#direction or just pretty much self indulge and fanservice their way out of it. Which I am going to be honest by the level of writing Wade

[qcomicsy]

Marvel writer: Then Wade get involved with monsters! And–

Me:

[haine-kleine]

what I find the most annoying about s2's drop in quality is not even the disservice done to the characters and the story of s1 but how the writers weaponized fanon and it actually WORKED. all the things fans wanted to see are there - the found family themes, Caitvi, Jinx's healing and joining the 'good guys', Viktor coming out of Jayce's shadow and doing his thing, Mel going from a damsel in distress to a badass mvp, Jayvik, Timebomb, did I mention Caitvi,...

but here's the thing: while all of those things do indeed happen, they happen with minimal or no development at all. this is why on a closer inspection s2 feels like fanfiction, and for an official show that's a bad thing. not because fanfiction in itself is bad, or that fulfilling fan's wishes is inherently bad, but because fanfiction is commonly motivated by self-indulgence. we take the characters we like and put them into situations we want to see them in. in fanfiction there's no strict need to development, you can do whatever you want with the characters and no one is there to stop you. if the character in the show ends up in point b, a fanfiction writer has no obligation to outline how they get to point c, they can just start with the character where they want them to be.

but fanfiction rules only work for fanfiction. when you write your original show which painstakingly developed each and every character and throw them around like chess figurines where you need them to be, this breaks the suspension of disbelief. I spent my s2 watch from act 2 onwards with that feeling. all the development is neatly cut out and the characters go to the points they are supposed to go with barely any work of the writers involved.

Jinx is supposed to be more mentally stable and become responsible? a child literally drops on her head and immediately becomes obsessed with her. Ekko is supposed to forgive Jinx and see past her current unstable, destructive self? he is transported to a canon divergent!au with the singular purpose of hanging out with au!mentally stable!Powder. there's no development of his relationship with Jinx afterwards, all we get is a beginning of a conversation and the next time we see them they are suddenly besties/in love/option c. Jayce needs to kill Viktor and so he does, his reasoning? the visions from the alternate universe™ told him to. how awfully convenient. how does Viktor himself go from a good hearted, motivated to help others but keenly critical of his and Jayce's methods man from s1 to a crazy messiah who watched The end of Evangelion too much? the visions from the hexcore are controlling him! i can't even.

the problem is not even the (bad) direction the story took a deep dive towards but the execution. they barely bother to develop the characters and when they do at all, they use the cheapest tricks, heavily sprinkling fanservice on top so that people don't pay too much attention. the worst victim of this writing is Vi, who is such a non-character that after her failure in act1 she literally has to be dragged around by Jinx or Caitlyn. the same girl whose single-minded motivation to find her sister sparked half of the s1 plot. and now she lets her sister go kill herself because the writers want her to have hot lesbian sex with Caitlyn. who went from a good-hearted but naive and privileged girl to fascist war criminal and then back to a good guy and the only way the could show this development of hers is throw Vi at her like they are dolls and making them kiss.

in conclusion, theoretically, disappointingly, from the characters' development standpoint, s2 has pretty much everything we could wish for after s1. unfortunately, the level of writing execution equates to turning off sim's freedom of will and manually making them do everything that would make fans happy.

and if I wanted that, I would just go to ao3.

[avelera]

Hey i love the prisoners dilemma and i was just wondering what your writing process is ( as someone who stuggles to get words on the page)

*falls in a heap* right now anon I’m so behind on TPD that I don’t even know what my process is but first of all, thank you for your kind words. 

OK! But I actually love questions like this so I’m gonna give it a shot (I’m actually very excited, thank you for sending this!)

1) Get an idea. Think the idea is going to be short. It’s not short. I am roundly mocked for my hubris. 

ex 1. the seed idea for “The Only Way Out is Down” was that I wanted to combine Newt’s recovery with Dante’s Inferno (got it literally in the parking lot after seeing Uprising and to this day I don’t know what was up with my brain that day). I figured that would be done in 20k. I wasn’t even through the third circle of Hell (out of 9) in 20k.

ex 2.the seed idea for “How to Accidentally Become a Jaeger Pilot in 10 Easy Steps” was a thought I had while jogging of how funny it would be if Newt and Hermann actually had to do the stick sparring and accidentally became an incredibly effective Jaeger pilot duo, to Hermann’s euphoria and Newt’s everlasting shame.

ex 3. the idea for “Prisoners’ Dilemma” was basically “what if Newt wasn’t alone for the 10 years of his possession? What if Hermann was there, both as our audience surrogate to observe the situation but also as a potential source of salvation? what if it was really messed up but also really cute and domestic?” 

2) Each fic has a different process but generally, ideally, I write the first draft as quickly as I can all the way to the end, occasionally having alpha readers to offer encouragement if it’s a very long piece to get me through the slog and self doubt (I had SO MUCH self doubt about towoid, damn, I was convinced the story was self indulgent garbage pretty much the whole time). TPD that kinda broke down so it’s been slower going overall as I release chapters as they come. One reason I like to finish a story to the end before posting though is a) it gives more time to let the early chapters sit so I can edit them with fresh eyes and b) it allows me to “seed” things and set up foreshadowing for stuff I don’t get an idea for until I’ve written to the end. For example, the circle “Wrath” in TOWOID was re-written after I finished the first draft because I realized it needed tweaking to be brought in line with the overarching mystery of the story so the reader could actually *solve* it. 

3) I get beta readers. I also read the chapters about 100 more times myself, before and after it’s posted. I’m still editing months even years later. I basically re-read a section every time someone comments on it, because their comment allows me to see the story with new eyes. 

