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fuckyeaharthuriana · 4 years ago

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I watched all the arthurian tv series I could possibly find and put them all from best to worst (imho)

Regarding my opinions and my taste: I am okay with low budget, bad special effects and even bad/weird acting, I prefer enjoyment over any kind of historical accuracy. I also enjoy cheesy movies, and I prefer characters over plot, and plot over the rest (pace, acting etc.).I tend to prefer movies that uses characters with a reason (ex. using Morgause as Arthur's sister versus using a random guy and calling him Gaheris just because it's an arthurian sounding name). I am also a bit Mordred fan.

Here I considered miniseries part of the tv shows/series list!

(the sequel to this movies post)

The Legend of King Arthur (1979) - my favourite arthurian media EVER. Among movies and tv shows, this is my favorite ever. It focuses a lot on Morgana and Arthur and on her revenge in particular. If you like Morgana, this show is for you. It also has a great Mordred, and some very beautiful moments for Bors.

Kaamelott - Amazing arthurian parody that starts as full on sketches and gets pretty serious and dramatic by the 5th season. It focuses mainly on Arthur.

Arthur et les enfants de la Table Ronde (animated series) - amazing animated show about a kid Arthur living in Uther's castle and having a bunch of adventures with Guinevere, Morgana, Gawain, Sagramore and Tristan. Pretty heartwarming!

The Boy Merlin - while I am not a Merlin fan in general, I still loved this miniseries which focuses on Merlin's childhood and small adventures without being too cheesy.

Arthur of the Britons - I love this show, and I am a big Kay fan so this show is really a gift. Sadly, it lacks in arthurian events/characters.

The Mists of Avalon (2001) - I hate the novel, but the miniseries managed to cut out my least favorite parts, and kept the bone structure of it. It also focuses on Morgana and she is played by one of my favorite actresses.

The Adventures of Sir Lancelot - episodic and fun, this has one of my favourite Lancelot ever. The only thing I disliked was that there is no overall plot or drama

Camelot (Starz, 2011) - the series was cancelled after the first season so it never gets to other events, but as a Morgana focused series it was pretty amazing. Arthur was quite weak as a character, but at least Eva Green was in it.

The Legend of Prince Valiant (cartoon) - this is my favorite adaptation of Prince Valiant and it has tons of arthurian elements, in particular it also had some great episodes for Gawain and Guinevere.

Fate/Apocrypha (anime): This season is not connected with the other seasons and can be watched alone. It is about humans summoning historical figures as servants to fight and obtain the Grail (basically a wish-giving object). Mordred is one of these figures.

Trollhunters (animated series) - (only first season and third season) The arthurian elements are pretty vague at the beginning, but the new season explored Camelot and the relationship between Morgana and Arthur. In general, Morgana is a great character in this show.

The Librarians - Mainly not an arthurian series, but it is a general fun show and it has Galahad as one of its main characters, with some specific episodes about him.

The Adventures of Sir Galahad - a fun watch but very repetitive. Still, I enjoyed this one tv series where Mordred and Galahad actually interact

Cursed (Netflix) - Tv show focusing on Nimue. Pretty fun, especially by the end, but many times the whole "this character by neutral name... is actually *insert arthurian character here*" ended up being not necessary and pretty fanservice-y, without any real meaning.

Merlin (1998 miniseries) - while I enjoyed it, in particular the second episode, I generally disliked many of the "beauty as most important for women" elements

Merlin (BBC) - I enjoyed the first two seasons more than the rest. The show ends up with a lot of plot stuff missing or forgotten and it ends up with no particular coherent plot at all.

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (anime) - I am still at episode ~ 12, but I am really enjoying it. It focuses on the adventure of Arthur on a journey (with some other knights) to find out who killed his parents and stop the big anime style villain

Sir Gadabout - I only watched a few episodes so take this with a grain of salt, but it's a funny parody show, but nothing special

Il cuore e la Spada - an Italian Tristan and Isolde tv show

Stargate SG1 season 9 and 10 - This was a good show, but it's this low because the arthurian elements of these "arthurian seasons" are only a few.

King Arthur's Disasters - Episodic parodies about Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere (mainly).

Fate/Stay Night and *Fate/Zero (*anime) - The anime has some arthurian elements (Holy Grail and Saber/Arthur), but I did find it pretty confusing e boring.

Once Upon A time - The tv show had some arthurian elements and then an entire arthurian arc. Unfortunately they dropped so many plots points that it literally made no sense.

Merlin's Apprentice - Melrin 1998 without the interesting parts

The Seven Deadly Sins (Anime) - It has Merlin, Tristan's Dad and Lancelot's dad among its main characters, plus other arthurian characters and Arthur as a guest character. It has some really problematic elements and the third season was also pretty boring.

Mr Merlin - this is barely arthurian. It's also about Merlin in modern times, and nothing too exciting.

Alias the Jester - I don't even know why I watched it. It only had, like, one arthurian element and in general it was pretty boring

Not watched/in the list:

Arthur And The Square Knights Of The Round (I watched some episodes ages ago, but I remember nothing)

King Arthur and the Knights of Justice

Blazing Dragons

Guinevere Jones (it's impossible to find in English)

Merlin (1980 German tv show and, sadly, I don't know German)

Arthur Prince on the White Horse (sequel of the other arthurian anime that I have to finish)

Space Knights (I only recently found out about this and haven't watched it yet)

House of Anubis (never found it in English)

Merlin (2012, only in French)

Runaways (I watched the first season, and have yet to get to the arthurian elements in the third)

Honorable mentions:

The MacGyver's arthurian episodes are among my favorite Connecticut Yankee adaptations. Doctor Who Battlefield was also a pretty good arthurian arc.

#arthuriana #merlin #camelot #kaamelott #king arthur #tv shows

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olivieblake · 4 years ago

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KSIGJICNRJCNEHCBD HELLO HELLO WELCOME TO THE HELL THAT IS KNOWING ZUTARA IS EVERYTHING AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN AS SUCH !!!! wow i love that you are as angry as i was (and am every rewatch? yikes) this is amazing i knew you're my favorite but yeah wow man this really. confirms it whew high five

yeah it’s pretty wild how I knew this was what happened and was already bracing for it and yet STILL got completely misled by the narrative??? MEN I tell you MEN. I’m also going to use this ask as a method to reply to some of the other commentary if you don’t mind since this seems like a good place for communal frustration (here is my original post for anyone scrolling around lost)

@meg-hemmings: I agree with all of ur thoughts and I would TOTALLY read anything you wrote for Zutara … your writing is among my absolute favorite ever and I think you would write the Zutara dynamic so beautifully!

@one-man-propaganda-machine: I am - begging - you to write it yourself.

I... am not going to make promises, but I may have to. I want something very specific and that never bodes well for me. I doubt it would be more than a one-shot, but there are multiple scenes that could have occurred between episodes that would flesh out what was there (and of course I’d cut the final 15 seconds of the show, much like another epilogue I loathe and ignore)

@deifiliaa: omg atla discourse in 2021; olivie, i’d love to see what your character tier list looks like now that you’ve finished the series 👀

I’m going to put azula at the top. not because she’s a good person obviously but she’s FULL. OF. HITS. every time she’s on the screen the narrative gets immediately more interesting. she’s savvy and self-assured and I love it. her ending depressed me although I like that it was kind of about the loss of her two best friends? if that had been more of a focus I think I would have enjoyed it more but yeah, losing mai and ty lee could have been rightfully devastating. who among us is not totally obliterated by friend breakups. I also really loved uncle iroh; if anything that’s why I wasn’t invested in zuko’s storyline until close to the end, because watching him disappoint his uncle was very difficult (I get it, he’s a teenager, he’s growing and evolving and whatnot, but also I am closer to being his uncle than to being him so like, yeah). I also hope the peter pan revenge guy (JET that’s his name, sorry pregnancy kills my brain cells) did hook up with both katara and zuko. I love that journey for all three of them. I wanted more time with mai than we got, so there wasn’t quite enough there to love... but I was very down with ty lee interfering on her behalf. what a pivotal moment

of the core characters I think I was quickest to love sokka; the episode where he apologizes to suki and asks her to train him cemented it for me. I think it’s a big deal to show boys apologizing on-screen and owning their misconceptions. I like katara a lot—she’s what a lot of people do with fanon hermione. toph is also great, and part of me feels there is a strong basis for a ship with aang that balances their opposing energy, though I also like the idea of them being platonic besties. aang is... twelve. pretty much every time he was on the screen mr blake (a teacher) was like “man, aang is such a seventh grader,” so it was nice how convincing that was for his emotional journey, but at the same time it was hard to forget he was in seventh grade. appa and momo are STARS. I am sure I have mentioned this before but mr blake really loves animals and he was devastated by appa’s kidnapping; he hugged our dog for about ten minutes after aang found appa. after he decided I was zuko, he speculated that he is closest to aang but he’s not happy about it lol. “ugh, aang and I are such boring pacifists” was I believe his take on the subject

@libbynico, who for some reason I can’t tag: so true! katara was literally something like a mother/older sister figure to aang the entire time, but whatever

yeah, I think it really sucks that katara, as the emotionally nurturing character, felt shoved into the role of love interest. it’s everything wrong with the distribution of emotional labor in male-female relationships but sure, WHATEVER, apparently nobody thought to ask me in 2008

@touslesnoms: I liked “such selfish prayers” by andromeda3116 if you ever decide to read zutara after the series; the worst prisoner by emletish is super funny too

thanks for the recs! I will take them. I do want something very specific so I will be accepting recs until I find it lol. or until I lose composure and write it (yeah this is me WITH my composure, no wonder mr blake thinks I’m zuko, “I’m never happy” indeed)

@gaeleria: THANK YOU!!! Ugh omg that “I’m confused” kiss scene made me actively hate the ending. I knew ahead of time they were endgame, so I tried to make myself accept it early on. Like, I really didn’t like the pairing, but I wasn’t going to be emotionally invested in the romance and it was just going to be like, whatevs. AND THEN THEY WROTE THAT SCENE??! 1000% no. What was even the point of that scene? If they had written it to make Aang have some introspection and realize it’s not all about him, Katara’s feelings matter too, or even apologize, or anything… but no, there was literally no point to that scene. No character growth, it was never mentioned again. Ugh.

this is in answer to both you and beloved @zabbini: yeah this was a fuck-up for sure lol. I think it may come down to editing for time; the series is very irregularly paced, what with the majority of the action taking place in the final three episodes of a 16 episode season. or maybe it’s just because MEN CAN’T BE TRUSTED TO WRITE ROMANCE but either way yeah this was a real misstep and just truly, truly reeked of a particular (white) male attitude about how women think and what they owe. had a bad day, dudes? buy a gun, kiss your forever girl, do whatever you want and it’s fine! (I’m exaggerating but barely)

in terms of what’s so angering for me: a character like katara who previously had tons of agency was robbed of it when it came to her romantic arc, which is just really upsetting. and to be fair, I was equally upset when zuko instantly agreed to the agni kai with azula because it was like okay well katara’s extremely valuable, as you know, but now you want her to just sit on the sidelines...? (more of a story flaw than a relationship flaw, but my chest sunk a little at the idea that katara was going to sit by and watch as an accessory to zuko’s story when she’s a crucial weapon in their collective fight. what a waste, right?)

it’s also especially hard to buy into the aang thing when zuko’s method of problem-solving on katara’s behalf is there for comparison. he asks her what she needs in order to find closure and then from there, does everything necessary to get it without having to be asked twice. versus aang, who is a twelve-year-old pair of rogue lips who never wins any of his fights without the aid of phenomenal cosmic powers...? ugh I’m getting off track but in the end there’s just a complete lack of understanding what female audiences want, though again, I don’t think they were really considering that at all. which I guess is... fair, it’s not the point of the show, but then why make the ending romantic at all? to show that their brand of hero gets everything he wants, I guess

in conclusion in 2008 I’m not sure the industry was capable of doing better, which sucks but isn’t surprising. still, it does fit the components of “stuff I write fics for,” which is I enjoyed most of it but find myself enraged by slivers I compulsively need to fix—WHICH IS STILL NOT A PROMISE but ugh I can already feel myself giving in

#avatar the last airbender #zabbini

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep1-6

It took me way longer than I expected to get around to writing this, and now we’re like one day away from ep7 coming out so that’s a bit awkward, but better late than never, lol.

Anyway I’ve slipped back into full-on When They Cry brainworms mode because of this new series, and I have a whole lot to say about it.

One thing I wanna say before I put the rest of this post under a cut, though, is that I think Gou should be approached as a remake/retelling first, and a sequel second. That might change later on, but I think Ryukishi and the director really meant it when they said that they wanted this to be accessible to new fans.

Since we’ve already gone through one and a half full arcs, I guess I’ll just start off with my overall thoughts on the series, and how I think it’ll go in the long run, before I get into the specifics of what’s happened thus far.

Like I said above, I really do think that this was written from the ground up as a remake or retelling first and foremost, with the sequel aspects being more like background fanservice to give old fans something to chew on. In spite of the various changes and cuts they’ve made to the story thus far, they’ve been very faithful about replicating the overall experience and vibe of the VN in a way that works well in an anime format.

For one thing, I think this is basically the reason why Rika seems to be weirdly hands-off about everything in this series, instead of actively interfering with everything going on and telling everyone about what’s going on. I get why it frustrates people, but I think it really just boils down to how Gou is specifically trying not to spoil new fans on the story in advance, so they’re keeping Rika pretty much entirely as a background figure who doesn’t actually do much. I think it’s a good set-up, though, since instead of having Rika dominate the narrative in the same way as in Minagoroshi and Matsuribayashi, Keiichi is still the ‘primary’ protagonist of Gou, who’s perspective aligns more with that of new fans, while Rika is a secondary protagonist of sorts, who old fans can see things from the perspective of because of what we all know about the story.

Which I think is actually pretty similar to the VN, since if you go back and reread it, you end up seeing things more from Rika’s point of view, even though she’s more of a background figure for most of the story.

I know there’s the whole scene from the start of ep2 where she’s talking to Hanyuu in the fragment world, but now that we’re further into this new series, I think that scene didn’t actually change a whole lot compared to the VN. It’s mostly just there to spell out that supernatural elements and time loops exist right from the start, instead of only revealing it later on. But in the long run it’s not really that important, so I can see why they decided to just get it out the way immediately. And they still intentionally side-stepped having Rika actually say anything explicit about who the mastermind is, or what the rules of Hinamizawa are, so new fans are still mostly in the dark about what’s actually going on.

Anyway, I’ve been kinda surprised by the sort of pacing and structure Gou’s had thus far, especially since it’s ended up feeling more like a full on remake with mostly superficial differences from the source material. I was worried about how it might go when it became obvious that it’d probably only be 24 episodes, but at this point I think they know what they’re doing with this. And even though it seems to still be trying to cover the same plot beats as the VN, I honestly think that they can pull it off in just 24 episodes. As long as they’re willing to make some ambitious and controversial edits, at least.

