#but at that point the series turns full shounen

[lesbianfakir]

"#if anyone cares send me an ask id love to ramble about my issues with how mangahood are structured" oh? owo?

ANON YOU ARE MY HERO!! You have been warned these are my personal taste opinions and don't necessarily reflect what makes a "good" story

I have two main points that sort of tie into one: I think fma makes more sense as a smaller scale story.

Under the readmore because this got long:

Yes, it’s a shounen of course it eventually has a grand arc with the world at stake. I can’t really blame it for that. But at its core the story is about the Elric brothers’ love for each other, and their loss of innocence as they venture out into the world that's hurt them so. We care about them, about their near impossible struggle to right a mistake and get their lives and bodies back. And we see how cruel and horrible the world can be through the eyes of children. Keeping with mangahood’s hopeful tone we also see how good the world can be, and imo this works best in the smaller interactions ie winry helping to deliver a baby, the hughes’ family’s generosity to the elrics and winry, etc. The jump from a character driven story (Edward wants to save his little brother) to a more shouneny plot driven story (Edward needs to save the world) takes the focus away from a lot of what I find compelling about FMA.

3/4's of the way into mangahood the Elrics are sort of subsumed into the plot at large and the story doesn't come back to them until Al makes his sacrifice. If I'm being honest, the final battle feels a little contrived to center our protagonists when the whole conclusion could've been written with them at the center to start with (that said I LIKE the end of Brotherhood, this is just a personal taste for story structure thing).

Now obligatory 03 ramble, in contrast 03 keeps the Elrics centered throughout. The final battle isn't much of a battle at all. And sure, it isn't as grand. But it feels in keeping with the heart of the story--Dante is going to kill Alphonse so she can live forever. The whole series up until this point is about Ed trying to save Al, it makes SENSE for this to be the conclusion. The brothers' codependent love comes to a forefront with each unwilling to let the other die, even at the cost of his own life. In this way not only do we begin and end with the Elrics, but we've stayed with them the entire time. 03 is a much more character driven personal story and that's where its charm lies.

My second and bigger issue with the structure of mangahood isin the way it uses large-scale tragedy to fuel its plot.

There are better posts than I can make already written about how mangahood centers the feelings of the perpetrators over the victims. What I will say is the fact that the ishbal war started due to an “accidental” hate crime against an ishbalan child by a military officer is a very sensitive topic and hits close to home (I’m American and this is a very, very relevant conflict). It feels a little in poor taste to me to take something so political and so sensitive and go ahaha but you see it was ENVY all along! Arakawa picked a very heavy subject as the backdrop for her story and sort of relegated it to that: a backdrop. What’s presented as a racially motivated genocide actually was just the bad guys being evil. It falls just short of a real, in-depth criticism of the military. Instead we are left with good men and women who were just following orders (which she DOES explore to a good extent and I appreciate how she does not shy away from making it clear what they did was unforgivable). The corrupt military being corrupt because it is the pawn of a big bad inhuman god-wannabe just... falls flat for me.

In 03, the child's murder at the hands of the police is a fabricated story created to "explain" the genocide--instigated by the military without provocation. And this happens because one, powerful human selfishly wanted to extend her own life. This is the story that feels more true to life and dares to really engage with the themes presented instead of writing them off as some plot device. Not to say that 03 didn't have its own problems with its depiction of genocide because. oh boy nazis in shamballa?? HUH!.

Anyways again these are all my opinions. I think FMA has a lot of heart, and it works best on a smaller scale in order to tell a more personal story.

[liquidstar]

do u have any recs for folks newer to the yuri genre? I've never really read any manga other than shounen and some magical girl stuff

Omg i can totally give yuri recs. (And which ones to stay away from. Sakura Kiss has cousin shit in it, Citrus has stepsister dubcon, Dragon Maid has lolicon, Happy Sugar Life is also lolicon but it’s edgy about it and tries to act like this makes it deep, we can do better)

Anyway here’s my actual recs! I'm going to give details but if you don't wanna read them I bolded all the titles.

YuriKuma Arashi (By Ikuhara of Revolutionary Girl Utena fame), is about lesbian bears. But it’s actually a metaphor for the simultaneous objectification and demonization of lesbians, the expectation both for purity and predation. There are some nitpicks I have with it like the sexualization being a bit too much to bring the point home, but overall I do like its themes and its message. And I think the ending pulls everything together really nicely. There is both a manga and an anime, and I believe the anime came first. I’ve only seen the anime so I’m not sure if/how the manga deviates!!!! 

Bloom Into You is an absolute must. Like, for real, I think it’s one of the best romances out there, yuri or otherwise. It gets really deep into both characters' respective psyches and the ways that they’re both Very Screwed Up when it comes to love and romance, or really just life in general. Giving details would be doing them a disservice honestly. Both characters are very messy but also do try their best to genuinely communicate, and what comes of that is a lot of teenage lesbian drama, but the growth they both experience though it TOGETHER is just great, and you can tell they care about each other so much.

Okay this one I’m not really recommending for the good writing, it’s more-so just really cool. Liberta (EXPLICIT) is a series about a vampire who can turn her body into guns and a human woman who is sick of being seen as lesser in her ordinary life. And then they fall in love and are vampires together. The artstyle and character designs are awesome and it has some really cool fight scenes. However it also has full blown barely censored sex scenes. A few of them. One of the women uses her tail at some point. If that’s not what your cup of tea is, give it a pass. 

Anyway for something more wholesome you should check out The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All, which I’m actually not fully caught up on bc life, but has still been a super fun read so far. It’s about a girl who works at a music store, and her classmate who gets a crush on her while she’s at work. The classmate doesn’t realize that they’re the same person, due to her looking different at work, and thinks her worksona is a guy. Hijinks ensue. 

Otherside Picnic is also highly recommended. Its manga adaptation is lagging behind the light novel, which I can’t find a translation of online (But if anyone can help me out w that 🙏). The story itself is about two college students who go on adventures to a parallel plane of reality, which contains cosmic horrors who can only communicate with humans through fear so intense it will make you go insane. They’re also looking for someone who went missing, and gain cool powers like Ghost Hand and Sans Eye. Yes this is still a yuri series and it’s also really really extremely fucking cool. 

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat, is a slice of life story about… Well exactly what it says. A woman with a passion for cooking, making lots of food and sharing it with her neighbor, and they end up bonding through this. It’s also like, cool to see a big butch woman for a change! The story itself is very straightforward but I love watching the relationship progress as well as the mc question her sexuality. This story will absolutely make you super hungry though.

Show Me Your Bust (EXPLICIT) is also exactly what it says on the tin, though it’s technically a webtoon. Again this is a series with explicit sex scenes, but it actually does have a story and actual depth to its characters. Honestly there’s a lot to unpack with all of them and a lot of the relationships aren’t totally healthy but it’s a drama so that’s the point. 

A Monster Wants To Eat Me is actually hard to describe without spoilers. It’s about a girl who lives by the sea, meeting a mysterious girl with eyes that remind her of the ocean itself. The girl says that she’s actually been looking for the mc for a long time, and it’s revealed that….

And lastly I wanna mention Hanamonogatari, a story about an old widow who begins to regain confidence in herself as she experiments with make-up with the help of another old lady who works at a local cosmetic store. Honestly it’s very very very sweet, it’s rare to get romances like this of old women when so much of the focus of romances (yuri or otherwise) is often on the characters being attractive. I also really appreciate how the make-up is being used specifically to accentuate their wrinkles. Not hide them. Because aging is beautiful too. Sadly IVE ONLY READ TWO CHAPTERS BECAUSE I DONT THINK THE REST ARE TRANSLATED IF ANYONE OUT THERE CAN HELP ME PLEASE DO 🙏

[zur1s]

writing anything about vagabond is genuinely so insanely tough because, vagabond is just so intimate with its character writing. more so, just the general handling of the whole story. each and every chapter is hand crafted with a care inoue adds in every brush stroke or text bubble. its simple yet intricate, every illustration⸺changing and shifting with the washing tides of vagabond's storyline. the art style is unmatchable, the arcs, beautifully gory just as they need to be. the ripple of a lake, the slash of the blade, a rare smile amongst the lonely woods. vagabond can be small and intimate, then explosive and physical. a blade can be something to admire, to compare to the mastery of a samurai⸺then stripped to an item to kill. vagabond is so simple, the chapters in the life of a man and the fight against death. there's something so supernatural the way musashi has avoided death for years, but each and every piece to his survival falls in so right. to become invincible under the sun, a statement that twists and turns as musashi evolves. it holds weight, but by the end it's simply a wish of a much more younger man. things change, and change, then comes the spell of regret. but the morning sun comes up and the world will never wait, so comes dawn on kokura.

vagabond is filled with spiritual themes and intense writing that is new as it is antique. inoue knows how to use his art to improve every plot point and he knows how to write a story as impactful as his art. it's no wonder vagabond has been on hiatus for nearly a decade. this tale of the samurai musashi miyamoto is dear, beautiful, intimate, thoughtful, deadly, visceral, but most importantly, breathtaking.

when writing my thoughts down about a series, i look at the media and take a grasp at the things it tries to say, to communicate, maybe. i take my soul and ask it what has this done? and how badly has it ruined me? but when writing about vagabond, i simply can't begin to start about the beauty in this story and how much it has left me with. when i try to recollect the chronicles of this lone ronin from miyamoto village, i get lost in thoughts and pieces of it that i can barely connect. i lose so easily to this legend, from a long far off land, many, many moons ago. every arc, chapter, and even page, holds more things to unpack and rethink. it's so hard to understand in full the epic that is vagabond, to make sense of the winding brush strokes that inoue places⸺as messy as the life of these dear children of twenty-eight years old. when shounen mainstays like jjk or kny have a collection of themes you can pick apart and savor, vagabond has a ballad unreadable but ever so beautiful. how i want to understand it.

[i-heart-hxh]

hai i was wondering if u have an analysis on what happened between greed island arc and chimera ant arc. so basically greed island arc was all abt killua and gon and them reaffirming their friendship and making their bond stronger. they were also (especially gon) being affectionate with eachother. we saw their friendship grow even more during that arc. so then why did togashi just junked that growth with chimera ant arc? like right after their beautiful friendship growth, chimera ant arc comes in and completely ruins it. killua started having doubts, uncertainties, and questions abt his friendship with gon and his worth next to him. and then gon being closed off and not being open with killua anymore, rejecting his help even tho he always accepted it especially during greed island arc, and lost his affectionate personality against killua. tho im not rlly smart on these so i decided to ask if u have an analysis on this (^^; also, im not hating on togashi, ik he has his reasons and his way of writing. im just confused if theres a hidden meaning behind that sudden clash between gon and killua.

