#actual tearjerker and thats not even half of it

[petrichal]

I cried so hard at this part specifically

[tumblunni]

Ok just... just... GIVE ME A SECOND to talk about the spoilery monster rancher stuffs, okay? Why THAT ENDING hurt so much but also fit so well with the rest of it, and why the third season kinda sucked so much despite being the continuation we all desperately craved. And why its still gonna have a place in everyone’s hearts, even the haters, JUST because it gave a conclusion to THAT FUCKING ENDING! I dont care if people say it would be more deep or whatever to leave on the downer cliffhanger, I still think it SHOULD have had a third season, just that it should have been better. Or I mean... maybe it would have worked better as a movie or a short ten episode season or something. Just there should have been SOME sequel to that ending, but a very very lighthearted season about a goofy tournement kinda wasnt what it should have been.

OKAY THE ENDING THE SEASON 2 ENDING the giant and damn awesome subversion of everything about the genre, which fit so well with everything else the show ever did, GAHHH Like.. there were SO MANY subversions and just interesting detailed twists on common ‘mon show’ tropes. One of the earliest episodes begins with an asshole trainer treating his Worm monster the same way a lot of people honestly might do while min-maxing in one of these videogames. He’s disgustingly abusive and feels like he’s justified because he’s making his monster stronger, and that’s all that it’s good for. And the show establishes its tearjerker tone early on by having this guy only repent after his horribly abused monster sacrifices itself to save him from the baddies, even after how badly he’d treated it. And he’s begging apologies to its dead disc stone, while it’s too late to do anything about it. But the show STILL gives him a chance at redemption, because our heroes trust him to raise a new newborn Worm, and to do it right. That’s just... what the show is. It went really REALLY dark, but it did this with this kind of determined optimism! And even the funnier episodes could have high stakes, and there was always the reminder that we were living in this dystopia and just trying to keep our smiles during it, because otherwise how can we change it?

And thats why season 3 fumbled by like.. not introducing its stakes early enough. Or.. at all. it was good that they finally introduced some good comic relief villains and generally villains with more motivations and backstory, but it combined badly with the no-intial-high-stakes thing to give a season that just felt way too happy. In a show that certainly had happiness in it before, but I mean it never felt hollow?? It kinda felt disrespectful to follow up a super depressing cliffhanger with such a badly explained and rushed flip back to the status quo, and then such a sparse plot with so few incentives to keep watching. Its only initial good point was that it resolved the cliffhanger AT ALL, but it could have done it WELL, and also established a new reason to wanna watch the show now the one big huge main plot has been resolved. Following up after the bad guy is defeated is always a hard thing, you cant just put no effort into it... Tho I feel bad even saying that, cos seriously season 3′s villains were the best part. They just might have fit better in season 1, or just if the plot kept up the slack surrounding them...

BUT YEAH JUST THE SUBVERSIONS!! I could fuckin ramble forever about how great they were! Seriously it was just THE BEST ‘ending’ to a ‘stuck in another world’ story, ever! Having the main kid finally get back home, but at the ABSOLUTE WORST MOMENT, after all his friends have sacrificed themself to save that world and he’s the only one left alive. And he doesnt even get enough time to process the shock, he barely even sees the rescued world before he just wakes up home as if nothing happened. And he’s stuck feeling like he can’t adjust to being part of this world anymore, and he’s mourning people he can’t even talk to anyone about. Imagine how worried his parents must have been when he became depressed seemingly overnight and refuses to tell them why! And then it just ends on him crying in the rain and the ghosts of his friends trying to motivate him to get back up and find a reason to live again. That was ONE HELL of a cliffhanger, yo! So yeah OF COURSE people were cheering for a new season, but also OF COURSE that new season would fail if it insufficiently followed up on the emotional impact of the cliffhanger and then had a bazillion episodes of barely anything emotional ever happening again, when the first series had you crying your eyes out as early as episode 4...

