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dadsbongos · 9 months

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the end of evangelion - s.geto & s.gojo & s.ieiri

part of the jjk movie marathon event / movie selection … warnings - children being traumatized by toji, you are killed and then revived :) , plasma vessel arc spoilers, i fucking love tragic character relationships <3 word count - 3.8 K / rating - PG-13

Satoru notices three things before him. Bangs. Mole. Bug eyes.

He doesn’t really remember their names, he supposes he probably should if he wants to seem polite.

But he wasn’t good at any of that, so he simply places his hand over his chest and proudly declares, “Gojo, Satoru, and I hope none of you think I plan on carrying the class.”

The one staring with wide, bashful eyes suddenly sours, glaring at him from beside the girl with the mole. A quiet laugh rumbles from the chest of the pretty boy with his bangs hanging over his eye. Satoru’s teacher sighs quietly before clapping him on the shoulder, the large hand heavy on his bony shoulder.

“Please, take a seat by Geto and we can begin.”

Satoru pauses, hands jammed in his pockets. His eyes are narrowed behind pitch-black, square lenses. Geto, Geto, Geto…

“Which one was that?”

The big-eyed one guffaws while the girl with the mole snorts. The both of them turn to the other boy. Ah, so it must be him, then.

“Geto, here,” the one with the bangs raises his hand, eyes straying towards the door as if he’s already prepared to bolt.

Yaga waits for Satoru to find his seat before standing in front of his four first-years. He looks out at them and sees two very different paths. One full of bountiful success; First Grade sorcerers chock-full of household names in the jujutsu world. And one of shameful failures, a crew barely able to work together long enough in the Kyoto exchange event let alone actually operate missions as a team.

Though, he watches as you and Shoko re-introduce yourselves to Satoru. The six-eyes user, surprisingly, nods along and seems to genuinely retain the information. Yaga feels hope bloom in his chest.

With such unique techniques gathered in one room, there is real potential here for a fruitful future.

“Just one more, c’mon!” Satoru nuzzles his warm cheek between yours and Suguru’s, and begs as if he doesn’t have you both trapped beneath his arms. For such a scrawny guy, he sure does have a good grip.

“We’ve been here for hours, ‘Toru!” you whine, but your body is already completely lax against his side.

Suguru hums along to your point with a gentle nod, “Yaga-sensei still has a reservation we need to get to, Satoru.”

“Aw, let the prince have this!” Shoko, for once, sides with the wonder boy beside you. She holds up her camera and grins, “One more and then dinner!”

“Quickly, please?!” Yaga calls from over the girl’s shoulder, “If we’re late, one of you has to pay for the replacement dinner!”

“Not it!” you call at the same time Suguru purrs it. Satoru rolls his eyes, arms squeezing even tighter around both of your necks.

“As if it would’ve been anyone else.”

“Alright, smiles!” Shoko glares over the lens of her camera, lashes narrowed, despite the uptilt of her rosy lips, “And hold up the awards - Yu and I worked hard on those!”

You, Satoru, and Suguru display the thin, crinkle-edged papers with crudely drawn-on golden trim and sky blue ribbon. In large black crayon scrawls are your names over the front with ‘OFFICIAL FIRST GRADER’ below. It must’ve taken less than a minute each, but you’re already mentally plotting where exactly you want to hang yours in your dorm. Maybe you could even goad Satoru into buying you each matching frames.

“Alright, alright,” Yaga calls, checking his watch for the umpteenth time since Shoko called for another picture, “Let’s go! Goddamn!”

“Okay,” Shoko lowers the camera, flicking through the many photos she’d collected over the evening, “There may be some actual salvageable ones in here.”

“At least you can’t tell when ‘Toru blinks,” you bounce over to her side, carefully cradling the homemade paper award to your chest.

“No,” Shoko pouts suddenly, staring into the sharp glare in Satoru’s glasses, “Dammit - you can see me in those stupid shades!”

“Good!” you lean over to follow her gaze, “That way everybody who sees it will know you were here, too.”

“But I look goofy…”

Suguru towers over the brunette’s back to look at the photo, “Yeah, you do.”

“Hey!”

“He’s right,” Satoru snickers, having not even glanced at the camera screen.

“Hey!”

All three Grade One Tokyo branch students sent as escorts are fatally injured. Two dead. Both later revived.