I suppose it’s still possible we might get a second season later, and that it’ll end up playing out more like the pacing of the 2006 anime, but I doubt it. The fact that they intentionally combined different elements of Tsumihoroboshi into the Onidamashi arc makes me much more inclined to think that this is going to be a more compact retelling of the VN, with it all being condensed into just 24 episodes.

Going by how many BD/DVDs there are gonna be for Gou, and how they divide up the episodes, I think it’s safe to assume that this will be split into five arcs with 4, 4, 5, 4, and 7 episodes, respectively. Which gives us a better idea of how things will go later on. I think it’s at least safe to assume that they’re splitting up the arcs this way, since that seems like a very strange and lopsided way to split up the discs, and we’ve already seen that Onidamashi was four episodes, and Watadamashi will probably be the same, so it seems to line up thus far.

Basically I think that after this we’ll get a new version of Tatarigoroshi covering five episodes, and then the rest of the series will be made up of two ‘answer arcs’, which will probably be where Gou gets more into original story stuff, and/or more major plot editing. I know the 2006 anime covered the first two answer arcs in season one, and then basically spent the entirety of Kai on the last two answer arcs, but I’m leaning more towards assuming that they’re actually going to cover all the important answers in just these two arcs.

Which seems kinda hard to believe, and I’m still kinda wary about how it might pan out, but there’s a lot they can do to shorten the answer arcs. For one thing, I think everyone’s already guessed that Takano probably won’t be the main villain anymore in Gou, so if that means they can basically skip over all/most of her material from the VN, that’d already let them cut out a lot.

And for one thing, it seems like Gou’s whole framing device with Rika is kinda already doing the same stuff as Minagoroshi, so I think that basically already makes most of that arc unnecessary for this series.

This is just my speculation at the moment, but I think that Gou’s ‘game board’ might be based on the timeline where Takano’s parents don’t die, and she doesn’t end up involved in the politics surrounding her grandfather’s research, which is I think how they’ll explain her not being the villain anymore. Even though she seems to be the same sort of person thus far in Gou, it’s entirely possible that in this version of events she’s just a regular nurse who has a bit of an obsession with Hinamizawa’s history, but isn’t actually part of any nefarious conspiracies.

At the very least I think this is the ‘simplest’ theory for where Gou’s heading, since it’s just based on stuff that already happened in the VN.

I also don’t really think that there’s a ‘new villain’, so to say, even if Takano’s more or less out of the picture in this version. I think we’re gonna find out that Featherine and Bernkastel are responsible for throwing Rika back into the loop, but I think that’s a bit different to the idea of there being some entirely new villain or something causing problems.

Anyway, I think it might be a bit more clear if I go into my thoughts on what went down in Onidamashi, lol.

Basically I think that 90% of what happened in Onidamashi was just Rena being infected by the virus like in Tsumihoroboshi. Rika and Satoko’s deaths is a bit of a mystery, but the main thing is that I think Rena killed Tomitake and Takano on the night of the festival. I think it’ll be a bit more clear what’s going on when the next episode comes out and we see what happens to those two again in Watadamashi, but I think it makes sense that Rena killed them in Onidamashi. I think she’d already killed Rina and Teppei before the story even started, and she seemed immediately suspicious of Tomitake when she first saw him and Keiichi joked about how he might be a spy, so I think she ended up killing him and Takano out of fear that they were gonna find out about the murders she did. Also there’s the whole scene where she was ominously watching them on the night of the festival, so there’s that, lol.

And on the note of Rena’s paranoia in that arc, it’s worth noting that the bit where she accuses Keiichi of hiding stuff from her at the dump site is [I think] entirely new, and seems to heavily imply that she was paranoid about the idea that he might have found out about the murders she did. So it makes sense to me that she might have had similar fears about Tomitake. It’s also probably the main reason why she ended up trying to kill Keiichi at the end of the arc, since he’s the other person who she would have been afraid might rat her out to the police.

I think there was also some element of her believing in the idea of Oyashiro-sama’s Curse, and going along with the expected patterns of that, but mostly I think she was concerned about protecting herself and her father.

I’m also assuming that at some point we’ll find out that Keiichi hallucinated the second half of their fight, and that what probably happened was that Rena got knocked unconscious when she hit the table, and Keiichi then went over the edge into full-blown virus paranoia and started attacking her, while hallucinating that she’d woken back up and started stabbing him.

On the other hand, I’m leaning towards assuming that she wasn’t actually involved with Rika and Satoko’s deaths, since there wouldn’t have been any real motive for that. With Keiichi, Tomitake, and by extension Takano, she had clear reasons to be suspicious of them and to want to get rid of them, but there’s no real reason she would have suspected Rika or Satoko. I think they also got killed in their house, so she would have had to really go out of her way to kill them, which seems unlikely. It’s also worth noting that Rika was convinced the whole time that she was back in the Onikakushi route, which is made more explicit in the manga version of Gou where the scene with her and Hanyuu happens after the end of the arc. For one thing she reveals that she was murdered by someone [but she doesn’t remember who], so we can at least rule out the idea that Rika killed Satoko and then herself, but it also indicates that Rika was assuming the whole time that Rena was totally innocent, which is why she told Keiichi to trust her. So I think there’s no real chance that she confronted Rena about her murders and then got killed by her.

So basically I think their deaths are completely unrelated to the other stuff going on in the arc. Which is why I don’t really have any super confident theories about them, lol. My best guess is that, unless there’s some entirely new and unpredictable stuff going on, maybe Shion was off in the background dealing with her own version of the virus. So maybe like how the Tsumihoroboshi scenario seemed to be going on in the background, it’s possible that the Meakashi scenario was happening too. Which would at least be a fairly understandable explanation for why Rika and Satoko would wind up mysteriously dead.

I’ve seen people also raise the theory that maybe Shion also killed Mion, and that it was her disguised as Mion talking to Keiichi at the hospital at the end of the arc, but I’m not entirely sure about that. It’d be a neat twist, though, and in a way it’d help address one issue I’ve always had with the VN, in that Shion seemed to be 100% completely irrelevant to the events of Onikakushi.

I’m also very curious about the scene where Keiichi goes to the Irie Clinic and finds that it’s being remodeled. Which seems to imply that they were basically packing up shop and abandoning the village. I imagine it’s a response to Tomitake and Takano dying, but it might still be consistent with my theory of Takano not being very important this time around. Even if she’s not involved in all that anymore, it’s possible that just means that Tomitake still is, so maybe it was his death specifically that caused the rest of the team to stop their mission and leave the village.

Either way, I think it goes to show that either Tomitake and Takano both actually died this time around, or they were at least taken out of commission in some way or another. Even when Tomitake dies in each arc, the clinic still continues it’s operations since Takano never actually died.

It makes me wonder if the Great Hinamizawa Disaster would even happen in a version of events where Takano isn’t in charge of things. Unless we’re meant to think that it happened off-screen while Keiichi was in the hospital, it’s odd to think that they’d just pack up and leave before doing it.

Keiichi probably got more or less assassinated by that random nurse at the end of the arc, though, so I think the people from Tokyo in general are still around, and are still at least somewhat aware of the virus. I’m not sure how that might impact things with the GHD, though.

Anyway, I’ve got less thoughts and predictions related to Watadamashi since it’s only halfway done at this point, and is a lot closer to the VN than the last arc was, so I’ll just go over them quickly.

In general I really do think that the arc’s been 1:1 with the Watanagashi arc thus far, aside from Keiichi giving the doll to Mion, which I don’t even think is that important. After ep5 I was wondering if maybe they were going to avoid showing Mion and Shion together until the very end of the arc, but then they immediately went into that in ep6, lol. It looks like they’re trying to make it a bit more obvious what’s going on with the whole Mion and Shion thing in general this time around, though, which I think is a good choice. I think it’s still the same as it was in the VN, but my current understanding of the timeline here is that Mion was pretending to be Shion, and we only first see Shion herself when she invites Keiichi to the cafe in ep6. And I think for the rest of the episode they were just being themselves.

There also seems to be a subtle difference in how Mion and Shion’s eyes are drawn in this version, as a hint to who’s who in each scene, so that’s neat. They’re similar enough that it’s kinda hard to be sure sometimes, but still.

Going by the ep7 preview images, I think the arc will continue following the same path as Watanagashi, with us seeing the group breaking into the Saiguden and talking about Hinamizawa’s history. Though one thing that’s really interesting is that in one of the preview images, Takano seems to be holding a folder of some kind inside the Saiguden, which makes me wonder it’s the same folder of documents she gave to Rena in Tsumihoroboshi, and that she’s gonna talk to Keiichi and Mion about her theory with the virus. That’d at least be one way to bring certain plot points up earlier, and it’d be another way to let them skip Tsumihoroboshi.

Since Watadamashi seems like it should be four episodes, but has also been going notably slower than the 2006 adaptation of Watanagashi, I think it’s safe to assume that like with Onidamashi, it’ll have a more abrupt ending than the VN, and skip over some stuff. There’s already several scenes from the PVs that seem to be from the whole torture basement part of Watanagashi, so what I think will happen is that Rika will just preemptively avoid getting herself and Satoko killed by Shion, and the story will just go more immediately from Shion killing the other family head people to Keiichi and Rena interrogating her. Assuming that the arc as a whole continues going in the same direction as Watanagashi, at least. And I can’t really imagine Rika letting herself and Satoko get killed yet again like this, so it’d make sense to just cut out that part. Also, if I’m right about my guess that Shion killed the two of them in Onidamashi, that’d be another excuse to skip that part in this arc, and that way they’d just be moving it to a different arc instead of outright skipping it.

After how Onidamashi went, it’s hard not to assume that this arc will diverge heavily from Watanagashi at the end, but honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being more or less the same. I think Shion would have basically the same motives for everything even in this version of events where Mion got the doll. And if I’m also right about the idea that Takano might talk to them about the virus theory in the next episode, maybe that’d push Shion over the edge for basically the same reasons as Rena in Tsumihoroboshi. At the very least I’d prefer them to keep Shion as the villain instead of making Mion the villain just for shock value, since it’s an important part of Mion’s character that she doesn’t ever do that.

I think the only way I could see it working is if Mion does the murdering in this arc not because of paranoia or the virus, but just because of her family obligations. Like, maybe she finds out about the Saiguden break-in, and ends up being obligated to kill the four of them as punishment for it. I still think that might be kinda contrived, but it’d be better than making her get the virus for the first time in the whole franchise.

I’m also still really curious to see if they’re going to talk about Satoshi at all in this arc, since they haven’t really talked about him at all thus far in Gou, which has been one of the more notable cuts. They did still show that one shot of him killing his aunt when Oishi was explaining how the past incidents went, so I don’t think he’s been completely written out of the story, but they’re being a lot more evasive about him than in the VN. At the very least, like with how the last arc contained references to Tsumihoroboshi, I wonder if this arc will reference Shion’s whole relationship with Satoshi, or if that’ll only be revealed later.

Also, since Onidamashi’s ending felt pretty similar to Watanagashi’s ending, I think the very end of this arc will go in a different direction to shake things up. I dunno what to expect from that, but maybe it’ll play out more like Tatarigoroshi, and Keiichi will leave the torture basement only to find out that the GHD’s happened.

Anyway, that aside, I wanna go back over why I think that they’re basically cutting Tsumihoroboshi out of the story, and moving different parts of it to other arcs. Like I said, I think the whole scenario with her killing Rina and Teppei was going on in the background in Onidamashi, but there’s also multiple instances of them reusing quotes from Tsumihoroboshi in that arc. The main one is that, when she’s venting out her paranoia to Keiichi, she says part of her monologue about ‘trying really hard’, which in the VN was from when she was explaining her motives for killing Rina and Teppei when she confessed to her friends. I don’t think there’s any major twists or subversion there. I think that was straight up just her alluding to the murders she’d done, even if Keiichi didn’t know what she meant this time around. The manga version of this scene is also a fair bit longer, and contains much more of the Tsumihoroboshi monologue, which makes it even more obvious.

Along the same lines, the manga version of the fight between Keiichi and Rena in this arc also used Keiichi’s internal monologue from the rooftop battle between them in Tsumihoroboshi, so that’s another example of them reusing stuff from that arc in Onidamashi. It’s not quite as obvious in the anime since they don’t really have any internal monologues at all, but the manga makes it very obvious.

And like I said above, it’s possible that the next episode of Watadamashi will also reuse elements of Tsumihoroboshi by having Shion find out about the virus from Takano and get paranoid about it.

Also there’s the whole fact that Keiichi was having flashbacks to Onikakushi throughout the last arc, which is also what basically happened in Tsumihoroboshi.

So basically there’s just a whole list of reasons why I think they’ve decided to skip that arc in Gou and spread out the important bits of it to other arcs, which is a major reason why I think they’re going to try and cover the whole story in just 24 episodes.

If they skip Tsumihoroboshi entirely, and cut out huge portions of Minagoroshi and Matsuribayashi depending on how they handle Takano, then I think it’d actually be pretty easy to just cover the remaining parts of the answer arcs in just two arcs across 11 episodes.

Considering that they haven’t really referenced Meakashi at all thus far, unlike how Onidamashi was blatantly a mash-up of Onikakushi and Tsumihoroboshi from start to finish, I think they’re going to basically have Meakashi just be the fourth arc in Gou, and be kept mostly intact. But going by how it’ll probably be four episodes long, compared to being six episodes long in the 2006 anime, I think it’ll focus mainly on the flashback stuff, and the present-day part of the arc will be changed so it’s shorter and doesn’t feel like a repeat of Watadamashi.

In general I think a lot of the changes and edits they’re making are being done to avoid unnecessary repetition between the different arcs, so yeah, if they do a Meakashi arc, I think they’ll try and make it a bit more unique.

After that, I think the final 7-episode arc will effectively be Gou’s version of Matsuribayashi, but that’s probably be where it gets more into it’s original plot points and stuff.

I get why lots of people would be worried about them condensing the answer arcs that much, but I think it could work just fine, and if anything it might end up just feeling less back-loaded and slow than it was in the VN.

I think the overall structure of the last arc will probably be fairly similar to Matsuribayashi, though, with us probably revisiting the earlier fragments and seeing what was going on in the background. Which would probably be where we’d get reveals for stuff like what happened to Rika and Satoko in Onidamashi, and whether or not Keiichi hallucinated any of his fight with Rena.

Also, I agree with basically everyone who thinks that Featherine is gonna end up being part of Gou’s story [since she literally shows up in the OP, lol]. And probably Bernkastel as well, by extension. I’m not sure exactly how that’ll play out, especially since in Umineko, Featherine was more of a passive observer than anything else, but still, the idea of them being directly involved in Gou’s story is extremely interesting to me. Mainly just because it makes me wonder if maybe they’re setting up for an Umineko remake, since it’d feel kinda weird to bring up Featherine if they aren’t.

I’m kinda worried that Featherine coming into play would alienate pretty much everyone on both sides of the fandom, since it might seem confusing to new fans, and irritating to old fans who don’t want Higurashi and Umineko stuff to get merged together to that extent. So I hope they pull it off well.

