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immaturityofthomasastruc · 4 years ago

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(Accidental 150 Follower Special) IOTA’s Top 10 Best (and By That, I Mean Personal Favorite) Episodes of Miraculous Ladybug

Alright, I already covered what I considered to be the worst Miraculous Ladybug episodes in two parts, and now it’s time to talk about the what I consider to be the best Miraculous Ladybug episodes before I talk about... him...

I’m only putting one rule in place for this list. I'm going to try and list episodes with good qualities other than “cool-looking Akuma and awesome fight scenes”, and focus on other details like character moments and story.

Other than that, let’s get started.

These are the Top 10 Best Episodes of Miraculous Ladybug (in my personal opinion because your opinion is also valid)

#10: Mr. Pigeon

While Marinette works on sketching a design for a hat for a fashion contest where the winning design will be worn by Adrien (a rare example where the “Marinette does a thing to impress Adrien” plot actually works), a birdwatcher who loves feeding pigeons in the park is told off by the only police officer in Paris, causing him to get akumatized into the titular Mr. Pigeon, who has control over all of the pigeons in the city.

And by God, does this episode have fun with the concept.

In addition to constantly mimicking pigeon cries, Mr. Pigeon's movements are just so entertaining to watch, only aided by the creative ways he controls the flocks of pigeons.

I'm not kidding when at one point, Mr. Pigeon traps Ladybug and Cat Noir in a cage, and threatens to have his pigeons crap on them unless they hand over their Miraculous. Yeah.

This is one of the episodes that really set the standards for how outlandish the Akumas in Miraculous Ladybug could get. It kind of reminds me of an episode of the original Ultraman, where the SSSP has to find a way to move an incredibly heavy monster using increasingly abnormal strategies, like inflating it with air so it'll float like a balloon. It's clear it isn't taking itself too seriously, so the audience shouldn't either.

Admittedly, Cat Noir's feather allergy feels shoehorned in, and is only included to increase conflict, and you would think it would come up when Mayura, a bird-themed supervillain appears in the third season. But then again, that's just a minor nitpick.

It's just a really fun episode, and I wish we could see Ladybug and Cat Noir fight Mr. Pigeon again that isn't used for a cheap gag.

#9: The Puppeteer

After being told by her mom that she can't have a Ladybug doll made by Marinette, young Manon is Akumatized into the Puppeteer. But obviously, you can't have our heroes beating up a five-year-old, so instead, the Puppeteer has the power to exact control over past Akuma victims as long as she has the doll made by Marinette. So Ladybug and Cat Noir have to face off against Lady Wifi, the Evillustrator, and Rogercop, before the Puppeteer gets her hands on the dolls Marinette made of the two heroes and take control of them as well.

It's still kind of funny to think about the fact that of all the Akumas to become a huge threat to Ladybug and Cat Noir, it's a little girl throwing a temper tantrum. And like with “Mr. Pigeon”, the episode has a lot of fun with the concept, best reflected in the voice acting. You can tell that Carrie Keranen is having so much fun this episode with the stuff she says as Lady Wifi.

The fact that someone who was actually a major threat to the heroes with how she was able to easily outsmart them and also came really close to getting their Miraculous is now acting like a little kid using phrases like “super duper sorry” is even more hilarious.

I'm still a little confused as why of all the past villains, it's Evillustrator and Rogercop that get to come back, and I wish they had gotten more to say, but it's still a treat to see Ladybug and Cat Noir fighting four villains at once, especially since this was before “Heroes Day”.

#8: Sapotis

Hawkmoth akumatizes Alya's little sisters into Sapotis (supposedly based off a folktale, but I can't find anything about it online), who have the power to multiply and easily overwhelm Ladybug and Cat Noir, forcing Ladybug to recruit Alya to become a third hero, Rena Rouge.

I've been a little negative about Alya in the past, but this episode gives her some major character growth. One of the biggest problems I had with her character in Season 1 is how often she tried to figure out Ladybug's identity... despite claiming to be a huge superhero fan, who should know why superheroes keep their identities a secret. Thankfully, this episode mostly puts an end to this idea.

The episode opens with Marinette giving Alya some reasons why Ladybug would keep her identity a secret, and it actually plays into the episode.

Putting aside the stupid Rent-A-Miraculous system introduced in this episode, the idea of keeping secrets and how necessary they can be sometimes is reflected after the battle where Alya is hesitant at first to give up her Miraculous, but eventually concedes and keeps her identity a secret from Marinette (who ironically knows, but that's not important).

Even without that, this episode still has a lot of action with the three heroes fighting their way through an army of Sapotis, with plenty of banter during said action. Hell, at one point, Cat Noir says “gotta catch 'em all”. I don't have a joke here, that's just brilliant.

Out of all the introductory hero episodes, this one easily sticks out among most of them.

(Don’t worry, I’m going to talk about Rena Rouge’s character design in a later post.)

#7: Guitar Villain

I said before in an earlier post that Jagged Stone is one of my favorite characters in Miraculous Ladybug, so it's obvious that the episode where he gets akumatized would be on this list.

After a disagreement with his manager about trying to mimic the popular singer XY (who ironically lacks a Y chromosome), Jagged is akumatized into Guitar Villain, a rock star with a pet dragon who forces everyone to listen to his Awesome Solo (yes, he names his attacks too) to dance uncontrollably.

Honestly, there's not much I can really say about this episode. It's Ladybug and Cat Noir fighting a rock star who flies around on a goddamn dragon. That's one of the coolest things I've ever seen! Even the way they defeat him (which I won’t give away) is a fun jab at rock stars.

Admittedly, the episode does border on grouchy old man territory sometimes by complaining about how bad today's music is with the way they portray XY as a whiny and egotistical coward, but after watching “Silencer”, you'll be glad everyone hates him.

Overall, it's a rockingly awesome episode.

#6: The Dark Owl

Mr. Damocles, the principal of Marinette and Adrien's school, is akumatized into the Dark Owl, a corrupted version of his favorite comic book superhero (who would later turn out to be real in the New York special, but I don't want to acknowledge that), who uses his high-tech gadgets to trap Ladybug and Cat Noir, putting them in one of their toughest binds yet.

I'm a huge fan of the Adam West Batman show, so you could probably guess why it's on this list. This episode really feels like an episode of that show with how goofy and over the top everything is. Obviously, this episode has a few Batman references thrown in (even an Incredibles reference at one point), and they're all hilarious.

I just love how complex Dark Owl's traps for Ladybug and Cat Noir are, and the fact that he actually manages to outsmart them at one point. Like seriously, have you ever heard of a death trap that involves drowning someone in whipped cream? That’s totally something you’d see the Joker setting up.

I don't really want to give away the ending (which is why this part is so short), because I think it's a really clever resolution that you should check out for yourself.

#5: Gorizilla

Hawkmoth akumatizes Adrien's bodyguard into Gorizilla, whose sole purpose is to protect Adrien. His motivation? To see if Adrien is actually Cat Noir or not. So Adrien has to avoid this gigantic gorilla's wrath with Marinette, all while trying to catch a movie his late mother was in.

See this? This is Adrienette done right. This is the kind of interaction I like when it comes to romance. Marinette and Adrien spend a few scenes with each other avoiding Adrien's crazy fanbase, and Marinette doesn't stammer half of her words. Even when she interacts with Adrien as Ladybug, she still remains confident, and Adrien trusts her judgment when it looks like he might fall. I don't just want Marinette and Adrien to cuddle with each other or declare their love for each other when they get their memories wiped. I want them to interact like human beings before they actually start a relationship, and this episode is a good example of it.

Adrien also gets some good focus with the way he views his relationship with his parents, as does Gabriel with his relationship with his son. Granted, he's taking a pretty huge gamble trying to kill Adrien to see if he's Cat Noir or not as opposed to just... taking off his ring while he sleeps. Can we at least admit he's trying?

I feel they could have done more with the King Kong homage (guess who I'm talking about?), but I can understand there wasn't enough time to focus on that. It's still an important episode to watch for plot and character growth that will barely be acknowledged in later episodes.

#4: Sandboy

tHe SaNdBoY hAs ChEcKeD iN. nOw NiGhTmArEs CaN bEgIn.

Now that we got that obvious joke out of the way, let's talk about one of the most creative episodes of the show.

Tikki and Plagg, Marinette and Adrien's Kwamis (the magical beings that power their Miraculous) take part in a ritual with the other Kwamis inside Master Fu's Miracle Box to contact Nooroo, Hawkmoth's Kwami, on his birthday and get an idea of where he is. Unfortunately, Hawkmoth chooses to akumatize someone during the ritual, leaving Marinette and Adrien helpless to fight back against Sandboy, an Akuma with the power to make their worst fears come true.

I said before in my worst list when talking about “Ladybug” that there was too much going on for one episode, what with Marinette's expulsion, the attempted Scarletmoth attack, and the fake Ladybug plotlines generally being rushed through. This episode is basically the opposite of that (ironically, they're both the penultimate episodes of their respective seasons).

The Kwami ritual and the Akuma attack are perfectly staged together so one affects the other. Not only do the Kwamis have to risk aborting their ritual to reach Nooroo in order to fight the Akuma, but Marinette and Adrien have to deal without fighting off Sandboy's nightmares on their own. Both plots balance each other out into a well-crafted story.

This is also one of the only episodes in the show where the Akuma of the week isn't the man focus. Here, we don't even see what happens to get the kid akumatized into Sandboy, and instead, Gabriel senses someone with negative emotions and akumatizes the kid offscreen. This works, because it doesn't distract from the main plot too much.

Even Marinette and Adrien's worst fears beautifully contrast each other, with both managing to be unsettling in different ways, even if they both have different tones. While Adrien's worst fear is being imprisoned in his own room (the fear only made worse with Plagg's absence), Marinette's worst fear is... the real star of the episode. Ladies and Gentlemen, I think you all know who I'm talking about.

You can tell the animators had a field day with animating Nightmare Adrien. Just look at the way he moves around and the faces he makes. It manages to be terrifying and hilarious at the same time. Bryce Papenbrook's performance only makes it better, cementing this as the highlight of the episode.

This episode also does a good job at foreshadowing the main plot for Season 3 with Hawkmoth finding out about the other Kwamis and by extension, more Miraculous.

It's got plot, comedy, good action, and Nightmare Adrien, so how can you turn this episode down?

And no, I'm not talking about Nightmare Ladybug, mainly because I'm tired of all the evil doppelgangers from the worst list.

#3: Startrain

Yes, believe it or not, I managed to find a Season 3 episode that wasn't complete garbage, and spoiler alert, this isn't the only one.

Marinette and Adrien's class goes on a field trip to London by taking the train, until the driver is akumatized into Startrain, who wants to escape to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism... SPACE! So Ladybug and Cat Noir have to defeat Startrain while also finding a way to bring everyone on the train back home.

I like how this episode plays with the usual Akuma of the week formula. Unlike every other Akuma they've fought, Cat Noir points out that if they beat Startrain, everyone will die, so they have to be more strategic in their approach. They don't even fight Startrain for most of the episode, as they have to make their way to the front of the train to confront the Akuma. The action in this episode is very creative and really takes advantage of zero gravity, only aided by the design of the futuristic train the episode takes place in.

The new hero introduced, Pegasus (AKA Max, another student in Marinette and Adrien's class), is also really cool, being very intelligent and helping out the heroes progress through the train even before he gets the Horse Miraculous. It makes sense that his intelligence would be used rather than just his powers in this situation.

There are even some good character moments too. For once, Master Fu does something smart and loans the Horse Miraculous (which has the power of teleportation) to Marinette so she can still go on the class trip, trusting her and actually letting her have a life. It was also nice to see Alya stick up for Marinette by keeping Lila from interrupting her nap with Adrien.

This episode is basically like a refreshing glass of water to enjoy during the garbage fire that was Season 3.

(I’m going to talk about Pegasus’ character design later on too, don’t worry)

#2: Silencer

Lukanette shippers, ASSEMBLE!

Music producer Bob Roth and his son XY hold a contest for young artists to show off their skills, and Kitty Section, a band composed of several recurring characters, decides to enter, with Marinette helping to design their costumes. But as soon as they submit their video, they find out that XY copied their style, naturally pissing the band off.

Marinette and the lead guitarist of Kitty Section, Luka, confront Bob Roth and XY, who threaten to ruin their careers by claiming that they ripped off XY. Seeing Marinette getting threatened is more than enough for Hawkmoth to akumatize Luka into Silencer, who naturally has the power to silence and mimic the voices of others.

I talked about Luka and his relationship with Marinette in an earlier post (specifically the one where Astruc claimed that the fandom growing to like Luka counted as character development), and I said that this was one of the few good episodes this season because of their interactions. This episode basically made me realize how much Luka cares for Marinette, and the episode gives plenty of time to show the two spending time together and growing closer. It's basically everything “Oni-Chan” should have been about, giving some depth to Luka and not portraying him as a crazy person like they did with Kagami in that episode.

Silencer is also one of the more creatively designed villains this season, and has a really creative approach to achieving his goals. While the ability to steal and imitate someone's voice seems mundane compared to control over the weather, or making nightmares come to life, it's used very effectively. Silencer basically tricks the police into arresting Bob Roth while imitating the mayor's voice, and he threatens to make his life a living hell by using the connections to the voices he's stolen. Even with the hand puppet gesture, it's still unsettling to have Silencer speak in all these voices, and it would make for a really interesting horror movie.

Even Ladybug and Cat Noir's interactions are back to their Season 1 levels of enjoyment. Even though Silencer took her voice, Ladybug just makes so many expressions that do a great job at describing her feelings, which naturally plays off Cat Noir's motormouth tendencies. Whenever Cat Noir jokes about Ladybug's condition, he is rightfully called out on it and is reprimanded in some way, my favorite being when Ladybug uses her yo-yo to hit Cat Noir on the head to shut him up. Even putting aside that, they still work well together this episode and really feel like equals. I also love their silent fist bump when Bob Roth is exposed.

Again, the episode still takes the time to go on about how unoriginal today's musicians are, and how they lack artistic creativity and all that crap. Look, given how ham-fisted the writing in this show can get, are you surprised the commentary isn't subtle?

Even putting aside how much this episode made me appreciate Lukanette, it still has a lot of great moments that aren't even related to the ship itself, which is a real testament to how this show can perfectly balance romance and story when it's done right. Now if only the show could try this much with Adrienette, then people wouldn't hate the main pairing of the show this much.

#1: The Collector

Taking place immediately after the Season 1 finale, Marinette meets Master Fu and discusses the book she found depicting past Miraculous users. Marinette theorizes that since the book was in the Agreste mansion, Gabriel could be Hawkmoth. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, she's right, and in order to draw off suspicion, Gabriel akumatizes himself into the Collector.

This episode has several good writing decisions for both sides, and the choices the characters make feel natural. Gabriel akumatizing himself is such a smart move, and so is what Marinette and Master Fu do with the book at the end. This episode does a great job setting up future plot threads and establishes Master Fu's character and the mystery associated with him.

The Collector is a visually stunning villain, and his powers are really creative, leading to a great fight with Ladybug and Cat Noir, who use a great strategy to outsmart him. I also love how over the top he is in order to make the heroes believe that he's working for Hawkmoth, all with a devious smile on his face.

This was also the episode that really got me into Miraculous Ladybug as a whole. I checked out the first season on a whim after it was mentioned in a Pan Pizza video, but it was during the hiatus between seasons, and I hadn't really started using Tumblr yet, so it mostly stayed off my radar. When Season 2 started however, I really got invested in the story, and the way this episode turned out was a big reason why. I wondered what it would be like when Adrien finds out his own father is Hawkmoth, and how the story would play out after the reveal.

Despite what it led up to, I still consider “The Collector” to be my favorite episode of Miraculous Ladybug.

Well, now that I talked about that, not it's time to talk about what I consider to be the worst episode of Miraculous Ladybug, “Felix”. God help me...

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willwedie-justalittle · 3 years ago

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Teen wolf and sounds

Ever since I started watching tv, I noticed that I would be more likely to recognise songs and voices instead of faces. That lead to a game in my household where I would try to remember which characters had the same voices, since the shows I watched were mostly American and needed dubbing. This means that most of the time, a single French guy would be the voice of a lot of different characters. I also spent a lot of time just singing the theme songs or trying to recognise which song was being used in a scene. And when I started TW, I watched it in English. That meant that I no longer needed to listen to the voices to see if they reminded me of another character, I could just concentrate on the sounds the makers of the show decided to use.

When making a cinematographic piece, there are a lot of things to take into consideration. Not only does the cast have to be good, they also have to make sure the visual and sounds serve a purpose. A dialog can be perfectly delivered by the actors, if their surrounding aren’t made to follow along, it just becomes a pretty useless scene. And since I’ve watched a shit ton of Teen Wolf over the years, I wanted to talk in length about the sounds and noises used by the makers of the show to help move the story forward, and how much I enjoy it. I originally wanted to concentrate on the 3rd season, but I soon realised that I couldn’t limit everything to a single season. Everything that’s being said here doesn’t reflect anybody’s opinion but my own. I accept criticisms, and I also recognise that I don’t own kind of degree regarding movies and/or sounds. I’m just a 27-year old who loves cinema and music. Don’t take it too seriously. This is also a disclaimer : I’m French, so there might be some mistakes along the way, don’t hesitate to tell me and I’ll correct them.

This goes without saying, but SPOILERS.

Here’s how I organised this :

I : Introduction to sounds, for the viewers and the characters

II : Wolves and vilain, how they communicate?

III : What if we just talk?

IV : The new world within the new world

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I : Introduction to sounds, for the viewers and the characters

Where it all began

For this story to exist, there is one thing that can’t be taken away : a police scanner. We overhear that a body has been discovered in the forest during the night at the end of August/early September. Stiles, the Sheriff’s son intercept the message on his police scanner and decides to drag Scott, his best friend, deep into the woods to go and look for the body. It is made clear to the audience that listening devices are going to be important, so much so that one of the main character has one installed in his car.

After the search, and an altercation with the Sheriff’s department, Scott gets bitten. In the scene, we see him turning around because of the noises the wolf behind him is making. The scene is dark, and we hear more that we see the wolf attacking him. We hear his feral snarls, and Scott’s screams. And here starts what becomes a very TW characteristic : the presence of a wolf is mostly known because of their sounds. Whether it’s the growling, the running, or the noises that come along the reveal of their shifted form with the glistening of their eyes. It’s a very distinct sound, one that will be kept until the end of the show to signal to the audience of the changing into a wolf of one of the character, no matter their rank.

The police scanner has then been used multiple times, up until the end of the 5th season, when Stiles and Scott hear that a body had been found in the woods, again, the story going full circle when Stiles decided to leave Beacon Hills to start studying in the FBI’s training program. Of course, it wouldn’t be the last time we see Stiles, but it was pretty heart-warming to see that after they passed the torch to Liam and Mason, their story as teenagers was coming to an end.

As my mum would say : should you listen to your music so loudly?

I thought it was interesting how music was used in the series. Not the background musics, sadly I didn’t have the time to go too deep with the interpretation of why a certain song was being used in a specific scene, but rather, how music is being used in the series in regards to the character’s actions, and the sense of false security that comes along with it.

First, let’s talk about Kira. In her first scene interacting with the pack, she overhears a conversation between them; using it to approach them. Sounds here serve as an introduction to the pack for her, since she’s able to become part of it afterwards. The other interesting part is that through noises and sounds, she is able to get a few glimpses into Scott’s world without fully understanding it.

She’s actually the first character that made me realise the importance of music as a tool. In season 3, she comes close to death when William Barrow comes to the school and is ordered to kill her. She has no idea that a serial killer roams around the school and goes to the library after her classes end. When Stiles pulls the emergency alarm; a universal sounds that signifies danger when heard, to evacuate the school, she is unable to hear it due to the music in her headphones being so loud. When Coach finds her and makes her leave, Barrow is shown hiding behind the shelves next to her. If music seems to be a way for her to escape, it it used to trick her into a state of false security.

Then, it Liam’s turn. In s4, this newcomer is bitten by Scott in order to save his life. And soon enough, he begins to change into a werewolf. This is being shown to the audience through music. When being driven by Kira, the music playing in the background overwhelms him, making it as if it was being played at a loud volume, instead of the nice background noise it actually was. It’s a nice flashback to when Scott was still learning to get used to his heightens senses (more on that later). Teen wolf has a habits of making things go full circles and often uses sounds to translate this for the viewers. Even without outright saying it, we are able to reflect on what it can mean. And this sense of false security comes back too. Kira is here pretending to drive him to a party, when she is actually bringing him to the pack to help him control the shift.

Last, I’m going to talk about the bonfire, and how, once again, music was made to lure the wolves into a dangerous situation. In the bonfire scene, we are shown Liam and Malia getting drunk, something that we’ve been told was impossible due to their healing powers.

Scott ends up realising that the music playing for the crowd is being used to disable them to help the killer who came there to cross their names off the deadpool.

The makers of Teen wolf found a universal part of the life of teenagers, something that can help them go through difficult times and decided to use it against the characters, showing the audience that nothing is safe. They all have to figure out a way to navigate through this new life without the help of what was once a source of comfort, and so does the audience.

II. Wolves and vilains, how do they communicate ?

How the wolves use it

Not only are we, as spectator, made aware of their changing, but the wolves themselves gain something from being bitten. Their sense of sight, smell and hearing become heightened, to help them not only hunt, but protect themselves.

Scott is the first wolf we see who is learning how to control his senses. In the first season, Derek tries to teach Scott a way to control and survive the shift. It doesn’t go as easily as Derek hoped, and he has to resort to showing Scott what will happen if he doesn’t try harder. He helps him concentrate on the sounds of hunters approaching them one night, and makes him watch another wolf get killed. From this moment on, Scott is not only able to take this training more seriously, but also use his listening ability to protect himself.

Unfortunately, the hunters are aware of this characteristic and found a way to deprave them from it : they fabricated a device that emits a sound only wolves are able to hear and it was originally used to distract them and lead them to a trap. But as the seasons go by, Chris Argent (whose family is known for hunting werewolves) becomes an ally and helps regroup Boyd and Cora to the school using those emitters. The torture device becomes helping as the seasons progress, along with the relationship between the characters. The noises then become a tool.

Over the following seasons, Scott masters this ability, and is shown using it in a lot of different situations. It helps him when he needs to listen in to conversations in relations with a villain he’s chasing, or when it helps him get closer to Allison on her first day. Funny enough, it is also used to try to befriend Kira when she first arrives after he heard her talking to her father about her lack of friends.

Alphas and packs

Since the beginning of the show, it was showed that wolves can communicate differently. To signal their position, they can howl and while it might not mean anything to humans, other wolves/animals are able to understand it. It is also used to bring someone back from their headspace. Scott first uses it in the first season to bring the alpha to the school. Later, in season 3, when he and Lydia enter Stile’s mind, he howls on Lydia’s advice to help Stiles overcome the Nogistune’s power in his mind. Stiles being part of Scott’s pack is able to hear it and regains control of his mind despite being human. Over the course of the show, we see wolves of Scott packs using it with each other, but they’re not the only one.

In the first half on the 3rd season, we are introduced to the Alpha Deucalion. Leader of the pack Scott fights against, he uses his voice to force terror and submission to those around him. He shatters his glasses when he proclaims himself Destroyer of worlds and tries later on to force Scott to kill Jennifer, making Scott fall to his knees ; his wolf unable to resist the command of an Alpha.

Sounds in this case becomes a way to rally someone to a cause or a pack. But it is a very grounding sound, used to bring either peace of mind, or terror. The viewers are then able to choose a fighter.