When it comes to defeating writers block, generally what I find is it’s a product of being too hard on oneself. Another reason to write the whole draft before posting is it allows me to not worry about the audience or let them in on the process until I’m certain myself about what I have to say, without fear of judgement or alteration for “fanservice”. Trying to change things to please fans is one of my biggest sources of writer’s block. There’s generally a reason I don’t do things a certain way. I also really need there to be conflict in a story or I get stalled out. If it’s just two people having a cup of tea agreeing on everything the other says, I don’t know how to direct the scene forward. Even just now while working on the next TPD chapter I realized I had stalled out because the characters agreed on something too early in the conversation and they needed to be in conflict for the conversation to progress to where it needed to go. 

Tip: One thing that’s helpful for breaking writers block is doing 15 minute short prompt fics. Just having something rough but DONE is a good way to remember that one is a writer and one CAN complete things. It also helps make writing feel less momentous, like every word needs to be perfect, which is in my experience the source of almost all writers block.

I also try to incorporate lessons from the writing workshops I’ve begun attending. Lately I’ve been working on:

- Make sure everything has a cause and effect. Even just thoughts the characters are having need to be prompted by something external, they can’t just realize things out of the blue, something needs to prompt the thought, otherwise the audience can’t follow or predict the action and it makes them frustrated. I still agonize over what are probably invisible plot holes in TOWOID where I feel like I didn’t adequately set up certain aspects of the story. For example, I still feel as if I never properly came up with the cause of the dive into Newt’s memories taking the form of Dante’s Inferno, at least not to my satisfaction, because the true Doylist answer was, “Because the author felt like it.”

- For TPD I’ve been throwing myself into making sure information isn’t known to different characters before they actually share it. An astute reader may notice that by ch. 6 of TPD, Hermann *still* doesn’t know that Alice is the brain in the jar. Why would he know that? It’s a bonkers thought that would never occur to Hermann, Newt is too embarrassed to tell him and the Precursors never would. So at this point, though the audience has outside knowledge of who “Alice” is, Hermann still believes she’s a human accomplice, perhaps someone at Shao. Similarly, the Precursors and Newt have a copy of Hermann in their minds, but it’s a copy from the day of the Drift, so they don’t know Hermann’s thoughts for the past year or two, they don’t have an echo of the Hermann who has been in love with and cohabited with Newt for that time. So, their map of Hermann is incomplete thus they can’t always predict his actions and that drives them nuts. I could go on but that would be spoilers. Suffice to say, I’m doing my damndest to give each character distinct knowledge and a distinct mental map of how they operate, which can be a bit migraine inducing for the author at times lol. 

- Describing facial expressions with specifics. This is a critique I got at my last workshop, that I was falling into the fanfic trap of describing things like, “Something indescribable happened to his face.” It’s not indescribable, damnit, describe it! You’re the author! We can only see the world as you show it because it’s all squiggles on a page! When you use that turn of phrase, you’re making the reader do your job of showing how things look AND you’re missing an opportunity to give your characters strong, unique visual details. 

Anyway, I hoped this answered your questions somewhere in this mess!

[miragablog]

Top 10 Mahou Shoujo Shows for Babies (Part 1)

I’ll be the first person to admit, getting into Mahou Shoujo is hard.

With the lacking amount of accessible critique and over the top presentation shows of the genre adopt,

It can be genuinely uninviting for many anime fans to get a foot in the door that is Magical Girl.

After my last video, I received a handful of comments asking about what I’d recommend as great gateway shows for a newbie.

While a recommendations list is all good and well, giving context to why these shows are worth your time is what i’m more interested in talking about today.

Before getting into the list I’d like to clarify that the choice being presented arnt tiered based on quality nor personal preference.

Some of these shows I love more than others and others not so much; However when recommending shows to try in a sub genre like Mahou shoujo, I find it counterproductive to introduce ratings when breaking down audience bias.

Also I’m judging the viability of these shows on their first five episodes, maybe a few chapters of the manga.

With that out of the way, let's get into the first section….

Kill la Kill

In a world where facism has taken hold of Japanese government, scissor blade wielding badass Ryuko Matoi is on a quest to avenge the death of her father. This brings her to Honnouji Academy, a school run by the iron fist of Satsuki Kiryuin. 

For the sake of finding her father’s murderer, Ryuko must demonstrate pride in her body and fighting spirit with the help of a bloodthirsty seifuku known as Senketsu.

Let's say you made a magical cheesecake. Amongst the common choices, of strawberries, banana and cherries you dig through and find the tangy lemon that is Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Kill la Kill.

Trigger has done some fantastic work in its six years as a studio, revolutionizing modern anime as we know it. 

However what I never hear ANYBODY talk about is how Imaishi and co.’s work has pushed the concept of the Magical Girl.Kill La kill is a bombastic, stylish addition to the genre and a fantastic entry point for introducing others to Mahou Shoujo. 

It has a really fresh, fun take on the Magical warrior, in its most literal form. The use of a mascot character being the transformation item is rare enough, but including symbiote-esc elements to the costume as a whole is something i’ve never really seen done outside of comic books stateside. 

While some may critique the shows use of “Fanservice” to be pandering or perverted, I don't think it should be a roadblock in trying KLK out. Most of the nudity presented serves into a message about confidence and having pride in who you are.

It's not trite BS like what you see in Queens Blade or (shudder) Master of Martial Hearts.

If you’re trying to get your little brother or a friend to try Mahou shoujo without having to preface starting crunchyroll with a disclaimer- about how your a real man, throw this on with a bowl of popcorn and a pitcher of lemonade. You’ll have a blast.

Shugo Chara

Amu Himamori is, for all intensive purposes, popular.

