#it's genuinely a really laudable way of understanding others imo.

[loriache]

"I've been waiting for ages for somebody to unmask them."

This moment tends to elicit negative reactions in a first read through, and I've got some opinions about why where Kabru is coming from here actually makes a lot of logical sense. So I thought I'd elaborate on that.

I think people hear this and go, "He thinks they must be hiding something because they gave money to someone? What a cynic." Or "he dislikes them because they did charity?? What's wrong with this guy!". And obviously, a lot, a lot is wrong with him. But I think this makes more sense than it seems at first glance! What people evaluating this judgement miss is why Kabru is paying attention to Laios and co to begin with.

Kabru knows of the Touden siblings because (he's a little bit of a stalker-) he is keeping an eye on all the relevant parties in events developing on the island, in order to be able to guide them to his preferred outcome. This includes adventurers because they are the ones actually exploring the dungeon! He's well aware that something as minor as internal tensions between party members could be key to the historical events that are developing. (He would love the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.)

His desired outcome is that whatever the rewards are of breaking the dungeon's curse, whether that's kingship or the ancient elven secrets of dungeons, are claimed by:

A) a short lived person

B) Someone who will be a good, effective leader and/or use those secrets and the power they carry wisely, with foresight, and to establish a political bloc for short lived people.

The person he can best trust to do this is, of course, himself. But due to his PTSD regarding dungeons and monsters, he's not able to develop the necessary skills to conquer the dungeon. Once he realises this, he starts looking for someone else who he can support to that end.

But most of the adventurers don't have any intentions of conquering the dungeon, don't have the skills, or are unsuitable in other ways. In fact, it seems like some potentially suitable people are the Toudens. There are a lot of good rumours about them going around - they actually seem to have a very positive reputation! That's what Kabru means when he says "unmask".

So when Kabru is observing something like them giving money to an old comrade from their gold-peeling days, he doesn't consider it a problem because "they're giving money to this person who doesn't actually need it" or because they must have some dark secret if they act superficially nice. I think he actually understands this situation and what it implies about Laios (in particular) perfectly well.

Laios and Falin gave money to an old comrade who got injured and couldn't work. That person then healed up but kept taking their money. Then he used the money to start smuggling illicit goods to the island.

The key is that for Kabru, the problem here is the same as with the corpse retrievers - people using the dungeon's resources to fuel dangerous, selfish, or violent pursuits cause problems for the island, attract more criminals and people with motives other than breaking the curse, and increase the chances of the whole situation ending in tragedy.

Kabru is willing to work with the Shadow Lord of the island if it gets him to his goal - he isn't scrupulous - but the criminal element of the island increasing is something he sees as a major issue.

Also, when you're evaluating someone as a candidate for power, riches, secrets, potentially kingship - then being curious about how the money you give to people is going to be used is kind of a relevant trait!

Interpersonally, Kabru's actually very easygoing - I mean, Mickbell isn't exactly an upstanding guy, is he! But Kabru likes him and they get along well. These traits wouldn't be a problem at all in a friend, or a comrade, or someone Kabru was confident he could use. But he can't get a handle on Laios, and Laios is someone who has the potential to be a major player!

On Laios' end, this is the same as with the marriage seeker who joined their party. She kept asking for things and he gave them to her, because he tries to be nice to others. He even gives her money! It's the exact same thing.

That's fine, but it became a problem because he basically wasn't interested in her motives, didn't notice she was trying to manipulate him, and it also didn't occur to him that the other party members would notice or be affected. We can assume the situation with the gold peeler is the same. When Kabru says that "It's not that they're bad people, they just aren't interested in humans," he isn't wrong.

The extent to which this is true of Laios is linked to his autism imo, (because it isn't just disinterest - he genuinely isn't able to notice nonverbal cues that people are lying to him or have ulterior motives) but to a greater or lesser extent I think it's a very common trait. Most people aren't actually that interested in other people who aren't close to them. Kabru is the weird one here. It isn't an issue except as a leader - which is why we see an immediate comparison to the Island's Lord, because that's how Kabru is evaluating them.

