#but i think it’s very obvious that having sex with traumatized mute children is a bad idea. and i think even marius knew that

[cloudabserk]

look i understand if you like marius because this is the evil morally bankrupt vampire story. however when people argue that marius was actually really cool and chill and normal about armand i want to fight them

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen Rambles about Master of Martial Heart

Dammit, the Villainess Rambling took all my creative title energy

Y’know, I really hate Past-Allen. The more I read through some of my older essays and opinion pieces the more I’ve grown to despite the me of 2016-2018. While I still agree with most of my old work there’s always two or three essays that make me very irritated. Most of the issue is with my anime stuff where I’m vague to the point of talking about nothing in an attempt to avoid spoilers. They just feel vapid and baseless looking back on them. Again, not all my old essays are like this, but a good handful are, and I want to start rectifying that. 

To that end, I’m going to talk about Master of Martial Hearts again.

I’ve mentioned this anime on a few occasions, usually calling it a form of ‘palette cleanser’ I use to remind myself of what a real bad anime looks like, what real bad story looks like when I find a particular season filled with bad isekai and played out tropes. I tend to watch this anime on a yearly basis along with a few other shows for various reasons. And I as I watched this anime for what was probably a tenth time I found myself thinking. Thinking about this anime in a more objective/analytical way. It was then I looked back on my old essay and felt I didn’t do this show justice, didn’t dive deep enough, didn’t actually critique it well enough. I wanted to fixed that, and so here we are.

But, as always, a quick synopsis.

Master of Martial Hearts or Zettai Shougeki: Platonic Heart is about an Aya Iseshima, an athletic high school girl, happened across a serious duel between a shrine maiden and a flight attendant with her friend Natsume Honma. Being a trained fighter by her mom, Aya quickly intervenes saves the shrine maiden. After spending some time together the shrine maiden, Miko Kanzuki, explains she’s in a secret tournament between women for the Martial Heart, a gem said to grant the wish of those who obtain, with Miko’s wish being to obtain friends. Worried for Miko’s safety as well as genuinely enjoying her company, Aya and Natsume befriend her to keep her out of such a dangerous tournament. With Miko’s wish seeming granted she decided to back out of the tournament. However, when Aya visits Miko’s apartment she finds the place abandon and torn to shreds, Miko herself missing with no one even remembering her aside from Aya and Natsume, and mysterious texts on Aya’s phone saying she’s able to participate in the tournament for the Martial Heart. With the wish of wanting to know what happened to her friend, Aya decided to fight in order to gain answers about what is going behind the Martial Heart.

And this summary is more interesting than the actual story itself, believe me.

Now... in my original post about this anime I basically just called it bad and didn’t do anything to explain why. It was basically tearing something down without explaining why the thing needed to be torn down. So, as I usually do, I’ll break this down into the main issues I have with the anime. 

But first...

Small Issues that Need Mentioning

I usually save this for last, but given the nature of things I feel it’d be best to bring up the smaller issues first. Now, I’m a story guy, a writing guy, and a themes/premise guy. I can tackling the actual writing and script of a story all day with pretty high confidence that I know what I’m talking about. However, when it comes to things like character design, animation, choreography, and so on I feel I don’t have much to say. These are not fields I am confident in discussing at length nor with confidence. However, I think I’d be reminisced to not at least touch on it. With that said:

The show doesn’t tell or show Aya with a particular fighting style in a show that gave every other fighter a unique fighting style, theme, or gimmick.

The show can’t keep their character on model, at all. Heights and breast sizes change way too much.

A lot of the animation feels stagnant and the fight scenes... don’t feel like fight scenes near the end.

The shrine maiden’s name is Miko. That’s not a critique, it just bugs me.

To touch on the ending real quick, the last main opponent being a literal psychic that just tells Aya (and the audience) how evil she actually is bugs me to no end.

Still on the ending, the head of the Martial Heart organization getting plastic surgery to look like Aya’s crush is dumb and goes nowhere.

