fantastic history coming to blows makes for easily the best fight of the season and a series-wide highlight. Watching it develop from storyboards, to mocap, to animations and the full version is a delight to see. This is what CRWBY can do when everything comes togehter. The orchestra’s all tuned. It’s a goddamn symphony.

THIS is my favorite shot of the season.

Tyrian also gets to shine with his two battles this year. His alley fight with Qrow, Robyn and Clover is short but sweet, the corvid and the scorpion especially trading brutal blows in the cramped space. Qrow goes full Devil May Cry with his style-switching here, Harbinger being swapped between sword, tonfa and gun forms freely alongside Qrow applying The Power of Punching. His 1v1v1 with Clover and Qrow though is the true highlight of the season in terms of choreography. It’s lighting-fast, and has some impeccable shot work. Qrow gets to use his scythe with deliberate nods to the Red Trailer, Clover gets to shut up everyone who doubted his weapon, and Tyrian is just along for the ride and he makes the most of it. It’s frentic, it’s heart-pounding, it’s everything a fight should be.

Honorary mentions as well go to Ace Ops vs the Geist, which is just really fun and has a great backing music choice, the opening battle with Sabre having Ruby’s obligatory ten seconds of fighting that come at the start of every new era of the series, and the Ace Ops vs RWBY fight which has some good choreo in places.

H) Winter and Penny have good chemistry

I don’t have a ton to add here, I just like their dynamic and how they advance each other’s arcs. It’s nice writing. I also like Winter apologizing to Penny when she’s angry at Jacques and takes it out on Penny by accident with the “You wouldn’t understand” line.

Penny as a Maiden is a nice idea, I think her new design is cute. Penny says trans rights.

Those are a lot of my favorite things about Volume 7. It’s a killer season when it’s firing on all cylinders but unfortunately... it often misfires in frustrating ways, many of which are unfortunately due to core emblematic problems with the series that won’t go away.

2) The Bad Stuff

A) The costumes

It’s been a over year. It’s low hanging fruit. I don’t care. Most of them are still not good and they’re ludicrously over-designed.

Blake’s in a fetish suit and I wonder how she even goes to the bathroom. Weiss just looks like an abino Sabre alt, Yang is what a Halloween costume site would describe as “Sexy UPS Driver,” (why does she have a thigh window) Ruby... looks fine, it’s one of her better costumes. Jaune’s hair is silly, Ren’s model has lost some muscle definition and he looks like an e-boy, Nora’s costume really doesn’t fit the Atlas visual design and looks like a rejected Kingdom Hearts costume. Cinder’s is too black and I actually can’t track her in darker scenes because of it (which is kinda bad during... a fight scene... where I need to know where she is...), Neo looks like a Ren Fair cosplayer doing a bit for her OnlyFans, Winter’s is anatomically weird with super skinny arms and legs, and Blake’s hair is a fucking hate crime.

Qrow’s is one I liked at first but in retrospect it does feel like a downgrade. To quote @h-e-m-o-goblin from a Discord chat:

in a show like rwby, where color is such a vital defining aspect of every character, a cohesive colorscheme goes a long way. qrow's original outfit works great in this regard. neutral tones. greys, whites, and blacks, with red accents that pop against the otherwise sparse color. it's good! it's distinctive! it doesn't feel cluttered and it doesn't look like a clown vomited on him! the subdued colors really lend themselves to the grey, cynical energy qrow seems to carry with him. a literal lack of color in his life. the outfit itself feels like something he would wear; a combination of "clearly trying to look cool" and "a little disheveled and laid back." the design breathes, it isn't cluttered. let's contrast this with his vol 7 outfit. a lot of outfits in vol 7 suffer from this problem, but first and foremost it doesn't look like something he would wear. where his old outfit had a casual feel to it, his new look feels like someone dressed him up for a family christmas dinner. it's too... tidy. now of course you could argue this is him "cleaning up his life," but i dont feel like you have to sacrifice his own personal style in order to convey that. if that's really what they were going for, they easily could have just, oh i dont know, given him a cape that isn't tattered???

remember how i said qrow's original outfit really made his colors pop? how less is more when it comes to having a character with a specific color theme? vol 7 butchered that. we suddenly have articles of clothes that are tinted with greenish blue tones, browns, and with gold trim? on TOP of the old colors he already had in his design. it's muddy. it's ugly. the burgundy vest is fine, if they wanted to work more color into his outfit they should have done it that way throughout, shades of grey and different tones of RED. his COLOR. it just feels like they tacked so much on there without a second thought and i really think he deserves better. its just. such a mess.

The ones I did like were Watts’ new coat (I like the puffy hood), Penny’s is fine, the Ace Ops look great, Ironwood’s new outfit is stellar (those last six are great examples of how to do a lot with just primary colors of white and red), Neon’s Jolyne cosplay is cute and Flynt is slick. Otherwise, Volume 7 feels like it’s taken a lot of the wrong lessons from the costume design of the earlier seasons. Less is often more but now it feels like they have a pathological aversion to empty space on the costumes, leading them to feel like... costume vomit for lack of a better word. I didn’t love the Mistral outfits, but their modifications at least were carried by how many of them called back to the Fall of Beacon and emphasized the themes of loss in Volume 4. The new Atlas outfits... don’t have that shared theme. It feels like a hodgepodge of different design influences without trying to find a way to unify them. It’s like putting Baki the Grappler beside My Little Pony, they just fail to mesh.

Also for fuck’s sake already CRWBY just give the girls muscles already.

2) JNR suck and Ren’s arc is glorified character assassination

I don’t love JNR. They’re fine, but the show has arguably not needed them for a while and while I’ve liked them all at different points, it’s never been adoration outside of Ren in Volume 4. I was cool with the idea of them staying in Argus to help cover Mistral after its Huntsmen were wiped out, and Volume 7 has... made me wish they did that.

Jaune is just comic relief, and it kinda blows for later reasons but the big one is that he’s just not very funny. His big role in Volume 7 is basically to crosswalk some kids so we can have a joke scene during the Mantle Battle where Jaune uses his tactical genius to teach people to walk in single file. I feel like at this point Miles is just actively trying to kill Jaune’s fandom out of spite for how badly Jaundice was received. He’s never allowed to be cool or try and redeem himself. His hatedom aren’t going to stop hating Jaune because he gets more comedy guys. They’re going to stop when you write Jaune well. It’s a bummer he got some genuinely great upgrades for his sword and shield and never gets to use them outside of the opening.

Nora exists. She got a surprising amount of focus this season in that she got focus of any kind. I liked her confronting Ironwood over his choking of Mantle because we know she was once the kind of person Ironwood would have been stifling. I like her being the one to realize the loophole in Jinn’s “You can’t” line. I don’t like much else about Nora this year, or at least the Nora the writing team are pushing. She’s not funny like Jaune but Nora just absorbs so much screentime in the first half with her constant shrieking. Sam Ireland has good range but making Nora into Discount Harley Quinn is pushing her out of it. She sounds shrill, making Nora sound like she has no heart outside of the election rally. A shrill voice is one thing. A shrill voice that never lands a single joke? Yeah that character is tainted by association.

And Ren... oh God Ren what happened to you.

The Volume 7 commentary confirmed a suspicion of mine that Ren’s arc was heavily cut down from what was planned. Even watching V7 I could tell his arc was bare-bones at best, and it’s downright character assassination in places. Why is he suddenly so cold to Nora? Why is he now so obsessed with training? Why does he side with Ironwood for all of... one line which is this last between episodes 7 and 11. Ren only has two hundred words of dialoge in Volume 7 and they feel so weird in places. Ren goes from seemingly disliking Nora, to kissing her, to never referencing the kiss, to partaking in the Worst Scene Of The Season, all with no consistency. It’s not even threadbare. Ren’s arc just has no connecting tissue for so much of it! It’s insane how badly Ren was hurt by this, and I shudder to wonder how bad his Volume 8 arc will be because you know that was one of the first plotlines they cut down on when they inevitably overreached again.

I don’t know how they made Renora kissing feel unearned? But by God they found a way with how much of a trainwreck Ren’s writing is in regards to tainting this.

If Ironwood is an example of RWBY doing character writing well, Ren is the mirror image of how badly they can do. JNR really suffered from Volume 7 (also fun fact, Ren has about 200 words of dialogue? Ironwood has 4400). Maybe not to the level of irredeemable dislike? But very close to being on the same tier as Cinder of “Just go away already.” I’m not looking forward to their content in Volume 8.

3) RWBY themselves are poorly handled in Volume 7

It’s unfortunate that the actual title characters of the series are also some of this season’s weaker links. RWBY feel... superfluous to this season in a way they’ve never felt before. It’s baffling how much of the season doesn’t change if you just don’t include them, and apparently Volume 7′s first draft? Was even worse.

The commentary says that many of the RWBY moments were added later in production. Stuff like Ruby and Renora at the rally, Blake and Yang’s talk with Robyn and Ruby and Qrow’s chat were all either added in near the end of the writing or were “low priority” enough that they could have been cut which is... veyr alarming that’s stuff even the main protags have to worry about!

Ruby feels half-baked. I was looking forward to her in V7 after how V6 gave her a more dynamic personality and the focus she got in Brunswick, and having Penny’s return had me interested in seeing Ruby grapple with her emotions about it. She watched Penny die, how would it influence her to see Penny back and OK? Good question, we never get to see it. Ruby’s just OK with Penny’s return, the one time they touch on it Penny immediately glosses over it. Ruby just goes back to her old happy go lucky persona where any and all negative emotions are immediately forced down instead of confronting them and growing from them. I’m getting a little tired of Ruby bottling her grief and being teased about finally getting her snapping like a Twix Bar. We finally got her crying and it lasted all of ten seconds. And it doesn’t help that Ruby’s still getting shafted for fights. Her scythe choreography has no excuse being as flacid as it is now after Qrow vs Clover showed they can do scythe fighting! Why is Ruby being upstaged by (let’s be real) a supporting character! Why is she being limited to ten seconds of good combat then nothing for the rest of the season outside of flimsily swinging it or shooting. It’s disappointing, especially after how good V6 Ruby was.

I swear, Gravity’s not just my favorite episode of the season just because Ruby finally cries in it.

Weiss was kinda just done dirty though. At least Ruby has a good outfit. Weiss confronting her father has been a long standing plot thread for the series, it’s been Weiss’s Big Thing since the White Trailer. And when Jacques finally appears, he’s very... bland. He’s just evil corporate dude who exists less as an obstacle for Weiss and more just a roadblock for the plot through the election. Weiss finally gets a chance to take her father down and work to redeem her family name... but instead of earning said victory and it being treated with the same gravitas and emotional weight as Blake defeating Adam... Weiss has her victory handed to her. And it’s played for comedy by her abusrdly attractive mother.