Or is she feared?

The “Cool and Spicy” character surrounding Amu pervades the relationships she tries to make with others.

Despite her crushingly shy nature, classmates interpret everything she does in a rebellious lense, perpetuating rumors without making the effort to get to know Amu outside of her reputation.

But in a miraculous turn of events, she is given the chance to rectify her social standing with the blessing of three strange eggs known as Chara, portions of Amu’s buried personality that act as guardian angels.

Originally watching the show while airing in 2008, I can say that Shugo Chara is a contender with the likes of Pretty Cure when it comes to presentation. I’m surprised I don't hear more people talk about the series to be honest.

Transformation sequences are minimal but catch the eye.

The concept of having multiple characters to change in and out of when needed lends to keeping the audience guessing, especially when paired transformations with new Chara come into play.

In combination, Peach-Pits colorful art design and Kenji Yasuda’s directing kept me glued to the screen.

While the shows premise isn't horribly original, Shugo chara stands out for it’s “heart on it’s sleeve” approach to character development.

Overall Shugo Chara has a very child friendly plot while addressing overlooked themes in most bishoujo.  

Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt

Keeping this one nice and sweet as i’ve already mentioned Hiroyuki Imaishis contribution to the genre with Kill La Kill.

If you want to test your expectation or others of Mahou Shoujo while indulging in some vulgar toilet humor, then Panty and Stocking is worth checking out.

While shows like this may not be everyone's cup of tea, Gainax has definitely cranked out a fantastic parody addressing the more sexual undercurrents usually glossed over in Magical warrior.

You don't see many studios that have the confidence to implement pole dancing into their transformation sequences.

Atsushi Nishigori, Masahiko Otsuka, Yoh Yoshinari- Shit even my girl Sayo Yamamoto is here. With the diversity in staff, you’re bound to find something you like whether its the experimental realism in “Vomiting Point” or a saving private ryan homage with sperm ghosts in “Pulp Addiction”.

As someone who's watched all of Panty and Stocking through in both Japanese and English; I’d highly recommend the dub.

Not only does it help jokes stick but stays really close to the original intent while implementing some Adult Swim level humor.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably be swept away by the shows poppy, powerpuff girl-esc art and Teddyloid’s contributions to the OST, introducing punchy playlist worthy electronica. Just don't listen to it with your mom or anything.

Cardcaptor Sakura

Sakura Kinamoto is your typical fourth grader.

She's outgoing, participates in sports at school and is beloved by her fellow classmates.

One day, when returning from class Sakura hears a strange sound from her father’s study. Investigating the bookshelves, she opens a strange tome containing “Clow Cards”,

a magicians tarot deck imbued with the powers of aspected spirits.

However, with a gust of wind the cards are lost and with the help of the books guardian, Kero- Sakura must recollect the deck and discover her true self.

Cardcaptor Sakura is by far one of the least abrasive gateways into long form Magical Warrior.

I’m 20 episodes into the series and while I know I dont have the free time to watch another 50 I kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnddddddddddaaaaaaaaa dont careeeeeee?

The scenery is beautiful, pacing is mellow and everybody, whether it be top tier camcorder waifu Tomoyo to the cuckoo lander childhood crush Yukito will find a way to melt your heart.

When others talk about the typicality of magical girls, I find that Sakura presents many unorthodox takes on commonalities to the subgenre.

The show doesn't have transformation sequences, but rather invests its runtime on  inventive fight scenes and dynamic character development.

On the Manga side the series is much more compact read, with about 12 volumes not including the newly announced Clear Card Arc. Mokona and gangs luxurious, carefully laid linework are in the forefront, taking a less hi-scifi approach than their other titles.

When it comes to wholesome, genuine Mahou Shoujo- Cardcaptor Sakura is a great series to snuggle into a blanket and watch with a friend.

Sailor Moon

YOU DON'T NEED A PLOT SYNOPSIS FOR THE DRAGON BALL Z OF MAHOU SHOUJO. IF YOU DO, YOU’RE EITHER LIVING UNDER A ROCK OR TOO YOUNG TO BE ON THIS SITE. FUCK.

Yes, the Dic dub is borderline horrible if you didn't grow up with it and the shows a popular prototype for what we now consider the Magical warrior, which for some is pretty stock. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT ISN'T FANTASTIC AND WORTH THE BINGE.

As far as Magical Warrior goes, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon is a staple introduction to modern Mahou Shoujo.

While early sections of the series do contain buckets of filler, the show makes up for it with a lovable, diverse cast, Beautiful transformations and a fun premise.

Season three alone, Sailor Moon S is arguably one of the best installments in the genre and worth every second of your time as it showcases director Kunihiko Ikuhara, of Utena and Mawaru Penguindrum fame.

The story is nothing too crazy mind you; but if you’re interested in Sailor Moon manga-wise, Naoko Takeuchi’s illustrations are TO DIE FOR, drawn with meticulous detail and colored with a mixture of ink and translucent watercolors.

Look i’ll even make it easier; because I have no life and completed the show six times. A month or so ago I put together a “Abridged Viewing Guide” for people wanting to cut out useless filler so if you’re interested the link will be in the description.

Sailor Moon broke ground in the 90’s for what is now considered a “typical magical girl”. Truly, You would be doing yourself a disservice passing the series up.

[murasaki-murasame]

Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 12 [Chapter 4 - Daily Life]

If you die in the game, you die in real life the other, bigger game called Danganronpa V3.

Thoughts under the cut.

Well this sure got weird. I expected the Neo World Program to come up soon enough, but not THAT soon, and I didn’t expect it to literally be the Neo World Program, even though the virtual world itself is obviously different to the one in DR2.

