#issei and rias get married

[jolyneswife-anime-reviews]

Why I love and respect Rias Gremory, despite the overs*xualised framing of high school dxd

Spoilers for high school dxd and tw for sexualisation, nudity, and forced marriage.

“We haven’t lost yet! You lose when you’ve given up,” - Rias Gremory

Despite often being portrayed in an overly sexual light by high school dxd in all the nude scenes and fan service angles, as well as occasionally being reduced to the girl who likes Issei, particularly towards the end of the show, Rias has many admirable qualities that are often forgotten or eclipsed.

She's smart- she's always shown as someone who studies and is a calculating tactician. From her skill at chess and in the classroom to how she tackles the training before the rating game as well as the actual battle, it's clear that Rias is intelligent and logical.

She makes her own decisions and is resilient, even when the odds are completely against her- time and time again throughout the anime, Rias is shown doubling down and not surrendering when the decisions she makes lead to difficult situations. A perfect example is when she was being forced to marry Phoenix by her family but she refused and accepted the deal of winning her freedom via a rating game against her fiancé. This led to her working her team incredibly hard for days, while she herself even stopped sleeping so that she could spend all her time preparing. Despite having no experience and going up against one of the best, and even after she lost the majority of her comrades, Rias never threw the towel in or complained. She fought with dignity, pride and determination until the end.

She's a calm and talented leader who genuinely cares for every member of her team- the way she can keep a cool face in stressful situations, as well as her firm, yet peaceful tone when giving instructions both point to this. Throughout the anime she tries to help her team develop into more talented fighters, even blaming herself for their failings. She also obviously cherished them all, always looking out for them and trying to keep them out of trouble, as well as stepping in to save them where necessary, like when Issei was first attacked by the fallen angels after becoming a devil.

She isn't perfect, nor does she pretend to be- there are many instances in the anime where Rias will make a mistake, or get jealous because of Akeno's own feelings for Issei and lose her temper. However, this makes her seem like a real person to me, who is chaotic and experiences emotions in the same way we all do. By the end of season 3, she has learned and grown from her jealousy of Akeno instead of marinating in it, which is admirable.

She's a badass- the most obvious one for last. Not only is she Lucifer's little sister, but her powers are extremely strong, and she takes pride in them as well as trying to use them to bring honour to her house. The fact that she's called the princess of ruin is proof enough that she's a powerhouse.

Masterlist

[dragonotaku-justineverything]

DxD Pokémon AU: issei in Pokémon battle. Playful and casual compared Serious and Super pissed off.

Playful/Casual battle:

"Shelgon, use DragonBreath!"

...

...

...

Despite Issei's confident tone as he gave his order, Shelgon did not unleash any kind of attack. Instead, he turned and slowly walked over to the side of the arena, where he laid down with a huff.

Issei furiously scratched his head in frustration. "Oh come on Shelgon! You seriously won't listen to me either?!?"

"Shel." Was the only response Issei got as Shelgon turned his head to face away from Issei, but everyone could tell that it was a "yes" of some sort.

"Gaaaah balls! You and Charizard are such dicks!"

Kiba chuckled awkwardly as he watched this unfold. His Bisharp was also watching, patiently waiting for Kiba to tell him how to attack. Kiba wasn't sure why Issei always wanted to battle with him even though his Pokémon wouldn't listen to him.

"Come Shelgon! I'll let you have some extra spicy Pokecubes tonight if you just help me out here!"

Shelgon just kept ignoring him.

"God dammit!"

Well. looks like this could be chalked up as another win for Kiba.

Serious/pissed off:

"Charizard... Shelgon..."

The massive Fire-Type and smaller Dragon-Type both looked at their trainer. He spoke in a tone that they had never heard before.

Issei's head was bowed and his fists were clenched. "I know you two don't like to listen to me. That's fine. I know I'm not the best trainer. I know I suck balls at being one. But right now..." Issei looked up and leveled a glare of pure anger at Riser and his Typhlosion and Houndoom. The three of them all were grinning arrogantly at him. "I really need your help crushing this asshole! So please, help me out! If not for me, then at least help me to keep Rias from marrying this prick!"

The two Pokémon looked at one another. Then, almost like they reached a silent agreement, they both moved to stand in front of Issei at the same time.

"CHAAAAR!"

"SHEEEEL!"

Together, they let out loud battle cries, ready to fight for their trainer.