Hello!

There are a few different aspects of this I'd like to discuss, I hope they'll help clarify for you why Gon and Killua's friendship took the turn it did!

So, first off, I strongly believe Togashi had Chimera Ant Arc (or something similar to it) in mind when he began the series and established the characters. If you go through the series again after having experienced CAA, there is a ton of build up and foreshadowing of what happened--from Gon's issues with guilt and self-esteem and feeling he has to prove himself by being strong, to different characters' reactions to his unusual ways of viewing the world/moral compass and even wondering if he's a "monster."

There are a few different points at which Gon and Killua's relationship is hinted to be heading in an unhealthy direction. When Gon tells Killua in Yorknew that it's okay if he (Gon) dies, but it's not okay if Killua dies, and that Killua needs to act as a brake for him. The dodgeball match shows Gon and Killua's trust in each other, but also reveals a darker side to their relationship wherein Killua self-sacrifices for Gon while Gon forges ahead, even knowing Killua is being hurt. (This scene is complex and certainly not entirely negative, but it definitely raises some red flags.)

Gon ignoring the plan they had and getting his arm blown off in Greed Island in order to be more personally satisfied with his fight against Genthru is another clear indication that something is not right with Gon. And in general with Killua, we see him struggling throughout the series with expressing to Gon how he actually feels, which ends up contributing to what happens between them.

Togashi was building up these fault lines between them throughout the series, knowing that eventually they'd be thrown into a situation where they'd be in above their heads and things would blow up between them. So, rather than thinking of it as, "Togashi built up this beautiful relationship and then ruined it," it's more like, "Togashi built up this beautiful relationship with full awareness that things were eventually going to get painful and complicated between them."

Hunter x Hunter exists in contrast with most other shounen series. If you watch much shounen you get to know the tropes and expectations--some of which include the power of friendship being able to overcome all obstacles, teens being participants in violent wars/battles without much long-lasting effect on their mental health, and sudden power ups to beat the odds in the middle of battles. Chimera Ant Arc takes all those expectations viewers have about a shounen series (and far more) and intentionally twists them--Gon majorly spirals when someone he admired dies and he's not emotionally prepared to cope with the grief and guilt surrounding this; when Gon has his huge power up to defeat an enemy he normally wouldn't be able to it's horrifying, brutal, and comes at a terrible cost; and Killua is unable to step in and save the day before major damage is done, no matter how strong their friendship is.

By twisting the readers' expectations, Togashi adds a lot of emotional weight and depth to the series that it wouldn't have otherwise. This includes the difficult turn that Gon and Killua's relationship goes in, which reminds us that the two of them are just kids in the midst of something terrible and traumatic, that both have come into their friendship with their own issues from their upbringings, and it makes the series far more emotionally realistic and hard-hitting than it would have been otherwise. It's also a logical growth for their relationship, based off some of the concerning hints we've seen earlier.

As for why exactly their relationship became complicated, the short version is that Gon struggles to cope with the grief of losing Kite, and pushes Killua away out of a feeling of needing to "take care of it himself," particularly because he feels incredibly guilty for what happened to Kite and thinks it happened because of his own weakness. He doesn't want to involve Killua out of a sense of it being his own problem and, in a way, to protect Killua, because Gon won't hesitate to throw his life away to assuage his own guilt.

Meanwhile, Killua also has his own guilt over what happened to Kite (remember, he was the one who decided to flee from Pitou and take Gon with him) and how that ends up affecting Gon. I think he understands that Kite is likely dead all along, but he can't bring himself to express this to Gon out of fear of how Gon would react and the ways this might affect their friendship. Killua ends up deeply impacted by Gon wanting to do this fight alone, and also by Gon's "relationship" with Palm, which both make him wonder if Gon sees him in the same way he sees Gon. Instead of talking with Gon about the possibility Kite is too far gone to save, and clarifying how Gon feels about him, Killua quietly decides he might die alongside Gon, worst case scenario, and that he needs to leave Gon ultimately in order to protect him.

I've said it before, but I do have a lot of hope that Gon and Killua will reunite, reconcile, and heal their friendship in time. I believe Togashi intends to give them a chance to reflect and heal over what happened while he goes back into Kurapika's story (plus the other billion characters in the current arc), and Gon and Killua will be brought back into the series when it's their time to shine again.

I hope this helps you understand a bit better why things ended up the way they did. Feel free to let me know if you're still uncertain about anything!

[h-worksrambles]

To be a Good Dog, or an Enemy of the World: Models of Masculinity in Shelter

Shelter is a very easy game to treat lightly when you first start it up. A bright colourful visual novel about anthropomorphic dog men, with clear Shounen anime influences in its tone and aesthetic. Charming, funny and unabashedly horny, Shelter presents itself as a game about a group of aggressively quirky treasure hunting doggos getting into all kinds of shenanigans amidst a post apocalyptic frozen wasteland. But to my surprise, not only did I find a game with unexpectedly rich worldbuilding, some sick action scenes (especially for a visual novel) and some genuinely powerful emotional payoffs. But it turns out Shelter has some surprisingly relevant things to say about constructs of masculinity and how they affect queer people. Full spoilers for the everything up to the most recent public update below.

Much of the story of the game revolves around Luke, the overseer of this technologically advanced home for lost Canines, and, apparently, one of the only known remaining Humans, as well as his three closest friends, and our three route characters: Burry, Rune and Max. We follow three alternate timelines where Luke spends the day bonding with one of the three, and, during the recurring event of Skies Ablaze, struggles with his identity as the only human in a giant facility full of anthropomorphic dog men. When Shelter malfunctions and is overrun by monsters, we witness three alternate ways the attack can play out. And in the course of this, the magical nature of Skies Ablaze as an event causes Luke to experience the memories of one of the three route characters. Through this we see the events that brought them to Shelter and how they became the self actualised people we see in the main game. That’s an extremely basic rundown of the gist of the game. But what I think makes this interesting is what we learn about the what the three used to be like before they joined.

All three of the route characters were in the service of one of the other powers that make up Shelter’s setting. Burry grew up along his many siblings only to be contracted as a scientist by the Wolves. Rune likewise was raised to be a soldier by the Wolves from birth. And Max was a spy and assassin on behalf of the Felines. It’s a common joke in the fandom to say that ‘everyone in Shelter is a war criminal’ but there’s definitely a major component of these dogs all being obligated and indoctrinated to serve corrupt systems of power, that lead then to do deplorable things. Burry begins research into the nature of Monsters, which leads him to turn the Wolves’ living test subjects into Monsters in a series of horrific experiments. Most shockingly, this included all of his own siblings. Rune, as the latest incarnation of the legendary hero, Moon, is trained to become the champion and general of the Wolven army and key to their expansion. Having been wrenched away from the only father figure he ever knew, he has taken countless lives in various campaigns, preparing himself for the moment when the power of his past lives finally manifests and his individual consciousness will fade.

Max is the least clear due to his route being unfinished, but we do know that he along with his brother Atri were trained not just to kill by the Felines, but also to hate and repress their own identity as Canines. To think of themselves as Felines, not being given a chance to choose that for themselves. Even in the present day, this still has an effect on Max. He struggles to relate to the other dogs, to adopt their mannerisms. Because he spent years being told that part of him was shameful and he should aspire to be something else.

So what’s the point of all of this? Well, while on the surface, Shelter is a fairly straightforward story of redemption, of people who have all done bad stuff in the past finding a home where they can make a fresh start and live better lives, it becomes very interesting when read through a queer theory lens. In fact, one starts to see some very pertinent points about the societal cishet masculine constructs that queer people have to exist in every day.

A recurring idea that comes up in the cast’s past is their instinctive desire to be told they’re a ‘good dog’. It’s a validation Burry craves as a scientist and Rune craves as a soldier. And sure, there’s a basic anthropomorphic element that they’re dogs who want to be praised. But what defines a ‘good dog’ in this context? Well, in a word, obedience. To live up to a very rigid social standard of what’s expected of them as a Canine, and crush any impulse that tells them otherwise. Burry must be cold and rational as a scientist, quashing his own empathy to perform disgusting experiments. Rune must be a constant image of strength as the legendary Hero. Always fighting for the sake of others and never showing a hint of weaknesses or vulnerability. As Luke points out, if his purpose is to save others, then who is going to save him? All three characters have to deny a part of themselves to live up to what arbitrary wider forces of power or culture have decided they should be. The realisation of this causes then to voice one of Shelter’s arc phrases:

“This World, truly, is Hell.”

And it is something they are only able to shake off when they are among the other dogs at Shelter. Or, in other words, when they are among other queer non conforming men, both literally and metaphorically. This is marked by then declaring themselves as having become an ‘Enemy of the World’. They have rejected the identity that was assigned to them by those in power, and have chosen one that lets them live as their best and true selves. Even when it may cause others to see them as a deviant or even an enemy.

Another factor that leads me to equate caninehood with queer masculinity is the fact that pretty much every named character in Shelter is male. Only one character with female pronouns has even been so much as mentioned so far in the text. Now there are other meta reasons for this. Shelter is an MLM centric, very NSFW game. One of the core draws of the game is to bang a bunch of hot muscular anthros, with very traditionally hypermasculine bodies. But when the game chooses to explore these themes of repression, identity, rigid social constructs and healthy self expression, it’s hard not to see a commentary on masculinity being made if every character is very pointedly, a guy. Now, I don’t want to imply that only queer men will get anything out of Shelter. I think these themes can resonate with any queer person. But I do think that when Shelter is read through the lens of being about the effects of toxic masculinity on queer people, it gains additional resonance.

In addition I think this lens of caninehood equalling queerness is also seen in the overt, casual sexuality of the dogs at Shelter. Luke is already friends with benefits with all three of the route characters before the game even starts. The player can have Luke hook up with other characters like Thistle and Alon and it has no negative consequences as no one really cares about that sort of thing. Again, this is to be expected in a smutty gay furry VN. But it does serve the point about queer celebration and expression. These characters can now be themselves here, whatever that entails. Homophobia is not really brought up as a concept in this game (again, with practically no female characters there are no straight relationships to be propped up as more desirable). But the spectre of it lingers metaphorically in the game’s subtext. There is a conflict between what other forces claim a ‘good dog’ should be, and what caninehood means to these characters.

