#it's so good they are so true to the manga in everything - especially the gag parts

[aashi-heartfilia]

Deku and Ochako: Two threads running in parallel

MHA has a vibrant cast with each character having its own quirks and perks. We often find ourselves shipping them and rooting for them to become cannon but in the midst of these shipping wars, we often overlook their personal journeys become true heroes.

One such pair is IzuOcha.

People often view it as a straight vanilla ship and ignore everything that makes it special/different from the other so-called vanilla ships. The fact that their journeys were always running in parallel, fighting side by side, inspiring each other in a give and take relationship...but let's start from the very beginning....

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Chapter 3: The first time we meet Ochako, she saves Deku from falling on his two feet. She's nervous, but not as much as Deku. She wishes them both good luck and leaves. Now, this was their first meeting, and this is where their "Do your best" starts.

They both did their best in the exams, where Deku saves Ochako from the giant robot and Ochako in turns saves Deku from falling, like literally saving his life this time around.

Chapter 4: Then, the next time we see her, she was vouching for Deku, even at the cost of her own points. This also parallels her speech later in the manga.

Chapter 7: They enter UA, finally meet each other again, and become friends. In fact, on the very first day, Ochako says that she likes the name Deku, as it kinda gives a "You can do it!" vibe. Another fun thing to note here is that in Japanese she refers to 'gambare' which literally means "Do your best!".

She changes the meaning of his name, from an insult to something inspiring and it might have looked like a comedy gag moment at that time, but when you look at future chapters, it was much more than that.

Chapter 8: The very next chapter, we see Deku facing off Bakugo and saying "He's the Deku who does his best!". And we even see the importance of what Ochako said as she inspired him to do his best. In that test, they both pass with flying colors.

Chapter 22: Then not after too long, we find out about Ochako's motivation to be a hero, which was to earn money so that her parents can have easier lives. Some might say, there are other ways to make money, why choose heroism?

Well, you need to look deeper into the character, especially for someone like Ochako that has layers to her character. She's not someone you can tell by looking at first glance. From outside, she might be all sweet and cherry but from the inside, there's a storm. She has an iron will, and that she depicted again and again, be it her battle with Bakugo in sports fest or her quirk awakening and battle with Toga in the 2nd war. She has always been like that.

On the surface, she presents herself to be your average girl next door, but when you look behind that facade, you'll see a plethora of emotions.

She laughs with everyone but cries alone.

Her crying after Deku leaves (ch 37) or her thoughts about "who saves the heroes", or her "I didn't know the first thing about Toga" thoughts...

She has thoughts and emotions that are deep and not for not everyone can comprehend them. Some people might still see her as nothing more than a blatant love interest but we know that's far from the truth and that's why we'll deep dive into her character a little more.

Ochako has a lot of self-respect >>>

Despite what inspires her to be a hero, she refuses to take help from anyone. This is depicted when she refuses to take help from Deku in the SF. She felt embarrassed when Iida challenged Deku as that made her question her own ideals.

They were all there to become heroes and that makes them all rivals, even if they are friends and thus she challenges him to meet her at the finals.

I think that was a very underrated Ochako moment. (can't present all the pictures because Tumblr only allows less than 10 pics, but you can see it in the collage above)

From the very first day, her "let's do our best!" moment to their battle with Toga in the final war, she has been challenging / inspiring Deku but due to her soft personality, it gets overlooked very often.

It parallels Bakugo in a way and I love the parallels between Bakugo and Ochako but that is for another day.

So it's safe to conclude that just like Bakugo who has been a hardcore rival in power and ideals, Ochako has also been a friend / rival both in terms of power and ideals, although it might be more of her morals that inspire him the most. He even thinks about her in his final battle with Shigaraki, because she was the only one that resonates with his idea of saving villains but more on that later.

Chapter 37: After her loss, Deku goes to check on her and it turns out she was doing fine. She has taken it very positively or so it may seem but as soon as Deku leaves, she starts crying and Deku overhears her. He even feels guilty about not being able to do anything for her.

And that shows you how perceptive Deku really is. He's not some dumb, dense MC that has no clue how others are feeling. He's very sensible and wouldn't cause unnecessary trouble.

Chapter 45: After the sports fest, we see everyone choosing their hero names and Izuku chooses Deku. We even get a reaction panel of both Ochako and Bakugo. Bakugo always looked down on Deku and used it as an insult to call him 'useless' but Ochako changed its meaning to some positive, more meaningful.

Then in the following chapters (ch 46) they both go for their internships where Deku learns to control his 5% from Grand Torino and Ochako learns combat from Gunheads and I might say, IzuOcha might be the only people who learned the most from their internships, lol.

From then onwards, they both continue to grow in terms of power, as the story starts focusing on other characters as well, and we see less of her. Plus, her slight crush starts to develop from that point on, which made most people overlook her entire story.

But let's go over some of the key moments from that time:

Aoyama and Ochako vs 13: Aoyama teases Ochako about Deku, and this might be the first mention of her having a crush on Deku (ch 67)

Izuku encounters Shigaraki at the mall: If it wasn't for Ochako, everyone in the mall, including Deku would have died, making it the 2nd time Ochako saved Deku's life, quite literally (ch 68 and 69)

God knows what would have happened if Ochako didn't come back at the right time. She called the police and alerted everyone. Ochako doesn't get enough credit for her responsible and mature nature.

Chapter 76-77: Deku vs Muscular and Chapter 80: Ochako and Tsuyu vs Toga 1.0 where Deku and gang's interference saved them kinda like how Ochako's presence in the mall saved Deku from Shigaraki, although that was more serious.

Chapter 100: Ochako, Iida and Deku meet Hatsume. Yeah, that iconic encounter that has another parallel.

Chapter 102: Ochako realises her feelings for Deku.

Chapter 105: Deku realises it's not Ochako.

The thing is, Deku knew from the get go that the stranger is not Ochako. He even says "Ochako has been training to use her quirk and now she can float herself for some time, ignoring the side effects. In a situation like this, she wouldn't forget to use it and to reveal herself to the enemy without a plan?"

No, you're not the Uraraka I know.

And that, says volumes out there relationship! Even though, we saw how Ochako had romantic feelings for Deku in the previous chapters, she still kept on improving and Deku acknowledged that!

Even if we don't see him analysing her quirk again and again like Bakugo, he always keeps an eye on her, because note that in the manga, she never specifically tells him about her improvement but he still noticed it!

He knows Ochako enough to know that she's smart and strategic and that she would never reveal herself in front of the enemy without a solid plan. So when he saved Toga (disguised as Ochako) he knew that it wasn't Ochako!

And that's pure respect.

It is one of the examples of "Show, don't tell".

Chapter 107: Ochako quickly followed Deku's idea because she trusts him so much.

Chapter 109: And later, we see her struggling to keep her feelings under check. Because she's so inspired by Deku to do her best, it becomes an internal battle of emotions. At one point, she wants to compete with him, on the other, she has feelings for him that she can't control.

After that, it's a brief period of self-reflection from Ochako. We start seeing her less and less. She gets busy with her internship with Ryukyu and the team and we later see that they help defeat that giant villain in ch 156.

We later see that one of the biggest developments of Ochako comes from ch 163, where she regrets not being able to save Sir Nighteye.

In the class 1a vs 1b arc, she saves Deku when his quirk blackwhip goes haywire. If it wasn't for her quick thinking, again God knows what would have happened.

She may not have numerous power quirks like Deku but she's a capable hero in her own right and that is depicted in the Joint training arc when not only does she save Deku, but also manages to KO 3/5 people in the opponents team (Monoma, Rei, Poltergeist). She was literally the MVP of that arc.

Plus we get to see more of what runs inside her brain. Her ideology about forms the basis for one of the greatest arcs in the story.

"Who saves the heroes when they are in pain?"

After JTA, they again go to their internships and when they come back Deku apologises for what happened during JTA. Note that even though it was never shown, he was still concerned about Ochako.

He was sad that he unknowingly hurt her (much like how he says thank you very later after her speech). But Ochako on the other hand brushes it off, saying it's not a big deal and it inspired her to use wires much like Sero and Deku.

So, we see this relationship of give and take come into play again and again where they both inspire the other to do their best. Then they share a cute fist bump.

On Christmas, out of pure coincidence (wink** wink** Horikoshi) they both receive each other's presents.

Also note that, Ochako gets her hero costume upgraded after JTA, where she starts using those grappling hooks to grab and throw stuff, much like Deku and also attaches tiny rockets in her heels for more mobility.

Plus, that cute tiny pocket where she keeps her AM plushie❤️(that she got as Christmas gift from Deku). I think, after Bakugo and Deku, she has the most useful costume upgrade in the entire class!

Also, when Deku has a battle with Shigaraki in the 1st war, there is an entire chapter dedicated to Ochako vs Toga. Plus, she also gets to witness the aftermath of the war and her face, even now serves as the highlight for that chapter (ch 295).

The ragged blanket of heroism shed that day and what was left was the remains, of what it means to be a hero.

And for someone who was initially there for the money, it is especially important that she gets to witness this. It was the true horrors of hero society. She witnessed all this and still chose to stay in that line of work already says that she is way past her old thinking.

She's not some government agent like Hawks or Nagant or training to become the No 1 hero like Deku, Bakugo or Endeavour. Her life is simple, much like the citizens she saves, but it still matters.

And that's what makes her a People's Hero.

And finally after the first war, Deku leaves UA and Ochako rethinks "Who saves the heroes when they are in need?" and after that point onwards there was no looking back as her character arc takes a great turn!!

We get an entire arc of Dark Deku, indulging more and more into the darkness of his own powers and almost 10 chapters later we see a completely different Ochako.

I still remember people talking about it when ch 319 dropped.

This Ochako is ready to take action and takes shit from no one! One of the greatest character developments if you ask me. Ochako in a way is more like Lucy from Fairytail. Gets ignored most of the time but their moments are just as important.

Even though Deku went around saving people for days, people started viewing him as a villain. Ochako's speech brought him back to being a human.

Not a hero, not a villain, just a human.

And then we see her thinking about Toga, and how she didn't know the first thing about her in ch 342. She had a chat with Deku, where she confided in him. I think that kind of emotional intimacy is what makes their relationship interesting.

Her morals matter a lot to Deku, believe it or not! And that's why when she asks him to leave and take care of Shigaraki in ch 348, he thinks back to this conversation and unwillingly obliges.

Because he has faith in her, the kind that cannot be expressed in words. That comes from a long time understanding of each other...that is beyond comprehension for many people and that's why her "Do your best!" matters because that's what they have been doing since the day they met!

~Sunshine

[eebibly]

The Fairy Tail anime should not have made the Eclipse Spirits arc.

Spoiler Warning

I was super excited for this arc. I knew it was filler and would end up relatively inconsequential to the main story because it can’t (or at least shouldn’t) mess with manga canon, but I felt like the Eclipse designs were really cool (most of them anyway) and the celestial spirits were finally getting the attention that they so deserved! So when I finally got to watching it as the episodes came out week by week, I was so disappointed to slowly witness the anime equivalent of a train wreck that only got worse with every new release.

It’s bad. Might as well start with that. Plain and simple. It’s horrible. It lures the viewer in with an intriguing premise: Lucy’s golden spirits aren’t appearing when summoned, her silver spirits are harmed and in distress. Suddenly, her beloved Zodiacs appear before her —having taken on completely new forms— to declare their freedom from the shackles of celestial contracts; even though they have no memory of Lucy and what they’ve been through together.

And, already, therein lies the anime’s first mistake. The Zodiacs, simultaneously, have absolutely no recollection of their previous lives or masters, and yet also harbour a deeper resentment for both. So much so that they are willing to give up their immortality and lives just for a taste of some ‘true freedom’. This implies that, despite the amnesia, there is deeply-rooted residual trauma that Lucy and friends could have addressed in order to reach out to them. Although Lucy, famous for being especially respectful of spirits, may not have done anything specifically wrong, this could still be a good chance for her to better understand what freedom, bond and loyalty actually mean to her spirits. And then, she could readjust to meet their needs. Instead, the anime gets very stuck by the fact that they’ve forgotten everything. So the spirits just end up sounding like petulant children, covering their ears. The anime can’t decide whether we, the viewers, should be taking their concerns seriously or just feeling bad for Lucy who has to deal with her oddball pesky spirits again- But This Time, They Might Die!! Edition.

One could argue that the anime didn’t want to explore the same concept of freedom 12 times over. Except, they didn’t have to. There are so many different ways to explore what freedom means to each spirit, especially since each one has a room dedicated to them. It’s a perfect yet wasted opportunity to actually delve into each spirit and how they feel about their existence. Some quick, underdeveloped ideas: Leo could have been a reflection on what it means to have power, but the way that that power is used is out of his control; Aries could be a deep-dive into how to deal with abuse and trauma when stuck with a soft heart; Aquarius could have a been a deliberation on independence vs codependence; Virgo— exploring the difference between loyalty and servitude, etc.

One may argue that it would have taken too much time to do that though, considering the allotted amount of episodes for the arc (being 15). But I would argue that some of the *checks Wikipedia* 10.5 extra filler episodes before and after this arc could have been used for this purpose, instead of filling more space with (cute, but mostly mediocre) one-shots that, honestly, could have just been OVAs. I don’t think they’re useless or anything, I just feel that those episodes could have been better spent on making the Eclipse arc actually good. (Except Kemo-Kemo~ sweet baby’s story is exactly where it should be and he deserves so much love.)