On that note, they sure are making a lot of references to DR2 in this chapter in particular. I’m even pretty sure that ‘Miral Falls’ was the name of the resort in DR2.

Anyway, in terms of the death that happened at the very end, I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be Miu. I genuinely thought that she was going to survive this one, and follow the tradition set by Asahina and Akane, of the fanservice-y girls surviving to the end. Huh. If she can die, though, maybe Gonta can break the curse of bara characters always dying.

Seriously though, I was genuinely unspoiled on this, and I didn’t see it coming at all. I guess it was pretty obvious in the final moments leading up to it, but Kaito’s mysterious disappearance also made me wonder if he’d gotten killed off instead. I’ll talk about him later, though.

Even though this whole part is basically one huge DR2 reference, the scenario within the virtual world itself felt very Banshee’s Last Cry-esque. But with how the murder actually played out, the comparison isn’t very strong.

Before I talk about anything else, I should comment on the start of the chapter in case I forget. That sure was one big plot tease with that video from Rantarou. I assume that it was a video he recorded for himself from before the killing game began, though the fact that we got a title card saying ‘a few days ago’ before it played was suspicious, since it’s been much longer than a few days since he died.

Anyway, they obviously cut off parts of it to avoid spoiling us too much, but from what they showed, I can gather that Rantarou was a part of a previous killing game that he survived through, and that he apparently wanted this current game to happen, and to win it. Welp, guess that plan of his immediately failed, since he was the first to die. It does make me even more curious about what his deal is, and how we’ll even find out about it at this point.

I think we already got a hint at him having done a killing game before [just in terms of the characters commenting that he sounded like he’d done this sort of thing before, I think], but getting more confirmation of it’s now making me wonder if maybe the Monokubs might somehow be related to other people that might have survived alongside him. DR1 had six survivors in the end, so maybe a similar thing happened with Rantarou’s group. I’m not sure. There’s not much to go on. But on this note, I’ve been meaning to say for a while that the Monokubs are suspicious as fuck, and sometimes it feels like they vaguely allude to a previous killing game that happened. Like that one time one of them talked about someone dying on a battlefield, and in this part we saw Monotaro mention someone called Kaoru [which may have been a reference to something I’m not aware of, though]. I’m not sure what to make of them, but they seem like they’ll probably play a big part in the overall story.

Given that Rantarou clearly made this tape in advance for him to watch during the killing game, I wonder if he got a chance to watch it before he died. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did, since he seemed to know a bit more than he let on. I wonder if we’ll find this tape if we ever find his lab.

Also, him referencing the idea that the killing game will end when two people are left makes me wonder if the game might actually go in that direction. I feel like the game’s been bringing that rule up a lot more than in the previous games, at least, so maybe this time we’ll get a scenario where the killing game actually winds down to it’s natural conclusion, instead of it being stopped partway through. I’ve always wanted to see what a three-person trial would be like.

I’m hesitant to assume this will happen, though, since it’d require six whole murder mysteries to happen, which is more than the previous games had. But if we get one more case of three people dying over the course of one chapter, then theoretically the chapter six case would then be a three-person trial, and we’d be left with two people left after the execution. So it could happen. We’ll see.

I still don’t have a clue about that tile in the courtyard. It kinda looks like there’s one word per line, and the first ones seem to be ‘the world is mine to’, but I can’t guess at the rest. And some of that guess might already be wrong. It sounds kinda . . . foreboding. I’m not sure what to make of it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention it last time, but I’m really suspicious about the ‘voice in Keebo’s head’. It sounds really important, but I’m not sure what it might be, specifically. Probably some sort of program that was installed in him ages ago. The question is if the voice is helpful or malicious, especially if Keebo really does whatever it tells him to do.

I’ll talk about the overall murder soon, so for now I’ll just talk about characters for a while.

Kokichi flips back and forth between being kinda endearing and incredibly fucking evil and irritating. Also he somehow managed to one-up himself in creepiness with that one expression he made during his scene with Monokuma. Good god. I just knew he’d fuck things up and do something to set up a murder, even if he probably didn’t kill Miu directly. I wonder what he found with that key card, and how it lead to him [presumably] messing with the virtual reality program somehow.

Also I’m not super happy about the prospect that he might be into Shuichi in a really yandere sort of way. I wasn’t sure if he was just teasing him before, but that whole ominous ‘I do everything I can to make the person I like notice me’ thing makes it seem pretty serious. But, like, on the one hand, I guess the basic fact of one of the dudes being not straight is nice, but on the OTHER hand, of all the dudes??? The one who I hate the most??? Oh well. At least now I’m starting to get a clearer idea of why people seem to ship him and Shuichi. Right now it just seems like an awful, toxic version of Komaeda/Hinata, so I can’t get behind it at all. At least Komaeda was able to feel genuine love and admiration and respect for those around him. Also him being really misogynistic toward Miu is kinda even more groan-worthy now. OH WELL. I just know this dude’s gonna survive so I guess I’ll have to deal with him until the very end. That’s not a spoiler, though. I have no idea if he’ll survive. It’s just that he seems like the sort of character who’ll survive.

I’m really starting to warm up to Himiko as a character now, although the fact that Tenko had to die a more or less pointless death to set this up is still hard to swallow. Thankfully Himiko is taking her message to heart, and is trying to move forward, even if she’s getting ahead of herself a little. I’m glad I did that training scene with her and Gonta. That was adorable. And on that note, Gonta continues to be a precious cinnamon roll who is too pure, too good for this sinful earth, but maybe he’ll break the Bara Curse [tm] and survive.