So how do our characters break free from these masculine constructs? Well, in many ways, because of Luke. Burry, having left behind his masters after deciding he could no longer work for them, goes into hiding in the snowy wastelands beyond Mozeburk. Trying and failing to save his brothers’ souls. He finally meets Luke, half dead in the snow, where the two band together and ultimately discover and establish Shelter. The two devise a magic to restore the souls of Burry’s brothers which Burry calls on in the present day during the final battle. Burry believed he had been irreparably warped by his complicity in the systems around him. That he was no longer a Canine, but a monster still worse than the ones he created. But he reinvents himself through finding connection with someone who believes in him, and who he believes in too. His love for Luke gives him a new purpose and identity. He now lives not for the sake of obedience but for loyalty. The toxic idea of what it means to be a dog is reimagined as something more positive. Kind of like embracing a healthier understanding of masculinity.

This applies to Rune as well. Before he felt he could never express his own weakness due to his socially mandated role, and awaited the total loss of his sense of self. He even ends up imposing those harsh systems on others by intending to take Shelter away from Luke and Burry and hand its powerful technology over the Wolves. Meeting Luke causes Rune to reconsider everything he once thought about himself. And it culminates in him manifesting the power of the Hero not in himself, but in Luke. He allows himself to be saved, to be emotionally vulnerable, to be sexually liberated (as it is around this point that Rune starts engaging freely in casual sex). He comes out, both literally and symbolically, not as the Hero, but as Rune. He trades closed off stoicism for boisterous earnestness. Again, a newer, healthier form of canine masculinity. And while Max’s flashbacks have not yet been elaborated on, I fully expect them to follow this theme.

There is also something to be said about how, within Shelter, they take on new roles that have sometimes culturally bern labelled as not being stereotypically masculine. Burry is the tavern cook. Rune, while ostensibly the chief of Shelter and head of defence, spends most of his time as a teacher for the other dogs. And Max shines as a musician. There too they take on gentler, nonconforming images of masculinity, ones in which their queerness can shine.

And key to all of these arcs, is Luke himself. I would posit that, if Shelter is about a bunch of traumatised men learning to embrace and celebrate their queerness, then Luke, narratively, is queerness personified. His own struggles as the only Human among the dogs represents a near universal queer experience. He wants to be accepted, to be as much of a canine as they are. But he is othered for something he was born as, something he can’t control. He is bullied and isolated by Teak, who is himself a walking hotbed of every toxically masculine trait in the book to drive this home further. In fact, between his hang ups over the physical differences between him and the dogs and how this eats away at his perception of his own identity, you could potentially read Luke’s arc as metaphorically being about gender identity, as he comes to realise that those arbitrary differences he was born with don’t make him any less of a canine at heart. But, as a random cis dude, I kinda feel like that’s not really my analysis to make beyond the broad strokes, even though it’s worth bringing that up.

He undergoes many relatable queer hardships But he also embodies the positive transformative power of queerness. Giving Burry someone to love and live for. Becoming the Hero for Rune to allow the latter to be true to himself. And accepting Max even though he is far from a typical Canine. In the present day story, Luke is the one who undergoes a character arc, compared to his friends/lovers who all go through theirs in flashbacks. In an act of queer solidarity, these now self actualised men are able to help him when he struggles with his identity and purpose in a way that mirrors themselves. Like Burry, Luke struggles with his sense of duty, keeping Shelter running smoothly at a distance, versus what he wants in his heart. Like Rune, he bottles up his emotions to act as the support for everyone else, and learns to confide in them and ask for help (all while stepping once more into the role of the Hero during the final battle, taking on a power only a canine could wield and proving his true nature once more). The Enemies of the World find home, support and empathy with each other, even as that World tries to quash them.

Of course, not only is the story incomplete but I’ve only scratched the surface with Shelter as a game. I could go further into characters like Teak, Alon and Cooper and how they all reinforce these themes in various ways. Or mine further details from the rich worldbuilding. Or even discuss the meta significance of the game’s multiple endings through the Barkest Corner. But my point was really to discuss what made Shelter so special to me. It’s a goofy, gorgeous, shameless visual novel with a lot of polish, a lot of porn and an even bigger amount of heart and sincerity at its core. It tells a moving queer narrative draped in a fantastical veneer and does it incredibly well. And I can’t wait to see how Rausmutt plans to bring it to a close.

[misrepresentedmorallygrey]

And Round 1 is Done!

PROPAGANDA

"Picture this: the love of your life betrays you and causes your death, then you're brought back to life later against your will and your lover is with your reincarnation. Anyone would feel bitter! She tries her best to keep living her half life and helping people. She's hated just because she's not the main character and gets in the way of the show's OTP."

"Kikyo was such an interesting character. She was murdered by the villain, who tricked both her and her love interest into thinking the other had betrayed them, brought back to life against her will only to find that fifty years had passed, the world had moved on without her, her baby sister was now an old woman, and she'd been condemned to an awful half-life in an unfeeling clay body where she was stuck in her worst moments and basically a vengeful spirit, but she eventually managed to move past it, gave up her one chance at getting revenge on her murderer to save the life of a child, and achieved some measure of inner peace before she died for good. But, she also has the misfortune of being the first love of the male lead, so of course the only thing anyone seems to care about is how she supposedly did him dirty and wasn't good enough for him. The whole fandom is chock full of meta posts about how she didn't trust Inuyasha enough and should have known he'd NEVER betray her like that. Meanwhile, Inuyasha fell for it just as easily when the villain framed HER for attacking HIM, but nobody ever tries to claim that HE didn't trust HER enough. (For further context, when she thought he'd betrayed her, she retaliated by pinning him to a tree and putting him in an enchanted sleep. He retaliated by destroying her village.) In at least 90% of the fanfics that she appears in at all, she's either the Bad Girlfriend or the Evil Ex, who either previously or is currently abusing the hero, or cheating on him, or trying to coerce him into turning human, or dating him for years only to break up with him by telling him he disgusts her because of his demon blood (huh???), none of which she did in the actual canon, solely so the preferred love interest can swoop in and kiss it all better. People will claim they're just making valid criticisms of her actions (which, to be fair, aren't always great), or saying she didn't properly earn her redemption (which is actually pretty standard for a shounen series) because she didn't apologize enough, but them multiple male characters who did far worse than she did somehow miraculously managed to escape the constant criticisms that she's subjected to, this despite having a so-called redemption that's literally just "He stopped eating people because he wanted to get into the heroine's pants", and remain very popular characters both in their own right and as alternate ships for the female lead. The double standards are so glaringly obvious, yet people will bend over backwards and jump through mental hoops that would give a gold-medal Olympics gymnast pause to insist that they're being completely objective and fair and that this isn't just about trying to score points in a ship war or holding female characters to completely different standards from male characters."

Kairi Propaganda

"The Kingdom Hearts game series is about Mickey Mouse battling the forces of Darkness with an alliance of fashionable anime boys. Kairi is a major character, and one of the few female characters. She is part of a trio of childhood best friends, with the protagonist Sora and their other friend Riku (who had a villain arc and then a redemption arc). Though Kairi is constantly and clumsily sidelined by the canon narrative, she arguably has more backstory going on than any other major characters. She is a refugee from another planet. She implicitly lost her beloved grandma at five years old in the traumatic destruction of their hometown. She was kidnapped and experimented on by an evil wizard-scientist—she escaped thanks to having a magic charm that basically teleported her to her soulmate(s). Then she had to adjust to living on a new planet and being adopted by a new family. In the very first game, when she's 14, she turns out her pure heart is one of 7 in the entire universe to be free of Darkness—she shows a full emotional spectrum of fear, sadness, frustration, defeat, but she isn't vulnerable to corruption. In KH2, she becomes one of the Chosen Ones who wield a magical weapon called a Keyblade. She loves her friends very much, and she has the unique talent to instantly recognize them even when they've been transformed into monsters. She has saved them several times with nothing but the Power Of Love in her heart randomly manifesting in, like, telepathy and teleportation and resurrection—she doesn't even consciously know that she has powers, her love is just so great that it's accepted as a tangible force of nature. She is frustrated and ashamed by her role as a damsel in distress, and she wishes to be stronger and combat-capable so that she join her male friends on their adventures instead of waiting around where it's safe. Also she was kidnapped by an evil assassin clown who's ten years older than her, and then they became friends. NOT ONLY does the fandom plug its ears and claim there is nothing interesting about this character and no potential in her story—Kairi has been demonized by the fandom for about 20 years. Somehow Kairi is useless and boring while also being a Mary Sue at the same time. She was called a bitch and a slut and a whore. She was hated for wearing too much pink and wielding a girly weapon with a floral design. She was criticized as a slut for wearing a short skirt, and for THE PLAYER being able to manipulate the camera into a contrived angle to look up her skirt to see her panties in the first edition of KH2. You can find nearly 20-year-old fanfiction and fanart of her being twisted into an evil schemer driving her friends apart, and of her being gleefully brutalized and insulted. Haters STILL comb for every crumb to make elaborate anti-canon theories about why she's an agent of evil, even though canon has FIRMLY ESTABLISHED for TWENTY YEARS since the very beginning that she's THE ONE CHARACTER incapable of growing Darkness in her heart. The theory is that she exists only as a puppet sent by the main villain to sabotage her friends (the plot for two out of the four main female characters) for all ten years of their friendship. The theory is that she's been using her powers to force her friends to love her—and their Power Of Friendship that is the EMOTIONAL BACKBONE OF THE STORY, and THE MAJOR FORCE OF GOOD IN THEIR UNIVERSE, and THE MOST CONSISTENT MOTIVATION FOR THE HEROES is all Just Misdirection LOL building up to a shitty Plot Twist. The theory is that she's secretly a custom-manufactured Chirithy (a cute talking animal companion that serves and guides humans)—and not a human girl with her own natural feelings and aspirations. AND THEN after stripping her of every important trait and role, these fans claim they're making Kairi more important and interesting than she is in canon. I don't know what causes the fandom to so desperately hate a sweet 14-year-old girl who literally canonically never did anything wrong."

[medea10]

My Review of Rurouni Kenshin (2023)

If you grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, chances are you’ve come across this title.

Rurouni Kenshin’s original anime aired in Japan from 1996-1998. It managed to make it out west with being licensed by Media Blasters and aired on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block in the early 2000s. With 95 episodes to its name, Rurouni Kenshin was pretty popular everywhere. In later years, a couple of OVA’s were released. One of them was a prequel that was never seen outside of the manga. The second one was a sequel to the main series that goes in a different route from the manga. And the third was a retelling of one of the series best moments.