Listen, I like I Willow Schnee. I think she’s a fascinating character and I like the idea of a person who is aware of the harm they’ve done by accident but is too broken to fix the issues she accidentally left. I love her calling Weiss out on her treatment of Whitley. But she is absolutely a Deus Ex Machina that exists to get Jacques out of the plot as fast as possible. You mean to tell me Hackerman Watts never once made sure Jacques had hidden cameras? Or that none of the staff found Willow’s cameras and reported them under the assumption they were White Fang spies? It’s so... convenient. It’s handing Weiss her victory on an unearned platter. Which sucks. I was really looking forward to Weiss beating Jacques. Instead she just gets given the plot device while JNR engage in the Worst Scene of The Season in that Whitley food stunt.

Me whenever I’m asked to rewatch Cordially Invited

Blake and Yang have much the same problems, in they never separate. I know they’re going to be together. I know CRWBY are making it canon (get it over with already). I still would like Yang and Blake to have individual character scenes. I’d like Blake and Marrow to talk about being a Faunus Huntsman in Atlas (another thing that got cut thanks to Robyn Hill). I want Yang and Ironwood to discuss their PTSD and have Yang thank Ironwood for his trust in her that he commissioned the arm despite Yang attacking Mercury. I want Blake to be well animated in fight scenes so she’s doing more than just jobbing so Yang looks better. I want Yang to stop hogging all the good Team RWBY choeography. I want them to interact with other characters and continue to grow instead of feeling like two halves of one character. And no, making a meta joke of how Blake and Yang don’t talk to other people doesn’t make it OK. It just means you’re self aware about your own faults.

(Also give Yang better merch or quit the favoritism. If you’re gonna milk her, put effort into it beyond crapply overpriced flannel. RT’s merch store is actively making me hate Yang.)

Team RWBY’s biggest contribution to the season is the Ironwood Lie which is... a can of worms. They certainly had a point in withholding some of the bigger truths from James but I feel by Pomp and Cirumstance he’d proven himself truthwrothy enough to warrant being told the truth about Salem. But then when he’s finally told the truth, it’s offscreen’d and the consequence isn’t “Why didn’t you tell me earlier” but “Fucking Ozpin man.” Gravity has it bite them in the ass, but it’s more an accessory to Yang and Blake telling Robyn about the Amity tower. I wish more had been done with the team disagreeing on whether the lie was a good choice or not, maybe have Yang be hardline against it due to her own “No more lies and half truths” policy instead of... having Yang tell more lies and half truths (Commentary confirms she never told Ruby and Weiss about the Robyn stuff BTW). But that’s a wider problem where RWBY aren’t allowed to disagree beyond surface level “I don’t know if this is the right call” dialogue. There’s never a threat of one of them cracking and just spilling the beans to James, everyone just blindly trusts Ruby and Qrow tells the audience “No this is different from when Ozpin lied. Trust us.”

This is the most RWBY get for content in the season finale: Ruby just nuking Cinder with no difficulty after having trouble with the eyes three episodes ago. Kinda lame tbh.

Team RWBY are just disappointing in Volume 7. They’re not given good animation, their story roles are largely insignificant, the impact of their roles on the story is threadbare and... well most of their costumes suck don’t @ me even CRWBY have admitted Blake and Weiss’s haircuts looked bad. It’s a whole barrage of a letdown for the main girls. And it’s really sad that the best scenes of the season... are usually the ones where RWBY are nowhere in sight.

Why the hell didn’t Yang get to keep the sunglasses come on guys. One job.

4) Robyn, the election plot, and the Happy Huntresses

Oh God, Robyn Hill is... not great. I could and likely will write a full meta on her character and how they bungled it but I’ll just be blunt here: I don’t like her design, the colors don’t mesh well, he head’s too small, Christina Vee is sleeping through the role and her weapon’s lame. Introducing her in a scene where she threatens to attack our heroes, and her agents are actively sneaking up on them to do it, is not a great first impression for a hometown hero. And that the commentary thinks she’s meant to be the hero in that scene is... staggering.

RWBY’s greatest threat yet is a wine mom Karen and her Home Owners Association army.

The election plot is less a misfire and more the engine just exploding. There’s so little good content between when it’s introduced and concluded, with it usually being individual scenes that are more good in spite of their connection to the plot (such as Tyrian’s massacre). It drags in pacing, going on for nearly half the season between episodes 5 and 10, and it purely exists as a roadblock to keep RWBY spinning their wheels while Watts and Tyrian keep going with the main plot. I don’t know why CRWBY went for this plot. They could have easily had something else fill the gap that also allowed for a lot of the character beats (such as Marrow and Blake’s talk and Ren’s entire arc) to shine, or at least condensed it to the important elements instead of letting it become bloated. It ends in such an unsatisfying way where Willow just shows up and goes “We have four episode left, here’s the plot device to beat Jacques, get back ot the main plot.” If they wanted to do the election plot, the best route would have been to give Volume 7 more episodes or stretch out its events to two seasons, but neither is realistically possible while RWBY lives off the teat of AT&T.

Jacques and Robyn are just boring. Evil corporate man and a lame adaptation of Robyn Hood who only has fans because of thirst who also like downplaying Robyn making a racist remark at Marrow (to say nothing of that weird subsection of Robyn fans who make her a Fox Faunus who cut her tail off to join Atlas Academy which is... certainly a creative choice especially when Marrow and Neon are punching holes in that angsty BS backstory). They can’t carry this plot and the artifical attempts to make it seem more exciting with the two cliffhaners ending on Mantle under riot or Grimm attack are laughably cut short by the next episode in each case opening the morning after. On binge watch it becomes weirdly funny more than anything and that’s not a good reaction. The dual cliffhangers being cheaply resolved is a short but succint example of V7′s pacing issues, and they almost always loop around to the election plot being too bloated, slow and just boring.

Also the Happy Huntresses are just... lame. I like their Semblances but that’s it. Fiona’s OK because she gets some screentime but May’s just “the surly one” and Joanna doesn’t even get her Semblance or much dialogue (oh wow she really is just a female Sage Ayana isn’t she). Robyn should not have been leading the HH and running for Council. That’s really stupid. And kind of wrong. Having May or Fiona be running instead while Robyn leads the team in relief efforts would have been better and could have split the focus more effeciently instead of leaving May and especially Joanna feelng like roster padding. There’s also some delicious irony in the show trying to frame the HH as the resistance fighting for the people and representing individuality, only for them all to have the same boring outfit and weapons (I think even the exact same model just with different sizes) while the Ace Ops are meant to be the military drones who are “Just following orders,” only for them to be more racially diverse, more diverse body-type-wise, and have more unique weapons. It’s another one of those odd creative dissconnects between what the writers wanted and what the artists/animation teams chose to do.

The election plot is overall toxin for Volume 7, and Robyn in my opinion, has one of the worst introductory scenes of any character in the franchise (and CRWBY have tacitly admitted that V7 had a character they were surprised at how controversial they were, which has to be Robyn). In a year where they were already juggling so much content and characters, adding in this bloated subplot was something I don’t think anyone wanted, especially now that we know we lost so much content on the sacrificial altar for this. It’s a black mark on the season and I don’t really care for the return of the Happy Huntresses or Robyn in Volume 8. None of them are interesting enough to care for outside of meta reasons like “cute.”

Also fuck you Fiona, can’t believe you got a shirt before Ironwood.

5) Cinder and Neo sure exist

To be fair, this is one of Cinder’s best years, easily her best since Volume 3 but that’s more because Cinder in the Mistral era was crap. (And if I wanna be cruel, because Cinder wasn’t in two thirds of the season)Her fans were finally vindicated after years of telling anyone who dunked on Cinder that “nooooo she has a super covert backstory that’s gonna be amazing when it’s revealed! You’ll see!” And well they finally got it. All of one line during a fight about how Cinder “refuses to starve.”

It’s still something so I guess we have to take it. Seriously... how do we still not have Cinder’s backstory.

There’s just not a ton to say about Cinder and Neo in V7 barring I that don’t think they needed to be here. They feel very superfluous and just here to have a big boss fight in Cinder’s case alongside continuing her streak of ending the odd numbered seasons fighting a female side character... which for me became an exercise in tyring to find during Cinder during the damn fight.

And this is why when most people saw Cinder’s V6 outfit they went “It’s gonna be hard to see her in darker environments,” then were vindicated when it became legit difficult to see Cinder in this scene. God if they at least just made the inside of the cape red it’d be easier.

Neo is Neo, which means she makes funny faces and mocks Cinder (I like that), but she doesn’t get a super good fight which uh... we’ll get to. I’m interested to see her finally exploding at Cinder and going for a backstab, but really Neo in V7 was kinda hit hard by the double whammy of the Oscar Hallway Punch and how humiliating ORNJ vs Neo was for ORNJ. Cinder’s definitely had far worse years and after how aimless she was in Mistral this feels like a sep in the right direction, but at this point CRWBY just need to shut up and tell us her deal. It’s been seven years guys. Come on. At least make her interesting if she’s gonna say around. They’ve had worse years, but unfortunately Cinder and Neo’s role in the finale leads into...

6) Some of the fights weren’t good

I wanna be clear, I like most of Volume 7′s fights. It’s just a bummer the worst ones are back and back and make up a chunk of the finale. ORNJ vs Neo is just crap. It’s the worst fight since the Battle of Haven. There’s nothing else I can say, it’s poorly animated, paced, choreographed and written. JNR especially are made to look like complete jokes after they spent all season training, to the point where it looks like V2 Yang could solo V7 JNR after this. Oscar I expect this from because he’s not allowed to have fun stuff onscreen after accidentally stealing the Haven budget for his fight with Hazel, but JNR were just done dirty. There were ways to make the fight work in a way where Neo still won but JNR looked good. They went for the worst possible outcome that just leaves Neo looking like she got fan-wanked and JNR looking like they’re just not allowed to be cool due to Miles’ spite at the Jaune-Self Insert stuff (and that’s not even getting into JNR being forced to run from lame rent a cops who can’t even handle a single Grimm). Cinder vs Winter and Penny isn’t much better, with her dark outfit making it very hard to track the fight because she blends into the background too well. It’s not a great showing for Winter or Penny given their earlier feats but, hey, some random female character had to fight Cinder in this odd numbered volume, carrying on Glynda, Pyrrha and Raven’s tradition. It’s at least better than ORNJ vs Neo, but that’s really not saying anything. At least Cinder’s VA work isn’t too bad this time but this fight commits the cardinal sin of a finale fight: It’s just not super interesting because we know Cinder can’t kill both Winter and Penny and she’s not becoming a Maiden, while Winter’s been too blatantly set up so it has to be Penny.

