#its that post about two cakes but everyone seemed to dislike the cake i brought to the function *SHRUGS*

[capybonara]

Me whenever someone draws any of my characters: You are the most amazing person ever, I will die for you, I will KILL for you, I hope you find $100 on the ground every day, may you receive a thousand blessings from the universe, we shall have a summer wedding

Me whenever I want to draw someone else's characters: This is so out of character, this is a terrible sin, they're going to hate this, they're going to hate me, hunt me down, send me to the gallows, I will be mocked forever, shunned by my peers, I deserve this punishment

[viroro-kun]

My Review of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime (2019)

[The following post is a repost of a thread originally published on Reddit in November 17th, 2019, titled “My final review of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime”, which I’m sharing here again for archival purposes. I may eventually do a new one and this post is meant to only reflect my thoughts at the time. It will also not be updated with later information to keep it consistent with the original] About two weeks ago, the Sun & Moon series of the Pokémon Anime concluded after a run of three years, ending up as what's probably one of the most controversial entries of the show, with fans either loving it as a fresh take on the series or disliking it for several issues that cropped up over time. Now, after reviewing the series for the length of the aforementioned three years and at the eve of the beginning of the newer series, I'd like to pass my personal, final judgement of the Alolan series. Now, first of all, I think a preamble is necessary: all of what I will explain is my opinion and nothing else, and this isn't meant to be senseless bashing of the Sun & Moon series, either. I treasure striving to be objective and analytical above all else, and while I of course can't claim mine will be an absolutely perfect and objectively correct review, I will do my best to share my thoughts on the matter, while explaining why I feel this specific way.Secondly, I'd like to address an argument I've occasionally seen brought up, that due to Sun & Moon's seeming focus on comedy and slice of life it's not possible to compare it to previous seasons. And while that may apply for some specific choices it made, I don't believe that's the case: it was still set in a new region of the Pokémon world, still had Ash undertake the local region-wide challenge, still had a structure involving unimportant self-contained episodes (which we could call 'filler' in an useful but technically inaccurate definition) surrounding the plot-based ones, and still ended up with a League at a climax for it all. Therefore, at least on a structural and plot standpoint, there are enough commonalities to make a comparison possible, and that's where I plan to dig in particular to explain my stance.

Before I move to the meat of it, however, I want to spend some words of praise for some things I feel this series did right or at least deserves some compliments for, overall. First of all, I think that Sun & Moon does great in mantaining a chill, comfy atmosphere which to a degree makes it stand out from previous seasons, and I understand why this was appealing for some previous fans of the series. Most of the cast is pretty likable on the whole with particular props to Ash's Alolan Pokémon team managing to mantain lots of expressivity in all situations, and the series has a decent willingness to explore some concepts previous seasons only lightly touched on. The show also foregoes a lot typical Team Rocket shenanigans for different kinds of plots, making it great for people who find their usage stale and played out by now, and the simplified art style allowed for some pretty good sequences both in battle and out. At its best, the series can produce some of the best moments of this Anime as a whole, and it was at least the first series to let go of some limitations that were just weighting the show down at this point. While I think several of these pros also have indirect cons attached to them (especially in terms of tone and character usage), these are all things I feel need to be pointed out in positive for the series.With that said, I'd like to begin my proper dissection of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime.

Pokémon Sun & Moon - A Pokémon Anime in an Identity Crisis

1. Plot Pacing and Development: The Problem of the Stationary Setting and the "Happy Bubble"

Everyone who has heard of the Sun & Moon Anime is probably aware of its biggest break from tradition: rather than being an adventure series, this entry in the long-running Pokémon series decided to take place in a single location with occasional detours by having Ash enroll in the Pokémon School, shifting the general tone of the series towards a more slice of life approach. This had a significant effect on how the story developed, but in my opinion, if there's a fundamental issue of the Sun & Moon series, it's probably this one. Because rather than committing to the change, the writers appeared to want to have their cake and eat it too.

Specifically, adventure series and slice of life have radically opposed mission statements: for the first, progression and rising action are an important, consistent story engine moving the plot forward; the second is instead far more laidback, focused more on enjoying the moment and offering low stakes and drama more often than not, especially Sun & Moon's chosen brand of it that's closer to a sit-com than a proper slice of life. Pretty much, adventure series have a degree of development in them, while slice of life is defined by the lack of said development.

Now, I'm not saying Pokémon characters were always amazing examples of character development, or that every series prior was well-written. But the structure itself was sound, as you had Ash embarked in a defined goal of winning the League as part of his vague dream to become a Pokémon Master, having filler adventures on the way, but always undertaking rising action from the first to last Gym and occasional rivals, until the climax of the journey at the League (and in Kalos' case, the Team Flare arc). We see Ash, and occasionally his friends, actively train, fight or improve on the path to their goals, while the narration itself always reminds us of what the current major objective is. Even when the episode doesn't actually contribute to the larger story, the viewer always has a reassurance that the next objective will be reached eventually.

The structure of Sun & Moon, by comparison, is inherently more passive more often than not, as you have Ash and the others waiting for the plot to happen to them. Instead of having Ash actively seek a new challenge, you see him sitting down and wait for something specific to make him go and progress, and so does everyone else, with only rare exceptions. The characters are effectively static until the plot decides to move them, and while this could superficially resemble the previous structure (as both have a progression that could be defined as arbitrary), the Sun & Moon series barely, if ever, reassured the viewer to still remember the goals it set up, or even what the next one to come is.

Now, inherently, the characters being passive recipients of plot isn't a bad thing, it's just how slice of life stories tend to work. The problem of Sun & Moon, however, was that beyond the vague and SoL-friendly concept of Ash at the Pokémon School they still had Ash pursue the Island Trials (and in fact, he's impressed by the concept of mastering Z-Moves before he even enrolls in the school), which gave the show a problem: it wanted to be a chill story focusing more on small time hijinks than big adventures, while still taking on a structure that demanded to follow the rules of an adventure series, creating an inherent contradiction.

What I mean is that, since the Island Trials were still part of Ash's stay in Alola, the show was still supposed to abide to the rising action leading to a climax, giving the show a direction that it had to fulfill by its end rather than have an open premise with occasional plotlines (example: GeGeGe no Kitaro, where the open premise is 'Kitaro deals with evil Yokai' with every other longer plotline spinning from there). It's something that pretty much prevents the viewer from fully enjoying the more quiet romps, because in the mind of a viewer expecting progression, these are just a diversion over the more important goal Ash has in the region. Now, in fairness to Sun & Moon, the show seemed aware of the tension and made sure to tie each Trial Ash did into either school trips or wanting to get specific Crystals, but beyond making it seem like Ash didn't care much for something he claimed he wasn't interested in (especially with wanderlust being a previously estabilished character trait of his), this ran into another big issue of Sun & Moon: rather than a sense of rising action, pretty much every Island Trial Ash did was narratively unrelated to each other, especially once it was revealed that Ash didn't need to complete any of them to access the Alola League, in contrast with how every badge was important and necessary in previous regions.

This specific issue wasn't however unique to Ash, but rather a persistent problem in pretty much every element and story arc of the series: be it Ash's quest, Guzma's struggles, Rowlet's rivalry with Hau's Dartrix/Decidueye, Lycanroc's rage issues, Lillie's goal to be able to touch every Pokémon again, the Necrozma and Aether arcs to even the Alola League and anything in between, almost all of them had only the bare minimum of buildup and either ended as soon as they got teased or happened to be sidelined for a large amount of episodes before they got their due focus, if not both at once. While some of these arcs ranged from alright to pretty great (Litten's pre-capture arc dealing with Stoutland's passing, or the Guzma-related segments of the Alola League), there are quire a few (chiefly Necrozma) that were ruined by a combination of lacking setup work and the feeling that, simply put, nothing mattered that much. Sure, the arcs could be mentioned here and there, and some can set up things for the future (like how Aether leads to the Ultra Guardians), but on the whole, the arcs are effectively done-in-one in terms of lasting impact. Unlike how in previous shows you could've had stuff like Ash's and Dawn's intertwined journeys, here you have Stoutland lose relevance in terms of influence to Litten as soon as he dies, where save for Stoutland brief cameo as a spirit on Poni Island his storyline got shifted in the unrelated rivalry with Kukui's Incineroar.

This last example, in particular, brings up another of the big issues of Sun & Moon, one that can be divided in three parts: plot pacing, plot segregation, and the "happy bubble".

In regards to plot pacing, one of the most notorious problems brought up for this series is the fact that, to put it simply, each plotpoint will only progress when the show decided they have to, which led to things like Lillie going almost an entire real time year between getting her Z-Crystal and then her Z-Ring, or Ash doing absolutely nothing about his Lycanroc's raging issues for getting dirty for close to thirty episodes before they happened again in the Ula'Ula arc, during which neither character gave any hints of even thinking about these lingering elements in any way even if it was clear setup to be followed on. This, coupled with the aforementioned lack of a constant reminder of the next destination, just made for a frustrating waiting game in terms of the next major point of progression.

A related issue is the plot segregation, or specifically, how each major arc is effectively removed from the others, from Kiawe and Sophocles' occasional focus episodes to more important stuff like Lillie's Pokémon phobia, her and Gladion's later interest in finding their father, Lana's desire to create a balloon to explore the ocean with, Ash's Island Trials, and so on. It made these characters feel like they exist in their own separate paths, never to intersect, something the evolution episode in the Poni Island arc somewhat exemplifies since Sophocles' and Lana's efforts happen on completely distinct plotlines and locations. As I explained above this also happens with major arcs, like how the Necrozma arc's only contribution to the wider narrative was sending Poipole home (and given its later offscreen evolution and power up, one could make a case the arc had a negative impact on the series). The segregation also had the effect of having the plot act like something flat out doesn’t exist unless it has been directly showcased, leading to such goofiness as Kukui's best friend Molayne not being invited at his wedding in spite of being Sophocles' cousin, or how absolutely no one was in Poni Island during the Manalo Festival buildup. A good example of the difference, I feel, is this: in previous series, we could've had Serena relate to Ash with her Master Class loss at a significant point of his character arc during the Winding Woods episode; in this one, Mallow only revealed her mother issues after Lillie's entire arc revolving around her mother was resolved, with the two never comparing notes. The closest we get is Ash relating to Lana for his problems with Lycanroc using Continental Crush in Ida's first episode and Lillie trying to help out Ash during his fallout with Rotom, both of which refer to things that happened to them either mostly offscreen or entirely there.

The plot segregation was, in particular, noticeable with the decision to associate three of Ash's Alolan Pokémon (Torracat, Dusk Lycanroc and Rowlet) to specific characters as rivals, with the Pokémon driving the rivalry rather than Ash himself (who had otherwise rather civil, mostly friendly interactions with Kukui, Gladion and Hau). On paper, this should've guaranteed that every Pokémon had their moment to shine, but effectively, it meant that each of them were restricted to mostly their specific rival in terms of focus post-Aether. Lycanroc got Olivia's Grand Trial, the Ula'Ula arc to itself and then the rivalry with Gladion's Midnight Lycanroc, but no other significant usages; Rowlet got roles in the first two Grand Trials, but then spent almost one hundred episodes before its second focus episode, and beyond his friendship with Meltan it only got Hau's battle and a part against Kukui to itself; Torracat was the one absolutely done dirty here, as beyond the Stoutland appearence in Poni Island and the Totem Lurantis battle pre-Aether, all his following focus moments rely on the rivalry with Kukui's Incineroar, with only occasional minor scuffles to its name and a bit of the Guzma battle to its name. That would already be bad enough, but the fact that until the League there's no battle that requires Ash to involve more than two Pokémon (with most of them requiring him only one), Ash's team never actually gets to act as a team until the very final battle of the series, furthering the lacking sense of cohesiveness. Year two of the series was particularly bad in this sense, as most major battles were fought with either Pikachu or Lycanroc while Torracat and Rowlet barely did much.

And lastly, one persistent result of both the plot pacing and the plot segregation was a phenomenon I like to refer to as the "happy bubble," or the tendency of the Sun & Moon series to confine major conflicts and bad moments for the characters only to their specific focus episodes. In previous shows, you could have moments of self-doubt or worry linger even outside dedicated episodes (Dawn's depression for her losing streak, Ash's rivalry with Paul affecting him, and his increasing worries in the latter part of XY being clear examples), but due to Sun & Moon's commitment to fun times before everything else, it means the characters aren't allowed to have any conflict or moments of darkness to later conquer unless they're the focus, and even then resolving them quickly. See how bubbly Lillie is even when she's scared of Pokémon unless the episode is specifically about her, how she never even thought about her father until Gladion reminded her, how Ash's confidence and his relationship with Lycanroc are only focused on in Ula'Ula and then never again, and most noticeably the fact Mallow's dead mother was treated as something that tore her for years but it was only ever directly dealt with in one episode, to the point she's the only family member on Bulbapedia listed under characters of the day. The problem of this bubble is that it pretty much makes it hard to invest in the emotional struggles of these characters because they end up feeling like throwaway moments which are then functionally forgotten, with no sense of constant growth. Characters get their moments, the audience gets invested, and then it's forgotten, with only few and far-in-between moments of exception, and that's another thing making each conflict feel segregated from each other.

If I could sum up everything in one sentence, I'd say this: Sun & Moon is composed by a myriad of pieces, some excellent, some average, some awful and everything in between, that all exist mostly in a vacuum. I'll return to this topic in a bit, as there's another important aspect to touch first.

2. Characters and Their Development: Too Many, Too Little, Too Late

Another aspect of Sun & Moon that's often brought up is the decision to have a main cast of six counting Ash, with the game Trial Captains Mallow, Lana, Kiawe and Sophocles alongside plot-important character Lillie turned into Ash's classmates. These characters have been as much a point of praise as they were of criticism, with some fans absolutely loving this group while others couldn't absolutely stand them. I feel the best way to tackle this is to first list how I feel each character was handled in terms of planning and development, before going into their relationships and the rest of the cast, starting with the humans and then going through Ash's Pokémon before closing on Ash himself. I will say to start with, however, that none of these characters is inherently unlikable the way they started as, and most of their later issues came solely from their handling down the line or flaws in how they were approached.

2.1) The companions

Among the companions, Sophocles was probably the one that made the poorer first impressions, as beyond sharing the same type specialty, his game background as an inventor and his Anime presentation as a programmer that sometimes built things gave him a number of unfair comparisons with Clemont, not helped at all by an introduction episode that ranks among the worst ones of this group. That said, I feel by the end he actually ended up being one of the best characters of the group in spite of heavily scattered focus, for one major reason: he's one of the few characters of this group to have a consistent character growth that plays in his dream and that's easily noticeable as the story unfolds. Early on, he starts as the timid, insecure kid that gets easily scared of the dark and needs people and Pokémon's support over everything, but between his first few episodes and the later clarification of his interest in space, it's clear that his development was actually aimed towards him growing into a more independent and confident person and trainer. He goes from being unable to tell his friends that he's not actually leaving Alola after a misunderstanding and only getting his second Pokémon as a gift from Ash to slowly take an interest in rising Charjabug, first with a race and then by evolving it, then deciding to gain a Z-Crystal and a Z-Ring, learning to use it, and ultimately take part in the League in spite of knowing to not be on the same level of his friends, yet still putting his all, with a nice interlude where he takes things into his own hands during the Celesteela mission, and with the race he does to gain his Z-Crystal leading him to confront and surpass his fear of the dark. While still pretty scattered and sidelined, I feel he's a character that's been developed well-enough and that in his post-series aim is actively working towards his dream in a new but productive way by visiting Mossdeep City's Space Center, and definitely my favorite of the Alolan kids as he clearly developed into a better person by the end through a straightforward, traceable progression.

Lana is probably up there with Sophocles in terms of being one of the best characters of this group, and I'd go as far as saying she's probably the best non-Coordinator/Performer Pokégirl out there. While Sophocles ranks high due to getting good personal development, Lana ranks high because, while on paper her dream of creating a big balloon to explore the ocean with is simple and a tad silly, it is something she puts clear effort into and that she never loses track of through the whole series, even with a fairly noticeable void of attention in the mid-series stretch. Between being the first of the non-Kiawe classmates to get a Z-Ring and a Z-Crystal, learning how to use Hydro Vortex, then evolving Popplio to Brionne and then Primarina (while dealing with a Kyogre along the way) while also getting Oceanic Operetta, she's consistently focused on her improvement, and always the best female battler of the bunch. The only thing that really penalizes her is that while her dream is technically achieved, she ultimately gets Oceanic Operetta with offscreen training and they never make a point to highlight that as a big moment, and while her skill development is solid, she remains exactly the same character throughout the series from the first and last episode. An entertaining character for sure, but one that just gets stronger and not much else. Still, she's easily one of the best female leads this series ever had, and a good example of how to make a non-Coordinator-esque female character work well after the pitfalls Misty and Iris fell into.

Kiawe is not far from them, with a pretty solid run slightly marred by a few issues. Specifically, he's probably the best battler of this group that isn't Ash, but he's distinctly characterized as having two "modes" as a character: either the serious, spiritual follower of Alolan traditions, or the one that started popping out more often later in the series where he's an overreacting ham to rival Cilan. I personally feel Kiawe's better moments tends to come from the first mode, not only because he stands out better in a funny sense by being the straight-laced guy in a cast of wacky people, but also because he's the best character to explore the more spiritual angle of Alola, the element that truly makes the region stand out compared to previous ones featured in the series. Unfortunately, beyond the fact the slice of life romps tended to favor his wacky angle more than the serious one, Kiawe is penalized by not quite having a true arc to develop through: he wants to become a stronger trainer and claims so, but all his episodes ultimately end up involving unrelated matters: he catches his Marowak, learns to use a Z-Move with him later on, and ends up getting his Charizard back into working shape after he undertakes Fini's trial to save Ash, but while each of these are overall good showings and he's probably got the best League run of the cast in terms of prowess and skill, they tend to remain isolated instances. It also doesn't help that while his hot-blooded rivalry with Ash can be fairly entertaining and it's teased from episode 2, it ultimately culminates into an underwhelming showdown in the penultimate episode that barely feels like an afterthought. I'd hardly call him a bad character and he still does pretty well even with his issues, but one that could've been handled better on the whole.

A far different story is Lillie, a character that, I feel, suffered from several different issues all at once. To address the elephant in the living room first, let it be said that while they share traits, Anime Lillie and Game Lillie end up being fairly different characters by the end, and while I think Game Lillie is probably one of the best creations of GameFreak, my opinion on her Anime self couldn't be more different, and it's not due to straight comparisons between each other. Now, Lillie doesn't actually start badly: the fact that she has a phobia of touching Pokémon from an unknown source at first actually gave her a nice direction as a character in a way similar yet different from Lana, but it didn't take long for Lillie's major issue to show itself: things happen to her rather than her working towards stuff proactively, and the majority of the time her struggles are resolved by feeling sad or believing really hard with extremely few exceptions. This started already before the Aether arc, where while her episodes were good, they all relied on the exact same formula of Lillie unable to touch Pokémon, being unable to do so and feeling sad about it until she can in a spur-of-the-moment situation, which started to make her episodes feel stale.