III. What if we just talked ?

Phones, man’s greatest invention

Scott realises quickly that something’s happening to him when he hears Allison (on the other side of the school ground) saying to the mother on the phone that she forgot to bring a pen. It helps him get on her radar since he is able to give her one, making him the first person/student Allison talks to when she arrives in BH.

As the story goes on, I’ve always thought that Allison’s relationship with sounds was a pretty important on. As a foreshadow, she gets some mysterious voicemails of a man speaking Japanese when her phone is turned off the night Stiles goes missing in s3. It is revealed that the man is telling instruction to a group of prisoners in a Japanese camp named Oak Creek during WW2. It ends up being relevant, since Kira’s mother summoned the Nogitsune while being a prisoner in this camp. Sadly, it also happens to be the place where Allison is killed.

Still with the Argents, when Kate is brought back to life, Scott says that since he doesn’t have the money to call France where Chris is staying since his daughter’s death, he thought he could text him the bad news. Stiles tells him that it might not be such a good idea to announce something like that over a text. And with money being a big part of the 4th season, the foreshadowing is once again strong in this scene.

Then we have the case of Jennifer Blake, the English teacher/antagonist in s3a. We are first introduced to her through her voice. She sent a text to all of her students, quoting the end of a book they’re going to study, and she reads the last sentence out loud coming into the classroom. And if it can be shocking to see teachers texting their students, it is later used to set up a meeting between her, Derek, Scott and Deucalion. This time, instead of the tool bringing people closer, it is used to put a plan in motion, one that involves death and pain.

Words aren’t just words, they’re tools

I talked about a lot of sounds a wolf can make, but another important thing in a series are the words themselves, the dialogues. In this story, we are faced with a lot of teenagers, and it isn’t wrong to say that at 16/17, it is hard to voice everything that’s going on in the head of a teenager. Everyone relies on a different method, and it builds their characters. Where Scott can be a little shy, Stiles is the loud one. When Lydia is making sure nobody knows how high her grades are, her boyfriend Jackson likes to brag about his successes. We have a lot of paradoxes here, and there are a lot more comparison to do.

Spoken words are loud in this series. Stiles is the sarcastic one, using it to defend himself, and it is quite interesting that Lydia is doing the same thing with her screams. But sadly, the unspoken things are louder. They can break a family apart. Scott is once again a good example. After his drunk father came home after a night out drinking, his mother told him to get out. She then went to Noah Stilinski to talk about it. Stiles overheard everything but never said a word to Scott. But so did Scott’s mother who felt like Scott would resent her if she told him that she was the one how asked his father to leave. Secret are hard to keep and live with, and they gain so much power as time goes by. There is also something to be said about misunderstandings. In that case, Melissa admits to Scott’s father in the 3rd season that he misunderstood her words, saying that she wished that he would still be a part of their son’s life.

Then, we have Stiles trying to get the biggest secret of all off his chest and tell his dad about the supernatural at the hospital. His father has a very specific answer :« I’m listening, I've been listening ». Meaning that as much as he is used to his son antics, he doesn’t want to admit that he is telling the truth. He hears what his son is saying, but he doesn’t want to listen, despite what he’s saying. Listening and hearing are two very different things. Listening means taking into account the words that are being spoken. And when the things he hears go against everything he believed his entire life, and he can’t listen to it any longer. We then find out that he had a moment when his wife died and a young woman told him to go be with his wife, and he didn’t want to obey. As much as he tells himself that he doesn’t believe, he just doesn’t want to face the fact that he missed his wife’s last moments. And it is heartbreaking to see that he needs to be himself close to dying to admit that his son was right. Stiles’ words were true, and not just the rambling of a teenager. He finally listened, after days, even years of dismissing what he refused to believe.

But some words can help bring closure. It is always a regret people have when they can’t say goodbye to their loved ones. But Allison isn’t one of them. On the contrary, her last words are probably the most important ones of the series. Just before her final battle, she made a point of telling her dad that she loved him. She needed to voice it, making sure that no matter what happened, her words would always resonate in her father’s mind. Then, she tells Scott how he’ll always be her first love, and finishes by saying that she has to tell something to her dad. When Chris hears it, he first think of his last conversation with his daughter, but it turns out that Allison needed to tell him something else : she realised how to kill the Onis, and she wants to make sure the pack and her dad are able to use her arrow heads to defeat them. Allison was a powerful young woman, fierce and strong, and as much as she values her relationship with the people around her, she also made sure to voice what was important to her.

Spoken words are on of the most effective ways to bring a story to life, but not everyone is able to speak. The show doesn’t let it stop them, and it brings us to the next subject.

Different kinds of voices

Over the course of the series, we see the pack facing all kinds of villains. Some like to talk and be heard, like Kate, or Peter, but some others use another way to be understood and deeply feared.

Let’s start with the Mute. He is a man (?) without a mouth, a professional killer who decides to kill supernatural beings from the deadpool. He uses a wrist keyboard with a computer generated voice to communicate with his victims. And the fact that he can’t talk but still has a voice coming out of him makes for a great villain, but a scary one at the same time. Because he only uses his voice to invoke fear ; with Sean Walcott to tell him that he killed his family and will kill him too, and with Peter when he tells him that Derek will be the next to die. The sounds coming from him are haunting, and likely resonate in the head of the people lucky enough to survive him.

The Anuk-Ite, who doesn’t use his own voice, found a way to inflict fear as well, with a difference: he uses other’s people voice to make his victims suffer. In the series finale, he uses the pack’s weaknesses’s voices against them to make them open their eyes and freeze them. Most of them give in and open their eyes, but Scott finds a way to go around it. If the Anuk-Ite uses voices, he will use his eyes. And it is such a great power move, because it shows us that while powerful enough to create illusion of the pack’s loved ones or fears, Scott decided to exploit the villain’s weakness against him.

Then we have the Oni, the « Japanese ninjas » from season 3. They don’t need a voice to be feared. The sound effects used to signal their presence is the only thing we need; a weird sound that comes out every time they appear, making the viewers and the character scared for what’s about to happen. And we have to recognise the talent of the people behind those sound effects, because without them, we would need words, and threats from the villains. But given that the only introduction they need is this sound, the scenes come across perfectly. And, except the few information given by Katashi, we don’t need anything else to understand that anyone standing in their way will be killed. Similar to them, are the Rider’s in the 6th season. They are some of the biggest villains the pack has faced, erasing dozens of people from existence without uttering a single word.

Finally, we have one of the most human killers of the show ; Brunski, the Head Orderly at Eichen House. He was a serial killer who killed patients because he believed he was helping them with their pain and recorded it on a tape recorder to listen to it later. In the fourth season, we found out that he murdered Lydia’s grandmother and uses this to torture her by made her and Stiles listen to the young woman's grandmother pleading for her life. And it must have been excruciating for Lydia to know that the last thing she will ever hear of her grandmother was her last moment alive. Once again, sounds and voices are being used against Lydia to torture her further, showing us that this human serial killer doesn’t need any super power to be heard and have his voice used to kill. Worst than this, his use of sounds is so disturbing. He finds happiness in listening to his victims suffer, going even further by recording it to relieve it all over again. He uses the last defences his patients have against them, even beyond their death.

Now that we saw the importance of sounds coming from humans and wolves alike, let’s see who else needs more than words to express themselves.

IV : The new world within the new world

Lydia and other Banshees

When we first meet Lydia, she is as far from the supernatural as one can be. But as time progresses, she encounters Peter who bites her and turns her into… Well something. She starts by following blindly his orders in season 2, but the real progress happens in season 3. Being held captive by Jennifer Blake, she ends up screaming, signalling every supernatural creatures around that something is happening to her. In the previous season, her screams were made to believe she was just screaming out of fear, as humans sometimes do when faced with a gigantic black form sprinting out of a store window. Blake then realises that she’s a Banshee ; the wailing woman, shading lights on so many events in the seasons : why she ended up finding a lot of the bodies in the beginning of the season, or why she would end up at certain key locations. But once again, the makers of the show decided to use sounds to express not only how she felt, but what it meant.

After she sees Peter talking to her mother about hearing, she decides to go to him to learn more about her power. He tells her that the screams don’t give her her powers. They help her calm down enough to quiet her mind. That explains how she was able to find out what was hidden in Talia Hale’s claws ; she screamed and threw them at the wall, allowing her to understand the voices inside it. That’s also how she was able to understand that the flies she was hearing in the William Barrow episodes were actually electricity, which helped the pack realise that Kira was being held at the power plant. After spending an entire day thinking there were flies around her, she finally screamed when Stiles told her to. Lydia has a special relationship with sounds, but they are sadly too overwhelming at first, thus stopping her to understand what’s going on.

During this time, a possessed version of Stiles was taking some medical tests in an MRI machine. Lydia, being so scared for his friend, spent the entire day being hyper sensitive to sounds. She was hearing lockers and doors closing at a higher rate and heard the sound of the machine loud and clear, as if she was the one inside it. She tried to put the music louder but the sounds were all she could hear, and she finally screamed. But no sound were heard in the scene. We only saw her despair and fear. She wasn’t screaming as a Banshee, but as someone who didn’t want her friend to die. The torture wasn’t over though, because Void Stiles took her in Oak Creek and there, she was able to hear every single person who died during the riot. She appears in total distress, not being able to shut her mind from all the pain that roamed around the corridor. The saddest moment however came when Allison was killed. Not being able to stop herself, or help a passed out Stiles, she just screams for the life of her best friend, and it no doubt will be added to cries of the other victims of this place.

Next comes the study in the Lake House. During the party in season 4, she realises that once the door was closed, no noise was able to come through. And as hard as it to make a scene with the proper music and sounds, it is even harder to do when there aren’t any sounds. Here we see how important the absence of noise is. And it becomes so much more relevant when we learn that her grandmother was also a Banshee who was able to predict one death because she heard rain when it wasn’t raining outside. Sadly, it didn’t help, since her girlfriend ended up dying, not able to understand where this warning was coming from. Her grandmother then decided to look for other people like her and here came Meredith. This young woman wasn’t able to understand the voices in her head. The Lake House served as some kind of experiment for her, and here, the sounds are used to show how mad they drove her. If Lydia was able to understand more of her family’s heritage and her power, Meredith bled from her ears in this room. Once again, foreshadowed when the wine bottle breaks on the ground, spreading red everywhere.

As for Meredith, she goes through some rough times during the end of the season when we discover that she was the one who created the deadpool in response of Peter’s thoughts that she was able to hear when he was in a coma after the fire. He kept going on and on about how there should be a list of supernatural people, and that professional killers should be the first one to cross names off that list. Lydia explained that for Meredith, all the time he spent in a coma, it was like she was only hearing his thoughts, like a radio. And so the deadpool was born. And once again, the study in the Lake House was a crucial part of the story since it was there that the deadpool was able to be active, and ended up being destroyed. When the truth comes out, Lydia is the only one able to understand Meredith. And it prompted the saying « Not all monsters do monstrous things ». Lydia is finally able to understand the world around her and herself, recognising that sounds and screams can be used for the greater good.

And it is also Meredith who ends up teaching a lot to Lydia, showing her that her screams can be as powerful as a bullet. From then on, Lydia is able to save Stiles from the Hunt-version of his mother in season 6 for example, help him break free of his imprisonment of the Hunt, or break Mason from The Beast’s possession in season 5. Her screams no longer come from a place of fear, but power.

But it also shows us something important : when the pack was trying to destroy the Beast of Gevaudan, Lydia is attacked by Sebastian Valet and, when she attacked him, he clawed at her throat, making her unable to use her voice, making her powerless. Over time, her screams became a defense, something that she was able to channel to protect herself. And the inability to produce them showed us once again that while it is hard to voice our thoughts and make sense of things while talking, it is even harder to deal with them without the ability to be loud or even just heard.

Eichen House & Echo House

We are first introduced to this place in season 3 when Stiles believes he is trapped there by the Nogistune. He finally decides a few episodes later to stay there to ensure the safety of the pack. And from the moment he walks in, we are surrounded creepy music. The woman tells Stiles that he won’t have any spoken contacts with the outside world for 72 hours, making sure that the isolation is complete. It also means that he won’t be able to be reassured by his loved ones. And as soon as the Sheriff begins to doubt his decision to leave Stiles there, he hears sounds louder, like Lydia earlier ; doors closing, buzzing sounds like in a prison when a cell opens and closes, etc… His mind is unable to concentrate on anything else but the sounds telling him that his son isn’t safe there. And as soon as he leaves, we have proof of that : a man hangs himself from the stairs. Right before that happens, we hear him talking, without anybody paying attention to him, even when Stiles points it out to the nurse. And when he voices his need to talk to someone outside, his request is denied. In this place, there are so many voices and levels of insanity that the few clear sentences that come out of the patients’ mouth are taken as white noise.

Stiles' roommate Oliver then tells him that he is aware of the suicide without having to leave his bed. The other name for this institution is Echo House, because according to him, everything echos there. Which means that the pain and suffering that one patient can experience is voiced and shared with all the other patients. Voices here are a sign of insanity and unsafe environment.

Sadly, all of this was perceived by Lydia earlier in the season. When Stiles went missing, she went to his room to find an intricate bundle of rope all over his bed. When Aiden pinched a string, Lydia heard voices telling her that Stiles was trapped in Eichen house.

The story then comes full circle with Lydia being a patient at Eichen House in the 5th season where she learns all about the strength of her powers. As patients are often physically restricted or tied to their beds, it is significant that Lydia was able to finally scream out her pain. So loud in fact, that she was able to break windows and free herself.

_____________________________________________________________

In the eighth episode of season 6, Blitzkrieg, Noah Stilinski says that they are gathered together (minus Stiles) because his « goofball son » decided to drag his greatest friend in the world out in the wood to see a dead body a few years ago. And this call was the beginning of everything. If Stiles hadn’t been listening, he wouldn’t have led Scott outside, Scott wouldn’t have been bitten, and none of this would have happened. And that’s the most important thing in this show. Without sounds, there wouldn’t be any kind of story.

Rare are the shows and movies who are able to make a complete work without any sounds, or spoken words. But as astonishing as those body of work are, it makes even more important the ones that feature sounds as a tool. Because that’s what they are, in the end. Tools to move a story, tools to understand the characters. Show runners talk through their characters, bring life to words that only existed in their minds. Some put more thoughts into it than others, but I think that we can learn a lot from the person behind a show if we listen closely to the sounds they choose to include in a story. Each character is a representation of a specific idea, and each one of their words represents an important notion a show runner wants the audience to grasp. Are we all willing to listen, though?

#teen wolf #stiles stilinski #derek hale #scott mccall #lydia martin #malia hale #liam dunbar #dylan o'brien #tyler posey #tyler hoechlin #dylan sprayberry #holland roden #shelley hennig #kira yukimura #arden cho

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fandomtrxsh19 · 4 years ago

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FINAL THOUGHTS ON FATE

I just finished Fate and.......... boy do I have thoughts about it. It wasn’t TERRIBLE, just meh. There were somethings I liked, somethings I didn’t like, and somethings I hated. This will contain SPOILERS.

Things I liked:

The sets. Some of the locations were really pretty such as the Greenhouse and outside of the school.

The performances of some of the cast were passable at best. Precious Mustapha’s Aisha and Danny Griffin’s Sky are among the standouts for me.

Bloom vs The Burned Ones: The transformation was a nice callout to the transformations of the original. The fire surrounding her and the fire wings were are really nice and cool touch.

Beatrix was an interesting villain to say the least. I like how she’s a bit of a mystery. I’ve noticed that she’s mostly like Darcy with some powers of Stormy.

The cast interactions: Watching behind the scenes videos and seeing their Instagrams, you can tell that the main girls are really close. You can tell in the Netflix interview that the cast really loved and cares for each other.

The music: I like how they used lesser known songs and others in the scenes, especially in the party scene.

The special effects: How they did the effects for the magic is pretty cool.

Things I didn’t like(strap in):

The Whitewashing: Of course this can’t be ignored or swept under the rug. The is a major issue on the directors and the creative team’s part. One of the things that makes the original so amazingly brilliant is in its diversity, having 3 of the main characters being WOC. This was and still is a bit step in representation on every shows. Winx Club is one of the first shows that I’ve seen where half of the main characters and lots of other characters didn’t look like me, and I LOVED that. The way they casted a white woman in the roles of both Musa and Flora is extremely shocking l and disappointing. Both Elisha and Elliot definitely tried their best with these characters, but this is still a huge issue. Netflix and the creators KNEW about this. The only reason why Flora’s name got changed to Terra is because of the backlash and the fandom calling them out on their bullshit. The way that Aisha’s role has been changed to a stereotype is simply disappointing but not surprising

The Characters: Not going to lie, lots of characters have been messed with and changed in many ways, none are really on a positive way. Bloom is extremely clueless and annoying. She only thinks of herself and whenever she’s on screen, it’s always like she’s internally saying “Everything’s about me. Let’s focus on me.” It just left a bad taste in my mouth. Stella’s just a bitch in this version. She just goes along acting like she’s above it all. This Stella acts like she doesn’t care about the rest of the girls and it’s really infuriating. She just insults these girls that are supposed to be her friends. She just fills the cliche of “ the bitchy blonde” and thanks, I hate it.

The Writing: Where do I start with this? It isn’t later seasons Riverdale bad, but, it’s still terrible. It’s like the writers haven’t even seen or heard of the source material. Just, the lines must’ve felt so awkward for the actors to say. The actors defientley tied their best with what they were given, but that didn’t really make it better in my opinion. They get old fast, especially the way how Bloom kept on saying “mansplaning” whenever she was taking to Sky was just so cringy. They referenced Harry Potter, Earth culture, and movies so many times and I didn’t like it. In the original, the Specilists, Winx, and Trix don’t know a lot about earth culture such as social media, and Harry Potter. I think this helps separate Earth with Magix. The Netflix adaptation decided to yeet that out the window and was like “Lets make this world like our own.” Part of the charm of the original is the even fusion between futuristic and fantasy aesthetics. Guess, they messed up....wow

The fashion: This is obvious. There’s no transformations, no cute and iconic outfits, just clothes that make the cast look bulky. The cast literally look like soccer moms omg. Stella? Wearing black? I don’t know her. Bloom? Wearing red? I don’t know her. Bloom is only shown wearing red ONCE. The whole reason why she mainly wears blue is to contrast her red head, and fire powers. Stella is APPALED, good sir, HOW DARE YOU!!

The character erasures: There’s no Winx Club without Tecna. Our tecnomagic icon is one of the pillars of the group. She makes sure descisons are thought through logically and comes up with amazing plans. Her powers are extremely powerful and useful in lots of situations. Also, the lack of Helia, Brandon, and Timmy disappointed me. Those guys are amazing characters and Brandon has an amazing personality and character growth that he goes through. Smh Netflix

The pace: The way scenes and storylines would progress was just awkward. The show starts off with Bloom at Alfea, then meeting Sky and I was just like......”What?” Scenes that are more “down to earth” and “chill went by kinda quickly to get to the “darker” and “edgier” scenes. It just weird and boring sometimes

Miscellaneous: The biphobia in Riven’s character and the fat phobia in the first 20 minutes. Seeing Elliot’s character constantly being bullied, not only broke my heart, but left a really bad taste in my mouth.

Now, these are just my opinions and scratch the surface of my feelings about this. As an adaptation of a preexisting property, I give it a 4/10 and as an independent show, I give it a 5/10. There were some good points and character growth, like the whole thing with Stella and her mom, but it was mostly disappointing.

According to Ignio, he and Brian Young think that animation is only for kids. He has literally said in an interview that this is “for the older fans who grew up with Winx” and “ They would like the darker and edgier version.” This makes me mad since I prefer animation to live action. These showrunners, creators, etc are in the wrong here. There are still lots of other cartoons that have a bright and colorful aesthetic and tell dark stories(I.e Madoka Magica). We don’t want another Vampire Diaries or Riverdale. We’ve already seen enough teens shows that are dark and edgy. What we need/want is a show that tells a story and honors the source material in an appropriate and special way. What we wanted and needed is a Winx Club adaptation that respects the source material, and keeps its fun, bright, and colorful aesthetic. Not, whatever Netwinx gave us. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go rewatch the Nick/4kids/Cinelume dubs and WoW so I can cleanse my palette from what I just watched.

PSA: PLEASE don’t bully or harass any of the actors. They clearly tried their best with what they were given. It isn’t their fault at all.

#winx club #fate the winx saga #fate spoilers #final thoughts #world of winx

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bedlamsbard · 4 years ago

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(in response to this post)

This turned out really, really long, so, uh, apologies? The short version is that the number one rule is that your legacy characters don’t undercut your main cast.

I think Rogue One and Solo pulled it off -- Solo is a weirder case because it’s a prequel story about a main character, but Rogue One’s use of Tarkin, Vader, Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, etc. worked for me because from the beginning they were there to support the original characters in the film and never wavered from that. Rogue One also benefited from knowing exactly what it was going to do and never wavering from that for an instant.

In terms of the shows, TCW is also not a straightforward case because it was using film characters as its mains and pulling from all over, but in terms of OT characters that appeared in the show, I am pretty happy with how TCW pulled off Chewbacca in Wookiee Hunt (3.22) -- puts him there, uses him well to support the main character of that particular arc (Ahsoka) and the other supporting characters (the other youngling Jedi), but it doesn’t turn into the Chewie episode. Same with Ackbar in the Mon Cala arc in S4: support, not overwhelming, doesn’t waver from the central theme of the arc. Tarkin’s the other big one, and I’m pretty satisfied with the way he was used in TCW -- he’s always there in reference to the main characters of the arcs he appears in, and not in reference to himself, if that makes sense -- he’s there because having him there specifically makes more sense than it doesn’t.

(Honestly, I think the little philosophical lessons really helped with TCW being able to keep its focus: they have to drive straight towards that and not hesitate about it. Every time they dropped those (I’m talking about you, Siege of Mandalore), they ran into a problem where they sort of wandered around a bit.)

Maul...I like Maul a lot. I don’t have that much of a problem with the decision to bring him back into the timeline in TCW (at least you always knew that when George Lucas was doing something he was doing it because he enjoyed it, instead of the current case of “are you doing it for a purpose? for cheap lulz? for the aesthetic? are you setting up a sequel? are you trying to course-correct another piece of canon?”). I do think Maul got overweighted in S7, and this is partially because they didn’t really have the space to build him up from where he ended in S5. The Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir comic helps a little, but S7 is such a rapid switch from where he is in S5 (and you do have to assume that most viewers hadn’t read the comic) that he then pulls in too much narrative weight, and that’s because S7 was trying to do something really, really different from what the previous six seasons of TCW were trying to do.

Rebels sometimes pulls it off, sometimes does not. Since we’re on the topic of Maul already, I am actually fine with Maul in Rebels. I don’t actually think he was used to his full benefit because they pulled back at the last minute, but Maul in Twilight of the Apprentice? Fine with that. Same with Holocrons of Fate and Visions and Voices. (I’ve got a few other problems with Visions and Voices.) Maul is always there in relation to the main characters of the show, not in relation to himself and not in relation to a non-Rebels character. Did it have to be Maul (back in TotA, obvs, not the latter two)? No, but it makes sense and it works really well thematically with all of the characters present in that episode. Holocrons and Visions and Voices, same.

Twin Suns, on the other hand, another Maul episode, was a disaster -- beautifully made episode, everyone is in character, it should never have been made. (I’m currently grumpy about this one specifically because I recently saw an “Ezra shouldn’t have been in Twin Suns” take.) Yes, Maul and Obi-Wan are both interacting with Ezra, but Ezra in this ep is basically himself the McGuffin. Neither the actual, thematic, or emotional conflict in the episode revolves around Ezra even if he’s the instigator of that final showdown. If you can start and end an episode without the show’s main cast (and Rebels differs from TCW in that it did, very specifically, have a main character as well as a main cast), you’ve made a mistake. Not to mention that Twin Suns takes a bunch of narrative and thematic weight that was set in TotA and earlier in S3 (such as the Maul/Kanan and Maul/Ezra parallels), and then completely ignores it in favor of a confrontation that is not going to be emotionally significant for viewers who are there for the show’s main cast.