The Three Sisters, despite teamwork being their gimmick, have no cohesive theme to their outfits and that bugs me too.

Aya tapping into the Satsui no Hado in every fight is never really mentioned, not even at the end, and it also bugs me.

There’s a few others things, but like I said, I’m not the person to turn to for technical critiques in terms of design and animation. Anything after these points are just minor nitpicks. I just wanted to get some of the smaller things out the way before tackling my big two points. And Point One happens to be...

A Magical Rock Grants Wishes in the Real World

Back when Juni Taisen was in the seasonal lineup made a Rambling about it and the Battle Royale genre as a whole. I had said I didn’t like how the dark and realistic tone of the setting clashed with the idea of trained soldiers fighting for a magical wish. In that show, all the characters were mercenaries and soldiers fighting in the ugly world of proxy wars and private military companies, suffering the trauma of it in some way, shape, or form. Sure, they had superpowers in that world, but the characters were so grounded in the idea of being soldiers and mercenaries scarred and damaged by war it felt nonsensical that they’d believe in magical wishes, especially when the powers were pretty tamed and the tactics having a bit of thought to them. I think a little differently about that specific anime nowadays, but Master of Martial Hearts has the same issue. 

The world of this anime is very much grounded in realism despite the zaniness. All of Aya’s opponents, ridiculous fighting styles not withstanding, are all just fellow martial artists and fighters with a quirky theme or weapon to them. A lot of their gimmicks come from the money the tournament gives them for participating or their own quirky personalities, not from magic or mystical powers. Aya gets notifications of future battles through her cell phone, not some magical bird or hologram. And in the end the Martial Heart is ran by an organization, but I’ll save talk of that for later.

A magical gem that grants wishes in a world that barely shows a hint of magic is just tonal dissonance. There being an organization and committee behind the tournament makes sense, but granting wishes? Searching for a magic rock within a secret tournament held by said committee? 

No. Just no.

This breaks a lot of the premise too since Aya isn’t in this tournament for a wish, but to find her missing friend, a missing friend that might have disappeared due to this committee/organization. It’s clear in the story that Miko was kidnapped after an obvious struggle in her apartment, and the only magical part of her disappearance is no one discussing Miko’s existence, which could had been the organization just paying people off to not speak about it. The fact that the ending hints there was still some mystical element to everyone’s actions just... ruins a lot of it. That’s the biggest issue I have premise-wise, as it muddles the premise a little... well, a lot. But that’s only my first issue. My second is much more... extreme. 

That Damn Twist

So... spoilers for Master of Martial Hearts, but the ending, specifically the twist at the second half of the last episode, just throws so much of the story into question. I’ll try to explain this as best I can, but no promises. Half of this twist is just exposition by the characters and some of what they say could honestly be lies for the sake of torturing Aya (and the audience by proxy). But... for the sake of my sanity I’ll assume everyone was telling the truth when explaining this.

So, here’s the twist of Master of Martial Hearts.

The entire plot of Master of Martial Hearts a fabrication. The idea of a the Martial Heart was created by a mysterious organization to lures in powerful women on the promise of granting wishes if they win a secret no-holds-barred tournament. The women who lose in this tournament are taken to be sold off into slavery, typically as sex slaves, but some also die within the tournament as well. 

Aya’s father, Shigeyuki Iseshima, had been a part of the Martial Heart organization for a while, and was engaged/dating to Aya’s mother, Suzuko Iseshima, a power competitor in the tournament. Through her connections with him, Suzuko was able to manipulate the tournament bracket in order to defeat the mothers of Natsume and Miko, who were sold off into slavery. Miko’s mother, Yumi, was forced to become Shigeyuki’s mistress, and he was heavily abusive towards her and his daughter Miko. He eventually killed Miko’s mother in a rage in front of the her at age four, traumatizing her to the point of wanting revenge. 

