#first scenes of part two of the episode

[bobbie-robron]

What’s that thing about… my enemy’s enemy is my friend. (Part 2.1)

‘Lowlife’ Cain offers his services to Jimmy to take care of the Sugdens with ‘discreet, professional service.’ Diane isn’t happy with Jack’s violent streak (she didn’t marry a ‘brawler’). The trio of Jimmy, Robert and Jack plot a bonfire of the barn to make it seem Andy wants an insurance payout. Unbeknownst to Robert, Andy has fixed the quad bike so their plans won’t go as planned. The trio arrive at the farm.

28-Jul-2005

[dollopole]

“But we need to find you some kind of disguise, you’re too conspicuous in those clothes.”

“Whatever you say, I’m entirely in your hands.”

Okay.

This is their reaction after, btw.

[arscorpii]

episode 12 / episode 34

episode 12 / episode 37

there were several similarities i noted between the two episodes (12 and 34):

within the specific scenes: both touga and akio reached out and touched utena's left hand with their left hands, but touga covered her hand with his, while akio took her hand into his. in episode 12, utena and touga were accompanied by anthy and wakaba (during the day, out in the open cafeteria), while in episode 34, utena and akio were alone in akio's room (during the night); anthy was aware of it, but she was in her and utena's room and couldn't do much about the matter. anthy also couldn't do much for utena in episode 12 due to the rules of the rose seal (she was engaged to touga). also, the two scenes in episodes 12 and 34 took place after very tragic incidents happened to utena: losing the duel to touga, and consequently, losing anthy as her rose bride versus akio raping her (unarguably even more tragic).

correlation with utena's sense of self: in episode 12, utena tried (and succeeded) to take back who she was via a rematch (losing to touga made her doubt who she was as a person). who utena was as a person at this point may be referring to the role of a prince that she was able to truly embody due to her engagement to the rose bride (e.g., utena saving anthy in episode 3 from anthy's dress incident and then dancing together, utena saving anthy who was trapped in a coffin in episode 9). or, more like how the engagement with the rose bride allowed utena to be more/most like herself, one of which would be largely comprised of the princely ideals she adopted/learned and idealised (as told in her monologue of meeting the prince; utena also said she wanted to be a noble prince who saves princesses in episode 1) (i'm not sure for this part).

in episode 34, we learned the real reason utena had the rose crest ring, the real reason utena wanted to become a prince: to save a little girl suffering a fate worse than death. ultimately, in both situations (episodes 12 and 34), anthy influenced utena's sense of self, to an extent. regarding the prince, taking into account the context of episode 11, i'm quite sure utena still believed that touga was her prince in episode 12. meanwhile, episode 34 gave us (more) indisputable confirmation that akio was the prince that utena met in her past (this fact was heavily hinted at since episode 25). however, i don't think utena made the connection yet at that point. nevertheless, as a whole, in both situations, touga and akio were framed as utena's prince (to utena [episode 12] versus to the audience [episode 34]).

a common conflict/theme underlying both scenes was the pressure of conforming to ideal gender identities and presentations. this was evident in the scene with touga (complimenting utena's girl uniform and asking her out). however, it's infinitely more severe with akio because he was actively grooming utena to that end; some events of this episode were just parts of the long process (in the specific scene: asking if they're friends, mentioning that she didn't take off her ring "that night," trying to kiss her). in addition, the visuals of both touga and akio somewhat covering utena's rose crest ring with their hand gestures could be seen as analogous to them trying to suppress/diminish her princely ideals/role (touga said that losing the duel gave utena a chance at being a normal girl; he then actively tried persuading utena to this end, i.e., the compliment on the uniform and the ask for a date. moreover, touga critised utena for not knowing about the true power of the rose bride when she "fancied herself as anthy's prince." also, to reiterate: akio brought up the fact that utena didn't take off her ring when he raped her while stroking the ring; he expected that that event would be sufficient for utena to take it off [give up the role of the prince]).

i think episode 12 is an interesting foreshadowing/parallelism of some kind for later events in the final arc, with regard to utena/touga/anthy and utena/akio/anthy dynamics.

[5hrignold]

I LOVE HIM

[thewizardyfish]

Solo leveling was so ass I'm sorry I have no idea how people like this show oh my god.

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: We Do What We Can (2.11, LWT, 1972)

"I have to be careful."

"You're big and ugly enough to look after yourself."

"Not with this little firm I'm not."

"Which firm?"

"Jimmy Sutton's. He don't believe in straighteners. Goes in for surgery."

"Surgery?"

"Amputation with a sawn-off shotgun."

"Ah. Well, you can always apply for a claim at the Criminal Injuries Board."

"I wouldn't have a leg to stand on, would I?"

[sskk-manifesto]

\\\

[navree]

you know what, it's been a good weekend for content. i got malevolent yesterday where john's spouting off about how much he loves arthur left and right, i got MAWS today with significant screentime for my favorite boy ever, anime prince slade wilson, and i don't know what the fuck else happened in HOTD but i DID watch the rhaenicent reunion on twitter and it fucking ate

[bobbie-robron]

Look what you’ve done between ya. That lad’s DEAD because of YOU TWO! He’s done nothing… and he’s DEAD! (Part 1.1)

Robert wants to get Max out of the jeep but it’s too late as another explosion sets off. It’s at this point Jack shows up wanting to know what’s happened. Robert just snapped (as he did in 2019) causing the accident to happen and Andy tells Jack that Robert SAVED him. But Max is dead Jack reminds both of his sons.

Note: I was planning to combine more scenes per post but will be spreading the gif love on them, so more posts for part one 😉. Part two will be one post.