Darth Vader mostly works in Rebels -- in S2 in isolation, not as part of the greater Rebels plot arc which is a weird hot mess of deescalating villains season by season (a whole ‘nother thing). In Siege of Lothal he’s set up in relation to the main cast and that’s who most of his interaction is with. Same with TotA, though I sometimes think more weight is put on the Vader/Ahsoka duel than should be there in terms of who the main cast are. Sometimes I think it’s fine as is. His other brief appearances are fine, since he’s mostly there just to loom and use up the fabric animation budget.

Tarkin really works in Rebels -- this is honestly Rebels’ biggest legacy character success, my gods, his introduction in Call to Action is terrifying. Did it have to be Tarkin? No, they could have made an OC and had the same role, but Tarkin here, in this context? It ups the tension level a thousand percent, we see him ordering around the Imperials in the show (and the execution scene still gives me chills), and the end of Call to Action, when he’s talking to Kanan on the gunship and orders the destruction of the communications tower? This is easily one of the most terrifying thing Rebels has ever done and to be honest, I’m not sure they ever topped it in terms of sheer presence. Evacuating the star destroyer in Fire Across the Galaxy? Perfect parallel to ANH.

From S2-S4, Rebels really wavers back and forth on their use of legacy characters and this is true of the show as a whole from that point onwards -- when there’s a legacy character, they tend to be overweighted in terms of the episode and in terms of how much narrative space is given to them rather than to the main cast. Not all the time (I have issues with the S4 Mandalore arc, but I think Bo-Katan was played fairly well because most of the narrative weight was still on Sabine), but a lot of the time. The Future of the Force is really bad on this in terms of Ahsoka -- most of the episode is still focused on Kanan and Ezra, but then they’re taken off the board so she can have her dramatic fight scene. Shroud of Darkness -- I go back and forth. (I have other issues with Shroud.) Leia in A Princess on Lothal -- mostly okay, but some weird moments, like using her to rally the Ghost crew into action?

Wedge in The Antilles Extraction -- fine He’s played in relation to Sabine, his presence in the ep is thematically consistent with everything else they’re doing. Saw Gerrera in both S3 and S4 I really go back and forth on. I think I’m mostly okay with him in terms of how he’s played in those four episodes, but I also think there are a lot of questions raised in terms of, like, his relationship to the Alliance. (This goes for his appearance in Jedi Fallen Order as well -- I’m fine with it, it’s not mindblowing, it was nice to see.) Mon Mothma I go back and forth on and part of this is because I’m not entirely sure what they were doing with the Rebel Alliance -- this same thing is true for Saw Gerrera. Especially in the back half of S3 (though it appears earlier as well), Rebels is intersecting more and more with the Rebel Alliance in the lead-up to Rogue One and ANH, but I don’t think they were really entirely sure what they wanted to do with that thematically, which is how we get these wildly varying views of the Alliance even from within it, especially in S4. Which is part of the reason why S4 thematically is A DISASTER. (y’all I should not have come out of S4 hating the Rebel Alliance and I still can’t tell if they did that on purpose or not?)

I’m not mentioning every legacy character in Rebels here (Cham, Hondo, Madine, C-3PO and R2-D2, Bail Organa), but mostly the ones where they pay major roles. Rex I think Rebels mostly managed to pull off having as treating him like supporting cast and not overweighting him as character. -- The clone trio at the beginning of S2 has them in relation to Kanan, Ezra, Kallus and the stormtroopers, etc., not just in relation to themselves.

(I have no idea how to talk about Thrawn in this context because Thrawn isn’t exactly a legacy character from the current canon, but on the other hand he’s a major EU legacy character, so he’s also just a weird god damn case in general that doesn’t really have a parallel in current canon?)

What else we got -- Star Wars Resistance; doesn’t use that many legacy characters but uses the ones it has pretty sparingly. Poe is always there in relation to Kaz, Leia has a very brief appearance, Phasma and Hux are mostly there because it makes sense for them to be there, same with Kylo Ren. Resistance has its issues (both thematically and with pacing) but this is not one of them).

Jedi Fallen Order -- Saw was fine; Vader wasn’t overweighted once he showed up. Battlefront II had its legacy characters almost entirely in context of Iden and Del; they weren’t there just to be there. (And not being a gamer I’m not one hundred percent certain how those two felt in actual playing, vs. my watching them on YT.)

(I am not terribly familiar with the current canon books and comics because I stopped reading them a while ago.)

Non-canon example from Legends: Han Solo’s appearance in the Wraith Squadron novels.

The short version of this is: if you’re going to use legacy characters, you want them to be there in relation to your main cast. It has to work thematically; they can’t undercut your mains. Their stories, no matter how important to the saga as a whole, should not overwhelm the main cast of your actual show/film/game/whatever. And they definitely should not undercut your mains. (I think Mando did this fine with Bo-Katan, tbh.)

#bedlam watches star wars #bedlam watches tcw #bedlam watches rebels #kimothee-chalamet #bedlam replies

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thecrazyanimegirl · 4 years ago

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Spring anime 2020

There was really a small amount of stuff we watched this seasons alongside continuations like kaguya sama, furuba or ascendance of a bookworm. A somehow empty season, but still, have what we watched and our thoughts (a mostly personal review).

{ Winter ‘18 } { Spring ‘18 } { Summer ‘18 } { Fall ‘18 } { Winter ‘19 } { Spring ‘19 } { Summer ‘19 } { Fall ‘19 } { Winter ‘20 }

Arte

It’s about a girl who wants to be an artist in a time that doesn’t accept female artists. She is determined, hard working and cheerful, so it’s a good show if you need to relax and catch some good feelings, but it’s not really a must see story or anything.

BNA (Brand New Animal)

A true gem this season! Not a totally furry anime like Beastars, but if you watched it and also love Trigger’s animation style, this one is for you. BNA tells the story about two species, beasts that live in Animacity and humans who don’t like them that much. The story has the perfect pace and leaves you on the edge of your chair after each episode, also every character has a good backstory and development. Akidearest said that it is really predictable, and even though that’s mostly true, the progress of the story is satisfying and the characters make up for the predictability.

Gleipnir

Looked cool, sounded cool but the overall experience is kinda... meh? The premise and plot idea are really good and the possible plot twists are also promising but it just leaves you thirsty for something else/more. The fights are okay-ish but tend to go really badly animated (one fight is an exception). The music is pretty good and has that dark vibe (kinda like Future Diaries) but there just isn’t anything going on that makes you shiver, tense or worry for the characters while you watch. We found some comments that imply that the manga is way better so it would be maybe wiser to try that instead.

Great Pretender

This one came as a nice surprise at the end of this season. An original anime made by Wit Studio centers around con artists and their ventures around the world. The engaging plot has a nice pace and makes you guess what is going to happen next, although it gets kinda predictable. It has action, humor, semi tragic backstories, drugs and races. The animation and music are really beautiful and an additional plus goes to the cats in the ending song. All in all, I would recommend it to anyone who searches for something fresh.

Kakushigoto

When I first read the synopsis where a gag ero mangaka tries to hide his job from his daughter, I was skeptical I have to admit, and expected inappropriate jokes and such. But it really proved me wrong! And ended up being this sweetest softest story! It’s not plot heavy, but the character interactions are filled with emotions, it even brought tears to my eyes and the whole overall feeling is soft and loving! Definitely would recommend if you want some warm family atmosphere, but also have a laugh ^^

My Next Life as a Villainess

Mc dies and is born again into the last otome that she played but as the villain character, the main rival girl, and she tries to improve her relationship with the characters to avoid her doom. Don’t expect too deep of a story since she will REALLY easily convince and befriend everyone without any hurdles. Exactly what you’d expect, it’s not going to blow you off your feet, especially plot wise, but the story is well executed, the humor is on point and the characters are typically good. If you like this type of stories or just want to relax, this one is pretty well done ~

Sing Yesterday for Me

Not really my type of plot, too much awkwardness and drama, but I just really had to finish it haha I found it somehow fascinating how many edges a love polygon can have and how many unrequited loves they could fit in one anime. But if you love a slow paced romance type of story, that focuses more on each persons view and their struggles as they learn to love, flirt but also how to move on, you might like it.

Tower of God

Yes, the favorite of the season! A really good webcomic turned into an anime! If you haven’t heard about it already, go watch it, or better yet read it. The characters, even though they are numerous, are lovable and interesting, the plot builds well (especially in the later chapters of the webtoon, the first season of the anime is basically just the prologue). I’ve seen a lot of bad comments about the execution of the anime, but somehow I’m just really happy it even got animated and got such good voice actors! Yes, some scenes were done differently, and some scenes were cut that were important, but there’s no way to animate absolutely every scene, and they stuck to the story pretty well. The music was also good, the opening and ending are done by a korean band, Stray Kids, which means that it doesn’t have the typical shounen anime feel to it, but it’s still great ^^ A good anime and an even better webtoon!

Wave, Listen to Me!

A woman starts working as a radio host after a bad relationship. I know, I know, it doesn’t sound great and probably a lot of people will skip this instantly, just like the other two mods of this blog, BUT! I really enjoyed it. It was somehow refreshing actually having an adult main character, not only kids and teens. Maybe it’s not plot heavy, but there are a lot of relatable or hilarious scenes. Also the voice actors did a really good job I think. The story is basically based on her monologues that get pretty lengthy. I know that the first episode I was like, wow that woman can talk! Well, it’s up to you whether you want to give it a shot, but if you need something a bit different, try it.

Looking forward to in the next season because they got moved from this one: Appare Ranman (an engineer and a samurai accidentally end up in america and decide to join the cross country car race haha, the visuals are cool so far, the story and pacing is okay, not something that blew us off our feet, but it’s funny and seems promising), The Millionaire Detective (ooh definitely looking forward to this one! James Bond and the local cop save the day, or something like that, the story isn’t groundbreaking, but it makes up with humor and characters so far), RE:ZERO it’s been yearssss

Some donghua’s that we ran into: All Saints Street (very shot, but is actually great, funny and cute, has the same vibe as Non-human/Fei Ren Zai, that one was also awesome), Antidote (shounen ai with a gangster and a sheltered rich boy, also there’s a cat, so far - cute)

Dropped: Woodpecker Detective's Office (we’ll never find out who the killer is), Bungou to Alchemist: Shinpan no Haguruma (its cool that is has japanese writers, but the story wasn’t that engrossing), Listeners (sorry mappa)

#spring anime 2019 #anime review #tower of god #arte #brand new animal #gleipnir #kakushigoto #my next life as a villainess #sing yesterday for me #wave listen to me!

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shinygoku · 4 years ago

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Top 10 CSatM Episodes (2/2)

See part 1 here

As a few paragraphs and pictures for 10 episodes in a row makes a rather long, unruly beast of a post!

The second half of my personal preferred picks for a Top 10, though the order they’re being listed in doesn’t correspond to my favour, but the order how I watch them on my DVDs. I still suggest you read the first half of the list before this one, all the same~

Spoilers below the cut, be warned! ✂

Crater 101

So this ep is pretty much a sequel to Lunarville 7, and is followed up with Dangerous Rendezvous. Neither of those made the cut of my list though, and even isolated from those it makes a solid story. The most Space-y of all the episodes and a visual treat, cause while we mostly stuck to the stark accommodations of Lunarville 7 in that episode, here we see the grey grimy gloom of the outside of the Moon, and the sharp, delightful contrast of the Mysteron’s fantastic plastic Complex. Here, vivid marbled colours and flashing lights join inorganic shapes that suggest something of the Mysteron’s nature, but as always, nothing conclusive.

Moving away from the lovely Aesthetics, this is also a strong one for characterisation. We get some sweet interactions with The Lads and for this episode only, the Best Female Character in the whole show. Linda Nolan is the controller of Lunarville 6, a smart, capable woman who had her own cool space mission referenced and in fact critical to the plot. She is also relatable in that she catches feelings for Scarlet, so while she’s barking up the wrong tree I still have nothing but respect for her, hehee.

Eerie, tense, interesting and still somewhat funny, this is another episode that eeks into an even higher ranking list than 10, I could comfortably put it in 5 and mmmaybe 3. Though I’m not gonna be able to say definitively as the best episodes all bring something different to the table, and this may just be the strongest in the uniqueness regard.

Fire at Rig 15

I get the feeling this may be an unorthodox choice, somehow? But yeah, I just really enjoy it. It’s not a funny episode, but it is rather exciting, and contains some lovely new music and a sweet scene at the end. The Mysteron’s plot is pretty simple, but should it succeed, devastating as it would be crippling Spectrum’s operations by removing the unique type of fuel all the craft uses.

In a way, it’s kind of like a dark mirror to a typical Thunderbirds setup; whereas in that show the initial fire would be more likely to be accidental or just maybe some ne’er do well like the Hood, this time it’s as simple as the Mysterons reopening the master valve. When traditional firefighters would eventually retreat to make room for International Rescue, here Spectrum themselves have a rather passive role as a professional rolls in. And of course, said man finds himself very, very dead due to further Mysteron interference (see picture), with Black seemingly hypnotising the poor bloke into standing too close to the explosion.

From there his duplicate half buries his original corpse and later receives direct instructions from Black to suicide bomb the nearby refinery, and it’s en route to this is where the thrilling car chase takes place! Scarlet saves the refinery but the whole SPV he was driving is completely ablaze at the end of it. Like my thoughts on Point 783, I really appreciate the human touch to the last scene, with soft music as arrangements are made for Scarlet to recover from the horrible state we’re spared of seeing. Seeing how his ability to recover from death is one of the cornerstones of the whole premise, I love it when we’re allowed a bit more insight into what the other Spectrum personnel do in the situations, in this case White specifically instructing Dr Fawn to make sure Scarlet is comfortable as the process takes place.

Treble Cross

A notable and unique spin of an episode, where a rather routine Mysteron threat takes quite the turn when their assassinated target is brought back to life! It seems by the 2060′s we’ll have cool machinery to do CPR for a couple of hours as well as doctors ready to play god when they happen to drive by the car crash scene, heheh

Seriously though, this is a really fresh premise, that the villains who have been using doppelgangers for their devious schemes get the tables turned. This time the duplicate gets perma-killed while the original Major Gravener willingly participates in an undercover mission to help draw Captain Black into a trap at last... However, an easily overlooked factor in the driver who was also killed had been duplicated offscreen, so even with this amazing chance Spectrum can’t catch Black. But the World Capital, Futura City, is saved and Spectrum find the Mysterons themselves can’t tell their own copies from the original person, so it’s all in all a net gain!

Also this episode contains the World’s Happiest Clock, so that’s a neat plus.

Flight 104

We start this story on the incredible note of Captain Blue singing in the shower of the Hotel room he shares with Captain Scarlet. Scarlet then orders them both room service for some lunch. And if that sounds like the start of a fanfic plot, it may well be, but it’s also literally right there in the episode, baybee!

Charmingly domestic opening aside, I love this whole shebang. Again it’s the usual Mysterons threatening of an individual who Spectrum are bodyguarding, but the way both our heroes and villains go about this is different from the norm. Scarlet and Blue are trying to avoid drawing attention, so they spend the whole episode in normal clothes (Blue spending 1/3 of this in that comfy bathrobe!), and don’t have their comms. What’s more, they get a pair of reporters suspicious, and the two trail them looking for a Big Scoop.

When I was first watching this, I was expecting the journalists to get killed by Black to be the Mysteron Pawns, but no! They’re both fine from the start to the end! Then we find Black doing ....something.... to the Flight Crew of the titular Flight 104, but they aren’t killed either, just drugged. Instead, the Mysterons remotely pilot the plane on a slow collision course with the Alps, but are undone when an Electrical Plant interferes with their control.

As breaking into the pilot cabin had the side effect of jamming the landing gear, the plane has to crash land at the airport, but almost everyone being unharmed makes this one of the most gentle episodes of the lot... of course, Scarlet himself is still heavily implied to have been killed from the crash, but even his injuries seem pretty minor this time. And yet, it’s not lacking in excitement, as the tension of Spectrum trying to communicate with the two without their Comms and the inability to override the Mysteron’s control until that pre-established Electrical weakness kicks in holds for a while.

Inferno

Those who know of me from Thunderbirds are Go (the 2015 TV series) discussion are likely to know how much I love the episode from Season 1, Tunnels of Time. It heavily features my favourite ship in that show as they explore an ancient South American Temple which is full of peril. The temple is destroyed by the end of the episode.

So anyway, Inferno features my favourite ship in this show as they explore an ancient South American Temple which is full of peril, and tragically the temple is destroyed by the end of the episode! Heheeheheee~

Ok seriously though, eerie parallels aside this is another utterly beautiful instalment, with set design and lighting that really blows other episodes out of the proverbial water. And the pyrotechnic team clearly had fun with the seemingly unending explosions at the end of the adventure. An all-around visual feast!

Main plot is relatively simple, like in White as Snow, the Mysterons kill a Satellite and its crew and steer the reconstructed version towards their target of the week. Unlike WaS, they succeed in the end, a reminder that they’re still not to be underestimated. No human lives are lost, but the important complex and more tragically, the 800 year old temple that’s otherwise intact, get bombed to smithereens. Something something additional cost of warfare on Culture and History.

But while this is the end of my personal Top 10 list, it’s not all bad, because the Scarlet and Blue antics in the temple are utterly lovely and [chef finger kiss] splendid cinema~!

That about wraps up this Two-part post of mine! Picking 10 out of 32 is easier than 10 out of 100, but it’s still tricky as most of the episodes are very good, with only a few I’d promptly write off as a candidate for the list. And in some ways I wonder if I went about this the right way, some eps I only saw once and might feel strong enough to pip one’a the ones I did choose.

I have been rewatching each of the eps covered, and a few that didn’t make it, but my initial choice was made looking at the full list and letting my gut grab a few, having to think over more as the slots filled. Some fan favourites like Lunarville 7 came close, but I hope I’ve been able to clearly convey what it is about this selection that gave them the edge ;3

I will write further posts on Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons in the future, but after this mammoth and also the Notable Episodes list I’d quite like to enjoy it for a while without thinking about points to talk about, haha

#Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons #Captain Scarlet #Supermarionation #Gerry Anderson #CutCat Top Lists

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freshlybakedspiderbread · 4 years ago

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more random trivia and commentary, garden and newspapers edition

double this time. hopefully i’ll be able to have more of these in the future ...!

The Puppeteer’s Little Gardeners (ffnet) (ao3)

literally what started the first thought behind this fic was shortly after publishing ‘what drives us to celebrate’, i just happened to see a tweet that was someone going ‘i like alice and yuuka as a couple and wish there was more content of them’ and i thought to myself ‘huh, thats not a bad pairing at all. why dont i do just that?’ and there I went. To do that. That’s literally all there was to it. This is probably going to be the only time ever where it comes to me that simply n_n;;

that said, if you’ve read it, you could probably guess that Alice’s various dialogue and thoughts in it regarding hitting some kind of slump in her hobbies was some very blatant projecting and self-inserting on my part. I mean there’s always inevitably gonna be a little bit of that no matter what i’m writing, but here it was almost like it was coming directly from my brain feelings onto the text :P Not to say that I turned Alice into a complete self-insert or anything! i’ve always pictured her as a serious and passoinate artist of a magician, compared to the workshop technician of Marisa, the knowledgable researcher of Patchouli, or the down-to-earth free spirit Narumi. Alice’s totally the type who probably has to be reminded to just smell the flowers every now and then.

I feel like with Yuuka, I just had to make sure i never strayed away from the image of her in my mind, which consisted of basically ‘always kinda lax, all smiles, believes and understands the beauty and fragility of flowers more than anyone else’. i believe Yuuka is just genuinely nice and loves flowers! I also believe she can be scary and merciless. these can all be true!!

all the guest stars i just thought would be logical but also fun to include. Marisa and Narumi were no-brainers since they’re neighbours of Alice. I also know in fanworks, Medince has always been vaguely associated with Yuuka in some form another, and my preferred interpretation, as seen in the story, is just that they are also pleasant neighbours. I like to think they got along really well after one or two times where they just beat each other up (which is probably the norm for a lot of dynamics in gensokyo).

I think i remember feeling tempted to spend a lot more time with those other characters, maybe just adding more scenes of Alice or Yuuka talking with them (Yuuka and Narumi never do interact, wonder what that would be like??) or just having more of them going through the sunflower jungle together, but i think its probably for the best that i decided against it. Mostly because i was desperate to finish and submit the fic before christmas for completely arbitrary reasons,

then there’s Eternity Larva, the ‘villain’ of the story. I remember there being several factors that went into me deciding to use her. One is that i was having nostalgic and fond feelings of HSiFS, and wanted a chance to do something with its characters. Another is that, well... I do actually like the bonkers theory/backstory that Larva used to be some kind of super god worshipped by a cult, but only as a funny backstory kind of thing. i don’t think trying to draw drama out of that would be fun for me. I mean, she’s a cute little butterfly fairy who hangs out with Cirno. Having her awaken to dark powers is like trying to take EX Rumia seriously. however, while i was thinking of a way to introduce conflict into this story about taking care of flowers, i figured using Larva would be a fun way to just coyly hint at all that stuff, just on a surface level. As is, the super-powered fairy who turns a garden into a forest is silly enough to fit this relatively peaceful fantasy story, while providing a big enough threat to have Alice have a crisis of confidence.

I think... the florist in the human lady is just barely prominent enough to count as an original character?? one with a preestablished relation to an existing character?? that’s supposed to be a big deal or something, right? i’m old yet i still feel blindly new to the fanfiction side of the world.

anyway, This story isn’t one i think about much at all, but when i do, i think i’m pretty perfectly satisfied with having come up with it and writing it out.

A Sensational Wind Worth Stirring (ffnet) (ao3)

If there’s any character who I can link to my earliest days of being into touhou besides Seiga (and the taoists in general), it would be Aya, literaly the first touhou anything i ever remember coming across. but rather than go into that here, i’ll just say that i knew from early on, i wanted to write a story starring her, and that would give me a reason to write aloud about her place and feelings of tengu hierarchy. The story ultimately didn’t delve super deep into it, I don’t think, and more just used all that as a set-piece, but its a nice set-piece to explore. Sometimes, you just happen to want to tell a certain story in a certain place with a certain atmosphere, if only for variety’s sake !

That said, when it came to thinking of what would actually happen in such a story, uh... i’m pretty i had a big load of nothing for a long while, just a lot of emotions i wanted to convey, and what kind of personality and vibes and fun lines i wanted to be able to show off. then again, is that not how most fan ideas start out? You think of a strong and good feeling and then work backwards until there’s like an actual scene or story to accompany it? Or is that just me...

anyhow, concluding that Saitono and Mai would be the ones to provide the conflice was an inevitable no-brainer. I was still on my HSiFs kick from before, and i felt (still feel) like this pair was an underappreciated duo compared to the secret god they serve. The fact that they’ve actually gone up against Aya in canon helps a lot too for inspiration and things to reference, not that i’m the kind of person who puts too much stock into ‘canon’ in the first place though! They’re funny and they have fun being evil together, I like em a ton! I feel like i may have made Mai a little too scatterbrained in comparison to Satono though, since it feels like maybe the latter is in charge as opposed to it being a pair of equals, hmm...