At the very least, I think Bernkastel would work fine if they make her into a major part of Gou’s story. She’s technically the one who created the timeline where Takano’s parents survived, if they follow up on that here, and also she’s literally Rika, so it’d probably be pretty easy for new fans to understand their connection and any emotional stakes involved in them getting into conflict with each other.

I’m not really sure at all exactly what their motives might be for throwing Rika back into the loop, but that’ll probably be the core of what Gou’s endgame is about.

One thing that’s interesting, though, is that Rika was a teenager when she died and woke up in the fragment world with Hanyuu, and I think Ryukishi’s implied that we’ll find out more about that later on. So I think the circumstances behind her death as a teenager will also be a big deal.

Going by how she was apparently wearing the same uniform as Shion, it makes me wonder if maybe she got bullied into suicide, or if maybe Satoko did, and Rika fell into despair afterward and killed herself. Which kinda makes me wonder if maybe part of the whole story and message this time around will be about Rika struggling to come to terms with actually moving on with her life after leaving the loop. Maybe for a variety of reasons she just isn’t able to cope with it, and without really realizing it she just wants to return to the time loop where she at least got to hang out with her friends in a comfortable, familiar environment. But who knows, lol.

If Featherine does end up being important here, I hope they make her connection to Hanyuu a bit more clear, since that’s always been a bit vague. It’d also make me wonder if they’ll also elaborate on Lambdadelta and her whole history with Bernkastel, but I really can’t imagine how they’d have her show up without her completely clashing with Higurashi’s whole aesthetic and tone.

Anyway, I could probably make a whole separate post about my feelings on a theoretical Umineko anime remake and what I’d want and expect from that.

Also, before I forget, my current prediction for the next arc in Gou is that it’ll basically just be Tatarigoroshi, but this time around they’ll mix in Onikakushi elements with Keiichi learning about all the stuff with Satoshi and becoming paranoid that the whole town’s out to get him. I also think they might move the part with Keiichi’s letter to the reader to the end of that arc. They included part of it in the PVs for Gou, so I assume they’ll include it some way or another, and I think it’d make a lot of sense to have it happen at the end of Gou’s version of the question arcs.

Oh, and I’m also expecting that Himatsubushi will get entirely cut out, since at least if we assume that Takano won’t be the obstacle this time around, there’s no real reason to include anything related to Akasaka, and they’ve already spelled out that Rika’s part of a time loop and knows what’s going on, so all of that foreshadowing from that arc would be kinda pointless here.

So yeah that’s basically all of my predictions, and my thoughts on the whole structure and plot of Gou thus far. But aside from all that, I’ve also just really been enjoying Gou in general. I get why a lot of people dislike how it’s been surprisingly similar to the VN, but I really like it. I think it’s doing a great job of preserving as much of the whole experience of reading the VN as possible, while repackaging it into a more condensed, cinematic format. Rather than being a very slow-burn, dread-filled thriller in the VN, Onidamashi felt more like a concise yet effective horror movie that built up to an abrupt, violent conclusion, so I think that was handled really well.

I’ve also really warmed up to the character designs over the last few weeks. At first they felt a bit too shiny and cute to me, but the more I see them, the more I think they work well, especially in the more serious moments. It’s going for a slightly different sort of vibe to basically any other iteration of the character designs in the franchise, but I like it.

Which also reminds me that my favourite version of the character designs might actually be the ones from the light novels, but that kinda feels like cheating since those are just used for covers and illustrations, lol. But I just really like the simple, atmospheric, painterly style that artist has. I’d love to see a version of the VN sprites done in their style, but that’ll probably happen.

And on the note of the LNs, they’ve recently gotten a new print run to celebrate Gou coming out, so I’ve decided to start importing them. I know I’m not even fluent in Japanese so I can’t even properly read them, but I’ve always loved the artwork for them, so I’ve been wanting to own them, but I think they were all out of print before Gou came out. Maybe they’ll eventually get released in English, but I don’t want to risk it. It’s a lot more likely that the Gou manga will get released in English sometime next year, so I’ll probably wait for that instead of importing it in Japanese.

[Also, I recently bought the VN on Steam since it’s on sale and the first arc is for free at the moment, so I’m gonna start rereading that soon to compare it more thoroughly to Gou]

Anyway, this got MUCH longer than I would have wanted it to be, but that’s what I get for waiting so long to start talking about this, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi gou #this got way too long and rambley but oh well lmao #it feels really nice to be getting back into Higurashi after it's been so long since I read the VN originally #though if they actually do make an Umineko anime remake after this then I will ABSOLUTELY go feral #it'll be the only thing I talk about for months

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vedj-f-bekuesu · 5 years ago

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Hey, I’ve finally gotten another step in my Ninjago watch!

Before I go through the season, there are some reasons why it’s taken so long to get to Possession.

1. Mum’s course I mentioned before is due to be handed in by tomorrow, so it’s been a bit hands on deck for her. Naturally, this means I’m being pulled in more to help. 2. The reason I started this was because I wasn’t able do my own work so had a lot of time to use up. Well, in the past week, it went from “oh you can’t work from home” to “you could but your smart card is at work and we won’t let you in so you’ll have to reject it” to “actually we can totally Indiana Jones it, here’s some WARs”, so I’m actually working again, so this will probably be a lot slower to go through. 3. Honestly, Tournament of Elements took a bit of wind out the sails. I mean, it was such a slog to go through, I was hesitant to do that again in a hurry if Possession ended up being a rinse and repeat of that.

But today, I’ve finally gotten through the season and...it’s serendipitous that this features the Elemental Master of Wind because this really was a second wind. I said that perhaps with it parring down the cast to a central focus that it would improve the quality over Tournament of Elements and that seems to have been the case. Let’s go through the points.

-I have barely anything bad to say about the characterisation of any character, main or side. Like, this season was mostly on point. I guess the main ninja were a touch on the mean-spirited side at the start, but this get smoothed out by the plot advancing. Jay could also get a little obnoxious at the start, but this was balanced out by him sassing out Wu for his absolute failure to disclose Morro’s existence anyway. -Of course the standout character is Nya, what with her whole sideplot and ending up a water-based BAMF in the ending. -The events of the Dark Island part of season 2 makes Kai’s fear of water and inability to swim jarring at first (because he swims just fine there), but I guess this was a change brought on by Rebooted’s soft reboot. -Even Lloyd has his moments even though at this point his character feels fairly weak since the show is pretty much just interested in his status as this really powerful hero. But his moment to reconcile his grief with his dad is done nicely, and makes a better sendoff than season 4′s. -Ronin’s good but that one moment was pretty uncomfortable. Thankfully due to circumstances it didn’t actually happen which prevents it from pushing it over. -But can I talk about the fact the show seems to expect you to have seen media outside of the show to understand his debut? When the ninja talk about Ronin as an old annoyance, I was like “man, you really think I played Shadow of Ronin, huh”. It would have been a shaky assumption in 2015 because the 3DS wasn’t exactly a big hit. But five years later, when the 3DS is nigh obsolete and I haven’t used mine in ages? It doesn’t help that the game is actually technically non-canon, only happening in vague. -Morro is probably the best villain of the old stuff so far. I don’t care if he’s this edgy teenage bad boy that younger fans tend to veer to, his biggest strength is that despite him being another conqueror and having a lot of power, he still comes off as very human. He still has attitude quirks (like being a bit casual in places), he treats his minions different to any other villain so far, he makes mistakes and has slip-ups, and the conflict felt more like an actual to-and-fro as opposed to one side completely dominating over the other requiring some deus-ex to balance it (even season 1 had this issue, lest we forget how the ninja failed to secure a single thing in their fetch quest). Thus, when Morro is faced with his mortality and finally sees what Wu was trying to teach him, it feels like that would be a natural conclusion to his arc. -So Kai and LLoyd’s dynamic is good, it’s a callback to Kai’s development from season 1 where he got over himself and dedicated himself to looking after Lloyd (I mean, the episode itself fell a bit like an asspull, but S2 and S3 stuck it as a recurring theme), but what surprised me is that there’s actually relatively little of it in the season. There’s a bit at the beginning, then it tapers off until like the third to last episode. The way people talked about it made it seem like this big recurring arc but it’s not. -Kai and Nya get surprisingly little throughout Nya’s actual training arc. You’d think Nya training to be the water ninja would be a bigger deal for Kai. They remember to give us a good dollop of it in the finale though. -Can I take an aside to talk about Kai and Cole’s dynamic again? After S1 had such a good thing between them, I thought it was going to drop off entirely. S2 seemed to make good on that...but then S3 brought it back, albeit a bit more reserved. Even S4 had the same level. Why bring it up now? Because S5 turns it up to the point where it was one of the dominating dynamics outside of all four ninja together. And yet I have never heard this referred to by anyone. What, if two characters aren’t explicitly honed in on for interaction (ie Cole and Jay’s whole drama thing, Cole and Zane in S4/S8...I can’t think of any I’ve seen that don’t involve Cole yet), then it’s just pushed to the wayside? No wonder S13 seems to have decided that it finally needs to be addressed after the last two joint seasons focused on Jay and Nya then Kai and Nya. -Speaking of, Jay and Zane actually get a cute dynamic going, albeit not as pronounced. Jay and Nya is surprising neglected, only getting some visual cues in the ending. Then again, I guess that’s what the next season is for. -This season is not actually dark to be honest. There’s a couple of points where it drifts into that territory, but one moment is the climax which is typical for a kids show, and the other I guess is Cole’s thing (although the next episode took the edge out of that). That being said, kudos to them for sticking out the change to the status quo so it isn’t just a one season gimmick. -Season 5 really said “That green ninja jealousy from S4 was shit so we’re just going to ignore it”. While I still have an issue with it as above, this is a relief. -Pacing here is fine, I have no issues with for once.

So overall, Possession is a pretty good season, I can see why so many consider it one of, if not, the best. My only real beef with it is that the secondary dynamics (outside of the four ninja but within the general team) end up surprisingly underutilised. Otherwise, the only other barrier it has with me is just my preference for more light-hearted affair than this season’s fairly middling (but not dark) tone, but it’s so competently done that it still manages to outpace seasons that do hit that tone.

I would have to see S11 again to see how I’d stack it up to this, but my current season ranks are as follows;

S12>S11>=S5>S1>S2>S4>S3

So, next time I watch again, it’ll be one of the more marmite seasons in the pack; Skybound. One of the coolest season names, but can it continue Possession’s quality?

For now though, I have a whole thing lined up gushing about Prime Empire’s thematic roots because Prime Empire is amazing. And also I’ll have a (probable) season finale to watch and S13 leaks to look for.

#ninjago #vedj-f reviews #vedj-f talks #ns5 #I was surprised how little the whole ghost thing showed up in the actual settings tbh #the only ones really horror-based were the haunted temple and the ending #this isn't a bad thing though

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entamewitchlulu · 5 years ago

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so i did a reading challenge this year and i wanna talk about what i read

transcription under the cut

i did Popsugar 2019 and wanna talk about what i read: Book Reccs and Anti-Reccs

1.) Becoming a Movie in 2019: Umbrella Academy (vol 1) by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

4/5. A fascinating take on superpowers, dysfunctional families, and the apocalypse. Can get pretty gory, confusing here and there and you have to pay close attention to panels for lore, but overall an entertaining romp.

2.) Makes you Feel Nostalgic: Circles in the Stream by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Middle grade novel about the magic of music, belief, and of course, friendship. Definitely written for kids, and has some unfortunately clumsy Native rep, but overall an absolute joy to dive into once again.

3.) Written by a Musician: Umbrella Academy (vol 2) by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

4/5. Ramps up the confusion to ridiculous degrees with some absolutely bonkers, unexplained arcs, but still fun to watch this dysfunctional family do its dysfunctional thing.

4.) You Think Should be Turned into a movie: All That Glitters by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Continuation of Circles in the Stream, but with more unicorns, more rainbows, and more fae, which makes it automatically even better than the first.

5.) With At Least 1 Mil. Ratings on Goodreads: 1984 by George Orwell

1/5. I understand why it's important and all but wasn't prepared for some of the more graphic scenes and the overall hopelessness of the message. Would not recommend or read again.

6.) W/ a Plant in the title or cover: The secret of Dreadwillow carse by Brian farrey

5/5. A fantasy world where everyone is always happy, save for one girl and the princess, who set out to solve the mystery of their kingdom. Poignant and great for kids and adults.

7.) Reread of a favorite: Cry of the Wolf by Rachel Roberts

4/5. Yet another installment in the Avalon: Web of Magic series, which clearly I am obsessed with. Please just read them.

8.) About a Hobby: Welcome to the Writer's Life by Paulette Perhach

5/5. A welcome kick in the pants, chock full of great advice told without condescension, and full of hope and inspiration for writers both new and old.

9.) Meant to read in 2018: The Poet x by Elizabeth Acevedo

4/5. Absolutely beautiful coming of age novel told in verse. Do yourself a favor and listen to the audiobook version.

10.) w/ "pop," "sugar," or "challenge" in the title: Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy

2/5. I think maybe I just don't understand this genre. Or maybe the translation was weird. I was confused.

11.) w/ An Item of Clothing or Accessory on the cover: Our dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani

4/5. It had a lot more slurs/homophobia than I was prepared for, but otherwise is a very touching, relatable collection of queer characters living in a heteronormative world.

12.) Inspired by Mythology or Folklore: Ravenous by MarcyKate Connolly

3/5. A girl goes on an impossible quest to save her brother from a child-eating witch. Really wanted to like it more because I loved the first one, Monstrous, but it dragged a little.

13.) Published Posthumously: The Islands of Chaldea by Diana Wynne Jones

3/5. I adore Diana Wynne Jones, but this one was missing some of the magic of her other books. Not sure if it was because it had to be finished by someone else, or if I just grew out of her stories.

14.) Set in Space: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

4/5. Powerfully written story of a girl straddling tradition and innovation, who wields power through mathematical magic, surviving on a spaceship alone with a dangerous alien occupation after everyone else has been killed.

15.) By 2 Female Authors: Burn for Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

2/5. Ostensibly a story about a revenge pact in a small island town, but leaves far too many dangling threads to attempt alluring you to the sequel.

16.) W/ A Title containing "salty," "bitter," "Sweet," or "Spicy": The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

3/5. It's okay but I literally just never know what anyone means at any time. Are they being reticent on purpose or do i just not understand communication

17.) Set in scandinavia: Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura

2/5. Technically and historically accurate and well made, but the story itself is not my cup of tea. Very gory.

18.) Takes Place in a Single Day: Long WAy Down by Jason Reynolds

4/5. A boy goes to avenge his murdered brother, but ghostly passengers join him on the elevator ride down. Stunning and powerful character-driven analysis.

19.) Debut Novel: Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

4/5. Charming and then surprisingly heart-breaking comic about Nimona, a shapeshifter who wants to become a villain's minion. Really love the villain/hero dynamic going on in the background, along with the dysfunctional found family.

20.) Published in 2019: The Book of Pride by Mason Funk

4/5. A collection of interviews with the movers, shakers, and pioneers of the queer and LGBTQ+ community. An absolutely essential work for community members and allies alike.