oh and like DEAR GOD all the OTHER really good subversiony episode plots aaaaa like even down to little stuff like how genki actually fights alongside his monster pals. And he’s a total badass who does succeed in doing more than most humans could do, but still he’s just a human going against monsters. he knows what he’s doing is rash, but he does it anyway because he cares about his monsters and couldnt just let them die without throwing himself in front of the bullet. And every battle in this show is life or death rebellion against an oppressive regime like that! Random low risk tournement episodes used to be.. like.. FILLER in this series. It was a terrible idea for the entire third season’s plot... And I also loved how the team actually did help people along the way as they journeyed to defeat the baddies, and it wasn’t JUST fighting. They had a whole tearful episode about everyone struggling to hold back a dam that the baddies had sabotaged to wipe a village off the map, and it was INFINATELY MORE INTENSE than half of the things Pokemon has ever done, lol! (not that I dislike pokemon, just the anime in particular is a bit naff) God, how they were all strangers to this village and how they actually had bickering between the team members on whether they should really do this, and all the different ways they tried to save the dam and how they made it way too clear that they were gonna die from friggin holding this thing back with their bare hands. And how they organized the whole town to work themselves to the bone trying to divert the dam, and how a bunch of their attempts failed and they came so close to not having enough time! You had me weeping for the potential deaths of a hundred nameless faceless npcs just from putting me in the shoes of our heroes reacting to it! You made a little kid understand the complexity of civilian casualties in war! And OH MAN, Golem’s backstory! How he was a former war soldier who just shattered mentally after being forced to kill so many other monsters. And he was so gentle at heart, and he sat there guarding this church full of disc stones for god knows how many decades, blaming himself for what happened. Like.. it showed that even when you’re fighting villains, killing still breaks you. Dear GOD, his face when he came back down from his friggin ptsd flashback anger episode saving the heroes from the baddies, and he saw all the dead baddies, and just... you could not talk to that man and tell him that killing was justified just because they were BADDIES. Even if its in self defense, he still has to look at his hands that just murdered people. I’m so damn glad the heroes managed to befriend him and take him away from that place, cos that moment came so close to sending him back to his guilt spiral! If anything, I think that the dub calling them ‘baddies’ actually made all these moments way more effective. The childish terminology makes you think this is gonna be a paint by numbers story, so it hurts more when its anything but! Even in a world with a concept like ‘the bad guy magically turns people into his bad minions’, they still managed to deal with complex grey morality, and that’s one hell of a crowning achievement!

...plus it allowed for a happy ending after all. God, i cried for all those poor minor mooks getting brought back to normal in the end. Honestly, even though it hurt, I would have accepted it ending on all of the hero monsters being dead forever for the sake of bringing back all the dead civilians and brainwashed baddies. Sacrificing yourselves to save so many others! God, this show’s characters are too goddamn pure. AND COMPLEX TOO! man I loved how grumpy and selfish half of the hero cast is, yet they’re still heroes despite it, and god just HOW THEY ALL DIED TOGETHER AND OUR PROTAGONIST IS THE ONLY ONE FORCED TO KEEP ON LIVING that was such a fucking cliffhanger thank you terrible season 3 for fixing it man i can forgive anything you do because you did that baby mocchi lived and ate some mochi cakes and tiger and hare lived to bicker with each other once more and golem could find some peace knowing all the people he saved, even if he might never be free of the guilt of those he failed to save and suezo and holly didnt have to be apart again, he didnt have to end his life finally proving his ‘usefulness’ at the cost of everything else (SERIOUSLY SUEZO LOW SELF CONFIDENCE EPISODES KILL MY HEART) and genki didnt have to have his childhood completely destroyed by his ‘magical adventure’ plot ending on so much of a trope subversion even if still it was good that it happened it was a really fuckin good plot all that suffering just made the happy ending that much happier! GOD I miss this show very much...