#it basically just started out as fanservice for myself but i’m invested in my own story and characters now i love them sm

[lizzienaut]

You've been visited by the random OC question fairy! :D ~☆

What is the strongest emotion your character has ever felt? What event caused that? How would they react if that happened again?

WOAH WAIT THATS SO COOL I DIDNT EXPECT SOMETHING LIKE THIS

hi omg!! that’s such a good question ahh, i’m gonna answer using the protag of my monster harem, which is snow!! this answer is gonna explain a lil bit of the story which is perfect because i’ve been meaning to explain the story for a while now B)

SO

snow and her father (who just kinda goes by “carver”) live in this kinda run down little townhouse in the middle of a busy street where he spends most of his time down in the basement working on his newest inventions, seeing as he’s an aspiring scientist/inventor and is currently working on what he thinks will be his magnum opus, a portal to another dimension. snow goes to a local high school, which is filled to the brim with rich and snobby kids, she’s one of the only few that lives off of minimum-wage (even less actually, because her father is paid by commission and she has to hold a part time job or two to help pay the bills). now carver, after years of work, has finally finished the portal — snow is incredibly excited because she’s so proud and supportive of her dad and she wants to be there for him during his testing of the portal, so the two of them take the day off right after it’s finished and snow watches eagerly as her dad, with much excitement, turns the portal on. at first, nothing happens and the two are incredibly disappointed, but mere moments later the machine springs to life and begins sucking everything in the room into it — including snow, but not before carver tries desperately to hang onto her to keep her safe. after snow is sucked in, the portal collapses, and a very distressed carver is left there to mourn the loss of his only daughter, who was the light of his life in painful silence.

SNOW ISNT ACTUALLY DEAD NO WORRIES!! she wakes up in the monster world with a bleeding head surrounded by her dad’s papers and 7 confused and very odd looking girls, and then that’s where the chaos starts B)

with backstory now out of the way, i’d imagine the initial separation from her father would be absolutely devastating to her — she’d probably be inconsolable for the first little while, terrified of this strange new planet and these wacky lookin people and panicking over how she’s gonna get back to her own world. during the story, she grows closer individually and as a group with the monster girls, and her feelings of fear and grief gradually fade away as she feels safer and safer with the group. if it ever happened again, there would probably be absolutely no fear in mind — she’d get to see her friends again, and she knows that she won’t end up hurt or worse as she’s been in their world before and has adapted to their culture.

basically all the negative emotions she feels in the initial landing are all caused by fear and lack of understanding about what happened and where she landed, as well as the uncertainty about whether or not she’d ever see her father again!

they get reunited in the end dw, neani is the real mvp of the story n makes a portal back to her world for the school science fair B)

[marumafan]

A Guide For Yuuram Fans

Hello fellow yuuram fan! Have you ever caught yourself thinking:

- Does Yuuri like Wolf? - No, but I mean like "Does he REALLY like Wolf?" - Am I getting invested just to find out it's clickbait? - Is Yuuri ever going to accept Wolf's feelings? - Does Yuuri like guys? - Will they get married or not?

You have questions? I have source material-backed answers!

The Basics

First, you need to understand that there's a variety of so-called canons. There's an anime canon, a manga canon, a drama cd canon, a musical canon, and then some other random things that you can't really call canon but exist: such as games, radio shows, tv stuff not written by the author, etc.

All of these canons and non-canon stuff are fine, and you can enjoy them as much as you want, but they're NOT the source material. Source material are only the novels and stories that have been written by Takabayashi-sensei (anything in written form and some dramas also written by her according to interviews).

Takabayashi-sensei is the author of the novels (the source material out of which everything else is derived), and her word is "god's word". By the way, she used this term to refer to herself in regards to the maruma series, I'm not fangirling, but using terminology she herself used.

Please understand that most of the material that isn't 'source material' has been altered in many ways to appeal to a 'larger audience' (manga and drama cds), or to make it palatable to the more homophobic society of the 2000s (in the case of the anime). When the anime began social media didn't exist. And when the anime ended (in 2009), social media was in its infancy. That's how long ago these media were adapted from source material.

The Fandom

The fandom has influenced the source material itself at times (such as Conrad fans throwing a hissy fit when he died in novel 5 to the point that Takabayashi-sensei had to resurrect him and change who the key was and many other plot points since then). Certain shippers still force sensei's hand to write fanservice here and there, and despite that, one thing has been clear from the beginning:

Takabayashi-sensei's 'main couple' is the one she got engaged back in novel 1: Yuuri and Wolf, the royal couple.

The Bias

Before we get into the thick of this, let's take a moment to understand bias. I'm sure that if you're reading this far into this you really like yuuram and don't have a problem with homosexuality, boys love, etc. (I use yuuram to mean the royal couple: Yuuri and Wolf, nothing to do with 'who's on top' or anything like that, just a name for the ship with these two characters).

Despite that, anyone reading this has been born and raised in a highly hetero-normative society where if a girl so much looks at a boy she must be into him, and vice-versa.

Who can forget the "He was a boy, She was a girl, Can I make it any more obvious" lyrics of the 2000s? Same applies to 'ships' all across the board.

If any, and I mean any 'boy-girl' relationship was 10% of what the yuuram relationship is, there wouldn't be a single doubt that those two are in love, dating, married, and living happily ever after.

But when it comes to Yuuri and Wolf it feels like pulling teeth to get people to accept that they’re in a relationship. I blame mostly the anime for including weird non-canon ideas into fans minds, as well as heteronormative societies.

Please don’t be this person:

Finally, please take a moment to read THIS as an introduction to my next section.

The Royal Couple

Begin by forgetting everything you consumed from other canons (TV, manga, fanfics) if you truly want to appreciate the Royal Couple in its source material form.

1) Romantic interest

The source material has made Yuuri very interested in Wolfram since the very beginning. Of course, at first, he was only interested in Wolfram's physical appearance. But the more he got to know Wolfram the more he cared about him and the less he cared about his physical appearance.

To get a full picture of how madly he falls for Wolf, you need to read the novels, but here are some excerpts to illustrate my point:

How it started:

Source: Novel 1-Chapter 1

"Even if our bodies are evenly matched, when I just glanced up, I've already been defeated. How can he be this beautiful! (どうよ、この美しさ！) At the same time, his head is emitting an aura. Although it's likely that it seemed that way because of his dazzling blond hair. His looks and voice are like an older Vienna chorus boy. His white skin seems transparent, and his irises are an emerald green that make me think of the bottom of a lake, and furthermore he doesn't have a split chin. He's an angel, definitely an angry angel. However, because he's in this place, he's probably a beautiful demon."

-> Yuuri writes a fucking sonnet in his head about Wolf's beauty when they meet.

Source: Novel 1-Chapter 10

 From the far side of the corridor, the blond with wavy hair comes running. The intense navy blue uniform suits him; the mazoku Prince Wolfram. I muttered in a sigh 'Although he's a man, he's this beautiful, Günter'.

-> Yuuri complains to Gunter that Wolf is too beautiful.

How it's going:

Source: Novel 17, Chapter 7

"Those words hurt me deeply inside my heart, a pain as though I was burnt in an instant. Because I had an experience like that, in which I nearly lost the most important person to me, just because he was wearing someone else’s clothes."

-> Yuuri calling Wolfram his most important person, code in the maruma series for person you're in love with.

Source:  Do you want an exorcism? 2 (post novel 17)

"And because of that rich VARIETY in the configuration, mazoku is more an ethnicity than a race.

You have from kotsuhizoku, kotsuchizoku, and bone fish who are living creatures, even though they are just bones, to the seasonal migrating tribe of half-humanoid, half-fish maidmer princesses. As for the humanoid ones, there are regular looking ones like me or Conrad, but there are also some who are super beautiful like Günter or Wolfram............. as for the last one, this is just a little bit of my own personal bias, but it makes no difference if he's beautiful or not."

-> Yuuri saying that the beauty he went head over heals in novel 1 for, doesn't matter to him anymore because of his 'personal bias'

Source: Misepan 2: (post novel 17, arguably the last story written near the release of the novels)

"If I was in trouble, and I was missing something important. And you had one that was exactly the same ...."

"I'd lend it to you, of course"

I thought about this, literally with my hands on his chest. In fact, with my hand, that was pressed against his chest, I could feel that the speed of my partner's and my heartbeat was the same. Anyone would get blood rushing to their brains when they're seriously thinking about something. When I could calm down a little, I let out a small sigh.

"Or rather, when it comes to things that I can give you, I would give you anything, Wolf."

-> Yuuri tells Wolfram he would give him anything in the world.

2) Sexual interest:

-There are several times when the source material implies that Yuuri and Wolf don't just sleep at night.

Again, please remember that in the novels Greta does not sleep with Yuuri and Wolfram. This was a TV addition to appease homophobic minds. In fact, in the novels, Yuuri forbade Greta from sleeping with them because she's 'too old'. Also source material Greta is rarely in Shin Makoku as she's studying abroad half the time.

Source:  Novel 2- Chapter10

"If I leave it up to you, it will never get settled."

"So, what kind of settlement do you want...?" My voice trails off as he sways his hips closer.

The former mazoku prince's face brightens and he pulls me down by the arm.

"Wah!"

"So you finally feel like settling things!?"

"I don't ~"

I'm scared to think about what sort of settlement this is. I'm not going to lose my life or anything, but I do feel like there's something else I'm going to lose. I desperately extract myself, fly into the bathroom and lock the door.

