#i feel like the two HunterXHunter animes are two different things | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

carnalcervid · 4 months ago

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(22, FTM here) // I know this is weird but I redownloaded tumblr just to find someone freaky af on here to confess to. it’s eating me alive and I genuinely have no one I can tell so I hope you’re okay with this (ignore if not and I’m sorry, btw this isn’t some “hot confession” this is something that’s bothering me)

this is about to be REALLY strange, but again I have to tell someone. I have been watching rick and morty every night before bed, and idk if you’ve ever seen the show, but it has a crazy amount of incest “jokes.” it’s so abundant it’s one of the main complaints about the show.

there’s a lot of incest in the show, mostly about r&m. they literally fuck each other with a sex dragon during a “soul bond” and in another scene they marry in a different, yet canon, reality. apparently when justin roiland was still around, him and the other co-creator both tweeted and said they approve of and even encourage the r&m ship, and said they might make an episode on it in the future (they even said it was canon in several different realities) and it’s hinted at A LOT in the show, like a lot.

there are some fucked up scenes too that try to be passed off as a joke but they’re clearly someone’s fetish or something (think dan schneider putting feet in so many shows/episodes “as a joke/to be funny”)

well… one of the most disgusting scenes actually turned me on a little and I’ve been struggling with it since. I’m not into incest, and even was touched as a kid by my brother. like, I’m not into incest or the roleplay incest at all, and of course I’m not into anything underage either. I know it’s just a cartoon, it’s not like any of it was real, but I’m still really conflicted.

there’s a scene where r&m have sentient facehugger aliens on their faces that control them, and the two aliens fall in love together, and start passionately making out. it was literally r&m making out but they had an alien facemask on, and again this is the type of humor in r&m that’s supposed to “be a joke,” meanwhile it’s turning me on and then making me feel ashamed of myself.

can you… offer advice? or anything at all? is this…okay? I don’t know how to end this confession. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable at all, and again, you don’t have to answer this (obviously, it’s your blog you can do what you want).

-🎪

i feel like this touches on very genuine issues ive thought about before.

first off, it really is okay to be aroused by something and not like it, not want to participate in it, and not want to be aroused by it again. i feel like that both goes without saying and needed to be said just in case

however. what do you do when a piece media arouses you in a way you don't like, and also when that media is doing it intentionally.

it is genuinely only natural to be drawn towards taboo, in reality and in fiction, and most kinks and feitshes are a form of power exchange, or some kind of attraction. it can be helpful to break down your arousal into broader categories to find out specifically why it's arousing and reassure yourself that you like it because its a similar dynamic to your already existing kinks, and not because youre a bad person who wants genuinely bad and harmful things.

however. even though r&m is fictional. even though its okay to be aroused by these topics and not want it. to me, whats happening is that you're getting ready for bed with a TV show, and instead are being shown trigger porn for various feitshes. especially with the creators explicitly saying thats what theyre doing. and personally i don't think its fair for the creators to do this. just the same as dan schneider putting feet in so many shows/episodes - it's not fair to create a piece of media for regular viewing and then fill it with their personal fetishes. (unrelated, but i just had this exact problem with the anime hunterxhunter)

i fully believe creators are allowed to do whatever they want with their creation, but also when the biggest complaint about the series is the fact that the creator is doing whatever they want with their creation. they're probably showing it to the wrong audience, or doing something shitty lol

It's different when the eroticism has a point in the media, but these "as a joke" type insertions usually just make no sense and are really uncomfortable for viewers to have to sit through. i only ever saw the first 3 seasons as they came out before deciding i no longer can watch it because it just makes me uncomfortable in various ways i dont fully remember because its been so long.

my recommendation is that, if you can't view the media without being like "okay we get it your have a [insert thing here] fetish can we move on", and if its genuinely bothering you because you can't compartmentalize your reaction to it (for example, knowing its something arousing but not being interested in it), i would stop watching the media. at this point its clear that these topics will be heavily featured in the series, and that doesnt mean anyone who's watching wants or expects that, just that. it's something youll have to sit through if you're trying to enjoy the show.

#chats #anon #🎪 anon #sorry this is so long i hope it helps in a way that matters #if not feel free to message me more and maybe talking it out will help

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catherdrashepard · 3 years ago

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Darrow is Not Going to Die at the End of the Series Part 1 Probably (Definitely)

I don’t think Darrow is going to die at the end. I’m open to being proven wrong, but I am entirely convinced that Darrow is going to live and happily retire with his wife and son. The main reason is because the trope of a main character suffering and then dying is one I hate and it should go away.

BUT, in all serious, I have been thinking of some examples in other media that is better evidence for my point. Spoilers ahead for Dark Age, Hunger Games, Castlevania, Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans, Avengers Endgame, The Hobbit, Voltron, FMA, HttYD, Death Note, Madoka Magica, Merlin, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, HunterxHunter, Dragon Prince, He-Man (the new one), Yu Yu Hakusho, Persona 3. Mass Effect, The Hollow, Camp Cretaceous, and whatever else I can think of.

I’m so sorry for the potential length of this, @hyena-frog and I kept thinking of examples.

First, I want to give examples where the protagonist went through hell and then came out alive and why those were good decisions. For starters we have Katniss from the Hunger Games series. I felt like this was a good beginning point because these two series are often compared to each other. Katniss is forced to fight to the death for the amusement of a bunch of rich people. Darrow’s time in the Institute also seems to be for the entertainment of Golds even if it’s disguised as a test. They both also turn the tables on the people who run these tests and shift the system. This then results into dismantling of the previous hierarchy in favour of a more equal one. They’re both at the forefront of the movement but the main difference is that Katniss is more of a figurehead and she gets used by more experienced people while Darrow takes charge during Morning Star and keeps his leadership position throughout the rest of the books. I kind of attribute this to the size of the series (3 books vs 6 books) and the difference in genre (Young Adult vs. New Adult and then Adult).

At the end of Hunger Games Katniss was shown to have survived and built a family with Peeta. She COULD have died for the cause like some of the other characters; Finnick and Prim. But the difference with those two, in my opinion, is that Finnick’s death was his choice after being forced into prostitution after winning his year. Victors pretty much have their freedom taken away and I feel like Finnick’s death was symbolic of him finally having autonomy over his own body. Prim on the other hand, died because she went to help others who had hurt when a bomb went off only to fall victim to a secondary blast. I think part of it was meant to showcase that Gale and Katniss had grown apart and that their ideals were now different. There’s also similarities in what happens to Prim with what happens to Lysander when he tries to rescue the Reds from Atlas’ Dragon’s Teeth (I’m sorry, they just remind me so much of the Husk spikes in Mass Effect). Each situation, however, serves a different purpose. I feel like a lot of the things that happen to Lysander are chances at self reflection he is given. I’m going to avoid going into great detail about Lysander (right now) because god knows I could talk about him all day.

ANYWAY. The point is both Darrow and Katniss lose people they’re close to, the families they have built over shared trauma and on top of that, they’re trying to fix a societal structure that treats them and other like them as lesser. Katniss has already finished her journey and at the end she’s shown to be slowly recovering and becoming comfortable with bringing children into the world. Darrow already has a son, and his found family has children and, of course, his story isn’t finished yet. Something else I think that will differ in their stories is that, if I remember correctly, Katniss and Gale never really reconciled. I think there are some parallels to the rift between Darrow and Sevro, although I feel with Devro we’re supposed to understand both perspectives whereas with Katniss and Gale, Gale is very much going too far. But Darrow and Sevro separate because of seemingly differing priorities. Sevro wants to focus on his family and protecting them and, while Darrow is also considering his loved ones, his methods cause conflict between them. I can see where Sevro is coming from. On the surface, Darrow might seem like he doesn’t care or his only focus is on the war. Which isn’t....wrong, he DOES want to end the war as soon as possible. But, much like Katniss, his motivation for ending everything as quickly as possible is to ensure a safe future for his family. What I think a lot of readers forget, my self included, is that none of the characters have a full picture of what’s happening. (A topic I will bring up again in my Lyria study). We’re lucky enough to get several different perspectives so we understand things that other characters may not.

Imagine if Katniss died at the end of Hunger Games. It would feel like such a disservice to have her go through all of that trauma and when finally presented with the possibility of having a life she thought she could never have, she dies. I think it would be the same for Darrow. Giving all he has just for the possibility of a better life for his family and then just snatching away his ability to see the benefits of all his hard work would just be...unsatisfying.