However, we instead get a hodgepodge of slapstick gags and situational ironies in nonsensical minigame-esque battles. Taurus getting defeated because he’s a germaphobe? Really? You’d rather make fun of OCD (or other related neurodivergent diagnoses) over just actually having a meaningful conversation about what Taurus wants to achieve out of this rebellion? A boring Game Show where Levy is forced to reveal her oh-so-not-secret crush? Magic The Gathering Scorpio??? Don’t even get me started on Aries and Virgo… On top of that, the characters speak to one another as if they’ve resolved… something (for example, Wendy and Aquarius wanting to play together again someday), and will see each other again in the spirits’ eclipse forms—which I had assume they were trying to revert. Unfortunately, there’s literally no point to any of their bonding… especially after they forget it all when they become normal again anyway.

Not to mention, every other conversation is just a looped wall: “Loke, I’m saving you cuz you’re my friend and Lucy is sad!” - “My name is Leo!!!”; “Virgo, let’s talk, I don’t want you to feel enslaved, I swear!” - “Yeah right, stupid human, have some mayo down your tits”; “Please, Libra, I just wanna be friends again!” - “Shut up, balance is all”. Worst of all, these are the few examples where the humans managed to break through to them minimally. Everyone else simply had no brain cells left and were just like: “Welp, guess I lost. Peace out.” It is just the laziest writing. They even chose to ignore Loke and Gray’s canonical friendship, all for the sake of making Natsu shine again… (listen, I love Natsu- but THE BROMANCE C’MON. It all just felt forced.)

And on top of that, you know all those interesting themes that could have been explored but that ultimately amount to nothing? The story then pivots and decides: “you know what? It actually DOES mean NOTHING!!!” Because (plot twist!) the freedom they actually wanted was from their power-hungry overlord beast of a King! (|Sarcasm incoming->) But of course, that wasn’t a believable enough reason for wanting freedom, and they’d rather die than ask humans for help. (Sarcasm over|) The fact that Ophiuchus tricked them into giving up their lives “for the king” without the Zodiacs realizing is probably the worst plot twist I’ve ever read.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily mind “we did this all for nothing” or “we tried to help but ended leading them to their demise” premises. Having said that, not only was this one poorly executed, but it also removes any reason for the viewer to take the spirits’ concerns seriously. After all, they were just taking out their misunderstood fear on the humans. Their feelings were misplaced, therefore we no longer have to worry about them wanting to actually leave Lucy or choosing to die. Also, why did they hurt the silver keys? Were they just acting out? Were they working under the influence of the king? Or is the implication that it’s actually the king who hurt them? If it was the Zodiac spirits who hurt them, despite the fact that the silvers are also under threat of the beast- WHY???

*siiiiigh*

In short, just because filler arcs should be inconsequential to the canon story line, that doesn’t mean that they can’t have something meaningful to explore or add to the existing story. Instead, Fairy Tail anime decided to waste everyone’s time on half-baked battles, cheap (borderline offensive) gags, and a plot twist that ultimately implies: “if the spirits don’t belong to Lucy (and Yukino), then they don’t matter.” And then— The spirits don’t even remember being saaaaved. *slow clap* Veeeery funny, anime. What a clever clever this-was-all-for-nothing final jest.

[connoisseursdecomfort]

A mini character analysis on Twilight/Loid/[redacted]

As much as I am a tiny bit sad that Loid is still not having that reflection I want him to have after the last arc, I think I will have to remind myself something I posted somewhere else:

“The problem is, Twilight is inching towards his hidden self, [redacted], instead of running towards being ‘Loid’. As much as we want to believe that [redacted] is closer to ‘Loid’ in nature, and that he could have become ‘Loid’ if war didn’t happen, ‘Loid’ is still a work persona created by Twilight to complete Operation Strix. This persona allowed Twilight to ‘love’, but it is also a constant reminder that it is a facade. ‘Loid’ was a middle ground for Twilight to get back in touch with [redacted]. But now it has become a battleground where Twilight and [redacted] are having a standoff.”

I’ll be as patient as I can be.

(Manga spoilers ahead: and an analysis of ch.77)

I see people on twitter saying that everything we love about Loid has gone downhill since ch.62. I don’t necessarily think so because we have ch.68, but it is kinda true he doesn’t seem to get much development on the dad/husband department since the end of the cruise arc. To a point that people started to be angry at him and Endo since ch.75.

Loid has been in this utter confusion since the cruise arc. Before that, he doesn’t realise he has this confusion - he has been able to use the excuse, you know, Loid “for the mission” Forger, to justify everything. The cruise arc is really the first time he’s not on the mission. Basically it takes 50 chapters for Endo to finally ask Loid this important question, “What if it’s not for the mission?”

This poor man has been confused ever since, like in ch.76:

This is, of course, just this stupid man’s way of asking if he’s a good enough father for Anya for the mission. But it doesn’t go away easily. He has been a spy for more than a decade. And before that he was alone for years. Being a Forger for only three months is not going to reverse that many years of trauma.

But his true self is winning. Has been winning since ch.62. He still tries to rationalise everything using his spy radar, and somehow he ends up being absolutely genuine.

In ch. 62, right after this scene where he deliberately reminded himself that this is “Loid’s” house:

He somehow chose to be a real dad instead of being a good spy:

And the same thing happened again in ch.66:

Sandwiched between all the spy-talks he had in his head, there is this transparent bubble. This is also the bubble that convinces me that he knows she is keeping secrets, but somehow he doesn’t care. But this is for another day.

His head says spy, but his actions always speak otherwise.

Endo loves to play with the idea of misinformation. He blatantly said in the fanbook that the info Franky has on the Garden is an exaggerated version of it, and is not accurate. The more obvious example would be the Handler’s arc in Ch.63. This is a story about secrets and lies, but there is a grain of truth in all the lies these characters tell us. Especially Loid “for the mission” Forger. From day 1 we knew Twilight’s a liar and a very cool one. But somehow Endo also makes him to be this genuine and sincere man. And he also needs therapy.

So Endo shows us how much he really needs therapy, just look at all these similarities, like this:

Ch.77

Ch.62.3

Or this: Ch.77

Ch.22

Ch.67.1

But the real fear is always this: am I worthy for the family? Does she feel that I am worthy enough?

Ch. 77

For Loid “for the mission” Forger, this basically translates to, my wife and daughter are upset my mission is failing because I’m not good enough I’m a bad spy. He has hit himself with this “bad spy! bad spy!” mentality so many times, it’s basically a running gag now.

Ch.10

Ch.17.5

Ch.29

Okay I give up finding every single panel of him panicking because it’s too much. But I think you get it.

Mr. Austin is so obviously a foil for Loid. As the therapy unfolds, we were trying to figure Loid out just as Loid tried hard to figure Mr. Austin out.

Loid even asked the same question we want to ask him:

Isn’t that exactly why people are mad at him now? Is he lying to himself when he says for the mission, or is he just lying to us the whole damn time? 

I think the problem is that we are all expecting Loid to be his actual persona. And it could be. But Ch.62 is also reminding all of us that “Loid” is something invented by Twilight. Even Twilight is something invented. By [redacted]. We love Loid. We kinda like Twilight, mostly because he’s hot af. But do we like [redacted], the man with all the flaws and merits Loid and Twilight have?

You see, like father, like daughter. Anya and [redacted] really don’t know what normality is. In Ch. 76:

And in Ch. 77:

They really don’t know what it is like to be a normal family, although they are already in one, and they sure feel very loved.

Remember back in Ch.10/Ep.7, when he said this: “I wonder what it’d feel like to have a real family.” This really is Endo asking [redacted] the same question, “What if this is not for the mission? What if you are in a real family?”

And [redacted] still doesn’t know the answer, although the answer is really there right from the start. He is this stupid, stupid man, who’s also absolutely traumatised and utterly confused. But you know what? If this is a story about recovery and rediscovery, then:

[airisu7425]

More priceless faces of Uenoyama-kun (in ep 11)

[stillness-in-green]

MVA In Memoriam (3/5)

The Comprehensive Account of the Butchering of My Villain Academia

(Introduction and Part One, Episode 108: My Villain Academia) (Part Two, Episode 109: Revival Party)

Part Three, Episode 110: Sad Man's Parade

Chapter 229 – All It Takes Is One Bad Day

• The full first page, of Jin getting mobbed by Puppet!Jins, them tearing his mask off, and flinging it and then him away. Saved them a bit of budget, I suppose, but it’s a shame to lose the drama and the violence of Twice having his mask pulled away, since it’s decent foreshadowing (indeed, possibly intentionally so, on Skeptic’s part) for the violent bewilderment he’ll be subject to shortly.

• Re-Destro’s line, “Not when he’s using his meta-ability to puppeteer, unless you want another nagging lecture.” They didn’t keep the first nagging lecture, so of course they wouldn’t keep this. I’m still annoyed, both on general principle and at the loss of RD’s implication that these nagging lectures are a regular occurrence, especially if one tries to bother Skeptic when he’s using his meta-ability. Has RD himself been on the receiving end of one? Possibly so! But you’d be less likely to think so just from the anime.

• Re-Destro’s line, “This allowed our warriors to momentarily hold back and stay out of danger.” Because why would the audience need to know that Skeptic planned for and Re-Destro cares enough to observe something like that lol?? Obviously the MLA is perfectly content to just throw their peoples’ lives away because, whatever, more where that came from! Dammit, anime, the fandom believes this enough as it is without confirmation bias from your cuts!

• Skeptic’s “fufufu” laugh, because the anime is allergic to the MLA having fun.

• The police officer’s line, “Sure, but in a case like this, you’re still to blame.” The rest of the exchange hints at it, of course, but there’s a horrifying callousness to a police officer just saying straight to the face of a teenaged orphan facing his first offense, “Yes, you were obeying the law perfectly and this guy just ran out in front of you, but it’s going on your criminal record anyway, whatever.” A weight the anime lost, and another that makes me very suspicious of the patterns behind what, precisely, was put on the chopping block.[1]

• Jin’s narration, “That police officer couldn’t have known. Me neither.” Demonstrates that Jin doesn’t really hold his fall against the one policeman. It’s a consistent thread with Jin’s character that, while he’s very jaded, he’s not actually vengeful, nor is he looking to enact systemic change. While he’s very defensive of his friends, people who hurt Jin himself are never in any real danger of him coming to collect his pound of flesh in return; he just rolls with it as part of how the world works, in the way of someone who was never given reason to believe any different. This line is a good example of that.

• From Jin’s old employer’s angry rant, deletes the note that the client that called is angry, and that the client said, “That young punk of yours did this!” It’s nothing that wasn’t obvious from the rest of the conversation, but I do I think cutting it loses a sense that this guy is just unloading all of his frustration and fear on Jin. The length of the screed, the extra details—it clearly communicates that Jin’s boss is so angry and upset he’s not paying any real mind to filtering, but just recounting every point of contention the moment they come into his mind.

• In modern society, when you’re someone without roots… Well, not a lot of people can relate to that.” It isn’t just the police that failed Jin; it’s a whole society that’s distrustful of people who don’t have a place in the fabric, and thus are unwilling to try and bring them into it. Like Tenko, there are a thousand little places where someone could have reached out a hand, but no one ever did. The audience can intuit this, but I feel it’s better to be clear about it—it’s not just the legal system that screwed Jin over; it’s every other person that never tried to help him because they were afraid of his eyes or distrusted a guy who had no connections. When Shigaraki comes, he’s not going to be coming for heroes alone; he’ll be coming for this entire tapestry of indifference and timidity.

• Skeptic’s lines, “Hrm? Fighting back? I was sure he’d either flee or cower in place... We didn’t anticipate such unity between them.” This gets at two things. Firstly, and once again, that the MLA did their research; that they came into this with educated expectations and a definite plan. Secondly, an in-character observation of what the arc has been showing the audience all along: that the League isn’t just a disparate gang of hoodlums anymore; that they’re developing real bonds. Those bonds mark them as unusual—Re-Destro comments on it in 223, as did Overhaul in 147; even Mr. Compress remarks disapprovingly on Twice’s “habit” of getting overly attached to people. It’s striking that, even though the MLA knew from Giran’s records that the League was uncommonly well-bonded, Twice’s devotion still fell outside Skeptic’s parameters.[2]

• Again Skeptic’s line, “Now his legs.” The drones don’t actually get this far (though you can see them gearing up for it on the next page), so it’s a reasonable enough cut, but it does emphasize the ludicrous, over-the-top extremes Skeptic in particular is willing to go to in securing what he wants. If, you know, “Kidnap the doubler so we have a method to make copies of the Grand Commander at our leisure,” wasn’t bonkers enough.

• Twice’s line, “Even against Gigantomachia!” It really highlights just how much mental energy Twice has been dedicating to avoiding injury, that he was able to keep it in mind even fighting a foe as overwhelming, and for as extended a period, as Machia. And like, the anime blitzed over the Machia fight so quickly, and with so little visible wear and tear to the League, that it really could have used all the reminders it could find room for about how intense those six weeks were.

• Twice’s line, “I won’t watch a friend die!” Such an important line that the composer named an entire track for it, not that the anime gave us that track in the moment it was clearly scored for. They added in a new line later in the scene which mostly gets the important sentiments back in, but loses out in being slightly less fitting to his breakthrough. See the Additions portion of the write-up on Chapter 230, following.

Framing Shifts

• The policeman in Jin’s flashback looked up at him in the anime, where in the manga, his eyes stay down on his paperwork the entire time. I realize that anime can’t just still-frame every panel of a manga and call it an adaptation,[3] so characters will do things like move and look around in different directions just in the course of inhabiting a room, Still, in this case, it has the effect of making the officer look more alert and engaged than he was in the manga, and given that this whole chunk of backstory is about Jin slipping through the social safety net, it feels appropriate to me that the officer should be completely checked out.