"Yuuri!"

"Wait wait wait! I gotta take a bath first, okay!? You don't wanna do it with a sweaty guy, right!?"

Do it...? I blanch at my own words.

-> Yuuri's subconscious is clearly working against him.XD It looks like Yuuri doesn't want to lose the v-card yet (he barely knows Wolf at this point), but he still says  to Wolf he should take a bath before they do it. Gambare, Yu-chan

Source: Novel 4 - Chapter 1

-> Yuuri and Wolfram have been sleeping together for 3 months at the beginning of novel 4! Please! If this was a guy and girl you wouldn't be wondering what they're doing! He has a lock on the door! He can keep Wolf out , order him out, but he never does. Don’t be the gray haired lady!

Source: Never Ending Poison Lady 1

- "As a measure against Wolfram, who somehow even on our trips sleeps in the same bed as I do, I made a wall with three pillows which also had cute egg shaped buttons. I tucked my shirt into my pants, so that my stomach wouldn't get cold. After all, in the mornings when I woke up, both my clothes and my sleeping posture were always preposterous."

-> Yuuri says he puts some pillows to avoid getting into the weird sleeping postures and getting his clothes messed up and shirt untucked, but he never thinks of 'not sleeping with Wolf'~

Source: Never Ending Poison Lady 1 (same book as last)

- "While watching Wolfram's cheeks get red in excitement, a surprised Josak swallowed the question" You even sleep together when you're out on a trip?".

-> Even Jozak (the spy who's supposed to know everything) seems surprised that they're "sleeping together all the time". They're clearly hiding it from people.

Source: Maru maru maruMA-  (book with series info and interviews)

Takabayashi-sensei replied to a question about Yuuri and Wolfram and what would happen once they get married... and she said it clearly: They'll have sex.

("Please answer my maruma question", maru maru maruMA)

Source: SS: Murakenzu 2018-11-13 (Paper 1 accompanying cd72) "Yeah, my father was talking about it, and she's still being called 'Gokumi', huh? At any rate, even if he was smiling way too much, his footsteps started to sound louder and faster as he got farther away. In that moment we thought: Eh? Is it that bad? Maybe they saw something while we were sleeping, or rather, maybe they took peeping photographs and want to do something bad with them."

"Rather than while you were sleeping, before going to sleep?"

"You mean like, when I do practice baseball swings naked or something?"

"Yeah, naked practice."

"Or maybe like, a picture of Wolf's butt when he's wearing his sexy negligee or something?"

"Ah! If a picture of it peeking out is released it would be bad, huh?"

"Then, I suddenly realized that "secret" might just be a hook. In other words, those trick titles that often appear in sports newspapers."

"Yes, yes."

-> Yuuri talks about Wolfram's butt showing as a common place and about himself being completely naked doing 'baseball practice' in the room with Wolf, whatever that may mean.

3) Illustrations

The 4 wedding pictures. Yuuri and Wolfram have been illustrated as married four times by the series' illustrator:

1  | 2  | 3 |  4 

And I like to add this fifth one (used in There's Valentine's Day in Shin Makoku!? DVD special), since in the black and white version, there's a comment by Takabayashi-sensei that says: "With this we've finally won against the anime team! ", meaning they beat them to the wedding. 

4) Terminology

Yuuri and Wolf are referred to in tweets by Takabayashi-sensei, GEG-san and Temari-sensei as the Royal Couple (ロイカプ). The author, editor and illustrator all know already what they are and that's why they call them that.

More information:

Please, please read the source material. But if you won't, at least read some of the analyses I've made to find out more about yuuram. Yuuram is here, it’s canon, and their ship has sailed a long time ago, in novel 1. They were always meant to end up together and they have. (”The dream ending” was how the author wanted yuuram to end, happily married). This isn't clickbait, or fanwork. The author likes the Royal couple and will see that they end up together no matter what.

Additional information:

Yuuram in novel: 1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |16 |17  

* Novel Analysis:  Crossheart and Love Letter

* Novel Analysis:  Misepan2

* Novel Analysis: Do you want an exorcism?

* Bias in KKM: English version of KKM

* Novel Analysis: Yuuri confessing to Wolf (w/quotes)

* Novel Analysis: Physical and mental development in mazoku

* Novel Analysis:  Yuuri and Wolfram’s daily routine (with quotes) 

* Novel facts: No mpreg in Shin Makoku (I get asked a lot)

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - Summer 2019

Hey, look who finished the season perfectly on time, even if he did so by dropping a bunch of stuff last minute! (Technically, as of writing, I haven’t finished Re:Stage Dream Days, but you can rest assured that it’s bad.)

I thought I was going to do a first impressions rundown video for the entire season at once, since my impression posts don’t tend to get a lot of engagement anyway, but since I didn’t end up going through with it, I’ll summarize my point - summer started strong, and even here at the end, I can easily say it’s the best season thus far in what’s largely been a letdown year for seasonal anime (and a god damn renaissance for long shows, thanks to My Hero Academia, so if I seem down on a season that had Dororo, or Vinland Saga, or Fruits Basket, remember that I exclude those shows from my considerations until the end of the year).

This season saw several high-profile continuations like A Certain Scientific Accelerator, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon II, and Symphogear XV, but also new works by creators like Mari Okada, and anticipated adaptations of Astra: Lost in Space and Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest, and in the end, well...a lot of those were mixed bags at best, but the biggest drawback I will remember Summer 2019 for is that it was drowning in bad isekai shows. The aforementioned Arifureta, the basically-counts Danmachi, and also Isekai Cheat Magician, Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks, The Lost Ones, Demon Lord Retry!...it just never ended, and that’s not even counting If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord. 

Speaking of all that stuff, let’s get right into it, yeah?

28 shows were simulcast this season, and of those, I…

Skipped 4:

Yami Shibai 7, Starmyu Season 3, A Certain Scientific Accelerator, and Lord El-Melloi II Case Files: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note were all skipped because I have not watched the previous series.

Dropped 15:

Worst of the Season: If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord!

I dropped this after one episode because I found the aesthetic and tone to be aggressively boring and I found even the cute daugheroo character to be utterly generic in execution...and then later found out oh boy was I right to drop it, based on how many people compared it to the Bunny Drop manga that we don’t talk about. *shudders*

Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest

Wins the “biggest tryhard” award for being just the most straightforward an SAO award gets, right up to being grimdark for dumb reasons. The first episode alone had inconsistent animation, and that just did not bode well for the future...and the plot instantly reminded me of Slime, which soured on me over time. I let this one go sour after one shot.

Demon Lord, Retry!

The blandest of beige this season, Demon Lord had neither the story nor the production values to reel me in or convince me it was anything but the Overlord wannabe it so clearly was.

Isekai Cheat Magician

This show was a pretty transparent attempt to have an isekai story with a childhood friend romance plot, and while I’m fine with one and a half of those things, it couldn’t execute them in any decent way by the end of the first episode, and just wound up being largely boring.

Wasteful Days of High School Girls

Speaking of boring, what if Nichijou wasn’t funny? You’d get something like this.

Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?

So the tone this one ultimately ended up having was pretty much exactly what I expected after the premiere - it leaned too hard on jokes that weren’t as funny as it thought they were, and too hard on the dumb hentai mom trope, and neither of those things interested me in the slightest. Pretty okay with having left this off the watchlist.

The Ones Within

I have stated multiple times in the last few weeks that Symphogear is great because it can convince you that it’s a work of genius. The Ones Within has, unfortunately, convinced itself that it’s deep social commentary of some kind, rather than a bargain-bin Danganronpa with no real thought put into it.

Are You Lost?

I’m amazed that we got another Eromanga Sensei this season and it flew entirely under the radar. For God’s sake, the first episode featured a young teenage girl eating a bug and drinking her own urine. I just didn’t see myself being particularly entertained by the shock value longer than the premiere.

Ensemble Stars (4/10)

I can’t tell if this one is actually over, but Funimation’s site doesn’t list any new episode premieres coming up, so I’m gonna assume it is? I gave this one a shot and hung onto it because it took UtaPri’s premise and gave it the slightly more serious tone I was looking for, but dropped it after the second episode started to drown us in side characters with no hint that the floodgates were closing, rather than giving ample screentime to a select cast so they could actually become at least two-dimensional before throwing in more people we’re supposed to care about.

BEM

BEM suffered from an unfortunate lack of distinct personality, which sucks when it seems to have had a decent story to tell. Nothing else about the show wound up sticking out to me, though, which has me fully convinced that Production I.G.’s name is only on this to boost recognition, and the second-billed LandQ studios did the majority of the work. And their best-known other show is Swordgai. So...

To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts (5/10)

I have gotten absolutely no pushback so far for my decision to tear into this show because it should have been a different show, so I’m gonna take that as a general agreement of my earlier statement. What a waste of a concept.

Cop Craft (5/10)

This one I still think I was not crazy to pick up after the first episode, because it wasn’t until the third that the animation tanked hard and the pacing went absolutely nuts, and apparently stayed that way. Did they write a thirty-nine-episode story that had to be condensed into twelve or something?

Magical Sempai

This one I probably would have kept watching if the majority of its humor wasn’t just the title character embarrassing herself in lewd ways. It was funny, but I didn’t see myself enjoying anything more than one episode of it.