Anyhow, i think things just fell into place in my mind. Having Aya’s newspaper, her greatest passoin, diminished and then threatened by her own people and then by the dancers just felt like really natural conflicts to have to me. Maybe things don’t play out quite as dramatically as they could have, but there was never gonna be much change in any status quo, but more just reaffirmation and a renewal of confidence in the character (I uh, feel like this is gonna be very consistent for most if not all the touhou fanfic i have in mind).

the big priority is always to show off personalities and relationships i think are neat of course. Hatate and Momiji show slightly different perspectives so that everything isnt only coloured by Aya, and honestly the whole chapter in the human village with Reimu was purely an excuse to dive a little into Aya as ‘the tengu closest to the village’. I’m especially happy with how i envisioned Hatate and how she came out i think, being simultaneously the friendly rival who criticises yet boosts Aya up, and also being the more starry-eyed junior compared to Aya who is more cynical than she’d let on. And i already talked about how fun the dancers were, and i like the thought of them being someone(s) who could really throw Aya off without really trying.

early on, i went back and forth a lot on what or why Satono and Mai were doing in tengu territory, and kept overthinking ideas and justifications before i decided that it is always best to keep it simple and just be like ‘they are there to cause trouble and they continue to cause trouble because they like it’. I mean what reason they offer in the story is a little more substantial than that, but i’m just glad i stuck to that compared to the overtly complex secret Okina plans I suggested to myself and worried over making sense.

The two newspaper ‘articles’ i wrote in the story proved more troublesome than I thought they’d be, for how short they are! I tried to make it similar to the format of the actual articles from Baijr or Afieu (though i might have borrowed more from the translated format courtesy of touhou wiki). Trying to keep it short enough so the gist comes across, but also making it long enough so that playing with the format in the first place seems worthwhile was a tough balance to strike for me... but i’m happy with the result.

close to final little thing to note? After I finished writing the whole thing once, I gave it a look over and decided that every line of dialogue from Aya needed to be rewritten, because i didn’t think it sounded enough like her, or was too dry. In a similar note, i originally peppered a lot of random bits of ‘ayaya’ here and there, before deciding to reign it in. Deciding that the one instance she should utter it being at the climatic fight in the press building is a decision i’m maybe just a little proud of? >_> n_n

there’s so much more to Aya and the tengu in general that i think would be neat to delve into, whether in this story or in future ones, but i don’t think i’m willing or smart enough to really dig especially deep into the related Japanese folklore to meet my own standards. I’ll say that one thing that occasionally gave me the boost to keep writing this was reading tengu-related thoughts from the blogs of friends i made during my roleplaying days. I don’t know if they’d feel awkward about me naming them, but there are two people specifically who hatched upon like hundreds of Aya and tengu-related headcanons that i thought was all sorts of inspiring to my creativity. That said! rest assured that all interpretations and headcanons featured in this story are there because they are what I like and not just there for the sake of having more detail.

#i dont proof read these posts at all so sorry in advance if they're a little incomprehensible :P #i probably had a lot more thoughts about all of these in the past but i can't quite remember them anymore #maybe i'll have new thoughts in the future :0 #writing

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goneseriesanalysis · 4 years ago

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Sam Temple

Ok, so I’m going to start by working through my opinions on the different characters of the series before I delve into other topics such as representation and plot. Here are my opinions on your main man Sam (I’ve only re-read Gone so far and will be doing a new one for each of the books).

Also I feel like this goes without saying, but just in case: Spoiler warning for Gone down below

Original Opinion: I thought Sam was a boring protagonist with little to no personality asides from surfing and being ‘in love’ with Astrid.

New Opinion: While I still think Sam is an underdeveloped protagonist, I enjoyed his character much more than I remember, and have more thoughts on him than I realised.

1.) SAM’S APPEARENCE AND CHARACTER: We get some indication of who Sam is, and his role in the story, in the first chapter. He describes himself as sticking “to jeans and understated t-shirts, nothing that drew to much attention to himself.” While this description is reflective of Sam’s reluctance to become a leader later in the books, it kind of reminds me of every boring protagonist of every ya book/film/tv show ever. It’s a little cliché and as soon as I read this I groaned out loud and prepared myself for the most basic protagonist to ever grace the page.

We then get a little insight into his personality and his relationship with the citizens of Perdido Beach:

“everybody knew who he was, but few people were quite sure what he was.”

“He was a surfer who didn’t hang out with surfers. He was bright but not a brain. He was good-looking, but not so that girls thought of him as a hottie.”

We get the idea that Sam is the underdog. Nobody really knows him, but they all expect him to be there when something goes wrong. This is a really good indictor for his role in the rest of the story, but the description still gives us almost no insight into who Sam is as a person. The best word I can think of to describe his personality is ‘protagonist’ - he could have been so much more if he had been given just a little bit more development.

The next paragraph explains the school bus incident, where we again get absolutely no information on his personality. It’s almost as if Michael forgot that the hero had to be an actual person too. We get told that Sam has one heroic moment and then goes back to being his normal self, but what is his normal self?? I still have no idea.

We get some more description of Sam when Caine is introduced in Chapter 14 “He had dark hair and dark eyes, not much different from Sam himself” - and this is reiterated by Astrid in Chapter 38 “Astrid was struck by how alike the two boys looked superficially.” “Where Caine hid his arrogance and cruelty behind a smooth, controlled surface, Sam let his emotions play out on his face.” But even here we still get very little idea as to what he actually does look like, a weak point I have noticed in Michael’s writing is his vague descriptions. I do really like Astrid’s comment on how they display their respective emotions. Sam’s strength in morality, his lack of deception, is also a weak point in his leadership - he is too easy to read and therefore manipulate (this isn’t really shown in this book but I remember this becoming apparent with the town council). Caine’s weakness in morality saves him from this weakness but leaves him open to betrayal and mistrust (and rightfully so).

2.) SAM’S HOME: We next get to see Sam’s house in Chapter 3, which is described as being a “small squashed-looking one-story house with a tiny, fenced backyard and no real front yard.” From this description, and other information throughout the book, we get the idea that Sam and his mother are relatively poor. However, I would prefer to have been shown this instead of being told. Sam’s monetary situation never seems to affect his decisions and opinions which is a little disappointing as, from someone who has grown up poor, I know that it is something that really does affect your whole worldview. The only indicator we get that this situation has affected Sam in any way, is his comment on how wasteful the kids are being with food during the first night at the plaza - but he never actually acts on this - that job falls to Caine and later Albert.

It would have been interesting to explore how Sam could have reacted to Caine’s wealthy upbringing as opposed to his own. Them both being jealous of each other’s lives for different reasons (Caine for his lack of parental love, Sam for his lack of financial security) would have added depth to their relationship as well as Sam’s character. I’m also interested to see how Sam reacts to Albert basically reinstating capitalism in later books. As I remember, he was never overly opposed to it, but it will be interesting to see if his reaction is a direct result of his childhood.

3.) SAM’S FEAR OF THE DARK: This is plot point that is introduced to establish Sam’s powers, and it doesn’t have any other relevance in the story. This is disappointing as, with the final villain being nicknamed “the darkness” it could have been a really poetic and fitting ending for Sam to conquer both his innate fear and the villain at the same time. However as I remember it (possible spoilers for fear and light), Sam has very little to do with Gaia - Gaia mostly interacting with Diana, Caine, Drake and Lana. His ability to produce light in order to counter act this fear is a really nice inclusion though, and reflects how Sam’s leadership is a safety net to those living in the FAYZ.

4.) SAM MOTIVATIONS: We first get an idea of what it is that motivates Sam when he talks about attacking Tom in Chapter 13, “I thought he was trying to hurt my mom.” Sam’s powers are triggered by fear, his first instinct is to protect those that he loves, and he will resort to violence if it is necessary. This idea is shown again when Sam steps in to protect Bette. His first instinct is to de-escalate the situation (and, interestingly, he looks to Howard to help him with this), but, when that fails, he resorts to violence. I really like this inclusion as it gives insight into Sam’s basic motivations and also explains how he was so quickly willing to murder Drake after Drake went after Astrid. Sam’s attack on Tom is heavily reflective of Sam’s relationship with Drake in the first book - Sam burning Tom’s hand foreshadows him burning Drake’s arm.

One thing that bothers me with this scene, however, is that Sam shows little to no emotion when talking about his stepfather - and this is never expanded on. It seems out of character for Sam, one of the kindest characters in the book, to feel almost nothing towards his stepfather, and with no explanation as to why this might be. We get no indication of their relationship prior to the incident, which would have been a good chance to further develop Sam.

Later in the book, when Tom is brought up again Sam says that he felt a rush “I thought, oh, my God, look at the power I have.” - And this again is never expanded on. Sam’s main fault is his unwillingness to shoulder the responsibility of being a leader, and he never really experiences a corruption of power in the way that this line hints. I think Michael may have just added this is to highlight the differences between Sam and Caine, but it feels out of character, especially seen as it is never brought up again (at least in this book, I can’t remember if this is featured later on in the series)

5.) SAM’S POWERS: I mentioned before how Sam’s powers are first introduced to us through the flashback to Tom and his fear of the dark. But the first time we actively see him use them in the book is during The Fire and later at the powerplant. During both of these situations, Sam is unable to fully control his power and can only summon them through fear. His core motivation is to protect rather than attack. I also find it interesting that Sam is technically the first person to kill someone in the FAYZ, but I don't really have anything else to say about it :/

The first time we see Sam voluntarily use his powers in in Chapter 28, when Astrid manipulates him into using his anger instead of his fear. I find this interesting, because, despite the change in emotion, Sam’s motivation largely remains the same. The use of his power here comes from his anger at Drake having hurt Astrid, his anger that he wasn’t there to protect her.

This then changes in chapter 33, when Sam seems to gain full control over his powers. This time, when he summons his anger he focuses on his mother. I have a few issues with this. Firstly, Sam gaining control of his powers seems rushed for plot convenience, especially when you compare him to Caine, who was more willing to use his powers and yet took months to master them?? Is this a hint that, if Sam were willing to go as far as Caine, he would be the more powerful one - or is it just lazy writing?? It seems that Sam and his powers were pushed aside for other storylines, which is troubling considering he is the main character. The other thing that bothers me about this scene is that Sam’s anger at his mother is not further developed (are you noticing a theme??) It would have been nice if this had come up again properly in the poof scene.

The poof scene would have been an excellent scene to develop Sam’s character, instead, for me, it fell flat. We don’t get much perception into Sam’s thoughts other than that his first instinct is to reach out to his mother, but this provides us with very little indication about who he is as we know that this has also been every other child’s first instinct. Him being the first one to refuse is indicative of his strength and hints that the anger he felt at his mother was more than a fleeting emotion, but it would have been nice to go into more depth on his feelings about his mother and Caine. A strong, emotionally charged verbal stand-off where Sam and Caine both vent their feelings towards their mother/the gaiphage would have been an excellent ending to the big fight - as Sam’s true strength is his compassion as opposed to his use of his powers. This could have also had a fantastic payoff in later books, where Gaia could have used this moment against the boys.

6.) WHAT MAKES SAM A HERO: I’ve already mentioned that Sam’s main strength is his kindness and compassion, which is nice to see - especially in a male protagonist (whether this continues in later books I can’t remember). His adversity to becoming the leader is his biggest weakness, as it often prevents him from doing the right thing in time sensitive situations. I found that this line from chapter 11 nicely sums this idea up “In a closet off the main room he found a grey-green military shirt, many sizes too large.” - possibly referring the idea that Sam is not ready to become the leader/ hero just yet. His hesitance, his insecurities, making him unfit to lead as of yet. Also nicely reminds you how he is just a child.

Then, there are multiple moments throughout the book where Sam is just shown to be the sweetest person and these are my two favourites:

“I’m not supposed to cross the street. // It’s ok. I’ll watch while you do, ok?” - Chapter 5

“Astrid, tell me if this is crazy: I’m thinking if there are any leftovers, we could send them up to Coates.” - Final

The reason people follow him is because in a world where he could be anything, where the old rules just don’t apply anymore, he still chooses to be kind and honestly I love him for it. His line “It is our world. So let’s make it a good one” contrasts Diana’s line “We didn’t make this world, we’re just the poor fools who are living in it.” And really just highlights how good he is. He deserves so much more credit than he gets from the ungrateful cretins whose lives he saves on a daily basis. I just wish Michael had developed him further past being the protagonist.

Another fantastic Sam moment is the bit where he escapes from the collapsed apartment building. If you are ever re-reading the series and wondering why Sam is the protagonist, please just read this moment again and tell me you don’t get chills

“Diana tripped backwards from the blow and sat down hard on the stone steps.

Caine could see her face with a sudden, terrible clarity by the glow of a brilliant column of blinding, green-white light.

That light could only have one source.

He lights was light a spear aimed at the sky. It arced upwards from the midst of the rubble of the apartment building.

‘No,’ Caine said.” Chapter 45

7.) OTHER:

These are just a couple of things I noticed, but can’t really make an infirmed point about

Is Sam’s light being green a reference to the gaiphage, or just a random addition??

I noticed that the first few freaks we learn about other than Sam just have a variation of his power. Is this lazy writing or does it have some significance that I missed??

So there are my opinions on Sam from the first book. I’m sorry that this was so long but I have just so many thoughts. I think I’m going to do separate posts for Astrid, Caine, Diana and Drake and then I’ll pair up the others before moving onto relationships, representation and my likes/ dislikes.

Thank you so much if you read this, and please feel free to give me your own opinions and interpretations :)

#the gone series #sam temple #Gone

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spaceorphan18 · 4 years ago

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Marvel Movie Nights: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

You know, based on its reputation, and the fact that I really disliked the original film because it was a bad CW version of the origina Raimi film, I was ready to just hate this film. And... I didn’t? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not great, it’s totally got a Spider-Man 3 thing going with just too much going on. But, if I’m being honest, I kind of had fun with it? More so than the so incredibly tedious first film.

The plot is so convoluted and twisted into itself that it’s hard to talk about it as a whole. It’s trying to balance about six different things while attempting to set up an entire universe on its own. And, because of that, it kind of collapses in on itself like dying star. So, I’m gonna take this one chunk at a time...

First we have... Peter’s dead parents. Honestly, this is one of the elements that feels a little too much. A lot of it is contrived, especially in how his parents are tied to the spider experiments that made Peter Spider-Man in the first place. It feels like dumb movie logic, and this is the part, for me, that felt the most emotionally hollow (which is saying a lot because there’s a lot of cheap emotional beats in this film). I didn’t care, and this movie would have worked fine without any of it in it.

I’m gonna mention Aunt May next, because she has so little to do. Sally Field is great -- but there’s this weird subplot of her trying to be a nurse? She spends most of her time yelling or crying or yelling and crying, but it all amounts to about five minutes of screen time. I get what they were doing with it -- having read enough Spider-Man comics to realize that Aunt May has been somewhat of a one-note character for most of her existence -- but she feels so obligatory here that why even bother?

Alright, so let’s talk about Andrew Garfield again. Believe it or not -- I liked him so much better in this film! His Peter is still very lacking, and he makes some bizarre acting choices (as well as the fact that Peter’s basically a weirdo stalker in this film) but his Spider-Man is way less of a dick, and a lot more fun. That is... when he has someone to actually interact with, which brings me to...

Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy. I didn’t get the chemistry thing from the first film, because the way the relationship plays out makes no sense. Well, it mostly makes no sense here, too, but there’s some really clear chemistry here -- and it’s so nice for Peter to actually have a grounded friend here, that this whole thing is actually the most enjoyable part of the film --- even if Peter is stalking her through half of it.

So, maybe I need a whole other post to talk about her death, but I’m kind of fascinated by this -- because it is one of comics most shocking moments. Seriously. It’s what ended the Silver Age of Comics and what pushed it to the Bronze Age, where comics were taken more seriously, and began to handle more realistic story lines. I think her death works here! It’s not set up very well -- I like a little more thematic in my superhero films -- but the actual scene is pretty good. I do have to laugh, a little, at the fact that Spider-Man clearly murders his own girlfriend, but because they have to end the movie, they kind of gloss over that with movie time montage. Anyway...

Villains! This story definitely has them. So -- there’s a ton of set up for the Sinister Six -- Black Cat is prowling around. BJ Novak was supposed to be someone. And of course Doc Ock’s hands are floating in some kind of liquid. And... Paul Giamatti in a giant Rhino suit, that’s kind of hilarious. Again, it’s too much. They’re trying so hard to set up, like, ten sequels that it kind of kills this one. It’s like Iron Man 2 but on steroids. There are also some evil lawyer types, too, which, whatever...

So, first big bad is Electro played by Jamie Foxx. He’s such a flat and ill-defined character. What are his powers? He’s like an electric Magneto. And so socially awkward that he has no personality and the basic emotional intelligence of a two year old. But that’s fine -- because the rest of the plot is only using him for his powers. It just feels... obligatory?

Meanwhile, there’s Harry Osborn coming in as the Green Goblin, and let me tell you, this shit is wild. The actor plays Harry like some kind of drugged up Leo DiCaprio. They awkwardly force a relationship with Peter after having zero set-up. Seriously - Peter just shows up one day. And then there’s the whole plot -- Harry is dying of some rare genetic disease that is literally making him the Green Goblin, and only Spider-Man’s blood can save him. After being thrown out of Oscorp because evil lawyer, he breaks out Electro so they can stop Spider-Man. And then at the end -- Harry is magically fine. It’s wild. And insane. Hilariously entertaining, but insane.

On the production side of things -- despite the fact that nothing about this film feels like it’s grounded in any kind of reality -- it’s not that bad. The CGI holds up pretty well. The action sequences are decent -- especially the third act, where I usually tap out, actually kept me pretty captivated. The score is fine, but not my favorite. And the film looks pretty clean and less dark than the original film.

Final Thoughts: While I did enjoy it despite the major flaws, it does make me miss Tom Holland -- I know all the fanboys want Spider-Man to work alone, but I think he does best when he actually has friends. :P

Next-Up: X-Men Days of Future Past. I have nothing snarky to add - this is actually a good film.

#marvel movie nights #the amazing-spiderman 2

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Doctor Who: Ranking the Master Stories – Which is the Best?

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Roger Delgado looms large over the character of the Master, being simultaneously influential and something of an anomaly: Delgado played the role with a debonair front, but since his death, the character has been less urbane and more desperate, manic and violent. In fact the actor who’s come closest to Delgado’s approach is Eric Roberts, who plays an American version of Delgado’s Master until his performance goes big towards the end of 1996’ ‘The TV Movie’.

Each actor brings different facets to the fore, but after the character’s successful launch in Season 8 we get the tricky balancing act of the returning villain: We know that the character returns because they’re popular (indeed, the reason for their existence was the question ‘What can we do to attract viewers for the season opener?’), but in story terms, this makes them seem increasingly ridiculous. The Master, among all Doctor Who villains, seems especially keen to involve the Doctor. Why do they keep coming back if they’re always defeated?

In recent stories, writers have attempted an explanation for the Master’s behaviour, be it an unspecified insanity or a damaged friendship where each party attempts to bring the other round to their way of thinking. Mostly, though, the Master appears in Doctor Who for a simple reason: a lot of viewers find it fun when the Master appears in Doctor Who, and the Master seems to find it fun when the Master appears in Doctor Who too.

Overall the character has a solid record in the show. Fewer classics than the Daleks, fewer duds than the Cybermen, but a lot of solidly entertaining stories mostly lifted by his presence. Here, then, is my ranking of – give or take – every Master story from the television series.

27. Time-Flight

I’m sure there are redemptive readings of ‘Time-Flight’, and its flaws are more understandable in the context of its production (with the money running out at the end of the series and a shopping list of items to include imposed on writer Peter Grimwade), but the end result is poor.

To contrast Anthony Ainley’s performance with Roger Delgado’s for a second: Delgado always played the Master with a calm veneer, as though his nonsensical schemes were perfectly sensible. As a result, he seemed in control. Ainley plays the role as if they’re not merely sensible but clearly brilliant plans even though they strain credulity. They’re smaller in scale and this makes Ainley’s Master seem tragicomic. He loses control more, there’s a kind of ‘She’s turned the weans against us’ desperation that’s much more apparent in this incarnation.

‘Time-Flight’ is, despite its faults, a poor example of this. While the Master disguises himself as a mystic for no clear reason, his end goal is simply freeing himself from prehistoric Earth. Once he’s discarded his disguise, Ainley’s performance is largely underplayed (especially in contrast with ‘Castrovalva’, earlier in the season). While there’s some camp value in the guest cast, it’s not enough to rescue this from being dull.

26. The Timeless Children

The most urgent problem with this story is not the retcon, it’s that it’s simply boring television. The Doctor is passive, trapped in a prison of exposition, and billions of children on Gallifrey are slaughtered because the Master is furious that he’s descended from the Doctor (the former childhood friend whose life is intertwined with his own, indeed who is frequently defined against). This, for me, doesn’t extend logically from what we know of the characters or indeed the situation and turns Doctor Who into a grimdark slog. Not only is it lacklustre, it feels like someone has cyber-converted the show itself.

Sacha Dhawan (saddled with a Master characterisation usually reserved for when they’re clinging on to life in animalistic desperation) brings out the aggressive and violent side of the character to reflect his rage and genocide, is satisfyingly disparaging of the Lone Cyberman, and is working hard to liven things up. There’s not a lot for him to work with, though. This Master is not a dark mirror of the Doctor, he’s just here to do what the plot needs him to. Sometimes that’s what the Master is there for, to be fair, but usually in stories with much lower stakes.

You realise that the Master is only back because the story needed a big villain to destroy Gallifrey and tell the Doctor about the Timeless Child, and it couldn’t be the Cybermen (because of their other function in the series finale) or the Daleks (been there, done that). Based on the character’s interactions with the Time Lords (most obviously Rassilon in ‘The End of Time’ and the chaos he sows in ‘Trial of a Time Lord’, but Borusa was presumably the Master’s teacher too, and uses him in ‘The Five Doctors’), it’s not completely implausible that the Master would resent them, but the reasons shown thus far inadequately explain the character deliberately committing genocide. Whenever the Master’s been reset previously there’s usually been a clear and coherent motivation. In ‘Deadly Assassin’ he’s dying and furious, in ‘Logopolis’ his pettiness unravels him, and in ‘The Sound of Drums’ he wants to be like the Tenth Doctor. Here though, his motivation just poses more questions.

Things could improve. This story is incomplete and – like a Scottish football fan watching their team in Europe – hope lingers that it might be alright in the end.

25. The King’s Demons

After disguising himself reasonably well in ‘Castrovalva’ and ‘Time-Flight’, here the French Knight with the outrageous accent and surname ‘Estram’ is clearly the Master. His goal is to use a shape-shifting android to stop the Magna Carta being signed. The result is less exciting than it sounds. It’s an amiable enough low-key runaround with some good character moments for the regulars, but you’d be forgiven for thinking this was the plateau of the Master’s descent. Ainley, deprived of a Concorde crew to camp things up, gamely takes on that mantle himself.

24. The Trial of a Time Lord

As with ‘Mark of the Rani’, here we find the show using the Ainley incarnation more knowingly. Here he turns up in the thirteenth of fourteen episodes to interrupt the Doctor’s trial. This is something of a relief, because if there’s a consensus on ‘Trial of a Time Lord’ it’s that the trial scenes are interminable. Then the Master arrives on an Eighties screensaver and just turns the whole thing on its head, casually dropping huge revelations that take a minute to sink in. His presence has a galvanising effect, bringing to a head everything that had been stirring thus far in the story. His satisfaction with Gallifrey falling into chaos also ties in nicely to ‘The Five Doctors’ and his later actions in the Time War. The final episode, written in an extremely turbulent situation, doesn’t pay off this thread well (originally the Master was intended to help the Doctor in the Matrix) but that it makes sense at all is impressive given the chaos behind the scenes.