And disinterest in/lack of ability with people to the extent Laios exhibits it, it does, actually, make him a worse leader... it's just that as we see in the story, people can help him out. The rest of the party tell him the marriage seeker is taking advantage of him so he tells her he can't give her special treatment anymore. They're pissed and it's a crisis point - he couldn't have recovered their trust without Marcille and Falin - but that's exactly the point. With Marcille and Falin, he was able to recover their trust.

And he has other good traits that make up for it, such as his intelligence, strategic knowledge, open-mindedness and sense of fairplay.

Kabru doesn't disqualify Laios as a candidate based on what he sees about him from afar, though - he still tries very hard to get close to him, obviously hoping that if he manages he can steer Laios to defeat the dungeon and make up for his lack of people-skills in the aftermath. (Which... he does eventually achieve that goal!) He completely fails until the events of the story, so... definitely I think "They just aren't interested in humans" could also partially be a stung reaction to Laios' complete disinterest in him.

Anyway, that's my read on what exactly Kabru's "issue" with Laios is. Obviously, once he does find out what Laios' true nature is like - about his love for monsters - he develops an entirely new set of fears about Laios' priorities. But since Laios kept that a secret until the start of the story, he has no idea of that yet.

Given all that, I think it's interesting that he says that he doesn't think that the Toudens are suitable to defeat the dungeon, and that he's hoping they'll turn out to be the thieves. As some of his few potential candidates, people who he thinks may play a big role in the island's future, you'd think he'd hope they would be good people!

I suppose it's better, in his eyes, because it means that he's involved in something "interesting". They haven't just had their stuff stolen by regular criminals (boring, puts them further away from his goal) - they've been caught up in the beginning stages of "a historic event". The desperate and dwindling group forgetting morals in their quest to retrieve their lost comrade probably appeals to his sense of melodrama. Because he also just... loves drama.

Despite it being "uglier than anything he was expecting", he still pursues Laios as the person he wants to conquer the dungeon pretty much as soon as it becomes clear that he won't be able to do it himself and they are out of time. That's because... well, to be fair, there aren't any other options. And he fits standard A: he's short-lived!

and Kabru still hopes he can fit standard B, too, and be persuaded to use the power he wins for good. No matter how many nightmares he has about Laios, or whether he thinks about killing him. He doubts him, but ultimately he puts his faith in him and seems happy after the manga's ending that he made the right decision.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2018 Overview: Megalobox

Megalobox follows a boxer named Joe, a guy who lives in a dystopian future and participates in “Megaloboxing” with advanced mechanical gear. When he has a chance to enter the big boxing tournament, Megalovania, he goes for it at great risk to himself.

I watched this one through a fluke more than anything really. The anime community was talking about it a bunch and I was restless one night and I checked it out and rolled with it to the finish. Sports anime focusing on burly tough guys are very much Not My Thing and this series...did not change that at all. While it was a solid production with great aesthetics and a fantastic soundtrack, I couldn’t really connect with it and I doubt it will stay with me at all.

The thing is, this is an extremely by-the-numbers underdog-rises-to-the-top sports story. If you’ve seen Rocky, you’ve seen the basic arc of this story. (The anime is even loosely based on a classic manga, Ashita no Joe, and one of the names for that series is “Rocky Joe”). It is executed with such confidence and sincerity that I think anyone who holds any affection at alll for the genre might enjoy it despite it’s standard set up, and the early episodes certainly had some memorable aspects.

Actually, the first half of the show was definitely strongest and most interesting...it actually touched on social commentary and societal dynamics a bit. Joe, our main character, is an undocumented immigrant, which was a really good angle for the whole underdog deal. Unfortunately, the show didn’t really DO anything about this, it mostly seemed to be there as a plot device/obstacle (Joe entered the tournament with a fake ID and quite a few times the tension comes from someone threatening to expose him). We never even learn what country Joe comes from or really anything about his past. Which is part of the point, I guess, his whole deal is he’s supposed to be a “nameless stray”- even “Joe” was just something he chose himself to enter the tournament. But it made it hard for me to connect to him, even if I got the gist of his deal.