RWBY vs the Ace Ops also gets a dishonorable mention due to the choreography on display here... and the lack of it for Weiss, Blake and Ruby. Ruby never once swings Crescent Rose the entire fight and is just reduced to getting the tar kicked out of her by Harriet. Weiss barely gets to use her sword and largely just sticks to her summoning and glyphs which makes for a very visually uninteresting fighting style at the best of times. Blake just swings around and gets caught by the bad guys so Yang is motivated to fight stronger. She never dual wields (again) and her best moves are just setting up Yang to do all the hard work while Yang gets to personally KO two of the Ace Ops. There’s a lot that can be said about whether or nor RWBY earn the win, but while the animation team try to sell the Ace Ops landing heavy hits, having only Blake’s Aura even flicker really undercuts the idea from the commentary that this wasn’t meant to be a stomp for RWBY and they had to work together and be in synch to win.

Which is why Yang solos two of the Ace Ops whle Blake plays support, Weiss beats Marrow alone and then kill steals Harriet from Ruby, all while the song playing is an extended diss track from RWBY to the Ace Ops about how badass they are now, and the commentary itself says the Ace Ops are hard carried by Clover’s Semblance (because you gotta love basically saying four POC were only competent because a white guy led them, and then have them lose because said white guy wasn’t around to carry them!). Great job guys, you really sold it.

And talking of Clover, I feel it worth mentioning Qrow vs Clover vs Tyrian. It’s animation wise near perfect, but unfortunately I do feel it would be remiss to not mention that I feel the writing really has to bend over backwards to justify this fight. A lot of it is stuff I would say in that hypothetical Robyn essay, but I feel Robyn, Qrow and Clover all have to become massive idiots for this specific sequence of events to occur, and for Clover especially every retroactive attempt to explain why he prioritized Qrow over Tyrian just sounds more and more desperate. Between the references to MCU Captain America (a person whose entire arc is about learning when it’s OK to defy bad orders) or the attempt in the commentary to say “Oh Clover thought it would be easier to take out Tyrian alone instead of Qrow,” none of them land and just further drive home how much the plot had to stretch and reach to get that moment of Tyrian killing Clover. I like the fight. But I hate the road the show took to get there.

Some of the misc fights are also weak like ORNJ vs FNKI and elements of the Mantle Grimm battle, but those are the big offenders. Otherwise, again, the fights are largely good.

7) The soundtrack wasn’t... great

I mean the vocal songs only, don’t crucify me. Trust Love is just lamer Let’s Just Live/Triumph, Celebrate and Let’s Get Real are so boring I thought they were the same song until the OST dropped, Brand New Day is boringly peppy and Jeff’s vocals are dreadful. I completely forgot Touch the Sky until I was checking the tracklist to make sure I didn’t forget any songs. War has good singers but tries to sell the RWBY-Ace Ops bond as way deeper than it was. The lack of a villain song did really sting though, those are always the highlights.

There are good songs. I really like Fear, I feel it encapsulates the themes of the volume well and serves as a good condemnation of Ironwod’s mentality. Until The End is finally the Ruby song I’ve waited for since Red Like Roses 2 and I enjoy that she got a melancholic song, and Hero is easily, hands down, best track of the record and probably best RWBY track, full stop. Caleb killed it, I loved the second verse, opening opera was strong, guitar riffs were a plenty. Stellar work all around for that one.

The OST has great work from Jeff and Alex as usual, but the Jeff and Casey songs are really starting to lose their appeal. Going for a peppy feel this year didn’t help cover the cracks that are beginning to show with RWBY’s vocal songs (especially Jeff’s vocal range), and while a few standouts remain such as Fear and Hero, they are the slim minority in an otherwise very boring vocal tracklist that barely scrapes above Volume 5 for weakest set yet.

8) It wasn’t as funny as it thought it was

Comedy is subjective but man a lot of these jokes didn’t land. RWBY really needs to realize that does work in traditional 2D does not translate into 3D and just comes off as making official reaction GIFs for your Twitter account. Making characters SUDDENY SCREAM LOUDLY is not good banter. Please stop making Nora into Harley Quinn. Marrow was probably the most consistently funny character but that was it. Also I dunno why CRWBY thought Forrest was funny or what the deal was with that FRWBY crap.

“Honorary” mention to the JNR food scene in Cordially Invited which is genuinely one of the worst scenes in the entire show and I hope whoever animated it has their save files deleted for a game where they were about to beat the final boss. Nothing sums up JNR’s pointlessness in the series more perfectly than this.

C) Conclusion

See what I mean about Volume 7 being frustrating?

It’s weird that I overal think of Volume 7 as a mid-tier volume. There’s so much here I genuinely adore, with some of the best stuff to do with the show coming out of this season (barring lame, overpriced merch that feels like clothing gacha), but simultaneously the whole thing is let down by outside circumstances that unfortunately are ones the show can’t ever really recover from. Put bluntly, Volume 7 is the most technically proficient season of the show with the best lighting, backdrops, (some of the) character models, etc. CRWBY definitely didn’t slack off this year, but the problem isn't with them. It’s with the writing. A wider reaching problem is just that Miles and Kerry can’t really improve to the level that the series now requires. Eddy and Kiersei’s first season could have gone far worse, but it definitely was notable whenever they took over. Volume 7’s core problems are fourfold: The comedy is terrible and none of the jokes really land, the season focuses on the wrong plots and gives them too much effort, too many episodes are spent building up to new plots only for them to be weakly resolved (especially the Mantle Riot/Grimm attacks that are shoved off-screen), and the character bloat strikes hard here and leaves a lot of the cast feeling like dead weight. CRWBY don’t need more writers. They need more editors willing to tell the team what has to go instead of them hemming and hawing themselves on if they if they can include a plotline. The election never should have gotten past its first draft, there was too much already in this season before adding that.

When this is an unironic shot in your series... you’ve got character bloat issues.

At this point, I think JNR need to go. The show had no idea what to do with them throughout the season, leading to Jaune just being comic relief while Ren and Nora became characters I actively dislike. Renora was the easiest ship in the show to land, and they still managed to blow the engines and ram at least three icebergs just to prove that RWBY can’t romance to save its life. Team RWBY themselves are little better, with Ruby’s feelings about Penny’s return being shelved, Weiss’s victory against Jacques feeling un-earned and undercut by comedy, while Yang and Blake are benched for the volume and become a singular entity with how tied at the hip they are. Maria basically yeeted herself out of the show and I didn’t notice, Pietro is just a death flag, and while the Ace Ops had a good intro, it was undercooked by how they had to play the villain role to give RWBY something to do in the final hours. Cinder and Neo didn’t need to be here. Robyn had one of the worst introductions for a character I’ve ever seen, I never enjoyed her moments and it genuinely feels like she only has a fandom because RWBY’s community are in fact that desperate.

On the brighter side, Ironwood’s arc is fucking perfect and Jason Rose deserves all the love. Great fight, great song, great design, love the beard, it was a perfect downfall for Volume 7’s true protagonist. Qrow had a fun volume and I loved his dynamic with Clover (I don’t see the ship stuff but that’s more because I’m an IronQrow main so my blinders were on). Clover was also way cooler than I remembered. His fights stood out but the guy’s just really cool at the end of the day, with Chris doing great work as a VA. Oscar even managed to do stuff this year which was a shock and a half, but a welcome shock and a half. I didn’t mention it, but the Ozpin fear monologue is one of my favorite scenes in the entire show and it and the Ironwood/Oscar confrontation in the vault save the finale. And of course, Watts and Tyrian were the MVPs. I don’t have a bad word about either of them, they fucking nailed their roles and I can’t wait to see them again.

And that’s kind of what I mean when I say Volume 7 flummoxes me. It’s frustrating at times with how it handles seemingly easy tasks and drops the ball. Renora went from “everyone liked that” to wondering how badly Ren’s stuff got butchered for him to be the way he is. RWBY themselves could be almost entirely cut and so little would change, and the fact that the finale basically hinges its entire emotional stakes on Winter, Penny and Oscar is a staggering call. And it really feels like the season was compressed beyond necessity because they decided going in that Volume 7 had to end on Salem’s arrival. There’s two volumes worth of material here, and maybe it would have been best to have broken up these events. Volume 7 does too much in too little time, and RWBY especially suffered from it. But when it works… it’s good. Never close to the highs of Volumes 6 or 3, but there’s genuinely good material here. The fights are mostly getting better with far less missteps than previously, the acting (mostly) continues to improve and it’s obvious that RWBY is a very good looking show at this point. Ironwood’s arc is franchise-wide highs, I loved Clover, and Marrow remains the best boi. But it’s frustrating that despite all the tech advances Volume 7 has made, it still makes such threadbare, rookie writing mistakes in cast management, comedy and character arcs. I’m glad Miles and Kerry finally realized that they needed more writers, but it won’t mean anything if the show just continues to circle the drain on the core mistakes it’s been making since 2013. Volume 7 has good in it. But I can see where it could have been great.

Thanks for reading, stan IronQrow and please get Whitley a therapist.

And for the love of God already make an Ironwood vs Watts shirt!

84 notes · View notes

kathbfiblog · 3 years ago

Text

Venom: Let There Be Carnage Review

In a year where Marvel have been pumping out dramatic content month after month; 2021’s Venom: Let there Be Carnage serves as a fun, if average, contribution to this year's superhero menagerie.

The original Venom almost felt like a leftover of the early 2000’s superhero movies; with over the top; moustache twirling villains. It’s sequel is no different. Woody Harrelson takes on the role of Cletus Kasady; a crazed serial killer on death row who becomes the host to the symbiote: Carnage. Whilst his characterization doesn’t often progress past crazy murderer villain, without the nuance of other Marvel villains such as Killmonger and Thanos, he is still a creepy character you love to hate. Even without motivations fuelling his battle with Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, Harrelson brings a stage presence and threat to the antagonist role that was sorely lacking from Riz Ahmed’s interpretation of Carlton Drake in the 2018 original movie.

The protagonists of the movie, Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote, have a much more engaging relationship in the sequel. Their scenes together are somewhat domestic but also funny, with Venom trashing Eddie’s apartment in an attempt to make him breakfast. Eddie’s relationship with the symbiote is heavily coded as romantic, with the pair having a full on break up in which Venom leaves as well as the symbiote confessing his love at the end of the movie. Tom Hardy surprisingly has a lot of chemistry with a CGI alien monster he also voices, it definitely makes for some unique queer representation in a Marvel movie.