You can feel it all down your neck. Cold and prickly and squeezing. The base of your throat cinches, heart banging against every bone rung in your chest - trying desperately to free itself. Instinctively, your shoulders bunch up towards your neck; the tips of your fingers go numb, and the numbness spreads up your hands. As if your body itself is trying to shut down. Some unfair, automatic reaction in the face of a bigger predator.

Your knees buckle.

Toji has a hand on his hip, head tilting with a lazy grin, “You’re not on the list, y’know?”

You swallow thickly, eyes scrambling hurriedly over the hulking form before you. Broad shoulders and muscles, at least three times the size of your head, doused in midnight black. You think you make fists.

“You can run, kid,” Toji raises both brows high along his forehead, “If you don’t think you’ll win, you can run.”

It’s cold. So cold it burns. Your jaw clenches. Air fails to reach the hull of your lungs before it’s all punched back out.

“I do it,” Toji jerks the sword in his hand.

Snapped third blade.

Maroon handle.

It’s shiny. Blinding.

Your eyes flicker from the blade to Toji. The blade. It’s familiar. You’ve seen it in a picture. It has a name. The blade glints, sunlight sliding across the metal. Your stare shoots back up to Toji. Toji Fushiguro.

Your legs are going numb now.

Toji’s eyes glide downward, your own snapping to where he glances. Your hands are balled into fists. They’re shaking. Is it fear? Is it anger?

Or are you just tensing too harshly?

Your eyes fall past your hands. Lingering on the concrete beneath your shifting feet.

“I…” your throat tightens, choking off your words. No saliva is willing to slip down and coat the dryness, but you try again, “I won’t run…”

Toji laughs. Head thrown back. Hand still on his hip, Toji twists the blade in his grasp, nodding to himself, “Alright.”

It’s humiliating.

The way your legs tremble as you try to attack. The way your arms lock into place as you barely manage to meet Toji’s eyes.

It’s humiliating: the way you’re on your back so soon.

Toji’s eyes are still, steady in their hold on your own. However, you don’t return his simple gaze. Darting from Toji’s face to the blade above your chest to the gate Suguru and Riko had run through. The blade plunges down.

Your whole body starts to tingle. Deadening. You hear a crack right below your ear. Sunlight dancing off the sword in Toji’s big hands, it’s a lot brighter up close in your chest.

Air startles in your throat, and you cough. Crimson bubbles up with it. Somewhere in the back of your head, you know what this means. A punctured lung. Severed thoracic artery. But that isn’t your main focus.

Toji rips the sword from your chest, his palm pressing against your throat to keep your body down as he pulls the cursed tool free.

You and Shoko had to do a report on that tool back in your first year.

The Inverted Spear of Heaven. Cuts through any technique.

She’d probably laugh that you got attacked with it if she didn’t know you were dying. If she knew that she’d probably try healing you.

Toji turns his back to you, stuffing the Inverted Spear into the worm looming around his body. His hands go into his pockets. Jaw unhinging in a heavy yawn while he approaches the main chamber of Tengen’s tomb. You don’t think he hears you giggle. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway.

The blood is warm against your cheeks. Pooling beneath your head and soaking into your hair.

You giggle, remembering how childishly your stoic friend described the complicated nature of her reverse cursed technique.

How was it again?

Fwoy… then hiyo?

Your eyelids droop. Gaze unfocused on the sky.

Fwoy. Then hiyo.

“How do you feel?” Shoko scrubs her thumb over the smooth surface of her Zippo lighter within her pocket. Her tongue dances over her bottom lip, chapped and rough. She briefly wonders where her chapstick tube is before returning to the present, “Stronger?”

Satoru snickers, an arm draped over your shoulders loosely. It feels odd, somehow an indent against the back of your uniform and yet entirely weightless. He shrugs, “Nah. I was already the strongest, anyway.”

“No more bragging,” you nudge an elbow into his side, but the hit fails to connect, “Your ego has been fed enough for tonight. Don’t you think, Suguru?”

“Hm?” the boy’s hair flutters around his shoulders, head jerking into attention. His arms are folded across his chest and it takes an awfully silent pause before he responds, “Yeah,” he steps closer, blinking up at Satoru, “No more ego-feeding, now you get to feed us, hm?”

“Fine,” Satoru groans, as if that hadn’t been the plan since you all knew he was being promoted, “We have to be quick finding a place, though,” he tugs at the collar of his uniform stiffly, “I didn’t exactly call anywhere ahead.”

