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hopeymchope · 5 years

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Unpopular opinion: I really don’t like Kokichi I get that he’s complex and he did so much in the endgame and objectively, he’s a great well written character, but he rubbed me all the wrong ways for way to long that it was kinda too late to redeem him for me.

I had to save this one a bit so I could really go into it, because I strongly agree with your distaste for Kokichi. He rubbed me the wrong way too - so many times and in so many ways, he’s there acting wantonly cruel and hateful to everyone. He’s introduced with a scene where he’s treating Kiibo as a sub-human, upsetting Kiibo greatly on the exact topic he already can tell Kiibo is most senstivie about - that’s literally his INTRO SCENE, and that says a LOT about the kind of shitheel Kokichi enjoys being.

However, as for whether he’s a great and well-written character... I dunno. I both agree and disagree.

I’ve written before about how I hate him (check me out - directly linking to a post that has gotten me hate messages, death threats and active trolls before! Gosh I’m such a rebel but seriously please don’t send me death threats I’m unstable enough as it is). Honestly, I feel very vindicated by the fact that last week saw someone else on Tumblr saying “Man, I fell in love with fandom Kokichi, but now that I’m playing the game myself, canon Kokichi is murdering that love.” That is funny as hell and it says SO MUCH

But my disagreement is that... well, is he a well-written character? I mean... he’s... inconsistent, that’s for sure. There are elements of his writing that I just don’t find very believable.

Sometimes he is. Sometimes he’s great. He’s incredibly good at pushing the buttons of the characters to make them disgusted with him. His manipulations are well-handled. He make a very powerful antagonist - I’d argue he’s a greater “enemy” to the cast than the main “mastermind” of V3. (The real mastermind of V3 isn’t really an individual, I’d argue.) He instills real rage in me with how he knows exactly how to find what our sympathetic cast members are sensitive about and then use it to tear them down and make them feel like shit.

Hell, I guess that means he’s exactly what John Mulaney says about teenage boys. (“Check out that high-waisted man; he got feminine hips!”)

However, his ability to always, ALWAYS know exactly what happened in any case from the moment a trial begins, and (even moreso) his ability to always be a 100% foolproof lie detector no matter how straight-faced the lie is delivered? Those are basically bullshit. They make him seem like magic. Even when a case is absurdly convoluted or someone says a lie in a completely believable way, Magical Ouma can see through all, proving a better detective than anyone in the cast (and then use the fact that he sees through all to... dick with everybody for no reason). These powers of his are just annoying plot device that aren’t justified for me in any believable way.

But I guess that’s limited to trial-writing. Because outside of the trials, I’m not sure if those same things still apply? For example: When Kaede suggests that maybe Monokuma ISN’T dead in the first chapter, he is immediately suspicious and accuses her of wanting the killing game to happen.

There are two possibilities at that moment:

He legitimately is unable to see that Kaede is sincere in her concern and thinks she’s lying, making his “flawless lie detection” skill not function properly outside of trials for some unknown reason.

He knows she’s sincere but just wants to hurt her and discredit her and make her feel shitty because he’s an asshole.

Both are equally plausible for the character, sadly. (It’s also worth noting that this is one of many moments where no one has died so there’s no way he’s already formulated his elaborate ‘end the killing game’ plan, but he’s still acting like a Grade-A dick in spite of that.)

He is, ultimately, a super-effective troll who reaps exactly what he sews. His entire gambit to end the killing game by taking on the blame and hiding his true intentions doesn’t work in the end, but it DOES result in multiple deaths because so many people hate him and want him dead as a result of his own actions. So when you consider that the game (and the series) celebrates cooperation and trust as the only true route to success, he’s thematically screwed and going to never be more than a thorn in the side of the cast; I’d argue he’s more effectively damaging than either Komaeda or Togami were in their games. Someone so accepting and embracing of distrust that he’d try to hurt as many people as possible so he can put up a front and end the game all on his own? He was kinda doomed from the get-go.

I think you’re completely justified in finding his distasteful. Canon Kokichi is a deeply toxic person to be around, unfortunately. Fanon Kokichi, on the other hand, is just kind of a fun-loving goof who lies in the silliest of ways?