"Thanks you guys, now let's do this! Charizard, mega evolve!" Issei pressed the key stone on the Mega Ring that he wore on his left wrist. Yellow lightning-like energy surged out from it. The blue sphere on a large necklace around Charizard's neck started to glow brightly. Soon his form began to morph.

His orange scales turned black. His yellow belly turned blue. The red flame on his tail turned blue, and burned even bigger. Matching blue flames leaked out the side of it's mouth too. As it finished Mega Evolving into Mega Charizard X, it let out a deafening roar at Riser and his Pokemon.

"RRRROOOOOAAAR!"

Issei pointed at Riser. "Okay you asshole, get ready to suck a dick! Let's kick his ass Charizard and Shelgon!"

"Roooooooar!"

"Sheeeel!"

[grey-eyed-menace]

do they all relatively get along within the oriax peerage and also. u mentioned that rias and sona have bad habits ( true ) so what kind does feyre have? i got a lil lost through the post but i found my way by the time i got to the end

The Peerage members definitely have their personal favorites amongst one another, what with several paired up romantically, I'll get a full relationship chart out at some point, when I've got the time.

But the major factor here is, mostly, that everyone is on relatively friendly terms with Feyre at the time of canon, excluding Urisha, who's still very... New to the whole 'Friendship' thing.

Feyre tries to keep these relationships up as best he can, and he tries to treat all of his Peerage members equally, but if pressed, he will freely admit he's closest to Zyndra, Ayaka, and Mikazuki. This is actually something I did kind of pick up from canon, as it's pretty obvious that this is the general rule for anyone smart enough to pick up on social cues.

Treat the servants nicely, and you might not end up brutally murdered during the inevitable revolution.

[Sona's far more left in morals on this then Rias and Feyre, the latter two genuinely saw their Peerages as their chosen family from day one, Sona treated Tsubaki like a human being because it was practical. If she was free from the burns of sociality, the first few years of Tsubaki's life as her servant would have been very lonely, and very boring. That isn't to say she doesn't care about her, she just has much less human reservations over her friends.]

(By that, an interesting tidbit about Diodora in this is that despite his relationship with the rest of his Peerage being relatively decent here, he would very much sacrifice one half over the other, and he does hold Ariell, Mirai, and Shirou to a higher standard to the rest of them.

So yeah, Diodora has a Dysfunctional Family thing going on with those three. Mirai is the father for reference. And he's NBD!Rei levels of strange. He's also the youngest member of the Peerage by leaps and bounds, Shirou is half-Youkai via his father so he's much older than the eighteen he appears to be.)

At the start of canon, Uri is actually closest with Koneko over her fellow Peerage members and Master.

The couples in the Peerage are actually pretty clear cut.

Ayaka and Feyre are actively courting one another, and plan to marry once shortly after Ayaka graduates so that her claim to title of Lady Oriax can remain unchallenged. Feyre is simply uninterested in anyone other than Ayaka, romantically at least, and Ayaka does not have the temperament to manage a harem she herself is not romantically invested in.

Yui, Mikazuki, and Zyndra are all equally devoted to one another, and are currently trying to coax a hesitant Minato into the fold, (featuring wingmen Hyoudou Issei, Toujou Koneko, and a confused Utsushimi Ikuo. Seriously, this situation could be a fic unto itself).

Yuuki and Akio have, for the most part, devoted their lives to protecting each other, and their chosen family. Neither have children by the time the Issei/Vali's children start fucking with the timeline, so it's kind of irrelevant.

Kiyome, Yvel, and Elise are dancing around each other like some demented Dramady Opera.

Finally, Momo retains her canon attraction to Saji, although she does have a bit less patience with him this go around. Uri entertains a crush on both her and Feyre for quite sometime as well, although Feyre's tends to trail towards the fact that she can recognize the fact that he's, objectively speaking, physically attractive.

The rest are largely undecided.

------------------------------------------------

Feyre's flaws.

To start off, a shared trait that his entire family tends to indulge in is, well, outplaying themselves. The Oriax family is nose deep in Underworld and foreign politics, and the thing about the Oriax family of the last two generations is that they've made a habit of making moves that tend to... Spiral.

The last, notable, Gambit Pile-Up nearly ended with Feyre being labeled as a illegitimate heir of Zepar, (and Venessa Kamiris's missing half-brother, which has, essentially, scarred the poor girl, Hadrian's parting action to his sister was to set her bed on fucking fire), a near accusation of grand treason on the behalf of Lady Luvenis Oriax, and Feyre's older brother, Aurum, being the secret mastermind behind an incident involving a societal ball with the Greek Pantheon and a spiked punch bowl.