Additions

• A new shot of Jin(s) in his pre-massacre doppelganger army days. Didn’t tell us anything we don’t already know—it’s little more than a new angle of the gang in the truck—but it was nice to see.

Bonus Note

• They left Re-Destro’s phrase, “My company,” alone when he was talking about the micro-transceivers Skeptic was using. That’s accurate to the manga, but I’d like to remind everyone that, at that point in the anime, viewers whose only reference is the anime itself have no idea that Re-Destro is a businessman. The show skipped the commercial, RD’s intro, the dinner scene where his company comes up, and Giran’s association of RD with Detnerat; it will further go on to skip Shigaraki recognizing him from the commercial. The news report mentioning Detnerat was ten full episodes prior to Episode 110, and was followed up on in not the faintest degree. For heaven’s sake, would it have been so hard to have Hirata Hiroaki say, “My Detnerat’s,” instead of just, “My company’s”?

Chapter 230 – Sad Man’s Parade

• Deleted the MLA members that are attacking Compress as they get pushed off by the Twice wave. Not the first time, and not the last, that the anime didn’t animate the random MLA people on the street. It’s hard to take the threat of their numbers seriously when the anime kept deleting them from what are supposed to be crowd scenes, you know?

• Mr. C thinking worriedly about Dabi as he’s mulling over Geten’s strength and disregard for catching his own people in the collateral damage. It’s just a, “Dabi—!” but it’s yet another tiny cut that shaves away at the manga’s clear depiction of Leagues’ concern for one another—even Mr. Compress, who claims that such things aren’t very villainous.

Framing Shifts

• Changed the random MLA’s exhortation to kill all the Twices to a generic, “Damn—!” I know American censors have often taken issue with the words “Kill” and “Die” in kids’ cartoons, but I was never of the impression that that was the case in Japan. And it’s not like the show made any bones about Curious planning to kill Toga. A rephrase to save a second and a half on dialogue, maybe?

• Had Skeptic give his lines about failure on the way over to the elevator instead of stalking over in silence, and then dumping the whole monologue all at once. The manga’s extended silence over three identically sized panels is much funnier and more characterful. I grow ever more confident in my assessment of Skeptic as the second-most ill-treated MLA character in this adaptation.

• The return of the Doom Choirs for the Twice Parade. I really wish the anime would lay off slathering Doom Choirs all over everything, especially a moment like this: a triumph for Twice, and, true to form for Twice, also crammed to the gills with visual and verbal gags. The Doom Choir is out of keeping with both the victory and the comedy—Mine Woman, later on, served the Parade much better.

Additions

• Gave Twice a new line, “I will protect my comrades!” It was nice to make up for his, “I won’t watch a friend die!” but the latter is more characterful, especially since a more literal translation is, “I won’t kill my friends!” Which is, you know, relevant to the fact that Twice has problems telling himself apart from things that just look like him, and he just had to intervene to stop some of those look-alikes from killing one of said friends. At least it got his use of nakama back in.[4]

• A new little cut of animation as the action went back to Geten and Dabi. I suppose the Dabi fans liked it, and it was nice to see more of Geten’s ice dragon, but I’d have much preferred they could keep the scenes we already have before adding new ones.

Chapter 231 – Path

The scene of Hawks wondering why he hasn’t heard from Dabi and his subsequent flashback to the last time they spoke were relocated to the beginning of Episode 102, the first thing the audience saw after the prior episode ended with Shouto inviting Bakugou and Deku to come intern with him at Endeavor’s. In the manga, of course, it’s not “a few weeks ago in Kyushu,” it’s “meanwhile in Osaka.” Also, the order of the scenes was flipped—the episode led with the flashback, then returned to the modern day. It really makes the timeline needlessly confusing—the viewer has no real context for what we’re seeing and when, especially since the anime neglected to specify how much time passed between the two scenes. You have to assume it was enough time for an outcry to be raised over Jeanist’s disappearance, but the random shot of a bird flying over was not at all helpful there.

          Alterations included (as usual, outright removed material is in bold text):

          1. Cut Hawks’ thought, “That’s why you keep calling,” and his line, “What’s the job?” I know I should give a breakdown here about Hawks’ mentality and training, but I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to complain about any lines Takami Keigo loses. God knows the anime gives him plenty enough bonus material.

          2. Spliced in the flashback scene of Hawks reporting to the Commission from Chapter 243, but subtly changed it to suggest that it took place after the phonecall in which Dabi demanded Hawks kill a non-Endeavor top hero, rather than it taking place right after Hawks and Dabi’s first contact, which is what the manga implies.

          3. Deleted several key shots in the Jeanist apartment scene, with the effect of making Hawks way less creepy. We got an anime-original shot of his eyes, narrow and serious, but not either of the shots of his big, off-putting grin and widened eyes as he pulls a feather-blade on Jeanist. We also lost a shot of Jeanist turning to face him, framed between extended primaries of Hawks’ Fierce Wings. It’s not like the anime dropped the fake!Dead Jeanist plot, so I’m not sure why the shift, unless it’s just that they wanted to keep Hawks likable for the merch-buying crowd, not creepy and unsettling. And while I personally never believed that Hawks really killed Jeanist, a lot of people thought it was plausible, no doubt based on how off-kilter he comes across in this scene. It loses a real frisson, to just play it straight.

• Shigaraki decaying a missile in mid-air. So Dabi can get those little animation flourishes but Tomura can’t, huh, anime? I see how it is. I. See. How. It. Is.

• Spinner’s little side comment about all the ice everywhere. A nice demonstration that Geten and Dabi’s fight really is affecting huge swathes of the city; that’s certainly apparent already in a bunch of the wide shots showing exactly that, but it’s helpful to have the more zoomed-in moments, too. Also, I do enjoy those little side quips wherever we get them, and the anime often removes them.

• Thinned out the crowd guarding the route to the tower somewhat (it’s particularly noticeable on the mid-distance rooftops) and, as best I can tell, removed Shigaraki and Spinner from the shot. Why keep all the lines harping on the 110,000 number when a) it’s not even accurate to the MLA’s forces, just the League’s assumptions, and b) the studio doesn’t even have the resources to adequately convey the numbers the manga does portray?

• Somebody in the crowd being defiant about Twice’s multiplication and vigorously declaring that the League are all just sacrifices for the MLA’s Revival Party anyway. The background nobodies? Allowed to express even bog-standard over-confidence? Well I never. How dare those people think their lives count enough for them to get dialogue.

• Spinner’s, “This keeps happening!” Of course he couldn’t have that line in the anime, since the anime cut the other big place Trumpet clearly used his power to rile up his followers. What other times were you even talking about when you said, “Every time he talks,” Anime!Spinner? That scene was the first time we even saw Trumpet since he welcomed you guys to town.

• Twice calling Re-Destro a cult leader. He just called him a damn moron (bakayarou) in the anime; he uses the considerably more specific baka kyouso (Google Translate gives “guru”; jisho gives “founder of a religious sect”). He uses the same term again immediately afterward—Viz’s translation gives, “More like chrome dome cult!”—which the anime also deleted.

          So here’s another example of the anime doing everything it could to erase the presence of cults in the HeroAca world. The easy assumption to make is that this was tied to broadcast standards about the depiction of what Japan refers to as “new religious movements,” which—and pardon the brief swerve into real life historical horrors here—have been very unpopular in Japan since Aum Shinrikyo and the sarin gas attacks in 1995. But were these elements removed because the anime didn’t want to represent anything that smacks of new religious movements at all, or because the depiction of both the MLA and particularly the CRC are explicitly villainous and calling religious movements, even made-up ones, evil on TV leads to a lot of angry phone calls?

• Re-Destro’s line, “Unlike my good Miyashita, there’s nothing charming about you.” Of course they’d cut this, having cut the Miyashita scene, but I hate it anyway. As I said earlier, RD’s invocation of Miyashita in front of two people who are going to have not the slightest clue who that is tells me that Re-Destro really does miss and feel bad about killing the guy. Cutting the reminder that RD still feels that sting makes it much too easy to assume that Shigaraki’s right about RD hiding up in his tower, uncaring of the blood shed on his behalf, when if you read Re-Destro with even the slightest of attempts at good faith, it’s clear that those losses weigh very heavily on him.

          Incidentally, and not to harp on the art again, but in the manga, Stress is still visibly spread down from RD’s temple to the ridge of his brow over his eye socket. The anime returned it back to its normal resting state, again suggesting that the death toll mounting in the streets below (as well as, possibly, the new stress of confronting a quirk as powerful as Double) left RD completely unmoved. The spread was back in the following shot, so it was probably just an art error, but it would be nice to have had fewer of those, especially when they impact characterization as much as what RD’s Stress blots are doing at any given time.

Framing Shifts

• Had Machia doing this weird cannonball skim just over the ground, when in the manga, he’s still half-buried, spraying earth and stone everywhere. The manga never namedrops Machia’s Mole quirk during the story itself, but it’s important to know for later that Machia can not only tear through obstacles, he can tear through obstacles extremely quickly.

Additions

• Gave Hawks a few new lines about how too many unexpected things happened for their last arrangement, and that Dabi should have given him more warning. Largely seemed to be there to give the anime an excuse to flashback to the High End fight, in case the viewers had completely forgotten about Hawks and Dabi having a clandestine meeting and sniping at each other in the aftermath of that event. An understandable addition, but deeply frustrating in the context of all the lines that got cut.

Chapter 232 – Meta Abilities and Quirks

• Dropped a third instance of Twice calling Re-Destro a cult leader. I don’t know what the S&P restriction is on this, but given that the movie was allowed to create and villainize an entire international terrorist cult, it is really incomprehensible that the MLA doesn’t get to keep their designation as such. Why?? Because the movie involves going out and defeating its cult, but the series is going to engage in a more sympathetic treatment?[5] Because the self-selecting movie crowd is less likely to complain than the TV audience? Did they just not want to draw attention to how much the movie was ripping off the MLA’s whole shtick? What??

• Missed that RD’s swole arm swipe wipes out the puppets Skeptic left behind; they just vanished from the scene entirely after Twice’s arrival. It’s hard to blame the anime for this; the manga also seems to lose track of the fact that they’re right there in between RD and the elevator—they’re nowhere to be seen anywhere between the end of Chapter 231 and the aforementioned arm swipe, where you can see them getting obliterated. Both versions could have stood to be more attentive to this; indeed, the anime could have fixed it, small error though it is.

• A sort of twitchy sparking around Shigaraki’s hand right after he decays the tower. This is foreshadowing that Shigaraki’s big AOE decay attacks are hard on his body, which will become extremely apparent after he unleashes it on the city at large during the climax, and factors into his decision to accept the mysterious power Ujiko offers. The damage Shigaraki sustains there doesn’t come out of nowhere; Horikoshi is, on the whole, extremely good at layering in foreshadowing many chapters before the foreshadowed elements come fully to light. It makes the writing look much messier than it actually is—more convenient, more pat—to delete this stuff.

• Shigaraki recognizing RD from the Detnerat commercials. Well, they ditched the Detnerat commercial, so of course they ditched this. Still, it lost one of the indicators that Shigaraki is, despite not receiving a formal education, actually quite up to speed on current events—even, apparently, when those current events are happening while he’s been fighting Machia in an isolated stretch of mountains for six weeks! I already suffer enough through fanon characterizations of Shigaraki in which he’s a basement-dwelling feral manchild glued to his gaming console whom AFO bans from accessing information about the outside world, anime! I don’t need you dropping the scenes that most clearly demonstrate otherwise!!

• In the anime, Baby!Chikara’s face was unmarked, just a normal infant face—you’d never even know the kid had a meta-ability just to look at him. In the manga, the skin of his face is clearly darker, contrasted against the paleness of his mother’s hand. It’s obvious that he’s not “normal” looking, and thus equally obviously would have attracted negative attention in his era.[6] Also had his mother smiling; her face in the manga is too shadowed and vague to make out an expression, befitting the murky tragedy of her story and the fear she must have been living with.

Framing Shifts

Additions

• A little thing: they had Twice echo, “Cushion?” when Clone!Shigaraki told him to get ready to cushion Giran’s fall. If anything, Re-Destro and his little thought-bubbled question mark is probably the one who should have had this reaction line.

• Added a visual for Clone-araki catching himself on the window. A perfectly reasonable way to fill screen time while a dialogue beat was ongoing.

• Added a panning still over a reaction shot from a bunch of Twice clones when the tower came down. It had a few good faces in it.

                                                           ---

So, generally, this episode was better. I definitely still had issues with it, but compared to what came before, when they were trying to cram 5+ chapters into the episodes, there were far fewer cuts, and what cuts and tweaks there were, were relatively minor. Definitely nothing that made me want to throw chairs Jerry Springer-style the way 108 and 109 did.

Sadly, I can't say the same for the remaining two episodes. Come back next time for Part Four, Episode 111: Shimura Tenko, Origin.

FOOTNOTES

[1] After witnessing the massacre that was Episode 108, I was convinced they were going to cut the policeman scene entirely, and just go right to Jin getting fired for hitting someone with his bike, letting the audience think it was his fault completely rather than cast aspersions on police and the justness of the law. I was pleased they kept it at all, but less pleased with the steps taken to soften the sharpness of its accusation.

[2] Of course, it’s not like the MLA themselves don’t understand the willingness to give everything for the people who matter. They just label those feelings Devotion To The Cause, and don’t think the League is capable of such resolution.

[3] Netflix’s Way of the House Husband, be told.

[4] Nakama is, of course, a shonen standby, but, to the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly limited; I don’t follow a lot of shounen series), it’s pretty rare to hear the word coming out of a villain’s mouth! Jin calling the League his nakama ties into how the League are both sympathetic villains in the larger story and also the protagonists of the current arc, thereby operating under a lot of protag tropes for the duration—foreshadowed by Spinner’s earlier talk of Shigaraki and his boyish, dream-chasing eyes.