23. Spyfall

The reveal at the end of Part One, in which mild mannered agent O is revealed to be the Master, was exciting on broadcast. It came as a surprise because there’d been so little build up to it, and at the time it seemed extremely unlikely that the Master would come back so soon after their last appearance. In the end, the contrivance that reveals the Master’s presence is indicative of this episode’s larger flaws: as with ‘The Timeless Children’ the character motivations and plotting feel like they’ve been worked backwards from an endpoint. This is not an intrinsically bad way of writing if you have the time and ability to make it work, but here the episode breezes along in the hope you won’t notice the artifice (small things, like the car chase that doesn’t go anywhere, to larger ones like the Master reveal drawing attention to his ludicrously convoluted scheme that involves getting hired and fired by MI6). As it does breeze it isn’t dull, at least, but the promise of Doctor Who doing a spy film with added surprise Master really isn’t fulfilled here.

22. Colony in Space

Possibly the most boring interesting story ever, and one where the Master’s appearance doesn’t lift things. If anything, it implies the Master spends his spare time as a legal official (and to be fair to ‘Spyfall’, it does maintain this tradition of the Master sticking out a day job). Aware that the character’s appearance in every Season 8 story might become predictable, the production team decided he should arrive late in this story. This makes it feel like the Master has simply been added to pad out an underrunning six-parter (and there is a lot of lethargic padding here).

There are some interesting ideas, especially the tension between Doctor Who’s revolutionary side and its conservative one; on the radical side the story clearly sides with the colonists of Uxarieus in the face of the Interplanetary Mining Corporation’s attempts to remove them by force, with initially sympathetic governor Ashe shown to be naïve, while gradually the more active Winton exerts more authority and is proven right when he insists on armed rebellion rather than plodding through legal processes that would inevitably take the IMC’s side (the IMC’s leader, Captain Dent, is a timeless villain – calmly causing and exploiting human misery without qualms).

On the conservative side, this is a story based on British settlers in America and their relationship with the indigenous population. Here we have some British colonists under attack by British intergalactic mining corporations, and throughout everyone refers to the natives of Uxarieus as primitives. It is ultimately revealed that they were once an advanced civilisation, but the Doctor continues using the term. Indeed, he warns the Master that one is about to attack him, knowing the Master will shoot them. This latter example is absolutely in character, and we’ll see in other stories how the Doctor’s blindspot towards the Master is explored in greater detail (indeed, this story also has the Master offering to share his power and use it for good, another thread in a Malcolm Hulke script picked up on later).Considering how padded this story is, though, having no sense of empathy towards or exploration of the Uxarieans’ point of view is a glaring omission.

21. The Time Monster

In many ways ‘The Time Monster’ is crap, with its Very Large performances and a man in a cloth bird costume squawking and flapping gamely. In many ways ‘The Time Monster’ is good, there’s some funny dialogue, great ideas, and a fantastic scene with the Doctor and Master mocking each other in their TARDISes. In many ways ‘The Time Monster’ is hypnotically insane, and you can’t help but admire the way it earnestly presents itself as entirely reasonable; ‘The Time Monster’ straddles the ‘Objectively Crap/Such a hoot’ divide, and is in fact the Master in microcosm with its blend of nonsense, camp, and occasional brutality.

Delgado has now been firmly established as someone who usually lifts a story with his presence, the Master’s routine now a regular and expected part of the programme’s appeal. It’s cosy enough to somehow be endearing despite this clearly being crap on many levels. This is Doctor Who that is extremely comfortable in its own skin; on one hand this involves establishing that the Doctor’s subconscious mind being a source of discomfort for him, and on the other it involves five characters gathering round to laugh at Sergeant Benton’s penis.

20. Castrovalva

‘Castrovalva’ suffers from similar structural problems to ‘Logopolis’, in that the first two episodes are a preamble, and while there’s no lack of good ideas it does feel like the regulars have to go on a long walk to actually arrive in the story. This means we have a lot of good moments (‘Three sir’, ‘With my eyes, no, but in my philosophy’, and the Master being set upon by the Castrovalvans in a nightmarish frieze, as if he’s about to be pulled apart) but there’s little emotional pull as we haven’t spent time with the characters. The idea of people being created by the Master for an elaborate trap and then gaining free will is great, but we’ve only known them for about half an hour so the impact is lessened. The ponderings around ‘if’ in the first half could be better connected with the concepts in the second.

In contrast to the cerebral tone, Ainley is at his hammiest here. Sensing perhaps that the Master improvising an even more elaborate plan than his previous two is stretching credulity, and stuck with Adric and his little pneumatic lift (not a euphemism), Ainley goes big and ends up yelling ‘MY WEB’ while standing like he’s forgotten how to bowl overarm (extremely unlikely given Ainley’s fondness for cricket). He’s also started dressing up again, which is actually done well here but the knowledge of what’s to come makes this foreboding.

‘Castrovalva’ also connects with John Simm’s Master’s misogyny, in that when Nyssa tells him he’s being an idiot he can’t think of a reply so pushes her away, and that he creates a world where the women’s role is to do the cleaning (although that might be partly explained by Christopher Bidmead following ‘Logopolis’ with another world of bearded old science dudes).

19. The Mark of the Rani

In some ways a low point for the Master, but also a relatively good-natured story for Season 22. Here the Master is first seen dressed as a scarecrow, and chuckles at the brilliance of his disguise, as if the Doctor should really expect to find him hiding in a field caked in mud. His plan is to accelerate the industrial revolution so he can use a teched-up Earth as a powerbase.

It’s not that this Master lacks ambition, it’s just that his plans all feel like first drafts. He also plays second fiddle to the title character, with the Rani clearly put out that he’s there at all. Ainley, who regarded a few of his scripts as less than impressive, wasn’t happy at being demoted, but this works for the character. This pettiness is part of the Master now, and so ‘Mark of the Rani’ can be celebrated for finding a tone and a role that makes sense for him, something that invites the audience to indulge him rather than take him too seriously.

Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure

By Andrew Blair

Doctor Who: Ranking the Dalek Stories – Which is the Best?

By Andrew Blair

18. The Mind of Evil

The Master is cemented here as an entertaining nonsense. He has a multi-phase plan to start World War III which involves converting a peace conference delegate into the avatar of an alien parasite which has been installed in A Clockwork Orange–style machine in a prison, after which he will take over the planet. Delgado, as ever, plays this as if it’s perfectly straightforward. As with his debut story the Master bites off more than he can chew in his allegiances, and you get the impression he’s not totally serious about global domination and just wants to hang out with the Doctor. Pertwee is at his peak here, rude and abrasive, righteous and enjoyably sarcastic, but also put through the wringer by the Keller Machine (which the Master has apparently invented using the alien parasite).

For all the good work ‘The Mind of Evil’ does with the Doctor and the Master (the idea that the Master’s greatest fear is the Doctor laughing at him ultimately comes to define the character), and with this being a mostly well-made story, it does devolve into an action-orientated (I say ‘devolve’, your mileage may vary) story where the Keller machine is now lethal and capable of teleporting, combined with a Bond movie plot where UNIT find themselves transporting a missile and guarding a peace conference (far from their stated goal of dealing with the odd and unexplained).

There’s a satisfying clash between the horror of the Keller Machine and the sight of prison guards shooting and screaming at what looks like a Nespresso prototype sitting on the floor. This is a good tonal summary of ‘The Mind of Evil’ – a lot of grimness (horrible deaths and genuinely nasty characters) rubbing up against something enjoyably silly.

17. The End of Time

As with ‘The TV Movie’ here the Master get some new and largely inexplicable powers, suddenly craving food and flesh. What John Simm’s stories add is the idea that the Master was driven mad by the constant sound of drums. Here it is revealed that the Time Lords planted it in the eight-year-old Master’s head as a means of escaping the Time War. As with The Timeless Child reveal, this Chosen One storyline lessens the characters for some viewers, limiting the character’s free will and making them less interesting. Russell T. Davies is smarter than that here though.

What works well are the references to the Doctor and Master’s childhood, the brief suggestion that that Master would like to travel with the Doctor without the drumming, the Master and Doctor choosing to save each other and return the Time Lords to their war; the Master rejecting his appointed role of saviour, refusing to have his entire life disrupted. Including the Master here is a good move beyond hype, offering a warped reflection of the departing hero (the fact that the Master’s big plan is grounded in vanity is telling).

It’s a strange mix, because there are clearly great scenes in this story, but the dominant impression of the Master is now being able to fly, shoot lasers from his hands, and occasionally have his flesh go see-through. The latter feels like a call-back to his emaciated state in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ but lacks the physicality.

It feels not dissimilar to ‘Twice Upon a Time’, in that it contains parts of what made the showrunner’s work so good, as well as being a clear sign that it was time to move on.

16. Logopolis

Maybe it’s because I didn’t have the context of its original broadcast, that sense of a Titan of my childhood finally saying goodbye, but – besides a memory of finding the opening episode unnerving on VHS – I have no real sense of this story from a child’s point-of-view. As it is, I can appreciate the ideas in it – a planet of spoken maths that can influence reality (riffing on Clarke’s Third Law), the sense of the Fourth Doctor’s regeneration being inevitable, the scale of the threat involved and that it results from the Master’s attempts at petty revenge rather than a deliberate plan – but I can’t honestly say they’re woven into compelling drama.

I have few objections to silliness in Doctor Who, but I find it hard to get on board with something so ludicrous that thinks it’s incredibly serious.

There are the recursive TARDISes that stop because the Doctor has to go outside for the cliff-hanger, Tegan spending her first story as someone with a child-like fixation on planes, the exciting drama of Adric and the Monitor checking an Excel sheet for errors, and the stunning scene where the Doctor explains that the Master knew he was going to measure a police box by the Barnet bypass because ‘He’s a Time Lord: in many ways we have the same mind’ immediately followed by the Doctor’s idea to get the Master out of his TARDIS by materialising underwater and opening the door. This story thinks itself clever, but judders forward through a series of nonsensical contrivances before cramming the actual story into two episodes.

The first half is stylish nonsense, building up to the reveal of the Master chuckling to himself about ‘cutting the Doctor down to size’ – it’s then you realise that everything he did in the first two episodes was for the sake of a joke that only he can hear, and this pun kills several trillion people. To be fair, this is a brilliant idea, it’s just a shame about the slog to get to this point. The final confrontation is then less ‘Reichenbach Falls’ and more ‘Argument at a Maplin’.

The Master is well played by Antony Ainley in his full debut, and as a child his mocking laughter was genuinely unsettling. As reality unravels, so does he. If he’d killed trillions deliberately, and they knew of his power before dying, he’d be fine, but doing it by mistake without people knowing seems to break him. Mostly there’s the feeling of lost momentum with the character, going from a powerful symbol of evil that corrupted paradise to a man broken by his own banter.

As with Nyssa witnessing the death of her planet, there’s a lot of potential for character drama here that the show wasn’t interested in exploring at the time.

15. The TV Movie

As written, the Master here is a devious, manipulative creature who is willing to destroy an entire planet just to survive. This is extremely solid characterisation, matching what’s gone before. You can also hear Delgado delivering this dialogue (though I’m not sure how he’d respond to ‘you’re also a CGI snake who can shoot multi-purpose venom’).

The shorthand for this Master is Eric Roberts’ big performance in the finale, which does tend to blot out the rest of his acting. Full of smarm and charm, Roberts is mostly downplaying his lines as an American version of Delgado (indeed his costume for the ‘dress for the occasion’ scene was going to be like Delgado’s Nehru jacket), and his line delivery obscures the fact that the final confrontation scene is very well written up until Chang Lee’s death. It’s quite a good summary of the character so far: cunning, persuasive, visually monstrous, driven by survival, then ultimately camp and desperate.

While the Master and Doctor’s rebirths are very well shot, the movie would have worked better without regeneration so we could get more screentime with the new cast, and the final confrontation is the only time the Doctor and Master get to actually talk, which means we only get a broad brushstrokes version of their relationship. Nonetheless the ‘What do you know of last chances?’ ‘More than you’ exchange is fantastic.

14. The Claws of Axos

Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s debut script for the show is busy and full of nightmare-fuel for the viewer, with the Master (who wasn’t in earlier drafts) put into uneasy alliances with UNIT and the Doctor. Briefly he fulfils the role of UNIT’s Chief Scientific Advisor, which is inspired, showing through his interactions with the Brigadier how alike he and the Doctor are.

The first story in which the Master is just grifting and trying to survive rather than being halfway through a devious plan. ‘The Claws of Axos’ wisely tries something different with the Master in the midst of an enjoyably garish romp (Doctor Who will never have this colour palette ever again). There’s some effective body horror, tinges of psychedelia, and a hokey American accent.

It’s all over the place this one, but barrels along with glee and feels like the Pertwee era has relaxed into a lighter mood, albeit one where people are still electrocuted and turned into orange beansprout monsters.

13. Terror of the Autons

We are immediately told that the Master is dangerous, but also not to take him too seriously: one of the first things he does in Doctor Who is kidnap a circus in order to raid a museum.

And so the rest of the story proves: a darkly comic (and famously terrifying) blast which sets out the character of the Master for the rest of the Pertwee era: the delicate balance between the ridiculous and the vicious. Delgado isn’t quite there yet in this story, not fully realising the comic potential in the character and playing things straighter than he would later. One thing he lands immediately is acting as if the Master’s plans are perfectly sensible, bridging the gap between animating murderous chairs/phone cables and suffocating people with plastic daffodils, so that they die uncomprehendingly as they claw at their face.

Therein lies the appeal of Doctor Who, with one of its central tensions being between the mundane and the ridiculous, the cosy and the suffocating. This is exemplified here by a plastic doll coming to life and trying to kill everyone because Captain Yates wanted to make some cocoa.

12. The Dæmons

In which the Master is good-humoured and ostensibly pleasant while trying to summon a demonic alien being, accompanied by a moving stone gargoyle who can vaporise people. The show is well aware of the Master’s impact, to the extent that one of the cliff-hangers features him in danger rather than the Doctor or UNIT.

What his debut season has established is that the Master himself is mostly fun (indeed, often more fun than the Doctor), but the monsters that he brings with him are terrifying. This is true from his first story, in which he brings a barrage of nightmarish ideas to life. Bok, the aforementioned gargoyle in this story, absolutely terrified me as a child. Most of the accompanying monsters in the Pertwee era did, but by tapping into the paranormal and demonic this story has an extra frisson of fear.

I have nothing new to say about ‘The Dæmons’: it’s the first Doctor Who story to mine the works of Erich van Daniken and it does it well, the Doctor is a dick in it, the resolution with Jo’s self-sacrifice is weak, it’s an episode too long, but also it’s got Nick Courtney effortlessly winning every scene he’s in, which helps a lot.

11. The Five Doctors

This is a story that plays to Ainley’s strengths, and he delivers. No other Master is as good at looking pleased with themselves, so when the Master is having a mission pitched to him by the High Council of Time Lords Ainley’s face is priceless. He’s present, and enjoying himself immensely, disdainful of the upper echelons of the society he escaped.

Then, when he attempts to persuade the Doctors that he’s there to help, the fact they all immediately assume he’s trying to trick them makes him entertainingly frustrated. Terrance Dicks’ script plays to the former friendship between the two characters, and the Master feels more like his old self before the Brigadier dispatches him with a cathartic biff. His brief alliance with and inevitable betrayal of the Cybermen is something you can imagine Delgado delivering, while also highlighting the difference in the two incarnations. Delgado would say ‘Your loyal servant’ with confidence, and find the ‘driving sheep across minefields’ line drily amusing. Ainley feels venal and nasty in these scenes, more like a childhood bully trying not to get hit. That he ultimately does is a lovely pay-off.

10. The Sea Devils

A somewhat padded Pertwee six-parter? With much of the padding being fight scenes with lots of guns and stuntmen flipping everywhere? With the Doctor being rude to everyone? And a meddling Civil Servant, Jo being plucky and resourceful, and the Master allying himself with a group that betrays him? With Malcolm ‘Mac’ ‘Incredible’ Hulke subtly undermining the entire thing? It’s like coming back to your old local and finding nothing has changed while you understand it better than ever.

Trenchard, in charge of the Master’s prison, is a relic of Empire and friends with Captain Hart – the highest ranking Naval officer we meet – who is clearly sad when he is killed. this story may have been made with the co-operation of the Navy but Hulke implies an old boys’ club which the Doctor breezes into and disrupts (but he is no longer averse to the military’s involvement as he was in ‘The Silurians’- it’s not clear whether it’s his relationship with UNIT or the Master that has changed his mind here – is he now used to having military support or does he deem it necessary due to the Master’s presence?).

Hulke, being one of the better writers of character the show had at this point, draws out his characters extremely well and deepens the Doctor and Master’s relationship by mentioning their past in more detail (a lot of what Steven Moffat developed in Series 8 – 10 was inspired by Hulke). Delgado briefly departs from the cosiness of this story by snapping in rage at a guard he’s attacking, letting the affable façade drop just for a second to show the fury beneath it all. It’s a small moment, but it’s something that will be built on for many years to come.

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9. Frontier in Space

In some ways, this is just a ridiculously long pre-credits sequence for ‘Planet of the Daleks’, but there’s just something incredibly endearing about Doctor Who attempting a space opera, complete with hyperdrives and space walks. The genius move is giving it to Malcolm Hulke, who fleshes out his characters more than most and manages to use genre cliches to achieve this. There’s a great gag where the Doctor tries to convince the Earth authorities that a war with the Draconians is being engineered, only to be captured by the Draconians who put him through the exact same rigmarole.

This is also Roger Delgado’s final story before his tragic death, and he arrives delightfully, walking into Jo’s prison cell and saying ‘Let me take you away from all this’. He’s also, after ‘Colony in Space’, taken another day job, this time as a commissioner from Sirius IV. Hulke is clearly determined to explain what the character gets up to on his days off, and the repetition both underlines how static the character has been (especially in contrast to Jo Grant) but also functions as something of a last hurrah.

The dialogue is absolutely superb throughout, which is ideal because not a lot actually happens in this story. However it doesn’t really matter because Jo, the Doctor and the Master are so established that it’s great fun watching them all riff off each other, with Jo resisting the Master’s hypnotism and going on a weary semi-ironic monologue about her day-to-day life at UNIT, the Doctor having a whale of time with political prisoners, and the Master dropping bon mots left, right and centre. There’s a lot of great lines here, so I don’t really mind the repeated capture/escape/capture padding because everyone’s having such fun that it’s just a joy spending time with them.

8. The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar

Opening a series with a character piece semi-sequel to a 1975 story shouldn’t work this well, however there’s definitely a sense of offering up shiny things to distract us from setting up other stories. The ending also happens in something of a rush. Nonetheless, I’m a big fan.

This story is interesting in terms of how inward looking it is. All the components involved have been established since 2005 and are explained in-story, but it’s still a demand that can limit the audience. So while I like this story, it does rather confirm that ultimately, making Doctor Who that’s right up my street isn’t a valid long-term strategy. However, if you are going to do a story steeped in lore, this is a good way of doing it: using the past as a foundation rather than trying to recreate it. Here Steven Moffat builds a lot: the Twelfth Doctor’s character softens based on his past few stories, Missy and Davros return and their relationships with the Doctor are explored, the actual experience of being a Dalek is expanded on (Rob Shearman’s ‘Dalek’ novelisation goes further if you’re into that), and the Hybrid arc is set up.

Previously in a ‘Ranking the Dalek Stories’ article I mentioned how ‘Into the Dalek’ felt like a story needed to establish that series’ themes, and didn’t do enough to integrate this with a good Dalek story. Here, though, the themes are woven more subtly in the episodes and less so in their titles. They’re also more interesting ones than ‘Fellas, is it bad to hate genocidal cyborgs?’

In the swirl of character building we have Missy essentially being the Doctor, exploring Skaro with her companion. Clara takes this role and has a terrible time as a result. As with the Doctor’s conversation with Davros, this highlights uncomfortable similarities: yes, Clara is literally pushed into danger while Missy has a secret plan for her, but it’s not like the Doctor hasn’t done similar over the years.

7. Planet of Fire

Considering all the tasks it has to do (introduce a new companion, write out two existing companions, using Lanzarote for location filming, and provide a potential exit for Anthony Ainley’s Master), ‘Planet of Fire’ is ultimately rather impressive. It suffers from an uneventful first episode (roughly 80% setup and 20% dodgy American accents), but once the Master arrives it livens up considerably.

With the Master controlling Kamelion, a shape-shifting android, remotely Ainley gives different performances for the actual Master and the Kamelion-Master, the latter more controlled. He’s also having fun here (his little smile after Peri responds to ‘I am the Master’ with ‘So what?’ is great) The Kamelion-Master, in a black suit and shirt combo (which suits him better than his usual outfit), seems more pragmatic and violent. It actually works for Ainley’s Master to be less threatening than a robot version of himself. Bent on survival, this Master has a better motivation than usual and the writing is layered: when he realises he’s in trouble in the final episode he switches instantly to pleading for his life and futile rage as the Doctor stares, either unable or unwilling to help him. There are emotional beats like this throughout the story which makes it fit well with post-2005 Doctor Who.

The rest of ‘Planet of Fire’ – as with writer Peter Grimwade’s previous script ‘Mawdryn Undead’ – has a knack for character lacking in many Fifth Doctor stories. As well as being a strong outing for the Master he writes Turlough out well and introduces Peri as a flawed but brave companion who clearly had a lot of potential. These arcs all intersect with each other, as well as the religious fundamentalism story (watered down in development), producing clear emotional journeys and an underrated gem.

6. Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords

Delgado’s Master was very specifically an inversion of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor: both of them were geniuses, one was grumpy and rude and the other suave and funny. The rude one tended to save the Earth, the funny one tried to subjugate or destroy it. John Simm’s Master isn’t an inversion of David Tennant’s Doctor so much as a warped reflection – they’re both quick-talking, charismatic and alluring figures, but while this Doctor is dangerous because he doesn’t notice the power he has over people, this Master is dangerous because he absolutely does.

It’s worth noting on the character’s reintroduction that Russell T. Davies dispensed with the kind of low-key plan that is clearly doomed to failure from the start, and instead showed the full realisation of the Master getting what he wanted coupled with the most cartoonish version of the character we’d seen: Simm went bigger than Tennant, and as Ten is a dangerous enough figure already it made sense to exaggerate this. While some fans wanted another Delgado, we got someone building on Ainley and Roberts’ over-the-topness while still feeling in control of his plans.

The character’s return was also tremendously exciting on broadcast. The impact that ‘Utopia’ had especially was huge, and Derek Jacobi left fans wanting more after his brief appearance as the Master (Hey, Big Finish Twitter person: here’s your angle if you want to retweet this). After the endearingly dated urban thriller stylings of the middle episode, ‘Last of the Time Lords’ is a really bleak episode that doesn’t quite stick the landing: the idea behind the floating Doctor offering forgiveness rather than vengeance is good, although I’m not sure it’s realised as well as it could be, and there’s an extra fight scene that adds nothing and loses momentum. The Simm Master is kept at a distance from the Tenth Doctor too, mostly speaking through phone or radio. The aged and shrunken Doctor is a misstep in terms of limiting their interactions, though the phone call we do get includes some fun nods to slash fic.

5. Survival

Rona Munro writes Ace and people her age with more verisimilitude than the surrounding stories, and she brings that same level of characterisation to the Master. Here he’s struggling against the animalistic power of a planet and plotting to escape. Ainley commits to the savagery and relishes the opportunities to be nasty.