The story of the movie feels lacking throughout. Rather than having an actual overall plot, we are given two separate plots which barely connect to each other. I got tonal whiplash whilst watching in the cinema; one moment I was watching Carnage murder guards while freeing Cletus’ partner from jail, another I was watching Venom mic dropping at a rave.

While Cletus is given a reason for his previous murders, his vendetta against Eddie is lacking. Eddie also has little personal connection to the villain; making their conflict feel undeserved.

Visually, the film is a lot prettier than its predecessor. The original was a wash of grey with uninspired CGI aliens, with very similar designs, battling it out. Venom 2 has a brighter palette, using a lot more colour. The symbiote designs heavily differ from each other too. Venom is a muscular appearing creature with black tendrils and a mouth full of teeth. Carnage has similar design cues but is a dark red, with a body reminiscent of clotted blood. Carnage also towers above Venom, giving the impression of being more powerful. We also get an animated sequence towards the beginning detailing Cletus’ murders and gives the audience an early impression of his insanity.

Overall the movie takes itself a lot less seriously than a lot of the marvel movies from recent years. A lot of superhero concepts sound ridiculous on paper and not every character needs to feel serious and realistic. The creators behind Venom 2 seemed to have realized this and given us a movie that was just a lot of fun to watch despite its obvious flaws. It’s definitely not a high-art film, but it is one I will revisit when I want to switch my brain off and just have fun with a comic book movie.

Ticket Evidence Under Cut:

2 notes · View notes

kervinredfire · 4 years ago

Text

My Other Fanfics in the Future

Well, I made announcements about my 2 Loonatics fanfics-related stories coming soon. So here are my other fanfics that I am making. But before I am going to show you my other fanfics, I like to share what most of them are like. Kervinverse related. If you checked my Tumblr header it's pretty obvious.

As you may wonder what is the Kervinverse is all about? The Kervinverse is like the multiverse but with all different kinds of Kervin. Inspired by Spiderman Into the Spiderverse all the versions of Kervin contained different personalities, stories, almost the same appearance, fighting styles, and special abilities. One of the most signature outfits is the black and red formal suit.

I already made a folder in toyhouse. However, most of it are unfinished and still ongoing.

https://toyhou.se/Kervin619/characters/folder:812137

People think that those stories a self-insert but it is actually not. Me and my other Kervins are the same but they are different the appearance, abilities, and personalities. An example is Denk Ops’s Chris Danger from the WWE games. And note that this is another long announcement for the other fanfics

So anyway, here are my Kervinverse stories that I would really like to share about Wattpad in the future. So are book covers later

KERVINVERSE STORIES (Including crossovers):

Grand Theft Auto Origins: Kervin Made Liberty – Set in the GTA HD Universe. Before Kervin (GTA Online) came to the place called San Andreas, he was just a very young boy who was born in the place called Liberty with his parents. His father Claude who became rich and retired to a life crime and his wife Misty who used to be a prostitute. It was normal and happy life for him and his parents. But when years passed when he is getting older, he slowly starts to realize what kind of broken world he is living in.

Now for those who played the HD Universe of the GTA Games you know every protagonist in the HD universe like Niko, Johnny, Luis, Michael Franklin, and Trevor. As much as they have different stories and perspectives but this story about GTA OC that he was living with full of offensiveness, disrespectfulness, brutal honesty, and others. An example in GTA IV a radio commercial of Babies Overnight that said that someone was not satisfied with the baby it can be disposed of. Although it would be interesting to have that backstory for my next OC for GTA. So, this story may contain a lot of murder and crimes on what led to him going to San Andreas. So, watch out. And for those who have not played GTA Online why his parents are both Claude and Misty is because it was part of the premium edition for free in Epic Games.

Def Jam X Kung Fu Panda: Book 1 Fight for A New Fight (maybe a working title) - After the events of Def Jam Vendetta, Fight For New York, and The Kung Fu Panda Trilogy including Legends of Awesomeness. Set during Paws of Destiny Season 2 in the Kung Fu Panda universe while in Def Jam 2 years later in the year 2005 after Crow's death (Fight for NY still takes place in 2003) Kervin (Def Jam Fight For NY) the new leader D-Mob's crew but also officially known as the Def Jam Crew after Blaze appointed him to take his place. Kervin has to manage every venue, club, and arenas in New York including places that Crow took over. But in Chinese New Year there was something strange that Kervin and his crew got transported to a different universe. Including former members, fighters, and circuit fighters.

Now, this fanfiction sounded really odd. As you may know why I am making crossover fanfic of Kung Fu Panda X Def Jam? Easy. The first one is because this is what would have been my PS2 games if I ever have a PS2. I was thinking of Mortal Kombat or Yakuza for Def Jam but Kung Fu Panda is the only thing I know when I was 7 years old. The second is because back in the days Hip Hop mixed with Kung Fu was very popular. Although Def jam may be a wrestling game martial arts stole my heart in Def Jam Fight For NY. I heard about things like the Wu-Tang Clan for example but the biggest problem for me is that I am not a true fan of Def Jam because I don’t know about hip hop artists. Just only the games so I will be focusing on their video game counterparts in their fictitious manner meaning pretending real-life characters with their real name are fictional characters. So, if there and fun facts in those real-life counterparts I may add them to it like easter eggs. The third is that there are Kung Fu Panda characters that did not get enough love and mostly art. So many recognizable characters like Po, Tigress, Tai Lung, and many more have become the most recognizable characters in the movies. But what about the tv shows like Legends of Awesomeness and Paws of Destiny? One of my favorite characters of Legends of Awesomeness is Peng, in short, he is the nephew of Tai Lung and he is such an interesting character that he deserves a lot more love. While for Paws of Destiny is Xiao because she is such a cute character, so is her personality and the best character to have hugs with. So, what I am trying to say is that I need to start off with the character that is unrecognizable then bring it recognizably. I may also add characters from shorts like student Mei Ling in the future book and it would be funny and to see rogue Mei Ling. 2 Mei Lings in one. Even Su and Master Snow Leopard because are both female leopards with the same appearance and outfit. I may also include some characters from the flash game Tales of Po and may possibly rewrite them in different stories because I love the character designs thanks to Blue Maxima’s FlashPoint. And the fourth and final part is that to make the Def jam games more recognizable. Def Jam in music is not absolutely enough but video games are. The Def Jam games did not bring a sequel after Fight For NY so I might as well make a sequel with interesting and experimental crossover fanfic just like The Loonatics Road.

The Red Fox (Kingdom Force Spinoff and maybe a working title) - The Kingdom Force has 5 members defending the 5 Kingdoms. Luka the wolf who leads in red, Jabari who runs in yellow, TJ who drills in green, Delilah who swings in orange, and Norvyn who strengthens in blue. Each of the 5 drives Kingdom Riders and turns them into Alpha Mech to fight against evil in the 5 Kingdoms. But even if they save the day multiple times the 5 Kingdoms are still filled with more crime and every antagonist came back doing other crimes and evil deeds because they were not arrested or eliminated. That's is when a red fox came along...

I have seen popular fandoms in cartoons that were supposed to aim at younger kids like Lion Guard, MLP, Paw Patrol, and even Bluey. But Kingdom Force is the cartoon that did get enough love. It's like Power Rangers and Voltron but with anthropomorphic animals like Zootopia. However, the stories and episodes in the show is very confusing and give me almost a lot of questions. But I do like the character designs in the show. My favorite hero is Luka who is a leader with and cute cuddly character personality and my favorite villain Envie Fernadez which she has a pretty hot design, name and voice and so is her personality. Reminds me of Sly Cooper but I have not played the game yet. But for the red fox also OC Kervin (Kindom Force) It’s still at work.

APB Reloaded X Zootopia: Anyone Can Be All You Can’t Be: - In Zootopia “Anyone Can Be Anything” But in San Paro “Be All You Can’t Be” Zootopia is a place where vicious predators and meek prey live in harmony. This means that people in Zootopia live together without the prey getting eaten by predators and predators not getting feared by the prey. They almost eat like us, they sleep like us, they speak like us, they walk like us, they run like us, they bathe like us (well almost), and most importantly they use technology like us. While San Paro maybe has a good look to sightsee but this city has a lot of crime. Robberies, bombings, thefts, drug dealing, murders and causalities, vandalism, and much more that we can think of. But that does not mean there is no justice in this world. When the Criminals like the Blood Roses and the G-Kings try to take over San Paro? The Enforcers Prentiss Tigers and Praetorians from come and save the day. What would happen when a human Enforcer meets a police fox and a police bunny? And how did it happen? Only one way to find out.

Now this one is also a Kervinverse crossover story. It focuses on Kervin (APB Reloaded) meeting Judy and Nick. I am trying to find a way on how will they meet each other. But the only thing ideas I know is that it can be a delivery gone wrong, an invention gone haywire or maybe a criminal stole something magical that is transported to a different universe. But I have a lot of strange things in the game like the Christmas events and Halloween events. I like to see any volunteers who play APB Reloaded. And for those Zootopia fans who have not played APB Reloaded you check it here. https://store.steampowered.com/app/113400/APB_Reloaded/

Well, that is it for the Kervinverse stories. Now it’s time for the other stories that I also planned in the future.

OTHER FANFICS:

Alza Flare (Road Rovers Fan Spinoff)- Alza is a black cat born in the place in New York City, USA. He was born inside a pet shop without cat parents since he was born. His parents' status is unknown. Although he did make friends with other cats and non-cats in the shop. But it was a short while until a human customer named Drayson Flare and adopted him as Alza Flare. Alza has been Drayson's pet for 3 years and they instantly became best friends but when during the time when they are about to go home from the park. A terrible accident happened.

A long time ago I watched Road Rovers on my phone just to try something nostalgic and the show is pretty good though although there are some parts that don’t use their powers all the time. One part that caught my eye is how brutal car accident in the episode “Dawn of The Groomer” which gave me an idea of my new anti-villain OC character named Alza Flare. Sadly, he does have an image of him yet. But I will tell you that I will give you an interesting revenge story for him.

The Best Surfer In The World (Surf’s Up Spinoff. Maybe a working a title and synopsis change) - After the events of Surf's Up and Surf's Up 2: Wavemania. There was once a wolf who lives in the place of Chicago Illinois. He quit his own career due to being a rejected member of Hang 5 for being too unstable and after beating J.C. in a tournament years ago and after his early retirement, he spends his normal life as an ice cream man in his own ice-cream motorcycle with one of his own freshest ingredients and swears to himself that he would never in the waters again. Until he met a young Toyger.