One of the most interesting plotlines in the show was the arc where Joe faces off with a former student of his trainer’s, who’s a disabled war veteran who is struggling with PTSD. It’s a pretty heavy arc- we get flashbacks to the guy contemplating suicide (like gun in his mouth) and the prosthetics he has, despite this being a futuristic setting, do make competing harder for him and it’s shown to be dangerous and that he has to do a lot to compensate. The arc also added depth to Joe’s trainer, who’d come off as pretty selfish before then, but this whole thing showed what made him tick, and the guilt he carried in regards to letting down his former student. It ended in a somewhat brutal but cathartic way too.

Honestly, this dude would have been a way more interesting main rival for Joe. But instead, his arc ended and focus shifted back to Joe’s “real” rival, Yuri, who just honestly...really boring. He didn’t have to be, but like Joe we knew literally nothing about his past and what motivated him to become a boxer. But while Joe’s motivations were easy to understand and sympathize with even without specific details- dude who comes from the margins of society, wants to be recognized and rise up, we all know that drill...Yuri’s really needed details for someone to feel for him. He’d joined up with this big company and was working for the “goal”, but felt repressed boxing for them or something, I guess? To understand that, you need to know why he joined in the first place, how he feels about the company’s goal, where he came from that makes him so desperate to break free and punch dudes....but we got none of that. 

The vagueness surrounding Yuri kind of extends to the whole show too. The sci-fi trappings of boxers wearing this mechanical “gear” that enhances their boxing was never really implemented well, imo. I guess the gear enhances boxers strength and speed somehow, but it was always really vague, and it was hard to tell what Joe was risking by boxing without it. Like, how hard does gear allow you to punch? Could Joe easily die by not having it? Why is it considered such a big deal? The show doesn’t really integrate all that well.

So yeah, the show started out with some interesting sci-fi elements, a stylish dystopian setting, themes of wartime drama, class-ism and the potential to comment on immigration issues...but all that just kinda went out the window for the boring basic “these dudes super want to punch each other to ~feel free~” story. There were still some laudable elements- in a super dramatic moment, character gains a significant disability, yet is still shown to be able to live a full life and be involved in everything- but it was mostly very rote stuff by the end.

“Nev, you sure are talking about dudes a lot here, were there any female characters in this anime?” I’m glad you asked! There was one whole lady and she was Yukiko, the head of the corporation that runs the Megalovania boxing tournament and produces the “gear” many of the boxers use. Yep, just her. Okay, I guess technically there were two women if you count her assistant, but she wasn’t really a character- her job was to provide exposition and be shocked when Yukiko made an unexpected decision. However, her presence did mean the series technically passed the Bechdel test! So, uh, yay for that, I guess.

Yukiko isn’t bad as a character- she’s capable as a company head (and was in fact chosen over her brother), she has her own goals with her company, family drama and she’s conflicted and sympathetic. But like a lot of characters in this series, she wasn’t super interesting because so much about her was so vague. I guess her goal was to sell her gear to the military? But not as a “weapon”, somehow. 

She was also not really all that into boxing and didn’t really understand why Yuri would want to throw away his life to punch some dude. Same here, but it’s kind of annoying we didn’t really get to know any women who had interest or knowledge about boxing as a sport. It gave the impression the show didn’t think a woman COULD be heavily interested and involved in boxing. 

Which brings me to a thing that genuinely bothers me about the show. They had an opportunity to have more than one girl in the series, they had an opporunity to show off a girl who was into boxing, they had an opportunity to put a female character on Joe’s team...but instead they actively chose to erase her. See, Joe is aided by a gang of Classic Street Urchins, and one of them, Sachio, becomes his advisor and a trusted member of his team. The street urchins are based on a gang of kids from the original Joe anime, but they’re all boys here, while in the original anime one of them was a girl. Her name was Sachie.

Yep, Sachio’s based off a female character (as well as another kid in the gang). They had a female character from the original 60s manga they could have made a part of the team, but they changed her to a boy instead. In 2018. They could have kept Sachio a girl, and changed absolutely nothing- his role in the team is to be tech smart plucky street kid who yells motivational things and gets emotional, and GUESS WHAT GIRLS CAN DO THAT. i was actually thinking while watching the show “you know, this kid would really work as a girl” the whole time only to find out he originally WAS. 