The next piece of media I’d like to talk about is Castlevania, specifically the ending. During the final battle, Trevor is ready to sacrifice his life in order to save the world and everyone he loves from death (kind of like the protagonist of Persona 3); he succeeds and the audience assumes he died in the process. BUT, he doesn’t. I don’t remember if it was explained in detail but Trevor lived and he was able to live happily with his wife, his husband, and his son. You know who else has a wife, a son, and at least one husband??? DARROW.

Trevor was prepared to die so his story pretty much ended and his death wouldn’t have felt unreasonable...for HIS character. Alucard specifically was betrayed and abandoned by so many people that having Trevor come back to him felt like such a good thing. Trevor may have left him but then he returned so they all could live happily ever after. I think a bit of it was even though they all worked together, it still felt like everyone was on their own personal journey and if Trevor had stayed dead....while not unrealistic, something would have felt off. Like Alucard and Sypha wouldn’t be able to move on and have a peaceful life together. Trevor needed to come back to complete the trio.

I’m trying to separate each piece of media by the point they make so bear with me on the length of this. Yu Yu Hakusho is a really good anime series from the early 2000s. The main character, Yusuke, dies in the first few episodes but then he comes back to life. It’s very similar to the beginning of Red Rising when Darrow is recruited to the Sons of Ares. Yusuke also died during the Chapter Black arc when he was killed by Sensui. Because Yusuke has demon blood, he didn’t stay dead. It’s not quite the same as Darrow as he hasn’t died a second time. I’m not going to count the fake death when he was taken by Adrius as that did not happen during the Iron Gold trilogy. The reason that worked in Yu Yu Hakusho (and also worked in the beginning of Red Rising) is that there was still stuff to accomplish. This is a point I’ll be making again. A lot of this rides on what is going to happen in the 6th book but, as of now, Darrow’s death would leave too many things incomplete.

For the last thing I’m going to talk about in this particular part, the He-Man reboot is really good. Now, I never watched the original so my knowledge of lore is very limited. But they kill Adam off pretty quickly in the first season and we have an entirely different protagonist for most of it. Adam’s absence can be compared to having different POVs in IG and DA, where we essentially get to follow different protagonists. But the reason both Darrow and Adam come back is because their stories aren’t done yet. Completely removing them wouldn’t make sense based on what’s happening.

Of course, some of this implies that Darrow COULD die as long as it was at the end of the 6th book and every loose end was tied. But I don’t think that would work either but I think that’s a long train of thought I’ll have to save for the next part.

#dark age spoilers #darrow won't die #iron gold trilogy #long post

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atatfortatzelwurm · 3 years ago

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Fandom osmosis for anything I’ve posted about tbh I feel like the only thing we have in common is Xenoblade

Xenoblade and Ace Attorney! i got into it in no small part thanks to you hehe

hm. i'll do hunterxhunter bc that one i know my sister loved too. (i say this as though i remembered anything about her talking about it)

the main characters are killiua and gon (who has a mailbox) and they... honestly i have no idea. they're like 12 and they both have the ability to kill if their hand is forced. one of them is more ready to kill than the other and i think its killua

there's this lanky guy with red hair and clown makeup but make it sexy and he is in a relationship with also lanky guy(?) with reeeeeeeeeally long black hair and big eyes, kinda reminds me of a cat. one of them is named Illumi but idk who. they are Very Important but i havent the slightest clue how

i think one of the two main characters has a little sister?? i might be getting mixed up with a different anime tho

#Tat talks

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fyrapartnersearch · 4 years ago

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HxH and Inazuma eleven nostalgia

Hi! Welcome to my partner search. Before going into detail I'll explain "my rules", I know it's a boring part but it helps us both to know if we are compatible. I roleplay mainly on Discord/ e-mail, with the first contact being on this e-mail: [email protected] - I prefer to roleplay with +18 people, I'm uncomfortable roleplaying with minors. -Quantity. I've been told that I'm on the literate side, but I know that sometimes one doesn't have the energy or just not enough to work to make a +1000 words post. So Quality> Quantity but please give me something to work with (my "lazy/small" usual is around 600 words per character I guess, if you need numbers. And again, if I have something to work with). You get stuck? Let's talk about it. I'm also here for the long term. - Doubling is required. I like to play both Canon and OC (CanonxOC trash here) and I intend to keep doing it. At least in this fandom. Do you want to play a canon for me? Please tell me you have a canon you want me to play against your OC. I get easily bored when I don't get to play more than one main character, and I like to build different kind of relationships (friendships, rivalries...and I'm talking bewteen the OCs, the Canons, both...) on my RPs, so I expect you to like, like me, playing multiple characters (it can be summarize in having two mains and then the others being like NPCs to build the scenes that we share). And I prefer to double with a male canon character usually. Why? I don't know to be honest but that is how it works for me, I guess it's because I grew up roleplaying like that?. This should be a given, but EQUAL EFFORT ON BOTH CHARACTERS, I love coming up with ideas for my partner's wanted canons and.... it's a bit sad when you're the only one who seems to be enjoying doubling (I know there are lots of people who said "I double!" but only to "make it fair" and "get their canon". Most of the time they don't even enjoy doubling, and well I can understand how desperate they could be for their fandom/canon but if that's your mindset we aren't really compatible). IF YOU DON'T DOUBLE/ DON'T LIKE IT DON'T FORCE YOURSELF, just keep going, I'm sure you'll find someone interested in playing your canon! -About OCs.... I used to accept any kind of OC but I've gotten tired of Mary Sues and all angst kind of characters. I know, it doesn't mean your OC is bad, but bear with me, I've had enough with those characters. This doesn't mean that your character can't have a sad story or that they need to have a friendly personality. The problem is when the only thing they do is a constant monologue about their tragic past and they never move the story forward. It gets boring. I want to be hyped about your OC! Choose songs, pinterest boards... -MxF is what I'm looking for in mains (playing both male - the canon - and female - the OC -). I don’t roleplay F// and M// pairings with partners I haven’t roleplayed with before. -Let's both contribute to the story. Maybe one has more ideas one day, or one suffers writers block, or one wants to surprise the other with a plot twist... but let's work/move the story together yeah? I also prefer if we use both 3rd person, it can be present or past, as you prefer, but 1st is a bit difficult to read and write for me. -When it comes to romance , love at first sight isn't my thing, I usually go with the slow burn/ "organic" path . Maybe you're more impatient, it's ok (besides, having crushes it's normal, not anything new or surreal), I don't mind speeding up things a little, but not just saying hi to each other and wanting to marry instantly. I like to keep the main genre of the series and focus on our character's development more than having romance as the only focus too. - Don't feel forced to answer everyday. I can't stress this enough. This a hobby, not a job. Even if I answer at the speed of light one day I'm not expecting that from you. There will be times that I won't be able to answer for days, life comes first. And I like OOC chit chat , share all your memes, silly headcanons, and feel free to chat with me even if you haven't replied to the RP. I've seen some people hiding that they are online to not be pressured about their RPs. I won't pressure you! -I'm very ditch friendly. At first I thought that people that were selective were just being a bit annoying/ hypocrites, but after roleplaying for around 10 years you get their point. I want to feel comfortable with what you write and I want YOU to feel comfortable with what I write. There is no need for hard feelings! No need to make an excuse too, just say ''Hey, let's just drop this'' and I'll be ''Ok, I'll keep searching then''. Ah, and I don't close my searches until I'm fully plotting with someone, like characters already been shared and all of that. When I find a partner I think will stay and that I feel confident about, I'll put the roleplay request on hold and lately if everything goes fine I'll close it. I think that those are the basic rules. I have triggerings and so but I think I prefer to talk about those matters with someone already interested in roleplaying. Now, the fandoms (Aged up friendly, since these fandoms have children on it, anything that goes beyond an innocent crush // holding hands, kiss on the cheek, you get me // is reserved for +18 characters. They may be super powerful and stronger than adults - at least in HxH -, but they are still children). Usually I'm open to try new canons, but I'm afraid that due to time limitations I'm only interested in playing the characters I have played before/ I feel more comfortable playing as when it comes to HxH. I'm also super open and I love to be honest, to do like an age progression. For example make an arc longer so the characters start to age up and as such face the consequences of growing and becoming adults. I think it's interesting. HunterxHunter I've watched the 2011 and the...1998? Anime, plus read the manga (I'm not up to date, I left in one of the.... endless hiatus - no shade to the mangaka btw, health and so comes first -, but if you're interested in knowing when I left it, ask, since I don't want to put spoilers here). The character I'm searching to play against is Killua. (Sue me. I made an OC and I felt like him and her could have an interesting dynamic.) Characters I'm comfortable playing as/ I've played before are: Leorio (love him), Kurapika (love him too), Gon (my son at this point) and Shalnark (had a good time playing him tbh, better than I had expected). Again, don't ask me to try different canons, I'm afraid that this time I'm not open for it.