And just laying it out there, yes, this series is sadly also known as “Samurai X”. I say “sadly” due to what was done to the series with that name. What with the bastardization of people’s names and what have you! The name of the series is Rurouni Kenshin. If you see that other name, turn around and don’t look back.

Now, does this series live up to the hype? Yes and no. While this was one of Japan’s most rewatched animes of all time, the series could have been better. Pretty much everything after what is known as the Kyoto Arc is seen as garbage to many. In some cases, they’re not wrong. It’s just a sea of fillers until the series ended in 1998. I guess some of the blame could be that they changed studio hands during the run of the original anime. Studio Deen has such a lousy reputation for messing with a good thing.

Case and point, Rozen Maiden 2013!

It’s just that when Kenshin gets into the swing of things, it’s a thrill to watch. So, having a retelling of the story and have it be faithful to the manga is welcoming for long-time fans and curious newbies.

Just. One. Thing. Though.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Nobuhiro Watsuki is the creator of Rurouni Kenshin. Back in late 2017 while he was releasing more Rurouni Kenshin in manga form, it was discovered that he was in possession of child pornography. This news alone is an immediate red flag, drop everything, cancel this bro right stat now kind of thing. What happened was he was arrested, paid a fine, and went back to releasing his manga after a several-month hiatus.

Obviously, everything about the story is disgusting. I’m not sure how much child porn was removed from this man’s place but I feel like it was somewhere between what Jared Fogle had and a fuck-ton. And now every fan is having this moral dilemma of watching this anime if it’s supporting this man. When it comes to me, fuck yeah, I’m still watching it. Do you have any idea how many things I still watch where the original creator is a fuck-bucket? And don’t lie, you probably do the same. Ren and Stimpy, The Loud House, Rick & Morty, Earthworm Jim, all of these and more are the product of some sick ass-banana. Just keep that in mind before tossing stones. You all know who you are and you all aren’t squeaky clean in what you watch. None of us are.

In the end, it’s your call to make on watching this or reading anything else that comes from Watsuki. Certain companies have made their call already when it comes to Rurouni Kenshin. Weekly Shounen Jump still prints whatever Watsuki puts out. Viz Media however has put an end to the latest Rurouni Kenshin manga that’s been put out in the last few years, but has kept the original manga up.

OKAY, NOW LET’S ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT THE ANIME: I know it’s a lot to go over, I just felt it necessary to do the frank discussion before I talk about the anime. This anime is a full reboot. That means, it’ll be a different studio animating it, it will supposedly take after the manga instead of diverting into a different path like the original series, and yes, the cast will be different. Which cast? All of them!

Rurouni Kenshin goes like this. It has been well over a decade since the end of a brutal war. With the entering of the Meiji era, peace was assumed as weapons like swords are banned. Of course, that won’t stop people from killing. And the never-ending fight with the government can cause this peaceful time…it was never really peaceful. Kenshin Himura is a wandering rurouni. He carries with him a double-edged sword despite the sword ban law put in place. Prior to this moment, Kenshin was known as “Hitokiri Battosai”, a ruthless killer. But after certain events, Kenshin swears to never kill again.

One day, he meets a young girl named Kaoru Kamiya. She’s the owner of a dojo that specializes in a certain style. At first, she confronts Kenshin thinking he is the dreaded Hitokiri Battosai. Most of it was a misunderstanding because yes, Kenshin is that, but he’s not the one using the name in vain and using Kaoru’s fighting style. After several incidents between the characters, Kenshin decided to set up shop and stay with Kaoru at her dojo. Eventually, two other characters join along. Yahiko, an orphaned boy who is training to be a great swordsman one day. And Sano, who once served during the brutal war is now a bit of a drifter. But he’ll have Kenshin’s back when they’re in a battle.

BETWEEN THE NEW SUB AND THE NEW DUB…AND EVERYTHING ELSE: I’ve gone on in length about the dubs to Rurouni Kenshin in the past. Prior to the 2023 remake, there were a total of three English dubs. The first one was for the original television run featuring Richard Cansino, Dorothy Elias-Fahn, and Wendee Lee. This was dubbed by Media Blasters. The second one consisted of the OVA’s featuring folks like Shannon Weaver, Gray Haddock, and Katherine Catmull. These were dubbed by ADV films and later Sentai Filmworks. And as for the third dub, that would be Sony’s sad attempt at redubbing Rurouni Kenshin filled with bastard names, a bastard name title, and new voices.

In the beginning, I was hoping for the absolute best-case scenario when it came to an English dub for this retelling. When it comes to me, I will always pick the first dub and that is for one big freakin’ thing. Steven Blum voicing Makoto Shishio. That and I always thought Richard Cansino was the best Kenshin. I’ve already been disappointed when Sentai didn’t reunite the original cast when retelling the Kyoto Arc several years ago and that’s why my skepticism is in play here. Plus, I’m pretty sure some of the original dub cast has already retired from voice acting. Sadly, the original voice for Misao (Philece Sampler) passed away in 2021. Much to my dismay, there was a new cast alright. Who they are was the bigger question.

Crunchyroll dropped the episodes without warning three months after the premier and without stating who would be in the cast. That’s certainly out of character for them. They get chatty when showering the masses who is going to be in an English dub cast everywhere they can including all social media platforms. I would have chalked it up to the SAG-AFTRA strike. But then I remembered, Crunchyroll has a conniption when it comes to that certain union. Plus, it never stopped them before as they’ve been whoring other English lists that same week this dropped. So, the obvious reason has got to be fear of having the audience badger the cast for being in Rurouni Kenshin after what the creator did. Only Kenshin’s voice actor came forward a week after the actor’s strike. The rest, most of us had to guess. Except for Yahiko, he just sounded like an angrier Gon. So, it’s Erica Mendez.

Just so you know, Aniplex had a live festival with seiyuus promoting the shows they’re on back in September of 2023. And what do you know, Souma Saitou and Rie Takahashi were on stage promoting Rurouni Kenshin. Out and about, no one getting doxxed, threatened, hate-mailed, or anything of the sort. I have a few scattered thoughts here. First of all, if there’s any bad-mouthing of Rie Takahashi of any kind, you and I are going to have a problem. Second of all, American fan-bases are fucking toxic and would harass the voice actors relentlessly to the point of no return. And third, why couldn’t they just come up with some fake-ass alias names for the English cast? On the other hand, I’ve seen how people on social media has harassed voice actors over trivial bullshit and it’s only getting worse. So, I kinda understand why this happened.

As for the sub, yes, the voices here have changed. So, when I originally watched Rurouni Kenshin, I watched nearly everything dubbed. It wasn’t until much later when I stumbled upon the sub, I discovered that Kenshin was voiced by a woman. Now, I’m getting another case of whiplash as I’m getting used to hearing Kenshin having more of a manlier voice. With all of that said, here’s the cast of Rurouni Kenshin 2023!

JAPANESE CAST: *Kenshin is now played by Souma Saitou (known for Diavolo on Jojo’s Pt. 5, Yamaguchi on Haikyuu, Kain on Rinne, and Miyano on Sasaki to Miyano)

*Kaoru is now played by Rie Takahashi (known for Ai on Oshi no Ko, Megumin on Konosuba, Emilia on Re:Zero, Sumi on Rent-A-Girlfriend, Ena on Laid-Back Camp, Mash on Fate/Grand Order, and Tomo on Tomo-chan is a Girl)

*Yahiko is now played by Makoto Koichi (known for Elza on Interspecies Reviewers, Young Jun on Tomo-chan is a Girl, Sumika on Yuri is my Job, and Sakura on Lycoris Recoil)

*Sanosuke is now played by Taku Yashiro (known for Friede on Pokemon Horizons, Natsuo on Domestic Girlfriend, Kouichi on Horimiya, Vulcan on Fire Force, and Arai on Chainsaw Man)

ENGLISH CAST: *Kenshin is now played by Howard Wang (known for Piers on Pokemon Journeys, Anastasia on Jojo’s Pt. 6, Kokonoi on Tokyo Revengers, Atsushi on Lovely Complex, Goshiki on Haikyuu, and Chuusaku on Komi-san)

*Kaoru is now played by Risa Mei (known for Futaba on My Senpai is Annoying)

*Yahiko is now played by Erica Mendez (known for Gon on Hunter x Hunter, Haruka/Uranus on Sailor Moon [redub], Ryuko on Kill la Kill, Raphtalia on Shield Hero, Retsuko on Aggretsuko, and Megumin on Konosuba)

*Sanosuke is now played by Darius Johnson

SHIPPING: Can I delve into this topic without going off the deep end and bringing up spoilers?

No, not really. These spoilers are over 30 years old. Deal with it.

Kenshin x Kaoru is a ship that has set sailed into the sea. No matter how much sex appeal Megumi can throw at it! Trust me on the matter, it’s a signed deal. I know that it almost seems one-sided in these 24 episodes, but that’s how it is.

WHAT TO COVER: In a reboot, you’ve gotta see what this version kept and what they didn’t and if it’s all in the right part of the story. Of course, we get the stories everyone is used to with this series like Kaoru being duped by that old creep and the debuts of Sano and Yahiko. Near the halfway mark, we’re already introduced to Aoshi and watched Kenshin and Sano take on the drug lords that were using Megumi. There have been a couple of episodes dedicated to some familiar storylines like Sano’s old comrade and the young lad Yutarou who wound up on the wrong side of the blade. Meanwhile, I’m squirming around in my seat waiting to hear something from a certain awesome villain. I have made no secret to loving the Kyoto arc and its main villain, Makoto Shishio.

Come episode 19, I heard his name uttered and know that it’s coming up.

Wait a sec! There are only 5 episodes left in the season. If this studio dares to even cram the whole Kyoto arc in that short amount of time, I’m throwing this entire media out the window. There’s gotta be a second season. Even if it’s only like 12 episodes that covers the span of the Kyoto arc, it’s better than the worst-case scenario. Thankfully, they did not cram the entire Kyoto arc into an episode. No mad man would ever do…Studio Deen would do that.

Case and point, Rozen Maiden 2013!

I am now being informed that I have already insulted Studio Deen’s attempt with Rozen Maiden twice now in this review. Let me get back to what I was saying. Thank the great good lord those guys are not in charge of Rurouni Kenshin again.