The Aether arc seemed to finally change things as it heavily revolved around Lillie, but to anticipate some things I'll delve into more detail later, the changed circumstances ended up weakening both the conflict and her character, making her come across as too unlikable. But beyond that issue, the problem of the Aether arc is that it ensured that Lillie was completely healed of her phobia due to the actions of others rather than herself, which killed off all her character potential and left her with nothing to do for the rest of the series (while the conflict with her mother was completely brushed under the rug after this arc introduced and hastily attempted to resolve it). Sure, she 'grew stronger', and got a Z-Ring and Z-Crystal, but the majority of important things of the Mohn arc were actually dealt with by Gladion, while her own help ended up amounting to still, once more, feeling really hard rather than active work. But the biggest problem of her character is that all of her major achievements derived from either someone else (Silvally healing her phobia by saving her, Gladion actually defeating Totem Kommo-o, her Z-Ring being borrowed from her father, Gladion finding Mohn's Zoroark) or facilitated by outside assistance (her one victory in the League's Battle Royale coming from effectively killstealing a Salamence Kiawe weakened, her battle with Tyranitar having the assistance of a Totem Sandshrew) which made it hard to think she earned her development or truly grow stronger when she ultimately always ended up relying on someone else, especially given her tendency to never act unless prodded (see how she seemed perfectly fine not touching Pokémon for years until Mallow and Ash actively tried to get her to do it, nor try to learn why she has the phobia in the first place, nor thinking about where her father may be). This, alongside the tendency of the series to play up game moments like the Lillie and Solgaleo moment or her change in dress and hairstyle to show her resolve while sapping all the meaning they had in the source material and the habit of the characters to praise Lillie for anything she does no matter how minor or trivial, ultimately made her a character that was borderline insufferable to follow, especially for the classmate pushed as the most important beyond Ash.

The worst of all main characters, however, is without a doubt Mallow. While I have several issues with Lillie's handling as a character, at least her faults come with how the show decided to approach her, while I feel by contrast Mallow was only allowed breadcrumbs of just about anything, something already shown by how she had to wait until episode 18 for her first true focus episode. Back in the earliest episodes I thought her interest in making Aina the most popular restaurant in Alola could've given her a drive as a character similar to the one Lana and at the time Lillie had, only for the story to be content with leaving her where she is. Between the fact her Bounsweet evolved twice in ways that were respectively too sudden and rather unrelated to her and the habit of her focus episodes past her first to focus away from her more than on her (having to share screentime with her brother 'Ulu and Oranguru, specifically), it felt like she was added to the cast because they had to, and while the last year of Sun & Moon tried to put a patch on the problem by giving her emotional moments with her mother and her League match with Lana, said patches had the effect of not feeling very genuine since her mother, as I mentioned above, only really figured in one episode, while Mallow suddenly being afraid of Tsareena getting hurt when she fought in Ultra Space and in other instances just fine just feels like an awkward attempt at giving her an emotional moment that doesn't gel with her characterization too well. If we add onto it that she only mastered her Z-Move during the League itself, her Z-Crystal was gained just by making a burger, and the Shaymin she cared for after meeting her mother effectively did nothing afterwards until its deal was resolved at the last possible second during the final credits of the series because 'Ulu found some Gracidea with no input from Mallow proper, Mallow ended up feeling like the most mishandled characters of this crew, whose character and development felt more like isolated moments than anything cohesive.

The Pokémon of the cast outside of the major ones don't really warrant much talk, the best of the bunch being Kiawe's Marowak for his vibrant personality and good feats, while everyone else ranges from pretty much not too focused on (Turtonator, Charizard, Tsareena, Togedemaru), useful for development but otherwise kinda dull more often than not (Primarina, Vikavolt, Snowy), cute but pointless in spite of heavy buildup (Sandy), and pretty much useless (Shaymin, Magearna outside of being a McGuffin), mostly getting occasional cute moments than anything substantial or productive for their trainers.

2.2) Ash's Pokémon

Beyond the classmates, there's the matter of Ash's Pokémon as well, and I'd like to spend a few words on the Rotomdex. On the whole, he was never the most important character, but I'd say the best way to describe him is that he's a likable character that happened to star in some rather poor episodes: while his overreactions could get annoying sometimes, for the most part he was likable enough, and his existence ensured that Ash would lose his oft-criticized trait to scan Pokémon he already saw that made him come across as dumb, and some of his moments and hobbies made him pretty endearing. His only real problem is that his focus episodes usually tended to focus on rather stupid plots aimed only to comedy, and while three of them are at least arguable, his last true focus episode happened to be one of the worst episodes of the series due to how out-of-character Ash acted under the possibility of Rotom leaving. None of the issues of these episodes were Rotom's fault, but as a minor character, it was somewhat unfortunate for him to receive such a short end of the stick focus-wise.

Going back to Ash's actual Pokémon, beyond the eternal Pikachu, I'd say the one most worth of consideration overall is Torracat (or Incineroar, but he never fought under the form), both in terms of praise and criticism. I say so because, before his capture, Litten seemed to be given unusually large focus, including being the first of Ash's Alolan Pokémon to debut and appearing for several episodes even between his major pre-capture arc, which being among the most tragic and involved capture circumstances seemed to point towards Torracat being the 'ace Pokémon' of the region, only for things to change once Lycanroc entered the picture. To put it simply, Torracat has some rather solid episodes and a personality that very much matches Ash's own, but he often feels like he's only given breadcrumbs of focus. Between only taking part in one minor trial and no Grand Trials, not getting his own associated Z-Crystal until right before the League and having it used only twice counting the test run of it, and his rivalry battle being the only one in the Alola League to happen in the middle of a match rather than at the end of it (which lead to a rather goofy division of him getting declared winner and then fainting after evolving just so it couldn't technically be considered a tie even if it functionally was to preserve his triumph), it feels like the poor Pokémon is never given enough of his due, and while I enjoy his drive to surpass Kukui's Incineroar and especially the way the plotline was figuratively used throughout the Ash VS Kukui battle, it just seems like Torracat is always last in priority in terms of Ash's Pokémon, which makes even his good moments feel like afterthought even with nice bits like his relationship with Lycanroc, especially with how, as touching and well-executed as it was, Stoutland's effect on Torracat is forgotten as soon as it happens, between Fire Fang being mastered exactly one episode later and Stoutland himself only being brought back twice, once as a thought by Ash and only in the second with Stoutland meeting Torracat again in Poni Island, mostly for the purpose of teaching him another move. So, in my opinion, Torracat is a case of a conceptually solid-enough character, that's however penalized both by how little the narrative gave him focus, and the fact that his arc with Stoutland and his later rivalry with Incineroar are pretty much unrelated (for why I consider this a flaw, consider that fellow Fire starter Infernape was able to have a memorably tragic backstory that did dovetail into his major rivalry perfectly, so just asking for a degree of connection isn't outside the realm of what this show can do).

And then there's Lycanroc, the Pokémon that the series wants us to consider the regional ace, which had several issues associated with him. To put this simply, I feel like he was a much better character as a Rockruff than he was after his evolution, mostly for being the perfect mix of adorable, focused, and having actually pronounced rage issues that occasionally popped up but were treated completely seriously, alongside having a pretty good showing in the Olivia battle as a rare final bout to completely not involve Z-Moves in a period where their usage was starting to become excessive. However, after the evolution (which is treated as a rare, one-of-a-kind event due to Rockruff evolving during a rare green flash yet is never actually remarked on beyond very occasional comments that he looks odd that are never treated as much), his handling changes for the worst, specifically for two of his rather ace-worthy moments: its rage form arc, and the way his rivalry with Gladion's Dusk Lycanroc was handled. The first is overall the biggest issue, because it's also symbolic of Sun & Moon's tonal issues since his major challenge to overcome as a Pokémon is the fact that, whenever his fur gets dirty, he goes on murderous rampages, always after acting goofily shocked in a way intended to be humorous, creating a whiplash effect that doesn't make clear how the viewer should find the scene given it first asks us to laugh at Lycanroc and then to be scared of him. This is also only introduced once in the middle of the Aether arc and then never revisited until the Ula'Ula arc, where it's ultimately solved by Ash bringing back memories of how Rockruff used to act about getting dirty that happened completely offscreen, only for the writers to then milk the drama some more two episodes later by now handling the rage mode completely seriously in terms of reactions and using actual rage as the trigger instead of just specifically the fur, in an episode that ultimately relied on Ash not trusting his Pokémon (when he was already somewhat out-of-character by being scared by Lycanroc's rampage after he was willing to hug his blazing Chimchar to calm him down back in Sinnoh). It's all handled in an extremely brief arc and then never again, feeling like an arc that takes elements from both the Infernape and Ash-Greninja arcs while missing the slow buildup and non-regressive development that made those two arcs work (and I'll elaborate more on it in a bit). Beyond this, his rivalry with Gladion's Lycanroc suffers of being extremely sidelined in spite of being the 'major' rivalry of the series: while the two Pokémon did fight three times, the first time was interrupted by Team Rocket (something they stopped doing for major rival battles for quite a while beforehand), the second relying on some very weird resilience by Midnight Lycanroc by not only tanking completely Dusk Lycanroc's Splintered Stormshards to seemingly no damage but also snapping out of confusion to deliver a finishing Z-Move of his own, and the third relying on a battle that was overall not too bad, but felt more like a mid-series squabble than Ash's victory at the Alola League (which is then completely outclassed in spectacle by Ash VS Kukui). Dusk Lycanroc's rivalry isn't actually too bad, but considering how Gladion's Lycanroc is the only major opponent Ash's ace got to fight post-evolution outside the Ula'Ula arc, Kukui's Pokémon (none of which he defeated) and occasional training bout, it did restrict a lot of his feats and ended up with him feeling more like an okay Pokémon than the powerhouse the writing wanted him to seem like. Coupled with a lackluster personal arc, this makes him closer to the Krookodile tier of 'possible aces' than one of the major ones like Charizard or Infernape.

And then we get to Rowlet, the last of the major Alolan four counting Pikachu, and probably the most problematic of the bunch. Much like Torracat and Lycanroc, Rowlet isn't inherently a bad Pokémon, with the first episodes neatly estabilishing two things: yes, he is dopey and loves to sleep a bit too much, but he's also a serious and competent fighter in battle that never fails to impress, making sure that neither side ultimately hurt or diminished the other. His problem is ultimately revolving around two things: he's spent a long time out of focus, and his later focus didn't exactly paint him in a good light. The first is probably the major issue at hand: while both Rowlet and Torracat were heavily sidelined midway into the series, Torracat did at least get a few token episodes to himself, while Rowlet's first real focus episode after his capture one only really comes almost one hundred episodes later. While in the early series this was mitigated by having Rowlet take part in two minor trials and two Grand Trials, this focus is all but forgotten by the second year of the series, with Rowlet reduced to solely a gag Pokémon whose greatest achievement ended up being learning Razor Leaf by sitting on a magical tree. This had the adverse effect of making his gag tries, which previously only showed either in minor matches or not during serious parts of battle, to slowly become more and more prominent. The other issue is that Rowlet had without a doubt the weakest rivalry set up and buildup of the three major Pokémon Ash obtained in Alola, as Hau and his Dartrix only appear in one episode before the League and two of the three battles Ash had with Hau involved major, non-strategy related writing contrivancies to reach the desired outcome (Ash slipping his Grassium-Z and getting distracted to fetch it for Rowlet to lose for the first one; Rowlet's Decidueye hoodie tanking a Z-Move, the overturned loss, and the sudden learning of a Feather Dance that doesn't act like the one Rowlet was trying to master for Rowlet to win in the final one). The way Rowlet acted in the Ash VS Hau battle is kinda emblematic of this, as the oft-debated overturned loss moment involved him falling asleep in the middle a match he was supposedly fired up for just for the sake of a joke and nothing else; regardless of how one wants to justify it, it doesn't change that such a thing never happened before in the series, and it ultimately involved Rowlet betraying the trust Ash put in him just for a scene the writers deemed funny, in what was supposed to be his finest hour (while Rowlet fell asleep in the Hala Grand Trial, it was only after his part of the match ended). Considering also that two of the moves Rowlet learned required the help of his adoptive flock without as much input from Ash and he ultimately ate an Everstone just for a variation of Seed Bomb that turned out to be more a liability than asset throughout the series, not even a cute relationship with Meltan and the fact that he won his last important matches of the series makes up for some of the worst excesses of tonal imbalance and inability to let jokes go in a context that absolutely have no space for his brand of incompetence-based humor.

With the major Alola captures gone, there's just the other two latecomer to discuss, and I'd like to start with Poipole/Naganadel, specifically because he's probably one of the worst handled Pokémon Ash ever owned. While the second year of Sun & Moon had several issues, none are as glaring as Poipole being the major Pokémon of the period, only to not actually do much of actually important. Starting with the fact that Ash only bonds with Poipole by proxy to begin with since Poipole interacts with and loves Pikachu before Ash even actually enters the picture, Poipole's biggest contributions to the series afterwards are acting silly for the majority of episodes and never actually getting involved in serious fights beyond one small bout with the Team Skull trio (which is estabilished as even more pathetic than the Team Rocket trio), making the fact that Ash captured him feel like a waste, especially when his focus episodes dealing more with his emotional side end up being just two, and ultimately not doing much of helpful during the Necrozma arc except leaving at the end in what at the time felt like a rather permanent farewell (as he was stuck in another dimension rather than somewhere Ash can readily access). Now, if Poipole's story ended there, he would've been odd but not too bad all things considered, but the problem comes from the fact that Poipole eventually returned right at the end of the series for no adequately explained in-universe reason during an unrelated Guzzlord attack, not only evolved but also presented as a competent and useful battler in spite of the fact none of it happened either onscreen or by Ash's efforts (unlike how Gliscor and Goodra, Pokémon in similar situations, did prove their worth onscreen before being put aside for a time), making this turn come across as an undeserved boost for Ash just so he could have six Pokémon, alongside removing the beauty of the permanent farewell Ash had with Poipole because the sheer coincidence of Naganadel's arrival and then his departure means that they may as well see each other again in the future. Among Ash's Pokémon in Alola, Naganadel is probably the crowning example of the series wanting its cake and eat it too in terms of wanting to be cute and fun and then rushing to make battles matter without the required buildup.

Meltan shares a lot of issues with Poipole, but overall to a lesser degree, mostly because his biggest problem is just coming way too late in the series and, much like Poipole, he only really bonds with Ash by proxy due to starting to like Rowlet first. Much like Lycanroc, his existence is supposedly important as a new discovery but this trait of his is barely called to attention, and coming too late in the series he only gets a few battles to his name with his contributions mostly amounting to gags rather than skill and serious fighting, alongside having the dubious honor of being the only Pokémon of Ash's Alola team to never use Z-Moves in spite of Ash fetching a Steelium-Z as a result of his final Grand Trial for no other reason than the out-of-universe one that Melmetal has never been in a game where you could use Z-Moves. Adding to the fact that Meltan only evolved right before the League finals for reasons outside Ash's guidance or influence conveniently before the last match for the victory, only to give indirect help at best and then winning a battle against a Pokémon with no feats, it's hard to consider Meltan's power boost earned and even harder to tell if he even had a significant power boost to begin with considering how little feats we have for both him in particular and Alola battles in general. All in all, a Pokémon that's been more shortserved by how late he came than actually any inherent issues.

2.3) Ash, Pikachu, and the Team Rocket trio

And with all those characters breached, we have to move on to the Sun & Moon take on Ash himself, which is, to put it simply, rather complicated to discuss. Another one of Sun & Moon's biggest talking points was the decision to amp up Ash's typical childishness to higher degrees than usual, with even his voice actress Rica Matsumoto confirming in an interview for the next series that she was explicitly instructed to play Ash as younger than usual for the Alolan series. Now, yet again, Ash having a goofier and more relaxed personality is neither unprecedented (as he was always silly to a degree, even in XY) nor inherently bad, and the problems mostly came from how the series decided to handle him later. One good thing at the start was that the take this series seemed to go for was Ash being a battle shonen-esque hero stuck in the wrong genre, with his typical behavior clashing with the more relaxed nature of the setting, which actually worked well in ensuring he didn't feel reset while fitting the new mission statement of the series. The problems really came up with how, ultimately, Ash became the series' biggest target of butt monkey-related humor (with the rest of the cast either being treated far more seriously or only occasionally being given the same treatment) and his initial competence in battling lead the way to an overabundance of 'silly regular kid'-related humor with even battles treated as mostly laughing matters, something later battles and important matches overturned to a degree that started to make Ash's handling feel arbitrary.

And arbitrary is the best way to describe Ash in this series: he can either be as good a trainer and master planner as he always was (Ash VS Olivia, Ash VS Misty, Ash VS Kukui), a heroic young man willing to go to good lengths for people he cares for (Tapu Koko rematch, most of the Guzzlord arc) while being scared and intimidated by his own Pokémon (Ula'Ula arc), a regular kid screwing up on daily tasks and willing to cheat his homework (Sophocles' early focus eps, the open school episode), a whiny little kid (the Stoutland treasure hunt episode, the Rotom farewell episode), a surprisingly thoughtful and serious boy (Stoutland's death episode, Minior episode) and everything in between, with the changes being so jarring that it feels less like this show is attempting a nuanced take on Ash and more like the show is simply not caring to stick to any portrayal depending on what the episode requires, especially when as I said above the entire premise of the show hinges on Ash not falling for his typical wanderlust (which is the inability to sit still for long and explore the world, so 'school and daily life adventures' doesn't cut it) without ever adequately explaining how, and seeming strangely uninterested in looking for new chances to grow stronger unless they happen to come his way. Arbitrary is also a great way to describe his impact on both his friends and the region, where in spite of appearing in every single episode, it often feels like Ash is irrelevant to his own show: he has nothing to do with either of Lillie's family deals, nor Sophocles' growing independency beyond occasional sidelines support and kickstarting it indirectly with the Charjabug gift, he barely did anything to support Lana's achievements beyond being there when they happened, his rivalry with Kiawe was nice but ultimately wasn't given his due, and Mallow and him barely got to have significant interactions throughout the story. Most of his rivalries in the region were carried more by his Pokémon than himself as he only shared amicable relationships with all of his supposed rivals with no real competitivity at their core (aside from Kiawe, which as mentioned was done dirty), and even when he got to be a hero it was either as part of an effort by everyone (Necrozma arc, both Guzzlord instances, technically most Ultra Guardians episodes), relying on questionably justified plot devices (Aether arc, and once again the Necrozma arc), or ultimately moving the focus away from him and his influence when you'd think the story would do the opposite (Guzma's parts in the Alola League). Adding onto that that the amount of times his Pokémon gained moves in the heat of the moment without training (a series staple that previous series tried to downplay with more onscreen training) and how his Pokémon ended up learning moves more for the actions of someone other than him than because he helped them, and Ash's handling in this region really adds up to strangely inconsequential, which is particularly bad considering how the League tried to go the other way, making his eventual achievement at the end feel hollow in the face of lacking buildup in the region and the several boosts and narrative aids he got to get there.

There's also the elephant in the living room that is Ash's development. Early in Sun & Moon I've seen people claim this series was more about Ash developing as a human being than as a trainer, which would be true... if not for the fact stuff like Ash doing chores was also alluded to and shown in previous series like AG and DP, and that during the Alola League (which should be the culmination of the series) none of it is actually remotely involved except for Ash talking of his love for the region during the final attack, while it never actually showed in previous matches (even against Guzma, which should be where this should come up given Ash's declaration at the start of it, the narrative wants us to stay in Guzma's head instead). The 'love for the region' thing also seems weird to bring up to me considering he actually spent less time exploring the region and more being holed up in one city with very occasional detours, with most of the plots ensuing around him being the sort of thing you'd see in "filler" episodes (like taking part in some competitions, taking part in a play, etc). It feels more like the series wants us to pretend the typical filler hijinks now are part of character growth rather than being just small adventures for fun. If we consider that learning to love the region, then Ash didn't really do much of different from previous series beyond sitting still this time around. And ultimately, the fact that Ash is back to adventuring now in a similar way to previous series means that if Ash ends up winning a League again in the future (which is not unlikely now that the ceiling was broken through), none of the reasons given to make his stay in Alola significant would really age well. The only arc that I feel actively tried to develop Ash as a trainer was Ula'Ula, and that still relied on some very significant moments of out-of-character behavior from Ash.