Maaaaybe this is an attempt to imagine what he’d be like outside of the stress of being trapped with his students like in V3. On the other hand, I’d also ssume a huge chunk of the fandom never experienced the game firsthand without a filter, opting instead to experience it through someone else’s playthrough that contained an amateur translation as that person went along. And as I’ve seen time and time again, watching a DR playthrough that’s still in japanese wildly affects how people see the characters and events of these games, because that person doing the amateur on-the-fly translation is absolutely going to serve as a warping lens that distorts the events and characters through their own interpretation and because of unfiltered cultural divides.

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lightsandlostbells · 6 years

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Skam Italia episode 9 reaction

shout out to the sheer number of snake emojis in the comments on any clip featuring or mentioning Martino

Episode 9

Clip 1 - Silvia spills the beans

Skam Italia being educational, kinda! I’m going to try out this headache technique.

According to the subs I found, Sana’s janitor told her about it? … her housekeeper? That’s probably closer to what it was but I just like the idea of Sana going around striking up conversations with janitors.

But another version of the subs didn’t have that part at all so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Dear Lord, Silvia, chill the hell out. Someone sitting in someone else’s car doesn’t mean they’re dating. Although lmao, Eva and Noora could have stood to learn that in season 2.

Actually, I do get how Silvia would be upset? She’s really jumping the gun but Edoardo just treated her like crap in front of people. I would probably be a little hurt that my friend was maybe hanging out with someone who hurt me. The problem with Silvia is that her motivation is less, “Eva, how could you associate with someone who’s treated me like garbage?” and more, “Eva, what were you doing with my mans???”

Evaaaaa, why did you trade that completely obvious look with Eleonora??? Just make it seem the most suspicious you can. I mean, if you don’t want to spill the whole truth about Edoardo digging for info on Eleonora, you can literally say “I studied for my exam in the car and he asked me about it” and technically that’s not a lie.

The flashbacks with Eva and Laura were pretty cute. Aesthetic hair-braiding!

I do like Sana immediately being like “lol why would you trust Laura” and bringing up the water throwing incident as a sort of logical evidence why Laura isn’t the greatest, as opposed to Vilde/Silvia saying something dumb and Islamophobic and Sana having to mention the water incident as proof of her loyalty. Also Silvia looks humbled by Sana mentioning she was defending Silvia’s honor.

Sana asking Silvia whether she has to meet her mother was a nice way of calming the situation for Eva’s sake while getting Silvia to leave before the problem can escalate. It was thoughtful for Silvia, too, as it gave her a chance to escape instead of digging the hole deeper.

I'm glad that the Edoardo lift had more plot relevance than just ship teasing (multi-tasking is A+) and I think that it’s good to illustrate how much it would break Eva is to lose a friend again. Her offering to let Silvia listen to the message she left Martino as proof is rather heartbreaking in its desperation. On the other hand, I don’t know how I feel about the emotional impact of this scene having to be more about poor Eva weeping and having to beg Silvia for forgiveness over something that was ultimately trivial and meant nothing, and that we as the audience know meant nothing, rather than Eva dealing with the guilt that she’s been carrying around for months over destroying her relationship with her best friend. That is the Big Secret Eva has been hiding from both her new friends and the audience so it probably needs more focus (which to be fair, is elaborated on in the bathroom scene later).

I saw some talk of how people thought it was an improvement that Silvia didn’t call Eva a slut, and while of course it’s nice that she didn’t do so, I don’t get why it’s better for Silvia not to call Eva a slut in this version since Noora directly confronts Vilde about it in the moment, it’s not like it was this casual misogyny in the show that went unaddressed. That was the point, it was a teachable moment. It’s certainly not worse that the moment wasn’t there, I just think it’s more about how it’s handled than anything else. (Also, I mean … Vilde being a jerk was specifically a tip off that something was going on with her.)

Clip 2 - Eva talks to a friendly serpent

Martino knows all the school drama and social scene. It is pretty damn shady of him to be like oh yeah, they didn’t invite you because that girl whose boyfriend you kissed, her friend is organizing it, when he is responsible for the apparent non-invite in the first place, or so he would think. But he’s so casual about it. Not much guilt when he tells her that. Maaaaybe a little more when she starts to tell him about what she’s dealing with at school? IDK.

Eva sounds less angry or frustrated, more defeated.

I’m still wondering what her arc is going to be? Because there isn’t that pressing question of “who are you?” and her not having her own identity, it’s like … I guess she’s questioning whether she’s become a bad person? Sort of? She has Silvia making assumptions about her being a bad person, Laura thinks she is a bad person based on events that really happened, and Gio is questioning why she hangs around with bad people. That could be an area to explore in terms of her relationship with Laura but I’m not all that sure how it would play regarding her and Gio since Gio has made many of the same mistakes she has, he can’t exactly talk.