Sachie in the original series didn’t seem to have that important of a role, but neither did the other street urchins- when they decided to raise the profile of one of them and get them more involved in the plot for a reboot anime, YOU’D THINK THEY’D HAVE CHOSEN THE GIRL INSTEAD OF ERASING HER COMPLETELY, CONSIDERING THE SHOW ONLY HAS ONE REAL FEMALE CHARACTER OTHERWISE. But no. You threw away the solid gold opportunity to make an anime with cute scrappy band-aid sporting little girl in a newsboy cap, you COWARDS.

Which basically sums Megalobox up for me. It could have done something cool and different, but chose to be just average. At least the soundtrack and aesthetic is great. The animation wasn’t bad either (though it could have stood to be more dynamic, considering it was about punching). I dug the retro vibe. But yeah, I won’t be revisiting this. And I will never forgive the loss of a potential boxing-obsessed scrapper anime girl. Ever.

[schniggles]

#kabru is such a big picture thinker. and he evaluates people more than he judges them imo #the hater jokes are funny but the people he judges most harshly arent laios and co. they're people like the island's lord. #but you don't see that as clearly because he isn't interested in the island's lord. he understands him. finds him contemptible but useful. #whereas laios lives in his brain rent free because he WANTS to understand him but doesnt quite. #even though he sees the elves as a major threat to his ultimate goals and dislikes the way they treat short lived races #he still understands and evaluates mithrun as an individual based on his own merits #he's one of the characters who is least judgemental in that sense because while he's always making judgements and evaluations #he's also constantly revising them whenever he gets more information #my beautiful machiavellian prince <3 #it's genuinely a really laudable way of understanding others imo. #the only problem is that because he's driven towards his goals by his PTSD and survivors guilt #he pushes himself into situations (the dungeon and also interpersonally) that trigger him or even just upset him #without regard for what he authentically wants or his own wellbeing. (via loriache)

"I've been waiting for ages for somebody to unmask them."

This moment tends to elicit negative reactions in a first read through, and I've got some opinions about why where Kabru is coming from here actually makes a lot of logical sense. So I thought I'd elaborate on that.

I think people hear this and go, "He thinks they must be hiding something because they gave money to someone? What a cynic." Or "he dislikes them because they did charity?? What's wrong with this guy!". And obviously, a lot, a lot is wrong with him. But I think this makes more sense than it seems at first glance! What people evaluating this judgement miss is why Kabru is paying attention to Laios and co to begin with.

Kabru knows of the Touden siblings because (he's a little bit of a stalker-) he is keeping an eye on all the relevant parties in events developing on the island, in order to be able to guide them to his preferred outcome. This includes adventurers because they are the ones actually exploring the dungeon! He's well aware that something as minor as internal tensions between party members could be key to the historical events that are developing. (He would love the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.)

His desired outcome is that whatever the rewards are of breaking the dungeon's curse, whether that's kingship or the ancient elven secrets of dungeons, are claimed by:

A) a short lived person

B) Someone who will be a good, effective leader and/or use those secrets and the power they carry wisely, with foresight, and to establish a political bloc for short lived people.

The person he can best trust to do this is, of course, himself. But due to his PTSD regarding dungeons and monsters, he's not able to develop the necessary skills to conquer the dungeon. Once he realises this, he starts looking for someone else who he can support to that end.

But most of the adventurers don't have any intentions of conquering the dungeon, don't have the skills, or are unsuitable in other ways. In fact, it seems like some potentially suitable people are the Toudens. There are a lot of good rumours about them going around - they actually seem to have a very positive reputation! That's what Kabru means when he says "unmask".

So when Kabru is observing something like them giving money to an old comrade from their gold-peeling days, he doesn't consider it a problem because "they're giving money to this person who doesn't actually need it" or because they must have some dark secret if they act superficially nice. I think he actually understands this situation and what it implies about Laios (in particular) perfectly well.

Laios and Falin gave money to an old comrade who got injured and couldn't work. That person then healed up but kept taking their money. Then he used the money to start smuggling illicit goods to the island.