2.4) Relationships, and Everyone Else

I think at this point one recurring issue has cropped up: specifically, there are so many supposedly important characters that none of them truly got their due in terms of focus, either having to be satisfied with a number of focus episodes that barely amount to an arc or with their involvement into things reduced to just their specific deals and barely little else, especially with how this was the first series to not have all of Ash's friends necessarily involved in every episode. I feel this had a pretty adverse effect on the series' dynamics, as the already diluted interactions between the cast due to the large group ended up being even less focused on given that not all the characters were always there. As a result, we barely know stuff like Mallow's or Sophocles' relationship, or Lillie's and Kiawe's, and so on, with their own relationships to each other mostly falling into basic friendship (the ones with Ash in particular mostly falling into respect, friendliness and occasional snark at his expense), with only a few like Kiawe's competitiveness with Ash or Lana and Mallow being revealed halfway in as childhood friends having particular focus, otherwise being content with splitting the cast into 'the boys' group' and 'the girls' group' whenever they needed focused attention, and the rare occasions where the characters had some interactions. For the most part, perhaps emblematically of this series, characters mostly shared moments rather than actual relationships.

All that's left to discuss in this area is the rest of the cast, and let it be said... for a series supposedly about exploring the people of Alola, the majority of the non-main cast ranges from forgettable to rather dull, especially once we move to the lesser recurring characters. Lusamine's reduction to an overworked mother who only gets involved in matters explicitly tied to her children and occasionally the Ultra Guardians missions was a rather noticeable waste of an interesting game character, and while Kukui does have a nice presence and good usage throughout the series, the same can't quite be said of his wife Burnet, who beyond some good presence in the Aether arc and minor bits of exposition when dealing with Ultra Beasts (and in particular Necrozma) is effectively sidelined in housewife position for most of the series as Ash's 'second mother' (a position that, unlike Kukui who actively acts the part, mostly seems to come from cooking for him and being married post-Aether) with most of her funny moments coming from being a Royal Mask fangirl. Wicke has very little going for her, while Faba is probably one of Sun & Moon's worst misfires in that, after making his villainy far worse than his game self, the story acts like he should be forgiven while never actually learning his lesson, in spite of the show telling us he caused trauma to Lillie for years and how most of his contributions to anything end up boiling to minor help at best, and attempting to cheat his way to what he wants (the League) at worst. It's a horrible lessons for kids to have, and I'm not sure what the writers had in mind with this aside from keeping him around because the games' more snively and heinous Faba (even accounting for his more evil USUM iteration) also did.

Then we have the Kahuna, which are for the most part okay bit characters (even if Olivia's take was pretty weird, coming from her game self), with Nanu as the obvious standout even between the issues of the Ula'Ula arc as a jerk trainer with a point that doesn't really get 'taught his place', close enough to his game characterization, and Hapu having a decent track to development in the Poni arc (even if much like Olivia, it sacrificed her game characterization along the way). The other Trial Captains not part of the main cast run the gamut between nice to see but not particularly deep (Acerola, to a degree Ilima) and pretty much borderline pointless (Mina). Ash's rivals are a similar deal, with Hau being nice but having not too much to himself with how late he enters the series, while Gladion is an alright character whose rivalry with Ash mostly suffers of being a tad vanilla: they're on friendly terms, are strong, and like to battle each other, but beyond that Ash doesn't have much of a reason to be a rival (something even Alain had by being interested in facing Ash even if he was as separate otherwise), like the student-teacher relationship Sawyer had, or the foil status Paul shared with him, or simply being an old friend he wanted to surpass the way Gary was. Their lack of connection alongside the fact that Gladion would barely think about him unless the plot required him to only contributed to them feeling a tad distant from each other, and why their final bout at the League felt for many viewers just 'okay' rather than the earned culmination of their relationship.

And then there are the lower tier recurring characters, ostensibly Sun & Moon's selling point as, unlike previous series, only rarely did the series happen to introduce 'characters of the day' that never came back afterwards. The biggest problem is that, ultimately, all of these lower tier characters are still as flat as the characters of the day of yesteryear: in spite of appearing several times, all we know of Anela the old lady is that she used to be a dancer and likes Litten/Torracat a lot, Ulu is pretty much an even more flanderized Brock that seldom pops up, Anna the reporter mostly stuck to that role, most of the parents and relative of the classmates that weren't Lillie's remained minor characters with little of note to themselves, and so on. The only noticeable recurring guys among the bunch are probably the Skull trio (which mostly acted as a second rate Team Rocket while was even less recurring than they were in this region) and Viren as a recurring antagonist, mostly for being the kind of villain you usually saw punished at the end of the series in previous series (like Dolan the Pokémon merchant) except made recurring in spite of being arrested in his previous appearence, with no real explanation beyond 'kids' show logic'. Even supposedly important characters like Ida and Horatio mostly remain rather regular mentors and rivals with not much else to them, and are unlikely to stick to anyone but the most diehard fans. There are of course some good characters among this bunch, especially the borderline characters of the day like two-episode-wonders Dia and the Kanto weaboos in the Malie City arc, but overall, if Alola truly wanted to make this a lived in and more developed region than previous series, its inhabitants didn't give this aim any real favors, in my opinion.

3. A Dissection of the Series: What Went Wrong, How, and Why

With the biggest parts of important elements of the series analyzed, I'd like to use this final part of the review for some extra analysis of how the series went down and why, in my opinion, it ended up changing for the worse as it went along, since there's one important thing to point out: Sun & Moon, conceptually and fundamentally, wasn't a bad series. But what it does have is, beyond some big flaws, several small ones that continously added up.

Now, let's start to dissect everything, dividing everything by their year of airing.

3.1) Year One: Beginnings, Akala Island, Aether Foundation

When I say that, I have to start with saying that my opinion of Sun & Moon wasn't initially this negative, and in fact, the first twenty-to-forty episodes were actually pretty nice: while the setup is slightly different than usual and humor is definitely prevalent (in particular the oft-mentioned 'funny faces', which would go on to become one of the defining elements of this iteration, far more than any prior series), there's a steady influx of plot-important episodes, development and setup for the future to help making the series a breezy watch, with each slice of life romp feeling either productive or simply fun diversions. Among the good things estabilished here that stand out as good even at the end of the series there's definitely the spiritual angle of Alola, an angle that whenever explored truly does make the region feel different than previous ones and like Ash is effectively experiencing something he never did before, and with stuff like the first trial and Grand Trial alongside Litten's capture arc and Gladion's introduction help keeping ther pace going even in the absence of a more overarching goal in the League. Now, this stretch is hardly perfect, considering that it already shows several cracks that later expanded: Ash only decides to move to the Island Challenge when he happens to remember about it in episode 9; a lot of battles end way too quick and barely get focus except for Trial and Grand Trial (which still have a somewhat lethargic pace); Gladion's decent rival setup is ruined by an unnecessary Team Rocket attack; some Idiot Plots and empty episodes that are just dull to watch happen; certain setups and developments are rushed to the finish way too fast; and, most importantly, the removal of Trial Captains from the lore and Team Skull as a consistent presence beyond occasional moments ended up removing tentpole parts of Alola's nature in the games that the show barely fills adequately, and it opens the door to call anything the show wants a trial, no matter how unrelated to battling it is, giving a feeling that the Island Challenge is hapzardly put together. But, during these early episodes, the problems are negligible or made up for, and even nowadays, I'd heartily reccomend everything up to Stoutland's death as legitimately good.

The first crack, overall, comes from the Akala arc. At the time of its airing, it looked to be a breath of fresh air as it finally moved away from Melemele Island after a rather noticeable dip in plot important events for more filler-y hijinks, and due to prior experience with the series, it was easy to assume the cast would've remained there for a while. However, that didn't end up happening, the arc ending mere episodes after it began, after rushing through equivalents of the three in-game trials (with Ash only effectively taking part in the Grass Trial from the games while Kiawe and Lana ended up gaining his Marowak and her Z-Ring and Waterium-Z instead) until it culminated in Olivia's Grand Trial, with one extra episode dealing with evolution-related issues for Lycanroc culminating into Dusk Lycanroc. This arc already started on a bad note by only allowing Ash one of the in-game trials for a Z-Crystal, which while to a degree understandable on the reasoning of wanting him to only have Z-Crystals he'd effectively use and the seeming decision at the time to not have overlapping Z-Crystals among the main cast, ended up solidifying the 'whatever counts' feeling of the Anime Island Challenge, and a first proper episode that seemed to relish into making Ash into an even larger butt monkey than usual, including him crying like a baby upon losing in a way that would've been immature for his OS self. Kiawe's episode was the standout of this batch, as it focused on him confronting an opponent he couldn't beat and with Ash giving him support into improving, estabilishing a good challenge to overcome in a way that had become rare for the series and was good to see again. Lana's own Trial wasn't bad either, but suffered of having more challenge put into it during the fishing part than the battling part, and Ash's Grass Trial being a battle that suffered of both misplaced comedy (an example of tone imbalance I'll address more later) and an opponent that barely even moved in Totem Lurantis. Olivia's Grand Trial was also probably one of the best battles to come out of Sun & Moon, putting a focus on strategy even in an extremely slow battle and with a more-than-decent finish, with the only blemish being that Rockruff's signs of evolving only really come one episode before they develop further into him evolving, and the already-mentioned problem of Dusk Lycanroc being supposedly a new discovery that nobody paid much attention to, after which we moved back to Melemele to resume the rhythm of seeming slice of life (with at least three episodes of good importance and one nominally important).

After another brief stretch, we moved briefly to Kanto for an arc that was ultimately just nostalgic fluff for old fans bringing back Misty and Brock, which was nice even if transparently OS-pandering (to the point Misty's Azurill and even Tracey were not even as much as mentioned during the episodes), with the only really important contributions to the series beyond two cool fights in the second episode was the first mention of the Alola Pokémon League (with Kukui being reminded he'll need badges, something he seemed to not pay much attention to later) and Misty and Brock getting a promise of a visit to Alola that didn't really do much for the series beyond further fluff. After this, however, we finally moved to one of the first truly major arcs of the series: the Aether Foundation arc, or, in my opinion, where the series really started to fall apart.

At first, the arrival of the Aether arc seemed to be rather promising, seemingly keeping the slice of life nature of the series but starting to delve into the elements of the games for what people presumed to be a slow burn to a payoff loosely covering the game events. Except... that's not really what happened. Instead, this entire arc turned into about a dozen of episodes harshly abridging the entire villain arc of the games and cutting everything they couldn't fit, while seemingly following the conflicting mission statements of making the arc as loosely close to the games as possible while trying to be as different from them as possible, and this was clear from the very beginning, with the introduction of Lusamine as an overbearing mother with none of the deviousness of her game counterpart. This, however, isn't necessarily a problem as the Anime has often rewritten game characters before, but what the problem is is the fact they changed the conflict of Lillie dealing with the emotional abuse Lusamine inflicted upon her into Lillie simply being annoyed at being treated as a child and, most importantly, being annoyed at how her mother evolved her own Clefairy, something Clefairy itself didn't have a problem with, that makes her come across as a spoiled brat and losing most sympathy (especially when no one but maybe Burnet reprimand her for her callous behavior), especially when Lusamine is treated as legitimately loving her and just being too busy rather than having any malice. The problem is also that, throughout the arc, the only one blaming Lusamine for never wondering how did Lillie develop her phobia of Pokémon is Gladion, while true to form Lillie doesn't seem to hold her mother accountable for it, and in fact, only wants to uncover the truth after Nebby teleports her near Type: Null by sheer coincidence, reverting her development from her focus episodes. Nebby is another big issue, as its ownership moved from Lillie to Ash for no reason other than giving him a reason to be involved in what would've otherwise been 'the Aether family show', yet the episode wants to still play into the game by implying Lillie and Nebby have a special relationship when they share their moment.

What I feel was the biggest issue of this specific arc, however, was shuffling the actively villainous role of the plot towards Faba, where he actually manages to be menacing for a brief while before the show decides to fully portray him as a silly villain hard to take seriously (including a magical girl routine to activate an Ultra Wormhole-creating machine) even as he's responsible for Lillie's trauma in his attempt to make Lusamine happy and finding an Ultra Beast for her and tried to wipe out Lillie's memories when she seemed to be able to reveal what happened. In the midst of a sea of confusing plot holes by adaptation (why was Type: Null fitted with the mask when as Silvally he did exactly what he was asked to do and Lusamine seems unaware it even exists? Where did the RKS System ROMs come from? Why the heck did a random Solgaleo and Lunala entrust their child to Ash to begin with?), the biggest problem of this arc comes from how, in Faba's aborted attempt to wipe out Lillie's memories, Silvally's attempt to save her reminds her of what really happened when she developed her phobia (a mere two episodes after it was revealed what caused it), giving her back the ability to touch all Pokémon again, making her previous attempts to do so feel retroactively pointless and only there to milk viewer sympathy for when she lost the ability to again, alongside ensuring to keep her development path directionless after this episode barely one third of the way into the series.

The biggest problem after this, however, comes from Faba's subsequent plan that ends up with Lusamine defending her children from a Nihilego and ending up dragged into Ultra Space due to her act of selflessness, with Lillie, Gladion, and subsequently everyone else moving on to Poni Island to rescue her. Along the way, Lillie changes into what the games called her 'Z-Powered Form', which in the games symbolized her moving away from her mother's shadow, while here it means... pretty much nothing, voiding it of its significance and making it come across as either a game-pandering move or something just done because the source material did it. Another significant issue of this stretch is Ash's upgrade of his Z-Ring into a Z-Power Ring, under the absolutely important reasoning of his Solgalium-Z not fitting in his regular Z-Ring. Meaning that Ash needed a magical, seemingly important ritual to obtain something whose usefulness boils down to borderline cosmetic reasons, especially as we later see Z-Power Rings doled out regularly like they're nothing important (including one to Team Rocket and Gladion's regular Z-Ring turning into a Z-Power Ring with no one remarking about it), which is probably one of the most blatant cases of marketing dictating plot flow in the history of this series.

We then moved on to the final battle, which was admittedly decent enough beyond some strange issues of power creep (like Sophocles one-shotting Lusamine's Milotic) and some occasional bits of tonal imbalance (Teether Dance hula in the middle of a serious mission by Sophocles, Mallow and Lana), but was marred by two issues of significance: one was the decision of having Lillie's big moment with her mother possessed by Nihilego involve her giving a speech of how she hates her and how she allowed herself to be possessed by an Ultra Beast for how self-absorbed she is, which while definitely meant to come across as "the mother I respect would never fall for it" has the problem of Lillie and Lusamine never getting a softer reconciliation before this moment (with said softer reconciliation seemingly happening offscreen after everything was over, which we never heard of until almost episode one hundred), which just further makes Lillie unlikable. The other problem is the grand debut of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt, a move that was only used three times that was either poorly explained or never actually received an explanation depending on how you interpret the part where it's employed in the very last major battle of the series, completely out of nowhere except for perhaps Ash's Electrium-Z shining briefly a lot of episodes ago, which was never fully explained, as is the fact Ash's Pikashunium-Z reverted after use.

And thus, after a wedding between the four-times-dated Kukui and Burnet and with Nebby deciding to leave for no adequately explained reason, with Lusamine estabilishing a task force for Ultra Beasts which involves the classmates and Lillie in the closest thing this series gave them to an onscreen reconciliation, after an arc where Lillie supposedly grew... things returned to be for the most part exactly like they were in previous episodes, almost like this arc never happened, including Lillie reverting to her regular clothes. Pretty much, this supposedly character-focused arc ended up coming across as ultimately not so important, especially when Lillie's personality remained roughly the same with the only real problems she developed from being the ones this arc itself introduced, except for now being able to touch every Pokémon.

Things seemed to just return to normal, even if this was just a prelude towards the structure of the series completely collapsing on itself.

3.2) Year Two: Ultra Guardians, Ula'Ula Island, Necrozma

Year two is the one to which I, personally, trace most of the problems of the Sun & Moon series, as the major focus of the series throughout this period ended up being the 'Ultra Guardians', a Sentai-esque team formed by the main cast under Aether Foundation supervision tasked with dealing with Ultra Beasts, and the biggest problem of this arc is that it really wasn't an arc so much as it was a loose connection of monster of the weeks plots that occasionally was brought up outside of them, but was otherwise completely separate from everything not just in terms of structure, but also in tone, as a parody Sentai with barely threatening monsters clashed heavily both with wanting to be a chill slice of life Anime and with wanting to be a battle-based Pokémon Anime. It's an arc that never fully gelled with everything else (the only I'd save being Celesteela, a good Sophocles episode and a rare character-driven Ultra Guardians romp) and ultimately ended on a pitiful note with a rather dull episode with no real oomph to it, but ended up taking the 'main arc' position and leaving the rest of the series pretty much directionless, with several major arcs stalled and, beyond Lillie obtaining her Icium-Z and an Ice Stone that then disappeared completely, Torracat and Steenee evolving, and the Ula'Ula arc for Lycanroc, and Poipole leading to Necrozma, pretty much little of major happened. Teams remained frozen, and development seemed to hit a dead end, beyond officially introducing the Masked Royal.

Between the Ilima episodes (which felt like a waste considering his main purpose at the League ended up being effectively jobbing to Guzma) and the beginning of the Ula'Ula arc proper, the viewers and the students were properly acquainted with the idea of Alola soon getting a Pokémon League, with both Ash and Kiawe expressing interest in it. This didn't send any weird looks yet, as Kiawe was estabilished as the other major battler and to have taken the trials, but this was in hindsight an important omen of things to come. In the meantime, however, Ash departed for Ula'Ula in what turned out to be a solo arc, and one that started up promising only to run into big issues along the way.

I already mentioned part of it when talking of Lycanroc, but the problem of the Ula'Ula arc is that it works on the assumption that Ash would be scared of Lycanroc's rage issues to the point of not acting, with Tapu Bulu's training giving them a moment to surpass those issues that, even with Rowlet suddenly learning Razor Leaf by sitting on a magical tree, could've even worked if it wasn't for the fact that to calm down Lycanroc and reaffirm his trust in him Ash ended up involving a flashback to Rockruff that we never saw before, making the whole affair come across as insincere. After an interlude where Ash undertook a 'Trial' that was technically the in-game Ghost one but was effectively a phony one involving Team Rocket (just furthering the 'whatever goes' sense of the Anime Island Challenge) that resulted in no Z-Crystal, the debut Electroweb, and a strange appearence of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt again in spite of the whole thing being a relatively down to earth affair even with Team Rocket about to win with Mimikyu's Z-Move, this arc reached its conclusion with Ash VS Nanu, a battle that's been in equal part praised and mocked, and which I had a friend describe in the most accurate way as a well-written and interesting battle... for anyone but Ash Ketchum.