[5] Sometime after the mass arrests, one hopes.

[6] This could well be a coloring error in the manga, but if so, you’d think they’d have corrected it for the volume release. Especially given that, again, the color is in a different shade/screentone than the shadow that covers most of his mother’s face, and her hand stroking Chikara’s chin isn’t shadowed at all.

[animebw]

Honestly Brook is a little socially off. Unlike Sanji who's is kinda women-obssessed,Brook tends to mostly say it cause he has less social graces then Luffy and seems to use it to break the ice.

Now out of universe it's a stupid joke that should die, and to be fair Brook does lessen it in the future.

Re-reading One Piece along side you is a trip, especially when comparing your analysis to mine.

Ive come to realize I'm far more jaded when it comes to anime humor, so much so that I just except it as part of the medium. So much so I mostly just focus on the jokes that are more creative, and the other apsscts

You actively hold it to a higher standard while still treating the story as slightly separate from the comedy. You want the comedy to be better, not resorting to cheap jokes. This is also true for all the aspects of the anime/manga, whether it's the art or the pacing

I guess that's why your the Anime Binge Watcher. Still fun to compare and contrast how I enjoy the medium, verses how you do.

I definitely have higher-than-normal standards for anime, yeah. But that's only because I've seen just how damn amazing this medium can be at its best. Gintama, Sangatsu, Evangelion, FMAB, Angel Beats, Yorimoi, Literally Everything KyoAni Has Ever Done... when anime creatives put their all into making anime the best that it can be, nothing even comes close. These stories are proof that you don't need to fall back on cliche. You don't need to settle for the laziest possible jokes. You don't need to include the worst of anime in order to make something worthwhile. It's possible to make a masterpiece without a single pervert character, or groping gag, or anything else in that general ballpark.

And yes, even some of those shows I mentioned have moments like that, and I consider those flaws just as much as I consider them in One Piece. But no one thinks FMAB is the peak of anime because of that one accidental pervert scene in episode 46. Nobody holds up Gintama as GOAT because of the running gag where Gintoki accidentally gropes Tsukuyo. K-On is not considered a beloved masterpiece because of season 1's Sawako Dress-Up jokes. In fact, I can't think of any anime or manga that are beloved because of these elements, and not in spite of them (aside from ecchi, where the fanservice is the whole point anyway). Like, would My Hero Academia have been any less successful if Mineta never existed? Has his inclusion ever been anything but a barrier to more people checking out and falling in love with this show? If so, I haven't seen it.

Honestly, I think it's that lack of necessity that makes this such a big deal for me. If we woke up tomorrow and every joke of this nature was scrubbed off the face of the earth, anime would easily carry on without missing a beat. The only thing that would change is that maybe now, even more people would start enjoying this medium now that they no longer have to navigate a minefield to do so. So it matters to me whenever an otherwise good anime or manga hurts itself with this kind of laziness. All you're doing is making it more difficult for people to like your stuff, Oda! The funny skeleton would not suddenly stop being funny if he could no longer ask to see girls' panties! If anything, he'd just be funnier! You don't need this shit! You're better off without it! Think, Mark, Think!

...man, this rant got away from me, lol.

TL:DR, I get compartmentalizing this kind of comedy as "just part of the medium," and if that helps you enjoy the good stuff better, then more power to you. God knows, I wish I could do the same sometimes. But as long as anime keeps doing this stuff, I'll keep complaining about it, because I know this medium is capable of doing so much better.

[tl-notes]

Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon S2 Episode 11 Notes

This is ラジオ体操 radio taisou, lit. radio exercise(s). Basically it’s a short series of light stretches intended for general health. It used to be broadcast over the radio (and I guess still is), but is also on TV and internet these days too.

It’s generally popular as a morning thing to kind of get the blood flowing—some companies (apparently around 1/3rd) even have a few minutes in the morning set aside to have everyone do it. Some neighborhoods will hold outdoor public gatherings during summer break, as a morning routine thing for children while school is out. It’s also a kinda stereotypical old-person thing to do.

There are two “sets,” known as radio taisou dai ichi, and radio taisou dai ni (basically “the first” and “the second”), and each has a standing version and sit-down version for improved accessibility.

“Pound (shoulders)” here is 肩たたき kata-tataki, a type of shoulder massage that involves lightly bopping the recipient’s shoulders with the bottom of your fists. It’s a stereotypical thing for kids to do for parents/grandparents (remember the shoulder massage tickets Kanna gave Kobayashi for Father’s Day in ep 8? same thing).

I honestly have no idea how effective it is.

小林さんは安く済ませようとして、色々物を買ってしまうタイプなんでしょうか？

For clarity here, the idea is less that Kobayashi tries to buy lots of stuff for cheap, but that she wants to solve whatever problem on the cheap, and ends up wasting a bunch of money on several cheapo purchases that don’t really help.

Another angle on it might be like:

“Could she be the type who tries fixing a problem cheaply, but ends up paying more for less?”

Just a bit of trivia, but in the manga Elma answers this question about computer chairs by saying “Yes, a good one costs as much as 1,000 cream buns.” 

That’s our Elma.

Takiya’s word for “logic” here is 理屈 rikutsu. Rikutsu does mean “logic,” but it has another use too: referring to something that relies excessively on “theory” vs. practical application/real experience, or a kind of “forced” logic. 

Basically here he’s saying this out of modesty, not like “the solution was only logical.” 

This “concerning” is 危うい ayaui, an adjective describing something that’s in a perilous situation, kind of like something you’d say “balanced on a razor’s edge” of. It’s typically for less immediately physical types of danger (which would use 危ない abunai instead).

In this case, while it’s true such situations are typically “concerning,” he’s not saying this because he’s concerned per se; he’s saying that situations like Tohru’s, where emotions run high (e.g. romantic relationships), are often fragile because of that strength of emotion.

For “a little hard,” Tohru says グサッと gusa-tto. (“Sharp” was 鋭い surudoi, which is basically one-for-one.)

Gusa-tto is one of those sound effect words mentioned in previous notes, used to describe a heavy stab or pierce (literally or figuratively). (If you’ve seen that anime/manga visual gag where someone says something and the words/speech bubble “stab” the other person, that’s a more light-hearted use of this.)

I mostly bring it up here because the “he’s sharp”→”what he said cut deep” was a good pairing of evocative phrasing that we didn’t really get in the English.

この程度でいいですか？　kono teido de ii desu ka? この程度でいいよ。　　　kono teido de ii yo.

Kobayashi’s answer here is repetition of the question, but changing the “question” marker for a declarative one. Like “Is this enough?” “This is enough.”

I bring it up here for two reasons. One is just because I mentioned the whole repetition thing in a previous episode’s notes, so as an example to help drive that home.

The other is that I have a bit of an issue with the choice of the word “perfect.” Kobayashi is generally a lowkey person (with some exceptions), prone more to understatement than overstatement, so a relatively strong word like perfect is a little out of character for this scene, I would say—especially given the Japanese.

The use of the particle で de in these two lines is also worth noting. In this context (where you’re talking about whether something is what you want), de ii and ga ii have two distinct meanings. With de, it’s “good enough.” With ga, it’s not just enough, it’s actively what you want. If you’ve seen romance shows where one person has low self-esteem, you’ve likely heard a question like “boku de ii?” answered with ”kimi ga ii.”

If there’d been some sort of twist to the phrasing like that, “perfect” might have been a good choice, but as it is I’d have probably stuck with something like “Yeah, this is plenty.” (if maintaining that sentence structure anyway)

そういうもんですか？ そういうもんだよ。 分かりました。そうします。

Just one quick note for clarity on this exchange; the “that/this” they’re talking about is the “what Kobayashi wants” topic, not specifically this tail-chair thing or how fast the tail-vibrations are etc. You likely got that anyway, but I figured I’d mention just in case, since the Japanese wording felt more obvious about it.

Notably here Daddy Tohru says 知り合い shiriai, which is very explicitly a level or two removed from “friend.” (it’s often translated as “acquaintance”)

They might actually be friends and he just phrases it that way because tsundere, but either way I don’t know if I’d use “friends” here.

If you’ll recall from the Elma episode, “clairvoyance” there was 千里眼 senrigan. This is actually not that, but instead 未来視 mirai-shi, which is more or less literally “future sight.” It probably won’t really come up again(?), but just as a world-building thing I guess, know that this guy and Elma don’t actually have exactly the same power (at least in this instance).

The word for “lost control” here is 暴走した bousou shita, which does basically mean that.

I would, however, like to point out that he’s not necessarily saying Tohru lost control of herself. Bousou means that [whatever] is running wild, but that ranges from a runaway train, to someone going berserk, to someone acting rashly without consulting others.

My point in bringing it up is that “lost control” sounds like Tohru had little/no agency in the decision to storm the enemy’s home ground, which is not really the case and not necessarily implied in the Japanese.

When Kobayashi responds here, she says she, Kobayashi, will be the one getting looked after by Tohru, not the other way around. She flips it 180 degrees from how Dad here says it.

(Since, y’know, Tohru’s the maid and everything.)

Example alt text:

“Make sure you take good care of Tohru until your lifespan runs out.”

“Yessir, I’ll have her take good care of me.”

It’s supposed to give this very heavy and serious scene a bit of levity to end on.

(For the Japanese students: she says [面倒を]見てもらいます, meaning that Kobayashi is having Tohru do the “looking [after].” If she was the one doing the looking after, it would be something like 見させてもらいます instead.

When you stick もらう or いただく after a verb, it’s you having someone else do that verb, not you doing it, so to make it work for “you” being the verb-doer, you have to flip the verb to a passive form. It’s kind of like the difference between “please [verb]” and “please allow me to [verb]”.)

どうしてトールがうちに来てくれる気になったのか

Two small things about this line. First: the “came here” is うちにきてくれる uchi ni kite kureru. The two words I want to mention are uchi, which is like “my/our place” (like “wanna come to my place?”), and kureru, which is used as a helping verb to denote that a verb was done for someone else.

So basically the Japanese adds two extra layers of… emotion(?) to the “came here.” That is, “here” is specified as Kobayashi’s home (vs “here” being more vague and could just mean “this world”), and the “came” is conjugated in a way that expresses Kobayashi sees Tohru’s .

The second, more minor, is that it seems like the English took the 気になった ki ni natta and changed it from talking about Tohru to talking about Kobayashi.

Ki ni naru can mean to take an interest in something (“I’m curious”), or when attached to a verb, can mean “got the will/motivation to do [verb].” In this sentence, it’s attached to the verb phrase uchi ni kite kureru, so meaning more like “why you chose to come here.”

(That said you could easily leave the “curious to hear” part there in the English too though, since that still makes sense for her asking a question like this.)

(Basically the English reads like a translation of どうしてトールがここに来たのか気になった instead of the line in question.)

So like as an example alt:

“I’m curious what moved you to come live with me.”

Which still doesn’t fully grasp that kureru, since that’s a hard thing to just “slip in” in English, but does hit a few other relevant notes and should still be okay length-wise (cursed subtitle restrictions!).

The phrase for “[move] to the big city” here is 上京 joukyou. It combines the characters for “up” and “capital” (of a state/country) and is used as a verb for moving to the capital—these days, specifically Tokyo.

(It used to mean moving to Kyoto, and I’m told it annoys some old-school Kyoto-ites if you use it to say moving from Kyoto to Tokyo, lol.)

[empty-dream]

Yuuji is actually my most favorite JJK character and also one of my fav shonen protagonists. (Long babbling. Huge manga spoiler)

I think one of the charming points in JJK is that there is nothing actually new regarding plot points or characterizations, but they are slightly tweaked and played in an interesting way here and there. I could name a lot, but for starters, let’s begin with Yuuji himself.

Yuuji is basically your everyday shonen protagonist: Not straight-up pretty, kind-hearted, super friendly, has a specific girl type, rather dumb but genius at the physical stuff, usually rowdy, kinda underdog, and whose history is deliberately never talked about until faaaar later. But something about him and the nature of the series makes him rather different compared to other series’ main characters. First off, his goal. The stereotypical goals of popular shonen protagonists are usually to be the best at what they do, to eradicate whatever evil they face, or both. Sometimes the ambition may have underlying motifs such as wanting to be acknowledged or not being lonely, sometimes it does not. Yuuji, however, does not have that kind of wish.

His grandpa tells him to help people so he won't die alone before passing away. Borrowed ideal or not, for Yuuji that's already a solid goal. The goal itself is soon questioned as early as chapter 3 by Principal Yaga, and from there on the quest of helping people gets even more complicated. And since Yuuji's got noose on his neck, the goal becomes his stool to stay sane and move forward.

He admits that he is prone to be lonely. It's not some grand ambition. Yes, he’s the only one who can do it - become both Sukuna’s host and Jujutsu sorcerer - , and yes, if he doesn’t do it people will die. But at the core he moves because of the plain fear, of being alone and of guilt when he's all that's left. And this is established even before he swallows Sukuna's finger and gets pulled in jujutsu world, when he is still just a normal person. Those feelings, in fact, are why he ends up doing it and kickstarting the entire story.

So in a way you can speculate that while he obviously does think helping people is right and good, it's not that he finds helping people in itself as his #1 goal. Rather, it is a means to achieve his true goal: Not being alone in his death. His end goal is the way of which he will die, or in short, his death. I don't think the majority of people that age, or any age in fact, would answer that as their goal. The contrast of his sunny-dumb disposition and his rather sad wish really catches my eyes.