21.) Featuring an extinct/imaginary creature: Phoebe and her Unicorn by Dana Simpson

4/5. Incredibly charming, Calvin and Hobbes-esque collection of comics featuring the adventures of Phoebe and her unicorn best friend.

22.) Recced by a celebrity you admire: The Emerald Circus by Jane Yolen

2/5. Recced by my fave author Brandon Sanderson. An unfortunately disappointing anthology proving that any story can be made uninteresting by telling the wrong section of it.

23.) With "Love" in the Title: Book Love by Debbie Tung

4/5. One of those relatable webcomics, only this one I felt super hard almost the entire time. Books are awesome and libraries rule.

24.) Featuring an amateur detective: Nancy Drew: Palace of Wisdom by Kelly Thompson

4/5. REALLY love this modern take on Nancy Drew, coming back home to her roots to solve a brand new mystery. Diverse cast and lovely artwork, though definitely more adult.

25.) About a family: Amulet by Kabu Kibuishi

4/5. Excellent, top tier graphic novel about a sister and brother who have to go rescue their mother with a mysterious magic stone. LOVE that the mom gets to be involved in the adventure for once.

26.) by an author from asia, Africa, or s. America: Girls' Last tour by Tsukumizu

4/5. Somehow both light-hearted and melancholy. Two girls travel about an empty, post-apocalyptic world, and muse about life and their next meal.

27.) w/ a Zodiac or astrology term in title: Drawing down the moon by margot adler

3/5. A good starting place for anyone interested in the Neo Pagan movement, but didn't really give me what I was personally looking for.

28.) you see someone reading in a tv show or movie: The Promised NEverland by Kaiu Shirai

4/5. I don't watch TV or movies where people read books so i think reading an adaptation of a TV series after watching the series counts. Anyway it was good but beware racist caricatures

29.) A retelling of a classic: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Rey Terciero

5/5. We can stop the Little Women reboots and retellings now, this is the only one we need. In fact, we can toss out the original too, this is the only one necessary.

30.) w/ a question in the title: So I'm a spider, so what? by Asahiro Kakashi

4/5. Cute art despite the subject matter, and a surprisingly enthralling take on the isekai genre. Love the doubling down on the video game skills.

31.) Set in a college or university campus: Moonstruck (vol 2) by Grace Ellis

2/5. An incredibly cute, beautiful, and fascinating world of modern magic and creatures, but unfortunately falls apart at the plot and pacing.

32.) About someone with a superpower: Moonstruck (vol 1) by Grace Ellis

4/5. Though nearly as messy plot-wise as its sequel, the first volume is overwhelmingly charming in a way that overpowers the more confusing plot elements.

33.) told from multiple povs: The Long way to a Small, Angry Planet by becky Chambers

4/5. Told almost in a serial format, like watching a miniseries, a group of found-family spaceship crew members make the long journey to their biggest job ever.

34.) Includes a wedding: We Set the dark on fire by Tehlor kay mejia

4/5. Timely and poignant, a girl tumbles into both love and resistance after becoming one of two wives to one of the most powerful men in the country.

35.) by an author w/ alliterative name: The only harmless great Thing by brooke bolander

3/5. Much deeper than I can currently comprehend. Beautifully written, but difficult to parse.

36.) A ghost story: Her body and other parties by Carmen Maria Machado

4/5. It counts because one of the stories in it has ghosts. A sometimes difficult collection of surrealist, feminist, queer short stories.

37.) W/ a 2 word title: Good omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

4/5. Charming, touching, and comical, probably the best take on the apocalypse to date. Also excellent ruminations on religion and purpose.

38.) based on a true story: The faithful Spy by John Hendrix

4/5. Brilliantly crafted graphic biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and his assistance in fighting back against Nazi Germany.

39.) Revolving around a puzzle or game: the Crossover by Kwame alexander

4/5. The verse didn't always hit right with me, but the story is a sweet, melancholy one about family, loss, and moving on.

40.) previous popsugar prompt (animal in title): The last unicorn by peter s. Beagle

5/5. Absolutely one of my all-time favorite books, it manages to perfectly combine anachronism and comedy with lyricism, melancholy, and ethereal beauty.

41.) Cli-fi: Tokyo Mew Mew by Mia ikumi and Reiko Yoshida

4/5. Shut up it counts

42.) Choose-your-own-adventure: My Lady's choosing by Kitty curran

3/5. Cute in concept, a bit underwhelming in execution. Honestly, just play an otome.

43.) "Own Voices": Home by Nnedi Okorafor

3/5. The storytelling style was definitely not my style; while the first book was slow, too, it felt more purposeful. I found my attention wandering during this installment.

44.) During the season it's set in: Pumpkinheads by rainbow rowell

3/5. Cute art, but precious little substance. The concept simply wasn't for me in the first place.

45.) LITRPG: My next life as a villainess: All routes lead to doom! by Hidaka nami

5/5. An absolute insta-fave! Charming art, endearing characters, an incredible premise, and so much sweet wholesome fluff it'll give you cavities.

46.) No chapters: The field guide to dumb birds of north america by matt kracht

3/5. It started out super strong, but the joke started to wear thin at a little past the halfway point.

47.) 2 books with the same title: Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roger

4/5. A brave and enduring personal story of growing up in and eventually leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. Really called to me to act with grace and kindness even more in the future.

48.) 2 books with the same title: unfollow by rob williams and michael dowling

1/5. How many times do you think we can make Battle Royale again before someone notices

49.) That has inspired a common phrase or idiom: THe Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

4/5. Definitely good and deserves it's praise as something that pretty much revolutionized and created an entire demographic of literature.

50.) Set in an abbey, cloister, Monastery, convent, or vicarage: Murder at the vicarage by agatha christie

3/5. I just cannot. physically keep up with all of these characters or find the energy to read between the lines.

ok that's all i got, what did y'all read and like this year? (oh god it’s gonna be 2020)

#book reccs #lulu booktalks

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frozenartscapes · 6 years ago

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Change My Mind? ...Not Really

Ok, so this is probably an unpopular opinion...

Comparing Steven Universe to something like Avatar: The Last Airbender after Change Your Mind and stating that SU comes even remotely close to A:tLA in terms of quality is waaaaaay overselling things. Spoilers below.

Change Your Mind was good. Even great, in some parts. That bit where Steven re-fuses with his gem was probably the best animation the show ever had. I enjoyed some of the characterizations. I enjoyed the new fusions, and Lapis and Peridot’s new forms. Also the CG’s new forms. And White Diamond was a very interesting villain.

But one episode does not make a show. And even something like Change Your Mind has its flaws. Numerous ones, in fact. That doesn’t make Steven Universe bad, per se, but going on to compare it to one of, if not the most, highly rated, well-loved, critically acclaimed animated shows of all time and saying they are even close to each other in quality is a bit much. Maybe calm down from the fan-hype high you have after watching the episode before making that claim.

Like, it was a good episode, but I was serious last night when I asked, “Now What?” The show has no conflict. No more unanswered questions. We went from barely getting any information or plot development to suddenly the whole main conflict is resolved in one episode. One. And even a bunch of minor conflicts and questions were thrown in there too. Will Peridot and Lapis reform with stars? Check. Will Blue and Yellow join Steven’s side? Check. Will White Diamond brainwash anyone? Check. What will the CGs reformations look like? Check. Do the Diamonds’ ships form a Voltron-esque giant robot? Check. What do the gem fusions of Steven + Pearl/Garnet look like? Check. Who is the temple fusion? Check. Does White Diamond turn good? Check. Corruption cured? Check. Sadie still in her band? Check. New version of the theme song? Check. Lars comes home? Check. Everything happened in this episode. And it made for one awesome episode, yeah, but it got to a point where it was just one thing after the next. It was like the Crewniverse watched all those rant videos about the show, picked up on the fact that every one of those videos mention how nothing happens in the show, and said, “Oh yeah? Hold my beer.”

But let’s talk Avatar for a second. Because I thought about this last night but at first thought it unfair to compare these two shows, but since seeing a post doing just that I’m gonna now. Imagine for a moment, after watching three seasons where there was a clear, defined villain and an evil force that must be stopped by a pacifistic lead, after witnessing all the oppression and suffering the Fire Nation and specifically the Fire Lord cast down upon the world, after learning how conflicted Aang was about killing him, they just...redeemed Ozai. Like, he and Aang talk it out in just the span of one episode and suddenly every evil and horrendous thing Ozai and Azula and every other terrible person from the Fire Nation has ever done is forgotten. It’s ok everyone! The Fire Nation are the good guys now! They’ve learned their lesson, and we can all just sing and laugh and be happy all the fucking time. Isn’t life great?

Yeah, I don’t think people would be happy about that. And the thing is: in Avatar, they had a better shot at doing that than Steven Universe, because Avatar actually took the time to delve into its villains’ backstories, and revealing that while they’re still morally in the wrong, it’s not just as simple as everything being black and white. There are complications. The reasons for the things they do change, depending on the character and that character’s relationship with others and own emotional growth and personality. They redeemed Zuko, but over the course of the entire length of the show, because going from an abusive family that rewarded morally wrong behaviour and punished anything else to helping the very people trying to stop that family isn’t as simple as talking only once. Other characters like Azula were even more complicated, as she was trapped even deeper in that negative lifestyle to the point where it permanently fucked up her mental state. And then there’s Ozai, who was the end all be all of morally terrible people. Someone who could not be redeemed. Someone who could only be defeated. The only way Aang was able to do so without killing him was by physically stipping away any power Ozai had.

So compare that to Steven Universe. You have a sympathetic character from the ruling, evil dynasty that seemed the most likely to eventually join Steven’s side in Blue Diamond. You have a ruthless, goal-driven character who does the wishes of her superior even if it’s wrong because the repercussions of not following orders create a deep, pathological fear in said character, in Yellow Diamond. And then you have the end all, completely uncaring leader of said evil dynasty that has conquered thousands of planets, killed billions, including millions of its own kind, enforced a strict and oppressive social structure that resulted in mass cullings of anyone who didn’t fit, created horrific experiments with the still-conscious shards of the physical beings of its subjects, and rained down a forced mental illness that permanently disfigured their subjects minds when said subjects disagreed with them: White Diamond. Zuko, Azula, and Ozai, respectively. In Avatar, it took Zuko all three seasons to complete his full redemption arc. In Steven Universe, Blue Diamond wasn’t even mentioned by name until The Answer, 74 episodes in. Azula and Ozai didn’t even get redemptions, although Azula was given a few sympathetic moments. Yellow had, what, maybe a facial expression here or there until finally doing a 180 personality shift in the latest episode?

Now before you get your pitchforks, hear me out: I’m making this comparison because it shows the difference between doing a villain redemption right, and doing it wrong. Avatar took a long time to develop its villains. It made sure to establish them as more than just The Bad Guys - they were also individual characters on various levels of the morality scale for various reasons. They did this by establishing them as regular characters, even if only by mention, from episode one. They had some episodes that barely focused on them, but then others devoted entirely to them. There were episodes that beautifully compared them to the heroes. There were episodes that humanized them. There were episodes that highlighted what life was like from their side of things. Steven Universe did none of that. The most development we got for the Diamonds was in the last few episodes, and it only happened after they learned who Steven really was. And even then, we never got a sense of the problems they themselves were struggling with until Change Your Mind. We never really saw Blue’s emotional issues with regards to how they treat each other, just her mourning Pink all the time. We never saw just how much pressure Yellow was put under by White Diamond, nor her frustration at how she works so hard but receives next to no praise. And we certainly never got the sense that the reason White was such a perfectionist was that she herself was terrified of being labelled “flawed”. All of these things only came up in Change Your Mind. And even if there might have been hints I’m sure people are going to reach for in other episodes, it still would only apply to the very few episodes in which the Diamonds had any focus.

The result of this is an extremely rushed and forced redemption arc. Hell, even Peridot had a more developed redemption than the Diamonds. And it didn’t have to be that way, either. This wasn’t the series finale. It was just the end of this season. If they really wanted to redeem all three dictators in one episode, why didn’t they just stop it there? And then have the return to Earth kick off the new season? Why not have another special event or episode that focuses on Steven showing the Diamonds Earth? Have them finally find beauty in organic life. Have them initially be confused about it. Have then stumbling a little bit but eventually learning just how wrong they were. Have them admit just how wrong they were. And then at the end of the special, we finally get to healing corruption. Something that has been the main conflict since day one. Something that was an incredibly complicated subject. Something that had a huge impact on all the current characters in the show. Something that really should have been done in its own episode where more time could have been given to it. I know they probably will once the show gets started again, but that initial event of healing the corrupted gems is done, the Diamonds have gone back home, and any chance for conflict to arise is over. Even Jasper��no longer seems like she’s going to be a source of conflict.

So, no. Steven Universe is not as good as Avatar, and isn’t even in the same league. This one episode still doesn’t change how horrible the pacing is for the rest of them. It still doesn’t change that in 160 episodes, well over half, at least, contribute nothing to the plot. And while they might establish some character, it’s always from Steven’s perspective. There was never an episode in which Steven wasn’t there to witness it, meaning the entire show is viewed from his - considerably biased - point of view. We never got a chance to see characters like the Diamonds acting without Steven present. We never got any development without Steven being the driving force behind it. Had a show like Avatar had done that with Aang? We never would have had episodes like Tales of Ba Sing Se, or Zuko Alone, or Boiling Rock, or Ember Island. And we certainly wouldn’t have gotten moments like Zuko and Azula’s Agni Kai, or Sokka asking Suki to teach him how to fight, or basically every character interaction with Iroh. Steven Universe wanted so badly to focus on Steven, and only Steven, that it shot itself in the foot when it came to character development and plot execution. It didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be for most of its episodes. And Change Your Mind was such a cluster fuck of wrapping up loose threads that people are still confused as to whether or not this was the season, or series finale.

Avatar had a clear and concise beginning, middle, and end. It knew what it was, and where it was going. It knew how to do character development and plot execution properly. Each season finale finished up the main conflicts of that season, leaving the largest arcs for the series finale. And it doesn’t try to redeem its villains all in one fucking episode through the “Power of Love”. Don’t even try to say the two shows are on the same fucking level.

Oh, and the animation was fantastic all the way through A:tLA, getting better with each season, instead of one beautifully animated scene in one episode and everything else being a hodgepodge of off-model characters and constantly changing styles.

#i'm not as mad at the show as i once was #but change your mind isn't changing my mind #steven universe is an ok show #but no where near the calibre of A:tLA #this latest episode doesn't change that #if anything it only highlights why it's not #unpopular opinion #su shows the problems with modern redemption arcs #it's often times a lot more complicated than merely talking about your feelings #and that redemption doesn't just exist in a vacuum inhabited solely by the main characters #you need to address the conflicts that can arise from a villain redemption #hell even my little pony - the show KNOWN for redeeming its villains through the magic of fucking friendship #takes time to show that sometimes there are still negative reactions even after a redemption #the way steven universe ended things it really makes it look like they're not going to do that #su spoilers #steven universe #steven universe spoilers #spoilers #Avatar The Last Airbender #a:tla

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96percentdone · 6 years ago

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if you don't mind me asking, what problems do you have with the Higurashi anime adaption? I also prefer the visual novel but can never really articulate my criticisms with the anime, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts

Well first for a start it’s just ugly as sin. Let’s just get that out of the way. Season one in particular looks like it was made on a budget of ten dollars. It looks bad even for 2006 standards, but y’know I could live with an ugly adaptation if it was at least faithful to the source material. But that’s just it…it’s not.