Inazuma Eleven

There are so many characters in this series! But I'm mostly familiar with those appearing on the first season (Axel and Mark's age range). I'm searching to play against Haruya Nagumo, since the Alien arc was by fart my favorite one, and I'm open to try many canons for you ^^. I'm more inclined to age up the characters in this fandom from the beginning.

Important note regarding canon characters. Everyone. Has. Their. Own. Approach. When. It. Comes. To. Canons. I'm not here to be like "I'm going to check every single time that you follow the canon perfectly! And if you don't guess what I have in mind for them I'll riot!" Not only that but as we roleplay the canon character may change because they may have different experiences from the canon source! That being said, if you for example, give me a Bakugou Katsuki (just you know, a quick example now that BNHA is pretty popular), that isn't an ass, or turns into a cheesy character in like 3 interactions, yeah, I'm going to be like "... What are you doing?". Share your headcanons! Your vision of the canon! I try to do the same so I don't end up with an uncomfortable partner, or uncomfortable myself! Thanks for reading and have a nice day! Btw it gets pretty obvious when someone doesn't read the rules, and I'm a bit tired of it to be honest. Yeah I highlighted the most important info, but just for you to have a way to quick check everything if at some point you forget about a rule or are having doubts about it. Not to fully skip everything. Ah! And this is also a copy paste of my old rules, so if you see something weird, like me referring to several fandoms when in reality I'm just searching for one, I'm sorry. I didn't want to repeat all my rules from 0 and I just copy pasted and edited some parts.

#multiple paragraph #para #long term #email #submission

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hopeididntscareyou · 2 years ago

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My jojo feelings

The second batch of jojo’s bizarre adventure part 7 that i have been waiting forever will be released on netflix this september .Third batch will be released after 2 years and i would be 28 yrs old by then. Part 7 and part 8 are going to be released on my 30s and 40s, basically as a middle age person i would be still watching an anime but i have no choice, thats how they been running the jojo since the 1980s. Part 6 manga’s in fact was released on 1999 so basically were watching a 23 yrs old story in 2022 and its not even fully released yet. But whatever. I have to live healthy and not die so i can watch steel ball run and jojolion animated. They have the best storylines and i just cant die without seeing them animated. If i was on my deathbed and asked whats the my last wish, the only wish i have is to watch jojo bc i love this anime so much it is life

Now back to part 6 stone ocean, i just saw the trailer for the upcoming next episodes and i immediately started crying remembering how it will end. After all their intense fighting scenes and camaraderie theyre all doomed to die anyways, which is making me so depress3d.

Part 6 ending literally didn’t serve justice. I’m still mad that Foo fighters never got the credits that she deserve. She was the best girl and had the best character development. This is also the only part where the jojo got defeated by the villain and not only one jojo but TWO powerful jojos and its doesnt make sense because jolyne is definitely one of the smartest and quick thinkers in the entire series. She’s literally the best strategy gamer. Meanwhile jotaro, who actually made the entire franchise popular bc of his star platinum and fighting with Dio thats been memed since the early 2000s, got nerfed to hell which is so retarded.

Whats even more retarded is the fact that they all got defeated by some irrelevant faggot (just a dio minion) and the only left alive was also the irrelevant kid in the group and im so mad why does it have to be this way. Like emporio was cute and helpful and all but how the fuck did a non-jojo defeat the final boss? If emporio was the one to defeat that annoying gay nigger villain then he should be the jojo of the series then instead of centering the arcs to jolyne. Its so. Fucking. Retarded.

i invested so much emotion in this man rooting for jolyne and everyone but they all died and the only one left was the powerless kid and somehow he made some asspull that wasnt even his own. The ending will never ever satisfy me cause its basically just some solipsism shit because everyone there was more like a figment of emporio’s imagination, not the reality. They were all dead, they all died for nothing and its so stupid how they all died. It would have been more acceptable if the final boss was like Dio or Diavalo who had a powerful stand, but NO, it has to be the most boring, uncharismatic and uninteresting villain (he was an ex of Dio, which makes him a fagot) and i just cant stop saying how retarded that is

I quit gaming and immersed myself in the jojo world and saw all their fights. Its so heartbreaking for me to see all of them die for nothing. I’m starting to believe that araki is a complete psychopath and just wanted to mindfuck his readers in a bad way, playing with our emotions. Like bruh. the thing is i don’t usually care about shit like this but araki made all these interesting, likable and fashionable characters with the best stands ever and teamwork. They didnt deserve an ending like that. And tbh, thats the reason why i'm choosing Golden Wind as my favorite cause atleast the jojo was still alive. if only the jolyne squad didnt die i would def chose Stone Ocean because i love all the fighting scenes and the mindfuck suspense shit in this. It feels more psychological and ive never seen an anime quite like this. Its definitely different from all those childish friendship anime storylines like naruto/hunterxhunter and onepiece which are all garbage. If you claim to be an anime fan and you said your favorite is hunterxhunter, I would put you in the degenerate weeebo category because there is nothing to like about hunter x hunter, unless you are a child

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icharchivist · 7 years ago

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What other anime would you recommend aside from HunterxHunter?

Heyyy!!

Ooooh my. I’m not really an anime person and mostly a manga person tbh, and my favorite manga had been badly adapted at times :/ But i’ll still make a quick rec:

-One of my fav manga ever is D. Gray Man. It’s been an important part of my life for years and I love to follow it so much. It’s really important to me.

It’s a story that is really hard to sum up because its strengths are on how the story twists itself and you really can’t take the begining of the story for granted - but as a result it’s impossible to mention why this story is sooo interesting without spoiling it. Let’s say it’s a story of a holy war with things going... extremely wrong. It’s a story talking a lot about identity and abuse, about war, and a lot of others things.

Sadly I wouldn’t recommand either of the anime adaptation per se :/ The 2006 anime covers up to vol 16 I think, it has about 108 episodes, but it has so much fillers.............. And often stuff that are ooc.

Also I really don’t think they managed the pacing all that well, not only on the story (the events are supposed to happen really closely in the manga, and the anime kinda screw over the timeline to squeeze fillers) but also sometimes the pacing of the jokes or dramatic moments. But that might be only me :/ Otherwise the voice acting and the music is A+. I’m not too found of the art though but that’s because the manga’s art gets stunning.

The second anime, Hallow, is more of a new season, covering from the end of volume 17 too volume 22 I think??? And it has like 12 episodes to do so. Also there’s a full volume that wasn’t adapted. Hallow was... not so good tbh, it was really rushed, which kills me bc one of my fav arc happens in that time.

I suppose the 2006 anime is still watchable, but i really can’t recommand Hallow. So if you can and want to try, try to read the manga!

-One of my other all time favorite is Fullmetal Alchemist.I’ve followed it for years and it was one of my first manga so i’m super involved in it.

The pitch of the two series is, two brothers looking for a Philosopher stone for.... reasons I don’t want to reveal if you’re interested in looking it up for yourself ;O It’s really a story about siblings, about war, about human tragedy ect...

Again, I prefer the manga, but for different reasons. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood adapts the manga rather faithfully but it rushes a little in the begining and deleted some scenes i loved, and especially a whole volume of backstory, which I found odd. But the anime stands well on its own.

The 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist happened when the manga wasnt finished yet (only 7 volumes were out), so instead it’s an original story, which only have the begining in common with the manga/brotherhood, even if it takes it to a lot of different directions. I personally like the 2003 version of the anime, even if it has nothing to do with the manga. The author of the manga actually wrote the alternative storyline, so this is how to watch it, thinking it’s an alternative storyline. It’s good enough, but i’d still recommand you to either read the manga and/or watch Brotherhood while you can.

Okay, next ones should be quicker:

-Lately I end up really liking Boku No Hero Academia, even though I didn’t finish it just yet *sweats*. It has great characters and story! The story is simple enough, a school for superhero, and our main character wants to join it even though he has no powers allowing him in. I didn’t read the manga yet and just watched part of the anime so i’m unbiased kdjhfkjdf so I can recommand it as an anime!

-Death Note is probably one of the Classics I would always kinda recommand.The story of a guy finding a Death Note: if you write the name of someone in the Death Note, they die. And the guy finding the Death Note will take his own uses for it. Again I personally prefer the manga, especially because there’s a lot of talks and I needed it to pause and read, but I’ve watched the begining of the anime recently and it really holds up and follows the storyline pretty well. I think the only difference is the epilogue? But ye, Death Note is a good anime too.

-Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki Kun, this time i completely mean the anime since i didn’t read the manga, and it’s one of my favorite cheer up stories. It’s a short shoujo where the characters are truly likeable and fun, it’s honestly such a feel-good anime, I would definitly recommand it! It’s... really a slice of life anime about a Shoujo mangaka’s inspirations and it’s really fun.

-Ouran High School Host Club is always a classic but i admit i didn’t watch the anime, just read the manga. I know the anime stops around vol 10 I think and that the manga has about 18 vols so it could feel uncomplete :/ But otherwise I think the anime is kinda faithful for all i know? It’s a shoujo, and it’s ridiculously good, it’s fun. Although i don’t even know how to summarize it..

-Bakuman is really an interesting manga, idk about the anime. It’s by the authors of Death Note and it explores the world of Mangaka and how it works for mangaka to work. It’s honestly super interesting and informative! I kinda dropped it at some point because lack of time, I should catch up one day, but ye, it really has an interesting narrative and dynamic all while learning a lot about the manga industry.

-Haikyuu!! is probably my favorite sport anime out there. It’s fun and enjoyable and the cast is really likable. It’s about volleyball, which honestly I didn’t care about before watching the show. But I think the anime is great. I kinda dropped it after season 2 and I read the manga only to drop it at some point bc i was lazy, but I remember really loving it. For once though, I think the anime is really faithful to the manga, and the dynamic of the sport are more enjoyable to watch in an anime!

-Card Captor Sakura is one of my all time favorite anime. It’s a Magical Girl Anime by CLAMP, I’ve read the manga and watched the anime and I like both a lot, I have a soft spot for the anime because I watched it as a kid. It’s fun and sweet and it has wonderful characters and storyline, I definitly recommand!Also it’s really a simple story. I mention it because......

-CLAMP has its own universe of manga, and two of my favorite of them are Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHolic. I hadn’t watched the anime of those and I’m a little puzzled because I think TRC is mostly made of OAV and xxxHolic has a movie?? anyway - Both series are amazing and interesting to read at least, and I would recommand you to read them both if you feel like it because.... slight issue...... The two series are inter-connected.

At first it’s not too bothering, it’s mostly the TRC characters who contacts the xxxHolic characters from a different dimension, and so if you read both manga at once you can kinda see the POVs of the different characters, but I think around vol 22 of TRC and vol 17 of xxxHolic, if you hadn’t read the other serie as well, you’re completely lost about what is happening.

I read TRC up to vol 22 when I was 14 I think and I was completely lost, so I dropped it. A few years later I started xxxHolic which i loved, but around vol 17 when it merges with TRC, I forgot everything that was happening in TRC so I dropped xxxHolic.

One day I should try to go back to it because both stories were super interesting (TRC is an adventure of people going through different alternative universe, which happens to be for some of them, different works of Clamp or with double of people you meet in the Clamp story. Hell the two main characters, Sakura and Syaoran, are both the versions in an alternative universe of the two mains of CCS. xxxHolic is a story of the Witch of Dimension, who among other things, help the TRC group to travel between dimension, but she especially takes care of Ghosts stories and folklore in her shop, which is suuper interesting.)

You don’t have to know the rest of CLAMP works to follow those two series (although if you do, it becomes really fun to see the alternative versions of some of the characters), but TRC and xxxHolic are better to read together, which makes it impossible for me to recommand it properly.

Those are all kinda the manga/anime that I got really invested in in the course of the years, or that I remember enough to recommand it. There’s maybe a few others series I remember liking (like Yugioh Duel Monsters, but i hadn’t watched it ever since i’ve been a kid) but otherwise, this seems like a good summary of the stuff i really liked.

Hope you find something to enjoy in there!

Take care!

#*finger guns* yo #i used to read so much manga before but i stopped around my 17 yo because 'noo i'm too old for that'#fuck this #ever since i came back into the anime life i hadn't really caught up with the hype #i know there's a few series i should watch recently like mp100 or opm #but i don't want to recommand stuff i hadn't seen yet #and ye sorry i'm that annoying 'but in the manga' person #like if you think i complain about hxh2011 not following the manga don't get me to talk about those #hxh2011 is one of the most faithful adaptation i've seen - for all my bitching about it #so ye kdjfhkdjfh #take care!#Anonymous #ichareply

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irregardlessly-tish · 7 years ago

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I felt like rambling...

I remember the first time I roleplayed here on tumblr I was terrified. I was still studying English and even though I could perfectly read what others wrote it was hard to form a sentence, maybe it wasn't that hard really but it felt that way. I didn't know much about how tumblr worked either but for some reason I took courage and asked to join a Hunterxhunter rping group. I guess it was "easier" because a lot of people in that group were European, mainly from Italy and Germany so I wasn't the weirdo whose native language wasn't English, I was just the third world Latin weirdo. Anyway, the "leader" of the group was an Italian girl and she said I could be part of that group and was really kind to me. A lot of people said that my portrayal of Gon was great, everything was very encouraging and writing made me really happy back then. But nice things don't last forever and eventually as the fandom grew bad people joined. There were individuals who had or claimed to have depression and sometimes would post threats saying that they were going to cut their wrists or kill themselves because apparently, no one cared about them since they weren't getting memes or as many interactions as they wanted. I can't tell for sure if they really felt that way or if they were just guilt-triping people. There was also a girl in particular who would use my icons without my permission and "steal" my headcanons and plot ideas. I posted something and then they posted pretty much the same. Then a new group of people that knew each other for a long time joined the fandom and each of their members would have like three accounts for different characters and it seemed kind of bizarre to me, even though I knew multi-muse blogs this was different and it felt kind of weird for some reason. I personally felt that there was something off with them but they weren't doing anything bad so why would I talked about them behind their backs or whatever. But then my main partner told me that the leader of that group tried to add him on skype and after he kindly said no that person made a post bitching about it. After a cuple of weeks I felt they were trying to impose their rules onto the rest of us. You have your group, you have your own rules, that's cool but don't try to make everybody follow what you think it's good. Besides that , there was drama with that group, they were getting anon hate and stuff but the way that anon talked was quite familiar. This group was European too, from Belgium if I recall correctly, and the way they formed certain phrases or sentences was quite specific. With a couple of people, we started to wonder if they weren't sending anon hate to themselves. Why would they do it? I don't know, maybe they wanted to play the victim or they wanted to look vulnerable so others would come through and stand up for them? They had mentioned that they always got anon hate in other fandoms. The common denominator in all those situations were them so the problem must be within them. Luckily, they stopped being active, they were kind of messy with their organization, in my opinion. Some time passed and one of their members started dating my best friend in the fandom and I didn't like that but apparently, it made her happy so why intervene between the two of them? After a couple of months, this person broke my friend's heart.

What was going on in the HxH fandom after that? Well, the anime had come to an end and some people lost interest and started leaving. I had to go to a hospital because of my depression and I didn't have any access to the internet. When I came back home I was excited to finally be able to write again and ignore my life problems for a bit and what do I find when I enter my blog? A message from my main partner basically "breaking up" with me. Our muses were in a relationship and in that message he said he wanted to try new things with their muse, things he couldn't explore while our characters were together. I was a tad shocked, I didn't expect that at all. What I was expecting were messages wondering what I was doing or where I was since I basically had disappeared, but no... I replied to the message saying that it was okay but I'd have liked it better if they had talked to me directly instead of sending an ask to my blog, we talked via skype pretty much every day. I expected our relationship outside roleplaying would be the same but no... He started ignoring me, other friends started ignoring me or just stayed away from their blogs and I never had any other way of communicating with them. Since I wasn't writing as much as I wished there I decided to join another fandom, hoping that things would be fun like they used to be but guess what? No...

While I was at the hospital I was only allowed to keep my books as a sourced of entertainment and I was in the middle of A Song of Ice and Fire. I had an original character in mind so I made a blog for her. The asoiaf was pretty closed, the people there were highly selective and ocs weren't accepted. There was only a handful of people who would write with me. I didn't make a single friend there. I had other oc I wanted to use but it was a fandomless one so what could I do? I decided to make a multi-muse blog with Gon and that oc, plus other muses from HxH. That way I could go back to the fandom that made me so happy before and included my own characters. That blog didn't last for long and went back to just Gon. My partner wasn't there, my friends weren't there so I chose to stay away from roleplaying because it didn't made me happy.