And the entire thing also becomes really interesting when Yuuji, who values people over everything, has to face Mahito, who disregards people as things. Then at the end of their fight in Shibuya, it is where Yuuji turning truly chilling. (It’s my favorite scene and panels btw, that’s stone cold. After Junpei, Nanami, Nobara and the countless humans that Mahito has cruelly transfigured and toyed with, there is no more reason or doubt needed. Yuuji accepts that what he’s doing is probably meaningless now. But whatever, killing Mahito is already as given as eating when hungry. Second factor is the relationship between the host and the demonic thing inside. In many typical shonen stories, the relationship tends to be bearable or even amicable in the end. Yuuji and Sukuna's, however, is played horrifically realistic. As mentioned, Yuuji is your generic naive guy. And Sukuna, the demon inside him, is an ancient, all-powerful, manipulative, ruthless demonic king. It’s made clear that Sukuna does not give a shit about Yuuji and will seize any and every opportunity to gain control and bring forth catastrophes. I knew that compared to more standard monster-inside-you in shonen manga, their case is bad. But holy shit it is THAT bad. Every time Sukuna fights, he enjoys causing destructions. Especially in Shibuya arc, where the fights are played painfully realistic with all the normal bystanders getting killed here and there and the whole district razed. I was like "God what will happen if Yuuji wakes up and sees this? He's not gonna be able to live with himself after this."

Which is exactly what happens. And get this, Sukuna specifically wants Yuuji to see the ruins, knowing full well his host would fall into despair. Earlier, Yuuji said he’d feel guilty for people whom Sukuna killed if he hadn’t been there to save them instead. Look at what happens. I cried when Yuuji just curled up all alone and wished for himself and himself only to die. This, when all he wants is to not die alone.

Third is the ‘memories that do not exist.’ Very sexy of Akutami to display Todo having made-up memories of him and Yuuji being brothers as a gag, then make it happen again with Choso but this time revealing it as a real issue: That those are literally made-up memories, implanted by something related to Yuuji, if not it being his own power. Yuuji, a not very brainy but very physically-inclined fighter, a cheerful guy who wishes to die surrounded by beloved ones, has something to do with inserting himself on people's memories. This is like if Naruto has the power of Bleach's Tsukishima. There is something very intriguing, and imo a bit disturbing, about that mixture. Fourth, by the way, why does Sukuna look like Yuuji, extra appendages notwithstanding? Is it simply because that's his host's face, or does his own face actually look like that by default? If it's the latter, doesn't that mean there is something deeper about their relation? Why is Yuuji of all people able to host Sukuna? And remember when Yuuji's grandpa wants to talk about Yuuji's parents before he dies? Who and where are his parents, anyway? How did they give birth to a guy who is so physically gifted he can actually run like a car without magic? And in the first place why does Yuuji's grandpa die alone? Who really are the Itadoris? Akutami-sensei opEN UP I HAVE QUESTIONS. Tl;Dr So yeah, it's not that Yuuji's so inherently different from other shonen protagonists, or he stands out like a sore thumb. It's just that the few existing differences do make him somewhat off compared to everyone else. And the more I think about it, the more I have questions about Yuuji, because as of this writing (Shibuya arc aftermath, Okkotsu appointed as Yuuji’s executioner), not much is known about him. But in contrast to the looming mysteries and the gloomy wish, the guy himself is naturally a cheerful, goofy and a very good person. The juxtaposition is just ... *chef kiss while crying*

[annalyticall]

Anime Newbie in her Twenties Ranks her First 10 Anime

With the recommendations of my sister @ging-ler​ and friends, I started watching anime just over a year ago and within that time I’ve watched a total of 10 - some clocking in at almost 200 episodes and some with only 12. I told myself a while ago that once I had finished 10 anime shows I would rank them like some Anime Newbie WatchMojo list, so, here we are. Really this is just an excuse to force more of my unwarranted opinions onto unwilling followers.

I should also preface this by saying I don’t think any of the anime I watched this year was bad, and I enjoyed a lot about every show even if I ranked some low. However, the top three anime on my list are the ones I would recommend to anyone following me even if they don’t watch anime.

10. Death Note

Despite absolutely loathing the “protagonist” since episode one, I really enjoyed the first half of Death Note! The story was intriguing with all of its wild twist and turns and I found myself immediately invested in what was going to happen next. Unfortunately, after the death of who I thought was by far the best character, the show seems to go off the rails as it introduces new characters and contrived plot devices in the second half that were frankly hard for me to care about at that point. The ending was satisfying but I forced myself to sit through a lot of painful meandering to get there.

9. Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop was the first anime I watched as suggested to me by @mcsherrybr​. The smooth and jazzy art, atmosphere, animation, action, and music were all a lot of fun, as were the lovable ragtag group of misfits that made up the main cast. I enjoyed myself a lot while watching this western/sci-fi melding pot of a show, and I only ranked it so low because the last few episodes were a huge disappointment to my found-family-trope-loving heart.

8. Violet Evergarden

Violet Evergarden, following the story of a child soldier learning to love, is absolutely beautiful to look at and listen to. The music in this anime is, for me, THE best music from any show on this list. This is also the only anime that made me sob several times while watching it. The collection of short episodic stories that explore the deep facets of human love and connection are incredibly resonant and will stay with me for a long time. However, the strength of the small story arcs made the rushed overarching war story and finale weaker in comparison. Similarly, the memorable characters introduced in the one-off side plots were more interesting to me than the cast of rather bland reoccurring supporting characters. While I will remember a lot of great individual moments, I can’t seem to remember a single character’s name besides Violet’s, but that might also be due to being one of the shorter entries at only 12 episodes.

7. Hunter x Hunter (2011)

Going from one of the shortest anime on this list to the longest, Hunter x Hunter was an great and engrossing story during the entirety of its 160+ episodes. It’s colorful and playful, but can also be very dark and at times even heart-wrenching. Because it contains so many distinct arcs, there is a wide variety characters and stories to get attached to, and some, like the Chimera Ant Arc, I even cried over. But this also left me with issues regarding the pacing. The show has great action and introspective moments but will often drag with long drawn-out pauses between fights to explain simple concepts (though I understand that’s a common trope in old shonen anime in general). The world-building is rich but also caught me off guard with some strange ideas, and admittedly not all of them I liked. Some eccentric characters and concepts rubbed me the wrong way and ended up hindering my enjoyment of the show. Overall though, it was a lot of fun and I left with a few more endearing favorite characters, like Leorio and Killua.

6. Erased

Also a 12 episode anime, Erased was amazingly impactful for how short it was. Even as I followed the unfolding murder mystery, I was also touched by the meaningful themes and kind-hearted characters I met along the way. The already-strong story is accentuated with great symbolism, art, and music. The only problem I had was with the mystery itself; I was able to tell who the true killer was within the first 4 episodes, which didn’t lend itself well to suspense and I spent the remaining episodes frustrated that the main characters couldn’t see some obvious clues.This is a minor problem, though, since the finale has less to do with mystery and more about the morals and resolution of themes that I felt was satisfying.

5. Demon Slayer

Demon Slayer is gorgeous. The stunning art style, fluid animation, and breath-taking music are all valid reasons to watch it, but the main character Tanjiro and his unwavering devotion to find a cure for his sister-turned-demon Nezuko are the reasons to stay. Tanjiro is unbelievably gentle as he shows even the evil demons he has to slay a hard-fought kindness, and it’s those tender moments between all of the amazing action sequences that really elevate this show for me. The issues I have lie with the rest of the cast. While I love some supporting characters, like the pig-headed Inosuke and the stoic Giyuu, others have very niche personalities that can get annoying if they’re on screen for too long, which they definitely tend to be. Still, the bond between Tanjiro and Nezuko is so strong that it gets me through even those dragging scenes.

And it’s written by a woman!

4. My Hero Academia

Hey so this might come as a shock for anyone who’s followed me for a while: My Hero Academia is not my favorite anime! I do love it a lot - it’s the only anime on this list that has inspired me to read the manga, write fic, and buy merch. There are so many lovable characters and exciting arcs in this show that there is bound to be something for everyone to enjoy, both inside and outside of canon. It’s a wonderfully paced and animated deconstruction of the superhero genre and besides its deeper themes and commentary, there’s also just a lot of endearing teenage goofin’ to be had, and the show balances the tone of these two almost-equally engaging aspects of the story fairly well.

The downside, for me, is the show’s sexualization of female characters, especially the teenagers. With the likes of pervy fellow classmate Mineta, it’s a flaw that’s hard to avoid and takes up an unfortunate amount of screen time. There are in-universe characters that protest against this behavior, and the female characters are still well-written for the most part, but that doesn’t make up for the canon material including it at all. It’s not a huge part of the show but it’s present enough that it really knocks the ranking down for me.

3. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Out of my top 5, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the only one that is complete. Because of that, I can tentatively say that so far, it is the best completed story on this list. From beginning to end, the pacing was perfect - the action never dragged, the characters were never unnecessary, and the plot twists were never unearned. I found myself more invested than I thought I would ever be for the large cast of characters, and everything, including its ending, was satisfying to watch. The animation is fluid and lent itself well to the most impactful scenes, especially involving the flame alchemist Roy Mustang. It’s also written by a woman! Really, the only nitpicks I have were with tonal problems - serious moments would sometimes be ruined by too much slapstick or visual gags.

As I mentioned before, my Top 3 are shows I would recommend to anyone who’s unfamiliar with anime simply because they’re good solid stories with almost no distracting anime tropes. This is a good place to start.

2. The Promised Neverland

The Promised Neverland is deceiving; on the surface it looks like a sweet show about a bunch of adorable kids playing together in the spacious green backyard of their quaint orphanage. Once you finish the first episode, however, you will quickly discover that there is definitely something more sinister lurking under the surface. This show is an expertly executed dark horror/thriller that always had me on the edge of my seat. The cute aesthetic never distracts from the suspense, in fact, it adds to the discomfort when the horrific visuals and expressions are contrasted against the character designs. I loved all of the characters, including the antagonist, who manages to be just as sympathetic as she is menacing. The sound design and music are also beautiful and adds so much to the rich atmosphere. I am definitely excited to see where this series will go!

1. Mob Psycho 100

ONE, the creator of Mob Psycho 100, said the single word he used for the concept for the series was “kindness”. Kindness shines through so much of this story following the life of Mob, a super-psychic kid that just wants to fit in, and I adore every second of it. While many shonen anime stories force the child protagonist to get stronger, become more powerful, and fight in battles against hostile adults, Mob Psycho 100 says “that’s stupid. Kids shouldn’t have to be traumatized by immature power-hungry adults. The only strength that anyone should pursue is strength of character, motivated by self-love and love for others.” And it says it with the most beautiful animation I have EVER seen in a show. The simplistic character designs mean the animators can have as much creative freedom as they like with expressions and movement, and they absolutely use that freedom. Humor is a large part of this mostly-comedy anime, but it makes the serious and introspective scenes so much more important when they do happen. The shifts between these two tones never feel awkward or imbalanced.

Mob Psycho 100 has inspired me to become more experimental and joy-seeking with my art, as well as just become a better person in my own life, which I can’t say for many other anime or many other pieces of media period. Even though a Season 3 hasn’t been officially announced yet, I can still safely say Mob Psycho 100 will forever hold a special place in my heart.

[gofancyninjaworld]

turns out I wasn’t quite done yet

@scumerage I realised I wasn't satisfied with my response to you, so now I'm digging a bit. Found sales figures for season 2, and now I'm just looking at the enterprise from a business standpoint.

Fundamentally, the value of OPM lies in delighting the customer. It doesn’t make the customer rich. It’s not something they need. It’s entertainment. If they're not delighted, they won't buy. It's compounded by the fact that the anime has low to no-cost first view access. Unlike a movie theatre where you can at least charge people to watch new releases, most streaming services are very cheap -- or even free if you just want to watch the anime.

Just as movies don't make money on people who only go to the theatres to watch it once, the anime doesn't make any money on people who aren't invested in the story enough to either buy the Blu Rays or DVDs, or the merchandise and they'll only do that if they're really delighted.

So here's the business question: what does delight consist of?  Delight is when you get something that you expect and yet is also novel in a way that is pleasurable. We're very weird that way, we like the same but different.  How different stories create delight is a variable thing, but they have this element, especially when they run long.

The brand ONE created in OPM takes something very familiar -- strong man saves the world -- and makes it novel by looking at tropes in an unusual way and using it as a platform to explore the human condition. The crazy things that happen, the gags, and the bombast go on top of it.

Who is the customer? Even though it looks and smells a lot like a shonen story, its profitable audience skews older and more female than the usual shonen audience. It's an audience that prioritises quality over quantity. Failing to understand that is the big mistake Bandai did in rushing season 2 out. When Murata puts Zombieman on the cover of volume 17 because he recognises that a lot of the paying audience are women, he understands where his bread is buttered. If you don't understand who your customers are, you fail to sell.

The sales figures were really horrible for season 2 -- shifting 1265 copies of the 1st blu ray in the same time period that the season 1 had shifted 8865. Link https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePunchMan/comments/doi0l9/opm_season_2_volume_1_sold_1265_bd_copies/

You can tell that the sales didn't improve in two critical ways: near-total radio silence on official channels and the increasingly miserable extras included. OAV 6 looks like it was done by people who have all given up and just want to go home -- not a thing you associate with a successful franchise.

Whether or not they make an operating profit on season 2, their sales forecast has just been dragged round the back and shot.  Return on investment has tanked and what seemed like a cash cow is looking rather shaky.

Which brings us to mistake number 2: understanding the brand.

Natsume really got that brand. He approached OPM as a drama that was only secondarily about a superhero. And then he got together a great and talented cast of animators to really make it pop. A win on all fronts that brought what made OPM work to life in a coherent way. Even people who generally didn't do anime bought it.  So the brand the anime created was something of rarity and high quality in addition to the drama, the humour and the subversion of familiar tropes.