“You’re Gojo, Satoru,” Shoko jams a hand in her other pocket, searching for her missing chapstick, “You’ll get us anywhere.”

“So irresponsible,” you muse.

“Well! This is my night, you know?! Why am I supposed to be the event planner?”

“Just ‘cuz Yaga-sensei isn’t here,” Suguru ‘tsk’s, waggling a finger at his friend, “For shame, Satoru.”

The overhead neons and flashing bulbs cast menacing shadows over the pale plains of Suguru’s face. Shadows falling under the bags beneath his eyes.

You contemplate asking.

You know it’ll be pointless.

“Hey, have you been okay?” you whisper against Suguru’s side. His body is warm and tense beneath his loose, hanging, boring beige shirt.

His faraway stare sparks suddenly, shortening back to where you stand beside him. He smiles down at you, it doesn’t reach his eyes so he manually crinkles them shut. He nods curtly, “Yeah…” and then nods again, “Yeah.”

Special Grade is sent as a replacement.

“You’ll be okay,” your hands are cupped over the searing, jagged incision in Kento’s stomach, blood pooling around your fingers and knuckles, “You’ll be okay, right?”

Kento can’t hear you very well, just the bland rolls of your voice. Crackling and raspy from the pressure of screaming.

“Oh, God, Shoko- “ you look around the morgue, trying desperately to unlock that flame from last month. The one you harnessed to save yourself, now desperate to save your friend, “Haibara… God, oh God,” you want to reach out and cradle the other boy, “Nanami, please don’t die.”

The blond blinks up at you, and you’re not even sure he understood your weak plea.

You need to keep your hands on Kento’s wound, but you want to take Yu into your arms. If there is any chance that he could still be living, you want his last moments to be warm and loving. Yu is not someone that should die, but if he has to - it should be kindly. And this was not kindly.

“I’m here!” Shoko barges into the cold morgue, skin bristling with the chilled air. The metal door clangs loudly against the wall, her body moves swiftly through the area as if she’s done this countless times. She almost crashes into the steel table that Yu rests on, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here…” she lays her hands on his cheeks, wiping at the blood splattered up his neck and chin, “I’m here…”

She cannot bring herself to look down at where the cloth over his body suddenly dips.

“Shoko,” your arms shake, “Shoko, you need to take care of Nanami.”

Her shoulders are tensed up to her bobbed hair. She steps back from Yu and joins your side at Kento’s body. Her hands overtake yours and you withdraw. The blood flows down your fingers and drips onto the floor.

“You,” Shoko whispers, shoulders still high, “Thank you.”

“I could only keep him alive,” you’re not nearly as adept at reverse cursed energy as Shoko, but you hope it was enough to at least save one friend tonight.

“Thank you,” she whispers, staring at Yu’s bisected corpse.

Satoru and Shoko are on opposite sides of Japan. Satoru is in Osaka, and Shoko is in Yamagata. Yaga-sensei is in Kyoto for the next week. You and Suguru are in Tokyo. You clasp his hand in yours.

“I’m really proud of you.”

Suguru brings you closer, his hand is warm. And large, “You’re Special Grade, too.”

“But I’m proud of you.”

He can still remember you as you were brought to him by Satoru. Blood drying and muddying in the weeds of your hair to your skull, crimson dyeing the cracks in your lips. Chest still and unbeating. No warmth in your veins. You would soon be ice cold.

You could have been.

And then you coughed and sputtered and shot up in Satoru’s arms, throwing him entirely off balance. The both of you had fallen over and you were the only one laughing it off.

You haven’t laughed like that since it sunk in what the darkness you saw before waking up was.

He remembers the anger he felt when he wasn’t able to maim Toji himself. The anger he felt over Toji being allowed to live into adulthood at all. That he could breed and eat and love like he was some kind of person. He should be dumb and drooling and helpless under Suguru’s palm like any other wild animal. That anger was so palpable that he couldn’t sleep for the next two days.

Then there was the mourning.

He never wants to see you like that again. Not to a bare-fisted, feral monkey. And not to a curse.

He’s sick at the thought.

“I’m proud of you, too,” he squeezes your hand. The lights of Tokyo continue to do his gaunt face no justice. Pale skin stretched over aching bone. He smiles, and he does not bother trying to make his eyes squint up.