Tsumugi and Keebo are still weirdly . . . empty characters to me, but I like them well enough. Tsumugi in particular seems to have some interesting things going on in her backstory, with the occasional references to her having dealt with debt in the past, and having had to do some presumably seedy jobs to pay them off. The bar scene in her lab was clearly meant to be sexy, but the implications of it kinda depressed me a little. I probably won’t ever bother doing her free time events before the game ends, though, so for now I have to just take what I get given with her.

Keebo is also still weird to me, for reasons I’ve gone over before. I imagine he’ll be important later on, but for now he’s just . . . odd. I still can’t help but get hung up on how weird it is that his ‘persecution complex’ is played as a joke, when he spends the entire game dealing with people making genuinely rude and demeaning comments to him, again and again. It just makes me kinda uncomfortable. It’s at least kinda bizarrely lacking in self-awareness for a game like this to be like ‘hahaha look at this dude getting worked up over nothing’ while simultaneously indulging in jokes about people being shitty toward him all the time.

I was never the biggest fan of Miu, but I’m sad to see her die. She was at least over-the-top enough that I couldn’t help but find her funny. And even if she was a genuinely rude and obnoxious person sometimes, she was still obviously trying to help everyone find an escape from the killing game.

This chapter is going even further to cement my undying love for the Shuichi-Kaito-Maki trio. They’re so wonderful. I love that we’re actually getting to see the step by step process of them becoming friends, in a way that feels really realistic and believable. I love seeing them all be mutually supportive but incredibly awkward at it. The nightly training sessions in general are a really nice way to show how they’ve been getting closer. They also really illustrate how different they are. I love the running gag of Shuichi trying and sucking at doing exercises, while Maki’s doing them really fast, and Kaito’s just laying on the ground being like ‘do you ever, like, just contemplate the vastness of the universe?’. I fucking adore these kids. I did not at all think I’d love them this much before I started playing the game.

The more we learn about Maki’s backstory, the more I like her. She’s great. I really like that a lot of the backstory she gave us originally is actually true. It’s just a neat detail, that she was actually for the most part telling the truth to everyone at the start, even if she was lying about the major thing she needed to hide.

I can’t help but feel terrible for her, though, with everything that she got put through. Seeing her going down the bumpy road toward normality and redemption is pretty heart-wrenching. I just want her to be happy.

Kaito is basically my heart, my soul, my beloved purple space boy, and it kills me inside that he’s being set up as the obvious culprit for this chapter. Am I going to spend a third chapter suspecting him? Probably. Do I feel guilty about it? Yes. And even if he isn’t the killer, there’s the fact that he clearly has a terminal illness of some kind that he’ll probably die from.

I also managed to marathon through the rest of his free-time events in this chapter because I figured he might actually die in this chapter so I should get his events done just in case. I was going to try and talk to Kokichi in the one session where Kaito wasn’t around to talk to, but he kinda blew me off.

I did not expect how Kaito’s free time events would go, but they were hilarious. I wasn’t expecting a multi-part story about how Kaito conquered the sea and the lands as a kid before deciding to treat the entirety of space as his final conquest. He’s amazing.

Also the end of the fourth free time event makes it pretty obvious that Shuichi is gay as fuck and has a massive crush on him. I’d rather not get into any sort of a discussion that’d involve words like ‘ambiguity’ or ‘canon’ because uuuuugh I’m so tired about that, and I’d prefer to allow myself the experience of relating to a fictional character rather than tell myself I’m interpreting things wrong, so I’ll just go down the path that makes my experience with this silly anime murder game the most fun, and say that, again, Shuichi is gay as fuck and has a massive crush on him. I already felt before that all of Shuichi’s monologues about how Kaito completes him, how he can be truly happy around him like he’s never been before, how they balance each other out, how he’d never met anyone like Kaito before, etc etc, were pretty damn gay, but then Shuichi himself went and found himself acknowledging how gay he sounds. I mean, at least the game in general acknowledged that Shuichi’s feelings and thoughts toward Kaito are, y’know, exactly how you act toward someone you have a crush on, to the point that even Shuichi was like ‘I-I shouldn’t be talking about another boy like that’.

But, again, even though I kinda doubt he’s actually intended to be gay, I’m just gonna choose to interpret it as him being in denial about his sexuality. Especially since I prefer that interpretation much more than seeing it as the game trying to genuinely say that it’s wrong for a boy to feel that way about another boy. [Also even if DR3 kinda fell into the pit of the Bury Your Gays trope, it at least still portrayed Juzo’s feelings as being genuine, and Junko’s homophobia as being an act of villainy, so it’d be a bit depressing if Kodaka went from that to being unironically homophobic]. It didn’t really come up again by the end of the series of free time events, but even so, this is how I’m seeing it. 

This is also part of why it’s going to literally destroy me if Kaito dies, especially if he becomes a killer who Shuichi has to prosecute, because on top of how I already love Kaito a whole lot, I’d also be stuck imagining how horrible Shuichi would feel about it. I feel like having to go through an experience like that might honestly break him inside, and make him unable to trust anyone again.

Anyway that ended up being a bit of a long rant even though I said I didn’t want to do one, but oh well, I can’t help myself. I’m so used to talking about this sort of thing that it just kinda happened, lol.

[Also just as a precaution, this rant isn’t an invitation for people to send me any kind of spoiler about this topic, or any other topic. Trust me when I say that I really don’t need to know.]

But anyway I love these three kids and I know that they’re going to go through even more traumatic shit before the game ends, so that sucks.

I guess I should finally comment on the actual murder itself, lol. I didn’t really expect it to take this long to get to this point.