Seeing a battle taking on a more psychological bent with Nanu toying with Ash and trying to force him to give in to Lycanroc's rage mode is an admitedly interesting choice and Nanu is absolutely the best part of this battle for it, but the problem is that this requires the assumption that Ash would unconsciously not trust his Pokémon after they put the rage mode under control with trust to begin with, alongside the battle being rather visually boring and with a 1 VS 3 set up that makes it more seem like Nanu is weak than Ash being strong (especially with Tapu Bulu tossing in a Sitrus Berry mid-match). This is supposed to be Ash's big development moment as a trainer in Alola, but it requires Ash to have a regressive mindset that doesn't fit how far he's come (something Sun & Moon does in quite a few things big and small, like completely forgetting Jennies and Joys are families of clones after the Kanto episodes) and, much like the Aether arc before it, begins and ends in the few episodes it takes to happen, I already covered Poipole's issue in his character dissection, so I'd like to move on to the most important part of this year: the Necrozma arc, which among the major arcs of the Sun & Moon series it's probably the most irrelevant. Coming in after only minimal foreshadowing (including a fairly interesting hint of a connection between Nanu and Giovanni that the show never really dealt with adequately), this arc was effectively as standalone as it gets, involving events that were only briefly mentioned after it (Rotom depositing the data of Necrozma in the Stufful episode, Naganadel's return, the stadium where the League was held being called Manalo Stadium), and that tried to make a big dangerous deal without actually having much happening: beyond the biggest damage of the episode being adults feeling comedically down as a result of absorbed energy, the introduction of an Elite squad of Team Rocket led by Giovanni's secretary Matori (here revamped as a Team Rocket trio hater in spite of originally being the one reccomending them to Giovanni in DP's last episode) that ultimately did nothing significant except maybe causing injuries to Nebby that wasn't clear if they happened or not with how stiff the animation was, the baffling and unexplained return of Nebby alongside an out-of-nowhere Lunala, and a general sense of big deal where nothing much of dangerous for the cast happened (and that bafflingly replaced the Ultra Recon Squad and Ultra Megalopolis with a talking Naganadel and a generic quarry that achieved effectively the same purpose), this arc ended up feeling like a snoozefest that only resulted in Poipole staying behind in his now healed world in an overall beautifully permanent-feeling farewell, except that, in the light of future events, this choice felt like one that effectively harmed the show in the long run. Also, with Matsui being the headwriter, one might think resolving the arc with everyone sharing their energy borders on self-plagiarism considering she was also the headwriter of Dragon Ball GT, which had a similar climax (itself inherited from Dragon Ball Z).

Thankfully, even if this year was really not the greatest, the following one brought as much improvements as it did other problems to deal with.

3.3) Year Three: Poni Island, Hints of Mohn, Alola Pokémon League

The third year of Sun & Moon did not start on a good note, as after the Necrozma arc the show ended up on a shortage of things to look forward to, with several arcs still stalled and only the still no show Guzma and the League left to check out. During this period, perhaps to lead into Let's Go marketing, we started getting some shorts at the end of each episode dealing with an Eevee getting to Alola, which everyone assumed would eventually go to Ash, only to unexpectedly go to Lana in a move that made some fans sour. Sandy didn't end up doing much else but being cute and possibly allowing Lana's arc to resume by giving her another cute Pokémon to hold in Popplio's stead, but that was it for a while alongside Hau's debut as a character, in an episode infamous for being at the same time an okay rival introduction where Ash lost a fight by fetching his Z-Crystal and getting distracted to take it back, and where Rowlet ate an Everstone for a move that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.

Beyond Misty and Brock visiting an Alola (which involved an episode where Brock's womanizing gag was blown even further than ever before) and an actually pretty decent arc starring Ash tossed into a post-apocalyptic alternate Alola to deal with Guzzlord in a rare instance of an Ultra Beast being presented as an actual force of destruction, the show finally started to move again with the Poni arc, or as some people called it 'the ultimate development arc', as the focus of this arc seemed to be the opposite of Ula'Ula being an Ash solo act by putting the focus back on the neglected companions, giving them either a new character direction, Z-Crystals evolutions, new Pokémon or in Ash's case his final Grand Trial, all tied together by Hapu opening up to the crew after starting standoffish and distant. Overall, Poni isn't on paper a bad arc, and there are quite a few episodes that are actually pretty good (Kiawe's trial among them for sure), but cramming all this development on the same island one after the other only had the effect of feeling jarring (unlike how Akala was not only still early enough, but only gave significant new things to Ash, Kiawe and Lana), most noticeably by cramming two completely separate evolution plots in the same episode in a move that slightly hurt both of them (Sophocles' feeling a tad impersonal, while Lana's lost the actual training part of it), Shaymin was effectively even more irrelevant than Sandy in the series, the Mohn arc estabilished here had some problems I'll get into soon, and the Hapu Grand Trial ending up as one of the worst 'Gym battles'-like matches Ash ever fought by utilizing the same strategy to victory as the extremely derided Brock battle by dousing Mudsdale and using an Electric attack on it, only adding the patch that 'it was just like Soak' even if no Pikachu can access that move. Ultimately, a well-intentioned arc that felt a bit too little, too late, and came at the expense of Ash's own focus before his final Grand Trial (to the point unlike the previous islands he didn't even do any unofficial trials before this one).

Following this, the next major episode (excluding a two-parter introducing Ash's Meltan that arguably ran one episode too long) was one that was both long awaited and caused some issues and improvements for the series going forward: Guzma's debut episode, alongside the formal announcement to the world of the Alola Pokémon League... and more specifically, the fact that it would be open to everyone with no requirements whatsoever, on the justification that it's not important who wins. Now, I've seen way too many debates on the topic, so I'll put it simply: regardless of if you think an open League is a good idea or not, it does mean that the various trials and Grand Trials Ash took on lost a lot of their meaning since they became self-sustained achievements that don't mean much outside their bubble if Ash didn't need to do any of them to enter the League, and this structure did cause several problems that lowered the general quality of the Alola League for a decent part of its length. When Guzma is being painted as the bad guy for considering the League just a schoolyard fight between weaklings, the viewers shouldn't be inclined to agree with him.

Another big issue of this decision is that, otherwise, it caused the structure of the series to come under scrutiny: before, and usually, since Ash is the only character taking part in the League, it's only his growth in skill that is under scrutiny, and everyone else is free to be as strong or as weak as necessary, but opening the door to everyone to join in also meant that everyone in the series came under scrutiny, and to put it simply characters like Mallow just weren't made to be involved in it even under the guise of a League for fun, something that showed in the actual execution of the Alola League and that I'll get to in a bit.

The episode after this one started the further estabilishment of the Mohn arc, and let me just say... this arc is, on the whole, probably the most disappointing of the various arcs of Sun & Moon, and that's saying something after everything I explained so far. Specifically, the biggest purpose of this arc was for the Aether family to find out about the whereabouts of the seemingly dead patriarch of the family, and supposedly show Lillie as being 'strong' after the events of the Aether arc, but in actual concept, it was just a convenient way for her to get a Z-Ring after conveniently ignoring the possibility for almost one real life year, getting it 'on loan' for almost getting a Z-Move to work in spite of everyone else requiring to pass a real trial to get theirs, and with her contributions effectively ending up still needing Gladion's help and amounting, once more, mostly to feeling sad to catch audience sympathy, while Gladion gets a Zoroark to be only used in one round of the League. But the worst part of all is that this arc, to put it simply, doesn't end. After Magearna finally wakes up and we get the not explained reveal that it knows where Mohn is, the Aether family embarks on a journey to find him... only for the series to end at that point. After spending six months teasing this storyline, just leaving it hanging like this is poor storytelling, and even with the justification that Pokémon 2019's world-hopping premise would mean the new show can end it for Sun & Moon, the series shouldn't have to rely on another one to resolve its own plots, especially one on which supposedly significant moments of the late series hinged on.

The rest of the series, however, does gain something from the open League premise, and that something is a consistent direction by having everyone get boosts in preparation for the League, which at the very least leads to some alright moments for Sophocles that play nicely in his arc and the technical resolution of Lana's arc, among a sea of strangely persistent legendary appearences that only got more and more contrived as the series went on considering they were entirely separate from each other, even the ones that led to ultimately good episodes (like the one where a Celebi led to Ash and Torracat meeting a young Professor Kukui), since it felt like a move to ensure attention that was wholly unnecessary to the story being told. But over time, everything came to a close with the start of the Alola Pokémon League, probably the most talked about arc of Sun & Moon, for good or ill.

The Alola League is unique in several aspects, both in terms of the Sun & Moon series and the Anime as a whole: for the former, it's a battle-focused arc in a region that didn't want battling to be the focus as the climax of it; for the latter, it's the longest League arc in the series' history. clocking at roughly sixteen episodes. Being a tournament arc, you'd think such a good length would benefit it, but the way the series decided to execute things left a lot to be desired, most specifically because Sun & Moon has a very mixed track record in terms of battles and for the decision to show every battle of the tournament even if just partially. There is a lot that could be said about this arc, but I'll try to aim for the big ones first: for starters, beginning the League by reducing the contestants to just sixteen using a Battle Royale was a rather poor choice, as not only that's a format that allows characters to reach high positions by just surviving rather than being strong (as seen by how James got to the Top 16 even if he explicitly didn't face anyone), but confining it to just one episode meant that pretty much every battle of it was reduced to just a series of one-hit KOs from every major characters, with all of them ultimately surviving. After that, another problem was how a lot of the early rounds of the arc ended up averaging between okay to poor battles, with the dubious honor of having Ash's first battle being completely for laughs against Faba, the only character beyond Jessie and James to get one in this League in spite of being the eventual winner. I already mentioned the specifics of Mallow's attempt to quit her match coming out of nowhere from a character standpoint and the issues of Ash VS Hau, so I'll just say that Lillie's battle against Gladion was okay but done dirty for what was supposed to be a huge moment for her in terms of development, and that Sophocles', Lana's (sans Mallow's) and Kiawe's battles ended up being okay to great on the whole. However, the fact that the first two rounds of the League only used one Pokémon each didn't help the sense of escalation at all, nor the sense of Guzma being correct in describing this League as 'a schoolyard fight between weaklings'.

From the Semifinals onward, the League improves in quality due to only good battlers remaining, though it does run into problems of a different sort: Guzma, which was built up as the major threat of the League with Ash vowing to stop him due to what Alola did to him, is not only dealt with in the penultimate round rather than in the finals, but in a battle that makes that statement ring a tad hollow since the perspective we follow during the fight isn't Ash's, but rather Guzma's, shedding some light into his confidence issues and his Golisopod's habit to use Emergency Exit whenever scared (which beyond being only halfway foreshadowed, also ends up with the bad side-effect of giving Ash a free win through Torracat, turning Ash VS Guzma into a 2 VS 1 in Ash's favor), but effectively making Ash interchangeable as a result. It's a good fight with some nice moments, but it just makes his build up as possibly ruining the League for everyone ring hollow when his presence didn't seem to ruin the League for anyone in any way, and the threat wasn't even considered worthy of the finals. Kiawe VS Gladion, by contrast, is mostly a good fight with not much else to it. However, one thing that starts to be noticeable in this part of the League is the sheer reluctance of the show to start any matches before the halfway mark or close to it, padding the airtime as much as possible with not always necessary scenes and stretching the battles along two episodes even when not necessary.

The finals having three Pokémon each meant that Ash VS Gladion ended up having a bit more meat to it in terms of battling, but Ash once again ended up getting another boost in the form of Meltan's evolution into a supposedly powerful mythical Pokémon, which would already be bad since he shouldn't be getting these kinds of boosts at the very final stage of this story (and yes, just to be clear, Kingler's deal was poor writing back in OS as well) but also comes after a gag battle rigged in his favor, a battle that required several contrivancies on his side to be won with Rowlet, and another battle with a facilitated victory in Guzma, making it feel like Ash ended up getting into each of these matches with the writing rigged on his side. The Gladion battle has some fairly good moments both from a character and battling perspective, but between the unearned evolution right before it and just the way they built up to things, Ash's victory here ended up not really feeling as impressive as you'd think this first League Conference victory should be, all things considered. A battle that just ends up as 'okay' rather than the amazing it should've been.

However, after a somewhat dull interlude involving a Guzzlord attack that's probably comprised of more stock footage than action just so Naganadel can come in to make number, we moved on to Ash VS Kukui, probably one of the best battles of this series. That said, while it is pretty good and better written than the majority of them, especially in terms of how Torracat is handling for its first three episodes, it is knocked down by being an exhibition match, meaning that beyond 'fun' and offering a good fight, Ash doesn't need to win this battle (unlike how every other major battle at this stage usually comes with adequate stakes), and most importantly how Tapu Koko forced his way in in place of Kukui's last Pokémon (after Kukui allowed Naganadel in on the pretense of being part of the family, ignoring that three-to-four of Kukui's Pokémon in this match were never seen before and his supposed Pelipper was completely excluded just because the local deity wanted some fighting), which given how Koko wasn't part of this particular equation comes across as scrunching two battles to save time. It also doesn't help that then Tapu Koko interrupts the match again just to allow Kukui and Ash to use Z-Moves again, with Ash ending up using 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt for the final time while praising the region, which while making for a cool finisher it ultimately makes Ash's supposed aim to master Z-Moves to defeat Tapu Koko resolved in a poor way when he only won using the Z-Crystal he never actually trained to use and that only conveniently showed up whenever it needed. Accounting for yet another boost in the form of Naganadel's return, this battle is ultimately marred once again like most of the League by the writing apparently wanting him to win at all costs and look good while doing so, strategy and skill be damned along the way.

After this followed two episodes of closure, that had some good moments (especially in regards to the Team Rocket trio) but ultimately involved a lot of contrived instances (like an Ultra Wormhole for Naganadel to return home coming just above Kukui's house) or poorly executed moments, most importantly the completely offscreen adventure of Ash and Nebby in Ultra Space, the way Mimikyu decided to let go of his killer instinct towards Pikachu, and most importantly the fact that Ash decided to leave his Alolan team behind for reasons the viewer wasn't made privy to, and which ended up having negative implications for either the Alolan team or the previous Pokémon depending on how you read it.

And that's ultimately how Sun & Moon ended up feeling for me, with several small issues that kept adding up, until the show just couldn't handle them anymore.

3.4) The Problem of Themes and Other Technical Issues

Before to move on the closing statement, I'd like to quickly address something I've often seen brought up in Sun & Moon's defense, generally its themes justifying a lot of what it does alongside exploring the region of Alola by having Ash live there. Usually, the biggest themes I see brought up about this is that Sun & Moon is about family and meeting a world and learning from it... but while the first might have some merit, the second is very much what the show has always been about, arguably moreso than Sun & Moon has been since Ash actively travelled to meet said world rather than wait until the world came knocking at his door, and there were a lot of family-oriented moments in previous series, be they siblings or relatives. I'm sure there are other, different themes that one could bring up here, perhaps some that are indeed unique to the Sun & Moon series, but there's something important to say about themes: no matter how good the message you want to spread or explore is, if the narrative has issues, you can't excuse them on the pretense of themes, especially if it starts to be applied to every single imperfection one finds in a story. Themes are embellishments that make stories better, not substitutes for good writing.

And in terms of narrative issues, Sun & Moon has, in my opinion, quite a few of them, not just the ones I explained in the first paragraph but also some important ones involving both the way episodes are written, and how battles were handled, including the way the generational gimmicks were used. In regards the way the episodes are written, there's the fact that several of them end up involving a strange structure where the plot doesn't actually begin until the halfway mark, and while this may perhaps help with a slow pace and relaxed atmosphere, it does have the side effect of making quite a few of them feel dull to watch, especially older fans used to the rhythms of the series before this iteration.

Bigger, and most pressing, are the problems of battle writing this season ran into, which go deeper than just the absolute downgrade in battle presentation, but go straight into how the battles were written. One noticeable thing that feeds into how slow the battles ended up being is the fact that commentary became just as commonplace as it used to be in the earliest series, constantly breaking the action on a regular basis rather than letting the scenes flow more often than not. Beyond that, the biggest problem is that, more often than not, the battles aren't decided by skill or strategy (though there are occasional skill-based bouts), but rather who feels a bigger drive to win or happens to fire their Z-Move last, which coupled with the removal of most of the minor battles that could go either way to mostly focus on the big ones that have to absolutely be resolved a certain way, leading to such gems as the already mentioned battle with Hau where an otherwise good Ash ended up slipping his Z-Crystal just so he could be distracted and lose due to it, or one where Gladion managed to completely tank a Z-Move only to reply by his own, out of nowhere new Dragon-type Z-Move. It made battles dull to follow more often than not, especially with battles often falling more on shows of strength or exchanges of moves with no real rhyme and reason rather than giving the impression that the trainers had any real plan behind their orders (Ash constantly falling back on relying on an incompletely learned move in Ash VS Hau being a particularly blatant case of it showing).

And relatedly, another major issue of the series overall is the way it choose to handle Z-Moves. Compared to Mega Evolution being a fairly consistent 'have the stones + have the bond = Mega Evolution' in the previous show, Z-Moves depend on several factors, from getting the pose right to having a correct amount of focus and bond with the Pokémon to if the Pokémon used them before, and as a result, the entire idea of mastering Z-Moves feels wholly inconsistent: sometimes you can have characters with perfect relationships with their Pokémon completely failing at using their Z-Moves, sometimes characters like Mallow that first chided others for not getting the Grassium-Z pose right and then ended up unable to master Bloom Doom well until the League match, sometimes you can have characters that get Z-Moves right with Pokémon they never even saw before, and everything in between. It feels extremely arbitrary, and makes 'mastering Z-Moves' feel less down to the characters' agency and more down to whether the writers feel like having them master them or not.

But, if I may say, the real biggest problem of the series is that, simply put, it often raises questions it never manages to answer satisfactorily, just creating a situations were things are left so vague everyone has to either remain confused at what happened or supplant it with their own headcanons. Counting just some of the important questions: Why did Ash choose to go to school instead of a typical journey? Why was Tapu Koko so interested in Ash? Why did Ash receive Nebby from that Solgaleo and Lunala? Why did Nebby leave at the end of his arc? Why do Giovanni and Nanu know each other so personally? Where did that Lunala come from? What's the deal with Dusk Lycanroc and Meltan? Why does the Pikashunium-Z manifest? Why did Naganadel return? Why does Magearna know Mohn's location?

I have no clue. And frankly, I'm not sure if Sun & Moon knows, either.

4. Conclusions

And with this, I reached the end of this long dissection. It probably got pretty ranty, and it may sound excessive considering this is all the result of overanalyzing what's ultimately a kids' show, but I think I covered most of everything I wanted to. So, in the end, with so much said, what are my final impressions of Sun & Moon? Well, I'd say the amount of fun you'll have with it will depend exactly from what you want of it.

In spite of all my critiques, I'm fairly aware of how people just looking for a good time to cheer themselves up with occasionally emotional moments will find definitely stuff to like. Less critical-minded viewers will also definitely find something for everyone in there, and perhaps enjoy what the series has to offer. My personal opinion is that, ultimately, at its best Sun & Moon can be one of the best entries of the Pokémon Anime, while at its worst, it can be even worse than entries like the Best Wishes series. And as someone who likes consistency in terms of what a series has to offer, I found Sun & Moon a quite irritating watch to do, and probably my second least favorite entry of the series even with its good moments.

Overall regardless of which opinion you will have ended this read in, I hope you found my thoughts interesting to read about, and whatever opinion you hold of the Sun & Moon series, I respect it, and, in case you enjoyed it more than I did, I'm glad you did.

As for me, I officially consider the Gen VII Anime a closed book. With the new series starting soon enough, I'm optimistic that things will only look up from there. Not just for me, but for every other watcher as well.