The Higurashi anime isn’t unfaithful in a technical sense. Many of the events that happen in the original visual novel do happen in the anime in some form (even if enough was taken out that they had to add a new arc but WHATEVER). That isn’t the problem. The problem is the entire focus of the anime adaptation, particularly in the first season, is centered on making higurashi into super horror, that in doing so it cuts out the emotional core. This will be long, so under the cut.

Let’s use Onikakushi as a case study. Now if we go by steam achievements, the original visual novel is around 12 chapters, although chapters are usually split in halves. Each chapter, for me and most people I know, takes about an hour to read, so about 12 hours of content. The anime adapted all of onikakushi in 4 episodes. Twelve hours of content shoved in four 25 minute episodes, give or take. That is 3 hours worth of content expected to be in one episode. You are already seeing the start of a problem.

Now, to be fair, a lot of the length of the higurashi vn can be attributed to the fact that it is a book. Much of what you read is just Keiichi’s inner monologue where he describes events or his own thoughts and feelings, and in adapting those in anime, you can show them taking much less time. But even with that said, three chapters of onikakushi is still too much to reasonably shove into a 25 minute frame, and it shows.

Let’s start with the prologue of Onikakushi in the anime. It’s 30 seconds and already everything is wrong about it.

That is obviously Keiichi. See, in the original vn, the prologue is a monologue that starts in complete darkness before cutting to a shot of the evening sky. We never see who is killing, or who they’re killing. We can only infer that’s what’s happening based on the sounds of a baseball bat and some of the phrasing in the monologue.

This first scene is entirely ambiguous in the original VN, which works in it’s favour. You start off confused and concerned, and gradually forget as it progresses and more things start happening, until finally Keiichi wakes up from a dazed trance later in the arc to find Rena and Mion on the floor, and you realise “oh fuck so that’s what that scene was.” Everything you experienced was building to that, and it makes so much sense now.

But again, this is obviously Keiichi in the anime. And there’s shots of Rena’s hat, or her hair, or her and Mion’s dead bodies, and there is no ambiguity. The start of this scene is alright, as it’s entirely silhouettes and the room is dark, but shortly after you just see everything. Immediately after this scene when you meet Rena and Keiichi for real you realise “okay he’s gonna kill her” and there’s no suspense. You already know how it ends.

But that’s not even the biggest problem. The problem is the focus of this scene has entirely changed. You see everything he’s doing, you can hear his heavy breathing, and get shots of his crazy eyes–emotionally it’s just “wow look at this crazy guy kill some people.” It’s entirely horror centered.

But the original visual novel was not like that. Take the first two lines of the whole thing:

This is entirely about how Keiichi feels in that moment. Sure, Keiichi is behaving like someone insane, but the scene wasn’t about that at the start. It was about the emotions he felt. His despair and his regret–all of his turmoil. It’s an emotional scene because the only sounds you hear at the bat and cicadas, and you know a murder is happening, but it’s also tragic just from the narration alone. Unnerving, and sad.

This doesn’t just set the tone for the arc, this sets the tone for the series. Higurashi is not just a horror visual novel, it is largely a series of tragedies. Of friends who fall so deep into their paranoia they start killing each other despite how much they care. The center of Higurashi as a series, is the emotional investment the core cast has in each other. Higurashi is about bonds, and tragedies, and overcoming them, with a horror setting. It is not about horror.

And from the opening scene of the anime, I get no sense of tragedy whatsoever. Nothing about those first 30 seconds reads as tragic. I don’t get the sense Keiichi cares about the people he killed, I don’t get the sense I’m even supposed to care. Immediately I’m told to treat this like a horror gore fest, and so I do. The anime starts by setting the entirely wrong tone, and then continues with it.

Immediately after this they skip the “someone is apologising” scene, which yeah sure anime, go ahead and skip a scene vital to clueing us in to Keiichi’s mental state and sets up the big words of the arc sure why not, and cuts to happy fun shenanigans. Except club games and the like in the anime adaptation are either severely cut down for time, montaged like every watanagashi, or skipped entirely.

In Onikakushi, the only club event we even see in any meaningful way is the Old Geezer game, and that’s abridged to hell and back. We hardly spend any time actually getting to know or having fun with the characters. Sometimes events are fun events are fused together too, so the character introductions for Rika and Satoko happen on the day Keiichi is getting his tour, vs earlier in the narrative in class.

And hell those introductions are also egregious, because Keiichi monologues in them. His internal monologue describing how he just moved here is fine, but instead of like seeing the attributes of Rena and Mion like he describes, he just…talks over scenes of them actually doing the things. In effect, the anime has both show and tell happening, but tells you to focus on him telling you about Rena and Mion etc. Again, it’s hard to get invested in Keiichi’s friendship with the club if instead of showing it to you, they just tell you about it.

In the visual novel, Keiichi’s monologuing about the kind of person his friends are for a bit was fine, because it’d spend waaayyy more time actually showing them as people and their dynamics. Him telling you that was backed by scene after scene after scene, except the anime abridges, cuts down, or cuts out entire scenes for this, so again, how am I supposed to care when things go badly?

The anime priorities the horror aspects of Higurashi. Most of the run time of the second episode is focused on the horror scenes. The festival shenanigans are montaged, the president club game was entirely skipped, and the clue one (which granted much of it didn’t happen) was made even shorter to prioritise Ooishi. Again, this makes the show feel like it’s not about the characters and their connections, but it’s about creepy shit and horror, and none of that was ever the point of Higurashi.

Season 2 is better than season one, because they aren’t trying to cram 6 arcs in 26 episodes but 3 in 24, which gives them more time to expand on characters, but the damage is already done. Six entire arcs were already adapted with the entirely wrong priorities, so it ends up feeling unbalanced when suddenly in Kai what matters is how good friends they are and how much they want to fight fate and all that. It’s already far too late.

Even the horror scenes in the visual novel, have a level of emotional turmoil and conflict you don’t see in the anime because the anime is too focused on scaring you, like the scene in the prologue. You never get the sense Keiichi is conflicted about how to view his friends, that he’s hurt by it. You don’t see him cry, or debate if his friends are just possessed, or if they care about him at all or not. In the anime, when Keiichi killed his friends for real this time, I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t know I was supposed to care, because no time was spent making me care by showing who they are when it’s not creepy, or even making me even think Keiichi cares through his reactions.

That’s why it fails as an adaptation. The Higurashi anime is bad because it gives you the entirely wrong sense of what the show is about. It’s not about the horror, or even about the mystery: it’s about the people in it, and the emotions they feel. And those people, those emotions, that connection that is so essential to why Higurashi works and the story it’s trying to tell, is lost through a reprioritizing.

And honestly I could go in harder about how this affects pacing, because shifting the focus to give more time with the horror messes with the balance of how the horror is even supposed to hit you. Or how they cut out key details to the mystery through poor adaptation choices, or how the lack of time and budget seriously hampers it’s potential, or it’s crimes against specific characters like Satoko just because of how it’s adapted, but I don’t really need to. Those are all just a result of changing what the focus of the series is. That’s why the anime is bad. Because it doesn’t actually carry the essence of what makes Higurashi Higurashi.

#hope.txt #higurashi #higurashi no naku koro ni #my meta #Anonymous

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franchisewars-blog · 7 years ago

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COBAR KAI: Series Review and Analysis (Spoilers)

If you told me a year ago that I'd stop ignoring all those annoying “Upgrade to YouTube Red!” advertisements for the sake of continuation of the 1980′s hit movie series Karate Kid, I’d have laughed at you.

Yet here we are.

I have a YouTube Red trial subscription. For the sake of Cobra Kai.

And I think it's well worth it.

YouTube released the first two episodes for free, as part of their evil scheme to get my money. And dang it, they got it! Flipping the script on the original movie’s premise and covering things from the perspective of over-the-hill ex-80′s-bully Johnny Lawrence decades later as he tries to make something of his old dojo proves surpsingly effective. Johnny has grown enough to grasp some of the failings of his old Sensei Kreese, and does genuinely try to reinvent Cobra Kai into a more positive force, but comes to find that it wasn't just the teacher that was the problem, but the entire creed. Old hero Daniel LaRusso, meanwhile, must reconnect with the spiritual side of the late Miyagi’s teachings, lest he succumb to the same petty misanthrope that ruined Johnny’s life when Daniel has already achieved a successful business and family life.

And all the while, a new cast of teenagers, including the children of both adult protagonists and new Karate Kid/Cobra Kai prodigy Miguel, all come to find how history repeats if old men don't learn their lessons...

This show may not have premium cable quality in everything, but manages a strong ensemble, excellent pace, and sharp and witty writing. And, in part thanks to the expanded nature of a series versus a movie, the show has an excellent hold on its themes of growth, maturity, and the sad cycle of bullying, as we'll as a tragic and heartwarming take on the paternal themes of the old movies.

Seriously, watch this show.

SPOILERS!

Johnny and Daniel have the largest character arcs, and the series figures out just the right amount of flaws and virtues to get you invested in both. Johnny's got the more classic tragic hero story, trying to rise above his past demons and to learn and grow, but blindsided by the flaws he was unaware of... Until it's too late and he's left to view the ugly side of his triumphs in his students. Daniel, meanwhile, is still overall a virtuous and forthright man, but he starts the show unbalanced enough to make some serious mistakes and eventually realizes he must reconnect with Miyagi's teachings before he goes off course.

The kids are a tangle of stories. Miguel starts off as pretty much a classic "Karate Kid" protagonist, and the first half of the show follows that outline pretty faithfully... And then the last half forces the audience and Johnny to see the flaws in Cobra Kai philosophy that make this kid repeat history that Johnny realizes should not be repeated. Sam LaRusso is a good character, with her biggest advantage that they do manage to push her past the "love interest" archetype via her friendship with the frankly awesome Aisha, though they probably can do more interesting stuff next season. Aisha and Eli are both fairly well developed characters, and a very accurate presentation of the benefits of martial arts in assertiveness and defense... And for how bullying cycles around more often then not, with Cobra Kai eventually molding them into classic physical bullies to contrast with the modern cyberbullying and point out how both styles are ultimately messed up petty misanthropy if you don't control yourself.

And the humor of the series is great! From Daniel as the embarrassing dad to Johny as the man so old school that his response to a former All-Valley Tournament champion hogging the mic to talk about peace and harmony is "Kick this sissy ***** in the face," they know how to play with their themes in a humorous style, simulataneously mocking self-aggrandizing mock morality and mocking the thuggish response of its opposite.

Probably the least interesting aspect of the show is Robby, though only because he's written as less of a character and more of an irony-leaden plot device. The actor does a good job, but you can tell they rushed through his "Karate kid" arc because they knew we'd already seen it with Miguel. He's also got more potential for next season. Still, he allows them to zero in on their reconstruction of Cobra Kai’s flaws and Miyagi-do’s higher standards.

And I really like how slowly they reintroduced Kreese almost as a theme before actually having him return. Johnny's clearly complicated feelings towards the man are a fairly dark undercurrent when they periodically re-emerge, and the way Johnny Reacts to realizing he's becoming the same kind of teacher in spite of himself is actually kind of heartbreaking. And it says something about the nature of the show and Johnny's arc that, while Daniel is moving towards rebuilding and continuing Miyagi's legacy for the better, Johnny has almost accidentally conjured Kreese up in the flesh from the nether when you know he'd rather exorcise that particular demon.

Hopper’s Recommendation: Watch this baby!

#cobra kai #karate kid #daniel larusso #johnny lawrence

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ploppythespaceship · 6 years ago

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Once Upon A Time Rewatch - Season 3A

At this point, OUAT is really structured by half season instead of full season, so my reviews will be as well.

Good Things:

I remember loving this arc while it was airing and upon rewatch, it still holds up. The plot is engaging and moves forward at a good pace. It’s character driven with only a few hiccups along the way. It also doesn’t waste time in Storybrooke when nothing is happening; it only cuts there when necessary.

Robbie Kay as Peter Pan might well be the best villain the show has ever had. It’s hard to believe he’s only 17-18, holding his own against all the adult actors.

I like going back to see how Mulan and Aurora are doing.

Neal and Rumple’s scenes together are fantastic, all of them.

Hook gets more to do and his inclusion doesn’t feel forced. While there’s clearly a love triangle with Emma, Neal, and Hook, it doesn’t feel like it’s taking over the show (yet).

The new characters are pretty good: Ariel, Tinker Bell, and Robin Hood (technically he was in the previous season but the actor changed and he’s given significantly more to do).

Pan being Rumple’s father is actually a great twist, and probably the last good secret relative twist of the entire show.

Rumple’s death -- honestly perfect. They built up to it well, and the fact that he does it all without his magic, while he’s still technically a coward, is fantastic. It’s a fitting end to his arc that doesn’t feel like it’s negating the rules of the universe. “I’m a villain. And villains don’t get happy endings.” (I honestly wish they’d left him dead instead of dragging him back for the terrible storylines they put him through later, but I digress.)

Honestly the midseason finale is just fantastic. It’s so good and emotional.

Best Episodes:

“Nasty Habits”

“Ariel”

“Going Home”

Bad Things:

Pan is fantastic, but the actor playing Felix is... bad. Real bad.

Rumple’s scenes don’t seem to contribute anything for a good chunk of the season. It felt like they didn’t have an idea what to do with him, so they wrote him out for a bit.

While I like the twist of Mulan being in love with Aurora, not Philip, I do wish the show had actually developed that.

Emma and Hook don’t have a great deal of chemistry, imo, so I’m not sure where all this shipping came from. Considering their dynamic takes over the whole damn show, it’s a bit irritating. (Weirdly enough, I thought Charming and Hook had the most chemistry, but Charming is with Snow so that would never happen.)

Hook’s backstory makes no sense. He’s so upset that his king would turn poison on their enemies that he... abandons all moral code and becomes a pirate. I don’t get it.

The scene where Neal is trapped in the cave and everyone has to reveal a secret to get to him -- I hate it. It’s so forced and doesn’t feel natural and it’s... gaahh. Stupid scene. Stupid stupid scene.

I want to like John and Michael Darling and sympathize with their plight, but they look so damn smug and hipster all the time that I can’t connect with them, at all.

Jared Gilmore as Pan during the body swap is awful. He can usually get away with being Henry just with little kid charm, but he can’t pull off Pan.

Charming’s dreamshade poisoning being cured feels very deus ex machina. They built it up the entire time and then Gold just... makes a cure. There he goes.

Worst Episodes:

“Lost Girl”

#personal #ouat rewatch

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Operation New Improv Moves

https://ift.tt/3uWlO2q

This My Hero Academia review contains spoilers.

My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 5

“We’re birds of a feather.”