Martino trying to pull some reverse psychology is cute because he can’t quite keep a straight face.

Sucks that this friendship is about to go down the toilet!

Clip 3 - Eva and the older girls

Heh, this angsty song gets cut off as soon as we establish that Maria does not give a crap who Eva is.

I always enjoy this scene and this advice. It’s one of the most underrated parts of season 1. These girls didn’t seem as invested as giving Eva some friendly advice but again, love that they get interested in their own sexual exploits rather than Eva’s and she ends up just walking away.

It’s nice that there was a totally logical, boring reason they didn’t get invites though how were they planning to invite everyone else once they stopped on Facebook? Word of mouth?

Mmm, I don’t know if I totally buy that Alice’s BFF doesn’t give a shit at all who Eva is? Of course her maturity is nice, and I can certainly buy that she doesn’t care enough to keep Eva from being invited to the party, but Alice got in a physical fight with this girl because she was that upset. . Like who were those girls accompanying Alice in the fight if not her friends? (At first they seemed like they wanted to hold Alice back but by the end it seemed like they were fighting as well.)

I think I’d have preferred if Maria was like, “Just between you and me, Federico is a fuckboy and I’m glad Alice can see the truth now,” or “I don’t like that my best friend was hurt, but I’m not petty enough to keep you off the list” or “I love Alice but she overreacts to everything and makes a lot of drama.” Or just some explanation for her total lack of fucks. The older Norwegian girls weren’t like, Iben’s best friends, correct? They weren’t even in the same grade? Maria has her BFF involved.

Clip 4 - Hippogriff

Fede, teach me your ways of absorbing information just as Sana showed us how to get rid of headaches.

Sana having an uncharacteristically soft moment and trying to deny it. She’s been really blunt with Silvia but their relationship has been all about helping Silvia with no apparent gain for Sana, except friendship.

Also she’s very reluctant to spread rumors, like this Sana goes from hard to soft pretty fast.

Federico and Laura leaving the men’s bathroom together sure adds a layer to Edoardo’s comment about Silvia hanging around the boy’s bathroom! That is just a thing these characters do, hook up in bathrooms. In S3 Martino can just wander into any men’s bathroom and find a girl to pretend to like.

Clip 5 - Eva and Laura and Alice

Nice use of music with the tense beat going as Eva drags off Laura, then it cuts off abruptly as Eva is about to get real and vulnerable.

This is easily the best acting Italian Eva has done so far. There have been a few “emotional” scenes where I thought she seemed too theatrical and not natural for the material but this was very good. I almost wanted them to stretch it out longer, as in the original, so we could get more of this performance.

And I’m pretty sure Laura was crying too by the end, which is very touching. I do think it’s one of S1’s best aspects how the Ingrid/Laura is not the villain, is actually the wronged party, but that she and Eva are able to come to a peaceful resolution.

It’s pretty sad that Eva made that little attempt at a wave back in the first clip. She really missed Laura.

Ha, I didn’t care for that Alice intro, though! Seeing her come up in the hallway definitely distracted from this intense, emotional acting between Eva and Laura. Especially because the moving music keeps going as she’s spying on them, and only cuts off when she throws her books down. I think it would’ve been more effective to keep the Eva-Laura shots going and keep us really engrossed in their dialogue, and then when Laura mentions Fede, suddenly cut to Alice standing like right there in the doorway and cut off the music, for a true jolt and change in the scene’s energy.

Alice’s actress looks so defeated as she realizes what a piece of shit her boyfriend is. And it’s nice that she apologizes and asks how Eva is doing. You know, before she inadvertently reveals Eva has been betrayed by a good friend.

“He looks like he cares about you” does that mean Martino looked pained when he told Alice about Eva and Fede? Boyyyy, why did you do such a stupid thing? (I know why, it’s still stupid.)

General Comments:

This has been a solid remake and overall they’re handling Eva’s emotional turmoil well. The point I’m wondering about is what Eva’s ultimate conclusion/personal statement is going to be since they’ve left out a lot of the questioning of her identity and insinuations that she is a follower not making her own choices. Season one’s strength lay a lot in that finale so I hope they have something cohesive for her character.

I am not Italian so if I misunderstood something or missed context, feel free to correct me.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

#skamit reactions #skam italia reactions

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