GRANBELM (6/10)

This one I got halfway through before realizing that, during my end-of-season catchup, I had absolutely no desire to return to. The plot didn’t really start moving until the fifth episode, and in that time I had not gotten particularly invested in the characters, especially since the show makes fun of the viewer for thinking that the big mecha dream battles actually had stakes beyond “you don’t get to be The Thing”. At least it looked nice and the mecha designs were very original.

Are you willing to fall in love with a pervert, as long as she’s a cutie?

There were four shows this season with questions for titles. Just saying! This one actually had me hooked right up until the end, revealing that not only is it a fanservice show, but a fetish pandering one. That being said, if I were attracted to women, I could have seen myself getting something out of it, what with the decently moody tone and good production values.

I put 2 On Hold:

Is It Wrong to Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? II

I’ll probably come back to this when the third series comes around, just to give it one more chance to pull me back in, but ditching my favorite character for harem antics and character shilling just did not endear me to this long-awaited sequel.

Re:Stage Dream Days!!

This one’s not actually on hold, but I don’t have any other good place to mention it. This one I’m gonna make it through just on willpower, not because it’s good, but because it starts out as the most shameless rip-off I’ve ever seen in anime, specifically of Love Live!.

And I Finished 7:

Kochoki (5/10)

I thought I was gonna give this one a 7 at least, for nearly the whole season, for being a decently-told and somewhat new telling of Nobunaga’s early life with great production values for Studio Deen...right up until the structure fell completely apart at the end, almost completely out of nowhere. I’m still in awe of the gall this show had to literally skip over the final battle.

How Heavy Are The Dumbbells You Lift? (8/10)

This one came right the fuck out of nowhere and totally blew my expectations out of the way from the very first episode. Looking at the summary, I was convinced I was gonna drop this after the premiere...and found myself totally hooked by its cheery visual presentation and excellent sense of meta-comedy, not to mention its genuine educational value.

Astra: Lost In Space (8/10)

One of two adaptations I was really looking forward to this season (along with Fire Force), Astra was pretty much what I expected - a very good translation of a very good manga that ran for the perfect amount of time to be divided into twelve-ish episodes. A fantastic and memorable cast of characters enhanced a surprisingly twisty story, and Lerche made it all look just as good as I’d hoped.

The Demon Girl Next Door (8/10)

Speaking of defying my expectations, another show I was expecting pretty much nothing from, maybe one I could compare to Gabriel Dropout or something, that was instead an incredibly charming story of a girl trying to save her family by defeating a magical girl...with a very, very loose definition of the word “defeat” in play. I couldn’t have asked for much more from this one, aside from maybe a sequel?

Given (9/10)

Speaking of “Lerche” and “gorgeous”, this profoundly gripping story of a spacecase and a loner hesitantly making music together blossomed further and further as it went on, and became my new go-to reference point for explicit gay relationships in anime. It went where even Yuri On Ice!!! couldn’t, and left me desperate for a Part Two.

O Maidens In Your Savage Season (9/10)

My write up for this show was one of my longest in recent memory, and I stand by it - even if Okada had to write a few plot contrivances in to get where she’s going, at least she presented her cast in an incredibly thoughtful way and gave them a satisfying payoff, with the knowledge that they’re teenagers and all of their problems can’t be solved in one semester. The high water mark for discussions of sexuality in this medium.

BEST OF THE SEASON: Symphogear XV (9/10)

Anime is wonderful, and so am I.

So that wraps up summer! We’ve got a lot to look forward to in fall, even if My Hero Academia and Food Wars’ fourth series will both ultimately end up on a list in the distant future next year. Will Psycho-Pass 3 redeem the series? Will Azur Lane be better than Kantai Collection? Will Beastars beat Aggretsuko as the biggest furry panderer of the year? Only time will tell. And then I’ll tell you all what I think it said.

[rwbyconversations]

The weaknesses of Volume 6

As someone who had sub-zero expectations going in, Volume 6 was overall a really good season of RWBY- in fact I’d called it the best overall Volume since Volume 3, if not overall, the best season we’ve had so far. Everything seemed to come together for this season, and most of the fandom has agreed that the opening salvo of episodes was the best the show had, and that the season hadn’t had a dud episode until the group reached Argus. I know some parts of the fandom don’t love the Argus episodes but I found something good in nearly all of them so I can’t say it was a complete waste of time. 

But, every cloud has a silver lining, and while Volume 6 was unmistakably a huge improvement over the previous Maya seasons, especially Volume 5, there are still several areas the show can seek to improve on as the show moves to the chilly frozen north of Atlas. So in this essay, I’m going to highlight the (ultimately small but notable enough to warrant talking about them) weaknesses I found in Volume 6. 

1) The show needs to more efficiently handle its villains (and why Cinder and Neo’s plot was a drag)

Weird that I’m saying this in the season that gave its longest episode to exploring Salem’s origin story, but Volume 6 had a lot of difficulty managing the pacing of its villains, and the largest subject of its focus arguably didn’t need to be in this Volume. I’m talking of course about Cinder and Neo’s plot this volume.

Now on paper, giving Cinder more spotlight should be what I want. After all, I wrote an essay last year detailing why parts of the fanbase weren’t fond of Cinder, so giving her focus should ideally be able to remedy those problems, right? 

Well, that’s the problem. In that essay, I talked about how Cinder’s two biggest flaws as a character were that she was very boring, and how her lack of backstory made it difficult to really care about her as a character. Cinder has effectively been the same character for six volumes in a row and much like Volume 4, the show has a golden opportunity to finally change that and give her a new narrative arc only to waste it.

Volume 6 should have been a drastic wake-up call for Cinder. Unlike at Beacon, where she lost due to Ruby’s sudden intervention and the awakening of her Silver Eyes, Cinder lost at Haven entirely thanks to her own failings. Raven beat her handily in straight combat and goaded her into the entire train-wreck of an operation to begin with, which for a power-focused individual like Cinder, should have really been an igniting spark to get her to begin seeking some introspection on why she’s lost twice in a row in failing to burn down the Academies. But sadly, just like in Volume 4, right as Cinder appears to be getting an arc about her recovering from her loss at Haven, she just ignores it and goes right back on her murder-Ruby train, as if she’s stuck in a Groundhog Day loop. 

Cinder’s refusal to move on from a basic arc of “Plan to destroy an academy, enact the plan, get slaughtered, blame Ruby, rinse and repeat” has made her easily the least interesting villain in the entire show. At this point we’re six years in and barring a few contextual clues, Cinder has no backstory, no sympathetic traits, not even any character development to differentiate her from her Volume 1 self. And this after the season where she dominates the villain screen-time until the final third when Adam hijacks the plot.  

Cinder’s plot in Volume 6 is therefore largely just setup for Volume 7, in that it explains how Cinder survived Haven and how she reaches Atlas. Along the way, she encounters the in case of bad season break glass button Neo, whose out for revenge and gets a really cool fight scene that’s ultimately just there for fanservice. 

Let me repeat. Good fight, really liked it. Let me also repeat- just there for fan-service. This is not an inherently bad thing, but it does have weaknesses. 

Neo was always coming back to the show and part of me feels like she was always being held in reserve in the event of a really bad season, so that the next one could have her return and generate some hype since her fan-base are that loyal. And sure enough, Neo’s return did see a notable collection of fans who had dropped the show after 4 and 5 coming back to see their ice cream queen return in a non-Chibi format. I won’t fault the crew for using a plan that worked. Where I take umbrage is that this fight was not necessary. It was a good fight, but I’d have much rather taken a Cinder scene of her actually recovering from Haven and thinking about why she lost again. Instead, Cinder and Neo effectively hijack all the villain screen-time for the rest of the season. And as someone who doesn’t adore Neo like her fans, this made their arc very tiresome, especially when the hints we got of the other villains were far more intriguing. I could talk a lot about the symbolism and thematic choices of the Mercury/Emerald scene in Chapter 9 but I’d struggle to find a lot to say about Cinder’s plot that wasn’t just “Setup for Volume 7.” 

The other problem of course is that the rest of Team WTCH are sorely underdeveloped. Hazel at least is interesting again now that he’s several miles away from Ozpin, Tyrian came back and was a delight and I loved seeing him all-but-begging Merc and Em to run so he could hunt them, but Watts remains crucially underdeveloped. He really needs to step up in agency in Atlas because his sardonic wit can only carry him so far, and the man’s voiced by Christopher Sabat, what more reason do you have to give him more to do? The man made the virus that Cinder used to cause the Fall of Beacon, can he be given some agency now please? 

Ultimately, Cinder’s plot didn’t need to be the focus for the villains and yet again, the fragments of focus they got showed how much more interesting they were as antagonists. While ultimately Volume 6 did finally give Mercury and Emerald more screentime than Volumes 4 and 5 combined and reminded the audience why you should be paying more attention to them, the rest of Team WTCH desperately needs development, Watts in particular. Cinder remains the worst villain in the entire show in my opinion, and it’s a shame that she’s almost guaranteed to be the one that makes it to the end of the show. I can only hope in Atlas she finally gets time devoted to what makes her tick, but at this point I’m almost at the point of not caring. It’s been six years, I won’t start caring for Cinder now if the show finally remembers to tell us why she joined Salem.  

... also I just think Cinder’s new costume sucks and I’d rather Em and Merc get new ones over Cinder and Neo buying extensions for their wardrobes.

2) Cordovin was a joke and she really shouldn’t have been

Show of hands, who actually took Cordovin seriously? Yeah, me neither. 