I'm honestly not sure of how much time had passed, I wanted to get back to it but I knew Gon wouldn't be the character for me at that moment. What did I love? Hannibal. So what better idea than creating a blog for a Hannibal muse? Well, a multi-muse Hannibal blog! But that's not all, I was going to add my ocs into the mix because they had been so well received before. I started with Will, Chilton, Freddie Lounds and two ocs. Not much was happening but it was alright. The fandom wasn't as closed as asoiaf had been but in general, I felt multi-muse blogs aren't that accepted as regular blogs and female ocs are easily dismissed. Then with time I added Beverly Katz, Gon, because I missed him and then other HxH characters and Chiyoh. It was a bizarre combination but it worked for a little. Then I decided to break that blog in three, one for my Hannibal muses, other for the HxH ones and other for my ocs. This last one had so little activity thanks to the acceptant world we live on, or maybe my characters just suck and no one was brave enough to tell me.

Hannibal ended, as just as it had happened with HxH, lots of roleplayers lost interest and disappeared. The lack of activity made me lost my muses and I ended up with Chiyoh alone in one blog and my dead ocs in another. I added Yuuri to my HxH blog, making it a just anime blog. I felt like a mess, I felt that I wasn't worthy of interacting with anyone and that everybody ignored me, the only logical reason being that they either were elitists who ignored multi-muse blogs or that I simply suck a lot.

I now have a multi muse blog with HxH muses, Yuuri, Chiyoh, Marik from Yu-gi-oh and two ocs. And I still feel shitty most of the time. I don't know why the community can't be open and accepting as it was for me in the beginning. Now it feels like everything is about having a complicated but unique theme in your blog and formatting your text so it looks cool along with your unique and distinguished icons. Some days I want to delete because it's not worth it. I spend more time feeling like crap that actually enjoying it. I don't know why I put myself out there, posting open starters or starter calls, why I send things to other people knowing that I'm likely going to be ignored. But I'm still there... And I feel conflicted.

If you read this... well, goddamn...

#;diary #;roleplaying adventures #it's long #i'm really telling you the tales of my adventures

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cheritsundere · 7 years ago

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I need help...... I've finished 2 animes in the past week and now I have no idea what to do could you recommend something for me to watch please -shanon

I’m on it, Shanon!

Well, I’m not too sure what exactly to recommend, since I don’t exactly know your personal taste and there are few anime out there for “everyone”. However, I’m going to assume you have seen most of the shows on my blog, such as Haikyuu, Yoi, Bnha, HunterxHunter, etc. (if not, those 4 I mentioned are the ones I would recommend you to watch first)

I’m gonna say therefore that you like comedies/shounens/underdog and growth stories. If that’s the case I got a few recommendations for you and I list them in order of what I think you would like most/have the best qualties/etc.

1. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood:

Although the original is good in a different way, Brotherhood is superior in most of the animation, plot, and character development.

The story revolves around Ed and his younger brother Al in a world of alchemy, tragedy, and hope. After having lost very important pieces of themselves, they journey together after joining the military to hunt down the Philosopher’s stone: an ancient myth that could bring them exactly what they need. Follow along with their travels as they discover friends, a hidden ulterior motive to the military’s actions, and the true meaning of what is really important in life.

Pros: Good animation, Great voice acting in dub and sub, Al is literally the cutest, strong cast (female characters have great roles in this), interesting and engaging plot, satisfying conclusion

Cons: A little on the long side with 64 eps (still shorter than HxH but), a few running gags that might get a little stale after a while, some 1 dimensional villains??? Idk I’m reaching.

2. Assassination Classroom:

Middle school can be difficult when you’re stuck in a classroom with the lowest of the low when it comes to grades, motivation, and skills. Class 3-E isn’t even allowed on the main campus due to their labels as school delinquents. Enter a Killer Octopus who moves at Mach 20, is indestructible, and wants to destroy the world.

Oh yeah. And he’s their teacher.

Pros: Comedy is on point, character designs are unique?, every kiddo in the class gets their moment in the spotlight for the most part, endearing characters from the students to the teachers, satisfying conclusion.

Cons: Animation isn’t the most “showy” and can be stiff at times, rushes towards the later half of the second season, some characters realllllly needed to be expanded upon, plot is kinda ridiculous??? but entertaining nonetheless.

3. Bakuman:

Man, you ever look at an anime and then go look at it’s manga and think: “Wow, I wonder what it takes to be a mangaka. Wouldn’t a story about 2 kids making and becoming published mangaka be interesting???”

No. No one did. But man is it a good fucking story.

Meet Mashiro and Takagi, 2 middle schoolers with dreams to become published mangaka in Shounen Jump and their journey throughout life as they go through the joy and pain that comes with gambling their careers in the trade of manga.

Pros: The partnership of the two MCs will bring the biggest smile to your face ever (Honestly the first Brotp I’ve ever had), Romance is well handled in the series and brings butterflies to your heart??? LIKE IT’S SO PURE IT HURTS, plot is really fucking good for a show about kids making manga, THE SECONDARY CAST IS GOLD

Cons: 75 episodes, last season seems rushed??? Idk, You won’t get a lot out of this if you don’t like the MCs

4. Yu Yu Hakusho:

14 yr. old Yusuke Urameshi is about as “Keith” as they come, constantly ditching school, causing trouble, and getting into numerous fights everyday. This isn’t to say such a delinquent kid is full of no redeeming features though as, in a strange stroke of fate, he sacrifices himself to save a little kid by jumping in front of a car. Sadly though, the afterlife wasn’t ready for his death and as such they offer him a second chance at life by becoming a GHOST COP - er “Spirit Detective” and gaining his right to come back to life. Along the way meet his enemy-turned-best-friend Kuwabara as well as the demons Hiei and Kurama as they fight against evil spirits to protect the world!

Pros: From the creator of HunterxHunter, Fucking awesome plot and characters, Yusuke is literally best “cool kid” in existence and is actually just a big dork underneath that bad-ass exterior, childhood friends ship that actually ends up sailing, the english dub voice acting is hilarious and will make you have nostalgic flashbacks to your childhood, fight choreography is gorgeous and inventive putting you on the edge of your seat, CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IS GODLIKE

Cons: It’s a fucking old ass show so the art and animation might turn you off a bit it was the 90s what do you want from me, tbh this is the longest recommendation on the list at a whopping 112 eps but trust me it’s worth it, cheesy puns and humor that might make you cringe since it’s an acquired taste but if you like it BOY WILL YOU LIKE IT

5. Birdy the Mighty! Decode:

What happens when a super awesome badass female alien police cop accidentally kills a normal teenage guy like Tsutomu Senkawa? Well, she has to fuse their bodies until his can regenerate! Duh.

Join these two polar opposite characters on their journey to hunt down intergalactic forces that land on earth while having to keep up with schoolwork without anyone finding out their little secret.

Pros: Holy shit Birdy is such a great female character like I can’t stand it, animation is on point??? Like the fights are awesome, comedy is good tbh, for a “guy and girl sharing a body” thing it really is handled tastefully and is light on most fanservice tbh, uh??? DID I MENTION ALIENS???

Cons: A little unsatisfying with some plot points??? Like some story lines seem to not…go…anywhere, romance does feel a little forced with Tsutomu and his love interest but Birdy’s romance subplot is handled well for the most part, kinda lacklust ending but it’s mostly forgivable

Hope these helped Shanon and sorry I didn’t answer sooner!

#long post #answered #shanon #anime recommendation #shy anon

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hawk-in-a-jazzy-hat · 8 years ago

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Anime Review: The Seven Deadly Sins (Season 1)

In a world where humans and magical beings had yet to split, signs of war were imminent and the country was protected by the group of mages known as the Holy Knights. But there was a group that split off, and terrorised the land. A group of seven immensely powerful beings, each branded with the sign of their sin, and designated the Seven Deadly Sins.

The owner of a travelling pub known as the Boar Hat finds himself in an interesting situation when a rusted suit of armour bursts through his door, only to collapse, revealing an unconscious girl inside. It soon turns out that the Holy Knights are searching for her, for she is Princess Elizabeth, third princess to the kingdom. She ran away, claiming the knights are corrupt and tyrannical, and her mission is to gather the Seven Deadly Sins in order to rise up and save her family and her kingdom. But after the owner of the bar gets himself involved, she makes a miraculous discovery; he is in fact Meliodas, the Dragon Sin of Wrath and leader of the Sins themselves. Together, they pledge to go out into the world and find the other six Sins, and maybe bring this fractured land back to rights.

But what is the true agenda of the Holy Knights? And what are the true characters of the Sins themselves? Are they misunderstood heroes, or is there some truth to the terrible legends...