03-Oct-2005

[calico-kiwi]

fuck man the absolute gut-wrenching emotional scenes in d20 go fucking hard

[as-dreamers-do]

did i somehow miss kipps’s wink and ‘sweetheart’ the first time i watched the archives scene or was it just that at that point i didn’t yet care 

because this time i very much did Not miss it whew

[volunruud]

okay that was literally the worst episode ive ever seen.

[mariocki]

Double Doctors! William Hartnell has a terrible time as wounded robber Jeff Richards, while Patrick Troughton is the unnamed (and uncredited!) tramp who finds Jeff's hiding place in Dial 999: 50,000 Hands (1.16, ABC, 1959)

[swampjawn]

Time to talk an unnecessary amount about floors!

Episode 6 of Dungeon Meshi was produced in collaboration with a smaller studio, Enishiya - and it went way harder than I expected, for being made up of two relatively simple and self contained stories focusing on one character each.

And you can really see how those extra resources meant the animators could give full focus to both halves of the episode. Let's take a look at one piece that stole the show.

The first half was handled primarily by episode director/storyboard artist Keita Nagahara and co-animation director Hirotoshi (or Hiroaki? [1]) Arai. It's actually kinda insane how much of this section can be attributed to these two.

But the real star of the show is the second half, Chilchuck vs the mimic, led by co-animation director Toya Ooshima in his first animation director role for TV anime!

And the biggest aspect that knocked my dang boots off was something that's very consistent with Ooshima's style: background animation!

By animating the backgrounds rather than using painted still images, Ooshima and the team of other similarly skilled animators are able to create these beautiful dynamic camera movements that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Like these cuts by Takeshi Maenami where the camera becomes an expressive part of the scene, zipping forward and backward, and tilting to emphasize the speed of this murderous hermit crab. (Maenami's style is also very recognizable here - snappy timing and quick camera movements)

Or this cut by the incredible Kaito Tomioka which cleverly combines a traditional background for the walls with a fully animated floor. The level of detail in these tiles is just completely insane, and used to great effect with this wide, diagonal angle, and the way the camera tentatively drifts forward before reversing direction, and the tiles blur out as it speeds up.

I don't think I'm the only one caught off guard by how much they full-assed this little side story, but it was a pleasant surprise!

I broke down the entire episode in this video here. A lot of research went into this one, and I think it's the best one of these videos I've made so far, so if you're at all interested in more of this type of analysis in video form, I would really appreciate it if you checked it out, or re-blogged this post! Thanks

[1] It's listed as Hirotoshi on Anime News Network, but Hiroaki on a key frame that Studio Trigger shared on Twitter, so I'm not sure which one is wrong.

[bobbie-robron]

So what if I did do it? I’d do it all over again if I had the chance. (Part 2.1)

The first of three scenes has Robert denying the accusations against him. Well, that is, until Andy riles him up so much especially bringing up Katie that he admits to what he did.

31-Jul-2005

[oatmealaddiction]

Okay but the weirdest thing about the whole "Brotherhood is better you should skip 03" discourse that's become commonplace now, it sort of forgets the world Brotherhood came out in and why you should watch the original Fullmetal Alchemist. When Brotherhood came out, the original Fullmetal Alchemist was one of the most beloved and most watched animes of all time. Brotherhood assumes you the audience have already seen it because of course you have, everyone has seen it, so it skips important information and speeds the story up because it doesn't want to bore you with things you already know. Have you ever wondered "hey why does the first episode of Brotherhood kind of suck, and why am I being introduced to like 50 new characters, and why are they acting like I know what the hell an alchemist is?" It's because Brotherhood thinks you've seen 03.

The first 7 or so episodes of Brotherhood constitute dozens of chapters in the manga, and the first 25 or so episodes of the original Fullmetal Alchemist. The Nina Tucker episode in Brotherhood, in FMA 03 takes up nearly three episodes. Yoki gets a backstory in 03 and it's genuinely one of the best episodes and taken directly from the manga and Brotherhood glosses over it because: duh, you've already seen it. And so if you skip the original you miss out on dozens of really great character building episodes like Ed and Al meeting Hughes for the first time and getting to spend a whole episode helping him free a train from terrorists, or Ed and Roy having a duel that expands on the relationship they have, or episodes where the brothers just help out random people in towns before the major story gets going.

The original also paces itself quite a bit better than Brotherhood and is more in line with the mangas storytelling. In the manga we don't find out about The Gate until nearly two dozen chapters in, and the same goes for the original anime. Like, that's a twist reveal in those stories, and it's weird that the most watched series is the one where they tell you all about The Gate in the first two episodes because they assume you've already seen the original show.

What's more, people don't know that Hiromu Arakawa helped write for the anime while she was still in the middle of writing the manga, and as a result was inspired to write scenes in Brotherhood that the anime did first. That scene of Edward getting impaled by a falling beam? Directly inspired by a similar scene in the original anime. There's a lot of little instances of that and they're great when you can recognize parallels and things in Brotherhood that are direct references to the original anime, but people don't notice any of that anymore. Because the original anime is just an automatic skip these days, and it's a bummer because people don't realize what a giant it was back before Brotherhood was released. They treat it as *bad,* not realizing it was one of the most beloved anime of its time and the problems people take issue with have a lot more to do with personal taste than any kind of actual flaw in the writing. Brotherhood was never meant to dethrone it, and the original anime was always supposed to be part of the viewing experience which is why those first few episodes of Brotherhood are so fast paced. So like, please stop telling people Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 is a skip, or it's bad, or you don't need it because Brotherhood is better. Regardless if you think Brotherhood is better or not, the original wrote Brotherhood's check. It was huge, it was beloved, and Brotherhood is *banking* on the knowledge you've seen all of it and loved it. And trust me when I say there is so much to love about the original series. It's still my favorite branch of the FMA franchise, and it's worth your time, I promise you.