Even during the fight scene, the heroes don’t take it seriously. Having a fight the characters aren’t taking seriously isn’t an inherent flaw but it does mean you can’t expect us to turn around and take it seriously five minutes later.

Cordovin was a wasted character, and one that the show shouldn’t have undershot in all of her scenes by making her the punchline of nearly every joke. Her long-winded rant at the gate scene in Dead End is a huge factor in why a lot of fans, myself included, consider it the weakest episode of Volume 6 despite picking up in the back half. It just drags on for so long that Cordovin outstays her welcome from her first scene. 

Additionally, the show not taking her seriously steals a lot of gravitas from the mech battle, and plays a large role in why I think the mech fight failed to really excite a lot of fans outside of key moments like Ruby’s missile run and canon shot. Being alongside Adam’s confrontation with Blake and Yang didn’t help but even on its own, the mech battle drags. Not quite to the same extent as Haven dragged, but on rewatches I was making liberal application of the skip button. That lack of gravitas itself goes on to hamper Cordovin’s serious moment in the season finale where she realizes that her ego allowed the Leviathan a straight shot on Argus and undergoes a soft redemption to let team RWBY leave the city. However, this moment of taking Caroline seriously comes after the plot has made it clear that the entire reason the Grimm attacked Argus was because of Caroline over-reacting to Maria and breaking out her mech instead of scrambling fighters as Qrow predicts they will. Caroline is solely at fault for the Leviathan getting as close to destroying Argus as it did, so it’s difficult to care when she pulls her head out of her ass to do her job. 

A lack of investment also means a lack of emotional dedication, which I think showed in the lack of fanart Caroline has generated since her reveal. Her design being very drab and militaristic doesn’t help matters but unlike say, the Yang/Adam rematch where the stakes were present on an emotional and thematic level, Caroline failed to excite the audience beyond a few funny memes. 

The additional problem with lacking in emotional dedication/investment is, again, we don’t have enough interest in Caroline to take her seriously, she goes in one episode from the Kooky Racist Grandma to someone we’re expected to sympathize with. And additionally, asking the fans to sympathize with a character whose opening scene includes a not-too-subtle dig at her Faunus traits was asking a lot of the fandom, especially after the previous years showed that the show’s handling of the Faunus racism plot was... varied in quality. 

In short, Cordovin basically took a shotgun to her own foot in her first scene. Establishing her as an over the top comic relief character before expecting the audience to care when she broke out a walking advertisement for gen;LOCK was an extensive reach for the writers to try and unfortunately they fell flat. Trying to make the audience care for the problem she herself created is a similar long-reach. Hopefully this extended comedy sequence depiction of the Atlas military will be left behind as Volume 7 heads into the heart of darkness itself. 

3) Oscar desperately needs limelight

Oscar’s been in the show now for three volumes. He spent much of Volume 4 on his own, much of Volume 5 as Ozpin’s meat-sack, and now in Volume 6 he finally gets to... get some clothes. I like them, but they’re not suitable compensation for the character development that he clearly had stolen from him.

Oscar is easily the most underdeveloped main hero right now, and it’s a problem that’s haunted the series since Volume 4. Oscar wants to be a hero much like Ruby herself did as a child, but this sole fragment of backstory is never used to make a connection to Ruby. Aaron Dismuke, bless his heart, is giving this show his all and his impression of Shannon McCormack’s tones must be applauded, but much like Cordovin he’s not given much to work with. In a way, he’s almost the hero’s version of Cinder- a character who keeps finding themselves in situations where they should realistically develop as a consequence... only for each time they do, it either gets shuffled into the next volume or relegated to offscreen happenings. 

Volume 6 really should have had Oscar undergoing some kind of arc, be it his fear at being persecuted by Team RWBY and Qrow due to harboring Ozpin, his fear as his days as himself become more and more numbered, his acceptance of the fight against Salem or, most glaringly, his running off while the team is in Argus. But every time, Oscar just powers through these circumstances and never gets to develop from them. He never holds it over Qrow that he attacked a child, that Yang indirectly called him a bastard, he never thanks Ruby for having his back after the train crash, and he brushes off Jaune’s apology for smashing him into a wall and alleging he’s Ozpin masquerading himself as Oscar. 

Argus is really where Oscar should have stepped into his own. I was looking forward to him going solo and having to fend for himself for a short while, maybe have a scene where he forces Ozpin to come out and talk or gets to chat with Ozma himself about his place in the war against Salem. Have him be scared of losing his personality and just becoming another body for Oz to inhibit, have him be angry that his dreams of being a hero have been cruelly dashed on the rocks for some agenda he never signed up to. Oscar should be an emotional hurricane and instead he’s just a gust of wind. 

Seriously show, you had a golden opportunity for an Ozma and Oscar scene since we know Oz can speak to his past selves, and you know Arron has enough range to do both roles at once, why do you spite my farmboi. 

But he got a coat now so I guess that’s technically development. Kerry admitted in the Rewind for Volume 6′s finale that some parts of the season got pushed to the next one as they usually do, and I can only hope that Oscar finally expressing emotion was one such scene because Christ alive, he needs it after all the times he just got over crap offscreen this year. I want to like Oscar, he could easily have one of the most tragic arcs of the entire show if they went with it, but the show really needs to give me something to like about him in the first place. Or else he really will become the heroic Cinder, trapped forever in a nightmarish world of never getting to properly develop in spite of countless opportunities being handed to them on a silver platter.

... I still think Oscar lifted Qrow’s wallet for that costume btw. 

4) The reaction to Jinn’s story felt lockstep

I don’t have as much to say on this point but I find it rather saddening that all of the characters have much the same reaction to the truth of Ozma’s past- “Salem can’t be killed, you were leading us on for nothing”- when the weeks around the Ozma reveal had the fandom reacting to the story in a far more diverse way. Even in the hiatus we still have arguments over whether Ozpin was truly in the right or if the story was painting Salem as the true innocent party, to say nothing of the takes that Salem and Ozma’s relationship could be seen as an early iteration of Arkos or even Taruadonna with Salem as the abuser. 

The fandom had such a diverse range of reactions to Jinn’s story, with everyone seeming to have their own take on the episode and the truth wherein. Some people even used this to ponder if Summer Rose had learned the truth during her time and tied it in with Red Like Roses 2, where she laments having made a necessary sacrifice, to ask if Summer had learned the truth and bitterly signed on to the war against Salem in the hopes that she’d be able to turn the tide thanks to her Silver Eyes. 

“Just because I have to give you this origin story doesn’t mean you’re gonna take the right lessons from it.” 

Some idiots even decided that this meant Oz was the main villain now, but I’ve learned to drown those people out. 

But the show itself has a very flat range of reactions, with nearly everyone in-universe only taking away from the story that Salem cannot be conventionally killed and that therefore their entire journey is pointless. Everyone had the same reaction, with the only levels of variance being how angry they were at Ozpin and Oscar, ranging from Ruby’s “ask first if they have a plan and then be angry at Oz specifically” to Qrow and Jaune’s “physically assaulting a fourteen year old child.”  

It almost makes me wonder, if the characters themselves didn’t take anything from the lesson barring Maria connecting the Silver Eyes to the God of Light and that “SALEM CAN’T BE KILLED,” why should the fans? No one took this and went “OK so we can’t stop Salem with force, maybe try talking her down?” Their minds all immediately went to not just being able to shoot her.

Jinn’s story was great, but the reaction to it in universe felt very lacking and I only worry that the more people are told about it, the more chances we’ll get to hear a variant of “Salem can’t be killed.” It’s a shame that such a morally gray out of universe debate has been stripped to its raw components in-universe. 

Conclusion

Volume 6 was really good, I really liked a lot of it and it still warms my heart that I can say that about a season of RWBY post Volume 5. But there’s still a lot of work that can be done behind the scenes to fix up the flaws remaining. I chose three big flaws here but there are a few more I could bring up for quick points (mostly: Weiss getting shafted entirely in V6 feels like an overly corrective backlash to her constantly getting slaughtered in V5, Ruby’s agency does not substitute for a character arc and she still needs one, the introduction of the Faunus in Ozma’s flashbacks felt very contrived, Ren and Nora continue to feel useless to the wider plot but at least this time Ren wasn’t getting bodied every fight, so on and so forth), but ultimately we got more good than bad, and you don’t throw out an entire batch of apples just because of one rotten one near the top. I can forgive a lot more when the overall product is good, and Volume 6 certainly was a good season. Hopefully with these smaller problems fixed, which mostly just extends to “Give Cinder and Oscar onscreen development,” Volume 7 and onwards can keep the show moving forward into a brighter future and a better tomorrow.

[cckaisoo]

Mini Kadi Shippers/Supporters’ Survey Result

I would like to thank everyone for taking their time to respond to this survey. Your contribution is much appreciated. Anyway, this might sound a bit formal. But as long as I deliver the message, aite?

This is a mini kd shippers/supporters survey. I asked a question and collected responses which were consisted of a statement(s). I managed to collect a total of 99 responses in a span of 10 days.

Question:  i have an honest question. i’m really curious. who re u guys that ship/support kd? ks stans, ji stans, ex0-l, non-ex0-l, not even into kpop?

Next, I’ve analyzed the data using a simple coding method (use in a qualitative study). I’ve extracted a few important points from the data and divided it into two main categories - Group Stan & Bias. The subcategories were determined based on the amount of the same response

Group Stan - (1) EX0.L, (2) Non-EX0.L and (3) Not Stated Bias - (1) Jong.in, (2) Kyung.soo, (3) Jong.in & Kyung.soo and (4) Others

The unit used in the result is counted as per response [x/99].