Surf’s Up is my first favorite mockumentaries since I was young. It’s like you are watching animals andromorphic animals absolutely existed in the world we live in. It had an interesting story and writing so are the interesting characters. But when I watched Surf’s Up Wavemania. Well, I honestly love the WWE Superstars and Diva came into the movie but the story did not actually surprise me a lot. Even if the movie has a lot of beautiful locations it still did not surprise me enough because it is more like an adventure than a tournament. That is why I am planning to start my fanfiction in a new different approach with a real story and a real rivalry. Starting with wolf inspired and based on CM Punk during the part when he won the WWE belt against Cena in Money in the Bank when I watched it since intermediate school with a little rename change so it won’t be obvious. And of course, my Toyger OC because he would be trained by his own surfing master. Also, I added a Slam City easter egg

Fire Pro Wrestling World Origins: Story of 2 Angels – There is no synopsis of them yet. But I will tell you they are brother and sister with the last name “Angel” The brother who is a pop artist while the sister who joined a motorcycle club. What they both have in common is they both can fight. Their stories about my 2 new Fire Pro OCs will be coming soon. But they are not part of the fighting roads.

Well, that is all for all the future stories with some summaries that I really want to share coming soon. Thanks for following including Wattpad

For those who are new here follow me on both Tumblr and Wattpad with the orange word link

Feel free to donate to me in PayPal

Also making fanfic is really long to make just like making an announcement. So again. I only post all chapters in 1 book.

9 notes · View notes

walksinlatewithcoffee · 3 years ago

Text

So like I’d put this on my main but someone irl knows my url and that person now has a vendetta against my existence so I have no doubt they’d screenshot this lmao

Anyway I was watching a tiktok that reminded my of this guy I dated in highschool. Sweaty gamer bro and not the fun kind we all like. BUT he was willing to sit around and watch anime with me and his taste in entertainment wasn’t that godawful. He only made me sit through one basic ass show and that was at least SAO which had beautiful fight scenes and backgrounds that made my artist heart happy.

And I’ve always felt like he was bi but in denial about it. Not because of his he acted around other guys, but because of his taste in anime.

For a long time I thought the most damning evidence was the fact that HE was the one who had to convince ME to watch YOI. I mean he straight up begged me.

But looking back I’m realizing that no, there was one piece of media even more damning despite the fact that it’s not a romantic show. In fact there’s only one actual plot relevant crush and it’s both a running joke no one expects to go anywhere and straight.

Nanbaka is the name. And it’s a wild ride.

No, this piece of media doesn’t need to be overtly gay to be overtly queer. It’s the gayest show I’ve ever seen and none of them are even gay, that we know of. No you can just TELL.

Because the creator made sure to design the most overtly fruity setting and cast of any piece of media I’ve ever seen.

It’s like a scene kid threw up on a pride parade. It’s every cringe early internet oc in one room, and that room got glitter bombed. That’s not a metaphor the entire show is sparkly it’s an intentional design feature. Every single character wears nail polish except the one character who was explicitly designed to distance out from the rest of the cast by being as generic as possible.

Over half the cast wears obvious makeup. They’re almost all men, which is a natural product of the setting and makes genuine sense. I can think of like three relevant female characters off the top of my head and one of them is a robot.

And MY SO CALLED STRAIGHT EX BOYFRIEND INTRODUCED ME TO IT. HOW’D HE EVEN FIND IT??? EVERY CHARACTER IN THIS LOOKS LIKE ONE OF THOSE BIGOTED TRANSPHOBIC CARICATURES FROM THE MEMES????

If he wasn’t bi before he found this show he certainly was afterwards. I refuse to believe he didn’t have a crush on at least one of the guys in this show I mean come on.

Also I mostly made this post for my followers as a long winded recommendation cause it’s gender envy city up in here. You think Ranboo is the Genderman? Wait till you meet Uno. THATS some fuvkin gender.

2 notes · View notes

mamagon · 7 years ago

Text

*SPOILERS AHEAD* So I finished my first Planet of Monsters viewing, and I thought I'd organize my thoughts into a pros and cons list. Pros: Kamakuras: I know it's a tiny clip at the start of the movie, but it's been THIRTEEN YEARS since I last saw a classic Godzilla enemy, so seeing Kamakuras, even if for a few seconds, felt like seeing an old friend. The Opening Scene: I think that this opening really works. It draws you into the movie quickly, and really shows the desperate circumstances our characters are in. It's also the most likeable the main character will be the whole movie, so enjoy that. The Designs: There were a lot of really cool visuals here. I loved the design of Godzilla and the dragon offspring (Servum?), plus the look of the planet and weaponry was nice. The Soundtrack: This is probably the strongest aspect of the movie. In any movie, but a Godzilla movie especially, the music can really effect my enjoyment. The music in this one, was great. It added so much mood to scenes where there would have been very little otherwise. Eh: The Story: I couldn't bring myself to put this in the pros or cons section. I like the basics of this story. The idea of humans fleeing a planet overrun by kaiju is fantastic, and also a place I don't think any other kaiju film has gone. When I initially heard this plot, I was ridiculously excited, because it was not only a cool idea, but an amazing idea specifically for an animated Godzilla movie. Take advantage of a format that allows for really out there ideas without the limitations of special effects! That being said, this movie really didn't use this plot to it's potential in my opinion. Too much of the movie was bogged down with characters dryly spitting out fake science (and don't get me wrong, I love this kind of dialogue in Godzilla movies when done well), and not enough time was spent exploring the really interesting ideas they brought up. An alien race made a deal to help Earth fight Godzilla, but was planning to take over the planet if we won! And they had some kind of religion that was part of this! Why couldn't we get more about that!? They bring it up, only two or three times in passing. Long story short, they had good ideas, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The Ending: This was another thing I was torn on. Seeing the actual Godzilla was definitely cool, and I really felt the power he was bringing (kudos again to the soundtrack), but at the same time, it was a little frustrating to realize I spent an entire movie on fighting essentially Godzilla Jr. I'm honestly just happy there was a reason that Godzilla was using that boring roar instead of his iconic one. I was legitimately scared they weren't going to use it the whole time. Cons: The Animation: This is a small one, because I think it's a personal preference thing. I generally don't like this 3D anime style, and this movie wasn't one of the times it worked for me. The Characters: I'm sure in the coming days we're going to hear this a lot, but the characters in this movie were bland. I felt like I'd seen the exact characters in plenty of anime, and found them boring then too. Our main character just isn't likeable by the end of the movie. The "I have a personal grudge against Godzilla!" bit has been done well before (Megaguiris, Against Mechagodzilla, Half Century War), but I think that's because it's usually done more in an Ahab way, where the grudge isn't glorified. In this movie, we're supposed to applaud the main character for repeatedly putting others in danger because of his petty vengeance quest. I found myself rolling my eyes at his "This plan only worked because you all believed in me," line. He came off as a self congratulatory asshole. The other characters aren't really even worth mentioning, because they don't have much character to speak of. They're kind of just stock characters thrown in to fill up space. The Monsters: I really hate putting this in the cons section, because like I said earlier, I liked the designs in this movie. That being said, the execution was disappointing in my opinion. When the first scene with the Servum came I loved how terrifying they seemed, until you got a good look at them. The Monsters in this movie aren't just don't look right with the rest of the movie. They look like unfinished CG models, or characters out of an early 2000s video game. This wouldn't be a problem if everything also looked like this, but it doesn't. Whenever the monsters were on screen, they really looked like they didn't fit with everything else, and for the first animated Godzilla movie, that was an enormous disappointment for me. I was really hoping that because it was animated the monsters would blend flawlessly with their environment and interaction with other things. I actually think this may have been more jarring than any of the live action films. Godzilla(?) himself felt a little disappointing as well. He mostly stood still throughout the movie, or just lumbered around slowly. There really wasn't much movement. Again, this is especially disappointing in an animated film where Godzilla could have done anything a person can imagine! I'm not expecting him to start throwing punches or slide on his tail like in the Showa films, but a little more of a response from him when he was being attacked would have been nice. This kind of Godzilla worked in Shin, because in that movie he felt less like a character and more like a true force of nature. This Godzilla felt like he was supposed to have more of a malicious character, especially if they want us to get invested in their main characters vendetta. All in All: At the end of the day, it's Godzilla. I'll always be happy to see the Big Guy, and nothing else about a movie can take that away. I enjoyed it enough, and I'll be happy to watch it again. Most of my negative feelings about the movie boil down to what I feel is wasted potential. But, that being said, I just watched a new Godzilla movie, and no part of me is able to be upset about that. It's not one of my favorites, but I love Godzilla's Revenge, so what do I know?

#godzilla #planet of monsters

9 notes · View notes

constantviewings · 5 years ago

Text

The TV Show Trials - Batman: The Animated Series

Batman: The Animated Series is an animated television series based on the DC Comics superhero Batman. Developed by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski and produced by Warner Bros Entertainment.

Bonus review of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm at the end!

Batman and Robin, a pair of caped crusaders, battle crime in Gotham City.

Almost Got ‘Im

In a bar, a collection of Batman’s enemies chat about their failed attempts to kill him.

This episode is formatted as a clip show, providing four stories on top of the main plot of the episode. This episode was a great filler as it showcased so many villains including The Penguin who I, unfortunately, didn’t watch a whole episode dedicated towards.

Heart of Ice

Batman must stop a vengeful Mr Freeze from fulfilling his vendetta against a callous business man.

Heart of Ice was the first episode I watched and I think it was the perfect starting off point. I only found this out while writing this review, but this episode depicts an entirely different origin story for Mr Freeze compared to his debut; though the storyline depicted in this episode quickly became canon in all other media portrayals.

Two-Face

Thought the ever calm Harvey Dent puts on a happy face in his bid for re-election as Gotham’s District Attorney, he can’t still supress the psychopathic split personality of ‘Big Bad Harv’.

I really enjoyed this pair of episodes and how easy it is to sympathise with Harvey Dent and, to an extent, Two-Face. This series also includes my favourite, and perhaps the most iconic, design of Two-Face.

Robins Reckoning

When Robin discovers that the thug who murdered his parents is back in Gotham City, he recalls the vents of his life as a young circus performer and the tragedy that made him an orphan.

There are an awful lot of dead parents in the Batman franchise aren’t there? I loved seeing Robin take centre stage in these two episodes and watching how he came under Bruce Wayne’s tutelage.

Harley and Ivy

After a failed heist, a frustrated Joker boots Harley Quinn from his gang and leads her to form a partnership with fellow criminal Poison Ivy. Both The Joker and Batman set out to stop the amazing duo. Little do they know, no man can stop Harley and Ivy.

I loved this episode. Besides The Joker, Harley and Ivy were the only other Batman villains that I had decent knowledge about and I loved seeing this iconic pair work together. The Queens of Crime being foiled by another woman was a nice twist that subverted expectations, especially for this series.