Actually, two of these episodes were a flashback episode that was originally an extra chapter to the manga. And if you’re wondering if this flashback episode contains Kenshin back when he was the legendary manslayer, it does not. It’s a story of Kenshin a couple of months prior to meeting Kaoru and the rest. For Kenshin’s past…just watch the OVA’s from 30 years ago.

The final episodes of the season set the stage up for the Kyoto arc with the introduction to Hajime Saito. Ten years prior, he was a bit of a rival to Kenshin back when he was the noted manslayer. Now, Hajime is part of the Shinsengumi. Kenshin and Hajime end up facing off like back in the day and he wound up reverting back to his manslayer mode.

Apparently, Kenshin can turn off that mode with a punch in the face.

As one does! The last time Kenshin was in that mode was when Kaoru was kidnapped earlier in the series. This time, Kaoru’s voice had no effect. This moment leads to Kenshin’s crucial decision at the end of the season. After the spar, he is confronted by Okubo Toshimichi, the man who has been trying to make the Meiji era a more peaceful time. He asks Kenshin for help of taking out a certain someone. Yes, it’s Makoto Shishio. Also known as, the man who just won’t die. Case and point, he’s been stabbed, knocked unconscious, and even set on fire. He’s still standing! Hell, he’s even known as the new Hitokiri Battosai manslayer. Kenshin gave this a lot of thought as he wants to remain peaceful and never kill again. Unfortunately, he’s given no choice when Okubo…well, he…

He fucked around and found out!

One of Shishio’s commrades (Soujiro Seta) murdered Okubo and sent a stark warning to Kenshin about going forward with anything brash. Kenshin truly wants for a peaceful nation and doesn’t want to kill again. In the final moments, we see him have a few precious moments with Kaoru before proceeding to leave her.

DON’T CRY, FANS! HE AIN’T GONE FOREVER! But a season two must, must, must, must, MUST COME!

Thankfully, two days after the finale we get the announcement that Rurouni Kenshin is indeed getting a sequel in 2024. Unknown to when in 2024, if the same studio will be doing it, how many episodes it’s going to be, or if Steven Blum is going to return as the voice of Shishio. Seeing as NO ONE from the original English cast has returned to do this project, I’ll shut up about it...

For now.

Was this a great reboot? That’s your call to make. For me, it’s too early to tell as there’s only been 24 episodes and none of them are the classic Kyoto arc. It’s too preliminary to call it a masterpiece or trash. Manga readers are somewhat split as they will always find fault with everything. Not every anime adaptation is going to do everything by the book and that’s their conniption. I read the manga too and I wasn’t picky about the adaptation. It’s not like they skipped 50 chapters and went right into unknown territory.

And before you say, “Oh, there goes Medea again bashing Rozen Maiden 2013”. NO! I was actually poking at The Promised Neverland this time.

Thankfully, Rurouni Kenshin was done well. The art was beautiful. LIDENFILMS did a spectacular job. If you’re not familiar with the studio, they have recently done Call of the Night and Tokyo Revengers. The music was great. Every opening and ending were bangers. Reol was the real stand-out star in that department. They kept the language Kenshin uses when he speaks, that they did. I’m satisfied. I know more fans would want to see some more footage of Kenshin back when he was the notorious Battosai. I’m just going to say to be patient. You’ll see some stuff soon enough. And if you’re an impatient fuck, the OVA’s are around. Trust & Betrayal will give you what you want.

Can I recommend this? Not without having a giant elephant sitting on my shoulders.

For now, Crunchyroll has Rurouni Kenshin 2023 available for streaming.

Now then, for those who are looking for the original series, OVA, and even the live-action movies, here’s where to find them.

The original 96-episode series is currently on Hulu. The recent live-action movies are currently available on Netflix. All of the OVA’s (Trust & Betrayal, Reflections, and Kyoto-arc retelling), I can’t seem to find them streaming wise. Also, unsure if the hard copies are out of print or not.

[runawaycarouselhorse]

Have you done any watches of the pokemon arcs and talked about them? Someone I'm mutuals with discussed doing that for AG arc. I'm considering doing it for the DP arc since I still consider it my favorite arc in the franchise.

Aww, sorry, I was a child getting into fandom when AG was starting in Japan, social media was at its infancy too... i didn't even have a livejournal yet. I don't do full series rewatches either. But I am very fond of the Contest arc, Haruka/May and Masato/Max, the humour, and the warm and tropical colour palettes. I also adored the hoso specials (the Side Stories that got dubbed as Pokemon Chronicles, although the dubs for those were... infamously much worse than the TV series in script quality and accuracy), I used to downloa the specials and watch them in Japanese while slowly learning Japanese bit by bit because no subbing group took Pokemon seriously enough to sub it outside of banned episodes, specials, and movies...

It was a unique time, I think!

Rescue Ralts! Hurry, Masato!/Do I Hear a Ralts? remains one of the best episodes of the anime, period. The Wishing star of Seven Nights: Jirachi was my old favourite pokemon movie before Lucario!! I love that the dub kept KAORI's singing for May and part of Chiisaki Mono in Japanese.

AG is criminally underrated, despite introducing concepts popular in fandom, like Hadou/Aura. Satoshi apologizing to Lucario after seeing his memory of apparently being abandoned by Aaron was the turning point for me where I truly felt Satoshi mature as a person and become much kinder and more patient. He was so prone to fighting people, he was much more of a (pint-sized) hotblooded shounen protagonist before that, but I adore the all-loving hero he grew into. How he helped Hikozaru/Chimchar heal in DP, how patiently he dealt with both Shinji/Paul and Shootie/Trip being jerks to varying degrees compared to the way he was before (solution: run screaming and throw himself at whatever problem exists, fists flying), the growth I personally cared about was visible even in the first episode of BW! where he's annoyed or exasperated by what he encounters, but keeps his temper in check and just makes faces in disapproval, fff.

He can still, of course, fight those who deserve it, like Largo's bullies and Sauboh/Faba.

So, yeah, I loved AG! It also has one of the only battles to ever excite me (anyone who knows me, knows I HATE Pokemon battles, they make my eyes glaze over... it's just not interesting to me unless a fight has, like, swords or something—I really do watch Pokemon more for the cute friendship stories, ships*, and idealized humans living in harmony with nature and other non-human creatures setting)... it was Haruka VS Shuu in the kanto Grand Festival! I was literally on the edge of my seat. I loved seeing her surpass him and his little look of approval and smile before she went from concern to happily celebrating with Wakashamo/Combusken. They had a beautiful story arc going from him looking down on her (while gifting roses like he's harboring a secret crush, fff), to respecting her as an equal, even dropping the -kun honorific he used to use after her name, when he saw her as a kouhai/underclassman and himself as her senpai/upperclassman, and moved to calling her just "Haruka"... after she saved his life, I believe!

I feel like that was Pokemon's best written romance amongst th main characters, it didn't overtake her story arc, it added to it and she still had her goals outside of that, it only added to her growth and story. ^^ It was innocent and sweet.

I am convinced that "for Agehunto/Beautifly" line is how Satoshi saw through Kasumi/Misty's lie in the final series.

I also adore the episode were Haruka and Nyasu/Meowth go back in time and save a man's life and improve a whole town (?) by doing so. It was a fun, moving episode.

The dub harmed this a bit with music choices and voice acting, but from the look of things, people still found it quite emotional (I still vastly prefer the original, no contest!), so Arbok and Weezing's release episode. Interesting that poacher Ryo/Rico was one of the last criminals shown using a real world gun and modern day weapon... maybe also because it doesn't look familiar to a lot of people as a real firearm...

*I got into Pokemon and Sailor Moon via a Rocketshipping fanfic set in the Silver Millenium when I knew nothing of both series and was used to only reading Harry Potter fanfic as an 11 year old! The secret backstory, pffft. So I watched for TR. ^^

I used to review Best Wishes! episodes, the earliest reviews were on my livejournal ( http://inkedfeathers.livejournal.com ), later mini reviews were on my now deleted tumblr blogs, but some reblogs exist... some DP episodes too! BW! was my favourite.

[understandableparadox]

Bottom of the barrel isekai review!

hey

hey

hey buddy

if you think im going to spell that, you can go Fuck yourself.

hey sweet peas, it's time to indulge in my favorite self masochistic pass time of reading horrid isekais and then explaining why they are bad to you.

anyways we have (read above). What's it about? let's present ourselves onto the steps of christ and ready some self flagellation devices~!

meet our wannabe hero Kurei yuugo, they are a god damn sentai nerd who dreams of being a boot licking fucking pig or a fire fighter in their never ending quest to be the hero they admire ever so dearly. he goes out and buys himself a brand new power ranger figure when some dude pops out with a knife and decides today is the day to snap. he tries to snap but with the dreams of every boot not yet licked kurai jumps to action, beating the shit out of this guy! only to realize he has been shanked with a one way express ticket to isekai land!

oh fuck, did i say his name was kurai? it's actually yuugo clay now and he wakes up about to get shanked again by some random blonde twink that is stealing his apparent girlfriend. That's right folks, your favorite kaman rider nerd reincarnated into an otome game right at the annulment event!

This world is a game luminous history, a dating game with a rpg magic system, how do we know this? Because Aryan wet dream with a sword that we saw sticking up yuugo is also not a native here, he popped into this world with a slightly better spawn spot as one of the game's romanceable targets. we also get to know that their are multiple chuckle fucks out there. anyways his plan is just to have a harem so please remember to have a foam hand out whenever something bad happens to him.

anyways that's not the meat and potatoes of this, we haven't even gotten to the god damn Gimmick of this series! Yuugos gets disinherited because Yuugo is a bitch prior to getting soul snatched and has to be homeless. his younger brother phil helps him out and gives him a apparent weak magic item, a bracelet that can transform into a full set of armor that looks suspiciously like a kaman rider suit, which is great because some random asshole decides to spawn kill the moment school starts, forcing him into a duel by... vaguely threatening his new lil brother, i'll be real, they aren't exactly clear what they are going to do to him but its props physical harm.

turns out the rider suit is pretty strong for him as he one shots random asshole, earning yuugo his first duel!

anyways, this makes blonde twink go fucking insane because now the script is off, but again asserts that its all gucchi and he is still going to have a bunch of girlfriends because in a world of endless magic the one constent is someone is looking to get their dick wet. fuck learning how to be a fucking wizard i guess, or looking for bad ass magic sword, Dick must have its moisture level elevated. Damn.

oh, also, yuugo is still homeless, that never stops being a thing. I'm going to stop regenerating the plot and actually start talking about its themes and such.