That is something Sakurai did not get. You can talk about characterisation and pacing and animation until the cows come home, but the biggest problem was a lack of a clear director's viewpoint. He could have taken a different point of view from Natsume and had it work, maybe lost a few people, but he’d have gained some more.  The lack of a clear vision and understanding of its brand really hurt and was the source of confusion from which everything else flowed.

Expectation and novelty. When you don't meet expectation, people don't buy in. Plain business. If you don't understand the brand and you don't understand the customer, you won't meet their expectation.

Why did Bandai do this? They’re not stupid. They’re not blinded by greed, let’s be clear on that. They have a business model based around regular availability which has worked well for most of their properties and failed to check if those assumptions were true with regards to OPM. They're right that in general, 'is it on screen' trumps 'is it any good' for a lot of properties, but OPM specifically is a manga that comes out in a hit-and-miss fashion and still has a large and loyal audience. They're not as availability sensitive.  Not checking who actually buys into OPM and how those customers might differ from their other properties is like selling Motorola phones to Apple customers on the basis that they’re both smartphones.

To make it worse, we come to another core business principle: stakeholder management.

It's no secret that JC Staff didn't have as good a working relationship with ONE and Murata as Madhouse did. It really shows in the OAVs – it’s so clear that ONE had less and less to do with them as they proceeded. However, it also translates onto the main story as they weren't as concerned with 'getting' where the author was coming from. Which is a problem as OPM isn't a straightforward story to adapt. It doesn't just follow one or two characters, so there's a lot of thought to go into what to emphasise and why. Who best to ask but the author? Natsume had a great working relationship with ONE, which combined with his great relationships with other people across the industry, led to a stunningly good season.

If Bandai greenlights season 3, they're going to have to find a studio and a crew who need to build a good relationship with ONE, which is all that time, time, time they didn't want to waste, but have wasted nonetheless.  You do business with people at the end of the day. Or they could just go crawling back to Natsume and see when he has time. Or Studio Bones, who also work very well with ONE.  Wherever they go, it’s going to take longer than they ever hoped for initially.

Here's the evillest kicker of them all. If I remember correctly, OPM season 2 was originally coming out next April, right? That's why they decided they couldn't wait that long and took the property away from Madhouse. But the next reasonable place for season 3 to stop is going to be out in print at the time that season 2 was going to run. If they'd not been so impatient, there'd have been one long wait and then we'd never be more than 18 months away from a new OPM season. As in not every year would see a new OPM season, but every season would be worthwhile with a good director who has a great relationship with the author and a consistent studio delivering that money-making delight.

Now, they're going to have to start afresh whenever it is that they make enough money to consider making another season. So there's two long-ass waits rather than just one.

Bad business for Bandai, a shame for us viewers.

That's business for you.

1. Check your business model assumptions.

2. Understand your brand.

3. Understand your customers.

4. You do business with people.

So, anyway, season 3. If they rush again and put out something that looks like a minimum viable product (if you like, ask and I’ll break down what that means for season 3’s story specifically) into a market that's made it very clear that it expects a premium product, they will never make another OPM season. They'll lose too much money.

I may stan characters, but I do more than just that.

[ranpo-stan]

can i just…... talk about ranpo real quick? im gonna talk about him. manga spoilers ahead. i love how asagiri didnt make ranpo a cliché apathetic genius or a one-dimensional character whose only personality trait aside from his intelligence is his brattiness. he is such a complex and well-written character with a lot of different sides to his personality, many of which are presented to us so subtly. kindness is probably not a quality one would immediately associate with ranpo, and thats because his acts of kindness are usually very understated. letting atsushi handle the case of his headmaster’s death so that he could get closure, burning the last page of yokomizo’s manuscript which had mushitaro’s tears on it so that yokomizo’s dying wish would be granted and no one would figure out the mystery, giving mushitaro the business card to help get him a job with the abilities secret services, telling poe that he was looking forward to his next challenge to lift poe’s spirits after his defeat during the guild arc… even ranpo’s personal motto (“if im ok, everything’s ok!”), which initially sounds completely self-absorbed, reflects his own strange way of caring. fukuzawa once likened the rest of the world to a bunch of simpleminded babies when compared to ranpo, and he reasoned that if everyone was as hopelessly dumb as fukuzawa claimed, then it was his responsibility to protect them. therefore, if he was ok and able to protect them, then everyone else would be ok too. also? the fact that, upon learning he was special, the conclusion ranpo immediately came to was welp, guess it’s up to me to protect everyone, especially after how poorly he was treated by them until then, speaks of his inherently good nature. ranpo is kind in his own unconventional but true-to-form way.

despite how he talks to them sometimes, ranpo also has great respect for his fellow ADA members, not just fukuzawa. ranpo called kunikida “the strongest and most virtuous” of all the ADA members, and he approved of kunikida as fukuzawa’s successor as the next ADA president; considering how highly ranpo thinks of fukuzawa, implying that kunikida is worthy of filling his shoes is high praise. ranpo also acknowledges dazai’s intelligence (i made a post about this before), and at the end of dead apple when he’s sitting alone in the ADA office, ranpo remarks that atsushi’s “gotten pretty good”. I also speculate that ranpo’s reluctance to aid in the search for atsushi when he was kidnapped by akutagawa wasnt because he just didnt feel like it; he likely figured atsushi would be able to escape without their help, which he technically did. kunikida was just the getaway driver. the ADA members are both ranpo’s respected colleagues and his treasured friends. he was angry when he was outsmarted by fyodor during cannibalism, not simply because it was a blow to his ego (which it almost certainly was), but more so because, as a result, the ADA was put in danger. In the perfect murder and murderer, ranpo vows that he will not be outwitted again and that he will not allow the ADA members to get hurt, saying that he would go as far as to “mold himself into a demon”, to go against his good nature, to protect them. ranpo was prepared to go to any length to absolutely crush mushitaro and force him to turn himself in to the police while undoing his ability so that evidence of kunikida’s innocence would resurface; ranpo recognized that “a regular person can’t beat a special ability”, yet he refused to concede and pushed himself beyond his limits.

on that note, in regards to him being nongifted, ranpo’s false claims of being an ability user are not just a gag; they reflect the hardship and vulnerability he experienced in the past. ranpo knows he is not gifted, but he clings so desperately to that identity because that was what helped him make sense of a world that he didnt understand, a world that rejected him and treated him like a nuisance. i know im rambling at this point, i just…. *clenches fist* LOVE ranpo.

[thebeauregardbros]

Can you tell me about Yakuza 0? I've never played it before and would like to read your thoughts on it.

YOOOOOOOOOOO LES FUKIN GO (thank u!!)

This review is spoiler-free!

Despite what you might assume a game about a bunch of tough muscley fighting dudes, the amount of moral philosophy in this game could rival a 3-part episode of Star Trek: TNG in terms of surprisingly deep and emotional thought. The struggles the protagonists go through has a huge emphasis on honor, keeping your word, taking responsibility for your actions, standing up to things you think are wrong and persevering no matter how much pain, suffering and threat you personally go through all in the name of trying to be a good person, and emphasizing that the mental fortitude to stand for your convictions is the true strength, not just brawn. Character development is absolutely fantastic and I feel like it’s impossible not to fall for these main characters by the end of the game, no matter how weird or even pigheaded they might seem to you at first.

(Trust me, moral philosophy is probably my biggest autistic hyper-fixation. They did this shit GOOD.)

Another major reason I really love Yakuza 0 is that it takes an unusual setting to the normal person - the incredibly political, dark, yet surprisingly realistic setting of organized bullies, criminals, and the uneducated brawn and bad-attitude baddies of the world and try to show them as worthy of more as humans like you and me than just trash that should not be seen or touched. The amount of humanitarian outlook on these people and the humanitarianism of our protagonists is absolutely heartwrenching and beautiful. Despite appearances, anyone can be a good person - this seems to be a major message in this story which I just find absolutely beautiful.

The yakuza definitely have different rules to their world, and that is one that’s built on violence over paperwork, especially when it comes to showing eachother the extent of their passion about something. I feel like it’s an excellent way of portraying the difficulties any normal person goes through with their mental health while struggling to do the right thing in a very direct and relatably painful way that anyone can understand.

The story deals with not only the importance of preserving life and protecting it with surprisingly pacifist ideologies, but the aesthetics in align with the idea that no matter how dark the world or your life feels, happiness is always an option.

Why you might love Yakuza 0 even if the plot doesn’t sound that interesting to you:

Tons of minigames - I think about 28~30 total. That includes 4 actual vintage SEGA arcade games! There’s also tons of gambling games like black jack and shogi, fishing, rhythm games, bowling, fighting tournaments, pool, darts, stock car racing, doll dressup.. It’s very hard not to find at least one you’ll like!

Tourism. Yakuza 0 has such an incredible amount of visual detail to every nook and cranny of every corner and unseen alleyway in the town maps that it feels just absolutely insane to me. The devs didn’t need to put in all this detail but they did. I could legit spend hours in first person mode just looking at everything. On top of that, every restaurant in town has a detailed menu describing each item despite the fact that all food items are just generic healing items. I think there’s even a bar where the bartender will go on a spiel talking about certain drinks after you order them. The atmosphere really makes you feel like you’re truly taking a vacation in another place. Great for when you’re longing to see new scenery while being stuck at home all the time during COVID.

The amount of optional side quests is absolutely insane. According to a wiki there’s a total of 100 side quests in all. If you’re a fan of JRPGs or a fan of completionism, completing them all gives you a ton of extra content and side-stories that can sometimes be just as gutwrenchingly wholesome or tragic as the main plot, or otherwise be great comic relief.

Speaking of comic relief, this game is notorious for it. The main plot can be incredibly serious and stressful and the devs know that can really wear down on the mental state of the player after awhile, so seeing Kiryu dance at a disco in the most lame awkward embarassing dad way possible, or see him pick up a phone in the most ridiculously over-dramatic way for no reason, or see Goro sing lovey-dovey pop songs is just something that will absolutely kill you with laughter and joy and give you a refreshed break you need to help you be able to keep continuing on.

Big fan of seiyuu (Japanese voice actors)? The karaoke bar lets you hear your protagonists’ gorgeous singing voice. You can even invite some side characters and hear their voices too!

NOW THE FAIR CRITICISMS:

Despite the plot having a huge emphasis on how important the morality is of not killing, fighting animations are often totally lethal. Goro canonically fights with a knife and a bat by the end of the game. Both characters can use guns, swords, poisoned knives, baseball bats and other lethal items as a weapon. One of Goro’s main fighting animations is snapping a dude’s neck. Kiryu threw a dude out of a high window. Kiryu shoots at dudes with a gun in a high speed chase at some point and none of these instances are ever addressed in canon plot as having blood on the hands of these characters - no matter what, the people hurt by these things seem to be able to stand up fine later on like nothing happened. Even the main characters can get shot by an actual gun 20 times in a row and shrug it off by shoving convenience store food down their throat. It’s super dumb but absolutely hilarious in it’s unaddressed B-Movie esque hypocritical nature and became a huge in-joke with the fandom. Despite these Goofy Video Game Logic instances, the main plot (specifically the cutscenes) are all extremely realistic and well done. Actual members of real-world Yakuza say the story is pretty accurate to reality.

One of the minor characters is obviously a trans woman but is misgendered constantly by other characters, including the protagonist (though this may be a translation problem), and is the only female character in the game you can fight and have to fight in order to unlock Kiryu’s endgame fighting style (though he remarks he only fights her because she looks like she can handle herself in a fight). She does end up joining up with you as an ally afterwards without changing anything about herself so that’s a positive, I guess? SEGA is aware of fans’ dislike for transphobia and have removed a lot of transphobic content from their re-releases of future Yakuza games, as well as shown the protagonist, Kiryu, as a huge LGBTQ+ ally.

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

Things you might like or otherwise want to check out relating to the same story style of Yakuza 0 I personally highly recommend:

Kyou Kara Ore Wa!! (aka, "From Today, It's My Turn!!"): Absolutely hilarious gag comedy with surprisingly heartwrenching drama and incredibly lovable in-depth characters. It’s about highschool delinquents in the late 1980s (same era Yakuza 0 takes place!). The two main characters remind me a lot of the protagonists of Yakuza 0 in that one is very straight-laced and honorable while the other is more prone to dirty tricks but still does the right thing in the end. I personally recommend reading the manga above all because adaptations cut out a lot of details that I feel add a lot of depth to the characters, but the OVA anime is pretty good on it’s own and there’s a hilarious live action TV show adaptation if you like slapstick.

Rookies: A story about an impossibly determined formerly disgraced highschool teacher doing absolutely everything he can to be the best teacher he can be. Part of his journey is helping reform a group of delinquents who have self-sabotaged themselves into having their baseball team - the one thing they cared about - disbanded. The delinquents constantly fight the teacher off, believing him to just be another adult putting on airs instead of truly caring, while the teacher perseveres no matter what to prove them wrong. A manga and live action drama - both extremely good.

[cherry-valentine]

Spring 2020 Anime:

Kami no Tou is one of my favorites this season. It’s unique in that it’s based on a Korean web comic rather than a Japanese manga or light novel. This gives it a different feel than most anime. The series centers on a massive tower that, when climbed, will grant a wish. Only the strongest warriors can hope to climb the tower, and even attempting it requires passing several grueling tests. The protagonist, Bam, initially enters the tower to find his friend Rachel, but ends up joining a team of three to climb the tower together. For the majority of the first episode’s runtime, I wasn’t really into this series and was pretty sure I wouldn’t watch anymore. It had a pretty vague opening that left me underwhelmed. But just before the episode ends, we get a really awesome sequence that sets the tone for the rest of the series, and I was hooked. The tests to climb the tower are surprisingly brutal, with frequent deaths until the cast is whittled down to the main players. The core group of characters is made up of a refreshing variety, with plenty of badass ladies. The main team of three are all likable. I honestly thought I wouldn’t like the lizard-like Rak very much, but he grew on me very quickly. The art is great, rarely going off model. The animation quality is pretty good and the design work is fantastic. The opening and ending themes are among my favorites this season. Probably my favorite new series of the season.