1st Category: Group Stan

I think the highlight of this result is the Non EX0.L. Altho it's not many of them but I find it interesting that Non EX0.L take an interest in kd. These were some responses from the Non EX0.L.

º im not ex0.l anymore and if it weren't for kd i wouldn't be here (in the fandom) º just kai.soo-l. im not into kpop or ex.o anymore... i just exist here now just for kai.soo. tho i still go to ex.o concerts but just to see kai.soo. º I'm not a EX.O fan but I believe Kai.soo are dating  º not really an ex0.l i literally only went to ex0.rdium to see them both c:  º ...I'm a bt.s stan irl  º Im an ar.my but i've been shipping kai.soo almost since the beginning :) they are The only ship that I actually believe is real

The ‘Not Stated’ subcategory is self-explanatory. I believe it doesn’t affect the result that much.

2nd Category: Bias

Ks bias and ji & ks bias share the 1st spot on the chart with a total of 33 responses, respectively. I find it quite shocking. I expected that there would be more of ks bias since I’ve only heard many kd shippers are ks bias.

It is expected from my pov that there aren’t many kd shippers that biased ji, which I also find it interesting. Perhaps this has anything to do with his popularity among ifandom? Or they are more of them that ship other otp like se.kai etc? Mybe his past dating scandal affected stans in some way? //shrug.

The least frequent answers fell under ‘Others’; consisted of those who doesn't bias ji and ks, bias all ex0 and not stated specifically.

Conclusion

As per stated in the title, the result represent kai.soo shippers and supporters. This is not a proper survey since the data are varied and I’ve only managed to extract few points when they could have been more. So take this survey as it is~ Anyway, it was a fun mini survey and I also had fun analyzing the data! Click ‘Keep reading’ to check out all of the responses.

That’s all for now. Thank you and have a nice day :)

These are the raw data. So it is unorganized. Thank you for the participation!

Ks stan ji stan ex0l

ex0l

I love Jong.in and KaiSo0. And EX0. ❤ my one and only bias, ship and group.

Ks stan, ji stan and ex0 l

ji stan ks stan ex0l

ks stan, semi ji stan

Ks-ji stan and ex0 l

ex0-l, ksoo stan (but i love them all wtd)

Ex0 l def, soo stan altho jong.in is close 2nd

Kyungso0 stan and EX0-L definitely and semi Jong.in stan <3

EX0-L, Ksoo biased

ksoo stan

I am an ex0-l but not a kyungso0 stan nor a jong.in one (my biases are baek and jongdae)

but my sister, who supports kaiso0 too with all her heart, is a jong.in stan !

i noticed ji first because of dance, then i realised ji comes with ks as a package, so i started noticing kd and then i believed kd is real so im a supporter instead of a shipper. im not an ex0L but i do appreciate all members of ex0 because i genuinely think they each have something special. but i dont really follow the activities much. some of those i chat with thinks im in transition from a non ex0L to an ex0L. i dont ship any other pairings but i like se.kai which i think are bros. not jagi bros. but maknae dance bros. i dont know i can fit into ur data though but here is all my information.

I saw your post haha... I'm an ex0l and a Kyungso0 stan that is also becoming a Jong.in stan... So a kaiso0 stan. I can't choose only one of them. They come together haha.

EX0-L, JI stan, KS, stan, stan the group as a whole.

I dont consider myself an ex0*l, thou i buy their albuns, if i like a mv a lot, i´ll watch over /over again. Im just not into fandom culture, i find it toxic, with all the fanwars inside and out. I love kd, ji and ks the same and more than ex0 as a whole, I only follow blogs that are kd, ji and ks centric, but idc much about their acting jobs. So im not sure in what place im, but in a way it makes sense to me. lol!

I'm ks stan, I'm into kd because ks (and their love;;), I'm into e x o because kd.

im not ex0l anymore and if it weren't for kd i wouldn't be here (in the fandom)

i'm a ji and ks stan combined. i can't have one without the other. i make sure to check out whats going on with the both of them. but sometimes i do feel like i go more crazy over ji. i'm a capricorn and i have that same introvert personality, which is one of the reason why i love them both so much. i'm a ji stan ks stan and a kaiso0 stan.

im a ksoo stan and i ship kd so very much !! they make me so happy and are my motivation in life tbh ＿ﾉ乙(､ﾝ､)_ <3

kaiso0 biased, ex0-l

I'm a kyungso0 and jong.in stan, but kyungso0 is my ultimate bias. EX0-L.

Am a proud ks stan \(⊙♡⊙)/

i'm an ex0-l and a kyungso0 stan~

KD support

Kyung Soo stan

She's jong.in fan n even before i talked to her about kadi, she already knew theres something different about them (she did some digging on her own). I swear i didnt plant any idea on her haha

Ex0-L, 100% Kaiso0 shipper, Jong.in Stan, Kyungso0 Stan, all of EX0 Stan especially C.hen and Xiu.min because they seem to get neglected sometimes

D.o stan kai bais wrecker ex0l

I starded as a Jong.in stan then thanks to that I discovered kaiso0 and it made me take interest in ex0.Now I'm a kaiso0 supporter,ksoo stan,Jong.in ultimated biased and ex0-l :D

Ex0-l, Ji is my ub but Ks is in my top 3 members.

Ex0-l, ksoo stan but ji is very close.

just kai.soo-l. im not into kpop or ex0 anymore... i just exist here now just for kai.soo. tho i still go to ex0 concerts but just to see kaiso0. i still listen to ex0 songs but just a few chosen ones that i like.

Ex0l ks stan ji stan

ex0-l, ksoo stan !! ♡

Ex0l, jong.in and kyungso0 stan(i cant choose, both are my ultimate biases)😊

i saw jong.in in nylon kor~~ he made me stan ex0 then i discovered kadi... so im a jong.in stan kadi "shipper" (i think they r real, but then im also scared of projecting something that may not b there. i think i saw somewhere that its usually ji fans that r the worst "kadi shippers" or w/e lol anywaysss let me know what ur results r from the poll!!)

Am a proud ks stan \(⊙♡⊙)/

Not even into kpop but because of kaiso0, started listening to ex0 songs

ex0l & ksoo stan

Multi-fandom here! I stan both but mostly kyungso0 and lowkey yi.xing because he keeps making me swerve

For survey, I'm not a EX0 fan but I believe Kaiso0 are dating. If I have to choose, my favorite member is Baek.hyun and I like a couple of songs like Growl and Call Me Baby. I started thinking they're dating after I saw them at a concert a friend brought me to accompany her. They did fanservice with the rest but the way they acted towards each other was so different from what I know of fanservice. When I got home I searched them up. And Ka!'s dating scandal last year made me believe in them more.

Kyungso0 stan and i love jong.in and kaiso0 too

Kyungso0 stan. And became Jong.in stan because when you love ksoo you should love jong.in too

cannot decide because both of them came as a complimentary set agjsgsjgsjgs not really an ex0-l i literally only went to ex0rdium to see them both c:

ex0l. ksoo stan, ji stan, kai.soo shipper, um what else

ks and ji stand but i dont really follow ex0

An ex0-l OT9 stan♡

#kpop Stan since 2010#ks Stan#since 2012 *starts crying*

EX0-L, Ksoo biased

hi! im a ksoo stan that ships kd

I stan both. I only stan ex0. Forever an ex0l. Kaiso0 is real. 🐻💜🐧

was a jong.in stan now a kadi stan, i started to be a real/invested ex0l only after supporting their relationship

I'm a ksoo stans and kai comes in second and together they are THE power couple of my life

Kd supporter , Xiu.min biased/Ex0-l

jognog is my bias first. ksoo comes in later cause kaiso0.

Non-ex0-l

Mainly a ji stan but I love ks just as much. I adore kaiso0. I'm an Ex0-L but I don't listen to any other kpop.

ex0-l and kaiso0 shipper

I'm a jong.in Stan but ksoo cuteness never make me calm. ex0-l

ks stan, ji stan, ex0-l!!

EX0-L JONG.IN STAN

Started with overdose as a jong.in stan, I feel ashamed but I didn't even notice kyungso0 until much later. Then now I am a proud jongsoo supporter T_T

A proud ex0l and ji stan c:

Kyungso0 biased EX0-L. Love all members, including Jong.in. Kaiso0 is the only EX0 "ship" I take seriously.

for the kai.soo thing !! i wouldnt call myself ex0 l but i like ex0, jong.in stan (i love kyung.soo too. i only care about kai.soo basically anyway)

I am an ex0 & ji stan since their debut, they are only idol pairing I believe 100%, from watching ji closely over the years!

ks is my bias in ex0 but I'm a bt$ stan irl... ex0 is in my top 5 fav groups but I'm mostly with them for ks

before watching iotl i wasn't into kpop,ex0 is the first and only kr band i stan,cuz of actor do ks,ks is my bias,ji is my 2nd bias sometimes i wonder if ji is my bias now,i don't like all ex0 members but i consider my self an ex0-l,i listen to all their songs but i only watch the shows if ks or ji is in them, i'm only interested in ks and ji solo works not the others i've never watch other members movies,dramas,shows or v apps,their happiness is all that matters to me even though i'm muslim 1 i'm muslim and being gay is wrong according to my religious beliefs but looking at them all i see is love,no one around me knows about my love for them,they are my guilty pleasure 2

I'm a kyung.soo stan!