What’s especially well written here is that this is still clearly the Master of ‘Time-Flight’, ‘The King’s Demons’ and ‘The Mark of the Rani’ – yes, he’s desperately trying to survive here and that shows him as more threatening than usual, but what’s equally important is when he says ‘It nearly beat me. Such a simple brutal power’, and then immediately takes the Doctor back to the planet, now engulfed in flames, and tries to kill him. It has beaten him. He’s lost to it. He even refuses to escape (‘We can’t go, not this time’) and is ready to die. This is the last we’ll see of Ainley in the role on TV (his last performance in the role, from a mid-Nineties computer game, can be found on this story’s DVD extras), going out with the acknowledgement that this Master is a tragic figure, he’s out of silly plans and costumes, now all that he has left is the violence that was latent within him – previously seen in…

4. The Deadly Assassin

Writer Robert Holmes hadn’t written for the Master since the character’s first story, and since then the character’s sadism had been downplayed. Here, after the death of Roger Delgado, Holmes elected to dispense with Delgado’s calm and suave persona, with the Master now a Grim-Reaper-like figure, still hypnotic but now without any pretence of reason: a creature of pure spite. That moment of jarring rage from ‘The Sea Devils’? That’s on the surface now. This, combined with his design for life, makes his plan seem more vicious than usual: simply to survive he will set off a chain of events that will destroy Gallifrey and hundreds of other planets. We’ve gone from the warped friendship of Delgado and Pertwee’s characters to explicitly stated hatred here.

The story does feature Holmes’ main weakness, in that after the fantastic world building, dialogue and horror, it all ends rather swiftly with the Doctor physically dominating the villain. What we do get here, though, is an almost casual rewriting of the lore of the series in a gripping and atypical story (that some fans hated at the time), and the successful recasting of the Master. What’s more, the character can now be revisited as this nightmarish figure or as another more Delgado-like figure, his scope has widened. What no one was expecting, though, was bringing the Master back as an almost primal force.

3. The Keeper of Traken

I know what you’re thinking. Putting this story ahead of ‘The Deadly Assassin’ is madness. Well, that’s subjective opinions for you. I think it’s fair to say that ‘The Deadly Assassin’ is a more solidly realised production than ‘The Keeper of Traken’, but I prefer the ideas in the latter and so it’s slightly ahead for me (and the ideas are still well realised).

We’ve seen from his debut onwards that the Master arrives in a location or organisation and brings it under his influence (the village in ‘The Dæmons’, the Matrix in ‘The Deadly Assassin’), but here we see him corrupt an entire civilisation. What’s more, it’s a fairy tale of a place, reputedly somewhere ‘evil just shrivelled up and died’ (to which the Doctor adds enigmatically ‘Maybe that’s why I never went there’).

I’m not 100% behind the more mythic versions of the Master (such as Joe Lidster’s Big Finish play ‘Master’, which is a great piece of work in itself but not one I keep in my headcanon). This could be one of them, with the Master a being of such purest evil that he infects and destroys the fairy tale kingdom.

Instead Johnny Byrne’s story shows Traken with a fairy tale’s darkness and decay, begging the the question of how much of Traken’s fall is down to the Master and how much of it is due to their own complacency (Traken’s Consuls are old and bickering. The youngest is clearly an idiot. They seem distant from their people). It seems the Master’s arrival exacerbates the collapse rather than causes it. This level of power likely comes from the original script without the Master, the character fulfilling a role created for something new, but it still fits with the ‘Deadly Assassin’ version who plays long games motivated purely by survival and spite.

And he capitalises on a very human fear, that of Kassia not wanting her new husband Tremas to take over as the titular keeper so that she will barely see him again. The main weak point of this story is that Doctor Who was not in a position to really commit to the heart-breaking ideas in this story (technobabble yes, but not as much pathos as there should be), especially the Master’s abrupt takeover of Tremas’ body.

As a child I found the final possession scene underwhelming, but the bit where the Master takes control of the Doctor is chilling. You understood that something extremely serious was happening. Tom Baker, it must be said, is exceptional here, especially when he shames Tremas (who doesn’t seem too fussed by the possession of his new wife) into helping him.

This story has a rich setup with good motivations for drama, and balances this with a more mythic quality. This is a significant development for the character, to become an evil so pervasive it manifests as rapid societal decay. Fortunately if there are two things Doctor Who fans are good at dealing with, it’s symbolism in storytelling and change.

2. Dark Water / Death in Heaven

Missy is something of a patchwork creation by necessity. In some respects she’s an evolution of John Simm’s Master, a manic figure concocting season finale-scale schemes and building on the Tenth Doctor’s frustration that they aren’t friends. She also evokes Peter Pratt’s Master in terms of sadism, killing a fair few of the guest cast, including some unexpected ones (and for a while it looks like she’s killed Kate Lethbridge-Stewart). She’s also reminiscent of Delgado, not necessarily in Michelle Gomez’ performance but in the sense that she’s largely in control and is written and cast as an inversion of the Doctor (Capaldi is irascible, seemingly heartless and mostly contained, whereas Gomez buzzes with childlike energy and revels in cruelty). From here, Moffat starts building towards the ends of Series 9 and 10.

Two things separate Missy from other incarnations: firstly there’s Michelle Gomez, a unique performer who varies the size of her performance in interesting ways, and secondly there’s explicit vocalisation of past suggestions that the Master does what they do as a warped gesture of friendship. This makes the character suddenly and deliberately tragic and strangely relatable: we’ve all been in difficult relationships where we try to get someone else’s attention, but none of us have been driven to an unspecified insanity by virtue of a constant drumming sound implanted by the resurrected founder of our entire society. As an explanation for all of the Master’s behaviour it’s rather neat, while also trying something different with the season finale: the grand plan isn’t to conquer the world (as with ‘Logopolis’ a colossal death toll is a side effect).

It’s Moffat’s grimmest finale – atypically no happy ending here – but if it hadn’t worked then there wouldn’t have been such solid foundations for what followed.

1. World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls

Series 10 is arguably one long Master story, as Series 1 is one long Dalek story, which is not only true but also a handy excuse for not wanting to watch ‘The Lie of the Land’. Missy’s story is initially told around the edges of the episodes, and as a result these short scenes are to the point and occasionally clunky while laying foundations for the finale. Fortunately the finale is superb.

We are shown the relationship between the Doctor and the Master as a tragedy spanning millennia: ‘She’s the only person that I’ve ever met who’s even remotely like me’, and so the Doctor’s hope that the Master can be the friend he remembers trumps Bill’s fears. And Bill is shot. It harks right back to the Doctor remarking – after all the death and carnage in ‘Terror of the Autons’ – that’s he’s rather looking forward to their rivalry. The Doctor has a blind spot where the Master is concerned, and it kills people.

It’s impossible to say how well the John Simm reveal would have worked if his presence hadn’t already been announced, but nonetheless he does great work as both Razor and a Master who represents pretty much all other incarnations except Delgado (not unlike the War Doctor standing in for all the original run’s Doctors in ‘The Day of the Doctor’). Steven Moffat builds on the way Simm’s Master delights in pure nastiness but continues to be cruel when there’s no joy in it for him. His is a Master abandoned by his people and his friend, very much feeling it is him against the universe.

In contrast, Moffat had been re-establishing the sense of friendship present between Delgado and Pertwee’s characters with Missy and 12. Delgado’s planned final story was planned to reveal the Doctor and the Master as two aspects of the same person, with the Master ultimately dying in an explosion that saved the Doctor’s life (with it remaining ambiguous whether this was a deliberate sacrifice). It feels like Moffat took inspiration from this, with the resulting story of a broken friendship and the cost of restoring it: Bill’s conversion to a Cyberman, the Doctor’s words – for once – cutting through to the Master, who tries and fails to escape her past. Part of her would rather die than be friends with the Doctor (as Simm’s Master also did in Series 3).

It’s spoilt slightly by Simm commenting that this is their perfect ending, which feels like it’s obvious without being spelled out, but on the other hand he does have a point. If you were going to kill off the Master, it’s hard to see past this as their ideal conclusion.

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passmeabook · 4 years ago

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Servamp: An Alternate Route

While rereading the manga I’ve come up with the hypothesis that during the C3 arc Tanaka-sensei intended for Mahiru to join up with The Mother of Wrath as her temp-Eve. I understand that Iduna is Freya’s Eve, but looking over the manga I feel this is a compelling argument. One that should at least be given thought and analyzed.

In this meta I will be covering how I believe Tanaka-sensei was setting up the manga to have Mahiru become the temporary-Eve of Wrath, and why I think it was originally intended before Tanaka-sensei decided to change what would happen. I’ll also be covering how a Mahiru & The Mother team-up could have affected the plot.

Be prepared to read, this is over 13,000+ words.

Hypothesis: Is there a possibility that Tanaka-sensei originally intended for Mahiru to become the temporary Eve of Wrath? How could this have affected the storyline?

Sections:

Paralleling Villains: Touma and Shamrock

Wrath: The Incomplete Plot

Mahiru & The Mother of Wrath

Iduna Nobel: The Guiding Star

Iduna Nobel: Finding The Inner Light of Hope

Wrath Resembles Fear

Iduna Nobel: “Twinkle, Twinkle (The Blue Star)”

Shamrock the Devil, the Nighthawk, the Metamorphosis

The Final Confrontation

Paralleling Villains: Touma and Shamrock

Something I’ve found interesting while rereading through the manga is how Touma and Shamrock’s narratives parallel each other in the C3 arc. Shuuhei and Mahiru also have paralleling narratives, but here I want to focus on Touma and Shamrock.

Touma and Shamrock are both placed in the role of ‘villain’ and are the antagonists to Mahiru and Shuuhei respectively. I find it fascinating how their actions mirror each other, and it has made me think that Tanaka-sensei wanted something more with incorporating their arcs to mirror each other. Touma and Shamrock are also two characters who have some of the most influence from literary sources. Touma has influences from Peter Pan [Peter and Wendy] by J. M. Barrie & from Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. Shamrock has influences from The Nighthawk Star by Miyazawa Kenji and from Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) by Franz Kafka. The two men have more literary influences that show up in their character than any other character I have seen in the series besides Tsurugi.

Right from the start you can see visual parallels between Shuuhei vs Shamrock and Mahiru vs Touma. In Ch. 61 “The Second Generation” Mahiru comes upon Touma. Touma is facing away and has his back to Mahiru and doesn't notice Mahiru is there at first until Mahiru makes a noise. In Ch. 57 “Born” Shamrock much like Touma has his back to Shuuhei, and doesn't realize Shuuhei is there until Shuuhei misses a shot with the gun.

Another parallel shared between Ch. 57 & Ch. 61 is the fact that Shamrock and Touma remark upon the likeness Shuuhei and Mahiru share with their respective “predecessors”: Yoshimasa and Tooru. In Ch. 57 Shamrock upon seeing Shuuhei’s resemblance to Yoshimasa tells him, “You look exactly like him when he was young!!”. Then we get Ch. 61 “The Second Generation” where Touma tells Mahiru, “You look just like him.” Both Shamrock and Touma have visceral reactions to seeing Shuuhei and Mahiru.

We also at the very end of Ch. 61 “The Second Generation” have Touma and Shamrock use the same kanji which the translator’s note says has a double meaning of being “The Second Generation” as well as being an “Imposter”.

Ch. 62 “I Will Strike Them For You” is mostly Shamrock-centric and gives us background on Shamrock’s death, and the event that led up to it. At first glance it and Ch. 63 “Purebred” don’t seem to hold many similarities in the paralleling of Shamrock and Touma, but there are. In Ch 62 “I Will Strike Them For You” Shamrock asks Shuuhei if telling him the reason he killed Yoshimasa will earn him (Shamrock) Shuuhei’s forgiveness. Then in the same chapter he goes on to tell the story of the events leading up to his death. In Ch. 63 “Purebred” Touma mocks Mahiru a bit by telling him, “You know I also want to be liked a little. What if I tell you a personal story about myself, to earn you sympathy?” Then he goes on to tell Mahiru his backstory with his parents, and even the history of Tsurugi’s biological father.

While not a parallel it is interesting to note that Shamrock and Touma have one part of their past where they interacted while Shamrock was still alive as a human; the Tsubaki Subjugation event that took place seventeen years ago as Shamrock tells Shuuhei. In Shamrock’s flashback during Ch. 62 Touma is shown to have been on the same team as Yoshimasa and Shamrock. So, while this is not a parallel between the two it visually connects them for the reader.

Wrath: The Incomplete Plot

Another reason I feel Mahiru was originally intended to become The Mother’s temp-Eve is because she had an incomplete storyline with both Touma and Tsurugi that was never quite finished. Some of the most important chapters between Tsurugi and The Mother are Ch. 57 “Born”, Ch. 58 “I Wasn’t Able To Grow Up”, Ch. 60 “Wrath Resembles Fear”, and Ch. 61 “The Second Generation”. In Ch. 57 “Born” The Mother lives up to her name and is portrayed as a mother figure, especially from Tsurugi’s perspective. Her emotional maturity gives her the ability to offer others compassion and also to handle matters as an adult. Tsurugi has a moving scene in Ch. 57 where Tsurugi calls out to The Mother as if she were his own parent, and then gives out a heart wrenching scream.

At the beginning of Ch. 58 “I Wasn’t Able To Grow Up” The Mother brings up the idea of Tsurugi becoming her Eve. She also informs him that, “In this world… exists things that you should share and bear the burden of with other people. As well as things you yourself must treasure.” and that he must understand which is which. Tsurugi is unable to make the decision to become her Eve. As he is right now, and where he is emotionally, he cannot become her Eve, and then he is shown to be doing what appears to be a cross between cowering before her and a seiza bow. Tsurugi is remorseful that he can’t make that step forward. He is not ready.

In Ch. 60 “Wrath Resembles Fear” the chapter starts off by showing that The Mother has shielded Tsurugi with her body from falling debris. Tsurugi tells her to stop, and that he has already received “plenty of happiness in my life…” implying that Tsurugi is ready to die. The Mother cuts through his words and tells him to his face that he is lying, and then asks him, “aren’t you only a newborn?”. Right after this scene Touma appears to retrieve Tsurugi, and manages to get him out of the rubble. Tsurugi then offers to The Mother the suggestion that she make a contract with Touma. Tsurugi introduces Touma to her as someone who is his family (a concept which is incredibly important to Tsurugi). After Tsurugi brings up the topic of Touma forming a contract with The Mother Touma brutally shoots her. It’s one of the most shocking moments in the manga.

Ch. 61 “The Second Generation” starts off where Ch. 60 ended, and it gives us the readers more details. It is important to see that when Touma is repeatedly shooting The Mother of Wrath he is having a flashback to a woman who bears a strong resemblance to The Mother, and who is implied to have given Touma the scar on his face. The woman in the flashback is shown holding a lit cigarette and Touma’s scar seems to be on fire in the present time.

The reason I feel these chapters all tie in and were the start of an incomplete storyline is because we never see The Mother or Touma or Tsurugi interact again in the C3 arc. The closest we get is in Ch. 80 “One Morning, When I Woke Up” where Tsurugi is shown to be checking up on a sleeping Freya who is recovering her strength. There is also great irony in the fact that both Tsurugi and Touma saw a mommy figure in The Mother. Though they both had very different reactions.

When Mahiru, who has been shown in several previous chapters to want to help Tsurugi, was left for dead after his faceoff against Touma he is shown to go back to fight against Touma, and therefore complete his narrative arc. Not only did Mahiru manage to save Tsurugi (a goal he has had since Ch. 48 “Limit” when Junichirou asked him, “Will you, save my friend?”), but he came back to finish his fight with Touma and won. The three people Touma has arguably harmed the most in this arc are: Tsurugi, Mahiru, and The Mother. Tsurugi was able to find his closure after so many years, and Mahiru was able to defeat Touma who had been set up to be his “final boss” of the C3 arc. The Mother was not given anything like this with Touma, and I find that incredibly sad.

From the flashback Touma had of his own mother I think we could have gotten even more information on Touma’s family life had The Mother been there visually before him to agitate those memories. It would also have been satisfying to have had Mahiru and The Mother team up because they were both innocent people who just wanted to help, and they were brutally harmed because of that. Them joining together to show ‘you have not broken us’ would have been amazing.

Touma and Tsurugi also have the strong literary influence of Peter Pan over their characters. Their spells show this influence such as Tsurugi and his Neverland (I Am Your Treasure) spell and Touma’s Baby in the Dark, The Blackbirds of Kensington. With Tsurugi and Touma we have influences from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and his other work Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy). Tsurugi seems to have more influences from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Touma seems to have more influences from Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy). In Ch. 74 “Taking A Seat” we even have Licht talk about Peter Pan’s shadow during the fight between Touma and Mahiru, and how Licht is sure that Mahiru will be able to sew it back.

Something people don’t realize is that mothers are a very important topic in Peter Pan. In Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) Wendy Darling is brought to Neverland by Peter so that she will be his mother and a mother to the Lost Boys. The pirates of Captain Hook even try to make Wendy their mother. There is even a talk where Peter tells Wendy that mothers are not that great and that when he went home to his own mother the window was barred and another little boy was sleeping in his bed. In Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens Peter is a seven-day-old infant. He become friendly with the fairies in Kensington Park and Queen Mab granted him a wish which was to return home to his mother. Peter feels guilty for leaving her behind, and he considers going back to live with her, but by the time he has said his goodbyes to the fairies and made his second wish his mother has given birth to another son, so Peter returns to the gardens heartbroken.

Another interesting tidbit of information is that one of the working titles for Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) was Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Hated Mothers. Something which fits in with Touma and his hatred for The Mother.

Quotes That Support Tsurugi’s Influences From Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie:

“Of course, it also shows that Peter is ever so old, but he is really always the same age, so that does not matter in the least. His age is one week, and though he was born so long ago he has never had a birthday, nor is there the slightest chance of his ever having one.”

Tsurugi does not know the day of his actual birth. He only has the day that Touma took him from his home to use as a birthday. Tsurugi is also a character that has had trouble mentally growing up. His spell Neverland showed his spirit as a young child, and Tsurugi himself was sometimes confused about how old he is like in Ch. 47 “The Tower” where he thought he was seventeen and then twenty-three.

“Perhaps you wonder why he did not swim across. The reason was that he could not swim.”

Tsurugi does not know how to swim, and Peter from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens doesn't know how to either.

“But the window was closed, and there were iron bars on it, and peering inside he saw his mother sleeping peacefully with her arm around another little boy.”

We know from Ch. 69 “Tsukimitsu Yumikage -The Moon-” that Tsurugi fears his “window” will be locked even if he goes back and this is related to his fear of growing up aka responsibilities and living for himself; instead of depending on others for his reasons to live.

Quotes That Support Touma’s Influences from Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) by J. M. Barrie:

“But she was exulting in his ignorance. 'I shall sew it on for you, my little man,' she said, though he was as tall as herself; and she got out her housewife, and sewed the shadow on to Peter's foot.”

Touma’s spell Daddy-Long-Legs (Nobody Knows) has Touma turn invisible and only his shadow is able to be seen. Licht himself references this in the manga when he talks about Peter Pan in Ch. 74.

“But of course he cared very much; and he was so full of wrath against grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was killing them off vindictively as fast as possible.” [Emphasis Mine]

Touma’s spell for Tsurugi The Blackbirds of Kensington has a reference to this quote in the words that activate the spell. The section of the spell has the words, “Breath five times in one second. Meanwhile, a single adult will die.”

“Now, if Peter had ever quite had a mother, he no longer missed her. He could do very well without one. He had thought them out, and remembered only their bad points.”

Touma seems to have a great hatred towards The Mother and to his own mother, but in Ch. 79 “Farewell” Mahiru calls Touma out by saying Touma actually did want his parent’s love and for them to call out his name with the words, “The ones that you truly wanted to call out your name are no longer here, isn’t that right?”

“Really there were whole weeks when, except perhaps with a stocking in the evening, she was never above ground.”

“And how ardently they grew to love their home under the ground; especially Wendy. It consisted of one large room, as all houses should do…”

These two quotes remind me of Tsurugi and his living underground in C3 since he was born, but these come from Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy), and we have to remember that it was Touma’s room that both children lived in for years underground.

Circling back to the topic of mothers and Touma’s mother and The Mother of Wrath in particular I have to wonder if Tanaka-sensei was trying to work out of the comfort zone with Touma’s mother. The two women are very much meant to foil one another. Hence why they share such similar physical attributes: the long hair, the voluptuousness, and even their clothes are similar. However, their personalities are completely different.

From what we’ve seen of Touma’s childhood and his single flashback to his mother in specific she’s a horrible person. She was an abusive parent to her son, and it’s highly probable that she gave Touma the scar on his face, and she was smiling while she did so. A reason I speculate if Tanaka-sensei was trying to work outside of the comfort-zone with Touma’s mother is that when writing female characters who are mothers Tanaka-sensei very much writes them as “good mothers” even when they do things that would be considered bad such as murder and adultery. They're very clean for lack of a better word. The Alicein wife committed murder, and yet she’s still presented as maternal cradling Misono to her chest. In the movie she even wears a white dress, a color connected with purity and innocence. With Misono’s biological mother she also holds Misono cradled to her chest in the photo she appears in, but she was also a woman who had an affair with a married man. In the movie she wears a light pink sweater, and pink is commonly associated with femininity.

Both of the women do things that many would consider to be “bad”, but Tanaka-sensei never really portrays them as anything other than sanitized mother figures. Even their deaths are “clean” with the Alicein wife being shown collapsed on the floor dead and Misono’s biological mother never being shown and just confirmed to have been killed offscreen. Even Hyde’s former female Eves the actress and Ophelia die off screen.

Compare these deaths to Lawless’s massacre of Tsubaki’s Subclass in Ch. 23 “~What Is Your Name?~”, the C3 squad that was annihilated by Shamrock and Higan in Ch. 72 “Shamrock -The Devil-” plus Yoshimasa’s death by Shamrock’s hands, and the disturbing pile of bodies smushed together to seemingly fit in a ritualistic circle in Ch. 71 “For That Reason”.

Not only are they “sanitized” from true gore and horror they’re all coded as maternal and go against what one would assume they’d be like: with a murderess you’d expect for them to be covered in blood (Alicein wife is completely spotless in her white dress) and with an adulteress you’d expect some sexy young woman who seduced a husband (Misono’s biological mother is dressed very modestly in her photo, and even returns a gift Mikado sent her). As character’s they go against what you’d expect.

With Touma’s mother on the other hand she is very much shown as a “bad” woman and seems to live up to the way she’s been visually coded. We only she her in the single flashback panel of her in Ch. 61, but from what we see she is: fairly attractive with long light-colored hair and a generous chest, she wears what seems to be a dress with a low cut similar to The Mother’s, and she not only has a lit cigarette, but she seems to be wearing nail polish and lipstick too. The way Touma’s mother is presented visually is as a villainous femme fatale or vamp. She’s also visually distinct from the other mothers in the series with her low-cut clothes showing her chest, her painted nails and lipstick, and she even smokes a.k.a something “bad” that no good mother would ever do. Compared to the other mothers in the series she’s completely “tarnished”.

She’s set up to visually be similar to The Mother of Wrath, but both are foils to each other in their personalities. Touma’s mother is almost the antithesis to motherhood and parenting because instead of a loving and nurturing protector she has harmed her own child and even seemed to enjoy hurting Touma as she’s seen smiling while holding her cigarette. In the opposite direction is The Mother of Wrath. She’s been shown comforting both Tsurugi and her Subclass with physical affection, and she takes on the role of protector when debris starts to fall onto her and Tsurugi shielding him with her own body. As well as saving him from drowning. She shuts down Tsurugi’s idea that he’s had a fulfilled life and confirms for him when he asks that she’s angry, but even when she’s angry she’s never portrayed as scary or dangerous. Instead she’s angry for Tsurugi not valuing his life more. The Mother was happily married to her Eve for several decades, and she lived on a farm cultivating apples. She had domestic happiness, and the nurturing and growth of living things ties into the nurturing associated with motherhood. The irony here is that as a vampire, an undead being, she likely can’t have any biological children of her own. This is also in contrast to Touma’s mother who seemed to have an unhappy marriage and family life that was likely abusive all around. Touma’s mother also lived in C3 which Mikuni in Ch. 51.5 “We Used To Have Meals Together” has noted, “It’s like a hospital with a horrible taste.” and goes on to compare it to a white box. The hospital comparison makes me think of the sterility of hospitals and Touma’s mother living in the sterile white C3 compound underground is a foil to The Mother who lives on a flourishing apple farm above ground.