Battles are chaotic and it can be easy to focus on only the immediate danger within them. Survival can give the illusion of strength, but sooner or later this facade crumbles away without the right preparation. “Operation New Improv Moves” is an exciting My Hero Academia episode that presents another grueling fight between the students of Class 1-A and 1-B, but it also speaks to how essential it is to adopt a bird’s eye view perspective. This vantage point, which considers the whole situation and doesn’t get lost in the specifics, proves to be fundamental in not just battle, but also life. Hawks emphasizes this to Fumikage Tokoyami during his internship and it’s a pivotal lesson for his current clash against Class 1-B.

“Operation New Improv Moves” does primarily focus on the second battle in this Joint Training Arc, but it’s exciting that the first fight’s conclusion still has everyone abuzz. Midoriya’s brawl isn’t for a while, but he already can’t help but devise a strategy with Mineta. Mina Ashido’s Instant-Kill Floating Ball also better be the Chekhov’s Gun of this Joint Training Arc. This season has largely been fun and games so far, but it’s nice to see a fire get lit under everyone as their competitive instincts become unleashed.

Shinso and Asui were the big stars of last week’s win for Class 1-A, but they’re still frustrated over their inability to pull off a flawless victory. It’s a throwaway moment, but All Might actually dwells on it quite a bit with the other Pro Heroes. They break down why “frustration” is the perfect emotion to feel after a victory and that there are few expressions that are more representative of a hero. Shinso and Asui’s self-criticism expands into general pointers for the entire team by Shota Aizawa.

This is a stretch of episodes that’s designed to be about combat, but it’s appreciated that the previous fight’s results are studied. The entire team learns how they can generally improve upon their performance and it opens the door for all of these characters to debut new strategies whenever they’re next in the spotlight. In contrast, Vlad pushes much more of a tough love approach on Class 1-B’s students. They receive derision and frustration more than they do encouragement and advice.

Class 1-B also exhibits some reverence towards Kirishima and other heroes for their work against the Shie Hassaikai. It’s a fleeting detail, but it helps continue to flesh out My Hero Academia’s growing world. Some of the students from Class 1-A have achieved remarkable things, even by Pro Hero standards, and so it’d be kind of ridiculous if nobody was talking about it. It also plays better that Class 1-A doesn’t get cocky from these past achievements and it’s instead their opponents that mystify them through these rumors over their past.

“Operation New Improv Moves” provides an especially exciting and eclectic mix of fighters. From Class 1-A is Tokoyami, Hagakure, Yaoyorozu, and Aoyama, all of which have extremely unique Quirks that have never fully gotten their due yet. Class 1-B pulls together just as interesting of an assortment of heroes.

Itsuka Kendo has gotten some attention before in the series, but the rest represent some of Class 1-B’s weirdest individuals, with Quirks that pull from mushrooms, comic onomatopoeia, and living darkness. Before literal darkness takes over the battlefield, there’s some metaphorical shade thrown at Yaoyorozu from Kendo over how they both “fit into the same box.” A very “there can only be one” Highlander mentality begins to fester between students, but it’s best reflected in Tokoyami and Kuroiro.

Everyone in this fight has a lot to contribute, but it ultimately turns into a war between shadow-centric Quirks between Fumikage Yokoyami’s Dark Shadow and Shihai Kuroiro’s Black Quirk. It was inevitable that My Hero Academia’s Joint Training Arc would pit counterpoints of characters against each other, but “Operation New Improv Moves” is thrilling rather than predictable simply because Tokoyami and Kuroiro’s Quirks are so powerful and mysterious.

This season’s secret weapon continues to be an inspired use of Quirks when it comes to battle strategy rather than victory through brute force. Tokoyami’s Dark Shadow can unleash vicious attacks, but here he uses its size and maneuverability to scout the entire field and immediately locate the enemy. Unfortunately, Tokoyami’s increased aptitude with his Quirk only becomes more of an advantage for Kuroiro. Kuroiro’s Black Quirk allows him to commandeer Dark Shadow and turn it against Tokoyami’s team in a very powerful display.

What’s also so effective about the competitive nature between Tokoyami and Kuroiro is that it functions as this collective origin story for this rivalry. “You and I share a destiny,” Tokoyami coldly hisses at Kuroiro. “Operation New Improv Moves” successfully turns two fringe characters into individuals that feel like they could fuel their own spin-off, which is really the power of My Hero Academia’s characterization and what this new season has the ability to tap into. I’m not sure if Tokoyami’s accusation that Kuroiro is a “Dark Fallen Angel” is based on anything, but it’s a straight up savage burn and an effective way to label your opponent as the villain in this feud.

My Hero Academia’s Deku and Bakugo on Season 5, Class 1-B, and Dark Betrayals

By Daniel Kurland

My Hero Academia Season 5: What to Expect

By Daniel Kurland

The choreography around Tokoyami’s flailing Dark Shadow and Shihai Kuroiro as they move around the pipe-filled area gives this episode such a gripping visual quality. It’s easily one of the best uses of an environment for a fight that My Hero Academia has ever done. Both the Dark Shadow and Black Quirks are already fascinating, but they really get to show themselves off through the labyrinthine nature of the battlefield. The “flying” solution to Tokoyami and Kuroiro’s feud plays well and also feels like natural development for Tokoyami’s character. Deku’s been on the sidelines for a lot of this season, but I love that his reaction to this is a freaking “Egg of Columbus” reference as if it’s a totally natural thing to reference in this situation.

It comes as a surprise when the episode jumps back in time a few months to chronicle Tokoyami’s Quirk development alongside Hawks, but it’s an approach that actually really works well despite how it stops the action dead in its tracks. Not every episode should resort to this strategy, but it provides valuable context for not only Tokoyami’s evolved powers, but also the ideology that drives him forward. More Hawks is also never a bad thing.

Tokoyami and Kuroiro are mostly able to resolve their fight, but that’s merely one piece of this busy battle. The final moments of “Operation New Improv Moves” initiates “Plan B” where Kinoko Komori unleashes a fungal apocalypse on the battlefield that forces Class A to quickly develop a new battle strategy that carries over into the next episode.

When it comes to the supporting players in this fight, I’ve always been very skeptical of Yuga Aoyama and his Navel Laser Quirk as anything other than comic relief, so I was kind of hoping that this battle could legitimize the hero. “Operation New Improv Moves” features more smart use of Quirk application since both Aoyama’s Navel Laser and Toru Hagakure’s Invisibility Quirk both make use of light refraction, which allows them to actively mess with Kuroiro’s strategy. Aoyama still isn’t elevated above a novelty supporting character, but this does allow him and his Quirk a little more depth that goes a long way. It’s possible that both he and Hagakure will both have more to do in the concluding half of this encounter.

The animation in this episode that brings these fast-paced Quirks to life is a triumph, but Yuki Hayashi’s score is so excellent here that it deserves some special attention. Hayashi has never been a slouch, but he’s seriously upped his game for this season and every scene becomes more powerful thanks to the operatic music that accompanies these tense moments. It’s the first time in a while that the series’ music consciously stood out to me in terms of its ability to match the animation.

If there’s any major problem to this season of My Hero Academia so far is that there’s a strangely reflective quality to the episodes that bides a lot of time and leaves every episode feeling padded. This look to the past makes sense on some level since this season is all about a reunion and a chance at redemption between 1-A and 1-B from the events of season two’s Sports Festival. However, “Operation New Improv Moves” definitely gets indulgent in this regard. There are several moments where U.A. High’s faculty reflect on the progress that their students have made, which it’s possible to do without devolving into full-on flashbacks of old footage.

All Might’s memories about Midoriya even feel trumped up to some degree and certain moments like his performance in the School Festival concert shouldn’t necessarily be included among Midoriya’s mastery of One For All or his defeat of Kai Chisaki. My Hero Academia is a rare example of a shonen series that doesn’t get lost in filler material and it’s an incredibly faithful adaptation of the manga, but sometimes the cost of this is episodes that subtly run the clock and don’t really get moving until the halfway mark. When “Operation New Improv Moves” is focused on battle it’s absolutely fantastic, but it shouldn’t have to tiptoe around its action to this degree.

“Operation New Improv Moves” could be a tighter episode in some areas, but it still succeeds and even improves upon last week’s solid battle. It’s comforting that My Hero Academia allows this fight to spill over into the next episode and that every showdown in the Joint Training Arc won’t have the same “one and down” structure to it. There’s a strong mix of action, character development, and emotion through this exercise and it does exceptional work to highlight some of the anime’s unsung heroes. This battle continues to rage on, but Tokoyami’s narrative softly receives resolution as he passes the torch over to Yaoyorozu for the next leg of this confrontation.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

And the biased commentary protest group continues to fight the good fight. Never surrender.

The post My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Operation New Improv Moves appeared first on Den of Geek.

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moved-to-moothebloo · 8 years ago

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Ninjago Season 1, 2, and 3 Analysis (Part 1)

Season 1 / Rise of the Serpentine

Summary:

The first season of Ninjago, Rise of the Serpentine, 13 episodes are dedicated to our main characters Kai, Cole, Jay, and Zane stopping ancient race of evil snakes from destroying the world from a bigger snake, while trying to deal with Lord Garmadon’s son, learning to get stronger on the way, and who is going to be the destined Green Ninja.

By the sounds of that summary, this sounds very weird and cluttered, and trust me, there are much more things this season throws in, like a mysterious Samurai who is also trying to stop the snakes, the ninja trying to find their “true potential,” and Wu bringing the evil Lord Garmadon from the... wherever he was. Yes, this sounds like a big mess, but for a kids show, it actually balances everything out very well.

The pacing in this season is spot on, and makes it very easy to follow, while also keeping us interested enough to know what was going to happen. Everything is there for a purpose, Lloyd Garmadon, a kid who seems very useless throughout most of the season, actually ends up becoming an important main character. The show never feels like it gets slower or faster, it all flows very nicely. The episodes that are dedicated to exploring our main characters still have stuff happening in them so they aren’t pointless.

Speaking of characters, for a kids shows about lego ninjas, the characters are a lot of fun too! The cast is small so it’s very easy to focus on them equally and give all of them good character development, even the side characters do have some stuff too, like how the Samurai turns out to be Nya, which I really appreciate. For a kids show clearly being directed twords boys, it would’ve been really easy to write her off as a character who does nothing, but she does help. A whole episode is dedicated to her beating the ninja into the ground.

The villain of this show is simply put, amazing. The Serpentine are alright, they all have unique traits and all, but the one everyone remembers is Pythor. And for good reason, he’s a lot of fun. The voice actor Michael Dobson is doing a fantastic job, and you can tell he is enjoying every second of it. Pythor is very fun to watch in the way he’s animated and just how deliciously evil he is. Manipulating anyone he wants, kidnapping children, a possible cannibal! The ability to swallow people whole and to disappear with camouflage makes him terrifying to any child watching him on the screen. Pythor is everything a kids show villain is supposed to be.

The main characters also get a lot of good stuff. Zane is probably the best character in this season. He is already an interesting character in the way he acts, and the voice acting is pretty good too, but any Ninjago fan will say that the episode “Tick Tock” is one of the best episodes in the entire show, and yeah it’s pretty good! The episode continues in it’s silly vibe of the show, but also has a lot of heart and effort put into it. All the other characters get that treatment too. My personal favorite is Kai’s arc in Episode 10, “The Green Ninja.”

In fact, that’s how I can describe this whole season. Silly, but has a lot of heart and effort.

Season Rating: 8.4 / 10

Season 2 / The Final Battle

Summary:

The Serpentine have been defeated, and Garmadon has gotten away and ready to plan how he’s going to defeat the ninja and take control of the world. Meanwhile, Lloyd has to train to be the Green Ninja that saves the world in the future, while the Ninja fight off Garmadons plans at world domination.

You know how the first season has a lot of details but still managed to balance everything out? Well. This season has a pretty simple plot, but somehow is a lot more clustered and uninteresting than the first season.

The first season had a lot of silly things in it, but still managed to flow things naturally, and in a way that only focused on things that mattered. This season spends half of its episodes with meaningless plots and stories that go no where, almost as if the people who were making the show were just dry on ideas, and just made episodes based on kids shows cliches, like an episode where they have to fight evil versions of themselves, an episode where they fight pirates, where they turn into kids, even an episode where they join in some kind of racing competition. And while the episodes, I guess aren’t completely pointless because they do focus on Gamradon with the weapons... a little bit. It isn’t enough to make me care. And halfway through the season he looses the weapons anyway sooo... that was all pointless!

The one episode that was good in this group of trash was episode 5 “Child’s Play” Where it is a little entertaining, and there is a thing that happens that does affect the rest of the story.

The other half of the season, episodes 7-13, while are better, still aren’t great. Important story elements do end up coming together, and the ending episodes are really great! But there are still a lot of problems. The pacing still isn’t right, there are a lot of episodes that feel very slow in pacing, and the new villain characters are not enough to save it. One thing I can say about them are the climax episodes, which has a superb finale. Season one had a great Part 1 hype episode, but a disappointing finale, this climax has not just a great part one and two, but THREE awesome climax episodes that are really really fun to watch, and leave you on the edge of your seat. The fight to get to the Overlord ontop of the tower in the final episode does everything you can do with a final episode.

Speaking of the villains, lets talk about them.

The stone army doesn’t really have much of an identity like the Serpentine, and are pretty forgettable. The Overlord, and I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on this, but I think he’s really boring in this season. He just kind of floats around obviously tricking Garmadon to do what he wants, he’s not at all threatening until the final episode, which is a long time to wait for a villain to become slightly interesting.

Garmadon is probably the one good thing going on. His relationship with his family and how he’s split between wanting to rule the world, but not wanting to hurt his son, is very interesting, while the first season had this too, and did it very well, this is more interesting. However, most of the time in the season he doesn’t really do anything other than play pranks on the ninja and sit while his minions do all the work. And when it’s his time to fight, like an idiot, he gets tricked by the Overlord.

The main characters don’t really get a lot of more interesting developments, except for Zane, Llyod, and Garmadon. The main four most of the time are just cracking jokes and fighting bad guys, nothing else most of the time.

To sum up the season, It isn’t really that entertaining in the long run, and is really hard to be interested in, you can skip the first few episodes and start at Child’s Play to be less bored. It still manages to have some really awesome moments, especially near the end, of the season, but other than than there isn’t that much to see.

Season Rating: 2.3 / 10

Season 3 / Rebooted

Summary:

We skip into the future since the battle against the Overlord, and the ninja seem to not be needed anymore while Ninjago gets more advanced in technology. But when the Ninja go to visit Ninjago City, they are tasked by Cyrus Borg to defeat the Overlord who has returned in the form of code.

Talk about a very unusual season.

This season has some of the weirdest choices I’ve ever seen in the show. Bring in a bunch of different characters, “reboot” an entire location in the show, and make the characters go to some of the weirdest places and do the weirdest things. And the weirdest thing is.. it actually kind of works! .... to an extent.

(Edit: Ok I have A LOT to say about this season, this is going to be a long analysis because this season had a lot of new stuff in it. You have been warned.)