Kakushigoto covers several types of series all in one. It’s a comedy at its core, with a focus on quick skits and gags. It’s also adorable and heartwarming, following a single father named Goto raising his young daughter, Hime. The hook of the series, and the source of most of the comedy, is that Goto is a manga artist who draws “ecchi” manga (when I first read the description, I had something else in mind, but it turns out he just makes silly, slightly perverted gag manga) and he’s desperate to hide this fact from his daughter, so he pretends he’s a regular “salary man”. His interactions with Hime are so sweet and wholesome, it really makes you just sigh and say, “Awww!” However, the series also covers another type of anime: the tearjerker. The scenes talking about Goto’s dead wife are almost hard to watch, as it’s very clear that losing her was incredibly painful for him, but he had to move on quickly for his daughter’s sake. There are little things, like the fact that the wife apparently prepared boxes for Hime to open at every age containing things she thought Hime might need or want at each age (and it looks like she prepared boxes for Goto as well!), that make it hard to stay dry-eyed while watching. There are also scenes taking place several years later, involving a teenage Hime, that imply some extremely heartbreaking things I’d rather not think about. Basically, any given episode will have you gushing over the cuteness, then laughing hysterically, then crying and batting away some dark and depressing thoughts. The art has a very unique style. To be honest I’m not entirely sure if I like it or not. The colors and backgrounds are lovely, but some of the character designs are a little... odd. In particular, Hime is probably the least cute “young daughter” type character I’ve seen in anime. Something about the way her face is drawn is just... off. Oh well, might be good for warding off the gross perverts who might be watching the show for all the wrong reasons (it’s anime, so I suspect the worst). The music is perfect, with the best ending theme of the season (seriously go watch it, right now! It’s a true visual delight with an amazing song to go with it). Highly recommended unless you have no soul.

Kaguya-sama Love is War Season 2 was something I was looking forward to very much. I enjoyed season one way more than I expected to, and so far season two is just as good. The series follows two highly intelligent but extremely awkward students at a fancy private school who are in love with each other but each is trying to force the other to confess their feelings first. It’s a genuinely funny comedy that also captures the feeling of being in love with someone but being too shy (or too prideful) to tell them. Season two introduces a couple of new characters who, in my opinion, aren’t super interesting but thankfully aren’t around enough to wear out their welcome. This is one of those shows where no actual progress can ever be made, because if these two characters actually get together, the entire premise of the show falls apart and there’s no reason for it to keep going. Despite that, the show continues to be funny and entertaining, and it’s consistently well done, from the art to the writing to the music.

My Life as a Villainess is one of the quirkier “isekai” series out there. It follows a modern teenage girl who suddenly dies and is reborn in the world of her favorite otome game. The catch is that, instead of being born as the lovely heroine that all the guys fall in love with, she’s born as the villain, Catarina, who makes life hell for the heroine and, in every route in the game, ends up either dead or exiled. Upon realizing this, Catarina decides to do everything in her power to avoid these potential fates. This mostly amounts to her being nice to everyone (especially the game’s heroine, whom she meets in this world’s equivalent of high school) and trying to improve both her magic power and her fighting skills so she can defend herself, as well as learning to grow food in a garden so she can feed herself after being exiled. The show’s true (and obvious) twist is that everyone (regardless of gender) ends up falling in love with Catarina. It’s actually a pretty nice message, that people won’t automatically love you, but if you work on improving yourself and be genuinely kind to others, people will gravitate to you. The series is actually really funny and overall light-hearted. It’s particularly amusing if you’ve ever played an otome game and are familiar with the tropes. The art is nice, if a little generic, and the music is fine. Not my favorite this season but certainly worth a watch, especially since the season grew a bit dry a few weeks in.

Major 2nd Season 2 is a baseball anime sequel to the series Major, which I really want to watch (but is clearly not required for enjoying this one). In the second season, protagonist Daigo (the son of the previous series’ protagonist) is now a second year in middle school, and is the captain of the team after most of the third years quit. Almost all of his team mates from the first season have split up and gone to other schools, but Sakura, one of the few girl players, is still on his team. It’s interesting to me that the majority of Daigo’s team is made up of girls, to the point that other teams have a tendency to underestimate them. I didn’t even realize that in middle school, teams could be mixed like this. It’s actually refreshing, as the girls are very skilled (Daigo points out very early on that the girls follow the exact same training regimen as the boys). In fact, the girls in general are much more talented than the boys (Daigo himself even gives up his position as catcher to a first year girl who proves she has more skill than he does). It’s just really nice that these are good players, not “good for a girl”. Another fun aspect of the series is the fact that previous teammates from season one are popping up as opponents in season two. The animation is fine and the music is good. If you like baseball at all, this is the show for you. If you like sports anime in general, give it a shot. It doesn’t really have that “lots of hot guys who are super close with each other” vibe that most sports anime has, so keep that in mind. 

There were a few others I was watching that had to be put on hiatus due to the pandemic. Since I only watched three or four episodes of them, I’ll wait and do write-ups for them once they resume.

EDIT: Added Major 2nd Season 2 because it resumed airing.

Carry Over Shows From Previous Seasons: Black Clover (now on hiatus) Ahiru no Sora

Best of Season: Best New Show: Kami no Tou Best Opening Theme: Kami no Tou Best Ending Theme: Kakushigoto Best New Male Character: Goto (Kakushigoto) Best New Female Character: Catarina (My Life as a Villainess)

[strawbewwysamurai]

Is one piece a good show? I haven't had anything catch my eye recently so I've got no manga or anime to watch :(( On that note, any recommendations?

HIYA!!!

Well for one, I'm biased to say it absolutely is! But if you want details then lemme give you some along with some warnings ! I’ll put them under the cut though to avoid a super long ask on people’s dash oh goodness,,, 

I’ll make this ask mostly about One Piece, but some quick reccs for you to look into will be:

- Mairimashita! Iruma-Kun!

- Natsume Yuujinchou

- Ao No Exorcist

- Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun [I DIDN’T FINISH IT YET CAUSE ONE PIECE GRABBED ME SO IF THERE’S ANYTHING WEIRD OUT OF THE BLUE IN THE LAST EPS  I’M SORRY BUT IT WAS VERY CUTE FROM EVERYTHING I SAW??]

- The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

- Gakuen Babysitters [Again, haven’t finished, but super cute from what I have seen!]

And now it’s time for: Ashley Rants About One Piece ! There’s vaguing/minor spoilers since I’m warning about some stuff, but I’m gonna be as vague as I possibly can !

Good stuff [There’s a LOT so this is just notable things]:

- Found family is STRONG, main focus is more of finding a family you can love and protect and does the same back rather than romance for literally majority of the series. Adults taking in kids is also a huge theme and they canonly call them their kid/they're the parent. And once families are found and bonds are made, it is extremely impossible to break them again. From many events with the Straw Hats, to minor stories out of the main manga/anime with people like Law/The Heart Pirates, you’ll see the absolute most worst things trying to break their bonds apart, but it does not happen. Because the people who made them love and care for each other too much for anything short of a mutual decision to break it will break it. 

 [I could go on about other ways found family is prominent in one piece, cause it's THAT huge but i'll stop here. But it’s literally one of the main major themes!]

- The lore and story and world is one of the deepest and most engrossing I have ever seen. I used to watch and love Gravity Falls with my sister, and short of having actual ciphers in the show, One Piece is definitely similar in how much it makes you think. There are cameos and characters that pop up at the very start who are extremely important, and you don’t even know it until much further in episodes, by like, a lot. It’s extremely captivating, theories are everywhere for everything, not just what this grand treasure known as the ‘One Piece’ is, but also on so many other little things. And if you think something doesn’t tie together into the story, or a character isn’t going to be very relevant, give it some time, you will be surprised. 

- Heroics. The Straw hats are very adamant in the fact they aren’t heroes, despite the thousands of people they have saved and helped in their adventures. I personally love heroes and stories about helping people, so it’s a real attention grabber for me- They are literally just a rough and tumble group of kind people who will help anyone. And when I say anyone, I mean it. They have witnessed pirates they are trying to fight get mistreated by their captain, and their first thought is not to continue fighting said pirates- it’s to attack the captain for treating those who should be family to them so badly. But literally, every where you turn there is a kind act, whether large or small, by one of the characters. Even side characters do it, it’s just all very heartwarming. 

- Empowerment. The whole series is about following your dreams, no matter what it may be, and fighting for it. It can be something like finding a legendary ocean that everyone says doesn't exist, to even something minor. It’s about fighting for yourself and what you believe in and having the people who love you there to back you up, or finding people who will do so for you as you move to achieve your dreams. 

Bad stuff:

- There are a lot of heavy themes. We're dealing with pirates after all! Extremely sad backstories, especially Trafalgar Law's and Sanji's, kidnapping and destroying human trafficking rings/slavery, government corruption and grey areas- it could be a bit much if you're looking for something solely good times and goofy! I will say though, OP is very good at gags and goofs to balance out, and also inspirational moments that come from the bad- The Straw Hats may be pirates, but they're good people and will help anyone they can in danger even at their own risk.

- A few bad tropes. My fave, Sanji, is main victim to the 'pervert' trope, though at the starting half it's more hes a gentleman who likes ladies too much rather than actually weird for the most part. After a timeskip and dealing with a different bad trope, he's cranked up though so I mostly ignore it cause it REALLY doesn’t fit his character but I'm here to tell you the bad so!

The bad trope he had to deal with is what i can basically describe as trans gags. He ends up on an island full of drag queens/trans people who do nothing but make his life hell/assault him because 'hes not embracing his true self.' 

Its a much later arc, and only around for a few episodes really scattered here and there, but if that’s something you wouldn't like you could always skip the episodes and get a run down from me. Drag queens/Trans people are there again part of a different arc around the same time, but they're portrayed much kinder/chiller so it's less of a Deal than the Sanji one.

I will add though that in a recent arc, there is a main lady who we find out is trans, and from my perspective as someone who is trans, it was dealt with respectfully and nicely, much more so compared to the above, but no duh. 

- Racism: one of the main characters is victim to 'old media racist designs' and several background characters. The main problem besides that is their designs never got changed after the nineties, so Usopp- one of the Straw Hat’s and an excellent main character- and recurring background characters can be very- yeah, design wise, and even new characters pop up with racist gags inserted. Also after the time skip a lot of characters get lightened to fit their manga colors, which is kinda concerning to say the least.

-

Now again, this is all off the top of my head, so there could be more good/bad stuff I’m not listing simply because I just woke up and yelled here, so forgive me! But another thing I wish to say is despite the bad, it’s a really good show. Nothing has ever made me cry so hard as One Piece has [especially the Sanji arc I’m currently rewatching as it hits hard and close to home in a lot of ways], or feel so connected to or feel so Seen as One Piece. I relate extremely heavily to Luffy and Sanji especially, including some of the hardships and things they have gone through, so it’s an extremely comforting and inspiring piece of work for me to watch, to the point words can’t really describe how attached I am to it unless I go off on a tangent. 

I hope this post was helpful to you though! 

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 Episode 14: “That’s A Secret”

Me before this episode: “I’m a big strong adult who can DEFINITELY deal with watching Momiji’s backstory and the grave visit get animated in the same episode :)”

Me two seconds into this episode: *insert sad cat picture here*

Anyway this episode is dead even though it killed me and now I’m typing this from beyond the grave.

Thoughts under the cut.

Right off the bat, this episode actually gave us a new set of OP and ED themes, which I’d been curious about for a while. They hadn’t said anything about it for the longest time, and then they just announced it a day or two ago, lol.

The new OP is really going to need some time to grow on me. I can’t help but feel like it should have been swapped with the first OP, since this is where things keep getting heavier. I know there’s some people who disliked how slow and mellow the first OP was, but I loved it, and this super energetic one is kind of hard to get used to.

But the new ED is absolutely AMAZING and I love it. The song feels very similar in tone to the first ED, which is nice because that was also a really nice song, but the visuals are a real departure from basically everything else in the show. From what I’ve seen people seem a bit divided on how they feel about that as an artistic choice, but I love it. I really like how it seemed to be real footage of figurines and dioramas mixed with digital backgrounds and effects. Which reminded me a bit of some visual tricks used in Sarazanmai last season [fun fact that I definitely haven’t just been waiting for an excuse to bring up: the person who did the zodiac animal character designs for this series, Kayoko Ishikawa, is also the person who did the character animation designs in Sarazanmai!]. Though I think my favourite part is the very first shot of Tohru.

Anyway, even though I knew exactly what was coming with this episode, and it was more or less exactly what I expected, it still managed to take me by surprise with just how emotional it was.

For the record, this adapted chapters 23 and 24 of the manga, which were also adapted into episode 15 of the 2001 series. Which also means that the reboot’s just gotten to the end of volume 4 of the manga. I still think we’re looking at about 70 episodes total for the reboot, give or take.