I’m reminded at this point of an anime reviewer I follow called Jacob Chapman (formerly JesuOtaku). He does very good and very in-depth reviews and honestly he was the one who got me into anime in the first place. I want to quote something he said back, when he was doing videos, when talking about a more classic show called the Vision of Escaflowne.

“Can a series be great on execution alone? Could perfect pacing, taut delivery and gripping tension save a story and characters that are old as dirt and nothing special?” [JesuOtaku’s Top 25 Favorite Anime]

Far be it for me to steal his thunder, but I honestly cannot think of a better question to ask when addressing the Seven Deadly Sins. Well, sort of. I want to add a little extra from my personal experience, since it will very much determine the final score I’m going to give this show:

Is it possible for a good show to be made great solely due to a single episode?

We’ve laid down our learning objectives, so with that, we can begin.

The animation is by A-1 Pictures; the Dreamworks of anime studios. They can push out some of the best shows and some of the best-looking shows on the market, but they push out so much stuff (Sword Art Online has obviously set them for life) that the quality can be a bit of a roulette wheel, though I will admit there’s more good than bad. Thankfully Seven Deadly Sins is on the higher-end of that scale, at least on the animation front. It’s straight shounen, and it has all the straight-shounen animation tricks; bright colours, simple but well-directed talking heads and panning shots mixed with some genuinely impressive fights. There is a lot of magic at work here and a lot of the characters are reeeeally powerful, so it’s nice to see the animation can handle it well. It’s not One Punch Man level, but the fights are still immensely fun to watch.

The music is Hiroyuki Sawano. I need say no more; you know exactly what you’re going to get, and you know it’s going to be absolutely epic. It’s also themed well, having a goodly amount of Celtic fiddle and fast-paced percussion, mixed with powerful vocals and guitar riffs. It’s symphonic rock, and honestly that’s perfect for this kind of show. The openings and endings are pretty standard rock fare, with the exception of the second opening which relies a bit more on the vocals and a bit less on playing-as-fast-as-possible, making for a more emotional opening. But overall, s’good stuff.

Now, those who know me may know that I’m not really the biggest fan of shounen. I tend not to hate it, but I tend not to love it either. And that’s what Seven Deadly Sins is; a paint-by-numbers, very safe and very standard shounen with all the standard shounen tropes. Cute animal sidekick? Check. Naive, weak (usually female) side character who acts as the human contact but ultimately means little to the main story? Check. Team member who is likely to betray the main character at any point? Double check. Initial villain who makes a heel-face turn? Checkity-check. Slightly goofy but insanely powerful main character with a very dangerous daaaaark siiiiiide? Oh boy, check. Pretty much every plot twist and character arc is on the table from the moment it’s introduced, so much so that it doesn’t seem worth going through it at all. I could just say ‘it’s a standard shounen’ and leave it at that.

But I won’t, because there are four very good reasons why this show in particular got me in ways that HunterXHunter, or heck, even Soul Eater, couldn’t quite.

The first is very simple; I’m a sucker for this setup. Any show which involves running around trying to ‘get the gang together’ as it were is just immediately attractive to me, probably because I like seeing different and insane characters bouncing off of each other. Add in the nice high-fantasy setting and the interesting setup with the Holy Knights (and for once, pretty much all of the standard one-off villains are actually unique in design and power, which you don’t see often), and I was left inherently excited for the concept.

The second reason is as I mentioned above; while the premise and characters are standard, the execution is very nearly spot-on. There is practically no filler in the whole show (granted it’s only 24 episodes, but for a shounen that’s still impressive). The show is heavily serialised, with elements and characters being introduced in early arcs, being left alone for a few episodes, then coming back again at the opportune moment. And it’s not just the ‘get the gang together’ plot happening at any time; there are rumblings going on within the Holy Knights, there are important items to collect, and of course all the characters have their own troubles to work through. And it all ties together very nicely; the discovery of a new Sin can also lead into the origin of a new villain and foreshadowing for the big final twist. It sounds like basic writing practise, but honestly in shounen, which is usually so arc-based with very little crossover in between, it is an utter gift to see actual PLANNING for once.

In fact, it’s planned so well that by the time the ending comes around, everything important is wrapped up. Not absolutely everything; heck, we only meet six of the Sins and only go into four of them in any depth. But as an actual ending, it addresses everything important that was brought up within the show. The initial objective? Addressed. All the side-arcs and villain-arcs? Addressed. Even things that are left open are purposely left open; characters turn round and say “I haven’t forgotten this, but let’s just wrap this thing up first.” It’s really quite stunning because, again, you see it so rarely in this kind of show. I want to see a second season, but I would be happy if it ended here. It’s open, without being unfinished, and that is such a breath of fresh air like you wouldn’t believe.

So a premise I like with near flawless execution. Is it still enough to get past the standard tropiness? Well...that’s the thing; there are one or two original ideas here...I...think. Not so much with the plot or the world, but especially with the characters. Not so much the side characters; while they are explored well and in-depth, the Holy Knights never really become something ‘new’. Even Elizabeth and mascot character Hawk are kind of familiar roles, despite both being done well. But what I did find interesting were the Sins themselves.

On the one hand, it’s nice to see some diversity. It’s not just a bunch of powerful warriors; we have a giant, a fairy and immortal(s?) on board, and everyone is visually distinct and has their own unique powers. That’s all well and great in itself, but then we find out which sin they each represent. And I’ll be honest, I was often taken aback.

The seven deadly sins as a concept has been done to death by this point; FullMetal Alchemist, Se7en, heck, even Pokemon and Digimon have had a crack at it. And with each variant you always sort of see the same ideas being pulled out; sloth is lazy, lust is an attractive woman, envy is wormy and obnoxious etc etc. You can usually guess who will fit each role, but here, it doesn’t always go with what you’d expect.

For example, the leader Meliodas is short, kinda pervy but immensely easy-going and even cocky. You’d expect him to represent pride, or maybe sloth at a push, but nope. He’s wrath.

When you meet Diane, the awesome giant lady and my favourite character, she’s a little ditzy, but obviously immensely strong with a short temper. You’d really expect her to be either sloth or wrath, or maybe gluttony or...envy? Yeah, in a weird twist, the arguably most outgoing member of the group is the representation of envy. That...never happens, and it took me a little while to figure out why it was her. I mean yes, they gave her a crush on Meliodas, but it seemed a little superficial when compared to what her actual character was.

It wasn’t until about halfway through the series when I figured it out, and why it seemed so far removed from other examples I’d seen. With things like FMA or Digimon, the sins are the literal representation of, well, their respective sin. But here, despite the name, the Sins are not represented by their respective sins; if anything, they are held back by them. Each vice represents each member at their absolute worst.

When you look at it this way, a lot of the backstories and character quirks suddenly explain a lot. Diane being envy actually makes a lot of sense, since as a giant around humans she often feels out of place and awkward, and is looking for acceptance. Her envious side is the worst side of herself. Ban of greed and King of sloth have similar issues; each one tries to be the best of themselves, but are forever branded and atoning for past sins they committed. And then there’s Meliodas of wrath, and let me just say...yeesh.

It’s very rare in a shounen that main characters are defined by their worst aspects. Even if many of them have fascinating flaws which are well explored, not often are they pushed to the front and centre of their every action, sometimes unfairly. The only one I can think off would be Yusuke Urameshi from Yu Yu Hakusho, who is such an annoying arsehole for the entirety of the series that it actually flips him around in the latter half and makes him stronger.

The Seven Deadly Sins are constantly fighting against the worst of themselves. Unless they ever atone, they will always be damned by their own title. That’s both a creative way of using the sins (despite being weirdly obvious) but also allows for some really interesting character stuff. I honestly can’t wait to see what they do with lust, because the reveal of their actual character was perfect, and I can’t wait to see how far they go down their darkest road.

So despite the plot being simple, the main characters actually have quite a bit of depth to them. Even so, I wouldn’t say it was so well handled that it would push it anything up from a straight recommendation. It’s immensely entertaining, with a bit of depth and drama to it, but nothing absolutely stunning or mindblowing.

Except...there’s one more reason why I find this show awesome. And it goes back to my other point, because it is all a single episode.

That is episode 19. And it might just be the single greatest episode of shounen I’ve seen in my entire life.

Everything came together at the right moment. The character arcs had hit the right place, and the tension was at its peak. The most interesting villain of the show was ready to strike, and I was genuinely scared for one of the sins. And then, just when it mattered, we finally discovered the full story.