So, regardless of what the future may hold for this show, I'm looking forward to continue my journey reviewing it with all of you, hoping in better stories to be told.

[mae-gi-writes]

Halloween Escapade | Jacob (The Boyz)

You and Jacob both dislike parties, so why not ditch it to get Mcdonald’s? 

Genre: fluff

A/N: I KNOW I’M ONE MONTH LATE FOR HALLOWEEN But I saved this in my drafts and forgot to post it. Nothing too intense, just a little cute Jacob. Enjoy <3 

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“You mind doing my makeup?" Looking up from your makeup palette, your heart does a little stutter at the sight of a dishevelled-looking Jacob decked in what seems to be a skeleton-themed shirt and pants. On the occasion of Halloween, the office had decided to close its doors early to celebrate. It was also a good excuse to order some good assortments of finger-picking foods and expensive cake. Being the artist that you were, you had brought along your entire makeup collection, ready to help out anyone in need of paint or decoration on their face.

But you had not expected Jacob, of all people, to be standing before you while shuffling his feet like a shy little schoolboy. He is obviously of a higher status than you are in the office, one of the Directors that has a certain percentage of shares, no doubt. You as a mere office worker that looked up to him in admiration, and had to admit that you had developed a little crush throughout the months of noticing his gentle and kind demeanour. "Uh--sure," you quickly stutter out before gesturing towards the seat, "you can sit here." He does so without complaint as you ask, "what kind of makeup do you want?" "Could you do a skull?" "Uhm--" that takes a long time, your brain screams out at you, "s--sure. No promises, though." "That's alright. The uglier the better anyway," he pauses, "not that your drawings are ugly, I--that's not what I meant." You chuckle softly signalling to him that it's all good. Opening up your palette and dabbing your sponge with white powder, you hesitate slightly before you start covering his face; his eyebrows, over his eyes, down the slope of his nose. He's gorgeous, you think to yourself while trying not to giggle at the thought of you two being so close in physical proximity. You hope that he can't hear the way your heart practically beats out of your chest, an excited hummingbird bursting out through your ribcage. "So...did you learn that yourself?" Jacob asks after a bout of silence. "Mostly. But I was always comfortable with painting and all that stuff," you start contouring his face with gray and silently appreciate the flawless texture of his skin, "I used to do makeup for halloween every year when I was still in school." "That's so cool. I wish I could paint like that," his eyes flutter open to momentarily gaze into your eyes, "the only thing I'm good at are numbers." "Well you know, I grew up wishing I was good at numbers." 'We always want something we can't have." "True," you start blending the black with the white, the makeup taking on a grey tone to create a shadow, "but if it makes you feel better, most people admire the ones who know their numbers well." "You sound like you know something about that." You just smile faintly, "I hope I don't sound too whiny. That wasn't my intention." "No, your honesty is...refreshing," he mumbles through closed lips as you brush over his face with the blender, "I mean, I don't really know how it feels because I'ver never faced this kind of problem. But I can understand how frustrating that might be, for people to judge someone based on their jobs." His compliment throws you off, so much so that you can't help the heat from spreading over your cheeks, "oh--uh, I hope that wasn't too rude. I wasn't trying to offend you or anything--" "No no, not offended," Jacob raises his hands in mock surrender, "I'd be frustrated too, in your place." His blunt sweetness makes your heart flutter and it makes you glad that his eyes are closed at this very moment, for it would've probably made you even more embarrassed to be looking at him face to face. Clearing your throat, you move to his eyes, applying soft dark smudges over his lids as he asks,"so, how do you find life here?" That's how it goes, with him sitting patiently and as still as a statue, and you painting the contours of his face while trying your best not to admire the beauty of the man sitting before you, a work of art you simply can't take your eyes off of. But the more you converse, the more you realize how much you have in common. And the result is astounding, to say the least. For starters, you would never have known that your superior hates socials the most, or that despite people at the office drinking their coffee black, Jacob prefers his coffee with lots of milk and sugar that is enough to cause him diabetes. Not that he's proud of it, mind you. It's not until someone coughs loudly behind Jacob that you realize he's been sitting there a lot longer than he's supposed to, jumping before quickly noticing the growing line of impatient people waiting for their makeup. "Oh sorry sorry!" He jumps up, as though startled he's stayed that long, "I'll leave you to it then, Y/N. Thank you so much for the makeup." "Oh no worries," your heart drops slightly at the thought that you'll never get the chance to talk to him like this again. But before you have time to dwell on that fact, another colleague is asking for a vampire kind of look. You lose sight of Jacob for most of the night, though small glimpses of his handsome figure is enough to entertain your little fantasy. You try not to feel so disheartened, knowing full well that there's not even a single strand of hope that he'll even look at you that way. Hell, he doesn' t even look at you. Stop being stupid, you tell yourself sharply. Nothing's never going to happen. He's probably already taken, idiot. "I'm going home," you mutter to your colleague as another song blasts through the stereo hall. The group protests but you shake your head and quietly slip out to leave all the noise behind, the night air welcoming you with its fresh chilly air. A soft sigh falls from your lips when you close your eyes for a brief moment. A car honks in the distance, you pay no mind. Let's go home, you think to yourself, body turning towards the subway station. You walk a few steps, only to hear another honk, closer this time. You stop and turn, a frown stitching your eyebrows together upon noticing a car pull up next to you. You're surprised to see Jacob's face greet you when the window rolls down. You blink at him. "Need a ride?" --------- That is how you find yourself sitting in Mcdonald's parking lot a few minutes later with warm food takeaways in your lap and the smell of fries wafting through the air, chatting with a man whom you'd deemed unapproachable for the past few months and realizing that there is so much more to what you see to him on a daily basis. You'd be lying to say that you don't feel your heart staggering every time he looks at you with those beautiful mahogany orbs that seem to hold galaxies. "I never used to celebrate Halloween," Jacob is saying as he pops a chip into his mouth, "my mother hates it, says it's useless to be celebrating an event that rouses the dead." "Technically, she's right." "Yeah, my five year old self didn't think so though." "You managed to celebrate in college?" He nods before pulling a face, "first and last time I drank till I puked." "That sounds fun," sarcasm drips from your voice before you laugh softly at the tongue he pulls out sat you. It's so easy to talk to him, too easy. It scares you, this foreign uninvited sensation of something fluttering through your ribcage as if you're constantly sitting on a swing that is going too fast for you. You talk about school, about where you come from, about how you sometimes miss your parents dearly and how hard it was at first, to be away from home for so long. And then he tells you about growing up, about his childhood dream of becoming a basketball player, one that broke the moment he realized it'd be much harder to actually get into the professional league. And then it quickly drifts to the troubles of life itself, to the nostalgia of losing friends when you grow up, to discussing multiple theories about what the future holds. "Woah, it's late," Your eyes widen in realization when you spot the time upon his dashboard. 3:30.a.m. "Oh," his own eyes go round, "shit I'm sorry. I didn't want to keep yo--" "No no, it's okay. I had fun," you smile softly at him while recalling yiur conversation, "I'm glad we got to talk." Relief breaks out as a sigh through of his lips, "that's good to know," his eyes find yours then, bathed in the reflection of the cheap streetlight hanging over your car, but you realise that it doesn't matter, for Jacob is ephemerally beautiful and carries that around with him wherever he goes. Your heart tugs when you realise that the night will have to end at some point, watching him pull out of the parking lot while asking you for directions to your house. The night started out with no expectations, with the sense that you can't breathe around the people you're surrounded with. Yet, this moment feels like a gust of oxygen bursting through your lungs. "Can I say something?" Jacob's voice pulls you out of your reverie as he turns onto your street, glancing over at you out of the corner of his eye. You hum for him to continue. He does after a few beats of hesitation. "You know you can talk to me, even if we're at the office," his murmur is so soft you barely catch it. You look at him in surprise, not expecting such words to fall from his lips. But the look he gives you is one that makes heat spread throughout your chest in parallel to the heat covering your cheeks. He continues, "I know that a lot of people are scared of me, because of what they think I might do considering my privileges. But take that title away and I'm just like everyone else." At this point, his vehicle wheels to a stop right before your front door and he turns his head so that your gazes clash, dark obsidian filled with a gentleness that you can't quite explain, though it causes your heartbeat to stutter. You gaze back though, trying to decipher the way his face softens and the tender way his lips are curved into a half-smile, as if you're sharing a private joke. "Well," you clear your throat, head whipping towards your door and hand finding the car handle, "I guess that's my stop." Biting your lip and debating whether to follow through with the aftermath of his words haunting your ears, you quickly turn back to him, "I don't think you're that kind of person. I don't think you could ever go behind someone's back just for the sheer fun of it," you see his gaze widen with surprise, "So don't worry about that." Jacob just stares at you in the pause that follows. You stare back, mentally debating whether you should just throw yourself out of the window for being so stupid or whether to ask the said man himself to run you over, so mortified at the prospect of having said such a thing that your orbs immediately drop to your lap. "I ...thank you," comes Jacob's whisper, "that...nobody has ever said that before." "A--Anyway, I should probably go--" you quickly scramble to open the car door only to be stopped by his hand swinging out to grab yours. "Wait," he says breathlessly, "I--Do you want to--you know maybe do this again? Sometime? I--" a shy smile dances across his lips, "I had fun, Y/N." Your heart swells. Your neck flushes with heat as your eyes drop to the ground, "I had fun too," you mumble, allowing his hand to slide down your arm until it reaches yours. His fingers, as soft as a dove's touch, gently twine around yours like vines and a breath catches in your throat. Jesus, he's perfect. "Yeah," your murmur, "I'd like to do this again." You don't want to look at him. You can't look at him, for you know that once you do there'll be no mistaking the blatant effect he has on you, and that is something you wish to keep to yourself a little longer. But that thought flies out of the window the moment you feel the softest of caresses upon your knuckles. Head shooting up to catch Jacob's lips skimming over the back of your head, a shiver runs through your spine the moment your eyes lock with all the feelings you've been attempting to cast aside for most of the night. "Great," he grins against your hand, "I'll pick you up at seven tomorrow?"

[paulinedorchester]

Mosley, Leonard. Backs to the Wall: London Under Fire, 1939-1954. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; reprint, as Backs to the Wall: The Heroic Story of the People of London During World War II, New York: Random House, 1971.

Each generation gets the history that it needs — or wants, or demands. That’s what kept going through my head as I read Backs to the Wall, which appeared three years after France’s youth explicitly rejected both Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed leader of the Free French during World War II, and the political ideology that he represented, and amidst ongoing unrest over the Vietnam War. (It’s also worth mentioning that it was published in the same year as Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War and two years after Angus Calder’s The People’s War.) This book gives up a World War II narrative in which Churchill was an improvement on Chamberlain only in that he wasn’t an appeaser, de Gaulle was worse than both of them put together, the Allied leaders all cordially loathed each other, half the British public wanted to sue for peace, and there was across-the-board mutual dislike between London civilians and American troops (and British dismay at the way African-American troops were treated by their white counterparts was far from universal). Do I exaggerate? Only slightly. Backs to the Wall is a sort of distant, city-specific pre-echo of Juliet Gardner’s sour 2004 book Wartime: Britain, 1939-45.

As with Wartime, however, this book does have the virtue of introducing us to a number of very interesting people. I became interested in reading it because it brought Vere Hodgson’s wartime diary to public attention. Mosley quotes or paraphrases Hodgson’s writing from the beginning of the war through its end, and also seems to have interviewed her extensively. His primary villain, meanwhile, is not Chamberlain but Chamberlain’s chief acolyte, Henry “Chips” Channon, from whose diary he quotes widely (and who turns out to have been born and raised in the United States, to my surprise). We hear a great deal from the chemist and novelist C.P. Snow and follow the misadventures of two civilians, Jenny Martin and Polly Wright, whose consistency in both bad luck and bad choices meant that neither of them was able to stay out of serious trouble for any length of time.

There are many glimpses of the London home front through the eyes of two boys, both eight when the war began: John Hardiman, of Canning Town and later of Aldgate, who was evacuated in 1939 but soon returned to London, and Donald Ketley of Chadwell Heath, who was never evacuated at all. Donald, who thoroughly enjoyed himself during the war, had an experience that speaks to our own recent reality:

Another good thing: quite early in the Blitz, his school had been totally destroyed by a bomb. Since Donald was shy, a poor student and unpopular with his teacher, he was overjoyed when he heard the place was gone. Thereafter he went each day to his teacher’s home to pick up lessons, which he brought back the next day for marking. In the following months he changed from a poor student to an excellent one, and although he was aware that his teacher rather resented it, he didn’t care. 

Mosley also introduces us to Archibald McIndoe, the real-life counterpart of Patrick Jamieson, Bill Patterson’s character in the Foyle’s War episode ‘Enemy Fire.’ Art seems to have imitated life pretty accurately in that instance: he and his burn hospital in East Grinstead were apparently exactly like what was depicted, the only difference being that the hospital was set up in an existing hospital building, not in a requisitioned stately home.

Backs to the Wall seems to have been one of the earliest books to make substantial use of Mass-Observation writings. Most M-O diaries are anonymous, but there are two named diarists here who stand out. John James Donald was a committed pacifist whose air of lofty detachment as he observes the reactions of those around him to air-raids and other wartime event and prepares for his tribunal — which, in the end, he decides not to attend — quickly grows irritating. More interesting is Rosemary Black, a 28-year-old widow, in no small part because she differs markedly from what I had thought of as the archetypical M-O writer. Here’s her self-description on M-O documents: “Upper-middle-class; mother of two children (girls aged 3 and 2); of independent means.” Mosley continues:

She lived in a trim three-story house in a quiet street of the fashionable part of Maida Vale, a short taxi ride from the center of the West End, whose restaurants and theatres she knew well. She was chic and attractive, and lacked very few of the niceties of life: there was Irene, a Hungarian refugee, to look after the children; Helen, a Scottish maid, to look after herself and the house; and a daily cleaning woman to do the major chores.

Black took her children out of London at the beginning of the war but quickly brought them back, and when bombs began falling she kept them in place — air raids might be disruptive for them, but apparently relocation had been worse. She was very much aware that she was riding out the war in a position of privilege, and she often expressed guilt feelings; but this tended to fade away before her irritation at the dominance of “the muddling amateur or the soulless bureaucrat” in the war effort. Offering her services, even as a volunteer, proved very frustrating. “She was young, strong and willing; she typed, spoke languages, was an expert driver and had taken a course in first aid,” Mosley tells us, “but finding a job even as a chauffeur was proving difficult” in September 1940. (She actually wasn’t all that strong physically: as we learn, she suffered from rheumatism which grew worse during the war years and probably affected her outlook.)

Black was greeted with “apathy and indifference” by both A.R.P. and the Women’s Voluntary Service. Early in 1941 she was finally able to get a place handing out tea, sandwiches, cake, and so on to rescue and clean-up workers at bomb sites from a Y.M.C.A. mobile canteen. She was a bit intimidated by the women with whom she found herself working:

Their class is right up to the county family level. Nearly everyone is tall above the average and remarkably hefty, even definitely large, not necessarily fat but broad and brawny. Perhaps this is something to do with the survival of the fittest.

And the work did bring her some satisfaction, even if it was of the type that lent itself to being recorded with tongue placed firmly in cheek:

We had a pleasant and uneventful day’s work serving City fire sites, the General Post Office, demolition workers and Home Guard Stations, etc. We were complimented at least half a dozen times on the quality of our tea ... I think the provision of saccharine for the tea urns to compensate for the mean sugar allowance is my most successful piece of war work. What did you do in the Great War, Mummy? Sneaked pills into the tea urns, darling.

For all her good humor and astute observations, Mrs. Black was far from immune to tiny-mindedness. After an evening out in 1943 she wrote:

I had to wait some time for the others in the cinema foyer, and I was much struck, as often before, by the almost complete absence of English people these days, from the capital of England. Almost every person who came in was either a foreigner, a roaring Jew, or both. The Cumberland [Hotel] has always been a complete New Jerusalem, but this evening it really struck me as no worse than anywhere else! It is really dismaying to see that this should be the result of this war in defence of our country.

Indeed, Mosley cites the results of a multi-year Mass-Observation study that showed a marked increase in anti-Jewish views London’s general population over the course of the war. Since it’s just one study, and since I haven’t seen that study mentioned anywhere else, I am reluctant to trust blindly in its accuracy; and there’s also this:

The small flat which George [Hardiman] had procured for [his family] ... in Aldgate was cleaner and airier than the old house in Canning Town [which had been bombed], and the little Jewish children with whom John now went to school seemed to be cleaner than the ones in Elm Road; at any rate, he no longer came home with nits in his hair.

On the other hand, Mosley himself gives us only a fragmentary view of London’s wartime Jewish population: everyone seems to be either a terrified refugee or an impoverished East Ender. We hear nothing about the substantial middle- and upper-middle class population — mostly of German descent and in some cases German birth — that had already taken shape in Northwest London; and while we are briefly introduced to Sir David Waley, a Treasury official, in connection with the case of an interned Jewish refugee, we aren’t told that Waley himself was Jewish, a member of “the cousinhood.” On yet a third hand, Mosley also quotes other M-O surveys from the same period that indicate largely hostile attitudes to most foreigners in London, with Poles at the bottom of the ladder and the small Dutch contingent on top. (Incidentally, the book’s extremely patchy index identifies Vere Hodgson as a Mass-Observation diarist, which she wasn’t.)

Backs to the Wall closes with a very brief, remarkably non-partisan account of the 1945 general election and its immediate aftermath. “Neither side had any inkling of the way the minds of the British voters were turning,” he writes.

When [Churchill’s] friends suggested that he was a victim of base ingratitude, he shook his head. He would not have such a charge leveled against his beloved countrymen. Ingratitude? "Oh, no," he said quietly, "I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time."

The book is worth reading for the primary materials that it includes, but it probably tells us as much about the era in which it was written as about the period that it covers.  

[hinabes]

A letter from the Food Fantasy writing team.

Source: xixi1226 on Lofter (They’re merely a relay, and so am I)

Touches on the writing of Food Fantasy as a whole and Black Forest Cake. Keep an open mind and be kind.

Only the parts specifically labeled as “TL note” is input by me (pretty sure there’s only one)

To all Master Attendants.

First of all, we may disappoint you, as we in the writing team are only responsible for the story, so we can't send out any in-game rewards. This is just the ramblings of some writing ladies.

Let's start with the past. Food Fantasy is almost 2 years old, and the writing team has been around for a long time as well.

From the bottom of our hearts, we know very well that our stories are mediocre, and very few members of the community actually read them.

At first, there were very few fan creations on Lofter, mostly inspired by the game arts. The first big burst in fanwork came from the haunted amusement park event.

When we saw the large amount (in our eyes) of fanworks, we were delighted.

That's right, we're lurking, watching from the shadows every day. Every! Day!

Though, due to work reasons and we've all got loose lips, we're not allowed to use our own accounts to like and comment on stuff.

Nonetheless, we're very thankful to everyone who comes to Lofter and uploads to the Food Fantasy tag!

To put it simply, a fanwork community like Lofter is built from all sorts of varying opinions, and that of course includes the dissatisfaction that some players have towards some characters.

As an author, our characters are like our children and seeing them hated, we can't deny that we're not saddened.

But of course, there must be a reason for a character to be hated.

A story, good or bad, must have an antagonist.

Whether people like or hate them, there's a reason for them to exist.

We created antagonists, besides out of necessity for the storyline, in hopes to show you a clearer Tierra, with all kinds of people with different points of view.