I’m honestly kinda surprised that the murder seems to have happened in the real world. With how much time they put into explaining the mechanics of how the virtual world worked, it’s odd that it looks sorta like someone just strangled Miu in her chair. But the fact that there’s so many specific mechanics to how the game world works makes me think that it probably IS relevant to the case, and we just don’t know how yet.

To address the elephant in the room, they’re really setting Kaito up as the obvious suspect. He just mysteriously vanished right when Miu died, as if he logged out in order to kill her outside of the game. I stopped playing immediately after the Deadly Life title screen, so I’m not sure what he’s up to at the moment or what he has to say about all this.

The fact that they’re making him seem like the obvious suspect, and the fact that we got that ominous scene at the end of chapter three that definitely implied that he was desperate to leave the school, makes me think he’s probably not the killer, since that’d be too easy. But I can’t help but worry that it really might be that simple, and maybe this chapter will just be difficult in the sense of it being emotionally difficult for us to suspect Kaito. Which, I mean, is definitely true, but still, it’d feel a bit . . . lame.

Though then again, Kiyo was signaled pretty early on as chapter three’s culprit, but that also had a lot of complicating factors that made it hard to pin all the blame on him until the entire mystery came to light. But you get what I mean. The game might not be above making the culprit kinda obvious.

I feel like a big question here will be whether Miu was killed inside or outside the game, because that really does influence how I would go about guessing at a culprit. If she died in the real world, then someone could have just logged off, walked over, and strangled her or something, in which case the rules of the virtual world seem largely pointless, aside from the fact that after Miu kicked down the bridge, only Shuichi, Kaito, Tsumugi, Gonta, and Kokichi would have been able to access the log-out phone, unless someone in the chapel group found an alternate way across. But limiting it to those five people isn’t saying much when Kaito is the obvious suspect right now, since the bridge being down wouldn’t have impacted his ability to log out and kill Miu.

Similarly, if Miu died in the game, somehow, then the bridge thing means that the suspect list would instead consist of the other group, of Keebo, Himiko, and Maki, if we ignore Miu for obvious reasons. But I’d be surprised if any of those three killed Miu in the game itself, since I thought all of them would have been in the chapel at the same time, thus making a murder there seem pretty unlikely.

Part of the issue is that I just can’t guess how someone could have gotten across the bridge without the signboard. Well, specifically, it feels like everyone would have had the same lack of ability. Theoretically someone could have picked up the signboard from downstream, went across it, killed Miu, and knocked it back down the river on their return trip, but that still doesn’t narrow it down much. I guess only the mansion group would have had a chance to do that because of where the signboard ended up, but that . . . doesn’t really change the suspect list at all. Especially since everyone has the same level of physical strength, so even that doesn’t work as something to differentiate the characters.

For the most part I just feel kinda skeptical about the idea that Miu was actually killed outside the game. At least directly. It definitely looked like she’d been strangled, but in hindsight I don’t think I saw anything that actually looked like a strangulation tool aside from her normal chokers, so maybe her body was just reflexively responding to the sensation of strangulation, and not actually trying to tear off something specific that had been used to physically strangle her.

But the idea that she died in the game itself certainly complicates things, with how it was set up. Aside from what I’ve already discussed, two weird things that stick out to me are that Miu was seen walking outside, and Shuichi heard Keebo scream. I forget if it was Keebo or someone in the mansion group who said they saw Miu outside, but if she was seen outside the mansion then that’d seem really weird, since she was the one who knocked over the only bridge to the mansion area, and she probably wouldn’t have been able to retrieve it. I also can’t imagine why she would have gone over there after knocking over the bridge. In general her whole attitude in this whole part seemed kinda off, like she was hiding something.

It confuses me even more, though, that Shuichi would have heard Keebo screaming. The game already explained that neither sight nor sound travels through the world loading screen thing, so Shuichi shouldn’t have been able to hear Keebo’s voice from the other map. I can’t quite remember all the exact details, but I remember being immediately confused about it all.

I’m also, uh, not entirely sure what the toilet-paper was there for, but I guess it’s probably a clue of some kind.

Anyway, I feel like until I do the investigation part, there’s no real clues pointing to any of the other three people from the chapel group, other than the weird detail of Keebo’s scream, so I’ll focus my preliminary guesses on the mansion group.

Obviously Shuichi isn’t the culprit, unless he pulled some sort of a Kaede trick on us and did stuff off-screen during the time-skip that happened while he was investigating the kitchen. Either way I’m ruling him out for now.

Tsumugi also seems unlikely as a suspect. I guess technically Shuichi might have been able to not notice her leaving the dining room while he was busy in the kitchen, but still. I kinda doubt it. I might be wrong about my memory of how it happened, but even if Miu was apparently seen near the mansion, I doubt it was Tsumugi cosplaying as her. Although that makes me wonder, like how Kaito’s avatar seemed to not have whatever illness he has in real life, maybe Tsumugi doesn’t suffer from cospox in her avatar form. So maybe she could have cosplayed as her. I have no idea why she’d do that, though, other than to maybe confuse people. I’m also wondering if she might have been able to somehow mimic Keebo’s voice, which would explain how Shuichi could have heard it, but I don’t think that’s something she could do, even ignoring her cospox issue.

Kokichi seems waaaaay too suspicious in this chapter in particular to be the culprit. We literally saw him talk about how he’d be down with becoming the new blackened, and we saw him talk to Monokuma about his plans to set a new murder in motion. So it’d be weird if he did it, but I guess he was somewhat unaccounted for, although Gonta should be able to verify his alibi.

And on that note, I also doubt Gonta did it. He seems too genuine in his desire to not kill anyone. But who knows.