So, what’s good about it. Oddly enough, it’s how you never know what’s gonna happen. The show does do a good job on keeping you guessing and sometimes even in suspense, which is really difficult for a kids show to pull off. Also I want to mention the pacing. This isn’t the kind of pacing we’ve seen in the past two seasons. The pacing in this season is much quicker, which is probably because this season has fewer episodes than the past ones, but like I said before, it still works. In fact, I prefer this faster pacing over the slower pacing of before. It fits the silly power ranger style adventure vibe of the show.

The best thing I can say about this season is the action. When these episodes have to In the episode “Enter the Digiverse” we are greeted with an episode where the ninja are about to fight the Overlord again, the side characters have to fight off an entire army, AND Lloyd is trying to fight off not dying in a weird draining glass thing. It’s pretty intense, and amazing! My personal favorite is in “Blackout” where everyone is flipping around, getting stuck, getting trapped, and Zane can’t completely fight. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

Another thing I want to add is that this season seemed to take a lot more chances. As in, this was the start of new characters being added all the time. It wasn’t just one season we would get a Lloyd, and then the next, a Dareth. Now, it’s a bunch more. So lets talk about them.

Garmadon, now as a good guy, is a really good character! To be honest, even as a kid I never really enjoyed Garmadon. He just seemed like a cliche villain to me. But him as a good guy, is much more entertaining than before. He’s funny, he’s awesome, he’s a fully developed character! He’s just a great character. I love the relationship he has with his son, and seeing them journey outside of Ninjago is very interesting to watch as we get to know his character in very subtle ways. I don’t get it, THIS is the guy who was overshadowed by Wu? I don’t know what else to say. You love him, I love him, next characters.

Pythor and the Overlord come back, and they are actually pretty good! Even the Overlord, who I didn’t really like in season 2 actually is very threatening in this season. I love the scene were he crawls out of the coffin thing, just for how freaked out I was when I first saw that scene. Pythor is also pretty good in this too. He’s not as awesome as he was in season one, but really that’s just because we don’t see him a lot in this one.

And once again. Michael Dobson still does a fantastic job.

Next we have Cyrus Borg, and this guy is one of my favorite characters in the entire show. This guy is such a lovable character. Every time this guy is on screen I get a big smile on his face. You can tell the voice actor, Lee Tockar, is really trying to show off this guys wonderful bubbly personality. And the best thing is, he’s not just a one dimensional character. He does feel guilty for everything that happens in the season. He has dreams, he has fears, he has things he doesn’t want to loose. He’s just great. Now.. with Pixal.

... Dang it! I’m sorry, I really tried to like this character. But this is the most pointless character in the show! I get if you just want to give Zane a love interest, but couldn’t you have made her a bit more interesting?At least Skylor, even though she was just there to make Kai gush, she at least had a purpose and a little bit of an identity. Pixal is the most standard character you could’ve put here. Why couldn’t it have been a girl who was human, and then was made with robot parts, giving Zane a reason to be interested in her. There, I just created a more interesting character in ten seconds then you guys did in months.

I will be honest though, even though I don’t like the character, Zane and Pixal are pretty adorable together. Yeah it’s not really that believable considering Zane really has no reason to like her, but they still have some really good chemistry. One reason why I really like the episode “Blackout” is because I love the idea of two people needing eachother in order to fight, just like Ruby and Sapphire, another adorable couple. But I think the reason it works is because Zane caring deeply about anyone is already adorable by itself, so that does lift some weight on Pixal’s part. So.. yeah, it’s good.

We get a love triangle in this... a completely pointless and forced one that has nothing to do with anything. Just like Pixal and Zane, there is no real reason for Cole to want Nya, they never had any special moments in the past or any interest at all. It’s the literal definition of forced. However I don’t hate it as much as everyone else does. Because, to be fair we do get some funny scenes from it, and it’s not like they focus on it for that long. I don’t know, I personally don’t really mind that much, but I don’t think we need another.

And of coarse, I can’t hide the elephant in the room for any longer, the finale. The big scene near the end, we all know what I’m talking about. Zane’s death. Now this finale episode was already pretty good, I can’t say it’s as good as season 2 because it takes about 15 minutes to get to the Overlord, and them trying to get off the moon isn’t really that funny silly, instead, just more stupid. But once it gets going its very entertaining. The Diet pill joke is hilarious not only by itself, but their plan being to stop the most evil thing in the world by just making it small is really funny and perfectly describes what this show is going for in terms of mood.

But yeah. The death scene. And to be honest, what can I say about it that no one else has already said.

It’s kind of hard for me to judge how sad this scene is, considering this guy was my childhood favorite character, and seeing him die like this is going to spark some emotions in you no matter how the scene is done. But let me try my best to remove the nostalgia goggles and look at this from a critiquing view.

Rewatching it, not thinking about the past, having no connection with this character, I still have to admit, It’s still pretty awesome.

I think the thing that really sells this scene here is the soundtrack music. To truly understand how amazing this music is, just listen to it without any visuals. This is a link to the soundtrack song to this scene. Don’t even look at the screen, just listen to it, because it’s really amazing in terms of instrumentals, and timing.

So. I just said a bunch of stuff, what do I think of this season?

I think for what it is, it’s good! This season really tries to do a lot. And most of it works! I really appreciate it when something tries to do something different because it shows they are not afraid to fail. Does this have problems? Definitely. But is it enough to ruin the season? Not really.

Season Rating: 6.8 / 10

Ok that is a Full Critic’s Analysis of Ninjago seasons 1, 2, and 3. Part Two will be dedicated to seasons 4, 5, 6, and even 7! So look out for that!

Sorry if I wasted your time, because in the end, this is just my opinion. Honestly, I’m not expecting this to really get any attention because who would care about some rando’s opinion. But I promise I can and will try to make my opinions worthwhile. Thank you for reading, if you have your own opinions, you can share them! Everyone is allowed to share their own opinion because Ninjago is about bringing people together!

@eyeofthewolfe @ninjamelissajulien @textsfromninjagoblog

#ninjago #ninjago masters of spinjitzu #lloyd #kai #zane #cole #jay #nya #garmadon #sensei wu #serpentine #overlord #cartoon network #lego

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recentanimenews · 6 years ago

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A Beginner's Guide To Dragon Ball

What is your great shame as an anime fan? What show has absolutely everyone seen but you? What titles in your backlog do you scroll over thinking you’ll watch it someday but never do? What series has your continued hesitance to engage with developed into an elitist disdain for? What colossal, inescapable anime will you never EVER watch?

Hello, my name is Danni, and I’ve never seen a single episode of Dragon Ball.

Let me explain myself. Growing up, there were few shows my siblings and I were allowed to watch on TV. It’s not just Dragon Ball Z that I missed out on. Name your favorite childhood show and I’ve probably never seen it. I did end up falling deep into the anime hole in my teen years, but I developed a habit of only watching short anime. My backlog was (and still is) massive, so I stuck to shows I could knock out in under a week. If it ran more than two seasons, I just didn’t have time for it.

Lately, though, I’ve started to change my tune. I’ve been watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure since season one and got pretty deep into My Hero Academia last year. I’ve had a pretty snobbish attitude towards shonen anime for awhile now, but I think I’m starting to see the appeal. I could start watching Naruto...nah, maybe another time.

Come to think of it, Dragon Ball Super ended pretty recently, didn’t it? I feel like everyone I know was freaking out about that final battle. I’ve also had this Dragon Ball FighterZ game for a month now, and it’s actually really cool. I know I’ve always thought that Dragon Ball Z can’t possibly be as good as it is long, but maybe it’s time I gave it a fair shot.

It’s settled then. I’ll try watching Dragon Ball Z. My favorite characters in FighterZ are from Super, so I guess I should watch that, too. Isn’t there also an anime that comes before Z? I hate starting a series from the middle, so I’ll watch that, too. How many episodes is that in total? 575? Great, this is gonna take me like six years or something. Ah well. I can always slip into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to watch them. I don’t know what that is yet, but I’m sure I’ll find out soon. See you all in a year!

Wow, what a year! It’s been so long since I wrote all that other stuff before. That definitely wasn’t all a bit I just wrote because I hadn’t started writing for Crunchyroll a year ago. It’s been a whole eleven months since I started watching Dragon Ball, and it’s been about three weeks since I finished Super just in time to catch the new movie. I’m living in a post-Dragon Ball world now, and there’s a Goku-shaped hole in my heart that I don’t know how to fill. I have a deeper appreciation for this series now than I ever expected to have, and I’ve been itching to tell you all about it.

What can I say about Dragon Ball that hasn’t already been said, though? Surely its legions of fans don’t need me to tell them what they already know. Then I realized something. I can’t be the only one who hadn’t seen it. Somewhere, somehow, someone out there right now has yet to experience for themselves the joys of Toei’s crowning achievement. They’re probably sitting there right now asking themselves why they should watch it now after so long. Their thoughts might be clogged with preconceived notions about the series that couldn’t be further from the truth. Mine were. I’d like to right that wrong, so I’ve compiled a list of seven things I didn’t know until I saw for myself. This is the beginner’s guide to watching Dragon Ball.

It’s perfect for binge-watching

The biggest lie you’ll ever hear about Dragon Ball from both fans and critics alike is that there are long stretches of episodes full of attacks charging and nothing else. It was something I had always heard about the show and was warned about when I decided to check it out. I waited and waited for these fabled episodes and by the end of DBZ, I realized they don’t exist (Before you ask, no, I wasn’t watching Kai). To be fair, there are times in the show when a character needs to spend most or all of an episode charging an attack. This isn’t near as boring as it sounds, though, as there is always a battle taking place to defend that character and usually a B plot to cut away to.

Climactic battles do tend to drag on a lot in Dragon Ball, I’ll admit. So if you were a kid only able to watch at the pace of one episode a week, it would sure feel like nothing was happening. I watched the entire series at an average pace of almost two episodes a day, and that made all the difference. I was able to see battles play out over a few hours rather than a few months. If it ever got dull (which it did sometimes), I could just leave it on in the background and listen to some legendary voices shout at each other while browsing Twitter or playing on my Switch. Most of the time, though, my eyes were glued to the screen, anxious to see what would happen next.

It’s actually about martial arts

I’m honestly a little embarrassed that I didn’t already know this. My second-hand exposure to Dragon Ball had only ever shown me clips and images of people flying around shooting energy beams and fireballs at each other. It wasn’t until I saw FighterZ gameplay in action that I realized there’s hand-to-hand combat in the show, and it took watching the original series for me to learn it’s the whole dang focus. In fact, a large chunk of the series’ sagas take place in or under the guise of a worldwide martial arts tournament, most of which can be found in the original series. Speaking of which…

You can skip the original series, but you should still give it a shot

Everyone I know thought I was crazy for not simply starting with Z. I thought I was crazy for not starting with Z. I had been told over and over again that everything that needed to be explained from it eventually gets explained in its sequel. I had been warned countless times that it’s so far apart from what it eventually becomes. I knew all this, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d be missing part of the story if I skipped it. So, I took the plunge. Now, eleven months later, I’m here to tell you that, yeah, you don’t need it to watch Z and Super, but you should still watch it anyway.

The thing that will surprise you most about Dragon Ball is that it isn’t an action series yet -- it’s an adventure series. Loosely inspired by the classic adventure novel Journey to the West, the original series largely revolves around a young Goku’s quests to retrieve the seven Dragon Balls that can (presumably) grant any wish when brought together. Along the way, he encounters a series of villains who all seek the Dragon Balls for some nefarious reason, and Goku takes it on himself to stop them.

Admittedly, the original series takes awhile to get going. It’s incredibly dated in some of the worst ways, making the first half of the series a bit of a slog to get through. Still, though, it features the first World Martial Arts Tournament saga, which offered me my first glimpses at Dragon Ball’s potential. The latter half of the series kicks off with its second tournament arc, aka the Tien Shinhan saga, aka the moment I finally fell in love with Dragon Ball. It’s here that Dragon Ball offered it’s best action and most compelling characters to date in the show. It still sits as my personal favorite tournament arc in the series. Dragon Ball manages to keep the momentum rolling with great arc after great arc as it launches itself straight into Z. It has its fair share of flaws and isn’t altogether necessary, but it’s absolutely still worth your time.

The titular Dragon Balls aren’t lost for long

So when Dragon Ball’s first episode ended with Goku and Bulma beginning their quest to find all seven Dragon Balls, I got a little antsy. I asked, “Is this gonna be like One Piece where they’re gonna need over a thousand episodes just to find the Dragon Balls?” Turns out I was about 987+ episodes short on my guess there. It really doesn’t take them long at all to find Dragon Balls and make their wish, even if it doesn’t exactly go as planned.

Every time the Dragon Balls are used, they disappear for a full year. This means that most of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z’s first sagas bounce back and forth between quests to find them and killing time until they can be used again. At some point in Z, though, the goal posts shift to a point where obtaining the Dragon Balls becomes completely trivial and they merely act as macguffins for resurrecting dead cast members.

Power levels don’t actually matter

If you’ve existed on the internet at all within the last decade and a half, you’ve likely seen the most popular Dragon Ball meme over nine-thousand times already. Between all the memes and chatter from fans, I learned about Dragon Ball’s power levels long before I ever saw them in action. Everyone has a power level and if your power level is lower than someone else’s, you’re guaranteed to lose. At least, that’s what I thought. As it turns out, power levels don’t actually mean that much in the grand scope of Dragon Ball.

They’re first introduced in the very first episode of DBZ supposedly with the rules I listed until Goku surprises everyone by actually raising his power level. The first few sagas in DBZ are filled with villains boasting about their power levels only to somehow be defeated by someone whose power level had been lower just moments ago. It doesn’t even take Goku half the series to defeat the highest power level in the universe, at which point the term has already become meaningless.

Super nullifies the concept even further by bringing back characters whose powers had long since been eclipsed and making them legitimate contenders. I wish someone had cleared this up for me much sooner. I had always figured that Dragon Ball fights were done deals where the highest power level always won. Who wants to watch a battle anime where the underdog never wins? Thankfully, Dragon Ball is all about the underdogs.

Goku is pretty cool

The hero of the story is cool. Big shocker, I know, but bear with me. If you only know Goku through clips of him fighting, of course it makes sense that he’s cool. However, once you actually start watching Dragon Ball, you kind of forget all about it, because he’s a massive goofball 99% of the time. He’s a dork from the countryside who only ever thinks about eating and fighting and doesn’t know what a kiss is despite having two sons and a granddaughter. He’s childish and naive, but when the chips are down and he gets serious, he gets serious. It rules every single time.

Get this, Dragon Ball is really good

Like, really really good. Don’t get me wrong, I had hoped to appreciate Dragon Ball when I first began watching it, but I never expected to fall this deeply in love with it. I spent nearly a full year watching every single episode of this series -- a series I had never intended to watch before. I spent literal hundreds of hours of my year bonding with Goku and his pals, and it hasn’t even been a month and I already wanna do it all over again.

Dragon Ball is a monolithic, world-renowned series for a reason, and that reason is because it’s freaking GOOD. Its cast is iconic, its art style is timeless, its action is to die for, and it only gets better and better as it goes on. Seriously, it’s been more than three decades since the show began and it’s still blowing minds at the box office. It isn’t a series that rests on its laurels and name recognition alone, it constantly one-ups itself with every iteration.