Again we are met with the idea that someone is taking over for someone. the implications of which are somewhat horrifying if we choose to dwell on it but we got school politics to deal with so we don't. The main character is mostly a blank slate uploaded with the bog standard lawful good personality of your average shounen protagonist.  A welcome change of pace even though it creates a somewhat boring lead whose main point of attraction is “they did/said something nice to me and now i'm going to be their super bestie fore-ever and root for them.”  which we see with the characters brother and the first introduced  female love interest melt. 

But we do see another plot theme erupt in the main antagonist within the story. That being engaging with the world in earnest vs attempting to interact with the world with prior knowledge in effort to enrich yourself through that knowledge. Yuugo does not care that he is in another world, he already died a hero's death so at this point he is just playing a new game plus. The antagonist on the other hand was a Hardcore gamer, the horror, who had memorized the routes throughout the game and was meticulously taking actions in order to take over as the protagonist and rich the “poly for me but not for thee” ending. 

To me this makes the thesis of the manga that you should really not be like the antagonist. I know, truly bold readings here at the bottom of the barral, I'll take my reward for it later. 

Ok ok but what makes it bad? It's because isekai is an inherent colonizer trope. You, the one from the enlightened land, come to some fantasy world, notably behind in technology and become its god. You are perfect at everything, you are able to emasculate the lands men and make the lands women soon with every wayward cape swish. Of course yuugo is still participating in it but to a lesser extent. They understand that this is a fantasy world but they are coming at it from someone who wants to earnestly learn about the world and participate within it as the native populace would. The antagonist has no interest in that and wants to exploit what they know of it as much as possible to reach their desired end point. 

I will admit that i'm reading a lot of this manga that may not be there. To be clear, the point of this manga is that a jock kaman rider fan beats up a bunch of shitty nerds while in cool armor. That's the if and and but of it all and there is not much that can change that. Though i do think it's interesting that even if by accident the author created a really interesting point about something inherent within the genre that they write in. 

Do you have to worry about copious sex stuff?

The main antagonist keeps yapping about wanting a harem and there are some lucky pervert moments with melt but that's about it. 

Is the author heavily invested in the use of troupes to aid the story?

Kinda

Is it worth reading?

Again, Kinda. If you like kaman rider stuff, this is like a dinner mint, fine but if you got it at a restaurant alone you would want to kill someone.

[littleshysheep-at-da]

I’ve come to the conclusion I really don’t like Harem Series, but I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with them. If you enjoy Blandy McBlanderson having Women fall over him for literally no reason at all live your bliss as long as you don’t think it’s translates to real life and believe you should be getting women for doing nothing when you have the personality of moldy cardboard. Also I HAVE to know upfront it’s a Harem I hate when there’s a really good Shounen Premise and then it becomes a Harem… I think what turns me off from Harems is especially when there is like a clear winner, so why is everyone trying to get something that’s taken??? I’m not even a fan or Reverse Harems honestly, I’m okay with a Love Triangle because it’s small enough to be reasonable but I really prefer Polyamory over either.

HOWEVER, there are 3 Harem Series I actually really like and I wanna talk about why. Quintessential Quintuplets, Bakarina (Full Title is My Next Life as a Villainess all Routes lead to Doom! But I ain’t typing that every time), and Nu: Carnival.

[Warning for poor wording here I’m just trying to get my thoughts out]. For Quint Quint: First of all it actually feels like each girl has a chance so it actually could go any which way. The Second thing is he actually has to earn their trust they don’t immediately fall over him and he doesn’t immediately like them either. We see both sides grow into better people as they get closer. Also Third the situation that forces them to hang out doesn’t feel creepy? I’ve seen a few too many Slave Harems and I like that Quint Quint has a situation where if it really came to it they could back out but there benefits for both sides so they begrudgingly stay. For Bakarina and NuKani: the Protagonist is actually REALLY likable and has a winning personality (also both these Series feel like they could have some Poly so I am very game). Katarina and Eiden out here giving free therapy to their Harems ngl. I also feel that Bakarina does a good job of exploring why the Harem Members actaully like the Protag. And NuKani has a lot of talk of that sort of thing as well where Eiden doesn’t seem to want to push anybody into anything and values their boundaries.

Update/Edit: [Also maybe poor wording just realized I missed a massive point]. I will say my biggest concern with Harem Protags with zero personality getting all the girls despite doing nothing is it may feed into the Entitlement a loooot of men have towards women’s bodies. Also I just find Harem Protags having no personality boring in term of being a Character 🤷‍♀️

Edit/Update 2: Realized my BIGGEST personal Pet Peeve with Harems is when they are disguised as a Cool/Interesting Shounen. Because I come in expecting an Interesting Plot only for it to be Derailed by a Harem Plot (Often with Badly Written Female Characters too egregiously to ignore). Like I’m fine if it’s a Harem but be upfront about it? Also not every Series should have all the Female Characters falling over the Protagonist (see Previous Edit/Update).

[cherry-valentine]

Spring 2023 Anime Season

Here’s what I’m watching!

Dr. Stone Season 3 was probably the series I was most looking forward to. The basic setup is this: a mysterious green light spreads over the entire world, turning all human beings into stone. Thousands of years later, teenage genius Senku awakens from his stone prison and decides to save all of humanity, bringing them back to the modern scientific age in the process. Unlike most popular shounen series, the focus of the story is notably not on fighting, action, training, chasing a dream, or even “the power of friendship”. It’s very much centered on Senku and his allies rebuilding society, recreating important scientific inventions, exploring, etc. There is some action, even some fighting, but the long stretches without either manage to be entertaining and, at times, thrilling all the same. The show also makes a point of telling us that physical fighting ability is definitely not the only thing that determines how strong or useful a character is. Senku himself is physically rather weak, especially when compared to the characters who can fight. But he’s super intelligent. There are characters who are good at lots of various things and are considered strong and important even if they wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight. I feel like this sets the series apart from other anime that focus so strongly on power levels and such. This season’s plot focuses on the characters exploring an island with a different village of people living on it, ones who might hold the secret of the petrification beam that swept over the earth thousands of years ago. The animation is great. The male character designs are great. The female character designs… not so great. I’m just not crazy about how the mangaka draws women. They all have enormous eyes that are drawn way too far apart. It’s a strange visual. But that’s a minor complaint. The music is fantastic, with my favorite ending theme of the season. If you haven’t tried Dr. Stone yet, you owe it to yourself to fix that mistake.

Hell’s Paradise is a series I was very excited to try. I’ve had the first few volumes of the manga on my Amazon wishlist for like two years now but never went ahead and bought them. The story is about a mysterious island that’s said to hold the elixir of immortality, but no one has come back from it alive. A group of dangerous death row prisoners are offered pardons if they can go to the island, find the elixir, and return with it. They’re accompanied by members of a clan full of government executioners who are highly skilled with the sword. The main character is Gabimaru, a notorious ninja assassin who was betrayed by his village and just wants to make it home to his beloved wife. This simple desire to be with the woman he loves makes Gabimaru easy to root for. The secondary protagonist is Sagiri, the executioner assigned to Gabimaru, and she’s where my main problem with the series is most clear. In the first episode, Sagiri is a stoic, badass swordswoman who is unfazed by Gabimaru’s seeming immorality and is so skilled that he’s legitimately afraid of her. She was quickly shaping up to be one of my favorite characters of the season. But then episode two comes along, and suddenly Sagiri is weepy and frightened and being derided as weak by her peers. We also get several of these shots that are supposed to represent her fear but are just images of her naked body being clawed and groped. I’ve never seen a character get nerfed so fast. Episode three restores my faith in her. Episode four has her being weak again. And so on. It’s a bizarre roller coaster that creates a very uneven experience for viewers who were excited to have a badass heroine. There are other female characters, though most of them are also used for fanservice. As it currently stands, Sagiri is back to being badass, so who knows how this will turn out? Aside from that issue, the show is pretty good. The animation and design work are gorgeous. The opening theme is easily the best of the season. The creature/monster designs are unique and interesting. It’s definitely worth watching, but I still wish Sagiri’s character had been a bit more consistent.

Kimetsu no Yaiba Season 3 is, as I understand it, the second movie broken up into tv episodes the way the Mugen Train movie was done last season. I haven’t watched this movie so this is all new content for me. As usual for this series, the production values are sky high, with breathtaking animation and incredible music. I’ve said it many times before, but Kimetsu no Yaiba’s strength really is in its gorgeous presentation. The story isn’t bad by any means but it is fairly standard shounen fighting anime fare. But it’s not just the animation and music that elevate the show. The design work, for the characters as well as the various demons and weapons and settings, is fantastic. The fight choreography is top notch. It’s all the little details, it’s the voice acting, it’s the beautiful colors, it’s everything coming together to make this series so damn watchable. To explain what I mean, the first episode of this season was a double length episode, but I watched it and had no idea until I later skimmed the comments. It was double length and it still felt short. That’s how you know something is highly entertaining. High on my watch list.

My Home Hero is a compelling cat and mouse game. It follows Tetsuo, a seemingly average middle aged father who finds out his daughter is dating an abusive yakuza thug and decides to take matters into his own hands. He ends up killing the boyfriend, and the rest of the series is about his attempts to keep this fact hidden from both his daughter and the dangerous yakuza family that is searching for answers. What follows is a tense, thrilling roller coaster. Tetsuo is a kind and caring father who looks like an unassuming salaryman, but he has a ruthless, cunning side to him that comes out when he needs to protect his family. He’s physically weak but incredibly intelligent and armed with a lifetime of reading mystery books. His only true ally is his wife Kasen, who is just an absolute delight. She never questions Tetsuo’s motives and doesn’t even bat an eye when he tells her he killed someone to protect their daughter. She just rolls up her sleeves and gets to work on helping him dispose of the body. She proves to be a strong asset, as her creativity and fearless nature get them out of trouble several times. The way the couple works together as a team is honestly very heartwarming. Even if they’re working to cover up a murder. The show has one major flaw, however, and that’s the animation. While it’s definitely not the worst I’ve seen, it’s certainly not good. I’m assuming it had a low budget. But it says a lot about the quality of the writing that this is one of my favorite shows this season despite the subpar visuals. Highly recommended.