Natsume’s mother, Kumi, was able to escape enslavement, settling down and having two children, Natsume and Haruki. However, Kumi’s throat was slashed in the process of escaping, making her mute. Despite this she was able to tell her tragic story to her children through sign language and writing, filling her children with the desire of revenge. Around high school, Haruki had turned into quite the hot item and happened to start dating his cousin Miko unknowingly. When the three connected the dots of their family tree together they realized all their suffering was caused by the same person, Suzuko Iseshima. Her daughter, Aya Iseshima, happened to be a close friend of Natsume at the time, much to her disgust, and had a crush on Haruki, though didn’t know Haruki was taken at the time.With the dominoes lined up too perfectly, the three decided this would be the perfect chance to have revenge against the Iseshima family, using the very tool that caused their anguish in the first place. 

They decide to reinstate the Martial Heart organization, getting together with the president of the group to give them the funds and tools needed to fulfill their revenge with the promise of letting the president have Aya for himself as a mistress after their revenge was complete. With the organization’s backing they planned to force Aya to fight several tough opponents before for the Martial Heart, eventually show her the cruel result and reality behind the Martial Heart as she climbed through the ranks, and hoping the revelation sends her into suicide as they record the act and send it to her mother before killing her themselves. 

However, this revenge was made out of key misunderstand.

You see, the grandfather of Natsume and Miko had killed Shigeyuki’s parents, Aya’s grandparents, before this entire thing began. As an act of vengeance, Shigeyuki worked with the Martial Heart organization to force the man’s daughters to fight Shizuko, a power martial artist he was dating/engaged to, and sent the daughters into slavery. Shizuko later learned of this all too late, as Natsume and Miko’s grandfather had Shigeyuki killed in revenge for his daughters. Wanting to avoid anymore bloodshed and pain, Shizuko walked away from it all with Aya, teaching her martial arts to defend herself and making sure she never gets involved in anything like she did ever again. 

At least until she met a girl named Miko one day while with her friend Natsume.

...

...

...

...

What the hell did I just type?

Did that make any sense to you guys? Would you believe me if I said some of this was my own headcanon to give context to some of this nonsense? Don’t believe me? Well... look at it for yourself:

This... this makes no sense. This makes no sense and I’ve played all of Blazblue. What the hell is this plan?

I... I don’t think I need to even explain why all of this is bad, but for the sake of actually be thorough this time...

Why the Twist is Bad

For the sake of my sanity, we’re doing this in list form.

Too many events for the revenge are done off screen. We don’t see any flashbacks to the last Martial Heart tournament or any hints of Natsume’s mom hating Aya except toward the end despite her having a bit of screentime.

The Martial Heart being a fraud to see hot women beat each other up is a good twist, the revenge plot isn’t. It’s too much information to believe it and requires too much exposition to explain properly.

There was no sign of Miko, Natsume or Haruki wanting revenge and it feels like more added for the twist. Natsume, Miko, and Haruki were affable to Aya for most of the series, and while you could argue Miko was being really heavy-handed with her friendliness and rather ridiculous wish, there was no hint of there being malice from these three save for the end.

The poetic revenge thing is, again, stupid. This premise had many more, simpler ways of having revenge in this context.

Too many elements feel out of place (Haruki dating his cousin, Aya’s dad dying due to Natsume and Miko’s grandfather, etc.). It feels like they were trying to just add minutes to the OVA for the sake of meeting that 28-minute goal.

I think the goal of this twist was be to a sort of slap to the face for the audience. Where we had to come to terms with that we watched a bunch of women fight for our amusement only for them to meet a tragic fate and for us to feel guilt for enjoying it. That could have worked, but... they added too much. the revenge plot, the fact that so many people were conned into this, the morality of the instigators (why are the children of former slaves okay with continuing the human trafficking trade?), the fact that Aya, aside from a few moment of brutality, was mostly innocent in this affair. There’s a lot wrong with this twist that could had worked better if they removed a few elements to it, but together they collapse the whole picture.

But those were my two biggest issues though. Without those two this would just be a relatively shameless Panty Fighter like Ikkitousen with a semi-interesting twist, but suppose the thing wouldn’t be as infamous as it is now. In any case, that’s my main issues. So with that all said...