How fun it would have been for Tanaka-sensei to contrast the two women and show both a well written female villainess and her spiritual opponent. That despite the physical similarities the two are incredibly different. Maybe even expand on Tsurugi’s inner search for a mother-figure in The Mother and include Touma as well. Because The Mother reminds him so much of his own, but The Mother is utterly different from the woman who gave birth to him. I imagine that The Mother is the type of parent Touma wanted when he was young, but he just can’t accept that she looks so much like his mother.

Mahiru & The Mother of Wrath

The end of Ch. 63 “Purebred” had Touma shooting at Mahiru, and then apparently leaving him for dead. I just wonder how and why Mahiru and The Mother didn’t come across each other. They were in the same room when Touma shot both of them. Mahiru waking up after his conversation with Inner!Kuro in Ch. 69 “Tsukimitsu Yumikage -The Moon-” and then Mini!Tsurugi not leading him to The Mother strikes me as odd. The Mother had tried to save Tsurugi, and he seemed to care for her or at the very least appreciate her efforts of trying to save him. So Mini!Tsurugi not guiding Mahiru over to her aid seems a bit out of place.

The Mother is one of the most emotionally mature people in the series. She has also shown great compassion for those she does not even know that well such as Tsurugi. If she had managed to find Mahiru in her human or wolf form then I do believe that she would have felt an urge to help him. Since they met up together all those months ago to discuss Tsubaki back in Ch. 5 “Choice” she may vaguely remember him as being her brother’s Eve.

She’s been shown to be impressed by the changes Lawless has gone through, and Lawless even remarks to her that Mahiru is the person who changed him and their big brother (Kuro) in Ch. 56 “A Windowless Room” with the words, “The guy who saved me… Who saved our oldest brother, wants to stop them.” In the frame Wrath seems to be a bit impressed by Hyde’s words and remarks that he’s matured a little. So, her having a good opinion of Mahiru doesn't seem too hard to imagine.

I also think having Mahiru & The Mother joined up together was originally planned, and then changed somewhere along the line, because we could’ve learned more about Mahiru’s mother and his past. All the male characters in canon who have looked upon The Mother have seen their own mother (ex. Touma & Shuuhei) or a mother figure in her (Tsurugi). If Mahiru had woken up in the dark after his mindscape adventures with Inner!Kuro and Mini!Tsurugi and then seen the face of his deceased mother I can’t even imagine the emotions that would’ve gone through him. Perhaps we could have seen some more flashbacks of her, and then Mahiru would’ve realized it was actually a Servamp.

There would have been introductions and small talk, and I believe The Mother would have suggested a contract between the two of them just like she did to Tsurugi a few chapters before. If only so she could gain strength and save the both of them from the crumbling C3. A name for her that I can see Mahiru suggesting would be his own mother’s name. Mahiru & The Mother’s team up could have been an interesting parallel to Kuro & Yumikage’s team up. Even more so when you think about the fact that Kuro & Yumikage fought Touma, so having Mahiru & The Mother fight Shamrock would have been a really great visual parallel. Not only because Touma and Shamrock are the two villains of the C3 arc, but because it fits very nicely. A Servamp and a C3 member (Kuro & Yumikage) fighting against another C3 member (Touma) and then a Servamp and an opponent of Team Melancholy (The Mother & Mahiru) fighting against a member of the Melancholy Team inner circle (Shamrock).

Mahiru also has some Jesus-like qualities in the series. His spear looks like a shepherd's crook, he wandered through Kuro’s mind-desert while Inner!Kuro, a demon-like figure, tried to dissuade him from his goal, and he and Kuro have a “Lion and the Lamb” feeling going on between them, and a title Jesus is known for is the “Lamb of God”. With The Mother of Wrath when I look at her with a Mahiru who has Jesus qualities I see Marian qualities in her. Especially in the title Mary the Mother of God because the Servamp of Wrath is known by the name “The Mother of Wrath”. The Virgin Mary is also commonly depicted wearing a blue mantle over a red dress in religious paintings, and red and blue combined create the color purple. If Mahiru and The Mother had joined up temporarily then they (stand in Jesus and Mary figures) could have been led by Iduna (The Star) to where Shuuhei (The Hierophant/The Pope) was fighting Shamrock (The Devil). Jesus and Mary could have arrived to help fight the Devil and admonish and support the Pope.

I also see some Odin qualities in Mahiru. Both wield a spear and one of Mahiru’s trump cards is The Magician, and one of Odin’s domains as a god was magic/sorcery. The Mother’s canon name is Freya, the Norse goddess of: beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seidr, and in Norse mythology Freya received half of those who die in battle at her heavenly field of Folkvangr and the other half went to Odin’s hall of Valhalla. Considering her connections to the battlefield where she met her Eve and that her Subclass were former soldiers having her name as Freya fits her nicely. With C3 so saturated with Norse mythology references it could have been interesting to see not only a Jesus & Mary team-up, but an Odin & Freya team up.

Iduna Nobel: The Guiding Star

With Iduna I feel she had for a long time been set up to be a guide for Mahiru. Even way back in Ch. 15 “Things Left Unsaid” she offered Mahiru information and insight to Shuuhei’s feelings on vampires. Throughout the C3 arc her interactions with Mahiru have been mainly through the relationships of others such as the Combat Team or Shuuhei. So, to have had her be a character that interacted directly with Mahiru and to directly support him would have been fun to see. Iduna’s trump card of the major arcana is The Star. This is the seventeen trump card and it represents hope and guidance, but it is more of a passive card representing inner calm. The way that I mean this is that The Star represents the bright possibilities that can happen, but they are possibilities they are not guaranteed to happen. In order for them to come to fruition you must stay on the right path and follow your guiding star.

(Also, getting a bit into numerology here, The Star being trump seventeen has connections to trump eight Strength. Visually both cards focus on a maiden figure, and both are connected to the number eight. Strength is trump #8 and The Star is trump #17 [17: 1+7 = 8]. This gives Iduna more connections to Mahiru because Ch. 59 “Strength” is most centered around Mahiru and Kuro.)

Iduna herself represents The Star rather well. On it’s card The Star has a maiden figure pouring out water from a jug. Iduna is a seventeen year old girl, and the water in The Star represents creativity. Something which she has been shown to have in spades. The Star overflows with creative energy and serenity, and it follows The Tower, trump number sixteen, so that there is a time of peace and healing from negativity. Iduna could have appeared to Mahiru and The Mother at one of their lowest moments when they’ve both been horribly injured by Touma (The Tower), and given them help and hope and guidance.

Another reason I believe Iduna was set up to act as a guide to Mahiru is the fact that in Ch. 64 “Pretended I Didn’t See” she is introduced trying to track down Mahiru with her ID card on her phone map. Historically stars have been used when traveling to figure out directions and orientation. There is also a thing called a compass rose which commonly comes in points of four, eight, sixteen, and thirty-two. The compass rose that seems to be most common is the eight-wind compass rose which covers: north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, and northwest. This is very interesting to me because on The Star trump card the stars that are shown have eight-points just like the compass rose, and both share a fairly similar shape.

I do genuinely believe that Iduna was originally being set up by Tanaka-sensei to be Mahiru’s navigator who guided him through the rubble of C3 in the dark.

Iduna Nobel: Finding The Inner Light of Hope

I know that Iduna has been thought to be a symbol of hope by some, and therefore be representative of her card The Star, but I offer up the idea that Iduna was instead in the reverse position of The Star. That by meeting with Mahiru, who has the new spell Elpis (Proof of Hope), she would meet the figure of true hope and therefore upright her trump card position.

I believe Iduna was in a reversed position of The Star because reversed The Star represents a block of creative flow, and a block from the hope and calm The Star gives. It can mean a deep insecurity that is masked by arrogance. Being too attached to a scenario and not looking at the details or being lulled into a false sense of security with a venture that has little chance of succeeding.

Iduna’s two main chapters where we learn more about her before her contract with the Servamp of Wrath are Ch. 64 “Pretended I Didn’t See” and Ch. 65 “Child of Wrath”. In Ch. 64 Iduna has a breakdown about her creation of weapons and wonders whether or not she really knew they were being used to kill when she had been told they were being used to only intimidate. With the title of the chapter I feel it goes deeper. Iduna herself did not want to see what her weapons were doing, and so she pretended and lied to herself so that she wouldn’t have to confront the truth. Ch. 65 shows her to be questioning her inner self and probing deeper internally for answers.

Something I found a bit odd about Iduna in the C3 arc is that she does not hate vampires like the rest of C3 who hold at minimum hostility of varying levels towards them. In C3 there is good reason to hate and fear vampires. These are the beings that have stolen away their children, something Yumikage feared as a child and now fears for Takuto, and have killed their friends and family who in the eyes of C3 members died in the line of duty. Fears which are all very reasonable and real. In some ways Iduna’s friendliness towards vampires reminded me of Tsurugi and his way of avoiding topics he didn’t want to think about, but Iduna has been shown to have had a loving family and encouragement from those around her, so it didn’t seem to fit her like it did Tsurugi.

Then we got Ch. 65 “Child of Wrath”, and I saw what was deeply hidden in her character. Iduna beneath all her friendliness and easygoingness does view vampires as weapons. The way the scene is framed is a bit odd, but we have Iduna’s inner thoughts of “You can’t regulate bombs in a world where bombs don’t exist yet. Vampires cannot be regulated in a world where vampires don’t exist yet. We question the pros and cons of every new technology that is brought forth.” Iduna correlates vampires to bombs, and views both of them as a new technology. She even has a frame in the chapter where Johannes randomly shows up and talks about morals and how things that do not exist in the world today will exist in the world tomorrow. Johannes, who canonly straight up tells Mahiru in Ch. 29 “In The Beginning Was The Act” the words “These monsters’ power were amazing… I mean, they would bring about victory for any country if they entered the war. The Greatest ‘Weapon’!!” [Emphasis mine.]

So the fact that Johannes appears in Iduna’s inner thoughts and she echoes some of his opinions makes me think that she had thoughts more aligned with his thinking than people realize. More aligned than she realized herself. It also could have been a great spot of character development to have her realize that despite being so warm and friendly to vampires she was really just the same as C3, and perhaps a bit worse because she was lying to those around her and to herself.

Iduna coming to terms with her very hidden inner prejudice against vampires would have been a great jump off point where her character could have been developed more and given depth. She could have come to realize that yes, she did view vampires as weapons, and so she viewed vampires as being subhuman just as much as the rest of C3. As it is Iduna is a bit of a false light of hope because she is lying to herself, and therefore can’t self-actualize. If she were to have met the Mahiru & The Mother team up though that could’ve been the starting point of her character development. Because she would have met the true light of hope, Elpis/Mahiru, and as we have seen Mahiru just has the effect of people changing for the better because of his influence on them.

Another way Iduna could have been developed as a character, perhaps in tandem with the point above, is for her to have come across Mahiru & The Mother, and to have a revelation about not how her weapons have been used in killing, but about how the organization she works for, the organization her parents work for, the organization into which she was born into is a form of corrupt justice. A weapon in and of itself is not evil. It is the intent behind it that can be malicious. Iduna may have created the new and improved vampire-killing gun, but she was not the one who went ahead and said, “Ok. Let’s kill these vampires for causing a ruckus.” We’ve seen Tsurugi, Junichirou, and Yumikage out fighting vampires in Ch. 41 “Magician Men-The Magician”. The vampires were at best causing a public disturbance, but were arbitrarily killed by orders of a higher up without even an arrest or a trial. We even get this exchange between Mahiru and Yumikage in Ch. 41 and Yumikage ends it by saying, “We don’t care what they did. This is our job.”

(We also have to remember that C3 has some connections to the government. We don’t know exactly how, but in Ch. 42 “Advice” when Mahiru is entering C3 on the sign-in screen there is an option for ‘Government Official’. It also makes sense that with C3 being such a large organization and having international branches that they would have what seems to be government funding and support.)

It would have been refreshing to see Iduna come to realize this. That the “Hero” of the Vampire vs C3 story she had likely heard growing up was wrong. In Servamp perspectives are important. They matter because depending on who’s viewpoint it is people become heroes or villains. To C3, an organization that has had their children kidnapped and used essentially as living blood packets until they’re too old, and has had many members, sometimes blood relatives or close friends, die from vampires the great enemy is “Vampire”. It is a word to be feared. So much has been lost to those beings. Shuuhei even tells Iduna in Ch. 73 “Iduna Nobel-The Star” the sentence, “There’s a friend of mine who went missing…” when he talks about how vampires in the area have gone down compared to when he was young. To the Vampires though C3 is tyrannical and oppressive. An organization of cold-blooded killers that won’t hesitate to kill them for the slightest of whims. To vampires C3 are the “Villains”.

This realization could have occured in Iduna by seeing The Mother and Mahiru wounded together. The Mother has been nothing but cooperative with C3. Allowing herself to be captured and being quiet in her cell after the death of her Eve who died the week before. The Mother/Freya has not even been given adequate time to mourn before being thrown into a jail cell. She has tried to save Tsurugi, and in this alternate universe of Servamp tried to save Mahiru. She is at her core a good person. Yet C3 has been nothing but horrible to her with her being jailed soon after the death of her Eve who she was with for roughly seventy-ish years or more, and with Touma brutally shooting her. She is an innocent who did not deserve this being done to her.

Mahiru could have had a more personal realization occur within Iduna. This is the person she tased into unconsciousness and kidnapped for C3 earlier in the series. We know from Ch. 14 “I’m An Adult That’s Society” that Mahiru was unconscious for almost six hours because soon after he wakes up and has his conversation with Shuuhei the distance limit kicks in and he begins to feel the side effects. Did Iduna realize how long Mahiru was unconscious for, and how her taser could have affected his health? I don’t think so; because at her ending in Ch. 15 “Things Left Unsaid” she asks about how Mahiru felt from experiencing the taser and her “sorry” does not even appear in the text box, but very small and on the outside of it. Almost like an afterthought. Mahiru is also an innocent who did not deserve any of the harm done to him.

Mahiru is the character of the main group who Iduna has interacted the most with in canon. He’s also a person she has personally harmed on behalf of C3, and even if she was young and just following orders it does not change the fact that she tased and kidnapped a sixteen year old. Seeing Mahiru bloody and with a broken arm in the dark and crumbling C3 building could have really hit home the point of the fact that it was a member of C3 who did this to him. A person from the organization she works for who is a member just like her, and I would have liked to see Iduna come to realize this internally, and then come to the desire that she wanted to change.

That she wanted to change herself who kept trying to avoid looking at reality by hiding behind a childish facade of ignorance. That good and bad were not black and white. That yes, she did know her weapons would be used to kill, but she didn’t want to acknowledge she might hold blood on her hands. That she had hurt an innocent person like Mahiru in the past and that she needed to do better, right here and right now. That vampires like The Mother of Wrath were not weapons or new technology, and that they were individuals just as much as she herself was. That it would be selfish to ask them for help when she and C3 have hurt them so much, but she wants to bring Shuuhei home to his mother and sister who love him.

This is the way I would have wanted to see Iduna to be written.

To be a character who has a moment of enlightenment, and while afraid to face and confront the fact that she was wrong to accept that she was, and to move forward and do better. Iduna has a great force of will. She was tracking down Mahiru all on her own in a breaking down C3. She does not lack courage or intelligence, and it is merely her fear of being complicit in wrongdoings that prevents her from self-actualization. No one likes to be wrong, or to have been a part of something that grievously harmed others intentionally. If Iduna had acknowledged that she was wrong, that C3 itself as an organization was wrong, it would have been a moment of great character growth, and also made her the second character besides Tsurugi to see that there are two sides to C3 and the vampires. That no one side are the true “heroes” or “villains”.

To have her go beyond her thinking of “I created these weapons I am at fault for everything.” and instead come to realize that yes while she created the weapons and needed to be more self-aware of the consequences that could arise from their misuse to realize that “The organization I work for is corrupt and kills living beings arbitrarily, and throws them into jail cells without trials. Even if I hold myself responsible for everything it won’t change the bigger picture. I need to change the organization itself.”

Iduna having these new insights and asking, begging, Mahiru and The Mother for their help, and saying she knows she shouldn’t ask because she and C3 have hurt them, but to please lend her their hands. Mahiru and The Mother being good people at their core would obviously accept her request, and Iduna would likely be floored that despite how much they have been hurt they still easily accept her request; they are still kind. Their acceptance and readiness to help invigorating her and driving her to do her best to help them physically while guiding them to Shuuhei, and also strengthening her resolve to do better in the future no matter the opposition she may receive from others.

To be a light of hope to others one must first fully believe in the hope that they offer.

Wrath Resembles Fear

With Mahiru and The Mother having agreed to join Iduna in saving Shuuhei they would have set off with Iduna leading the way. Maybe even with her flashlight to light the way being a call back to a star’s light guiding the way. Perhaps since Iduna would be worried about Shuuhei fighting an escaped Subclass, and Mahiru has experience with fighting Team Melancholy, the three of them would split up. Iduna and The Mother who are both in better physical shape than Mahiru running towards the Third Control Room, and Mahiru making slower progress to the room because of his broken arm. Maybe Mahiru even gives them his Spear-Lead because they’re going to be fighting a strong opponent and need all the help they can get.

When The Mother and Iduna had left we could’ve been given a flashback to what went down between Mahiru and Inner!Wrath when the contract was made just like when Iduna was shown to have a flashback to the making of her contract in Ch. 73 “Iduna Nobel-The Star”. Only this time maybe we’d have also got Inner!Kuro inside as well. Inner!Wrath and Inner!Kuro could’ve had small talk going over Mahiru’s head such as Inner!Wrath remaking “Such a long time since I’ve last seen you. How’s it been to have been sealed away for centuries? Being so small must be really irritating huh?” and just having two demons sniping at each other really. I think it’d have been pretty hilarious.

Mahiru & The Mother team up makes sense to me because in Iduna’s canon chapters we have her remark in Ch. 73 that “If this is “Wrath” then, it greatly resembles fear.” I think Mahiru was supposed to have met Inner!Wrath and gain this knowledge originally, and to have had it aid him in fighting Touma. I believe this because “Wrath Resembles Fear” is the title of Ch. 60. The main people that appear in the chapter are Touma, Tsurugi, and The Mother. Tsurugi and The Mother do not seem to be wrathful in the chapter, and instead it seems as though the title is talking about Touma. Touma who is the one who violently shoots The Mother in the chest into unconsciousness at the very end of the chapter. Iduna also uses the words “‘Wrath’ resembles a cowardly heart that is afraid of getting hurt.”, “‘Wrath’ resembles a weakness of trying to hide painful scars.”, and “‘Wrath’ resembles hurting.” when describing wrath in her inner mindscape. To me these all fit Touma perfectly. He fears his mother, he is afraid of being hurt by her, he literally hid his scar with a dressing when he was younger, and no one can deny that he’s been hurting from childhood to even his current adulthood.

In the beginning of Ch. 61 “The Second Generation” we see that while Touma is shooting The Mother he is having a flashback to a woman who bears a strong physical resemblance to The Mother and who is holding a lit cigarette. I talked about this back in the Wrath: The Incomplete Plot section and how this woman likely gave Touma the scar on his face and is likely his own mother. It makes sense to me that Ch. 60’s title is about Touma because in this instance we the readers can literally see where the seed of his fear comes from. Touma fears his mother, a person who was supposed to protect him, because she harmed him when he was young and vulnerable. Touma, like so many other male characters, likely saw his own mother in The Mother of Wrath. The physical resemblance between the two women is strong too, and he reacted instinctively to the person who had abused him so much that at the age of fifteen he planned her death.

Inner!Wrath being part of The Mother could have used Touma’s wrath/fear of her as an example to Mahiru. He also could have used Tsurugi as an example of someone who does not get angry when they should. With Touma’s wrath Inner!Wrath could have pointed out such fear to Mahiru, and then asked Mahiru why was Touma so afraid of him (Mahiru) that his feelings manifested. Mahiru could have rebuked this by saying that he’s barely met Touma-san for more than an hour in all the time he’s known him, and how could he cause such a person to be afraid of him?! Even if the interaction between Mahiru and Inner!Wrath did not answer this question; it still would have left Mahiru with something to chew on.

Inner!Wrath could also have used the anger Mahiru was feeling from Inner!Kuro showing him images of his past, and asked “What are you so afraid of?” (We the readers know from current chapters that Mahiru fears being alone and from Ch. 97 “It Has To Be Me” Mahiru has a flashback to a car, so perhaps Mahiru ran in front of a car and his mother saved him at the cost of her own life. But if this had happened in canon with a few more flashbacks shown then it could have left the readers thinking right alongside Mahiru.)

Mahiru’s talk with Inner!Wrath and fear being the seed of wrath could also have prepared him for what he was going to be walking into when dealing with Shamrock and his wrath.

Iduna Nobel “Twinkle, Twinkle (The Blue Star)”

While Mahiru is slowly making his way behind them, Iduna and The Mother could have been hurrying as quickly as possible to where Shuuhei was. Hoping that they’d get there in time to help and that they weren’t too late. In canon Iduna remarks to Shuuhei that they found his gun and his coat while on their way to him, so Iduna could have picked up the gun she created and decided that if push came to shove she would use it to protect those she held dear. Because as her previous growth has shown her it is not the weapon that is evil, but the intent behind it. It would make sense for The Mother to wield Mahiru’s Spear-Lead because she has the most combat experience, and it would give her offensive power to balance the defensive strength of her shield. Since C3 has a lot of Norse mythology going on too it could also have given her Valkyrie qualities. Iduna could point out the doorway leading to the Third Control Room and The Mother could have sprinted with a burst of speed through the door just in time to shield Shuuhei and beat down Shamrock with a well placed smack.

(I wonder if in canon Shamrock also saw his mother’s face in the moment The Mother was shielding Shuuhei. He has this look of shock/soft lostness on his face when they make eye contact with each other.)

Iduna runs to Shuuhei to check up on him because he’s, you know, bleeding on the ground, but then Shuuhei does like canon and tells Iduna to give him her new weapon, The Mother of Wrath, who he believes is her Servamp. Iduna who has had her small moment of character growth, and is still continuing her character growth, tells Shuuhei to shut it. That The Mother is not a weapon! That Mahiru and her have joined up and are helping Iduna to save Shuuhei! Even though The Mother doesn't even know Shuuhei, and Shuuhei has harmed Mahiru just like she (Iduna) has in the past! That she knows he’s upset and angry and nothing she can do will bring back his father, and that he’s allowed to feel that way and that his emotions are valid, but that doesn't mean he gets to be mean to her or to others. He’s yelled at her and stolen her guns for selfish personal reasons, and turned away all her attempts to help him. That he’s so focused on revenge that did he even stop to think what would happen to his mother and his sister if he died? How they would both feel?! So, no, this all stops now. He can be angry with her for the rest of his life, but at least Iduna knows he’ll be alive. So shut up Roki-kun and let people help you.

Shamrock then has his overflow of wrath like happens in canon.