Over the Edge

Batman and his allies have their secret identities exposed and are now being hunted by the Gotham City Police.

Now don’t start complaining that this is from The New Batman Adventures and not Batman: The Animated Series, but given the fact that it was mentioned on eight different lists of the best Batman: The Animated Series episodes; it counts. I’ll be honest, I was somewhat confused during the first half of this episode, as I feel most first-time viewers would have been, but I am a sucker for the ‘it was all a dream’ trope. Though my only issue with this episode was seeing Nightwing with long hair; gross.

The Demon’s Quest

Robin is kidnapped, and Batman unexpectedly joins forces with Ra’s Al Ghul, whose daughter Talia has also been taken.

I didn’t really enjoy this pair of episodes; that is the only time I will say this. By half-way though the first episode, I found myself to not being paying any attention and ended up leaving the episodes on in the background; so much so, that I don’t remember anything that happened.

Beware the Grey Ghost

Gotham City is struck by a series of remote activated bombings as a warning to a ransom demand. Batman realizes that the pattern of the recent bombings is based on an episode of an old television show, the “Gray Ghost”. Seeking information, Batman visits the actor who played the TV hero, Simon Trent.

This episode revolves around an interesting narrative device that shows both a young Bruce watching The Gray Ghost and present Bruce solving the crimes. Another feature that I only discovered upon writing this review is that Adam West voiced The Gray Ghost.

Joker’s Favour

An everyman schmo named Charlie Collins insults the wrong super villain on the road, leaving the terrified loser at the beck and call of The Joker. Two years later, he crashes in with Collins, who desperately tries to find a way to alert Batman to his master’s evil scheme.

This is an interesting episode, with the focus being on an everyday citizen who gets caught up in the crime world. Featuring Mark Hamill’s iconic performance as The Joker being the icing on top of a well written and entertaining episode.

Perchance To Dream

After being knocked out in a mysterious warehouse, batman wakes up in an alternate existence that’s seen Bruce Wayne lead a fulfilled life with his family and fiancée Selina Kyle. But Wayne’s inability of live the dream reveals his mind to be in the thrall of The Mad Hatter.

I quite enjoyed this episode, especially as it highlights how much of Bruce Wayne’s personality and purpose is taken up by Batman. I don’t know much about The Mad Hatter and his ‘abilities’ so which did leave me somewhat confused, but it didn’t effect my viewing experience.

Zatanna

When the glamorous magician Zatanna is framed for a robbery during her act, Batman swings to her defence. Zatanna is grateful though a little puzzled by the Dark Knight’s commitment to prove her innocence, but the two heroes unite and use the skills her father, Zatara, taught them to expose and combat an evil illusionist.

I loved this episode, particularly the relationship between Bruce and Zatanna when they were younger. I don’t remember much of this episode outside of that.

Trial

Gotham’s deadliest criminals, The Joker, Two-Face, Mad Hatter, The Ventriloquist, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy among many others, kidnap Batman and put him on trial in Arkham Asylum. The Dark Knight’s only hope rests with District Attorney Janet Can Dorn who, despite her anti-atman stance, is forced to defend the Caped Crusader’s life as well as her own.

Another villain-filled episode I really enjoyed. I’ve always enjoyed the aspect of superhero media that delves into the moral and justice-based side and this episode fully satisfied my craving. That, combined with the story of a DA coming to term with Batman’s presence in Gotham makes for a great episode.

If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

After being fired from Competitron; Edward Nygma takes over the identity of The Riddler in order to get vengeance over his former boss Daniel Mockridge. It is up to Batman and Robin to decipher the riddles that Nygma has been placing for them in order to save Mockridge from Riddler’s vengeance.

While writing this review, I did happen to confuse this episode with another episode featuring The Riddler; take of that what you will. Apart from that, I really enjoyed this episode.

The Cat and the Claw

Catwoman and Batman join forces in an attempt to foil the evil forces of a terrorist by the name of Red Claw.

The pairing of Catwoman and Batman has always been a great one and this episode proves no different.

What is Reality?

When the Riddler traps Commissioner Gordon’s consciousness in a virtual reality device, Batman must enter the villain’s construct to save him.

The only negative aspect of this episode is the dated understanding of Virtual Reality technology. Looking past this, this episode provides a great viewing experience.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

I never thought Batman’s origin story could get more tragic, but alas, this film proved me wrong. Featuring great animation, a compelling story, a darker tone compared to the animated series and a compact runtime of only 76 minutes, Mask of the Phantasm is a fantastic film that covers ground untouched by the animated series.

Rating: 4

After watching Batman: The Animated Series, I now understand why it is held in such high regard by Batman fans. Its compelling stories combined with iconic characters and performances make for a viewing experience unlike any you will find among any other Batman media.

Did I like this show? Absolutely.

Will I continue watching? I would love to watch the entire series from beginning to end, but that’s for another time.

Artist Credits

George Caltsoudas

Phantom City Creative - Justin Erickson

Ken Turner

#The TV Show Trials #Batman: The Animated Series #Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

0 notes

bossladytae · 8 years ago

Note

Hi...hi! I hope i'm not bothering you, but can i ask your opinion about oboro? I love him so much and i don't get it why some of fans doesn't like him. thank you so much ^^

Hi! Don’t worry, you’re not bothering me at all. :) I’m always happy to talk about Gintama in any way. That’s why I made this blog.

Sometimes people don’t like certain characters because they just don’t and we don’t have to like every single character. To me, though, that’s different from those who seem to have a personal vendetta against characters and spend their time hating them and talking about how much they hate them, which makes no sense to me. Why waste time on characters you hate when you can invest that time in the characters you love? There’s a difference between critiquing a character and outright hating on them just to be petty and cause drama.

Anyway, on to Oboro, who I like and don’t hate in the slightest – and this doesn’t mean I seek to justify his actions. People get confused on this to the point where they take start judging people’s moral character just from the characters they like, especially if they are villains. This kind of logic comes from the desire to put everyone on a pedestal, even fictional characters, without realizing that it’s possible to like a character without needing to somehow justify what they’ve done so that you can appear morally superior to others. There are some anime and book villains I like, but it doesn’t mean I’m a terrible person who’d do the same bad deeds. It simply means I like the way they were designed and the role they play in the story. Writing a good villain can be as challenging as writing a good hero or character in general.

Okay, now back to Oboro for real:

(Putting the rest of my answer under a cut for spoilers, so heads up, Anon, if you haven’t read the Rakuyou arc.

Also, to the other Anon before, I will reply to your second message with additional thoughts of mine in several hours’ time. My brain needs rest first. Thank you for your patience.)

Some people don’t like Oboro because he’s done some less than heroic things. There’s no going around this and we don’t need to make excuses for what he’s done. Oboro is the leader of the Naraku, who have been in league with the Tendoshuu, who are not exactly nice people. Focusing on Oboro only, he’s fought and injured Gintoki and put the people he cares about in danger. He played a role in Shouyou’s execution, damaged Takasugi’s eye and more, and has just generally shown up to throw a wrench in the plans of the people we usually root for. Plus, being involved with Shouyou in that way caused a lot of physical pain and psychological trauma for Gintoki, Takasugi, and Katsura…that doesn’t exactly make some fans wave their pom-poms for him.

Oboro seemingly died in the Courtesan of a Nation arc and people thought that was the last we’d see of him. Then, he reappeared in the Shogun Assassination arc, where he also seemingly died and they thought that was it. And then he appeared again in the Farewell Shinsengumi arc and sustained major injuries. And then so on to the Rakuyou arc. This man just wouldn’t stay dead or immobilized, and that probably annoyed people, especially when he kept trying to kill Gintoki and others.

As for myself, I liked Oboro before I knew of his back story. I think he’s an interesting antagonist and one of my favourites in the series. One reason is because he’s voiced by Inoue Kazuhiko, who is one of my favourite voice actors. I think Oboro has a cool character design and stellar combat skills. I like that he’s rather stoic and isn’t figuratively twirling his moustache with evil glee like others. He stays calm and composed for the most part, except for when he becomes enraged.

(Doesn’t he look so cool? I had to include this pic.)

I also like that he’s one of the people who can give Gintoki a hard time in battle. Now, that doesn’t mean I like when people harm Gintoki, but if he were all-powerful and constantly defeating people without any challenge at all, it would be boring and predictable. The Gintoki vs. Oboro fight is memorable for the fact that Oboro was a tough opponent who brought back unwanted war memories.

Oboro shares many parallels with Gintoki. Besides physical appearance, they owe their lives to the same man: Yoshida Shouyou. Very much like Gintoki, Oboro tagged along with Shouyou, unwilling to leave him, feeling indebted to him for saving his life. Oboro has a rather low opinion of himself, as shown in the flashbacks of the Rakuyou arc: he didn’t believe himself to be anyone special or of importance to others. An orphan bought and sold by bandits, Oboro didn’t expect anything more and knew nothing more than pain, fear, and emptiness with no purpose in life except to serve others as an object, not a human being. And that makes my heart ache.

He’s not on a quest for ultimate power or to destroy the world for the heck of it. All of that is the result of his loyalty to Shouyou/Utsuro; he’ll do whatever it takes to “remove obstacles in that man’s way,” and if it means the downfall of a nation or killing Shouyou’s other students, so be it. Even years later, he only sees himself as a vessel to be used, a servant to Utsuro, forevermore.

Oboro was willing to do anything for Shouyou, prepared to become even an assassin. He was ready to become the first disciple of Shouyou’s and start a new life with him. And when the Naraku assassins came looking for them, Oboro sacrificed himself just so that Shouyou could escape and make his dream of opening up Shouka Sonjuku a reality. Oboro knew Shouyou no longer wanted to kill, and wanted his teacher and saviour to achieve all that because Oboro loved Shouyou more than his own life. Shouyou made Oboro feel human.

That kind of dedication speaks volumes of Oboro’s character. But, of course, Oboro survived, the Naraku made him one of their own, and he decided to rise up in the ranks – all to protect Utsuro, even if he could no longer be with him. Everything was and is for Utsuro/Shouyou. Everything.

Then, Oboro saw Shouyou with Gintoki, Katsura, and Takasugi. He must’ve been relieved and glad that Shouyou was able to accomplish his dream and give new life to other children…but I can only imagine the deep sorrow Oboro must’ve felt, because he could not be with them, that he was apparently forgotten by the man he was so devoted to. Hearing him express his wish, that he “would have liked to become one of them,” as his dying words…it really breaks my heart because I bet he would have been such a good older brother figure to Gintoki, Takasugi, and Katsura in another world and time.