I am definitely a kai.soo supporter T_T Always! 100% jong.in stan and 100% kyung.soo stan! I don't know what is the criteria of being an ex0L! I do love their music and watch the variety shows they are in but I never bought an album or went to their concert!!

Kyungso0 is my bias

I'm ks stan, ex0-l, and start liking ji bcs if kd ;)

Se.hun fans, broken hearted kriso0 shipper

I'm Min.seok biased but I love couples, I started loving kd a couple months after I started liking ex0 and xiu.han. Kd is so cute and so real! But I'm lowkey a ji and ks stan...

so i stan both ji and ks i find them really talented and i like ex0 in general . I don't really stan other groups but i appreciate kpop a lot.

To your question, I ship kd and i'm ex0-l and Jong.in stan, but i got into EX0 bc of Kyungso0, i felt in love with him the first time i saw him <3 so basically a ksoo stan too(? im not sure :_

ex0-l since predebut era. originally a ksoo stan now both kd are my babies TvT

I’m a Kyungso0 and Jong.in stan ☺ Baek.hyun’s my bias wrecker though

I'm Kyungso0 stan followed by Jong.in. and I only ship Kaiso0

both are my biases but kji is my ult💕 ex0-l for lyf

I started shipping kai.soo back in 2013 when I was a casual ex0.l and didn't have a bias. Now my bias is jong.in :)

Ex0-l, my ult is kyung.soo, and jong.in follows!

ex0-l yi.xing stan HOLLA HOLLA love kaiso0. stan ksoo over jong.in just a lil bit.

EX0-L, I love all EX0 members! Baek.Hyun is my bias! <3

I'm a Ji Stan but I love both boys with all my heart

I'm a jong.in stan that was exclusively a jong.in stan before I cared abt or knew any other members. and then kaiso0, like immediately afer

Ksoo stan

ksoo and jgnog stan :^))))

Ex0-l - stanning both

I love all of ex0 members, but I'm Jong.in biased. I do support (believe in) KD since I entered the fandom 2 and a half years ago ^^

ksoo and nini stan

Im an arm.y but i've been shipping kaiso0 almost since the beginning :) they are The only ship that I actually believe is real

ji & ks stan, but i knew about and supported KD before i entered the fandom

Kyungso0 Stan ❤❤

I'm not an ex0-l but i like ex0.. and i recognise love when i see it

Yi.xing stan Kai.soo shipper!

[sableaire]

hello! this might be a little odd to ask since I don't think you've ever talked about this publicly, but I really value your opinion and think you are super well-read so I wondered what your thoughts were on this!!! My gf recently got me into kuroshitsuji, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on sebaciel, as a psychological concept? (I really liked your ks analysis!!! also I don't want you to think I'm asking for an actual analysis or anything I was just curious!!!)

Oh dear, I haven’t read Kuroshitsuji in years. I think I stopped some point near the end of the boarding school arc. Thank you for your kind words, by the way - true or not, I’m glad that is the impression I give off, ahaha.

Just on a surface level, I think the Kuroshitsuji animes were the ones that really leaned into the fanservice. There may have been some scenes in the manga that are evading my memory, but there’s no denying that the anime hinted at it far more heavily. As such, I feel that fans who only watched the anime - or watched the anime first - are more likely to end up shipping SebaCiel. However, I pretty much reject the first two anime and haven’t seen the Book of Circus, so my answer will have to focus on the manga.

Regardless, I know this is a touchy subject for a lot of people, fans and non-fans alike, so my response is below the cut: 

My thoughts on the concept of SebaCiel, hm… I can see where people might be getting it, I think, but I don’t necessarily understand it. When I read the manga when I was a teenager, I didn’t realize that people shipped the two characters romantically/sexually. It just didn’t occur to me. 

So personally, when I read Kuroshitsuji, I saw no romantic or sexual chemistry there (and this isn’t even mentioning the fact that Ciel Phantomhive as written is a literal child, aha;;). What I saw in Kuroshitsuji and what appealed to me as a reader was a fascinating power dynamic, wrapped up in a weird business arrangement, and I think there-in lies the issue.

Perhaps it’s just because I’m aroace, but I personally feel that a lot of readers fail to acknowledge that there can be an emotional/mental intimacy in a relationship without romance. Similarly, there is a failure to acknowledge that there can be a power dynamic or obsession without sexual undertones.

From my limited knowledge of the SebaCiel fandom, it seems to me that the ship is built more upon sexual content rather than romantic fluff, which plays into my point. I believe that a lot of people end up shipping SebaCiel because of the underlying power dynamic between the two throughout the entirety of the manga, which many readers automatically associate with sexual themes.

I cannot speak for the intention of the author as to whether Kuroshitsuji is meant to encourage shipping Sebastian and Ciel or not. I do believe she started as a BL author, which could mean that any homoerotic undertones (should they be present; I don’t personally remember any, it’s been a while) are intentional. It could also just mean that she’s so used to drawing them that she doesn’t know how to draw pretty scenes without them, ahaha.

However, from a storytelling perspective myself, I don’t see any grounds for a romantic or sexual relationship between the two. Ciel is wholly focused on his revenge, fully intending to die - a little too busy for romance, and he holds his responsibilities as a noble to a certain esteem, which means that were he not to die, he would probably fully intend to marry his fiancee Elizabeth, without affair.

As for the demon himself, my interpretation at the time of reading - which, again, it’s been years - was that what Sebastian got out of this relationship was Ciel’s own corruption of self. Yeah, he likes the corruption of an innocent soul or whatnot, but what he got out of their weird pact was a front-row seat to Ciel’s self-destructive journey. He is basically ensuring that his favorite cake is baking properly, and his whole interest in Ciel is because Ciel himself is the one corrupting his own soul, without Sebastian’s direct involvement or encouragement.

Since that’s Sebastian’s role in all this, I don’t see it as a strong possibility that he would, I don’t know, seducing Ciel for laughs as a viable option, and if he attempted, I imagine Ciel would firmly shut it down, and if Ciel expresses no interest, Sebastian wouldn’t waste the effort on trying.

Further, I cannot actually imagine Sebastian actually harboring any affection for Ciel. He is a demon, fundamentally different from a human. What he is there for is the promise of one of the best soul meals of his life - he cares for Ciel to the extent I might care for a Michelin star Asian-style Strawberry Shortcake: I’m going to watch the chef, sit in front of the oven and stare at it while it is cooking, make sure it’s decorated to my liking, and I am going to kill anyone who tries to prevent me from eating the whole thing after I waited so long. Heck, I’ll probably kill anyone who even smears the icing. 

However, even without a sexual or romantic component, the two characters do still undeniably have both a power dynamic and a codependence. They both are incredibly prideful, and they are both bonded together despite their personal animosity for a perceived mutually beneficial outcome. Ciel holds power of Sebastian in all the public ways, as the Lord to demon’s Butler, but Ciel is also helplessly reliant on Sebastian when it comes to all the… supernatural stuff… and also not-so-supernatural stuff…

And personally, I love that. I love the stories where one character has all the cards and the other has to swallow their pride to get what they want, and I love stories about one-up-manship, and I love stories about people being forced to rely on one another. However, those dynamics do not have to be sexual, and they do not have to be romantic. Also, possessive behavior does not have to mean romantic/sexual obsession, especially when one character is technically a tool (a means to an end) and the other is literally a food source. I am pretty darn possessive of my laptop computer, and I would be pretty damn possessive over my Michelin-star strawberry shortcake. 

I didn’t actually intend on this being such an effective analogy, but now I am super protective and territorial about this imaginary strawberry shortcake because by god, it has been years since I had a good one.

Still, my theory is that to a lot of people, when presented with a power dynamic in fiction, many readers immediately see a sexual appeal to it in a Dom/sub-esque fashion, and when presented with seeming emotional intimacy, they immediately see romantic potential. And though the author/artist may throw in fanservice, that’s just that - service. It doesn’t discourage the shippers, for sure, but it’s not necessarily support for it either.

Basically, due to modern culture, committed and or intimate and or passionate and or intense relationships in fiction are often perceived to be romantic and or sexual in nature when they do not have to be. Platonic relationships are underrated. Non-sexual hatred and obsession is underrated. 

It could also just be that people are interpreting a business-arrangement-turned-emotionally-invested-relationship narrative as a platonic-relationship-turned-romantic one. I know a lot of people who think of platonic relationships as equivalent to mere acquaintanceship, and there-in might lie the issue. They may fail to perceive Ciel and Sebastian’s escalating emotional involvement (if there was any, I can’t remember) as a step up from a professional relationship. They may instead perceive it as a step up from a platonic one.

Also, Kuroshitsuji is one of those mangas a lot of people discover while young, so that may factor into the enthusiastic fandom and the eagerness for romance, considering most tween/young teen books angling for girls are romantic in nature and that is how many girls are used to relating to their fiction.

Sorry if this wasn’t the kind of answer you meant, and again, it has been years since I properly read the manga. I heard the two-Ciel theory’s been proven true? Fascinating.

[avoresmith]

About Ajin and AV’s delicate feelios

I want to explain why I love Ajin because it's quite personally important to me and while my immediate social circle has heard me talk about this quite a bit in the last few days, ya'll haven't. In fact, most of you probably haven't even heard about this manga.