To be labeled an antagonist, these characters must have done some things unacceptable to the general public. They have their own stories to tell, and we would hate to claim any of them as completely innocent. The problem lies in something we hoped to doーーshow that bad people have pasts tooーーwe didn't do well enough.

This is our problem.

Be it because of a disliked ship or a character that's too grim.

We will use this experience and work even harder to write better characters and stories.

Once again, we thank everyone for putting your efforts into the tag, making your voices heard.

You've shown us, at the very least, that our efforts put into this or that character have been seen and that you're willing to voice out for them.

We take the time to read every single one of your posts. Perhaps putting it like that might make us seem egoistic.

Nevertheless, from the writing team, thank you!

We have seen lots and lots of the world of Tierra, it's not a pure world of only saints and innocents, it has a wide variety of characters.

The good, the bad, but no matter what, whatever anyone does is rooted in their own beliefs.

Such is the way in real life as well. Because of you, we have the motivation to push onwards.

At the same time, we wish that whatever negativity you have, you vent by enjoying the game, leaving the joy and happiness you have for reality. And that the game is able to release whatever pent up negativity you have from reality.

Thank you for voicing out your suggestions to us, and thank you for your love for the characters of Tierra!

From the bottoms of our hearts, we hope that the tag can thrive through the hard work of all of us, with more and more fan creations for everyone to look at. Because of your support, we have the courage to push onwards.

Thank you, everyone.

Formalities and heartfelt words done with, let's talk about things you're probably more interested in.

First off, we have seen everyone's dissatisfaction with Black Forest Cake.

Is she based off a certain unacceptable organization? Actually, no!

("You're wrong, I'm not!" Black Forest Cake yells)

The black forest cake is a famous German dessert that prides itself on its strict craftsmanship, maintaining its fame over its long history.

In Germany, if a patissier didn't make black forest cakes by the set recipe, such as swapping out ingredients and making it with vanilla sponge cake and strawberries instead and still selling it as "black forest cake", their shop would be swiftly shut down and the chef might even have to serve a term in prison, as the black forest cake is legally protected by the EU. (TL note: google "black forest cake protected status")

Compared to other desserts, the craftsmanship regulations for the black forest cake may be considered overly harsh. We've only seen Germans portrayed as strict on the internet as well. Combining these, we made Black Forest Cake a stickler for the rules.

Taking a step back, another factor is that when we were writing, we saw a lot of news reports about overbearing and manipulative parents, along with the stress and breakdowns of friends.

=-=.......

Um… At first, Black Forest Cake was modeled after a child who grew up with overbearing parents, who in turn enforced too many unreasonable rules on her own children, which resulted in their pent-up stress bursting out on her. The parent in this situation would never back off and would think it's the child at fault.

We're so sorry… Everyone, you think too highly of us… We know far less about military history than some of you do, and we're nowhere near as good at making connections… To bring up bad feelings, we're really… sorry…

Regarding the design of her clothing, this is the image we brought up as a suggestion: A punkish dress with military vibes.

(Gets on knees and apologizes)

We're so sorry, it's completely our fault that we didn't take into more consideration everyone's ability to make connections! But it's true, we really didn't! We really didn't!!!

QAQ We love this world! We're not an evil, anti-human organization!!

Black Forest Cake out of the way, let's talk about more stuff you might be interested in, the stuff many of you approach support about.

Q: Do Food Souls have genders? A: Food Souls' bodies are modeled after humans'. They're whatever gender they believe themselves to be, Hotdog's gender is hotdog.

Q: Can Food Souls [CENSORED]? A: ………..Modeled after…humans… um…….. when two Food Souls love each other very much… ummmm if we say more our boss is gonna beat us, you get the idea, don't come asking anymore!!!! Please!!!! QAQ

Q: Is there true love between Food Souls? A: Depends. The bigger your heart is, the more space you have in there. As they say, the stage extends as far as the heart goes.

Q: Are XXX and XXX shipped? What's the relationship between XXX and XXX!! A: … We said stop asking!!! We're gonna killed by our toxic male boss!!!! Please, please, please just read the story and make more fanworks. We definitely will see them.

Q: How much do you check Lofter? A: I know nobody asked this question, but. Your creations on Lofter may just become the inspiration for our next story, each of us checks Lofter as often as 4 or 5 times a day at most. Thanks, pl0x, next question.

Q: Anything to say? A: Thank you, everyone! We love you! (づ￣ 3￣)づ

Lastly, we hope that we can all take on the world with an open mind, express ourselves better, bring joy to everyone else, and with a strong positivity we can better ourselves as people.

Thank you to each and every one of you who read this far! We will continue working hard and do our best to deliver you heartfelt stories, both sad ones that have you bawling your eyes out and sweet ones that give you toothaches. Loving you always, the writing team.

ーーThoughts after half a month of overtime 21 August 2019

[ketocountrymomma]

Well here we go, embarking on a new journey... writing a blog to share pieces of life with others, however avoiding the social leash of #facebook. Far too often people seem trapped by the demon that is Fakebook - people posting what they want their image to be instead of the truth in their character... so who am I?

Well that’s not so easily answered... it takes more than a simple blog to really get to the depths of my soul and beyond, but let’s try to fill these pages up with memories and laughs.  Things parents, women, and anyone who might have a lifestyle similar to mine can relate to.  Here’s my honest look at life... the good bad and most certainly ugliest of truths.  

I’m a firm believer in just cause you have an opinion doesn’t make it right, so no where in these textual outbursts will you find anything that is law (unless I researched and show facts haha)... but this is just the way I see things and how life works for me.  I’ve walked around the sun now for 34 years and have experienced some craziness, now to share it with you guys... I’ve been told I should write a book years ago, but don’t any mother have time for that.  I choose to write a blog and share my world here instead.  

Looking forward to mutual interactions, comments, questions and MORE...

So, me... I’m a short statured dark curly haired Italian girl, who grew up about half hour from Boston, MA.  I’m the daughter of an Italian immigrant and a Polish (which up until May we thought was Irish ☘️) American, although the man that raised me and I call  Dad is English and one of the best male influences I could have ever had, but we'll get to my parental units in the near future I'm sure.  Overall, life for me has been interesting, challenging, and full of lessons - but by no means would I call it a hard childhood.  I have no complaints and have lived a rather privileged lifestyle since birth.  

So I grew up in a home, in a suburb of Massachusetts with parents who worked their tails off to provide for me and my step-sisters.  I don't have any full blood siblings, my sperm donor helped to populate the streets of New York, however he never had a bank account but made plenty of deposits all over the state if you catch my drift.  My parents, are hardworking middle class heroes, who never let their kids go without - even if they did.  They sacrificed a lot daily to make sure their children got the best opportunities and experiences to carry them into adult hood - and I am very thankful for them.  I would never be half the woman I am without my parents, Tammie and Ed.  

So... how did I get to New Hampshire?  Well, to be honest, I fell in love with it back in 2002.  My high school boyfriend worked on cars, as I am in my 30s and grew up back when Fast & the Furious was the hottest thing going and everyone needed to have a Mitsubishi Eclipse.  Well we used to drive up Wednesday and Friday nights for open drag night so he could race his car.  This was an absolute blast and brought me to Epping NH.  I was 16 years old and life was the best ... no bills responsibility and your parents were still flipping the bill hahaha (adulting is overrated).  I loved the feeling in the air when we crossed the border into NH and so when I was looking to settle down, for some reason I wanted to go north.  I wanted out of MA - that was for sure, the housing market is extremely inflated and people are more materialistic than my liking - so I longed for a different life to raise my two beautiful children.

I moved up to NH with my ex of 10 years - the sperm donor to my children. To say I dislike this man is a complete understatement. I had lived in fear of his temper for so long and finally he went too far and even murdered my dog - which is a whole other story... So this is a really difficult time frame in my life, the feeling of being completely stuck and without options in the status of SAHM.  I had two kiddos with this being.  Anyways... I ended up getting a job to officially get out on my own, as we had been living separate lives for far too long and cohabitating, which was less than hospitable and I needed to get FREE.

I got probably my favorite job to date that I had, working with my old bosses was a blast.  It was utility construction and so much fun as well as lots to learn!! I met some great people and it was a fresh time for me, breaking free from the crazy that was my ex life and get to be on my own.  This was also the time that I met the absolute love of my life - coincidence I think not.  That’s a story for a different day, but to sum it up, I believe in love at first sight because of this amazing man!!! So we fell in love, dated, and bought a house together.  It’s not complete perfection, we’re both strong personalities - but bliss it absolutely is!! I am not perfect, in fact I have so many faults that I open arm embrace and own.  He’s a strong, loving, heartfelt, and most beautiful man I have ever laid eyes on and I still get weak in the knees from the way he looks at me and that little smirk he flashes my way... so THATS what love is.  I’ve read about it, heard and sang along with many songs proclaiming its beauty, and cried along with movies that painted the perfect love story... but never thought it was REAL, until my man looked at me.  That’s all it took and I knew, damn “that’s the man, right there, that I’ve been set on this earth to find, the other half to my whole, the stars all aligned and so many signs pointed and blessed the broken road that led me straight into those big masculine arms.  Ok, I’ll stop in LALA land, but to say I love this man just doesn’t do it justice.  

So now here we are... I work maintaining my beautiful home in the lakes region of New Hampshire - which you will see tons about... here’s my life, all wrapped up in tattered bows and some dirty Gucci sneakers! 🇮🇹 I love my life - I have fought to be the woman I am today, standing on these two feet, raising two amazing little humans while being loved by a man that rivals any noteworthy king.

Fairytale it might not be, but my dreams cake true, absolutely without a single doubt. ❤️

[shhiatusbang-blog]

Tier 2

All Tier 2 fics, below. 

A Universal Mishap ( Main Pairing: Alec/Magnus // Side Pairing(s): Clary/Jace, Isabelle/Simon, Luke/Maryse //  Mature )

WARNINGS:   Mature Content

Summary: Alternate Universe Malec are unexpectedly thrown into the main verse after a magical mishap. The issue is AU Magnus has still not told his Alec about being a warlock.

Special Requests: Must be 18+.

City of Stars ( Main Pairing: Alec/Personal Growth //  Side Pairing(s): Alec/Magnus, Aline/Helen  //  Teen and Up )

WARNINGS:  No Warnings Apply

Summary: S1 Canon Divergent Alec-Centric. 

When the punishment for their unsanctioned missions comes down in the form of a transfer to another institute, Alec must navigate a land far from everyone he knows and loves alone. 

Heaven is a Taste on Earth ( Main Pairing: Alec/Magnus // Side Pairing(s): Clary/Jace, Isabelle/Maia, Raphael/Simon //   Teen and Up )

WARNINGS:   (Past) Abusive Relationship (Cannot be endgame)

Summary: Making a birthday cake for the renowned chef Magnus Bane is a hard enough task – made harder still by the fact his girlfriend doesn’t seem to know Magnus’ likes or dislikes at all. Alec Lightwood, maker of some of the finest cakes in Brooklyn, is up to the challenge, even if he can’t take his eyes off the birthday boy. But as Alec and Magnus grow closer, could it be that the missing ingredient is true love?

Idris Troje( Main Pairing: Alec/Magnus // Side Pairing(s): Clary/Jace //   Explicit )

WARNINGS:  Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Mature Content

Summary: As a child, Magnus is cursed by his father Asmodeus. Cursed with foresight, with the knowledge of what the future will bring, and that no matter what he tries... no one will ever believe his warnings.  

Except one.    

Magnus sees fire and death brought by ships, sees years of war, a city in ruin, a people destroyed... But he never did see Alexander coming.  

***

AKA, the Iliad AU where Magnus is Cassandra/Andromache, Alec is Hector, and Idris is Troy.  

Not based on the movie, but inspired by the actual Iliad. Which means there's going to be a lot of character death, violence, tragedy and angst, and I genuinely can't guarantee a happy ending.    

Special Requests: For a beta I was really hoping for someone with a little knowledge of the Iliad and greek tragedy, and/or someone with experience or the motivation to tackle non-linear narratives, since that's so far out of my comfort zone (also I still can't believe I'm doing ANGST!) I'm ESL so I also commit a lot of crimes against comma's and tenses.

Special Requests: Must be 18+.

Magic [when I'm with you] ( Main Pairing: Multi // Side Pairing(s):  Alec/Magnus, Clary/Jace, Isabelle/Simon, Luke/Maryse, Maia/Simon  //  Gen )

WARNINGS:   (Past) Abusive Relationship (Cannot be endgame), Graphic Depictions of Violence, Suicide/Suicidal Thoughts

Summary: Alec is dying on the floor, Magnus can't save him, Clary is missing, Simon thinks he killed her, and Jace is stressed. What happens now? Or: a fic exploring what happens after the events of the 3A finale.

Marine Biology ( Main Pairing: Clary /Maia // Side Pairing(s): Alec/Magnus, Isabelle/Meliorn, Luke/Maryse //   Mature )

WARNINGS:   (Past) Abusive Relationship (Cannot be endgame)

Summary: When Marine Biologist Maia Roberts signs in the Blue Hotel to pursue her research on the bay’s wildlife, she has no idea that the pretty girl at the reception is the most interesting of wildlife: a mermaid. We follow her through her discovery of the town, its strange inhabitants, and her falling for mermaid Clary Fray. Main ship: Claia, side ships: Malec, Marcian, Melizzy

Orphan Alec ( Main Pairing: Alec/Magnus //  Side Pairing(s): N/A  //   Mature )

WARNINGS:  No Warnings Apply

Summary: As a teenager Alec woke up in an alley behind a Burger King, with no memory and nothing but a leather jacket to his name. Now, there are only three things he can be completely sure about: he can't fry an egg without burning it, he needs to walk around the block twice before turning in at night, and he can only depend on himself to get by.    

Two teenagers and a handsome business man are about to change all that.  

Or the one where I play around with Alec's relationships and literally no one knows who he is (yet).

Special Requests: Must be 18+.

Puppy Love( Main Pairing: Alec/Magnus //  Side Pairing(s): N/A  //  Gen )

WARNINGS:  No Warnings Apply

Summary: When his guardian Ragnor gets a position as a professor at the Shadowhunter Academy in Idris, Magnus has no choice but to follow along, being only four years old.  At the same time in New York, Maryse Lightwood comes to her senses and leaves her husband, taking a position as Headmistress of the Shadowhunter Academy.  Along with her were her two children, Alec who was three and Izzy who was still an infant.    ----   Over the years, everyone comments on the sweet relationship between Magnus and Alec, as the two grow up in the Academy in Idris.  "Puppy love" they called it.  ----   A 5+1 fic, the five times people referred to Magnus and Alec's relationship as puppy love and the one time they couldn't anymore.

Some Secret Histories ( Main Pairing: Alec/Magnus  // Side Pairing(s): Clary/Jace, Clary/Simon, Maia/Simon //   Mature )

WARNINGS:   Anti-LGBT+ Issues (in a non-supporting narrative), Mature Content

Summary: Magnus delights in broadening Alec's horizons, taking him to new places, showing him the world. So, when Alec asks, after one more globetrotting date, "When do I get to take you somewhere?", he's not really prepared for the question. The sharing of experiences is a two-way street, and some things can only be seen by looking close.  ---   Five times Magnus finds himself in Alec's spaces, and the little discoveries they both make there. Fluff, slow romance, and a dash of drama and smut.

Something Else  ( Main Pairing: Alec/Magnus // Side Pairing(s): Clary/Jace, May add others, currently any side pairings will be very vaguely mentioned/implied. //   Explicit )

WARNINGS:   Mature Content, Memory Erasure (amnesia)

Summary: Alec Lightwood doesn't understand why his mother always seems so sad when she looks at him. He also doesn't understand why the former High Warlock of Brooklyn saved his life and avoided him like the plague afterward

Asmodeus took away the Shadowhunters’ personal memories of Magnus as payment for his help. (Post 3x10 where instead of taking Magnus’ magic, Asmodeus is just making Magnus suffer.)   

Beginning premise/prologue: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486841

The work won't interact with this fic directly. It will be a canon divergent version of events following Lilith's ritual.

Special Requests: Must be 18+.

The Only Good Guys You Get ( Main Pairing: Gen Fic/No Pairings // Side Pairing(s): Alec/Magnus, Clary/Isabelle //   Mature )

WARNINGS: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Summary: Former Interpol agent Luke Garroway has lost everything. Or so he thinks. An offer to turn his life around comes with just one catch: switching sides. Leading a team of hackers and thieves, Luke's biggest challenge might be making them all get along.

Special Requests: Must be 18+.

This Book is Great (Who's the Author?) ( Main Pairing: Gen Fic/No Pairings // Side Pairing(s): Alec/Magnus, Clary/Jace, Maia/Simon //  Gen )

WARNINGS:  No Warnings Apply

Summary: No one knew that Maia liked to write except for her boyfriend, Simon. 

And then she wrote a book. That got published. Under a pseudonym. That caught fire and acclaim in the publishing world. 

And now she’s in her book club, with her best friend Alec and her other friend Magnus, who she may or might of not based two of the more prominent characters off.  

And now Alec’s holding up her book - that no one knows she wrote - which, apparently, they’re going to study for this month’s book. 

Well.   

Crap. 

(A.k.a Maia wants Magnus and Alec to get together so badly that she wrote a book where they did.)

Unexpected (  Main Pairing: Alec/Magnus ,//  Side Pairing(s):N/A  //  Mature )

WARNINGS:  No Warnings Apply

Summary: A sort of enemies to lovers college au where Magnus is the drum major of the band and Alec is captain of the lacrosse team and they have a rivalry over who gets to use the field. Until one day, they end up having to share a table at a coffee shop to study and realize they might not hate each other all that much.

Special Requests: Must be 18+.

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Reviews: Tokyo Treat Feb 19

Okay so I still have no idea whats going on with the move. We haven’t really discussed it much these past few days due to the drama surrounding it, and I was told that we would get September to get everything done so I lost a large portion of stress and anxiety compared to how I’ve been feeling.  

In other news, back in July I realized that I never got my June Tokyo Treat box. I’m not sure what happened because they said it was sent out, and when I contacted them (after the 60 day wait as requested) they asked me to wait like 14 more days and see if it arrives. So basically, if it doesn’t come around the middle of next week I have to contact them again.

“Can you believe it’s already March?! While we hate to see the beauty of Winter fade away, we are super excited for Spring to come along. We love all the gorgeous flowers that bloom, the warm sunlight bringing color back into the world, and all the fresh fruits and veggies that are starting to be harvested! Speaking of fruits and veggies, we thought the idea of fresh produce would be a great idea for this month’s box. So, we curated a box inspired by fresh food to bring refreshing, delicious flavors to you this month. We hope all the snacks in this month’s box brings a smile to your face as bright as the Spring sun! Have a great month everyone!“

For this month, the Lucky Treat and Prize items are all focused on various popular Studio Ghibli movies. The featured pages talk about Hinamatsuri (Girls Day), and how to keep away bad luck around the start of a new year.

Okay, so as usual I won’t be covering the DIY- but I won’t be making a blog post on it either. I’ve gotten this several times (I’m pretty sure I have one of each mold by now), it never changes, it’s self-explanatory, it also tastes good so I would recommend it if you see it. I did take a picture though:

You get four sticks and enough of both candy (Lemon and Strawberry) to make them all, but for demonstrative purposes I only decided to make 3.

Coca Cola Peach

I decided not to review this item either, because we’ve already gotten it in a previous box. However, this is an improved version of the drink; it was so popular that they brought it back this year but added real white peach juice to ensure a richer flavor and refreshing taste and scent.