Actual Good Points

For as bad as this anime is there are a few good things in it. I don’t want this Rambling to just be me bashing on a series after all. I’ll also do this in list form, mostly because there’s honestly not a lot here.

The teacher battle was just legit funny. A chemistry teacher using elements to telegraph her moves is absolutely stupid, but hilarious when our dimwit protagonist didn’t study her periodic tables and gets wrecked for half the fight. It was just good cheesy fun.

While probably unintentional, the conversation between Aya and her mother before the teacher fight had some weight too it, at least in terms of the acting and scripting. Shizuko explaining that fighting someone in the ring means to give it your all despite past relations while also not having the full story behind the reason Aya is fighting a friend is a quiet kind of a tragedy.

A lot of the fights are pretty silly and fun all things considered. Fighting in a maid cafe, a pool, and so on. I kind of wish they had more episodes for some zanier fights and situations. Case in point, episode 3 had an opponent that could basically be described as a wrench-nunchaku wielding Karen. I’m not even joking, it was hilarious to watch.

The dub is actually pretty good all things considered, even if most of the voice actors have vocally stated their shame for voicing it. This was right around the time Funimation was getting some good/experienced directors to make even the lesser known anime have good acting behind it. It’s a bit ironic that this anime was probably the first of the 2010-dubs.

Overall I like the idea of Master of Martial Hearts. I like the idea of an Ikkitousen without the dumb Three Kingdoms analogy. Just a silly show with hot girls fighting for a random prize and a twist ending that makes you think a little. I like this idea a lot, it was just executed poorly. To this day I still watch this anime as a remind of what a bad story, for what a truly poor execution looks like, and I thank it for that. It makes me calm down a little when I think about Tokyo Ghoul or even The Last of Us Part II and their stories. Nothing has been as bad as Master of Martial Hearts.

But nothing as been as intriguing as it either.

Recommendations

As I often do for these more negative Ramblings I’d like to offer some alternatives to Master of Martial Hearts.

If you want a Studio Arms anime with cute girls beating each other up in a vapid fanservice-filled romp, then Wanna be the Strongest in the World! is the show for you. It’s basically a lighter version of everything Master of Martial Hearts wanted to be. Not as serious, not as creative, but it’s better. I actually have the DVD collection of this anime with the episode commentaries included. Interesting stuff since they decided to make the commentaries a semi-interview of sorts. This isn’t a good anime, but it’s a good anime, but it’s better than Master of Martial Hearts at least. You can find this on Funimation and Crunchyroll.

Variable Geo is another all-girl battle series OVA with a bunch of shameless fanservice, but this one is from the 90s and has pretty good fight choreography in it, at least for the demographic its targeting. It’s only 3 episodes and while the premise is just as ridiculous as Master of Martial Hearts, I think the series has a lot more fun with the premise of all-girl battle tournament. Sadly, I think you can only watch this through non-official streaming sites, but I think Youtube has an episode or two up somewhere if you’re curious.

And, for an actual good show, I’d recommend Keijo, a fun, action-filled parody of most sports anime. It’s silly, it’s wild, it’s on Funimation and Crunchyroll, and it’s overall a good time. Butt-Battle anime is just a wild ride throughout and one I absolute recommend with no shame.

And... that’ll do it for me. This monster took over 6 hours to write so I’m just watch a few of my recommendations to relax a little. Next, I’ll... finally talk about Arknights... maybe.

[papas-con-aceite-y-mucha-sal]

abri-chan ha respondido a tu publicación: abri-chan: The only problem with Shinji x Kaworu...

It would be very shallow to ascribe his personality faults to his depression. There are depressed people that are not “shits”. The rest about bitches and sluts is just biases against females. Doing what she wants, doesn’t make Asuka a bitch. Sleeping with who she wants, doesn’t make Misato a slut. You can argue there is no such thing as a “slut”, just people wanting to control your freedom. Anyways, those are both great characters. Cannot say the same for Shinji.