But to talk about it means spoiling a (fairly early) reveal of the manga. It's not a big deal to be spoiled for it probably, but I wasn't. So I'll start with just the Impersonal Deets for those of you who might like to go in unspoiled.

Ajin's premise is that of a world wherein within the last generation, humanity has discovered that there are ajin/demi-humans living among them. Demi-humans are in a lot of ways no different than regular humans, except that they can't die. They don't have super strength, they aren't a different species in the sense that ajin parents have ajin children (not as far as we know, anyway), they can summon cool ghosts with limited abilities and if they die they will return to life within seconds, unharmed.

You don't find out you are a demi-human until you die once, but demi-humans are considered nonhumans with no rights and society is quick to turn on them.

Ajin's focus is primarily on a ruthlessly efficient exploration of the world dynamics it's established around the powers of demi-humans and how they operate. It is really fun, because so many manga see the solution to whatever problem they set up as more strength, cooler super powers. Ajin is much more interested in playing chess with a pre-established and limited number of pieces.

Think about it: normal humans who don't regenerate from any injury unless they die, but WILL come back from any kind of death. How do you stop such a person and how do they make themselves harder to stop? Incapacitate them, okay. But if you injure them, can't they then just kill themselves to recover from any injury? Knock them out then, but not too hard or they might die, and then you're back to square one. Or tranq them, but careful not to cause an OD. Or, kill them repeatedly so they can't move. Long enough to get them in restraints that a human can't escape.

So then you have them, what do you do with them? What does an undying body that will regenerate any lost body parts upon death mean to what group of people? What would a government organization do with such a thing? What about a criminal one? What about a scientific one? What about a corporation?

What is the value of an undying body, and to who, how do you extract that value from it? And if YOU are unable to die, what do you do with it? Do you fight, knowing that death isn't an option as a release from your war if you lose? Do you hide? Do you go on a power trip? Do you see more or less value in life overall?

Ajin is largely a systematic exploration of these questions and dozens of others extrapolated through a very simple premise and lived by a group of amoral and largely un-empathetic characters.

It's terribly smart, pretty fast paced, and absolutely dedicated to its premise.

Character wise, you may care about about 3 or 4 people, as long as you aren't bothered by No One Is Actually Very Good and Almost No One Scores Higher Than A 3.5 out of 10 On Giving A Fuck About Other Human Beings.

It actually has some of my favorite character writing ever, but I don't have an issue with a cast of low empathy assholes.

For warnings other than that:

Bad at remembering women exist. For the majority of the manga there is Only One Actually Relevant Female Character. Weirdly also has some of the best writing I've ever seen for a tertiary female character. There isn't any fanservice, the author just seems to forget women exist outside of very specific tropes, but does write those tropes well. Seems to be improving slowly. I believe in him on this front more than I believe in Kojima.

The writing in the first four chapters is Not Good. It's very trope heavy, contrived, and nonspecific. I didn't find it painful but I did roll my eyes a lot and it set a really low bar, haha. Then artist takes over the job of writing as well, and there is pretty immediate improvement in both art and writing over the course of the manga. Has some fantastic scenes. Possibly the best mother character I've ever seen?? Also has one of the best versions I've ever seen of a specific villain trope.

Don't watch the anime, read the manga. It's available legally online via Crunchyroll and Comixology.

Now if you're like. GOSH AV, SEEMS INTERESTING, BUT IT'S WEIRD YOU HAVE SAID BASICALLY NOTHING ABOUT CHARACTERS.

Well friend that's because Ajin also has perhaps one of my favorite protagonists of all time but I can't tell you why without spoiling the first uuh. 17ish? Chapter of the manga. (it's monthly so that's about the first 3rd of what is out now).

So if you want to know more than I THINK NAGAI KEI IS THE BEST EVER AND YOU SHOULD READ HIS MANGA. Continue under the cut:

Nagai Kei, the 17 year old protagonist of the manga who gets hit by a truck in chapter 1 and finds out he can't die, is a sociopath.

Or maybe he's Incredibly Low Empathy.

I honestly don't care which, I feel like if you're quibbling over Full Sociopath or 90% Sociopath you're missing the point. He literally popcorns the deaths of thousands of civilians and acknowledges it as a 'pretty good move' of a terrorist to make. He has incredibly little empathy.

But he is also, inarguably, the hero of the story.

Not the most heroic of heroes, also inarguable. But that's sort of what the story is about, when it isn't about murder chess. The exploration of a kid who isn't motivated by how much he Cares About People, still coming to risk everything he has to Do What Is Right. And him turning away the chance to BE a villain, even though, aren't sociopaths always villains? Isn't that the constant implication, that if you don't Care Like Most People Care, you don't care at all? Without empathy, what motivates one to not be a villain? A huge number of canons would suggest the answer is nothing.

Fandom AND mainstream media really likes the romanticize the villainous sociopath. And look, me fucking too! I love many of those assholes. But it's also frustrating to watch people struggle to scrounge up reasons to justify lack of empathy as somehow an excuse for why a character can still Not Be That Bad even when they have done Super Bad Things.

Ajin, though Kei, sets a different standard. You can try to stop a war and save countless lives for motivations other than how much the suffering of others bothers you. You can choose not to kill for reasons other than some inexplicable conviction that 'all human life is equally valuable'. You can not give a fuck about someone's pain without being a sadist, and you can protect someone without fearing a life without them. You can make tons of Right Choices Which Benefit Others without thinking your life is worth less than a large quantity of people you have no personal investment in.

And it does it without actually disparaging empathy, either. The lesson isn't That Feelings Are Stupid And You Should be 100% Rational at all.

Rather, it's the nuanced story of a boy with little to no empathy struggling to navigate the feelings he very much actually has but has convinced himself he doesn't and can't have because lack of feeling for others is often conflated with lack of any kind of emotion. Kei has bought into this narrative as much as anyone, and constantly has a Logical Reason for everything on hand, lest he ever be forced to admit He Had A Feeling.

Kei's primary struggle as a character is admitting to himself that he cares about Very Specific Things, and that this motivates his actions when by every logical choice he really should be running as far away from the plot as he can get and never looking back.

And I… relate. Incredibly.

And I never have before, is the thing.

And that's okay. I was not yearning to have a character of low enough empathy that processes the world the same way I do. That inofitself would probably be a weird thing for someone with low empathy to even think to need. You don't really grow up giving incredibly little fucks about how others feel only to be distressed when there isn't media that you can relate to. I long ago Accepted The Importance Of Representation In Media but never in a million years would have told you "I wish I saw someone who had as little empathy as me being a hero, because actually I work pretty hard to fit a certain standard of Good Person, and this is an incredibly underexplored perspective".

But now that I've seen it, and it happened, I can tell you it Means A Lot, and I Had Quite A Few Feelings About It.

Reading Kei's story is in a lot of ways like flipping through a diary of my own emotional growth. We went into our teenage years with very different priorities (I was raised to value interpersonal relationships very highly and got into fiction at a young age, Kei was raised to see relationships as tools and has been fixated on medicine most of his short life), but none-the-less we've had a lot of the same questions, insecurities, frustrations.

And because SO MUCH of what Kei says, how he processes the world, how he responds in almost every situation, is viscerally familiar to me, I find myself terribly fond of him. I've never so much honestly wanted to shake a character and give him life advice because I know what he's going through and I know he can come out of it.

I'm also unfortunately fond of the author at this point. It certainly isn't impossible that I'm completely wrong and he is just very good at character perspective, but I find it difficult to imagine that he hasn't also really really been there.

And I'd kind of love to take him out for a beer sometime and shoot the shit about what it's like to be a confused teenager who is constantly disappointing people because they keep expecting an emotional resonance you haven't learned to perform on cue yet.

[echoed-truth]

All caught up!

I stopped reading DC pretty much two years ago at chapter 920 because I was so fed up with a lot of things: the writing and utilization of female characters, especially how major female characters faded away as male characters take over the main plot, how they are kept in the dark even as they are directly involved, the shallow treatment of female relationships in comparison to the male ones, the occasional fanservice; the idolization of childhood crushes, how every single character is shoehorned into a romance, and how the individual characterization suffered as a result; Conan’s alarming omnipotence and the complete absence of criticism; people constantly talking past each other in fandom based on false assumptions.

I didn’t know back then whether that’d mean that I’d be quitting DC for good or not, which scared me because I had been following the series for so long and had invested so much money and time in it... But I knew it wasn’t good to keep reading if all of the frustration overrode - on a weekly basis! - any lingering affection I still had, so I cut myself off from it.

In the meantime, starting from about half a year ago, I got into merch collecting. While I was keeping away from the manga, I’d rage every now and then at all the new DC merch coming out, which is all pretty much presenting Conan/Shinichi, Akai, Amuro, KID and sometimes Heiji as the faces of the series. I know that those are popular characters for good reasons and that smart marketing is to produce whatever’s currently a hot topic, especially when it comes to a series that has been running for this long, but it didn’t help with my bitterness regarding the neglect of female characters within the series. In my opinion, Ran and Ai in particular deserve merch before any of the above (with the exception of the titular character) get any, especially when said merch is bundled or part of a line-up. :| (I'm talking about the recent scale figures and the planned Nendoroids, but also some sticker/strap sets I've seen.)