So... if I recall I did like the drink, I’m not sure how much but I was looking forward to having it again. According to the wrapper, its only 31kcal.

As soon as you open it you’re hit by a very strong peach scent (and the lid making a loud bursting sound! It always surprises me >3<) with a very light cola scent in the background. The flavor is very strong, I was a bit surprised but I didn’t hate it. However, the cola seems almost completely drowned out by peach, which could be good or bad depending on who you ask. The peach lingers for a few minutes, but then I also caught a small hint of bitterness as it passes.

Minions Chocolate Wafer & Pokemon Cookies

First up we got some chocolate for the review. First will be the Chocolate Wafer by Furuta that features the Minions for this box. This is a common snack that has featured several series, each package contains 1 of several big, shiny sticker with the wafer. Each wafer is 53kcal.

Rating:  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

This might shake some people, but I actually don’t like Minions. I think they’re really annoying and I don’t get their popularity, but I will admit that on rare occasion they can be a little cute. We’re not here to judge them though, just the wafer.

I want to say “if you tried one wafer than you have tried them all“, but these are actually pretty decent for being so thin. When I took my first bite I didn’t think they had much flavor, but the more of it I ate the more I got the rich chocolate cream within it. It might not be the best chocolate, but it’s not terrible.

-------

Our other item also features a super-popular mascot, this time Pokemon! These are also by Furuta, so I assume they might have other series of these, but I haven’t seem them. Each bag contains 63 grams of wrapped baby-sized chocolate, chocolate chip cookies :D I am OBSESSED with chocolate chocolate chip muffins, and I love chocolate chip cookies so I was so ready for this!

Each cookie is 49kcal, and I think we get about 8-10 cookies per bag.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

As small as the cookies are, they are super ultra chocolatey and fudge-like. Very soft and a bit chewy, they remind me a lot of these cookies my mom would get me after work when I was little. Highly recommend.

Would you believe my luck- almost every single wrapped featured the Alolan Rokan/Vulpix! For anyone new or unfamiliar, my favorite Pokemon has always been Rokan/Vulpix, so I love love love its snowy counterpart too~  

Bear Club Gummies & Pineapple Gummies & Ramune Candy

Okay, so I won’t be reviewing the gummy bears only because I mean... they’re typical gummy bears. I’ve gotten them once or twice before now and they don’t change. Each bag is 39kcal, and ironically after the few I ate, I only had 3 green bears left... I think they’re green apple flavored. The gummies are okay, but they’re kind of chewy and hard so I wouldn’t say they were my first choice...

----------

Next up is some cute Pineapple slice gummies. Which stuck to the plastic due to being in the package so long and because of summer...

These are by the brand Pine and each pack is 48.9kcal.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I had to use a knife to pry them out and it still made a sticky mess. As it turns out the mold can be played with a little to pop them out <3< Despite that problem, these taste really good. They have a slight tartness to them like real pineapple, so I waver between realistic pineapple and candy/fake pineapple with these guys. I think they would be worth trying if you like Pineapple.

-------

Our next item is another one I had; but I haven’t reviewed it yet. You might recognize the shapes though, because I have covered two other flavors before; the mixed variety, and the strawberry one.

These soda/ramune flavored ramune candies (powdered candy mixture that is hardened into a specific shape. When eaten it breaks down into powder.). These little cuties are circular in shape, some of which bear the adorable droplet mascots on the packaging in various expression, and a cute translucent ramune bottle container.

The bottle is 108kcal.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I don’t like hard candy very much, but I make an exception for ramune-style candy. It’s powdered so it dissolves and you don’t need to have it in your mouth long to bite through it. The flavor is light in the mouth and pretty sweet, and it strongly brings to mind the ramune/soda flavor that is so popular in Japan~

Look A La Mode Chocolate

Our next item was a variety pieces; we could either get this delicious bite-sized chocolate bag, or a bag of Banana Omelette Cakes. Considering my strong dislike of banana, I am very happy I got these!

What makes this bag special s that you get 4 different chocolates: Banana, Strawberry, Almond, and Pineapple flavoring in the middle. I believe the pineapple is a new flavor according to the bag, the booklet also mentions a caramel flavor, so I’m not sure if the pineapple replaced it, or if that’s an oversight. Each one has 24-28 kcal. 

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

Because there is 4 flavors, I’m rating them more of a concept than each individual flavor- that comes below this segment. As a whole, the chocolate is very good. They’re small but you get a lot of flavor, and the cream in the middle isn’t skimpy at all and they taste very much like the item they represent.

Okay, so now I’ll be telling you my feelings of each flavor. The booklet suggests having these with some tea or coffee, and because I hate tea, I grabbed coffee. I’ll be listing my opinions of each one with and without coffee to see if there is any differences.

WC - With Coffee

Strawberry: Typical strawberry-chocolate taste. Loved it like usual. - WC: The strawberry flavor was still really strong.

Banana: Tastes like real banana, didn’t hate it - WC: banana was covered up

Almond: Creamy and smooth, definitely taste almond - WC: covered up a little, but I could still taste almond. I liked it.

Pineapple: Never had chocolate and pineapple, but it’s tasty. The pineapple flavor lasted a while. - WC: I could still taste the pineapple a bit, wasn’t too crazy about the combination but not bad.

So all and all, I didn’t see too much of a difference with or without coffee. I think the almond went with it perfectly.

Rice Puff Carrot & Curry Corn Snack

The Carrot will be our final “sweet” item, I say that because the booklet describes it as savory and apparently popular in Japan- but to me it tastes a bit sweet, a lot like a breakfast cereal I’ve had before in fact... 

The calories for this carrot is 51.2kcal.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

Okay so... these weren’t opened, but when I opened them to try I thought they were a little stale. They have a slight sweetness to them, like I said I don’t taste savory at all. I don’t hate them, but they weren’t my favorite thing in the box.

----------

Our next item is a crunchy sweet-savory curry inspired corn snack. I couldn’t find the calories on this one, nor do I have much to say about it in all honesty. 

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

I love crispy-crunchy snacks, and initially when I tried these I was like “these taste like curry?“ but a few later and I totally got it! They taste like the curry you can make with the little premade squared blocks of seasoning, I bought them once before but the flavor of these matches them exactly. I do wish the flavoring was a hint stronger though.

Chibeans & Split Pea Snack

Next up are these two very similar pea snacks which I do believe I’ve had before- but I’ll review them because I don’t exactly remember. Anyway, before I get into them I wanted to point out that I hate peas and green-beans a lot! However, for some strange reason I like to pick open the podded ones and eat the little bean in them, or sometimes I’ll eat the pod too.

First is the Pea Stick Snack, the greenish ones with the cutesy drawing on the package. These are savory and have a strong crunch, and they are made to taste like they were just picked off of the vine :3

Each bag is 86kcal.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

If you like crunchy snacks you’ll love these, they are very crunchy- but not to an impossible extent. They didn’t hurt my mouth at all after eating them. The flavoring is very strong too!

-------

Our next item is by Calbee, and it also came in a variant. We could either get a share pack of these, or a vegetable stick share pack. I’ve had the vegetable sticks plenty of times and while they’re not bad, I’d rather have these.

This is on the healthier side of snacking, but they’re crispy and look more realistic than the prior snack, although it also has a strong flavor and is very crispy. Each bag is 58kcal.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

If I was asked to choose between the two snacks, I’m not sure I could. They have a similar theme but they both taste delicious in their own way. These ones are light and crispy, and they have a bit of saltiness to them rather than straight up vegetable flavor.

Teriyaki Burger Umaibo & Buttery Salted Sweet Potato Chips

These are our last two items for the review, and I’m not sure you can see it but the Umaibo stick was completely annihilated :P but still edible so it’s fine. I won’t be reviewing this because I’ve gotten it several times (like a few other things in here...) and my opinion never changes; it’s very tasty and I’d recommend it, I think it’s my second favorite Umaibo!

-----

Lastly we have some super-crunchy sweet potato chips. Actually it was kind of funny, while I ate these I was thinking “why does this remind me so much of those sweet potato chips I like?“, then I actually read what these were. So yeah...

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

They don’t really look like the sweet potato chips I’ve had, but they really do taste like them. You get the buttery salty taste and a sweetness that makes them very pleasant. They are a bit hard and crunchy (something my mouth hates) but they’re not nearly as hard as baked chips, so they didn’t bother me too much.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - 4 out of 5. Everything was very tasty, I had no complaints there. However, I felt like the repetition was even worse in this box that what it was previously- which is kind of a bummer. Also, while we did get a handful of items that included multiples, I noticed that all together the items/amount was pretty small. I guess it’s a give-and-take scenario?

Theme - 4 out of 5. Okay, so the theme was produce, meaning things like vegetables and fruits. There was about 5 items that didn’t meet what I consider to be produce items, but everything else fit like exactly. I kinda wish they gave us a different DIY though, because I can think of a couple that would have fit the theme.

Total Rank: 8 out of 10. Like last month I was satisfied with the box but it could have used some improvements too. Like...  kind of feel like we got traded Quantity for Quality. The Quality was fine (minus obliterated Umaibo), but there was a LOT of repeats, even though they were delicious. It’s come to my attention that the reason I might not be as satisfied with the box sometimes is because I see how unique Japan Crate is and wish we got more unique items. We do on rare occasion, but for the price of the box I kind of wish it was more consistent. I have liked the items though, so I can’t say it isn’t worth getting.

Also, as of late I’ve noticed they didn’t include a specifically noted health snack, so I’m beginning to wonder if they removed it.

♥ Cutie’s Scale of Yummy ♥

1. Pokemon Cookies - They pack a lot of flavor for being so small, I loved them and every single chewy soft bite~!

2. Teriyaki Burger Umaibo - I adore this, it never gets old!

3. Coca Cola Peach -  I think it tastes better than last time, but the aftertaste is a little unattractive. . .

4. Ramune Candy - I love snacking on these, especially if you need a sweet pick-me-up~

5. Pea Stick Snack - I love the bright green color, even if they aren’t the most attractive looking thing. They had a very strong taste.

6. Buttery Salted Sweet Potato Chips - They seem kind of average, but I love sweet potato chips so these were like a semi-upgraded version! I found them to be pretty addictive.

7. Curry Corn Snack - I wish there was more in the bag, these taste pretty good. They’re not spicy or anything, but they did make me think of the curry I’ve tried.

8. Look A La Mode - Very tasty, sweet but they weren’t overly, and I was impressed by how each one gave me a different experience. I was even impressed by the realistic banana taste.

9. Split Pea Snack - Tasty and I love how crispy they are. But I feel like they didn’t have much natural flavor like the other pea snack, just saltiness. 

10. Pineapple Gummies - I love pineapple, but pineapple candy I feel like I have to be in the mood for.

11. Chocolate Wafer - Initially I didn’t think much of it but the more I ate the better it was~

12. Bear Club Gummies - Average, but chewy gummy bears. I like gummies, but they just don’t offer anything.

13. Rice Puffs - As much as I love rice, these just felt so plain in comparison to everything else.

[kyuukancorbie]

JG Summary 1-5 XX

 XX. 1939

Disclaimer: 1. I assume people know what’s already in the anime. 2. The information is based on the Chinese novel, I do not claim credit for translation. 3. Everything is quoted, my comments are in parenthesis. 4. Please don’t post outside of tumblr. 5. Corrections are welcomed.

 Main character: Hiroyuki Tobisaki（弘行　飛崎）/ Odagiri （小田切）

(I said I’m not translating the whole novel but this chapter was altered a lot in the anime so I ended up feeling like I might as well have. But never mind. As in Robinson I will be following the plot sequence for this one.)

A note on the timeline: I refer to these charts when suggesting a timeline. But note that some of the dates are suggested based on historical events that may or may not be quoted directly from the novel/anime. 

For this chapter, it suggests that XX. takes place not long after Sakuma departs, when cherry blossoms are still flowering, which means roughly from March 31 to around April 11 in 1939 when the flowers reach full bloom. 

Tobisaki’s military exercise (that killed his career in the army) is suggested to be in September, 1936. This is based on the historical Japanese “Special Large Scale Army Maneuver” in Sapporo, Hokkaido. This means that there would be ~1 year gap between when Tobisaki left the army and when the D-Agency is established and picking its first students.

The story starts with Yuriko Nogami's （百合子　野上） monologue.

- She asks for some water before explaining how found Karl Schneider dead in her house as she is in shock.

- Earlier the day she arranged to meet with Schneider at her flat, and had already given him the keys. She states that Schneider is often busy with work while she stayed at home alone.

- When she felt the rehearsal will last longer than usual, she phoned Schneider who is back home to tell him. The time is around 2pm.

- She recalls that Schneider sounded unusually depressed, and wished she had noticed at the time.

- Rehearsal ended at 3 pm. She phones home again but this time nobody picks up.

- She states that she thought Schneider was tired of waiting and had already left, which often happened in the past. She thus decided to invite her friend Miyoko Yasuhara（美代子　安原） home to eat some cake together.

- When she opened the door Schneider's shoes were in the doorway. Miyoko saw this and suggested she should be leaving.

- Yuriko asked her to stay and calls into the room. When nobody answered, they entered the flat together and saw Schneider's body.

- She stated that she was too shocked to do anything, and Miyoko called the police.

 Hiroyuki Tobisaki （弘行　飛崎） reports the case to the Agency.

- Three years ago Schneider arrived in Japan as a writer for the famous German newspaper "Berlin Allgemeine". He rented a two-story house in Tokyo city, and often held parties at his house. Geishas and all sorts of artists with various nationalities are invited, the music continues late into the night.

- The Kenpeitai dislikes his flamboyancy and investigated him closely. From their report, Schneider is a secret Nazi member in contact with the Gestapo, and a language genius fluent in German, English, French, Russian, Japanese, Beijing dialect, and Cantonese. The Kenpeitai decides that Schneider is here to write for the Nazi government, but does not realize that Schneider is a spy.

- By chance a communist suspect interrogated by the Tokko gave out Schneider's name, naming him a spy working for the USSR.

- At first nobody believes him. Schneider has several friends in the German embassy, it made more sense if he were a German spy.

- But after further investigation they realize Schneider is indeed gathering information about the Germans in the Far East. For the Kenpeitai, uncovering the truth now will make them look bad for not finding him out earlier over the past three years.

- Schneider is also very popular among the high ranking officers of the Japanese army, their wives, and various foreign embassies. It is not just difficult to prove that Schneider is a double agent, but also impossible to keep the faces of German ambassadors and Japanese officers.

- Meanwhile the USSR embassy will probably act as if they know nothing.

- As Schneider's activity concerns three political entities, the Kenpeitai had to consult the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The agreed to secretly arrest Schneider and use him to exchange hostages.

- To prove Schneider guilty they need to first find his contacts and get a solid proof. The mission is passed on to the D-Agency because no one dares take the responsibility.

 Tobisaki's mission.

- When Tobisaki is assigned this mission, Yuuki does not say anything, but he immediately realizes this is his graduation exam.

- Some of the students who's been training with Tobisaki has already graduated.

- For students still under training, nobody knows what mission these graduates are assigned or where they will go or why. Graduates simply disappear one day.

- Before their departure Yuuki always gives them a certain mission. Their subsequent destination and future missions will depend on the results of the graduation exam.

- Tobisaki starts spying on Schneider immediately. As all spies need to send the intelligence they gathered home eventually, Schneider is bound to leave prints somewhere.

- All international telegraphs sent from Japan are transmitted by the Ministry of Communications （逓信省）to the D-Agency. Outgoing phonecalls are transferred to and recorded by the Agency. Outgoing letters, including those from embasssies, are first sent to the central post office, then sent to the Agency. The Agency uses a special traceless method to open the letters and reseal them after copying down the contents. These are all done in secret.

- Tobisaki finds some suspicious telegraph activity from Schneider, and letters with encrypted information.

- He also knows there is an illegal radio station in Tokyo sending out encrypted messages. They located an area within 2 km of the signal range using trilateration, but was unable to pinpoint because the the transmission always ends quickly. Tobisaki stalks Schneider until he confirms Schneider sending radio from a rented fishing boat.

- Schneider's cover is so unusual that even the Agency may have missed him if not for the Kenpeitai. He mets with contacts while hidden in his parties, and uses the loud music to render eavesdropping useless. He gives trivial information for Germans and Japanese, while sending important information back to the Soviet.

- Tobisaki admires his tact. However he finds Schneider dead before he has a chance to arrest him.

 The meeting room.

- Everyone in the meeting room, though dressed in suits like businesspeople, are high ranking officers of the Japanese army. Tobisaki himself is a second lieutenant.

- But the novel then states that everyone's position are also fake. The other agency students in the meeting room are named: Kasai （葛西）, Munakata（宗像）, Yamauchi（山内）, Akimoto（秋元）, and Nakase （中瀬）.

(Note: All D-Agency students seem to be automatically second lieutenants.)

- In the first year the agency was short of money and used the army's abandoned pigeon house as their training space. But now they have ample budget and currently uses a three-story building on the outskirts of Tokyo.

- Tobisaki does not think Schneider ever noticed him. He does not think he had any mistake, but is unable to find an answer for the situation. So he asks Yuuki to hold this meeting so that others may bring light on the case, even though he fears the meeting will become a scolding party.

- There is competition and controversy over jurisdiction among the police, the Tokko, and the Kenpeitai, so they don't usually share information with each other. The police thus determines that Schneider commited suicide.

- Kasai challenges Tobisaki's opinion that Schneider was killed because of his dying letter. The conversation generally follows the anime, except that Kasai's lines are split among Miyoshi, Kaminaga, and Hatano.

- Kasai is described as having long, thin eyes, red lips, and short. He has a reputation among D-Agency students as shrewd and competent.

- Munakata breaks the silence by asking if someone could have entered the room through a window. He is descibed as having thick eyebrows and big eyes.

- Tobisaki states that the window on the other side faces the streets, and the police would have been alerted if someone climbes up the window in broad daylight.

- Kasai mocks Tobisaki by saying this makes the case a locked room mystery, which means an impossible murder.

- Yuuki asks how Schneider died. Tobisaki states he was poisoned by cyanide potassium, easy to find while difficult to trace.

- Akimoto asks if Schneider died of blood loss, mistaking spilt wine in the photo for blood.

- Akimoto is described as very tall, and sitting next to Tobisaki.

- Tobisaki answers that it is wine from Chateau Margaux, a brand Schneider particularly likes. He got the bottle from the German embassy and brought it to Yuriko's flat a week ago.

- Munakata asks how many languages Schneider knows, noticing the double cross in the corner of the letter. (Note: In the anime, this is Amari.)

- Kasai asks if those are just marks drawn when trying out the pen.

- Munakata suggests that Schneider may be a triple agent, also serving either the UK or the US.

- Kasai thinks this is ridiculous, but Munakata disregards him and simply asks for Yuuki's opinion.

- Yuuki tells them to put aside this possibility for now. He then orders Munakata to investigate English speakers around Schneider, Akimoto to investigate the original letter for invisible ink, Kasai to investigate the German and Soviet embassies for espionage activity, Yamauchi to investigate the route of the wine and list anyone who could have touched it. He mentions Nakase but the words trail off.

(Note: In the Anime, Hatano corresponds to Akimoto, even though he is short. Miyoshi corresponds to Kasai, Amari corresponds to Munakata, Tazaki's mission corresponds to Yamauchi's. Kaminaga is ordered to investigate Schneider's aquaintences, possibly corresponding to the left out Nakase's mission, while there is no reference relating to Jitsui.)