Misato doesn't even sleep with other people apart from Kaji as shown in the Ep #19 when Kaji sees her smoking after having sex, and she comments how she only does that after sex so he's the only one who knows this. There's a certain incident with Shinji in Ep#23 and later with EoE but even that (an act which would have had terrible connotations and consequences had been consumated; the only proposition is enough of an issue, I am not trying to excuse it) went nowhere. She could have had sex with Makoto and took advantage of him thanks to his crush on her, as it was something she knew, yet she never did something like that. (Makoto’s very cool dude too.)

And sure, even if she had slept with every adult around Nerv she'd be in her right of doing so. That’s not the point. The point is that she still doesn't adhere to a 'slut' definition if we define that as 'sleeping with many men'. I’m not saying that’s neither good nor bad. What I’m saying is that label is wrong.

Asuka being a 'bitch' (taking the definition as bitch as ‘an annoying/whining woman just for the sake of’) is not a good definition either. When Asuka is ‘yelling’ at others it’s mainly because she’s in a stage she’s either a child nor an adult and then acts like such (and some of those times people know better and don’t feel personally attacked, see for example Shinji and Misato reactions at the beginning of Ep #16), she’s resorting to her main defense mechanism because she feels threatened, or a combination of both (there are also others reason and this is summarizing a lot, of course, but this isn’t an Asuka analysis). And she feels threatened by Shinji, very. Or to be more exact it’s her vision of Shinji what’s threatening her, what’s threatening her position as the best pilot, something she has been working for her entire life. With Rei is the same with the addition Asuka’s projecting herself onto Rei. Asuka as well has been dragged and used by other people her entire life and didn’t mind dying when she was a child as long as it was an order from her mother, just like Rei is a tool for others and didn’t mind dying as long as it was an order from the commander. Misato takes Kaji away from Asuka, and that’s one of the reasons once Misato and Kaji are back together Asuka and Misato’s relationship goes to shit (from Asuka’s part, she either ignores her or gets mad at her without listening to anything). You could go on and on but as I said, this isn’t an Asuka analysis. She still has many good points and her good moments such as when she complimented Shinji in Ep#15 for playing cello, or took both the Children and Misato to a cheap enough place for Misato’s poor wallet, and to a place where Rei could eat with them knowing she’s vegetarian (in Ep#12). Her slash towards characters like Shinji or Rei is more of a defense mechanism than an act purposely done to hurt them. She’s living as she’s learnt. Is her attitude excusable, or even healthy for her? No, it isn’t. But it’s understandable. Calling her 'a bitch' is unnecessary. Kinda misses the point. 

Rei being a 'doll', being 'cold' or 'emotionless' isn't true. She's someone who has been one with the HIP since her very birth. It's her reason to exist because it’s for what she was created. People never gave her anything else so she only does what she can, the few she has learnt. Did you see the kind of place was she living in? Yet I don't see you replying to that part, you've blatantly ignored her. Rei’s a very important, strong and good character. Should I assume you are implying Rei is like certain people love to paint her then? A submissive, emotionless robot? A non-character? Even when she ended up getting out of the hands of the person who made her out to be like that in EoE and did her own thing? Even when she refused orders of retreating in Ep#23?

I feel the same with Shinji. That's my point.

For Anno, Misato/Shinji parallels were a very important point of the show. So let’s see.

Misato went mute for two years after 2I, a traumatic event where she lost her father and watched everything being destroyed behold her eyes.