That deep sorrow turned into something else, and Oboro pulled strings to have Utsuro arrested and then executed. “To get my master, I killed my master” – twisted, to say the least, and yet fascinating. Shouyou returned, but not as the man Oboro once knew: Utsuro. But that didn’t matter – it’s something Oboro points out to Takasugi, the key difference between them. Shouyou, Utsuro, the name doesn’t matter, because he is one and the same to Oboro.

But after his “blood vow” was fulfilled and he was about to die, Oboro told Takasugi and all of Shouyou’s disciples, consequently, the truth about Shouyou/Utsuro. Even at the end, Oboro wanted Shouyou to be free again, free from his immortality that causes him so much suffering. He knows Shouyou’s other students – most especially Gintoki – will be the ones to bring an end to that. He was probably envious of their closeness with Shouyou, that they got to spend more time with Shouyou than he did, but still, he shared vital information to help them, even after he had tried to kill them. Then, as I stated here, I believe Oboro dying at Takasugi’s hands for good was a fitting end for him.

And that’s why I love Oboro. He’s a complicated man and a memorable antagonist. His devotion to Shouyou led him down a twisted and tragic path, but I’m sure he would have preferred it to a life of nothingness without Shouyou.

I can understand why people might dislike him, but I will always be fond of him.

21 notes · View notes

james-senpai · 8 years ago

Text

On Gency

Okay, because some people have issues with Gency, I thought I’d compile a lil list of arguments that I find against Gency and why I think they’re bullshit. Disclaimer; The ship isn’t canon yet, this is refering to fan complaints, and everything below is my own interpretation of the current lore and character dynamics between the two. This is not a case FOR Gency, rather just debunking some of the toxic shit I’ve seen thrown at it. (long post incoming) TL;DR: if you have another opinion, you’re free to have it. Just try to stay on topic and don’t drag anything into it that doesn’t belong (’homophobia in OW’, current real world issues, that kinda shit) Oh, also I’m going to overlook the “It’s a het ship, so it’s boring” argument, because while I’ve seen it enough to tear y’all a new one over it, I’mma let it slide because that would be too easy to destroy (but I’ll get to that later) 1. Gency is abusive Nowhere cited or stated. The largest asspull I’ve seen. Don’t have much to say about it since the people I’ve noticed who use this excuse can’t provide any other reason than this simple phrase. 2. Genji didn’t consent to what Mercy did to him This is like getting in a car wreck, going to a doctor, them saving your life, and then turning around and yelling at them for doing their job. Genji was injured, Overwatch picked him up, Mercy as chief medic of OW saved him, as per her job description. Genji probably didn’t want to die there either. He was a playboy at the time, so I imagine that that moment was one of clarity for him, realizing that he never truly lived for anything worthwhile and if being brought back as a part-cyborg would enable him to do so, then he’d do it. 3. OW used Genji to attack his family Again, nowhere stated or implied. It’s stated that Genji used his abilities to dismantle his family’s criminal empire, but never that Genji went on a vendetta against his family. Genji’s no idiot and was probably well aware of the things his family was doing to ensure that he lived the playboy lifestyle he enjoyed for most of his life, but never really cared until they turned against him. After being saved from death, logic would dictate that he’d have some resentment against his family for the criminal shit they were pulling and would’ve gone after them anyway even if working for OW wasn’t a part of the deal. 4. Genji hated his body, and therefore hated Mercy Another asspull and something people try to use to demonize Mercy. Genji’s hatred of himself stems from that: HIMSELF. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anyone who’s disabled to the point of losing a part of themselves, but it really takes a toll on one’s mental state, self-worth, self-image and esteem. The stress of losing his ENTIRE body coupled with the betrayal of his family more than likely left him disillusioned with the world and his place in it. And as common for men, he found peace in something greater than himself. It’s why he’s so willing to write Mercy and keep touch with her through writing. After he has found peace with himself, he realizes how grateful he is to Mercy for saving him and giving him a chance to live for something greater than himself. Even without canon romantics, it’s genuinely touching to see one character grateful for what they once took for granted and were repulsed at. 5. Mercy had no say in saving Genji Mercy’s designation is the chief medical doctor of Overwatch. Last time I checked, a doctor’s JOB is to SAVE LIVES. Angela strikes me as the kind of person who does what she does, not out of obligation, but because she wants to save lives and make the world a better place. Even if you want to go with the excuse that OW MADE her save him, odds are she would’ve done it anyway because that’s who she is. 6. Mercy turned Genji into a killing machine Genji was ALREADY a trained ninja, so also bullshit. While he did indulge in a frivolous lifestyle, he was still able to contend with Hanzo and fight him off to the point where it wasn’t a one-sided slaughter. The fact that Genji lived AT ALL after their fight is proof of his abilities and skill. The cybernetic makeover they gave him had the primary purpose of saving his life, but because they are naturally more efficient than human limbs, they inadvertently BOOSTED his already stupidly skilled body even beyond what he could do before. TL;DR, the cybernetics didn’t suddenly make him a ‘killing machine’, Genji did. also he’s not a ‘machine’, as he still retains morality and free will. 7. Mercy is evil and a white savior The evil part has already been debunked by the creators, but the ‘White Savior’ bit is really confusing to me. She’s a doctor, so her job is to literally SAVE LIVES. LIKE I HATE TO BREAK FLOW HERE, READER, BUT WHERE THE HELL DID THIS EVEN COME FROM? THE BLONDE HAIR AND BLUE EYES?? SHE’S SWEDISH! LIKE ????? Worst asspull and people just resorting to spitting insults at a character. 8. Genji is a self-insert OC so the writer can live out his dreams of fucking Mercy Yeah, because as if implying that an Asian writer wants to plow his character ISN’T racist. ok. Every character that has ever existed is an OC. And honestly, this is one of the most disgusting pulls I have seen to come out of some people’s mouths. Think before you speak, like damn... 9. The writer is homophobic and favors a straight ship over LGBT representation He’s also the guy responsible for making the comic that revealed OW’s flagship character as gay. I’m not surprised that you missed it though because, while everyone else was celebrating this fact, y’all were complaining about Genji and Mercy writing one another. While he might enjoy the ship, he has also gone on record saying that people should enjoy what they love, regardless of canon. 10. Mercy has a savior complex Side note, but I find it funny how people will say stuff like this and then turn around and ship Mercy with anyone else. Like that makes it better... Again, DOCTOR, SAVES LIVES, HELPS PEOPLE. She doesn’t do what she does out of obligation, otherwise she wouldn’t even be active after OW disbanded, but because she genuinely cares about the good of others, even to the point of disagreeing with OW from time to time and helping those afflicted by war.

11. The patient/doctor relationship is weird and gross Newsflash! EVERYONE who has actively served in OW has at some point been Mercy’s patient. So if you go by that logic, you can no longer ship her with ANYONE in the game who has ties to OW.

12. It’s a poorly-written ship Of course it’s going to be poorly written when it isn’t even CANON yet. Look, bottom line is all we have right now for them that’s concrete is canon story connections, sweet fluff in game and out of game, and voicelines that tie into those story ties. No canon comic dedicated to them, no animated short. At the end of the day, that’s what people are sending death threats over: canon fluff and connections. 13. It’s a boring ship This one bugs me and it’s probably where I’m going to close with. I’ve seen this the most, even without the ‘het’ label (because bi, pans, demi people TOTALLY don’t exist yeah?) but that it’s ‘boring’. This, at the end of the day, is an opinion, but a very unfair one. ANY PAIRING CAN BE BORING. ANY RELATIONSHIP CAN BE BORING, EVEN GAY ONES. WHAT MAKES A PAIRING INTERESTING, A RELATIONSHIP DYNAMIC, AND CHARACTERS INTERESTING ARE THE WAYS IN WHICH A PAIRING IS HANDLED, A RELATIONSHIP FLESHED OUT, AND CHARACTERS DEFINED, ALL OF WHICH OW’S CAST OF CHARACTERS ARE DESPITE NOT HAVING DEDICATED COMICS AND SHORTS TO EVERYONE. They have likes, dislikes, dynamics and themes, stories and agendas, motivations and convictions, and small bits and pieces in between. All of which makes them engaging and interesting characters that we as the audience WANT to learn more about. We WANT to see Lucio get a short because he’s a great and lovable character with a cause that he’s fighting for. We WANT a McCree short because of his past, his convictions in his time with Blackwatch, and want to see what he’s going to do next. And we LOVED the Reflections comic because, for the first time that I can remember, we saw Tracer get revealed as gay and it DIDN’T remove from her being a bad-ass, wise cracking adventurer who believes that the world could always use more heroes. What I’m getting at is if you think ship X is boring, then it tells me two things about you. Either 1.) You haven’t looked hard enough or 2.) You haven’t seen what someone who’s GOOD can do Because I have loved ships simply because of the heart and soul fans put into them. I love Symetrat because someone wrote a hella good fic that fleshed out their characters, explored the dynamics between their differences, and presented them, for lack of a better word, flawlessly. I’ve loved the sheer amount of sweetness in the art I’ve seen in the Pharmercy tag and loved the dynamic of McHanzo, two roamers looking for peace in their own way. I even loved Widowtracer, two opposing forces and ideologies, melding, clashing, and learning. And I love Gency because it’s different from the ‘guy saves girl trope’, it EMPOWERS Mercy, gives Genji a turning point in his life, and creates a dynamic friendship between the two characters that, even if it never reaches romantic canon, will always be one of my favorite character dynamics in gaming. I’ve seen it in and out of Overwatch and to several fandoms beyond. We as fans can do some pretty amazing shit when we’re not engaging in ship wars and tearing out the throats of our creators, things that can genuinely touch and impact other people’s lives in new and profound ways, add relateability to already relatable characters, and flesh out stories and dynamics and relationships even after the official story is over, all while offering a new perspective on characters we already know and love. What I’m getting at, and will close on, is that the ship isn’t boring. You are

#overwatch #gency #long post

426 notes · View notes

swipestream · 7 years ago

Text

SUPERVERSIVE Goes Warpig: Why the Netflix Death Note Movie SUCKED

Our good friend Daddy Warpig isn’t the only one who can be passionately but rationally and analytically disgusted by steaming piles of crap. We at the Superversive team are capable of the same thing, and on that note, I’d like to tell you why the Netflix American Death Note film is an insult to the franchise name, and a black mark on its legacy forever. It’s worse than bad. It’s insulting.

In the big picture, it’s sort of hard to see, or at least explain. But none of the small details add up. Everything felt wrong. It was kind of like somebody made Abrams-verse Death Note but not as mindlessly entertaining…since Death Note has no appeal as mindless entertainment. Star Trek is theoretically brainier entertainment but at least it has spaceships and phasers and cool stuff; the Abrams movies were solid popcorn filler and I enjoy watching the first one especially. It just wasn’t good at the cerebral half of Trek.