I know, there probably aren’t many of you out there who haven’t seen Dragon Ball and thus most of you won’t find this article very useful. That doesn’t matter to me right now. Because I know I’m not alone. I know there are people out there just like I used to be who at best think they don’t have time for Dragon Ball and at worst think it’s somehow beneath them. Even if there are only twelve people like that out there, I want all twelve of them to read this piece and rethink their prior misconceptions.

If that doesn’t apply to you, yet you’re still with me anyway, first of all, thank you. Second of all, I want you to think of the Dragon Ball in your life. What show do you think you don’t have the time for? What show do you think isn’t worth your time? If you’ve learned anything from me today, I want it to be this: that show might be your next favorite. You’ll never know until you sit down and watch it.

Are you a lifelong fan of Dragon Ball? A relative newcomer like Danni? Did you not even know it existed before? Let us know in the comments below!

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Danni Wilmoth is a Features and Social Videos writer for Crunchyroll and also co-hosts the video game podcast Indiecent. You can find more words from her on Twitter @NanamisEgg.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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bluephoenixdruidicprincess · 7 years ago

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My Super Special Awesome Sauce Supernatural Re-Watch -- Season 1 Episode 8, Bugs

Welcome to my Supernatural Re-Watch project in which I'm re-watching every episode of Supernatural. Why? Because I want to. I've kind of made a name for myself in the Shadowhunters fandom for my love-hate relationship with the Freeform show. So I thought, hey, since I'm reviewing a sub-par show that constantly disappoints me (Shadowhunters), I should also review a show that I love. This way, when I'm critical of Shadowhunters, my audience can get an understanding of where I come from. What it is I look for in good story telling. Or they could think I'm a hypocritical idiot. Either way, I'm doing this. And also, I love Supernatural and I'm really just looking for an excuse to watch the show and then talk about it. Here we have Episode 8, Bugs. As a reminder, these are my own thoughts and opinions. Please respect them even if you don't agree with them. And like always, please don't send me any spoilers for Season 13.

RECAP

Our teaser begins with a construction crew working on building a new housing district. One of the members of the team was working on the gas line when he falls through a sink hole. His partner goes to get rope to pull the man out. While he's trying to find rope, the man in the sinkhole is suddenly attacked by beatles. He screams and then dies. Picture the scarabs from The Mummy franchise and that's kind of what you're looking at here. Bugs crawling into his ears and eating his brain, not a pretty picture.

We cut away from the teaser to find Sam Winchester sitting on the impala leafing through a newspaper. Dean comes out of the bar glowing from his newfound wealth in hustling pool. Sam is quick to judge Dean on this. Sam wishes they could make money the honest way but Dean is adamant this is the only way because hunting doesn't pay. Sam tells Dean he found a case. They check out this sinkhole and Sam finds some dead beatles. In an attempt to get some dirt on this neighborhood, they go to a neighborhood barbeque where they meet some of the tenants in the area. Sam also meets and bonds a little bit with this 16-year-old kid who's into insects. Later on that night, one of the tenants dies in her shower from massive spider bites. Dean suspects the kid might have something to do with it because the kid has a tarantula and an obsession with insects, in general. They follow the kid into the woods, Dean accuses him, and the kid is adamant he's not the one doing it but he does think something weird is going on with the bugs.

The kid takes them to this area in the woods where bugs seem to be converging. The Winchesters find some old human skulls and take them to be identified. A professor tells them that these skulls are most likely native american. Sam and Dean head over to a native american reserve where an elderly man tells them a story of how some 150 years ago, the white men had killed just about everyone in the area that housing district is being built on. In retaliation for this injustice, the chief put a curse on the land that no white man shall ever stand on it. The curse will go on for 6 days and kill every white man. Our heroes realize that they're on the 6th day now. That the bugs will kill everyone today which means the kid and his family are in very real danger.

Sam and Dean get to the house and they have to fight off the bugs for the entire night. Once the sun rises, the curse will end. The sun rises and the family decides to move. The father states that he will make sure no one tries to live on this land again.

This episode also has a little bit of Winchester drama going on that kind carries into the dynamic of this story's main plot. Sam bonds with this 16-year-old kid because the kid feels like he doesn't live up to his father's expectations. Sam can relate to this. It's made apparent in this episode that Sam did not part amicably with his father when he went to Stanford. His father essentially kicked him out when he found out Sam wanted to leave. Sam could never quite measure up to what his father wanted. He tells the kid that he only has to put up with his father's disapproval for a couple more years and then he can leave home for college. Dean is against giving the kid this idea as he feels you should respect your father and stick with your family. This all culminates to a scene where Sam feels as if when they eventually do find their father, he doesn't think Papa Winchester will be happy to see him. After all, Sam scored a full ride to Stanford and was kicked out of his father's house for his trouble. Dean tells Sam that their father was just scared. Sam was heading off to a place where his father wouldn't be able to protect him and he wasn't ready to face it so he reacted badly. But Dean also mentions that yeah, while Papa Winchester reacted badly, he still went to the Stanford grounds whenever he could just to check on Sam and make sure he was alright. He never stopped loving Sam. This newfound information spurs Sam into wanting to find their father even more so he can apologize for the things he said as well on that fateful night. At the end of the episode, we see that the kid and his father, having lived through a life-or-death situation, are now seeing eye-to-eye and realizing what's really important.

Thoughts

Honestly, when I think back to the very first time I ever watched this episode, I hated it. Doing this re-watch now, I actually don't hate it as much as I used to. I probably hated it back then because well, it's bugs. I hate bugs. That and the story isn't really all that interesting either. I mean, maybe it is if you're into native american lore. But that's an element I've never really been all that interested in so the story in this episode wasn't all that stimulating for me.

This one thing did stand out to me, though. So, when Sam and Dean are at the house trying to get the family to leave the land before the bugs attack they say it's 12am and these bugs are about to hit so they need to last until the sun rises. This is confusing because when the sun does rise, it feels like only maybe 15 minutes have passed. The entire climax of the episode was really badly paced. I did enjoy the Winchester drama here. I felt it related very well with what was going on with the family we were introduced to in this episode. Sam understands this kid because he understands what it's like to have a father who doesn't approve of him. Dean doesn't quite understand the animosity Sam has towards their father because he's always been the perfect son. However, because Dean's judgement is not being clouded by anger, he's able to relay to Sam that under Papa Winchester's bravado, deep down he loves Sam. And then it kind of goes symmetrical with this family we're introduced to in this episode. At first, you can tell that the father doesn't approve of his kid having this fascination with insects but after they go through this life-or-death scenario, he understands what really matters. He and his son almost died. It doesn't matter that his son maybe a little weird, he's alive and he's reminded that he loves him regardless of that. So it was a nice little symmetrical arc between the two families. I always enjoy the family themes in these episodes.

Favorite Quotes

SAM: (to Dean) You watch Oprah? I like this because throughout the series you'll get these tiny little hints that despite Dean stating he doesn't like chick flick moments, he has a little bit of chick flick in him. Dean has a certain idea of what a masculine man should be like so he kind of hides these guilty pleasures that he feels doesn't fit in with the persona he wants to have.

DEAN: (to Sam) I'm gonna talk to Larry, kay, honey? This is such a tongue and cheek line and I love it. Sam and Dean are mistaken not once but twice as each other's life partners and at this point, Dean is just fed up with it. There's also a lot of irony with it as well. Considering Wincest is one of the biggest ships in the Supernatural fandom. I personally don't ship it but if you do, no judgement here. You do you. I'm cool with it. I have my own ships that I would prefer people didn't judge me on, after all.

SAM: Like when I said I'd rather play soccer instead of learn bow-hunting. DEAN: Bow-hunting's an important skill. You really are starting to see the difference in personalities with Sam and Dean in this episode. Sam always wanted the "normal" pursuits whereas Dean sees nothing wrong with choosig bow-hunting over soccer.

I'd give this episode probably a B-. It's a little shallow to say this is why I don't like the episode, I know, but the bug part of it still freaks me out a little. I have no real inclination to re-visit this episode. The main story also wasn't that interesting for me either. But that's probably just a case of personal preference. I'm just not super interested in native american lore. But I did enjoy the family dynamics in this episode. There was a lot of heart to the story which is why I like it slightly more than I did previously. So there is that.

If you have any thoughts or opinions, I'd love to hear them. Just remember to be respectful and please, no spoilers for Season 13.

#supernatural #spn #supernatural rewatch #spn rewatch #supernatural season 1 episode 8 #spn season 1 episode 8 #supernatural 1x08 #spn 1x08 #supernatural bugs #spn bugs #bugs

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vedj-f-bekuesu · 5 years ago

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At this point I’m just watching the seasons to keep the momentum going after two great (and one flawed but still okay) seasons. With Friday being a Bank Holiday, I might get the rest of the pre-11 stuff wrapped up by the weekend. But enough of the future, how about the season I watched, Sons of Garmadon?

It had a lot to live up to based on its reputation, and I’m happy to report that it delivers on what it sets out to do. Issues with the season are fairly minor tribbles, but that’s something I can cover in the notes.

-Hoo boy, let’s get this out of the way; the movie did fucking wonders for Lloyd Garmadon. Spending like five seasons stuck to his blander “chosen one must learn” characterisation, this season gives him a very long overdue overhaul into a more modern chosen one protagonist who is way more entertaining to watch. Bonus points for having a look I can take seriously now...yeah, sorry, but the Anakin hairpiece with the strange approach to voice commitment never did for me, even as it became the norm for what I was viewing. -To be honest, his teammates get some good material here too. Some more than others (Zane especially has a really good little arc where he gets to show his more calculating side. Cole’s arc is okay but I don’t feel it quite nails the landing as well), but they all get chance to banter and have character moments, which is mainly what I come into shows for as opposed to straight up development constantly. Shout outs to Jay who has small moments, but important ones that do really good for his character (I could go into why Lloyd and Jay make the most sense as leads...probably after my season watching is done). I also like the callback to a character moment he had in season 3. Also this finally feels like the writers are sticking to characterisation, this season mostly keeping what Hands of Time did with them. Not so much design-wise, but I’ve made it clear many times that I prefer the new designs to old. Also, I get to throw in Pixal as a main character now since she’s clearly on the team full time. She’s good here too. -The dynamics get their own section just because I want to restate how I prefer the dynamic between Jay and Lloyd compared to Kai and Lloyd so far. Seriously, Jay seems to step up to bat for Lloyd more than Kai at this point. And yet no-one really seems to be interested in it within the fandom. -There wasn’t really much in the way of side characters this season (I am aware that next season will change that). Misako was good for what little material she had, Wu was fun and actually became a solid character in his own right once he became a toddler, Dareth is solid and really gets to show his alternative way of helping out, and the police commissioner...eh, better than season 6 but I’m still not big on him. -I can sum up Harumi in one sentence; Skylor but done better on every count (and also evil). She’s engaging when she’s acting as the more humble Princess figure, and she’s nicely hammy when she’s unleashing her evil side. I can see why people would be into Lloyrumi with such a investing act (for the record, I’m not). This all being said, those who say that Harumi had a point are missing one important detail; as much destruction has been caused with the ninjas’ close call; what alternative is there? I don’t see anyone else stepping up to save Ninjago so it would have probably fully fallen a long time ago. And even with the Great Devourer, Lord Garmadon was channelling his good side to deliver a finishing blow, he still needed the ninja there. -We have three other villains and two of them are enjoyable. Ultra-Violet is committed to her crazy shtick and amusing, and Killow is definitely different to how I thought he’d be, but it’s a lot more enjoyable (especially when Garry Chalk is channelling every bit of his Sonic Underground Robotnik voice he can. Kind of like how Clancee was Ian James Corlett channelling a lot of his scrub monkey third class). Mr E can go rust though. -Unlike the other seasons which people cite as dark, this one feels like it does actually go there. It’s not completely a dark season, mostly the end of Jade Princess and scenes between Game of Masks and Big Trouble, Little Ninjago. It was still pretty fun and light-ish hearted outside of that. -Weirdly enough, most of my quibbles are on the technical side. People cite this season as having the best animation...but I don’t really see it. In terms of visuals it’s a step up, but the actual animation doesn’t feel that different to Hands of Time. They learned to use flashier graphics everywhere. Which is probably why the intro is the way it is, and I’m sorry but this is probably my least favourite intro. I can’t appreciate the spectacle when focusing on anything is difficult to achieve. On top of that, there were still some glaring graphical fuck-ups (like when Cole is shown with the other ninja in a scene where he was captured, or when Lloyd was shown with green eyes in a shot despite being drained of power at that point), which aren’t really any different to the ones Prime Empire has. -The pacing of the season wasn’t entirely smooth, but unlike other seasons it’s not like one set issue. It’s more like a concertina effect; it was very quick at first, then slows down, then speeds up again, then slows down, then finally hits an even tempo about halfway through. This is why I didn’t mention the likes of Hutchins, the parents or the Mechanic before; because of the pace, you don’t really get enough time to really get attached to them (doesn’t help that the Mechanic has Alan Marriott doing the voice in his cameo, and man does it not fit compared to Skybound. I’m glad when the Mechanic got more substantial stuff they went back to his original VA, that voice is so fun). -My other big thing is actually the complete continuity snarl that’s Harumi’s backstory makes. They’ve thrown in so many random events over the seasons but because of the sheer vagueness of the timescales it doesn’t really break suspension of disbelief. But Harumi’s turn to darkness is clearly during the ending of season 1, which we have a much more tangible sense of time for. Harumi seems like she’s about 8-10 then, the ninja seem like they were 14-15 then, Harumi seems like she’s 15-18 now but the showrunner still insist that the ninja are teenagers? How does that work, the most generous allowance for time is five years, and that would barely make them still teenagers in season 8. Certainly don’t believe they could be teenagers as of the most recent seasons. -On a completely different tangent, can we talk about the toilet humour? Yeah, it’s not like it’s never been there (there’s been poop jokes, fart jokes, halitosis jokes, and who can forget that one utterly cringe scene in S3?), but Hands of Time and Sons of Garmadon do it in a way that just comes off as really weird compared to earlier toilet humour. Like, there’s the implication by Jay in season 7 that Kai has issues with constipation, Cole’s truth tea dose forces him to say that he pees in the pool, and then there’s Kai, right to Harumi’s face, all but saying that Jay has issues with peeing himself. Her reaction to it is fucking hilarious, but it’s still weird, even though knowing Vincent Tong he would totally do that.

Overall, this was a great season, and it’s clear to see how this became such a draw to the series (meaning in hindsight, LEGO’s method of dealing with the new style was pretty much a winner). The issues I have don’t stop the quality being across the board. Aside from Possession, I think this may be a favourite season from the pre-11 stuff.

Next time, we effectively get the second part to this story. Yep, it ended in a cliffhanger so we’ve hardly wrapped it up here. Time to see how the OG ninja and newer recruits handle themselves alone in Hunted.

#ninjago #ns8 #VEDJ-F talks #vedj-f reviews #cole cannot sing sorry

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