It’s pretty interesting to compare this to the 2001 version, since it’s technically a less drastic difference than the Valentine’s episode, but it still highlights how the 2001 anime made the conscious choice to remove any foreshadowing or character development that hadn’t been resolved in the manga by about volume 8 or so, which is what was out when the 2001 anime was made. From what I remember of the 2001 anime version of this material, they did a really good job with the Momiji side of things, since they kept it pretty 1:1 with the manga, but their version of the grave visit chapter really suffered because so much of Kyo’s character development and depth got taken out across the entire original adaptation, which in particular really took out a whole layer of foreshadowing from this part. It was still fine, from what I remember, but it lacked the sense of mystery and intrigue that the reboot version has, and the whole scene with Kyo and Tohru at the very end of the episode was entirely removed in the 2001 version.

It’s a much less noticeable change than how the 2001 anime had to basically remove a whole chapter or so of content for their Valentine’s day episode since that part of the manga was so heavy with foreshadowing, but at least if you know where things go with the story in the long run, you can really notice all the intentional set-up going on in this episode.

I’m really excited for anime-only people to eventually figure out what’s going on and what exactly this episode is hinting at, especially since more people seem to be starting to develop theories about what they think’s up with Kyo and Yuki’s backstories and how they tie into Tohru and her mother. So I wonder how they’ll all feel about this when they can look back on it later.

I’m definitely biased since I’ve read the manga, and I’ve seen a lot of anime-only people still make largely incorrect guesses about what’s going on after this episode, but wow does a lot of this foreshadowing seem super obvious in hindsight, lol. It’s not a bad thing, but when you know what’s going on, you can really tell how heavily they’re hinting at stuff. In particular the bit with Yuki at the end made it seem really obvious that he’s the one who gave Tohru the hat, but I feel like that’s something that anime-only people might end up forgetting about compared to all the stuff going on with Kyo.

And on the note of that whole final scene, I loved the abrupt cut to the new ED. It was such a neat shift from how every episode thus far has ended with a relatively mellow and slow lead-in to the ED theme. And most [but not all] of the previous episodes had ended with fun and light-hearted scenes. So having this sudden and relatively surprising admission of guilt from Kyo and an abrupt cut to a new ED theme was really neat.

But of course, the True MVP [tm] of this episode was Momiji, our resident precious bunny boy. I’ve been bracing myself for this exact episode for weeks now, but oh man it still hurts so much. I know the reboot’s been really good with it’s dramatic moments, but I wasn’t expecting how intense and visceral everything about his backstory would be. I had to check back at how the manga presented it, and even though it’s mostly the same, the reboot’s a lot more explicit about showing that Momiji’s mother started engaging in self-harm after he was born. In the manga there’s one panel that shows her vaguely laying on the ground with one of her arms tied in bandages, but that’s about it. And in the manga, the bit with Momiji and his dad didn’t really have a clear setting, but the reboot makes it very clear that they’re at the hospital after his mother hurt herself. Which made it hurt all the more.

I also feel like they were a little more visually explicit with Tohru’s flashbacks to her mother’s death and her going to the hospital. That was also presented as a set of small and relatively vague panels in the manga, but the reboot went all in on making sure you knew exactly what was going on. Like always, I think both approaches work well for their different mediums, but I appreciate the reboot’s commitment to giving every scene a sense of time and place, especially when it comes to flashbacks. It gives it a very different feel to the manga at times, which helps it feel fresh and interesting.

Momiji’s backstory is pretty interesting and noteworthy, since even though we’ve already had tragic backstories in this series before, this is basically the first time where the series really starts to specifically explore and develop this theme of parent/child bonds, and how the curse plays into all that. I think that the way the manga handles the theme of being born ‘with a curse’ and how that impacts your relationship with your parents is actually my number one favourite thing about it, and something that I think it does almost perfectly. It’s a big part of why it means so much to me as a story. It’s not really something you see explored often in media, especially not with this level of nuance, and from as many different angles as this series looks at it from as it goes on.

Trust me when I say that I have A LOT I want to say about this whole theme of the story, and this is definitely where it first becomes a big part of it all, but specifically I’m waiting for the Kyo arc to happen later in this season before I really let loose all my thoughts on it. Pretty much like 90% of the main cast have different sorts of messy relationships with their families, and with the state of their bodies, but Kyo’s story is the one that speaks to me the most. Going by when I think the reboot will get to that part, I’ll probably spend most of my post on the season 1 finale talking about that, which would be a pretty fitting place to do it.

Though on the topic of Momiji, I do want to say that the scene where Tohru hugs him and they both cry together is one of the most memorable and hard-hitting parts of the manga. It’s such an raw and emotional example of the sort of acceptance and love that Tohru represents to the Somas. With how many examples we get across the whole story of the zodiac animal forms being a curse that the characters are hurt by, and which cut them off from other people, the image of Tohru hugging Momiji’s bunny form, and Momiji letting himself cry in his bunny form and be hugged by her, really just goes to show why Tohru is such a pivotal character in all this, and why she in particular is the one who manages to get through to the Somas so well.

Also, before I forget, people are talking about the whole debacle with his accent again, and my two cents on the matter are that he definitely comes across like he’s either a native German speaker, or he’s intentionally acting like one, and I tend to lean toward the former. Especially early on, he uses German very fluently and frequently, and there’s a whole running gag of him misspeaking simple phrases in Japanese, so either he’s genuinely more comfortable with German and not fully fluent in Japanese yet, or he’s trying to come across that way intentionally. It’s also worth noting that Momiji even says in this episode that his little sister ‘isn’t very good at speaking Japanese yet’. Basically I don’t think we’re really meant to question the in-universe logistics of whether or not it’d actually make sense for Momiji or his sister to speak German as their first language when it seems like they were both born and raised in Japan, lol. [And on the note of his sister, the short moment of her looking back at him while her mother pulls her away is another one of those little details that make it clear they’re setting up for way later scenes]

Anyway, this was an incredible episode, and it makes me really happy that they’re committing to adapting the entire thing, so all of the foreshadowing in this episode will be followed up on and developed.

[recentanimenews]

Meet the Fathers: Eleven Classic Anime Dads and Where to Find Them

  Fatherhood is a tricky business, and the responsibilities of raising a child are even thornier when the child in question has superhuman strength, magical abilities, or the need to pilot a giant robot for the sake of all humanity. Come rain or shine, these papas persevere, and we here at Crunchyroll think it's time to recognize that fact with a look at how a handful of fathers approach their duties (or shirk them) in various old-school anime.

  Some of these dads are rad. Some of these dads are mad. Some of these dads are bad and dangerous to know. But all of them are indubitably dads, and on this Father's Day, we celebrate the trials and tribulations of parenthood with a brief look at eleven classic anime dads in their natural habitats.

  In no particular order, meet the fathers:

    Ataru's Dad

Origin: Urusei Yatsura

Threat Level: Salaryman

Profile: A humble, middle-management working adult who just happens to be the father of one of the most accursed teenagers in the universe, Ataru's Dad merely wants to read his newspaper, pay the mortgage on time, and maybe watch the occasional pro-wrestling match. With aliens constantly blowing up the house, though, this is easier said than done.

Where You Can Find Him: AnimEigo's DVDs are out-of-print, but you can catch Ataru's Dad in the Viz Signature editions of the Urusei Yatsura manga.

    Mr. Invader

Origin: Urusei Yatsura

Threat Level: Oni

Profile: An intergalactic conqueror by trade and the father of perennial anime "best girl" Lum, Mr. Invader is a rough, gruff, simple sort of fellow with a large appetite for life. A straight shooter who tells it like it is, Mr. Invader fears no man...although he does fear his wife, who is a terror with an electrically-charged broom.

Where You Can Find Him: (See Ataru's Dad.)

  Maximillian Jenius

Origin: Super Dimension Fortress Macross

Threat Level: Valkyrie

Profile: You may think you're smooth, but are you smooth enough to get your mortal enemy to marry you immediately after you a.) clobber them at the video arcade and b.) they try to stab you? I didn't think so. Max is the quintessential MacDaddy, although his parenting skills need some polish and his marital troubles inform the plot of Macross 7. It's probably a good thing that his eldest daughter, Komilia, has a strong skeleton.

Where You Can Find Him: The previous DVD releases of Super Dimension Fortress Macross by ADV and AnimEigo are out-of-print, but you can catch the entire original series streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

  Senbei Norimaki

Origin: Dr. Slump

Threat Level: Mad Scientist

Profile: The only thing that prevents Senbei Norimaki from being crushed beneath the weight of his own ineptitude—or pulverized by the tiny metal fists of his robot daughter, Arale—is the fact that he's the father-figure in a gag manga, and thus he has “plot armor” that is seventeen inches thick. Senbei is ultimately able to marry Midori Yamabuki, the woman of his dreams, so he must be doing something right...

Where You Can Find Him: Although the Dr. Slump TV anime have never been officially released in the United States, Discotek Media has a DVD set featuring five Dr. Slump films, and the entire run of the original Dr. Slump manga is available in English from Viz Media, and you can check out Senbei's misadventures there.

    Daisuke Ido

Origin: Battle Angel Alita

Threat Level: Hunter-Warrior

Profile: When he's not out bounty-hunting for spine-stealing freaks, Daisuke Ido runs a cyber-surgery practice and acts as a surrogate father for his adopted daughter, the Martian cyborg super-soldier, Alita, who happens to be hundreds of years older than him. Parenthood is strange.

Where You Can Find Him: ADV's DVD release of the Battle Angel anime OAVs is out-of-print, but the Battle Angel Alita manga and its sequels and spin-offs are available in English from Kodansha Comics. You can also catch Christoph Waltz as Ido in the live-action Alita: Battle Angel film.

    Hikaru Daitokuji

Origin: Project A-ko 2: Plot of the Daitokuji Financial Group

Threat Level: Billionaire Playboy

Profile: The head of the mega-corporate Daitokuji Financial Group and the father of genius inventor B-ko Daitokuji, Hikaru spends most of his time stealing his daughter's mecha designs and passing them off as his own for fun and profit. He's also not above borrowing B-ko's personal set of form-fitting powered armor if the situation calls for it, although later films in the Project A-ko series show Hikaru taking a more civic-minded approach.

Where You Can Find Him: All four of the Project A-ko films are currently available on DVD from Discotek Media, and Hikaru Daitokuji makes an appearance in at least three of them.

    Prince Philionel El Di Seyruun

Origin: Slayers

Threat Level: PACIFIST CRUSH!

Profile: Heavy is the head that wears the crown, especially when your wife is deceased and both of your daughters spend most of their time adventuring rather than helping to run the kingdom. Despite his rough and tumble appearance, Prince Philionel El Di Seyruun (“Phil” to his friends) is a benevolent ruler with a gentle heart who believes in pacifism, kindness to all creatures, and the occasional spinning lariat delivered with just the right amount of loving violence.

Where You Can Find Him: Funimation releases the Slayers TV anime on home video in the United States. The Slayers movies and OAVs were at one time published by ADV, but Phil isn't in those releases, which are also out-of-print.

    Chiyo's Dad

Origin: Azumanga Daioh

Threat Level: Norio Wakamoto

Profile: A creature of myth and enigma, Chiyo's Dad is not actually a cat. He can fly at Mach 100 and deflect bullets. He's paid by the government. He may or may not be Santa Claus. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Eat your tomatoes.

Where You Can Find Him: In dreams, Chiyo's Dad is everywhere. In real life, the ADV and Sentai Filmworks DVD releases of Azumanga Daioh are now out-of-print, but the original Azumanga Daioh manga is available in English from Yen Press.

    Genma Saotome

Origin: Ranma 1/2

Threat Level: Panda

  Profile: It's possible that deep down, Genma Saotome cares about the well-being of his son, Ranma, more than he cares about martial arts or training. If this is the case, then Genma has a really poor way of showing it. Genma's ceaseless training regime has afflicted both father and son with shape-changing curses, and Genma's poor planning has inflicted traumatizing ailurophobia on Ranma, and that's not even counting the dire consequences that Genma's promises to Ranma's mother entail...

Where You Can Find Him: When not playing with a tire or chewing on bamboo, Genma Saotome can be found in the Ranma 1/2 manga and anime, which are both released in the United States by Viz Media.

    Taki Renzaburo

Origin: Wicked City

Threat Level: FALCON PUNCH!

  Profile: A member of the Black Guard that protects the boundaries between the human world and the Demon Realm, Taki Renzaburo is pretty new to this whole fatherhood thing, since his first child isn't born yet when the Wicked City film concludes. With a James Bond libido, a pistol that can shoot through walls, and a right hook that can crush faces, Taki is more of the “who's your daddy?” type.

  Where You Can Find Him: Wicked City is available on DVD from Eastern Star, but we warned, even though this is Father's Day, this film is not kids' stuff.

    Yujiro Hanma

Origin: Grappler Baki

Threat Level: Ogre

Profile: Some would say that Gendo Ikari of Neon Genesis Evangelion is the worst dad in anime, but I'd argue that even Gendo levels of shitty parenthood pale in comparison to the walking natural disaster that is Yujiro Hanma, the father of underground fighters Baki and Jack Hanma. Yujiro's bloodlust is all encompassing, and Baki's friends and family often pay for it with their lives. Yujiro's bad dad deeds are too numerous to count and must be seen to be believed.

Where You Can Find Him: Funimation's DVD release of the 2001 Grappler Baki TV anime is out-of-print, but the most recent Baki anime is currently streaming on Netflix, and Akita Shoten Comics publishes the New Grappler Baki manga on Comixology.

    And that's our look at some classic anime daddies, but this sampling is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list. Anime has a long and rich history, the full spectrum of fatherhood in all its beautiful and messy permutations would take a lifetime to explore. Who are your favorite classic anime dads? Which honorable (or dishonorable) mentions do you think should make the list?

  And from everyone here at Crunchyroll, we wish you a very happy Father's Day!

    -----

Paul Chapman is the host of The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast and GME! Anime Fun Time.

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