Skip to Loafer is a sweet and gentle palette cleanser after all the intense shows I’m watching throughout the week. It’s a high school slice of life series about a country girl named Mitsumi moving to Tokyo to go to a better school and meet new friends. Mitsumi is well meaning, smart, and ambitious, but she’s also easily distracted and a bit clumsy (not in the usual cutesy way, but in the accidentally puking on her teacher on the first day of school way). Her life could be summed up as one of those “expectation vs reality” memes, but a big part of her character arc is understanding that things not going according to plan is not necessarily a bad thing. The supporting cast is made up of interesting characters that manage to be unique without being exaggerated caricatures. Most important (narratively) among them is Shima, a handsome and popular young man who seems aloof and carefree, but of course there’s more to him than that. His relationship with Mitsumi is one of the main plot points of the series. It’s also worth noting that Mitsumi lives with her aunt Nao, who is a trans woman. From what I’ve read/heard, Nao has been well received and counts as positive representation. She’s a funny, cute, engaging character who is never reduced to a stereotype. The show overall has a calm, soothing feel to it, with pastel colors and peppy music. Recommended.

Best of Season:

Best New Series: My Home Hero

Best Opening Theme: Hell’s Paradise

Best Ending Theme: Dr. Stone

Best New Male Character: Tetsuo (My Home Hero)

Best New Female Character: Mitsumi (Skip to Loafer)

[objectivelyimpermanent]

I watched My Personal Weatherman and I really liked it. It was cute. I'll rewatch it later. But I do understand why some people are so wary of it. I don't think it's unusual that I check Tumblr before I decide to watch a series. I usually scan the gifs because my main attraction to series is production values and general prettiness. My point is that some of the gifsets do give off a wrong impression of the context of Yoh's and Mizuki's relationship. I was under the impression that the scene where Mizuki ties up Yoh and gets a little rough was right after the one where he finds Yoh playacting kink with (whom I thought at the time was) a potential romantic rival, and that sort of dubiety is a bit of an uneasy thing for me.

I was slightly worried that the consent was all deep-subtextual or linguistic, or that it was one of the cop-outs where it's presumed that there's an agreement off-screen which is kept so vague that the audience isn't made aware of where are the boundaries. I've found that sort of thing a lot in yaoi and shounen ai, so usually I have to screen for a panel where it's made clear that there are lines of which the characters are aware.

In the series it's fairly clear that it's firmly on the right side of dubious consent, and that it's kinky and not abusive, but that's only with the context of all the interstitial domestic scenes. The high-passion scenes which are gifset most often give off a bit of a bad impression without them.

-- This is where it turns into therapy. Please ignore if you like.

I'm not alone in sympathising with Yoh's inability to read the room. When you feel out-of-step with others, it's difficult to trust them. It's like being locked in a room with a telepath. There's this person with this superpower that makes them able to read your mind, but to you, they're a stone wall; and since this ability is so common that it's only a superpower because you can't do it, it's clear that you're the one who has failed, and so any situation that forms because of your lack of understanding is your own fault. You have an incompetence that makes your life difficult, and everyone around you seems to navigate with ease these complex social nuances that either you don't notice or of which you don't register the significance. It's like being very short in a room full of giants and, having climbed up to the bar with difficulty, suddenly realising that everyone has already left without noticing that you were still there and still struggling.

The yearning then is not for someone to understand you, but for you to be able to understand another enough to trust them despite their understanding of you. It's difficult to trust someone with this much of an advantage.

I say all these deeply embarrassing things to explain why I (and I think some others perhaps) find it so uneasy when the consent is dubious due to a social reticence or due to a deficit in explicit communication.

I understand that, with Japan, it can be a cultural thing; but Japanese also has quotidian, functional things like linguistic aspects that make more clear your relationship to others and their relationship to you as a matter of existing in the world. That sort of coded social protocol is a relief. [Conversely, this is not to say that unease or miscommunication is impossible in Japan or with Japanese, as can be seen with Yoh. But I don't think that Yoh's miscommunication is the same thing precisely as that about which I'm talking.]

It's unwise to trust strangers, but if you don't trust strangers, you can never become close enough to trust someone wisely. It's scary to let pass that kind of superpower, and since trust is a skill, you are going to fail many times before you succeed. When you're this bad at reading the room, failure is like letting a tiger into your bedroom. It's infantilising.

Is your superpower so strong that you can understand me better than I do myself? Do I trust you in that? How do I know if I'm wrong to do so? What do I do if I am wrong? Not everyone is Segasaki Mizuki, and I'm not Yoh.

[nenekobasu]

yo I just wanted to say I've been reading your BL theories and so far I was pretty certain that Isagi was going to come out a winner out of PxG (because he said he wants to become BL's #1 and shounen protags become what they said they'll become) even tho I thought it was going to take masterpiece S-class writing from Kaneshiro to be satisfying bc how was Isagi getting over Rin and beating Kaiser for real, bc the "how does it feel to be the clown of my story" part, Isagi said so himself that it wasn't a total win, and now I didn't fully notice that I'd noticed it before you pointed it out, but the Isagi who called Kaiser his clown looking back doesn't seem to be the same Isagi who's happy to be #1 rn. Like, past Isagi would have celebrated becoming real #1 over Kaiser with a different heat and differently. Here Isagi doesn't even think abt Kaiser anymore? Like wow reader me noticed but I took your posts for it to enter my conciousness. So I think you've convinced me that yeah, Isagi won't be happy (after?) next game. Also, I think you had a post abt how everything rested on PxG game, and I agree. PxG has to be the best part of the manga so far, or the manga will be over. Like the amount of stakes???? This is a very ambitious knot Kaneshiro tyed. (end of my ramble... for now I hope this wasn't a bother ;_;)

hello and np anon. my opinion is that what blue lock did with isagi is incredibly ambitious which would indicate it has every confidence it can stick the landing, so while i think greatness is a minimum requirement for pxg i also think it will be and i’m prepared to love whatever form it takes. while pxg is the end of nel arc it’s probably the midpoint of the series; thematically egojin promised nel would be “a big bang” in its inception and with egojin–>rin and hiori–>isagi both want to see “the birth of a hero” so if isagi is the hero and pxg is his ‘birthplace’ i think he’s given a lot of freedom in how much he can afford to fail before his supposed ‘birth’. every match is its own rollercoaster so maybe there is an emotionally satisfying way to put isagi at the top in the end even though i think his current success can’t and won’t be sustained

part of why the pressure is on for pxg to be great is that it needs to do like twelve contradictory things at once you know it needs to renew a trust it shattered while revealing the full extent of its betrayal it needs to be the reaffirming anchor that condones freeform chaos it needs to be itself to such an extent it reinvents itself into a new form. ubers was great because it was this shifty unmoored scramble of the same recycled images within a principled 3-act structure that didn’t ever let solid ground form (turning kaiser into the loner protagonist, isagi becoming non-isagi, defacing the meaning of key terms and symbols, etc.), i think ubers is a masterpiece that hides a lot in plain sight so it depends on what follows to be a masterpiece too. the stakes are high here because blue lock’s identity and message are on the line which is just super neat as an experience since blue lock is most definitely doing it on purpose to fuck with people, in any case i’m flattered to hear you got something out of these posts

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

It's Gotten Worse

I've given up on The World After the Fall.

Back when Game of Thrones was starting to get big as a book series, I got to the Red Wedding in book 3 and I gave up on it. My take on things was that the emotional center of the series was "will the Stark family reunite?" as a question, and that question had been answered in the cruelest way possible about four times in a row by that point. A resounding, "No." *whack* "No." *whack* "No." *whack* "No." *whack*

Imagine George standing at a table with a cleaver, saying that, and bringing the cleaver down on something that crunches wetly just out-of-frame.

Anyway.

It felt to me as if the premise of the series as laid out in the first book wasn't still at all where it was going, and didn't care to invest emotional energy in new tissue-paper humans who would be ripped apart in the author's hands and thrown in the garbage at a moment's notice.

The characters - (except the witch, seriously I feel like I misread something, she was a main character and then just got written out of the story; I don't even remember a goodbye or a death or a "no, it's better if I don't find her again" or anything) - have proven a little more durable in The World After the Fall...but I have a lot of the same sensation. The comic is up to its third or fourth premise; its third or fourth new vibe, and I don't think the author realizes how much it costs the comic every time it changes gears that way.

The genie was let out of the bottle like two years ago in the comic, and the author's been trying to shove it back in for the entire time since, and the genie's not going back in the bottle but it is getting more and more ugly and squidging around the author's hands in much the same way as this metaphor's squidging around mine.

It's still a really pretty comic, I appreciate the "fight against a broken world" vibe the author's currently trying to run with as the plot's core, and I do feel like it has better legs than the things he bounced from to get where he is...but I find I can't get over those first stories and the consequences he's trying to ignore from them.

And, like, boy do I get it.

I was writing an isekai and it ran like,

Chapter 1: Dude wakes up in his magic tower with his magic generals and starts trying to figure out how dangerous the new world he's in is.

Chapter 2: Something - probably the same force that shoved dude into the body of his videogame character among his magic generals that he'd made up in the videogame - decides that dude having a tower full of magic generals is unsporting to the rest of the world (almost certainly a reactionary opinion to my having recently watched Overlord at the time) and puts them all into stasis and de-powers dude.

Chapter 3: Dude goes into town and accidentally kills the reprehensible nobleman's son by scratching said son with his own magic soul-sucking dagger, then uses mind magic to MIB "flashy-thing" the bar and make his escape.

Chapter 4: Dude turns himself into a kid to preserve mana and gets picked up from the street by a caretaker at an orphanage. He finds out about a plot to use orphaned kids as mana batteries through a program that sends them to a school from which they don't return. Which isn't suspicious yet, because they haven't been gone from the orphanage that long, except to our dude because he's from our world and therefore very genre-savvy.

Chapters 3 and 4...There's the start of a plot there! There's a character at a reasonable amount of power - interesting magic, limited mana pool, a problem-solving style that is much more about finesse than force (which makes it kind of a bad match for Shounen manga but while that's often how I picture such stories in my head I'm not actually a manga-ka), and a threat that can continue to scale with our hero's capabilities (dealing with the nobleman whose son he killed, then the guy who commanded him to start taking orphans, then the entity or group that set up the entire scheme)

Chapters 1 and 2 have nothing to offer the story except limitations, rules that are hard to live up to, goals that will contradict or seem like they should override the goals of the mainline plot, and a whole lot of "why doesn't he just" questions that I honestly have no answers to. If I'd been writing this as a serial manga and releasing it, I'd be in the same position when I came up with chapters 3-4 of my idea as the author of the manhwa I'm dropping is in now.

When I say I get it I mean I really get it.

But that's not a reason for me to keep reading.