- Tobisaki sees that these students are hardly supressing their intrest in the case. For them, Schneider becomes a more fascinating prey after he dies. Or rather they and Schneider are of the same breed. Tobisaki smells the same egotism from Schneider as the D-Agency students.

- His investigation has shown that Schneider was in contact with Nazi officer in order to join the Gestapo, thus travelling to Japan to work for the Soviet. He sends German intelligence to the Soviet and vice versa. The cover is needlessly risky and complicated for the objectives alone. Tobisaki concludes that this can only be explained by Schneider's overgrown ego and his thirst for excitement.

- Again, D-Agency students accept their trainning because they believe only they have the ability complete those missions, with ease.

- Tobisaki feels intense competition to keep up with the other students. As Tobisaki is left alone in the room with Yuuki he realizes he is the oddball.

 About Tobisaki's past.

- The Agency hires from the common and outside the army. Tobisaki is an exception as he attended Cadet Corps （陸軍幼年學校）and then the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, finally becoming second lieutenant, which makes him an army man from head to toe.

- Tobisaki never met his parents. His father is a third rate artist who left for Paris before he was born, and later eloped with some other young woman. His mother left home with another young man not long after giving birth. He never knew what happened to his parents, nor was he interested.

- He was sent to his grandparents as an infant. A young woman named Chizuru Nishiyama （千鶴　西山）from the neighborhood comes to their house to do chores and she was the one who really raised him.

- After some years Chizuru Nishiyama no longer works at their house, so Tobisaki's grandparents sent him to take the cadet entrance exam. They were a noble family in the countryside while Tobisaki is a reminder of their son and daughter-in-law's scandals. Tobisaki thinks his grandparents were distant and didn't know what to do with him. Sending him to cadet school solves everything with just a little money.

- Tobisaki always graduates first place from his schools. He does this for his own ego and not for the opinions of others.

- He was given several positions until promoted to second lieutenant. His first job is to train new recruits.

- Training requires the recruits to memorize their direct commanders' name and title, up to the Emporor of Japan. The idea is to "induce awareness and gratitude of being part of the Emporor's subjects and the Imperial Japanese Army". The army is regarded as a family with the emporor at its head, and requires everyone to be willing to die for the family.

- Tobisaki doubts this as he is a self made man and has never had a positive connection to his family. When recruits would even cry with joy he hides his contempt with indifference, and simply completes his job efficiently.

- During a large milittary exercise, his division was moved to Sapporo. A subordinate who was supposed to be a long range scout in the mission had an inflamed tooth that swelled his face so much he could barely see with his right eye, and in a 40 ℃ fever. Tobisaki informs the battalion commander (Note: typically a lieutenant colonel) to have someone else carry out the mission, but was ordered to report to the commander immediately.

- Tobisaki wrapped the scout in warm clothes and helped him walk all the way. Seeing this the commander thinks they are not taking his orders seriously and states that even if the soldier would die he should still be happy to die for his country.

- The soldier wanted to salute, but Tobisaki stops him. He states that it would be stupid to let the soldier die for an exercise and he would look for someone else fitter.

- The commander is enraged, and attempts to tear off the coat the soldier is wrapped in and order him to go at once. Tobisaki stands between them to stop him, but the commander falls onto the floor. The other soldier passed out.

- Tobisaki is jailed, and then invited by Yuuki to take the Agency's entrance exam.

 Tobisaki's training.

- Tobisaki was shocked by the examination and wonders if anyone would be able to complete it except him.

- In fact quite a few passed with similar grades, some even above him.

- When training becomes physically demanding Tobisaki thinks that the other students won't be able to take it. However the other students look as if it's just piece of cake.

- Not because the training is easy. Even Tobisaki who received army training all his life sometimes felt like it's too harsh. The other students are acting that way because they always believe they are capable enough.

- Yuuki tells them to forget about titles and positions like soldier or ambassador. He tells them to focus only on the facts presented before their eyes. If they are tied to anything other than facts, it will become their weakness.

- Yuuki criticizes how contemporary Japan deifies the Emporor, stating the army should be absolute realists.

- Tobisaki thinks the Agency is a good place for him to stay. Since he was young grown-ups regarded him as cold child, and he was never good at socializing with others. When he was in school he often felt awkward bonding with other students.

- Nobody in the agency will know he is an exception. To not get tied up meant freedom for Tobisaki. The novel uses a past tense.

 Back to the meeting room.

- Yuuki orders him to re-investigate "that woman's" alibi.

- Tobisaki is confused at first thinking about all the woman with a connection to Schneider.

- Schneider's father was German, his mother was Russian. He is described as having blue-grey eyes, a flat nose, overall a crooked look, but very passionate. He is extravagant, harsh-speaking, and often gets drunk, with the coldness of Germans, passion of Slavs, and the carefree of Bohemians. His complicated personality and his charm makes him very popular among women. In Japan alone there are more than 20 who's been in a relation with Schneider.

- Tobisaki realizes Yuuki is referring to Yuriko Nogami. He states she is impossible. But Yuuki forces him to carry out the order by simply keeping silent.

 About Yuriko Nogami:

- During the time when Schneider committed suicide, Yuriko was at rehearsal with her troupe. There is a straight line distance of 5 km from where they are rehearsing to her flat. There is no time for her to go home and kill Schneider and return in 10 minutes. As she is the main supporting actress she was never away from the stage for more than 5 minutes.

- On the day Schneider died, Tobisaki disguised himself as a police and read their report.

- By Yuriko's account, she met Schneider a year ago at the night club she was working at. When she told him she wanted to be an actress he not only encouraged her, but by the next day had already arranged for her to receive professional training. Since then he often visited Yuriko, and also paid for a telephone in her flat.

- The police were particularly suspicious of Yuriko. One reason is that it is unusual for her to continue being in a relationship with a foreign reporter given the tense situation in Japan. The other reason is that she was expelled from girls' academy due to "extremist behavior". Her parents broke relation with her, so she had to work at the night club for a living.

- Tobisaki thinks she is a wise and pragmatic young woman. Which by the standards of Japan, means that she leans too much towards liberallism.

- In her report Yuriko is not embarrassed to state that she loves Schneider deeply. She is soon aware that he has other lovers, but brushes off stating that charming men in Japan and foreign countries are always surrounded by women.

- Other people have confirmed that she is always courteous and friendly to women who are obviously Schneider's lovers. She doesn't complain even if Schneider holds a party late into the night and only tells her to come home after that.

- Tobisaki thinks it is difficult to give Yuriko the motive to murder.

 Other students report to Tobisaki.

- Tobisaki first bumps into Akimoto in disguise. After reporting Akimoto blinks at him and leaves.

- Then he meets Munakata. Munakata states the possibility that Schneider is a triple agent is very low. (Note: this is not shown in the anime. Instead the next person is Kaminaga.)

- Yamauchi about the wine.

- Kasai about the embassies.

- Tobisaki stops Kasai. Their dialogue is the same as in the anime.

- Tobisaki seems to have noticed something he missed.

 Ending.

- Yuuki says he heard that Yuriko Nogami has admitted she killed Schneider.

- Yuuki also says it's uncommon for the Kenpeitai to share this info with them.

- With the results of Tobisaki's investigation the Kenpeitai has decided to use Yuriko as an excuse to take Schneider's case from the police, so that the police won't know they have failed to track down a spy for three years.

- Tobisaki feels disgusted when he remembers the way the Kempeitai looked at Yuriko. He doesn't want to think about how she will be interrogated.

- Tobisaki realized previously that there are loopholes in Yuriko's confession, such as why her friend Miyoko went out to call the police while there is a phone in Yuriko's home.

- Yuriko asked her friend to go to the police station so that she could bring the letter from next to the phone to the dining table.

- She pretends to have thought of a line to use in the next play and asks Schneider to write it down during their call. She does not deny making the call as this will be on record, but the police will not know about the conversation.

- Yuriko said her rehearsal took longer than usual, but a final rehearsal shouldn't be longer than the actual play, at least not long enough for her lover to leave. Tobisaki asked about this in her troupe and was confirmed that the rehearsal ended almost at the scheduled time, so Yuriko was lying.

- Yuriko brought Miyoko back to prove her alibi.

- She killed Schneider because she was jealous of Miyoko. She didn't mind his previous lovers, but Miyoko is her friend and competing with her in the troupe for the same place.

- Tobisaki suspects that Schneider knows about Yuriko's jealousy. He feels himself betraying Yuriko while on the phone with her, and makes the XX mark on the paper. To Schneider, the feeling when he betrays something he values is important. "XX" represents Schneider's inner world, the most unique side of the experienced double agent.

- Yuuki does not know if Miyoko Yasuhara is Schneider's lover, nor does he know that Yuriko has a phone at home. Yet he believes that Yuriko is the murderer. Tobisaki asks why he suspects Yuriko.

- Yuuki answers by asking if Yuriko looked like Chizuru Nishiyama.

- Tobisaki remembers Chizuru.

- Yuuki states that either Schneider was killed or he committed suicide, which ever is the case Tobisaki should have noticed something (Note: in the anime, Yuuki specifically asks if he didn't notice anything when Schneider died). Tobisaki is well trained in the Agency, so if he did not notice he was not looking. Yuuki reasons that the only thing that could distract him and tie him up, would be the ghost of Chizuru.

- Tobisaki thinks about his graduation examination. Rather than Yuuki's testing out the students' abilities, it was more a chance for the students to decide whether they will be able to work under Yuuki in the future. In a way this was Tobisaki's personal case.

- The important thing is to not be tied to anything, which means to not believe in anything, to forsake love and hate as trivial matters, and even betray the only thing a heart relies upon.

- Tobisaki realizes he cannot abandon the image of Chizuru. He wouldn't know what else to live for.

- He also realizes why he always felt inferior to the other students. A true spy is someone who can abandon everything besides himself, betray the ones he love, and still live a lonely life like it's natural.

- Tobisaki feels he is at his limit. This is why he only wrote "resigning for personal reasons" on the last page of his resignation letter.

- Yuuki hands him his appointment letter. The Agency never gives out paper files, everything is either told and heard, or immediately retrieved after reading. Receiving a paper appointment letter means that Tobisaki is no longer part of the Agency.

- Yuuki tells him his new position is in northern China, and he will be promoted to first lieutenant.

- Tobisaki knows he army is giving him a promotion and then a place to die. The cruelest sort of pat on the back.

- When Tobisaki is about to leave he hears Yuuki call out his true name.

- Yuuki stands up from his chair, raises his right hand, and for the first time, salutes to Tobisaki. He said, don't die.

- Tobisaki returns the salute and leaves silently.

@jgfiles 

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

19 Times Celebrities Went Totally Off the Rails in the Public Eye

Being a personality is hard-handed. Not that we’re luminaries( at least , not according to anyone but ourselves ), but it’s pretty easy to imagine that being a fame is hard-bitten, considering how often they tend to lose it. The constant investigation, the demanding hours, the paparazzi always in your aspect — all that stres could make any acceptable person snap. Advertisement div > Honestly, it’s amazing that some personalities have even conserved the apparition of normalcy div > We don’t blame them, but we’ll likewise never tire of watching their epic meltdowns. If “youve been” find yourself wishing to be in the public eye, these 19 celebs are now to remind you that being prominent is not all parties and private jets. Advertisement div > div > Charlie Sheen ranted on aura, but likewise gave us one of the best catchphrases of its first year div > In a completely fantastic interrogation with ABC in February of 2011, Charlie detonated Two and a Half Men inventor Chuck Lorre, claimed “hes having” vampire blood, and peddled a new pharmaceutical called Charlie Sheen that promises to soften your face off. Charlie likewise proclaimed that he was ” not bipolar but’ bi-winning.'” After that, we were all #winning. Advertisement div > div > Alec Baldwin get kicked off a flight because he wasn’t finished with his recreation, and we are capable of honestly relevant div > In December 2011, an intense Words With Friends match went Alec Baldwin booted off an American Airlines flight when he refused to quit playing at departure. We’re not sure if Alec is accepting new adversaries at this time, but we really increase his commitment to the game. Advertisement div > div > Chris Brown lost his shirt and also his damn mind div > On Good Morning America in March of 2011, Chris Brown was asked about the 2009 abuse of his then-girlfriend Rihanna, and to say he was triggered would be an understatement. The singer stormed off theatre, ripped off his shirt, and propelled a chair out his dressing room window. That’s one way to say, “No comment.” Advertisement div > div > Mariah Carey queried Carson Daly for rainbows, ice cream, and some therapy div > While promoting her devastating movie Glitter on TRL in 2001, Mariah Carey brought along an ice cream truck and a striptease, as well as one of the more memorable interviews in TRL history. Mimi ended up in a hospice weeks later for” extreme tired ,” where we’re hoping she got the disruption from the stardom she necessary( and maybe even the chance to learn to razz a bicycle like she missed ). Speaking of botched performances… Advertisement div > div > Kanye West interrupted his own concert three songs in to give a 17 -minute-long rant div > During his Life of Pablo expedition in November of 2016, Kanye West handed his fans an surprising( and unwanted) amaze when he ranted about everyone from Jay-Z, to Beyonce, to Mark Zuckerberg, to onetime President Barack Obama, claiming that “theyre all” “fake.” We’re going to let you finish, Kanye, but that was probably the most difficult concert recital of all time. Advertisement div > div > Tom Cruise rushed on Oprah’s couch and eternally granted Scientology a bad name div > While guest-starring on The Oprah Winfrey Show in May of 2005, Tom Cruise outraged the unflappable Oprah by hopping up on her couch and affirming his love for his then-girlfriend Katie Holmes( who now, unsurprisingly, is his ex-wife ). As far as dreamy gesticulates become, we’d prefer something that doesn’t piss off Oprah. Advertisement div > div > Lamar Odom made a crowbar to a paparazzo’s vehicle, and Khloe Kardashian evaded a bullet div > When requested information about chiselling rumors by a photographer in July of 2013, Khloe Kardashian’s then-husband Lamar Odom threw the photographer’s paraphernalium into the street and then proceeded to take a crowbar to the photographer’s car. Once again , not the best way to allege, “No comment.” Advertisement div > div > Lindsay Lohan pocketed more than $100,000 -worth of watches and sunglasses and officially grew uninvited from all of our future parties div > In August of 2012, the Los Angeles Police Department suspected Lindsay Lohan of leaving an all-night gathering in the Hollywood Hills with more than $100,000 -worth of the party host’s belongings in tow, the fourth burglary thought for LiLo in four years. If at first, you don’t supplant, then you probably shouldn’t try three more times. Advertisement div > div > Justin Bieber’s supporters wouldn’t make him mop up the stage, so he left it div > During a concert in Oslo, Norway in October of 2015, Justin Bieber got fed up with grabby devotees who encroached when he tried to clean liquid off the stage, and he stormed off, deserting the concert after playing exactly one song. Never mind, Kanye — we repute Biebs dethroned you for the worst concert of all time. Now you are able to never expect this next personality to lose her cool. Advertisement div > div > Reese Witherspoon was arrested for disorderly conduct and a lack of Southern cordiality div > In April of 2013, Reese Witherspoon and her husband, Jim Toth, were pulled over for suspicion of intoxicated driving, and Reese was not afraid to let her dislike be known. ” Do you know who I am ?” she requested the policeman.” You’re about to find out who I am .” Reese may be an Oscar-winner, but her’ dispassionate’ impersonation involves work. Advertisement div > div > David Hasselhoff had a struggle with a burger and exposed his real struggle with alcohol div > In May of 2007, a videotape circulated of an inebriated David Hasselhoff, on the flooring and drape merely blue jeans while clumsily eating a hamburger. His daughters had captivated the moment by seeking to get their papa back on the wagon, but it simply pointed up proving a pissed Hoff is no match for a hamburger. Advertisement div > div > A cameraman bumped into Lil Wayne, and Weezy shaped sure that somebody would live to regret it div > While materializing at DirecTV’s annual Celebrity Beach Bowl flag football match in February of 2013, Lil Wayne was accidentally bumped into by cameraman during the post-game trophy presentation, and Lil Wayne gave’ em have it. Two teammates accommodated Lil Wayne back as he criticized the cameraman with epithets, expecting apology. Being Weezy ain’t easy( but apparently, neither is being a cameraman in Weezy’s lane ). Advertisement div > div > Vanilla Ice destroyed an MTV set with a baseball bat, which is probably a very close he’s ever come to earning street cred div > While on the deep-seated of” The MTV Lame 25″ in April of 1999, Vanilla Ice’s” Ice Ice Baby” music video was dubbed the ninth bad of all time, and Vanilla Ice didn’t take the bulletin well. The ” rapper ” attacked the list with a baseball bat, startling( and maybe scarring) the emcees in the process. Who would have anticipated Vanilla Ice would so easily lose his cool? Advertisement div > div > Christian Bale had his eyeline blocked on pitch, and he didn’t furnish any probability of saving div > While filming “Terminator Salvation” in July of 2008, the film’s head of photography accidentally accompanied into Christian Bale’s eyeline during a shot, leading to an expletive-laden tirade from the actor. Forget Batman and American Psycho em >— angry Christian Bale is the person we should really fear. We know celebs have a complicated affair with cameras, but this next one certainly makes the cake. Advertisement div > div > Bjork coaches reporters an important exercise: don’t photo Bjork at international airports div > At New Zealand’s Auckland International Airport in January of 2008, Bjork affected a photographer by rending his shirt from behind after the photographer snagged a few photographs of her. A similar happen happened in Bangkok’s airport in 1996, when Bjork secreted her delirium on another reporter with repeated slaps to the face. Swans may look cute, but recollect, they attack when photographed. Advertisement div > div > Britney Spears shaved her honcho and attacked a automobile with an umbrella, throwing the internet food for nearly forever div > In February of 2007, Britney Spears infamously took her umbrella to a photographer’s car while sporting a reduced psyche, an accident that she subsequently claimed was ” method acting .” On her website, Britney wrote,” I was cooking my courage for a role in a movie where the spouse never plays his part, so they swap places accidentally .” Seems legit. Advertisement div > div > Amanda Bynes played with shoot and scorched any lurking indecisions we had about her wellbeing div > In July of 2013, after a fibre of comical action, Amanda Bynes started a fervour with a canister of gasoline in the driveway of an older stranger, an accident that led to burned gasps, a gasoline-soaked Pomeranian, and a psychiatric hold. We’re pretty sure this case is too strange for even Judge Trudy to handle. Advertisement div > div > Bill O’Reilly completely lost with his staff off-air, returning us another catchphrase for the ages div > While working at Inside Edition , Bill O’Reilly experienced technical impediments with the teleprompter before going on aura, and to describe his reaction as displeased would be a egregious understatement. The video that circulated after the facts of the case registers Bill’s rant against his personnel, as well as his eventual decision to just” make love live .” You do you, Billy. Advertisement div > div > Anne Heche paid a see to strangers in Fresno and claimed to be God div > Shortly after announcing her separation from Ellen DeGeneres in August of 2000, Anne Heche strayed to a agricultural residence near Fresno — wearing precisely a bra, short-changes, and shoes — and announced that she God and would take everyone up to sky in her spaceship. Breakups are hard, but has become a fame might just be harder. Now extend share this with the biggest divas you know! Advertisement Read more: http :// twentytwowords.com/ times-celebrities-went-totally-off-the-rails-in-the-public-eye / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/07/05/19-times-celebrities-went-totally-off-the-rails-in-the-public-eye/