So that basically just leaves us with Kaito, who’s obviously super suspicious because he apparently logged out before anyone else and could have killed Miu in real life afterward. Of course, anyone else in the mansion group, even Tsumugi, could have just logged out and then back in before everyone got alerted about what happened to Miu. So in that sense, he’s not the only possible suspect. But he’s still suspicious. Especially since I feel like the toilet paper was probably dropped from the ceiling, which makes that a piece of evidence that, uh, technically points in his direction,  I guess, even if I have no idea what it could mean. I imagine it’s also pretty important that since he was on the roof he would have had access to the binoculars, so he could have seen stuff that was going on. Although he wouldn’t have been able to see into the chapel zone.

The whole detail of the world loading screen seems way too important not to be relevant, which is why I’d be a bit surprised if the murder happened in a way that involved not even doing anything with it. In general that’s how I feel about a lot of the details in this case. I imagine that a majority of the evidence will be based around the mechanics of the virtual world, including the way that the headset and it’s plugs work, which Miu also described in too much detail not to be a relevant detail, so logically it should more or less all be relevant. So the idea of Kaito just logging off and strangling Miu in her chair feels too simple, and too separated from all of the mechanics and rules this chapter spent time setting up.

But I still can’t really begin to guess just yet how else Miu could have died, and how all these rules could be relevant to the case. Hopefully it’ll feel a bit more clear once I do the investigation part.

If the case is indeed more complicated than it seems to be, then I hope that it means Kaito isn’t actually the killer. That’d be nice. I’ll probably still suspect him for the entire trial, though, like always.

As I said above, I feel like I have far too little info on the chapel group to go on in terms of suspecting them, so my suspect list at the moment is basically just Kaito, with Tsumugi as a fairly distant second place, and Gonta as an even more distant third place. The only person who I even vaguely want to point any fingers at in the chapel group is Keebo, but it’s hard for me to put him on my suspect list.

So with that in mind, I feel like I’m setting myself up for another chapter two-esque scenario where I focus intently on Kaito and get surprised by the real culprit. The way that I can’t even really begin to imagine how anyone other than Kaito could have done it in a way that makes use of the rules set up about the virtual world is making me nervous.

And on the note of the rules about the virtual world, I feel like the set-up with the two coloured plugs in the headsets will probably come into play, but I’m not sure how. They raised the question of what would have happened if someone installed it wrong, but even she didn’t know what it’d do. So it’s hard to speculate about it.

I’m also very suspicious of the fact that Kokichi probably tampered with things somehow with the key card he had, and whatever that gave him access to, but that’s also one huge question mark in this equation.

Also, just as a final note, I’ve basically been saying that I suspected Kaito starting with chapter two, but I guess I technically suspected him in chapter one as well, though not very intently. I think back then my suspect list for that case was Shuichi, Tsumugi, and then Kaito and Tenko tied for a more distant third place. But still, I guess that technically means I’ve been suspecting Kaito to some degree or another for the entire game, which is a bit depressing considering how much I like him and don’t want him to be a killer.

Anyway that’s about it for now. I’ll probably play the entire rest of this chapter tomorrow. I’m going to be bracing myself for some intense sadness, on the off chance that Kaito really is the killer.

[recentanimenews]

Three-Episode Test: Ink's Winter 2017

Welcome (back) to the Three Episode Test, where contributors give you the low-down on what they're watching from the current simulcast season and why.

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid

Streaming on Crunchyroll In what turns out to be the ultimate consequence of beer (sake) goggles, office worker Kobayashi wakes up one morning and forgets a kindness she paid to a dragon in distress the previous night while stumbling through the woods. That creature, named Tohru, then shows up at Kobayashi’s door as she opens it to go to work, morphs into a cute maid (complete with horns and a tail), and moves in with Kobayashi. Hijinks ensue.

The whole “human saves creature, then creature returns to repay human in money/love” theme is a common one in Japanese folklore, but this series carries a way sillier tone than most of those folktales straight off the bat. Also, I’ve evidently got a thing for female drinkers in their thirties who work soul-draining jobs and have spherical heads. What can I say?

My interest in Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid lies much more with the defeated malaise with which Kobayashi both walks through her daily life and confronts the reality of supernatural beings than any aspects of her newfound servant or her flying, tail-swinging friends (who also adopt the moé maid form factor as their default domestic countenance). However, I do love some of the choices made in-series regarding the art – specifically colors, framing, postures, and scale. (No pun intended, ‘cause, you know…dragons). This is my surprise long-form comedy of the season.

Fuuka

Streaming on Crunchyroll A sequel of sorts to Suzuka in that it focuses on the daughter of that title’s protagonist, Fuuka features the titular girl, an aimless high school student who loves music, and a boy (Yuu) who comes to be quite stricken by with her. Fuuka suddenly obsesses over starting a band after meeting the well-intentioned but hapless Yuu, who seems fated to accidentally stare at Fuuka’s panties. But those aren’t the only panties peeking out at Yuu; his sisters can never seem to find anything to wear (literally), and a long-separated childhood friend-turned-pop idol just so happens to suddenly give him a call, a visit, and a romantic conflict.

The first three minutes, let alone those that follow throughout the first three episodes, show exactly what this series is going to be. Even though I’m a sucker for a love triangle drama, overly detailed fanservice and the abundance of it (evidently a trademark of Kouji Seo, the original work’s manga-ka), literally shoved in viewers’ faces via a camera with zero sense of personal space and a leerer’s eye for a lens, severely detracts from what could be the series’ saving graces: Fuuka’s independence and flirty forthrightness; a slightly less-than-usual milquetoast male protagonist; and earnestly inspiring moments of clarity/awe. Other than the cliffhanger confrontation at the end of Episode 3, there’s far too little to entice me to watch this weekly or continue at all.