I was marathoning this at the time, and I don’t know if any of my fellow members noticed, but I was actually on the verge of crying throughout this episode. It was beautiful, it was adorable, it was immensely tragic yet still hopeful, and it explained EVERYTHING. THAT is how you do backstory. Heck, that’s how you do characters to begin with. And for the characters in question, it totally appealed to both the worst of themselves, while finally breaking through and showing the best of themselves.

I loved this episode. I wanted to take it home and watch it again and again with a pot of houmous and just live in the moment again and again. Just...that right there? That is my jam. That is what made the Seven Deadly Sins for me.

Can a tired concept be made great through perfect execution? Honestly, of course it can. Originality can only get you so far. All those important things like pacing and planning and foreshadowing and editing; all the things that you need but nobody remembers, probably make up for at least half of every true great out there. Heck, you don’t need me to tell you this. Look at the Lego movie. An utter cash-in based on a toy which needed no effort put into it whatsoever, and yet what did we end up with? A movie so absolutely wonderfully brilliant that people were angry that it didn’t get nominated for an academy award. Any concept can be great if you do it right; no matter how tired it is.

As it stands, Seven Deadly Sins is a solid recommendation. It’s not perfect, and yeah it’s not finished either, and frankly it’s not really my kind of thing, in theory, but it’s done so well and so completely that I can’t help but give it a solid 7.

Is what I would say.

But frankly, when something is as solid is this, and then does one thing – just one thing – really, really astonishingly well, it would be lax of me not to take notice.

So, I can proudly boost my score by a whole point, making this show not only one of the greats, but without a doubt my favourite shounen as of yet. The effort that went into making this show the best that it could be – pushing the basic structure further and further to make it as perfect as possible, is utterly admirable. The animation and fight scenes are wonderful, the music is phenomenal, the characters are delightful and the whole thing is just immensely fun from start to finish.

Who could have guessed? Even a curmudgeonly old critic like me can be won over if something’s done well enough.

My score: 8/10

#seven deadly sins #nanatsu no taizai #a-1 pictures #anime 2014

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someguyranting1 · 7 years ago

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Why Do So Many People Love SAO? The Art of Mass Appeal

Hey! It’s okay! You are allowed to like Sword Art Online. I feel like I needed to explain that before somebody gets the wrong idea and thinks this is just me saying, “I don’t understand how somebody likes an anime that I don’t like!”

I just want to put this on the record: You’re not a bad person for liking SAO. You don’t have shit taste, and you’re not stupid. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to like this show, and, for this review, we’re going to be exploring what those reasons are because any show that can reach over a million people has to be doing something right.

No, this isn’t going to boil down to an insulting and reductive conclusion, like, “Thirsty weebs need wish fulfillment,” although I do think that is part of it for some people. This is a serious, analytical look at the series. The mechanics of mass appeal have always fascinated me, and SAO’s lacking qualities in other departments make it easier to isolate those mechanics than it would be looking at something like FMA.

You really can’t understate the impact that SAO has had on popular culture. It takes a lot of brand recognition for an American product to get a shot on network television, let alone a Japanese one. Much as critics like to downplay popularity as a measure of quality, success like that doesn’t just come down to random luck.

That said, luck is a major factor. SAO is often lauded for its great premise, but that’s only half the story. The most obvious factor in SAO’s whirlwind success is that it hit on the right premise, at the right time. When SAO came out in 2012, eSports and Free-to-Play games were becoming huge in the public eye. League of Legends had overtaken WoW as the most-played PC game of the year, and WoW’s death grip on the MMO market had loosened enough so that the landscape of online worlds was becoming more expansive and varied than it had ever been before. It was the perfect time to release any story about hardcore gaming, hardcore MMO gaming in particular, and with the Hunger Games phenomenon just starting to “catch fire” thanks to the first movie’s release, the market was hot for death game stories in particular. Add to that the exploding popularity of the then-new Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, and any series with a similar sense of lethality was bound to do well. Just look at how many articles at the time compare Attack on Titan and SAO to those two shows.

On top of that, anime was about to blow up in a big way in the West. Crunchyroll came to my attention in Fall of 2011, when they acquired the rights to Fate/Zero. I was hooked enough on the series from watching it on their ad-supported site to bite the bullet on a subscription just to get one episode ahead, and I don’t think I’m the only one. From 2011 to 2012, Crunchyroll began offering a serious value proposition by doubling their seasonal anime library, and becoming the go-to place for basically everything coming out of Japan by the Summer of 2012. It might not have been Fate/Zero specifically, but between huge series like HunterxHunter and quality niche stuff like Space Brothers and Kids on the Slope, the streaming service finally had enough content to pull in and sustain a hundred thousand subscribers by September of 2012, and two hundred thousand by March of 2013. Crunchyroll had become the service of choice for the then-niche community. SAO hit right in the middle of the surge in anime’s Western popularity, right at the point when Crunchyroll had enough content to be worth a subscription, but before it became totally unreasonable to watch everything on the service.

As one of the biggest fish in a rapidly-expanding pond, SAO both benefited from and helped spur on the service’s growth. Since it was one of the most popular shows on the service, Crunchyroll naturally put it at the forefront of their marketing push, which only increased its brand caché among anime fans and casuals alike. At this point, SAO was huge in Japan, and within the niche of Western anime fandom. It had proved its market viability enough to become a flagship title for the recently revived and redesigned Toonami block on Cartoon Network in Spring of 2013, and it was both relevant and popular enough to be added to Netflix in 2014, right in time to hype up the second season.

Anime had become a massive wave, washing over popular culture. Like 2013’s Attack on Titan, SAO had the good fortune to start riding that wave while it was still small, and go all the way to the top. The two series’ similar tone, and similar lethality, meant that fans of one were likely the fans of the other, and the cross-pollination only helped them both.

However, if good timing and an enticing premise were all it took for a show to embed itself in the popular culture, we’d be staring down Season 3 of The Unlimited Hyoubu Kyousuke right now. As much as it pains me to admit it, SAO does do some things very right when it comes to its execution that primed it for its whirlwind success. One of the biggest factors in this regard is the look of the show. A1 Pictures has faced a lot of criticisms from anime YouTubers and critics in general for the uniform look of its productions, and indeed, it can get pretty tiring to see the same faces, in nearly identical art styles, over and over again. However, that’s not going to be a problem for the casual anime fan, whose only seen a few dozen series. Their shows might look pretty similar, but they all look polished and professional, assuming they’re given enough time in production. They might not look or feel as nice as something from Ufotable, Kyoto Animation, or Bones, but they can get most of the way there in less time with a smaller budget, and that’s impressive. People like things that feel polished and professional.

If you haven’t seen a million shows like it before, SAO looks really clean and cohesive. It looks like what you expect a good anime to look like. The lineart is sharp and crisp, the characters blend with the environments well (at least, when the characters aren’t moving), and you can freeze on almost any frame and use it as a pretty decent wallpaper, which is all that many casual anime fans look for in a show’s visuals.

A1’s visual style is also very versatile. Its characters look cool, but they’re still very expressive. The girls can be moe cute, the heroes can look badass and youthful, and the adults can look old and hardened, and they all exist within the same world. Despite its “same-face syndrome” problem when put next to other A1 anime, SAO’s main cast has impressively diverse and easily recognizable character designs.

On the subject of design, while I do think that SAO would be a crappy game in real life, I will credit it for looking very visually appealing. The environments are super varied and interesting, from the flower dungeon, to the ice peak where they fight the dragon, to the trippy cave system where they find the Gleam Eyes. As VR spectacles go, this world would be a hell of a draw. The show’s visuals can really pop with vibrant colors, without looking too silly, and those can be muted down for more serious scenes without it looking incongruous with the rest of the show. SAO manages to sell moe, horror, action, and even Looney Tunes-esque cartoon comedy at times, and it all feels like roughly part of the same series.

That highlights one of the show’s other big strengths: plot variety. Because of the longtime scale of its storyline and the way that its setting creates a sort of blank slate for adventure, it can dabble in lots of different plot concepts, and even genres. One episode might be a short tragedy about Kirito watching all of his friends die, while the next is a cute story about saving a little girl’s pet and beating up some cackling Team Rocket villains, and that can be followed with a two-parter murder mystery, and after that, why not, let’s go on a side quest for crafting materials that blossoms into a short unrequited love story.

None of these individual stories have to be particularly great, hell, they don’t even have to make much logical sense because each one is so different from the last that it’s kind of fun to watch just for the surprise of finding out what they’re going to do next. Even if you really hate one storyline, you can rest assured that something new is on the horizon within an episode or two, and there’s a good chance that at least one of the many things the show tries will work for you.