I don't want to yuck your yum if you like the series. The art is seriously impressive. And - perhaps the hardest part to say, for me, because it sounds mean - while I don't like the writing personally due to what feel to me like structural flaws, I also get the sense that the author cares about writing well. It's not a sure shot for success for the series' continuation or conclusion, but it's a hell of a lot better than an author who doesn't, right? There's a much better chance that the writing will continue improving. I wish the author felt free to make a clean break and just start a new series with the ideas he now has clarified, because I think that story would be better for being whole, just as I will start my story with "chapter 3" if I ever try to get it out of my head and into a real publishable format.

[metalandmagi]

Winter 2021 Anime Worth Watching!

Since 2020 basically sacrificed itself to give us the most stacked anime season of all time, I’m currently buried under the weight of almost 20 shows airing per week. So for anyone who’s looking for some anime to watch this winter, here’s some first impressions! I’m speed running my list this time by only talking about the new shows...because otherwise this would be my great American novel. 

If anyone’s interested, I have master lists for both 2020 anime and 2019 anime, because there’s no shortage of fun things to find. 

New Shows!

And before anyone asks, So I’m A Spider, So What? isn’t on here, because CG spiders freak me out.

Cells At Work Code Black: This...less comedic spin off of Cells At Work (made by a different studio) takes the wholesome concept of Osmosis Jones meets cute anime girls and turns it on its head. In this much more depressing version, we follow a rookie red blood cell who works in the body of an overly stressed, alcoholic smoker who puts every strain on the body imaginable. I love Red Blood Cell AA2153 and his co-workers, but man am I glad we get the regular Cells At Work airing this season too, because I need something fun and uplifting after seeing my sweet son go through hell every episode. 

*Heaven’s Design Team: Have you ever wondered how God came up with some of the weird ass animals that live on this planet? Like, what’s the deal with giraffes? And why can’t we have dragons and flying horses? Well this is a comedy about the engineers and designers in heaven creating the new animals that are going to inhabit the Earth. That’s it, that’s the show. It’s kind of in the same vein as Cells At Work, having comedy blend with a surprising amount of educational information. If you want something light and funny, this is the show for you (though I don’t think it needs to have full length episodes). I’m just hoping there’s an episode about how the hell the platypus was created. Also it’s the only new one available on Crunchyroll.

Horimiya: A romantic comedy about a girl named Hori who fits the image of a perfect queen bee and a quiet bespectacled boy named Miyamura who never makes an impression at school. When the two meet by chance outside of the classroom, we see that Hori is practically raising a younger brother by herself, and Miyamura is actually a sweet guy who happens to be covered in tattoos and piercings. This show is an exercise in breaking down the images people have of others in their minds, and it’s a concept that really hits home in a fun and meaningful way. Honestly, this has become one of my immediate favorites. The characters have great chemistry, and I can’t wait to see more of them!

Monster Incidents (Kemono Jihen): When big shot Tokyo detective Inugami is called to a rural town to investigate a series of strange animal deaths, he finds a mysterious boy with the nickname Dorotabo who has been shunned by the other children in town. As the detective gets closer to Dorotabo, he discovers that there may be more...inhuman secrets to the boy than he realizes...and Dorotabo discovers that Inugami has some secrets of his own. This is a hard show to sell without spoiling the first episode, but it had twists and turns that kept me engaged from start to finish. I’m really interested to see where the plot goes, because I thought this was going to be something totally different just from the PV and series summary. If it plays its cards right, this could be a great paranormal detective show!

Wonder Egg Priority: A psychological drama about a girl named Ai who starts having dreams about a mysterious egg that promises to give her what she wants most in the world...a true friend. Before long, she begins to see how the dream world and reality are tied together, and trippy antics ensue. It’s hard to say more without spoiling anything, but I had to go back and add this one in because I made the mistake of thinking it was an OVA when it’s actually a full series. And what a series it’s starting out to be. This anime has all the psychological discomfort of a Satoshi Kon product with the beauty and style of something from Kyoani (even though it’s made by Clover Works). It’s really one of those anime you just have to see to understand.

Sk8-∞ (Skate the infinity): An original skateboarding anime from Bones, featuring a typical sports anime protagonist who takes a new transfer student who has never skateboarded in his life under his wing. Together they compete in dangerous races and take the skating community by storm. The character designs rival Appare Ranman’s in outlandish creativity, and I can smell the main characters’ ship dynamic a mile away (considering they’re exactly the same as the protagonists from Robihachi). If you’re looking for some wild and crazy fun with top notch skateboarding animation, don’t skip this!

2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu (Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Club): Yes, it’s another volleyball anime. And no, it’s not just a clone of Haikyu. This story follows Yuni Kuroba, a physically built but emotionally weak teenager who finds out his childhood friend Hajime is moving back to their hometown for high school. Yuni discovers Hajime has become an exceptional volleyball player and they join their school’s volleyball club hoping to turn the unknown team into a rising star. If anything, this anime is much more like Stars Align or Free, where the sport is a backdrop for letting the characters explore their personal problems. Or at least it seems that way after the first episode. I went into this show ready to throw it in the trash because how could anything compete against my beloved Haikyu, but I found myself really enjoying the dynamics of the main duo and I’m curious to see what the rest of the team is like.

And speaking of sports anime rip-offs…..I can’t believe I’m including this but…

Skate Leading Stars: The show where the animators clearly wanted to design another throw away idol anime but saw how popular Yuri On Ice was so they decided to make whatever the hell this show is instead. It revolves around a fictional team sport called skate leading, and we follow the world’s most insufferable main character, a former figure skater named Kensei who wants to return to the ice and join his school’s skate leading team after he finds out his childhood rival is going to compete in the sport. Look, this show is just trashy enough to get a certain type of audience hooked, and it mainly has to do with the best boy of the winter season, Hayato Sasugai, the aspiring team “coach” who pulled most of us into watching this show with his punk appearance, snide comments and smug personality. He’s basically the lovechild of Izaya Orihara and Shizuo Heiwajima in a high school sports anime setting. The show treats itself with the perfect amount of sincerity to get away with being absolutely ridiculous most of the time without making you feel like you’re watching it from a dumpster...like Try Knights. You will know after one episode whether this show is for you. All I can say is, Hayato is worth the watch, and I haven’t seen any 3D animation used for the skating scenes (yet) so that’s a win for me. 

Honorable mention:

Jobless Reincarnation ( Mushoku Tensei): Yet another isekai where the main character is hit by a car (big surprise) and gets reincarnated into a fantasy world...but he happens to remember his previous life and narrates himself growing up as a jaded adult. I’m only including this because it looked amazing animation wise, and I love the opening where getting hit by a car and dying is actually traumatic. And I love the protagonist’s parents (who are retired adventurers who just want to bang all the time). But honestly...the main character is the fucking worst, and I don’t know if I want to keep watching it because of how creepy and weird he is. Like...he’s the hit on your fantasy mom as a baby kind of creepy and weird. But for anyone who wants a cool looking isekai that had an amazing PV, it’s worth checking out. 

Continuing Series!

Because the real gold of the season is in all the established anime getting their next seasons, I’m just going to list some of the things that are also amazing and definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already (because I’ve already talked about most of them at some point and don’t know what else to say).

Attack On Titan season 4

The Promised Neverland season 2

Beastars season 2

Log Horizon season 3

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime season 2

Re: Zero season 2 (second cour)

Dr. Stone season 2

Cells at Work season 2

Osomatsu-san season 3 (second cour)

Higurashi New (second cour)

Jujutsu Kaisen (second cour) 

Not to mention all the shows I don’t watch that everyone else loves...like World Trigger (which I have seen quite a bit of, but long shounen shows are too much for me now) Quintessential Quintuplets, and Non Non Biyori. 

So there’s just some of all the anime airing this season. Hopefully, someone can find something they like. Here’s to a great year...well, of anime at least...

[misrepresentedmorallygrey]

PROPAGANDA

Alana Propaganda

"this poor woman. every other hannigram fic is “oooh look at alana she’s such a bitch and a slut and she never believed will and she’s stupid”. it’s horrible. she deserves the world"

Kikyo Propaganda

"Picture this: the love of your life betrays you and causes your death, then you're brought back to life later against your will and your lover is with your reincarnation. Anyone would feel bitter! She tries her best to keep living her half life and helping people. She's hated just because she's not the main character and gets in the way of the show's OTP."

"Kikyo was such an interesting character. She was murdered by the villain, who tricked both her and her love interest into thinking the other had betrayed them, brought back to life against her will only to find that fifty years had passed, the world had moved on without her, her baby sister was now an old woman, and she'd been condemned to an awful half-life in an unfeeling clay body where she was stuck in her worst moments and basically a vengeful spirit, but she eventually managed to move past it, gave up her one chance at getting revenge on her murderer to save the life of a child, and achieved some measure of inner peace before she died for good. But, she also has the misfortune of being the first love of the male lead, so of course the only thing anyone seems to care about is how she supposedly did him dirty and wasn't good enough for him. The whole fandom is chock full of meta posts about how she didn't trust Inuyasha enough and should have known he'd NEVER betray her like that. Meanwhile, Inuyasha fell for it just as easily when the villain framed HER for attacking HIM, but nobody ever tries to claim that HE didn't trust HER enough. (For further context, when she thought he'd betrayed her, she retaliated by pinning him to a tree and putting him in an enchanted sleep. He retaliated by destroying her village.) In at least 90% of the fanfics that she appears in at all, she's either the Bad Girlfriend or the Evil Ex, who either previously or is currently abusing the hero, or cheating on him, or trying to coerce him into turning human, or dating him for years only to break up with him by telling him he disgusts her because of his demon blood (huh???), none of which she did in the actual canon, solely so the preferred love interest can swoop in and kiss it all better. People will claim they're just making valid criticisms of her actions (which, to be fair, aren't always great), or saying she didn't properly earn her redemption (which is actually pretty standard for a shounen series) because she didn't apologize enough, but them multiple male characters who did far worse than she did somehow miraculously managed to escape the constant criticisms that she's subjected to, this despite having a so-called redemption that's literally just "He stopped eating people because he wanted to get into the heroine's pants", and remain very popular characters both in their own right and as alternate ships for the female lead. The double standards are so glaringly obvious, yet people will bend over backwards and jump through mental hoops that would give a gold-medal Olympics gymnast pause to insist that they're being completely objective and fair and that this isn't just about trying to score points in a ship war or holding female characters to completely different standards from male characters."