The key is that for Kabru, the problem here is the same as with the corpse retrievers - people using the dungeon's resources to fuel dangerous, selfish, or violent pursuits cause problems for the island, attract more criminals and people with motives other than breaking the curse, and increase the chances of the whole situation ending in tragedy.

Kabru is willing to work with the Shadow Lord of the island if it gets him to his goal - he isn't scrupulous - but the criminal element of the island increasing is something he sees as a major issue.

Also, when you're evaluating someone as a candidate for power, riches, secrets, potentially kingship - then being curious about how the money you give to people is going to be used is kind of a relevant trait!

Interpersonally, Kabru's actually very easygoing - I mean, Mickbell isn't exactly an upstanding guy, is he! But Kabru likes him and they get along well. These traits wouldn't be a problem at all in a friend, or a comrade, or someone Kabru was confident he could use. But he can't get a handle on Laios, and Laios is someone who has the potential to be a major player!

On Laios' end, this is the same as with the marriage seeker who joined their party. She kept asking for things and he gave them to her, because he tries to be nice to others. He even gives her money! It's the exact same thing.

That's fine, but it became a problem because he basically wasn't interested in her motives, didn't notice she was trying to manipulate him, and it also didn't occur to him that the other party members would notice or be affected. We can assume the situation with the gold peeler is the same. When Kabru says that "It's not that they're bad people, they just aren't interested in humans," he isn't wrong.

The extent to which this is true of Laios is linked to his autism imo, (because it isn't just disinterest - he genuinely isn't able to notice nonverbal cues that people are lying to him or have ulterior motives) but to a greater or lesser extent I think it's a very common trait. Most people aren't actually that interested in other people who aren't close to them. Kabru is the weird one here. It isn't an issue except as a leader - which is why we see an immediate comparison to the Island's Lord, because that's how Kabru is evaluating them.

And disinterest in/lack of ability with people to the extent Laios exhibits it, it does, actually, make him a worse leader... it's just that as we see in the story, people can help him out. The rest of the party tell him the marriage seeker is taking advantage of him so he tells her he can't give her special treatment anymore. They're pissed and it's a crisis point - he couldn't have recovered their trust without Marcille and Falin - but that's exactly the point. With Marcille and Falin, he was able to recover their trust.

And he has other good traits that make up for it, such as his intelligence, strategic knowledge, open-mindedness and sense of fairplay.

Kabru doesn't disqualify Laios as a candidate based on what he sees about him from afar, though - he still tries very hard to get close to him, obviously hoping that if he manages he can steer Laios to defeat the dungeon and make up for his lack of people-skills in the aftermath. (Which... he does eventually achieve that goal!) He completely fails until the events of the story, so... definitely I think "They just aren't interested in humans" could also partially be a stung reaction to Laios' complete disinterest in him.

Anyway, that's my read on what exactly Kabru's "issue" with Laios is. Obviously, once he does find out what Laios' true nature is like - about his love for monsters - he develops an entirely new set of fears about Laios' priorities. But since Laios kept that a secret until the start of the story, he has no idea of that yet.

Given all that, I think it's interesting that he says that he doesn't think that the Toudens are suitable to defeat the dungeon, and that he's hoping they'll turn out to be the thieves. As some of his few potential candidates, people who he thinks may play a big role in the island's future, you'd think he'd hope they would be good people!

I suppose it's better, in his eyes, because it means that he's involved in something "interesting". They haven't just had their stuff stolen by regular criminals (boring, puts them further away from his goal) - they've been caught up in the beginning stages of "a historic event". The desperate and dwindling group forgetting morals in their quest to retrieve their lost comrade probably appeals to his sense of melodrama. Because he also just... loves drama.

Despite it being "uglier than anything he was expecting", he still pursues Laios as the person he wants to conquer the dungeon pretty much as soon as it becomes clear that he won't be able to do it himself and they are out of time. That's because... well, to be fair, there aren't any other options. And he fits standard A: he's short-lived!

and Kabru still hopes he can fit standard B, too, and be persuaded to use the power he wins for good. No matter how many nightmares he has about Laios, or whether he thinks about killing him. He doubts him, but ultimately he puts his faith in him and seems happy after the manga's ending that he made the right decision.