Because Kirito’s character arc is about learning to open up to other people, all of those different plots feel like they’re moving the central plot forward, or at least a little, even if they’re really just filler. That results in a show that feels like it’s moving forward at a good pace. Emphasis on “feels” because if you look at the actual storytelling and logical structure of events, it’s an absolute mess. Just look at the final fight between Kirito and Kayaba Akihiko, it just comes out of nowhere on Floor 75 and it doesn’t work at all. However, if you’re just sitting down for entertainment, how a show feels to watch is paramount, and what sense it makes doesn’t matter so much.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that it’s dumb to enjoy a show on that level. There’s value in sitting down, turning your brain off, and simply being entertained for the sake of relaxation. Analyzing anime can feel like work. For some, it is work. In SAO, it feels like at least one really important thing happens every single episode, and there’s usually a really cool-feeling action scene every two or three episodes to keep the excitement up. As a result, the show has momentum. Once you start watching, it’s very easy to keep watching without getting bored or confused. The show is consumable, like popcorn or other A1 Pictures shows like Gate.

The show suffers, a lot, when it loses this forward momentum, which I think is a big part of why even fans of the series acknowledge that the Fairy Dance arc kinda sucks. Kirito has a clear goal there, with an obvious solution in trying to rescue Asuna, which means that any diversion from that goal, like going off to fight a random guy in PvP, feels like a true waste of time. Furthermore, Kirito’s character is entirely static during that storyline. He doesn’t grow or change at all. Neither does Asuna, nor anyone aside from Suguha, and even then, only kind of. Therefore, even when the story is moving forward, it feels kind of flat.

Gun Gale fixes this problem in a kind of artificial way of giving Kirito sudden onset PTSD to get over, but it does help the story feel more substantial, and fans reacted positively to that. When it does work, even if it doesn’t actually have any idea where it’s going, SAO’s story moves forward with a bold sense of confidence and purpose.

Speaking of boldness, SAO also excels at setting a strong tone for whatever is happening in its story at any given time, particularly early on. Not necessarily the most appropriate tone, but a tone that is powerful and striking nonetheless. The monsters feel scary and intimidating, the comedy feels fun and lighthearted, the romance feels heartwarming and intimate, and deaths feel tragic and poignant. If you’re not invested in the story and characters, a lot of this can feel cloying and emotionally manipulative, but until something happens to take you out of that (like Yui’s death did for me), watching SAO is an emotional rollercoaster.

A big part of that is Tomohiko Ito’s direction. He is really good at placing the camera and cutting in a way that draws out the maximum possible emotion from any given scene. He needs to work with great source material, like Erased or Gin no Saji to really shine, but even working with Reki Kawahara’s leavings, he does a good job. The use of reflections in windows while Kirito listens to Sachi’s last message to him is legitimately incredible filmmaking.

The emotional impact of the series is further enhanced by the work of Yuki Kajiura, Tomohiko Ito’s most favorite composer, who also crafted the amazing soundtrack of Erased, as well as Tsubasa, Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero, Kara no Kyoukai, and some of the Xenosaga video games. Yuki Kajiura is one the most singularly talented composers working in the anime industry today, and it’s hard to understate just how much of an impact I think she’s had on the perceived quality of SAO. Her compositions for the show give it an air of cinematic quality, but they also feel distinctly, and very appropriately, video game-y. In particular, I’d argue that she is the primary reason that people say SAO has good action scenes. Her compositions make fights that are actually pretty stilted and janky, outside of a few sakuga cuts, feel incredibly bombastic and slick. When SAO’s music kicks up, it gets your pulse pounding, and it’s hard to resist getting caught up in it or even humming along to that memorable hook. Watch these fights without the music, and they kinda suck.

Kajiura’s abilities don’t just improve the action scenes, though. Her work is an integral part of that emotional roller coaster effect, heightening the emotion of each scene and connecting the emotional beats so that the shifts in tone feel less jarring than they might otherwise feel. She makes the scary scenes feel scary, the sad scenes feel much, much sadder, and the romantic scenes feel powerful and moving. That brings us to the big reason that I think people love SAO.

Most of the things I’ve talked about so far aren’t totally unique to SAO, and though they are important factors in getting people interested and keeping them invested in what’s going on, they’re not enough on their own to make people care so much that they’ll tell me to kill myself when I badmouth it. To evoke that kind of emotional response, a show really needs to get its audience to say, “Fuck yeah!”

The thing that makes a lot of people say that, myself included when I first watched SAO, is the fact that Kirito and Asuna get together in Episode 10, after several episodes of buildup where other characters notice they have a thing for each other, and it’s just really cute. That’s just not a thing that happens in anime. Even in shows with a clear OTP relationship, nine times out of ten the romance will be drawn out to its breaking point, and the characters will only hook up right at the end of the story, which isn’t just a lazy way to create an emotional arc, it’s tedious to watch.

The “will they, won’t they” is a story we’ve seen a million times, while the equally interesting story about what happens after, the trials and tribulations of actually dating and being in love, is almost never touched upon. You can justify that in a romance anime where the story is about characters sorting out their feelings and finally getting together (Toradora does that and it’s just about perfect), but even there, after a while you start to crave shows that buck that trend, like Ore Monogatari, My Little Monster, and Golden Time.

Also, with shows that have other things driving the plot, there’s really no excuse. There are few things that could really improve on Fullmetal Alchemist, but Winry and Ed hooking up earlier in the story would probably be one of them. Look at how many people loved Mikasa’s confession to Eren at the end of Attack on Titan Season 2. That was beautiful!

It’s a very pleasant surprise to see two main characters of a show like SAO commit to a monogamous relationship this early in the plot, and I think that most people who love the series do so because, in this respect, it doesn’t waste their time. This plot turn changes a lot of story dynamics, too, since Kirito and Asuna can be explicitly motivated by their love for one another, and that love can be made much deeper than the obvious mutual crushes that drive shows less willing to pull that trigger. For a story so driven by its emotional content, that one change makes SAO feel very different from just about everything else a casual fan is likely to have seen, and from what you would probably expect going into the show.

Now if you’re like me, and you think a lot about story structure and plot logic, that effect of that change doesn’t really last. Reki Kawahara is totally unwilling to abandon his harem anime nonsense, so every arc sees Kirito introduced to a new hot girl who wants to jump his bones. In terms of narrative structure, that really undercuts the importance of his commitment to Asuna.

However, if you’re just watching the show to enjoy a show, then it feels very substantial, to the point that fans get very mad at me when I call this harem anime a harem anime, in the same way that all of the deaths early on make the show feel very lethal and dangerous, so long as you don’t realize that all of the key characters have plot armor. If you do buy into it, the scenes of Kirito and Asuna being a couple and enjoying each other’s company are extremely emotionally satisfying. By the same token, if Yui doesn’t bug you the same way she bugs me, her relationship with Kirito and Asuna is adorable. Hell, Asuna and Kirito’s romance is the only part of the movie that I think really works. To get more cynical for a moment, for the segment of the audience that does use this show as pure escapist wish fulfillment, the fact that Kirito can have an emotionally fulfilling relationship with his wife, while still being chased by hotties all because he’s so dang good at video games that he’s basically invincible, those aspects only improve the show for you.

However, I don’t think that most people who love SAO love it for those reasons. I think they love it because it managed to get them deeply invested in its main characters through one very bold plot turn, and once you care about those characters, seeing Kirito be an unstoppable badass stops being eye-rolling, and starts being cool and fun. I think they love SAO because the world that it creates seems like a very appealing place on the surface to spend time in, and you can imagine yourself being one of the NPCs going off and doing something that’s not vital to Kirito’s plotline, like that guy who’s fishing, for some reason. I think they love SAO because it came at the right time in their lives, right when they were getting into anime. If you’ve seen hundreds of anime, then yeah, parts of it are going to feel played out, but if you’ve seen just a handful, SAO is going to feel fresh, and new, and exciting.

Considering that it’s at the forefront of the anime fandom, even today, I think it will be among many people’s first anime for many years to come, and I think that ties into why so many of us so passionately hate this show as well. Because when we discovered it, it had all of this promise and potential, but at one point or another, be it a poorly-executed death or a very, very poorly-executed rape scene, it let us down profoundly, and we were left unable to enjoy this thing that, at one point, seemed like it could be so great, that was, at one point, so enjoyable for us. That disappointment is a lot more cutting than the overt and unsurprising terribleness of something like The Asterisk War or Akashic Record.

But not everyone was disappointed in it in the same way. While I do think it’s fundamentally poorly made, SAO does some things right that are going to be more important for some people than the things it does wrong are for me.

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