Interviews with Monster Girls

Streaming on Crunchyroll As a biology teacher, Tetsuo Takahashi takes a particular interest in the demi-humans – a vampire, a snow girl (yuki onna), a headless girl (dullahan), and a succubus – present at Shibasaki High. Not knowing too much about the daily lives of monster girls, Tetsuo decides to sit down with each and talk with them to gain a greater understanding of both his students and life as creatures not wholly human.

After my gag reflex to Monster Musume, I did not, in any way, ever see myself watching Interviews with Monster Girls (much less genuinely enjoying it). And while this show could easily be titled “Interviews with Mo(nst)é(r) Girls,” the setting, the girls’ ages, and the fact that they’re effectively minorities in a “normal” human school justify their design and demeanor. On top of that, and even though there’s a harem air regarding the male protagonist and the supporting female cast (all the students and even one of the teachers are in love with him to some degree), the series manages to avoid the outright lewd and capture both the humor and reminiscent sweetness inherent in (first) crushes and awkward situations. To that, there’s a great bit of subversion going on regarding the succubus being portrayed as a typical “glasses girl” in an effort to not appeal to a moé-seeking audience, and the detail given to the animation of the dullahan’s eyes, hands, and arms is probably the best thing about the series. All this makes for a good enough excuse to keep watching weekly.

Saga of Tanya the Evil

Streaming on Crunchyroll In 2013, a callous salaryman/axman gets shoved in front of a train by a disgruntled ex-employee, meets (a) god, and is reincarnated as a little girl (Tanya Degurechaff) in a Germany-like state during a WWI-like war wherein mages provide areal support for ground troops. Cursed by the god she meets and refuses to acknowledge as such (calling it “Being X” instead), Tanya is born with great magical potential but can only use it if she says a prayer first. This is the means by which Being X hopes to instill faith into the salaryman’s soul.

Saga of Tanya the Evil (a much better title than the original Youjo Senki in that it is much sillier) is everything my melodramatic teenage self would have loved. And honestly the outright internal resistance to organized religion or the concept of God in general is still something that strikes a chord with me. Older me likes the more subdued commentary, such as the admission from God in Episode 2 that “Administering seven billion people is already beyond my capacity” as delivered through a frozen-in-time salaryman vessel who’s tired and slumped over his own watch. Teenage me really just likes Tanya’s selfishness and wickedness and things that go boom. Also, the series is pretty much drawn to give excuses to make Tanya smile like a demon, and it’s a pretty great reason to watch. Her VA also really brings the character to life.

One Room

Streaming on Crunchyroll During this series comprised of less-than-four-minute, POV-based shorts, you're behind the eyes of a mute, university-aged male who gets a knock on his Tokyo apartment door one day. The person knocking turns out to be Hanasaka Yui, a young girl who has just moved into the adjacent apartment. The first, second, and third episodes are, respectively, dedicated to her introduction, her tutelage and going to a public bath, and her cooking and (more) tutelage – all in one room...your room. (Except the public bath…that takes place in a public bath.)

For the loneliness deterrent/masturbation aid it is meant to be to its target audience, this is a fine example of an anime that never needed to be made. My only real gripe with the show, keeping in mind its intended audience, is that it only mostly holds to first person perspective. That is to say that the camera, the show’s very premise, wanders whenever (and wherever) it feels like it. Each betrayal of the show’s mission statement is mostly to ogle Hanasaka from the rear or side (in cuts too quick to be anything other than third person) or her chest (from her own perspective). As is the case when Hanasaka enters an empty room at the beginning of Episode 2, sometimes the camera isn’t even employed for POV and instead simply serves to establish the setting. And while that example might make the case for the first person perspective to be from the room itself, that is obviously not the case; there are different locales after all, and differences in the height from which you, the viewer, look at this girl range from eyelevel to a god-like areal vantage of disapproval.

Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories 4 (sequel)

Streaming on Crunchyroll Based on the kamishibai aesthetic, Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories specializes in a specific type of scare in each and every season. The first season brings boo scares based on the art style’s uncanny valley effect and laudable storyboarding. The second season focuses on mental distress applied to metaphysical horror. And the highly contested third season, of which Jared and I also talk about at length, brings monster-based horror home in a wonderfully surprising frame story. So what does Season 4 offer so far?

To start, the fourth season of Yamishibai focuses on narration – a typical and prominent aspect of anime against which I usually (and still do) rail. I’ve mixed feelings about it here though. Vocal exposition falls in line with that of the previous seasons, but narration, which lasts the entirety of each tale, at once dilutes the visual execution while imparting inflections, an overall tone, and a pacing that lends to the aural ambience of the story itself. Did I mention that the narrator is a different VA, including a Noh master, in each episode? In another first, Season 4 integrates live action snippets. This simultaneously imparts a jarring otherworldliness and laughable juxtaposition. It’s not the best visual direction, especially given the hitherto held execution of the series, but it’s a strike at something new, and occasionally, even in the first few episodes, it works enough to keep curiosity alive.

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju: Descending Stories (sequel)

Streaming on Crunchyroll I’m admittedly cheating on this one since a prior review obligation to the first season made me wait to indulge in the second. In short: I’ve yet to see the requisite three episodes to talk about this sequel to my 2016 AOTY. But if you listen to the two-plus hour podcast I did with Jared, there’s obviously no way in hell I’d not watch the second season in its entirety. I’m invested in these characters and want to see where the story takes them and how it takes them there. Think of the possibilities inherent in the title's pun (pun intended)!

originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on January 28, 2017 at 5:00 PM.

By: Ink