About 1-2 days ago, I ranted about DC merch again (a set of straps), and a good friend was wondering on Twitter whether anything of note has happened in the series in the past year. I guess someone I know talking about it in some way and expressing frustration was the push I needed to catch up again! I’m all caught up now, and reading the 73 (à 16 pages) chapters didn’t take anywhere as long as I thought it would.

Some rambling under the cut, both positive and negative. No explicit story spoilers.

TWO YEARS' WORTH OF EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS WOW!! SO MANY EXCITING THINGS OMG!!

Reading all of it in one go was less painful than following this series on a weekly basis while dying from impatience and getting upset over the writing of female characters. I’m still upset, but at least it’s not a weekly letdown, which was hard to stomach as a fan. (Also wow, I quit right before that Shinichi/Ran chapter wtf.)

One of the most exciting things about binge-reading this is that of the huge cast, many people met each other for the first time!! Hell yeah I am here for seeing every possible kind of combo (though I doubt most of it will get fleshed out).

Megure is spot-on when he says that most of the time it’s just running into groups of assorted detectives hanging out. EVERYONE IS A DETECTIVE.

Part of it is that there are wayyyyyy too many men now, most of them some genius/specialist of some sort. They set themselves apart from the non-detective characters by being characterized as smart and impressive, but in a cast where everyone is impressive, it’s just... getting very crowded. (There are cases where I constantly wonder "was this really necessary" with regard to this type - Shukichi and Komei in particular.)

Heiji/Kazuha chapters continue to be really stale; as with two years ago, they’re easily one of the worst parts of the entire series to me (and I used to love them waaaay back!). Every time they show up, we’re confronted with the non-progressing romance (see above: romance ruining characterization), while Ran and Kazua are forced into the “I’m so scared and ghosts totally exist HELP” role. Every. Single. Time. It’s mind-boggling it’s handled this way even on the most basic level, which, in DC’s case, is the mystery. If certain characters are associated with a certain types of mystery (folklore and “scary” things in general in this case), doesn’t that make the constellations they’re part of repetitive as a whole?

The recent Ran/Kazuha scene in chapter 983 was SUPER CUTE though. Really beautiful. ;_;

Not sure how I feel about the amount of new characters introduced in all these chapters. O_O I know it’s a new arc and all, but damn, I think it’s about 5-6? wtf @ sushi waiter...

Not sure how to feel about Wakasa either, but it bugs me that she seems like some sort of Jodie rehash - the combination of possibly being a threat, being very clumsy, being secretly capable, and a teacher. Rehashes are nothing new (Eisuke/Masumi as transfer students and siblings, for example, and also the clumsiness in Eisuke/Jodie/Wakasa as they follow their own agenda), but it bugs me because... I really like Jodie, and like other female key players (Ai, Kir), she is underutilized/written out of the story while male characters dominate.

I should be more upset at Amuro because he's almost like the mirror of One Piece's Law (except it's way more blatant and annoying in the case of OP), super special in his own way and now getting all the merch next to Akai as well as other male characters, while major female characters can stew, but I still really like him. IT'S JUST A BUNCH OF THE DC MERCHANDISE THAT I RAGE AT.

That moment in chapter 954 when two of your lowkey crackships are in the same panel bc MAGIC...

CATCHING UP WAS SO WORTH IT JUST FOR THE END OF CHAPTER 957, I LOOOOOOVE IT SOOOOOOOO MUUUUUUUUUCHHHHHHHHHHHH YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW.

[a-sleep-i-insomniac-blog]

Boku No Hero Academia: Shonen Boiled Down To Its Basics

My relationship with the shonen genre is quite complicated. For one, I love hype, and am hype whenever a show gets hype. After all, my favorite anime of all time is Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and that show has the most hype ending in the history of the world. Twice. However, I also despise one of the trademarks of shonen anime: filler. Thus, whenever the action in a shonen grinds to a halt so the entire ensemble cast has a chance to voice their opinion about the situation, I find myself groaning and my attention waning. Plus, I really dislike filler and recap episodes. I do understand that sometimes they can help people remember the plot if they are watching on a week to week basis, but I tend to marathon things. Therefore, when I decided to watch this entire show in two days, the small recap segments in the beginning of the episodes were far from welcome. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that recap episodes can be done right. I loved it when Kill La Kill compressed its entire recap episode into the beginning part of one of its episodes, and was able to move onto new material by the time the Op had finished playing. I appreciate that Boku No Hero Academia puts all of its recap in the beginning, making it really easy to just skip to the Op to get to the new stuff, but these segments can drag on for up to 3 minutes. While Kill La Kill’s recap segment was probably around 5 minutes long, it was the spectacle of it that made it watchable. Firstly, it was the first recap segment to occur in the entire show, and occurred about halfway through the series. Thus, instead of condensing the previous episode like MHA did, Kill La Kill needed to condense about 12 episodes into 5 minutes. Furthermore, the fact that Senketsu’s voice slowly accelerates in speed as he talks, and you can hear him slowly run out of breath, was extremely entertaining on its own just to listen to. And, such a thing never happens again. Thus, it is played off more as a joke than an actual recap segment.

Now before I start talking about how much I hate recap episodes for 392385 hours, let’s move onto the other technical aspects of the show. For the record, I did not do any research on the staff of this show before writing this post, so some of the assumptions that I make may or may not hold water. Personally, the directing in this show was miles better than BONES’s previous work Kekkai Sensen, which I will cover more in depth in the near future. It felt very shonen, similar to how FMA Brotherhood was put together. In other words, solid and unmemorable, but doesn’t screw anything up in the process. The animation is also very solid, with a few great looking scenes of Sakuga peppered in for good measure. I adored Hakuyu Go’s cut on All Might’s battle during the finale, as well as that cut of Deku punching that giant mech during the exams that I can’t find of Sakugabooru for some reason. The character designs, especially of the costumes, were very appealing to me, and I found myself just admiring the character art when not much was moving on the screen. I really like how thick All Might’s outline is and how intense his shading is when he in his muscular mode, as it really exemplifies how he is a larger-than-life hero in the eyes of the many, while when he shrinks down to his true form his shading becomes less intense, and his outline become more normal, as this is when he is the most down-to-earth and subdued. Designs like that really helped me get a sense of the characters of this show, as boy are there a lot of characters. Also, special mention of that invisible girl. She gets like a combined screen time of about 10 seconds, and each time I burst out laughing as it’s just a pair of floating gloves.

Great character designs aside, the characters that inherit those designs are a little less realized than they designs entail. Deku, the protagonist of MHA was a very easy lead to get behind. I’m always for the hardworking type in anime, having admired figures like Rock Lee, and violently admired people like Nanami Aoyama. Deku is no different. In a world of superpowered people, he is born without a quirk, and is bullied and has his dreams crushed because of this. Thus, when there’s an entire training montage of him working to inherit his power All For One, the payoff is that much greater than if he were just a naturally gifted person like your average light novel protagonist. I also like how analytical he is, as he grew up fanboying and analyzing his favorite heros, as well as the fact that the nature of his power makes so that he needs to be systematic in his approach to fighting, instead of going all Super-Saiyan. I do think his power is very shounen and main character-ish, but is it is executed well enough that I was able to buy into it. Deku is the only character in the entire show’s expansive cast that seems to undergo any real development. Granted, every character has his or her own gimmick, a “quirk”, if you will, but are otherwise rather one-note. One guy has a very strict moral code and can run very fast. One girl is caring, but kind of an airhead, and can negate the gravity of anything she touches. One girl is just a frog. Like actually. While they are fun to watch interact, they lack any real depth for me to actually get invested in them. Of course I love frog girl and think she’s best girl, but I feel like if less people had been introduced, and the core cast had had a little more room to breathe, they would have been more memorable characters as a whole.

Another thing I wanted to touch upon was the show’s fanservice. What struck me the most about this show’s fanservice was the fact that there actually was any. While I don’t think that the fanservice to be extremely tasteless and found it to be rather playful, I nonetheless was not able to shake the feeling that the show was trying to pander to me with these brief sequences. It’s similar to that of Kiznaiver, as 95% of the time there is no fanservice at all, but then all of a sudden, everyone is talking about another character’s boobs for some reason. I found it be distracting at times, as it was just so jarring from the tone of the rest of the show. I think the moment that broke me on this was when the girl that could just create matter (for some reason) gets her shirt blasted off for a few seconds, you we get that classic shot of strangely convenient positioning of props that just happen to block the camera’s view of the character. However, I don’t think that this is uncharacteristic of such a show from an Shonen Jump manga, as you need only need to look at Bleach or One Piece to see that fanservice isn’t exactly something unknown to this genre. Even FMA Brotherhood had that infamous seen with Winry accidentally changing in front of Ed.

As you can see, MHA does not do much to distinguish itself from its shonen contemporaries. The character designs, directing, protagonist, and story are all very shonen. To me, it feels like MHA is a shonen boiled down to all of the basic building blocks that make shonens work.  While a lot of what I just said has a lot of negative connotations attached to it, I feel like the reason that I liked MHA as much as I did is because Shonen as a genre works. Furthermore, it cuts through a lot of the excess and waste that you would get in Naruto or Bleach, focusing more on the good than the bad aspects of the genre. It had hype moments, and poignant moments. By the end of the first season, I found myself cheering for All Might, and shouting “PLUS ULTRA” along with him, while pumping my fists up in the air. Thus, I think this show deserves a strong 7 to a light 8 out of 10. I know that a second season has been confirmed, and will start airing in 2017. Thus, I look forward to continuing this story with this cast of fun and likable characters.