This is where we the readers could’ve seen Iduna’s magic spell just like with Touma, Yumikage, Tsurugi, Shuuhei, and Junichirou. This is more headcanon area, but considering Iduna’s trump card is The Star I believe her spell would have been centered around the lullaby Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. For the name I’d guess and headcanon it be something like Twinkle, Twinkle (The Blue Star). Iduna’s spell being based off of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star fits narratively because Shamrock has The Nighthawk Star as one of his literary influences for his character and stars play a semi-important role in the story. It would also tie Iduna lightly to Tsurugi and Touma who have influences from Peter Pan. In Peter Pan the Disney version directions to Neverland are given as “second star to the right, and straight on till morning.” There is also Tinker Bell, and before Iduna’s name was revealed she was called “Tinker”.

The lullaby in it’s full version talks about how the little star shows it’s little light in the dark for the traveler when the sun is gone. Which fits Iduna’s narrative role as a guide and navigator for others, and Mahiru (who has connections to the sun) is not able to be present at the moment. Iduna can even been said to have superficial influences biblically perhaps even representing The Star of Bethlehem just as the Combat Team can be viewed as superficial representatives of the Three Wise Men, Shamrock and Shuuhei have the Devil vs the Pope conflict going on, Touma having superficial connections to the Tower of Babel, and I’ve already talked about Mahiru & The Mother having Jesus and Mary influences on their characters.

With Iduna’s spell I would imagine that it is more of a support type than even Junichirou or Shuuhei’s because both of their spells seem to have some offensive power. With Iduna being on the Development Team she wouldn’t need to have an offensive spell, so with The Star as her influence I imagine it as just being starlights and mathematical equations that allow her to pinpoint locations with extreme accuracy. Somewhat a mixture between Yumikage’s spell Cry For the Moon (I Am Already Complete) and Shuuhei’s Hawk Eye/Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Nobody In The Rye). Giving her a sphere of area where she can see everything, and move her stars to shine light where she needs to, but ultimately it has no offensive power. Iduna is creative however, and a large cluster of stars can blind a person momentarily. A plus side I can see to her spell having no offensive power is that she might be able to hold it for a very, very long time. Yumikage’s spell seems to have a time limit for throwing power around, and even Shuuhei’s Hawk Eye has a time limit as seen in Ch. 62 “I Will Strike Them For You”

Iduna & The Mother teaming up together. Iduna giving coordinates and directions, and The Mother being a powerhouse with her spear and shield. Women being awesome. The Mother knowing wrath intimately, and upon seeing the blue star of Shamrock’s wrath throwing Mahiru’s Spear-Lead at it and destroying Shamrock’s wrath construct. Her going in for the killing blow only for the Spear-Lead to be ripped from her grip, and she turns around only to find Mahiru in the doorway and he just says, “Haru.” Mahiru slowly walking over to Shamrock and asking, “What are you so afraid of?”

(We’ve not yet received the canon name for Mahiru’s mother, so in this meta I used my headcanon name for her “Shirota Haru”.)

Shamrock the Devil, the Nighthawk, the Metamorphosis

Shamrock as a character is pretty interesting. The C3 arc is where we get to see him in a more proactive role with more scenes and plot relevance. Before he just seemed to be off to the side as another Team Melancholy member, but here he has one of the leading roles. Shamrock’s been shown by his use of the magic spell Die Verwandlung (The Nighthawk Star) to have connections and influences from the two books Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) and The Nighthawk Star.

Die Verwandlung also known by the English name of The Metamorphosis is a German novella by Franz Kafka, and it tells the story of Gregor Samsa, a salesman, who wakes up one morning to find himself turned into a huge insect. We can see influences of The Metamorphosis in Shamrock’s spell. His arm looks like a giant insect’s arm, and he uses it to pierce Shuuhei. Shamrock himself is also shown via flashbacks to have been from the German branch of C3 which again ties into The Metamorphosis’s German origins.

A fascinating thing I learned while researching the book is that in the opening line of the original German version the word Ungeziefer is used in the description of Gregor’s transformation. It is a word that is hard to translate the meaning of into English, and so many use the word “insect” when translating it. Shamrock is shown visually multiple times to have imagery connecting him to an insect. The most insect-like picture I could find of him was in Ch. 72 “For That Reason” when he attacks Yoshimasa and kills him. The panel shows Shamrock as almost fully an insect. Ungeziefer is Middle High German and literally means “unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice” and is used colloquially to mean “bug”. Near the end of the novella Gregor Samsa dies alone in his room. Shamrock views his body as ugly, and it feels as though him viewing himself as something similar to ungeziefer wouldn’t be too far fetched of an idea.

Shamrock’s other literary influence is The Nighthawk Star by Miyazawa Kenji. In The Nighthawk Star the protagonist, The Nighthawk, is bullied terribly by the other birds because he is so ugly. The Hawk is offended by the fact that the Nighthawk has the word “hawk” as part of his name, and so tells him to change it. The Nighthawk responds that he can’t and the Hawk informs him that if he doesn't change his name and go with a sign around his neck introducing himself to the other birds by the new name that the Hawk will kill him. The Nighthawk is distraught by this, and flies away on his strong wings to say goodbye to his brother. Then when the sun rises the Nighthawk asks the Sun to take him to it, and tells the Sun “I don’t care that I’ll burn and die. Even an ugly body like mine will shine as it burns!” which is something that Shamrock says near word for word in Ch. 76 “Nighthawk Star” with the words “I don’t mind if I burn to death. Even an ugly body such as mine should emit a small light when it burns.” However, the Nighthawk is rejected by the Sun, and so tries then asking the East, South, North, and finally the West Star, but is rejected each time. The Nighthawk falls a bit from exhaustion, but then with renewed vigour soars into the sky, and when he opens his eyes from exhaustion he finds that his body has become a beautiful light.

Shamrock’s trump card of the major arcana is The Devil trump number fifteen. Which is very cleverly used by Tanaka-sensei in Shamrock’s fight against Shuuhei who’s trump card is The Hierophant (also known by the title The Pope). The Devil is a card that represents restrictions, obsession, negative behaviours, and addiction. It often represents being a slave to your desires, and enslaved to a relationship which may have started out positively, but now has become negative. The Devil’s influence over Shamrock is shown visually in Ch. 76 “Nighthawk Star” where his wrath takes on the form of a horned demonic looking creature, and via his obsession with Yoshimasa which has been carried for almost two decades since Shamrock died. If we had been shown Mahiru fighting Shamrock then we could have had our Jesus figure fighting the Devil.

Shamrock’s flashback in Ch. 62 that shows us he was part of the German Branch allows us to speculate that C3 is international, and Shamrock even implies that he is half-Japanese or has Japanese ancestry with the words, “It’s because I’m of ‘eastern origin’.” Yoshimasa in one of the next panels asks Shamrock if he intends to memorize Japanese to which Shamrock replies he doesn't. I don’t know if Yoshimasa meant memorizing the kanji, but it seems as though they’re speaking Japanese fluently to each other. So, maybe Shamrock grew up in Germany with a German father and a Japanese mother and that allowed him to understand and speak Japanese, but not to read it? If I were to go into headcanon backstory territory I’d base Shamrock’s past and family off of Gregor Samsa, or maybe even Franz Kafka.

With Shamrock I feel as though he wanted to die, and in both The Metamorphosis and The Nighthawk Star the protagonists Gregor and The Nighthawk died at the end of their stories. We have Ch. 62 “I Will Strike Them For You” where at the end of the chapter Shamrock committed suicide by shooting himself in the head he was so overwhelmed and full of emotions that Yoshimasa would leave him behind. Narratively this could have mirrored Touma and concluded their paralleling arcs. Touma narratively “dies” with the collapse of C3, and is thought to be dead until his phone call with Tooru. With Shamrock I feel Tanaka-sensei was going for a death ending in a somewhat similar way to The Nighthawk’s.

Orion the Blue-White Star of the West= Mahiru

Canis Major the Blue Star of the South= The Mother

Ursa Major the Blue Star of the North= Iduna

Aquila the White Star of the East= Shuuhei

Following Mahiru asking what Shamrock was so afraid of I feel Shamrock would just ask to be killed. In Ch. 77 “The Hierophant” he just easily accepts the idea of death by Shuuhei’s hand, and I honestly don’t think he would have minded dying. He was just so tired, and the person he wanted to see was no longer there. In The Nighthawk Star the Nighthawk first asks Orion, then The Great Dog, then The Great Bear, and finally Aquila to take him (kill him). All which refuse and then The Nighthawk flies so high he dies and becomes a star of light.

In following the plot of The Nighthawk Star I believe Shamrock would have first asked Mahiru, then The Mother, then Iduna, and finally Shuuhei to kill him. Shuuhei, like in canon, would have struggled with his decision on whether or not he wanted to kill his father’s murderer now that he was right within his grasp, but right before he decided he didn’t want to I feel Higan would have come across them like in canon. Only Shamrock would have taken the full brunt of Higan’s attack that was meant for Shuuhei, and just like Gregor Samsa and The Nighthawk who influenced his character Shamrock would have died. Finding the peace in death he had never found in his life as a vampire.

The Final Confrontation

After Shamrock’s unexpected death everyone would have been too shocked by the turn of events to really process what had happened. It all occurred so fast. On Higan’s part I feel he would have just fled the way he came because of the intense remorse he’d feel for killing someone he viewed in a warm way like he did the rest of Team Melancholy. The rest of the group left behind would still be in shock, and Shuuhei the most because for some reason his father’s murderer had decided to save him. “Why? Why did he save me?” It’s an unanswered question he’ll have to wonder about until he dies.

Someone, perhaps The Mother or Mahiru, would remember that they were looking for Tsurugi. Iduna would offer directions, but say that she needed to stay behind to look after Shuuhei, and also so that she can give directions to others that might be stuck or lost in the dark and rubble. She says to go on ahead with the directions she’s given, and if they get lost she’ll tell them where to go over the speakers. Mahiru & The Mother set off to where Tsurugi is, and Iduna turns to Shuuhei and maybe gently places a hand on his shoulder and tells him that they have work to do.

When Mahiru & The Mother do make their appearance to fight Touma I imagine it would be just as quietly impactful as it was in the original canon where Mahiru just silently walked up and his presence was known. The Touma vs Mahiru & The Mother showdown is something that could have tied up so many loose ends. Touma seeing Mahiru teamed up with a woman he sees the face of his own mother in, and with the name of a woman he likely had feelings for (Shirota Haru), could have stirred up memories and flashbacks in him like we were given with Shamrock. Touma facing Mahiru & The Mother also has him face off against two innocents whom he tried to harm for completely selfish reasons. Having Mahiru & The Mother face off against Touma would also serve as a reminder to Tsurugi that people wanted to save him, and that they are still trying their best despite the hurdles in their way.

Mahiru could have said to Touma’s face the question he’d been thinking over since his conversation with Inner!Wrath “Why are you afraid of me?” Touma is a character that focuses heavily on control, just look at his spell that blindfolds Tsurugi and uses him like a puppet, and to imply that Touma is scared of a sixteen year old, which he genuinely is but not for the reasons Mahiru thinks, would definitely rile him up. Touma and Mahiru have also been shown in their interactions with each other to be oddly truthful with one another. Their argument/conversation in Ch. 63 “Purebred” is some of the most straightforward talking I’ve seen either of them do. Touma tells Mahiru bits and pieces of his past and talks about how “truth” is subjective. Mahiru tells Touma that he’s tired of all the secrets and lies, and that C3 and Kuro are troublesome and he doesn't like it.

Having Mahiru & The Mother together would get Touma emotional and even more volatile. I’d expect him to explicitly target The Mother because of her resemblance to his own mother, and maybe while fighting Inner!Wrath would show up to Mahiru and remark upon Touma’s wrath towards The Mother. Giving Mahiru some words that would make him think that Touma’s mother was the one that he feared. If Mahiru asked the words, “Did she, did your mother hurt you?” I imagine Touma would pause for just a moment, and then become furious and focus on Mahiru. Maybe even try to shoot him point blank in the head a second time.

Fighting against Touma with Kuro and The Mother, and using his Elpis (Proof of Hope) to find out more of Touma’s childhood with his mother and maybe even stumble upon some memories containing Mahiru’s mother. Because those seem to be the two women Touma’s had the most impactful relationships with for better or for worse. Though with Touma being mostly focused on The Mother I’d imagine most of the memories would be about Touma’s own mother instead of Shirota Haru. Mahiru confronting Touma in the mindscape tower, and having the conversation like in canon. Having Tsurugi, the one person who never gave up on Touma, be there like in canon to save Touma. Only after the debacle of C3 to have Mahiru still be left wondering, “Why was he afraid of me?” paired together with the question, “My mother was part of C3? How did she and Touma-san know each other?”

I’d even say that Touma could have been shown as a young teenager in his tower mindscape; around the age he looked when he kidnapped Tsurugi, or when he killed his parents. Touma like Tsurugi is a character that did not grow up in some ways. It would be an interesting parallel to Tsurugi with whom he shares Peter Pan influences. Tsurugi as a young man is more similar to a young child, but Touma as an adult in his mid-thirties could have been portrayed in his mindscape as a teenager. Even the memories Mahiru gets the most information from is the one where Touma is in high school with Tooru. When Tsurugi thinks of Touma back in Ch. 54 “Climbing a Tower” he visualizes Touma as a young child. This is partly Tsurugi’s blindspot towards Touma, but also a bit accurate because Touma just like Tsurugi did not grow up in certain ways. Touma’s a bit paradoxical in that he’s presented as an adult and coded as such, but in other ways you get subtle hints that he’s a bit childish. It’s also important to notice that Touma isn’t a captive maiden in the tower figure, but that he willingly chose to be in his Tower.

When Touma is first fully presented to us the readers in Ch. 44 “I Am Your Treasure” on the very last page he has a distinctly “villain” vibe. He’s introduced as laughing at the screen that shows Tsurugi currently being strangled by Mikuni’s “My Fair Lady” and casually talking to himself that Tsurugi’s playing with Mikuni and comments that he hasn’t told Tsurugi he could die yet. Then he’s shown to ignore the female assistant who’s come to inform him about a phone call from the president. He’s also shown with a cigarette and smoking is usually coded as something “bad”. Then in Ch. 47 “The Tower” he literally walks into the infirmary room and just towers over Mahiru. He seems to be able to turn on charm with his self-introduction to Mahiru, and Yuikage and Junichirou acknowledge that they can’t keep up with his pace of talking. In some ways Touma reminds me of a James Bond villain. If he wasn’t so well written as a villain I’d almost call him cliched. All of these attributes: the literally towering physique, the smoking (and alcohol is implied as well because in Ch. 47 Tsurugi mentions he’s been to a lot of business parties that Touma dragged him to, but Tsurugi’s minor so he can’t drink), and the smooth talking that allows him to easily get under the skin of people like Yumikage and Junichirou all give the impression that Touma is an intimidating villainous adult male. We haven’t even gotten to the part where we learn he has a gun and has committed murder multiple times and gotten away with it too.

On the other hand we the readers also see some childish and immature actions from Touma. A big part of Touma’s desire is to be acknowledged. As a child and as a teenager he wished to be acknowledged by his parents, and is even implied by Mahiru in Ch. 79 when he says to Touma, “The ones that you truly wanted to call out your name are no longer here, isn’t that right?” to still want their acknowledgment right after Touma monologues about wanting to become a special existence and to never have his name be forgotten. Touma and Mahiru even have the parallel between them wanting to be someone’s pride: Tooru for Mahiru and Touma’s parents for Touma. In Ch. 56 Tsurugi’s flashback shows Touma’s floor has tests with high grades on them scattered about. Compare that to Ch. 68 where Mahiru has handed Tooru a paper, likely a test, and Tooru remarks, “Great job Mahiru! You were the best!”, and then Tooru is shown a few panels later praising Mahiru to someone on the phone because Mahiru is a fast runner and the class representative. Ch. 68 also has Mahiru’s internal thoughts of “I felt like if I could become someone’s pride, if I could become your pride… then I’d have a reason to be here.” which ties in with Touma’s question to both Tsurugi and himself from Ch. 56, “What are you even living for? You,... and me.” It’d have definitely been an interesting direction for Tanaka-sensei to take and explore.

Since Mahiru & The Mother would have only a temporary contract with each other once the 24 hour period was over The Servamp of Wrath would be free from any contract item that could be destroyed, and so Tsubaki could not target her. This would be an interesting development because if Mikuni joined up with Team Melancholy then Tsubaki might just target Jeje since The Mother of Wrath is no longer an option on the table to go after.

Conclusion

I think that having Mahiru & The Mother team up together was definitely a possibility Tanaka-sensei was thinking of, but it just did not happen in canon.

The fact that mothers are such an important theme in the Peter Pan stories really makes it seem as though The Mother of Wrath had a larger role to play with Tsurugi and Touma. Even with Mahiru and his own feelings towards his mother, but Mahiru’s feelings are more centered around guilt rather than fear and abandonment. I would have loved to see more memories of Mahiru’s mother, and to learn more about Touma’s childhood from his perspective rather than just Tsurugi’s memories as a child and Mahiru finding out about Touma’s teenage years through Elpis. I also would have loved to see Shirota Haru from Touma’s perspective. What attracted the both of them to each other? It’s left us readers with answers that only Touma holds because he’s the only one from that relationship still alive. I’d take even a bonus chapter like Hyde and Tsubaki have received to get more insight to their history and see Touma’s inner thoughts about the relationship.

With Iduna I do feel she was supposed to support Mahiru because the way she had been set up from the beginning of the manga gives that sort of feeling. Also, by the time she created her contract with The Mother of Wrath in Ch. 65 “Child of Wrath” she had appeared in the manga a total of eight times: Ch. 13 “Towards A Happy Summer Break”, Ch. 14 “I’m An Adult That’s Society”, Ch. 15 “Things Left Unsaid”, Ch. 46 “Ace”, Ch. 50 “The Hanged Man”, Ch. 51 “Screams”, Ch. 64 “Pretended That I Didn’t See”, and finally the chapter where she creates her Servamp contract Ch. 65 “Child of Wrath”. The way her character had been portrayed from Ch. 13 to Ch. 64 makes me think that in Ch. 65 she was supposed to have come across Mahiru & The Mother, or the chapter was going to be in Mahiru’s mindscape and focus on Touma who has been shown to have such intense emotions of wrath that they manifest just like Tsubaki’s melancholy.

As I said way, way back in the opening of this meta, I acknowledge Iduna and Freya are canon, but I genuinely can’t help but think that Mahiru & The Mother were being set up together as Servamp & Temp-Eve. I worry about Iduna and Freya as female characters because when you look at the three female characters who have parameters assigned on the Servamp wiki: Otogiri, The Mother, and Usami Mitsuki. You see that the extra/special ability given to them is “Breasts”. Characters like Belkia have “Gaudiness”, Touma has “Smoking”, and Dodo has “Driving”. It’s only the women who get the characteristic of “Breasts” assigned to them, and frankly I’m disappointed. Otogiri could have been assigned “Dexterity”, The Mother could have been assigned “Farming”, and Usami Mitsuki could have been assigned “Marksmanship”. They did not need a category to measure their chest size.

It’s because of that parameter on the Servamp wiki that I worry about what Iduna is going to be assigned as her special/extra parameter. Will she also receive the category of “Breasts”? With the information we have it is sad to say that there’s a very big chance the answer is “Yes.” Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised at this point because out of the female characters we’ve seen, mostly the mothers of our characters, they don’t even get names. We don’t know the names of Mahiru’s mother, Mikuni’s mother, or Misono’s biological mother. Kurumamori Shifumi, Takuto’s mother, gets a name, but she’s also killed off before the start of the story. Licht’s mother seems to be the only woman happily married, enjoying her career in music, and who hasn’t faced tragedy or violence, but we still don’t have a name for her. Even Ophelia who we have a name for died in the series, and not even a peaceful death in old age like The Mother’s former Eve instead Ophelia died via execution.

We haven’t seen Iduna or Freya since Ch. 89 “Hostage”, and it makes me wonder if Tanaka-sensei is ever going to show them interacting with others in the Gluttony Arc. Maybe when we get more focus on the Red Lantern Children Tsubaki created? I don’t know. We don’t even know how Freya has changed after her contract item was destroyed. There’s also the fact that female Eves in the series tend to die or be killed, and Iduna seriously deserves better than that. Adding salt to the wound would be her dying, and Tsurugi making a contract with The Mother. If Iduna does die I’m never going to get over the fact that she could have been portrayed with a Temp-Contract and did not have to be killed off.

With Shamrock in canon I feel a bit unsatisfied with the ending of his narrative in the C3 arc because as I pointed out in Paralleling Villains: Touma and Shamrock I feel he and Touma were paralleling each other in their narratives. So, with Touma having “died” in the collapse of C3 I have to seriously wonder if Shamrock was being set up to die. His literary influences also have their main characters die at the end of their books, so it's not hard to imagine his death as a possibility.

A reason this meta came into being is because I was originally thinking of Mahiru’s mother and her relationship with Touma. In a way we can see why Touma might have found Shirota Haru attractive, but currently there is no information on how she viewed him, so we can only speculate. So, I was reading Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) by J. M. Barrie and Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster to try and figure out what influence they could have had on Touma and his romantic life. Oddly enough I speculated before my readings that Touma was attracted to Shirota Haru because she was the exact opposite of his own mother, and perhaps found in Haru his “ideal” woman who could fulfill both the role of “Lover” and “Mother” a woman that would be sexually available to him as a lover, but still take care of him and love him unconditionally like mother. It’s a bit Freudian and also an unrealistic expectation to have.

Then I read Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) and found out that Peter wanted a mother, so maybe my slightly Freudian hypothesis wasn’t so far off? In the story there is also a part where Peter is a little scared of being a father figure to the Lost Boys because that would mean he is a grown-up, “I was just thinking,” he said, a little scared. “It is only make-believe, isn't it, that I am their father?” (Barrie. Peter Pan [Peter and Wendy]) From the one scene we have of Tooru confronting Touma with the fact that he’s Mahiru’s father in Ch. 82 “Sudden Change” Touma looks shocked, and I think he did not want to be a parent considering the history he has with his own.

Another thing I found really interesting while reading is that Peter returned home and found another little boy sleeping in his bed, and I wonder if Touma never got together with Haru because she had given birth to Mahiru, and so Touma would, for lack of better words, no longer be the sole receiver of her attention and affection. When analyzing Touma I sometimes believe he is jealous of Mahiru: Mahiru grew up in a loving home and was a beloved child. I also believe with Touma’s character that he might have viewed Haru loving Mahiru as choosing him over Touma. In a way his character is a bit childish and immature. Which fits with the Peter Pan theme. He might also be jealous of Mahiru because as I pointed out a bit in The Final Confrontation Touma wanted to be his parent’s pride. Something he didn’t succeed in, but not through lack of trying. Then there’s Mahiru who is Tooru’s pride and who had both Tooru and Haru’s love. It would fit in with the childish aspects of Touma’s personality to be jealous of the child he never wanted receiving so easily everything Touma wanted as a child.

My final conclusion to be drawn from this meta is that while I think the Mahiru & The Mother team-up was a serious contender for a storyline it just did not come into fruition in canon.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope you enjoyed the meta. You’ve now read around ~13,000+ words of writing. I apologize for any grammar and spelling mistakes as well as any problems with the picture formatting.

References:

Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan [Peter and Wendy]. Duncan Research, 1991. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/16/16-h/16-h.htm.

Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/26998/26998-h/26998-h.htm.

Pictures:

@ailisia: Ch. 41, 44

@hello-vampire-kitty: Ch. 64, 65, 71, 72, 74, 77

@faecakes: Ch. 56, 61

#servamp #servamp meta #shirota mahiru #the mother of wrath #kamiya tsurugi #touma taishi #servamp freya #iduna nobel #servamp shamrock #this is so long

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