Anyway, yeah... Feyre has something of a complexity problem when it comes to politics involving his family.

Secondly, Feyre has a very static view of relationships.

He's incredibly trusting, and while this can be a boon in certain situations, such as the recruitment of Urisha and Minato, it's also largely a weakness of his. The situation with Yukito could have gone very south very quickly if he had been a little more inclined to secure his political standing, (A.K.A. find a way to permanently replace Feyre himself)

And by static, I mean Feyre was largely raised by a father who thought that his incredibly abusive family members were perfectly normal members of society, and thus encouraged a near suicidal level of forgiveness in Feyre to the point that Urisha could outright try to kill him, go rogue al-la Sasuke, and become an unreputant Monster and Feyre would still be her main ally.

The boy has very leniant boundaries, and it's rather sad.

[Also, Uri is going to do some shit but she's not going rogue.]

By that, via growing into his own boundaries I suppose those he sees as enemies from the get-go have no chance of redemption.

(Diodora has gotten away with quite a bit of murder concerning Feyre.)

Ayaka isn't aware of how bad this aspect of his just yet, but she's going to host a collective intervention once she does.

...er, I hoped that answered your question?

[recentanimenews]

High School DxD: The Phoenix of the School Battle

By Ichiei Ishibumi and Miyama-Zero. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Haydn Trowell.

Sigh. The second volume of High School DxD, I’m pleased to say, has the same strengths that the first volume had. Unfortunately, the weaknesses the first volume had are also here, and they’re far more in your face. This is the perfect series for horny 15-year-old boys. There’s a likeable cast, a premise of “which of the many hot women who desire me shall I choose?”, a lot of very cool fights, and smug punchable villains who are basically the ‘evil’ version of your own fantasies. It’s shonen battle manga up the wazoo – in fact, when typing the title of the book I accidentally typed “Phoenix of the Old School Battle”. Unfortunately, its fanservice, which was present but not up to annoying levels in the first volume, has now reached annoying levels. Issei will not shut up about boobs, spends a page or so describing what it’s like to feel up the heroine, has powers that strip the villains of their clothing (provided they’re girls), and declares, and I quote, “Rias Gremory’s virginity belongs to me!”. YIKES.

The premise of this one is fairly simple: Rias has an arranged marriage she’s been avoiding, to Riser Phenex, a high-born noble demon. She very clearly does not want this, and would rather stay in high school with Issei and company. So a duel is arranged between Rias’ group and Riser’s – if Rias wins, she can keep doing what she wants, if Riser wins, they’ll get married. Issei, naturally, is ready to fight for Rias, both because he’s got the hots for her AND because he’s rather upset that she’s not being treated like a person. Unfortunately, Issei, as he is now, can’t beat anyone, as is made painfully clear. There’s only one thing for it: we’ve got to have a training arc. And even after that’s done, we have to deal with the fact that Riser has the abilities of the phoenix, making him basically unkillable. How do you defeat someone like that?

This book is very much content to take as long as it wants to to tell its story. We do get more of the rest of the cast here, but they’re still relatively one-dimensional – Akeno is the ojou and secret sadist, Koneko is the short grumpy one, and Kiba is an odd combination of Koizumi, Shirou and Saika. We are briefly threatened with some backstory for Kiba in the middle of one of the big fights, but threatened is as far as it gets. I assume we’ll get more depth to them in later books, but for now they’re pretty cardboard. As for Riser and his crew, he’s meant to compare with Issei’s own harem dreams – Riser has a harem, who it’s clearly implied he’s sleeping with, and which contains various cute fetishes – twins, sword chicks, etc. – even his own younger sister, because what’s a harem without incest? And, well, that gets me back to sighing, really.

Again, fans of this series will love this. And if you’re a teenage boy, feel free to read this, as the chance of actual sex happening in it is zero. For those of us outside the age range, though, High School DxD is a series with an interesting premise and characters that can’t resist being perverse in the exact way teenage boys are.

By: Sean Gaffney

[uniquestream]

High School DxD: Season 1 Episode 8 Issei dreams that he is marrying Rias, which leads him to get in touch with his inner dragon. Asia confesses a desire to have a deeper relationship with Issei.

[animeawake-blog]

High School DxD: 1x8

High School DxD: 1×8

Issei dreams that he is marrying Rias, which leads him to get in touch with his inner dragon. Asia confesses a desire to have a deeper relationship with Issei.