Shinji not only had to suffer the events of the first episodes: getting in a huge machine where he felt all its pain shortly after arriving into a new city, fighting Angels (from what he got flashbacks and other typical symptomatology of PTSD), the change of the environment, reopening old wounds with her father, etc. He later lost first his friends, then Rei, then Asuka broke down, then Misato broke down too, then had probably one of the best times of his life (’Before with my sensei, everyday was a calm day, I did nothing, I just lived’) once he met someone who said he could be loved, that he was worthy... and had to kill that same someone just shortly after. Shinji had to kill a human that felt exactly like him (’he was like me and like Ayanami’). A human dying was something he had tried to avoid since Ep#3 with Toji and Kensuke, in Ep#6 with Rei (he went running to her once he had the opportunity and nearly burned his hands to get her out alive asap), in Ep#10 with Asuka (jumping into the magma with no special protection when even Asuka was having troubles being equipped with it to save her life), in Ep#18 with Toji again (where he claimed he preferred his own death over the risk of harming/killing him), yet he finally killed another person. That was when he finally lost all touch with reality. 

He later watched the 3I unfold behold his eyes and entered in the entire world population’s conscience.

I don’t think I need to add much more.

>It would be very shallow to ascribe his personality faults to his depression

But many of them, for not saying the majority of them, ARE a cause of his poor mental health. Again, this is not an excuse, this is an explanation. This is a kid who grow up with depression since he was four, five at most. And then you have PTSD added in the top of the cake. He even has actual phobia towards people according to Schizo/Parano, it’s what’s written in his profile. I’m not good enough at Japanese but it more or less says ‘from the shock of both the death of Yui and the abandonement of his father, Shinji grow extremely introverted and developed an interpersonal phobia/anthrophobia’. You can see this in how Shinji is always seen alone by himself feeling an incredible and bottomless loneliness, in all of those times he's seen with people and yet he prefers to maintain a certain physical distance from them, mentally complains about the noise they make or how alienated he feels (Ep#12), rejects them, or runs away from them (the entire Ep#4, all the times he hides he’s awake to not establish conversations, etc).

>There are depressed people that are not “shits”

First, there are many types of depression, and secondly, everyone gets affected differently because everyone has an entire world inside of them, so they have different internal variables. It IS a mental illness, and because it affects your mind, it makes you do shitty stuff (or do you think Misato making advances towards Shinji in Ep#23 is something she would have done had her been mentally fine at that point?). That much is truth. Any psychologist you ask, or any psychology book you consult, will tell you this.

Were those people living in a both post-apocaliptic world while fearing a new apocalypse, experienced death of a mother at three, abandonement of a father at four, grow up with a distant tutor, were commanded by their father to pilot giant robots, and went through all I’ve already mentioned during the Misato-Shinji parallelism?

And, if Shinji is 'shit', then how 'shit' are the people who have shaped him as the person he is (as Rei points out in the last two episodes, you’re shaped by your bonds with others)? Even the person at charge of him for a decade didn’t seem like he cared enough about him. We only see he made him play cello, but Shinji doesn’t even know things normal kids do at his age: simple things as swimming (Ep#16), how good it is to have a family (he is envious of Asuka, believing she had it, Ep#22) or how the warmth of another human feels (Ep#26). As it was pointed out long ago, everyone around Shinji had their own problems: they all 'carry a wound in the heart and a sickness in the soul’. But many of them knew how messed he was and can be accused of negligence because of how blatantly obvious is the only thing they needed was the pilot, not the person, and thus acted as such. They can be accused of the same when it comes to Rei and Asuka, of course. 

Do you see now how tricky all of this can get? Things in Eva are not black or white, and I don’t think the show is written for people to think it is. It’s too complicated to simplify it like that.

I'm not trying to excuse his actions nor I excuse the actions of the others. As I’ve said many times in this post, it’s an explanation. Does Shinji have bad traits? Yes. Is Shinji a good character? Yes. He shows both bad and good traits, and he's well written; he has a solid character arc. He goes under character development (both regression and progression) and under character analysis in a couple of chapters, and in the end reaches a conclusion, a very positive one actually. If there's something the last two episodes teaches you is that you can always get better, and that things can get better as well. Of course, you have to work for it.

To end with, I think there's definitely something worthy in the awful mess that Shinji is when Adam decided after meeting him humanity was worth saving and, few time later, Lilith decided that he was worth enough to become a God (again, EoE).