“Death Note” is entirely about the mind game. The notebooks and the death gods are the only supernatural elements in the story, and they’re a plot device. If you lose the mind game, there’s nothing worth watching – and the Netflix film lost the mind game.

The premise of the movie is the same as the premise of every other adaptation: A Death Note drops out of the sky and is picked up by Light, an exceptionally intelligent but otherwise average high school student. The Death Note gives the holder the power to kill anyone simply by writing their name down. They also get to be followed around by a death god (shinigami, for you purists), the original owner of the note. This one’s name is Ryuk, and he appears in every adaptation, ’cause he’s just that cool (William Defoe as Ryuk in the Netflix movie is one of the few bright spots).

The first place the movie goes wrong is with Light. In the original anime (this is going to be my shorthand for both the anime and manga, since the former is just a direct adaptation of the latter) Light isn’t just smart, he’s a super-genius, more brilliant than every other character in the story except, arguably, L. And this is a story with no dumb characters. His intelligence is god-like.

And Light is also an excellent athlete. And handsome. And great with the ladies. And charming. He’s the classic sociopath – perfect on the outside with the heart of a monster underneath.

In the Netflix movie, Light is smart…for a high school student. He does other people’s homework and has them pay him. That’s smart, I guess. He also stands up to a bully by prissily yelling about how it’s child abuse if he hits them. That’s…not smart. He ends up in detention. Not very Light-like. He has no friends and is a nerd. VERY not Light-like.

Ryuk’s character design is basically the same in every adaptation, because it is perfect and awesome

In the anime, when Light sees Ryuk for the first time, he’s cool as a cucumber. Oh, a death god? Well, I suppose I do have a notebook with the power to kill people by writing their name down. He doesn’t seem to bother me. Why should I care? Light is stone cold. He assesses threats with the cold-blooded rationality of a predator and reacts to them accordingly. Ryuk might have been scary looking, but when Light deduces he’s not a threat…why freak out over it, right?

This version of Light sees Ryuk for the first time and screams like a little girl crying for his mama. It’s ridiculous and pathetic and very much NOT Light.

Anime Light trusts nobody. Nobody is a “friend”…and nobody is off limits. Light may eventually decide to “trust” you in the sense that he uses you as a pawn because he is convinced you won’t betray him, but this only happens after long and careful planning and deliberation, in the absolute assurance that letting you in on privileged information will directly benefit him in some way.

Movie Light, after using the Death Note to settle a couple of personal vendettas, shows it to a girl (Mia) and tells her what it does.

Was he friends with this girl? Nope.

Does he have any reason to believe she’ll do anything but freak out, and possibly get the Death Note taken away? Nope.

Does he have any reason to believe she won’t try to steal it herself? Nope.

So why does he show it to her?

He has a crush on her. That’s it. That’s the reason. Light reveals that he stone cold murdered two people with an untraceable and unstoppable weapon, because he had a crush on a pretty girl. Movie Light SUCKS.

Where does Light keep the Death Note? Surely in some untraceable spot, somewhere nobody would ever think to look or could stumble onto accidentally?

Anime Light creates an elaborate death trap, ensuring that anybody who doesn’t do the exact set of steps required to retrieve the Death Note from its hiding spot will literally set the entire house on fire and burn everything to the ground. In public he is never stupid enough to carry the Death Note around with him, instead smuggling pieces of paper that he hides in places like secret compartments on his watch.

Movie Light brings it to gym class and reads it on the bleachers, and is promptly spotted. He also carries it around with him, stuffs it inside of a Calculus book (when he doesn’t take Calculus, making it an especially dumb hiding spot), and leaves it lying around. Later in the movie Mia is able to steal several pages of the Death Note. How? Because he left it sitting there. In the next scene a group of FBI agents investigating them commit suicide. Light is too dumb to realize that Mia stole the Death Note, and accuses Ryuk of acting on his own. Light is an idiot. The movie frames the revelation that Mia stole the Death Note as a “twist” instead of an absurdly obvious plot device.

Anime Light will kill anyone, do anything, to avoid being caught – and he will not lose a second of sleep at night over it. He openly talks of killing his own family several times, and while he never has to do so directly he is certainly very much open to the possibility.

Movie Light is essentially challenged on TV by his father: Kill me if you can. Light doesn’t do it, because this version of Light will kill hundreds of people in cold blood but is willing to get caught if it means not killing his father. Movie version of L (more on him soon) immediately and correctly figures out that Light must be Kira (the Death Note killer) for this reason.

Let’s talk about L. In both adaptations L is the detective in charge of the Kira investigation. I’m going to be fair here and say that Keith Stanfield did a very good job here and was easily the best part of the movie; it’s not his fault the writing betrayed him in the end.

The Lind L. Tailor scene is one of the most iconic moments in the Death Note franchise and the moment it became clear how brilliant the plotting really was. It was a ploy by L designed to pinpoint Kira’s powers and location by sacrificing a death row inmate and announcing on live TV that he was in charge of the Kira investigation. It established L’s brilliance, his ballsiness, and the stakes and rules of the game in one awesome game-changing moment.

More like LAME L. Tailor scene, amirite? Huh? Huh?

The Lind L. Tailor scene is not in the Netflix movie. Instead we get a pale imitation where L simply holds a press conference and asks Kira to kill him; when Kira doesn’t kill him, he deduces that this means Kira needs a name and face.

Here again the stupidity of the Netflix movie is contrasted sharply with the brilliance of the anime. In the anime the Lind L. Tailor scene works because L is repeating the broadcast over and over throughout the day – as he says, though apparently he gets lucky and Tailor is caught the first go around. The key here is that it’s not just that he’s looping it, it’s being repeated live, so he can show Kira that he knows exactly when he made the kill. He also DOES NOT USE HIMSELF – that’s the big twist in the scene, that he’s using a proxy.

In the Netflix movie, L goes up and invites Kira to kill him himself, and at a live press conference. When it’s over, he leaves. This defeats the whole point of the scene – he proved nothing! All he knows is that for some reason, Kira did not kill him – he does not have any proof that Kira CAN kill someone with just a name and face. And he risks his own very much NOT expendable life on a hunch with no proof. And doing this would prove nothing about Kira’s location, since he’s already pinpointed him to Seattle. Non-action is not evidence. It’s just not proof against his theory – a very different thing.

Later Netflix L deduces that Light is Kira by having Light’s father – the police chief – give a press conference, live. When he does not immediately die afterwards – as of course he would if Kira had no relation and thus no reason to keep him alive – he uses this as his evidence that Light is L.

…Except L would never be this sloppy. Anime L would NEVER use this scenario to come to a conclusion like that. He would do something rather like he actually did – suspect Light, hide cameras in his house, set a tail on him, and track his movements. What he would NOT do is decide that his investigation is over based on such a flimy deduction. Again – one of the best parts of the anime is that it doesn’t contain moments like that. If Anime L doesn’t have proof Light is Kira, he doesn’t go gunning half-cocked on hunches, which is exactly what Netflix L is doing. And the thing is, if Netflix L HAD set up Light’s room with cameras, Light would almost certainly have been caught, considering how much stupider he is than anime Light.

Later in the movie, L introduces himself to Light and tells him he knows he’s Kira but has no evidence yet. He even takes off his half-mask thing and shows him his face.

Why would L risk his life like this? It’s not explained. There is no reason. L gains nothing from this. When Anime L reveals himself to Light the scene is shocking and dramatic, because up to that point it was understood that L’s big advantage is that Light had no idea what he looked like or what his name was. As the episode goes on it becomes increasingly clear that not only has L not made a mistake or gone off the rails, he has executed a masterstroke, one of the most brilliant moves of the game to that point, effectively evening the playing field against a seemingly unstoppable enemy. Anime L NEVER took unnecessary risks unless he knew the potential gains were massive. Netflix L is careless in comparison.

This, by the way, is the only face to face interaction between L and Light in the whole film. The back and forth battle of wits underpinned with Machiavellian maneuvering that characterized their relationship in the anime? Completely gone.

Later, after Netflix L’s assistant, Watari, is killed, he loses it, grabs a gun, and goes after Light vigilante style…with no evidence, when earlier in the movie he makes a point of saying he doesn’t use a gun to kill people.

Anime L would never do this. First off, L HATES to lose. If Kira somehow managed to get to somebody close enough to L to affect him, it wouldn’t prompt L to give up his values and go running off half-cocked against a suspect. It would be another reason for L to up his game, to further solidify his dedication to the cause and willingness to take even more dangerous risks. But stop trying for answers and instead steal a car and start gunning for somebody? Unthinkable.

And second off…what, exactly, is L hoping to accomplish? I mean revenge, I guess, but then when he first sees Light he tells him to freeze and puts him under arrest…why? With what evidence? He had nothing. No matter how upset L was he’d never do something that rash – in fact, if L was upset he would ESPECIALLY not do something that rash. He would simply double down on his efforts, work twice as hard. Like Netflix Light, if less dramatically, Netflix L is just a lamer version of the anime L. He’s not a “different” interpretation, he’s a worse one.

Light, by the way, is willing to leave Watari alive. When his girlfriend yells something to the effect of “Stop acting all high and mighty because you don’t have the balls to do what’s necessary”, she is absolutely right, and it’s hard not to be on her side. Come on, Light, you’re a predator. You’ve killed over 400 people! Embrace it!

This is accurate.

The ending is just a mess. So the Death Note doesn’t just allow you to control people’s actions before their death, it allows you to place yourself into a medically induced coma and fall in specific spots at specific times. Apparently the Death Note can do anything so long as you write “And also, this person dies” at the end of the sentence. L, by the way, finds a page from the Death Note stuffed inside Light’s calculus book. You might recall that Light doesn’t take Calculus. This is how obvious his hiding place is.

The Netflix Death Note is like a Russian doll of bad decisions. It’s just mistake after mistake, one on top of the other, and beneath all of that is the biggest mistake of all: Focusing on the edgy themes and black comedy in lieu of the incredibly deliberate and careful plotting and mental machinations that make up the heart of the original story.

Because beneath all of its death gods and magical notebooks, “Death Note” is a thriller. And when you take that aspect away, as the Netflix movie did, you’re doing more than making a bad Death Note movie. You’re not making a Death Note movie at all. You’re just adding another chapter into the book of generic grimdark fantasies so beloved in this, the dung age.

And you should be ashamed.

SUPERVERSIVE Goes Warpig: Why the Netflix Death Note Movie SUCKED published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi

0 notes