He wishes that you being a fellow Special Grade could ease his worries. But even as you walk hand-in-hand back to the dorms, that image of you - still and cold - refuses to go down.

“I just want you to hear it from me. I know what I’ve done. I’m in my right mind. I just couldn’t let them… this village was full of non-sorcerers who tortured two girls with cursed energy. I have to make this world better for… I can’t sit back and let them form curses and kill us off. I can’t let a corrupt world continue to cut away at everyone I love. Do with this as you will, I won’t be mad if it becomes evidence against me. Just… don’t show Satoru. If I can keep some sort of reputation with him, then for now I’d like to. But I don’t regret it. I just regret not being able to say this in person.”

You play the voicemail again.

And again.

And you don’t show Satoru. Or Yaga. Or Gakuganji.

It was a simple job. Get in. Exorcize a curse from a dead-end 9-5 office. Get out. You and Satoru were quick enough - got in and exorcized the curse in the dead-end 9-5 office - and now to get out.

You watch your janky, funhouse reflection in the steel elevator doors. It’s a blurry and stretched thing, but it’s you. You look up and watch the floors tick, tick, tick down.

Satoru is leaning against the wall to your right, his left leg is bent out with his shoe jammed rudely against the wall. His eyes pierce the back of your head. He can’t tell if you’re intentionally ignoring him or just that dense; either way, he hates it.

He scoffs, “I don’t get it.”

“Get what, Satoru?”

Satoru folds his arms - he can't pinpoint it, but these days you make him sick - “He just left. Like it was that easy. Like…”

He wants to see you react. He wants to watch you clench your fists and bow your head, but you don’t. Instead, you say, “It was that easy for him. He hated how the school does things, so he left. He hated that village, so he got rid of it.”

Kicking himself off the wall, Satoru throws his arms out for emphasis. Too bad you’re still staring at that damn floor counter, “So just picking up and leaving us was that easy? He could’ve called us! He could’ve said how he was feeling!”

You swallow thickly, heat clings to the back of your neck.

“But he didn’t,” your hands are limp at your sides, voice shallow, “Trying to find purpose in things you’ll never know the answer to will drive you insane. He left - he isn’t coming back. And if he does, it’ll be to die.”

“We could’ve done something!” Satoru’s voice cracks in the middle, his nails stabbing into his palms.

“But we didn’t. And now we can’t.”

“Why aren’t you angry?!” he shoves you from behind. His hands are neither hot nor cold. Not soft or rough. The space of his infinity doesn’t feel like anything even though it still stubs against your uniform, “Dammit, don’t you care?!”

You stumble from the force of his push, quickly regaining balance and turning to look at Satoru. Your brows crinkle just slightly, lips tugging down at the corners, “Trying to find answers for something you’ll never know will drive you crazy. It’s best to just let it go.”

There’s a flame behind those crystalline eyes, his fists dig into his thighs, “How can you do that?”

“What? Move on?”

“Not care.”

“I care.”

“You don’t,” his throat bobs, white eyelashes batting shut and chin tucking down to his chest. His voice wavers, “Suguru was the only other person that could understand my every thought. He wasn’t someone you could find just anywhere. He was someone I couldn’t imagine going a day without, and now every day is one without him. He never told us what was going on, and he left without so much as a goodbye. And you don’t care! Why don’t you care?!”

“Suguru had his reasons,” you reach out, fingers brushing against the sheer nothingness of his infinity and entwining your hand with his. It isn’t hot or cold. Just imperceivable space between your palms, “I’ll never know them, not like he did. So I can’t waste my time pretending that one day I will. It hurts that he’s gone, and I wish I could’ve done more. But I didn’t. And I can’t. Suguru isn’t coming back, and if he does it’s to die,” you lean down to try and catch Satoru’s eyes through the pitch-black shades of his glasses, “We might even have to be the ones that kill him. I’m letting it go before I go crazy.”

“You already are,” he sniffs, “That’s why you don’t cry when your friend goes off to die.”

“And you’re too obsessive over it,” you release his hand, winding your grip into the front of Satoru’s uniform and yanking him close, “That’s why you’re so blinded by Suguru leaving that you can’t see me and Shoko still on the sidelines. Have you even asked how Shoko is?”

Satoru snatches your wrist. The pressure is intense and unmistakably inhuman, “Let go of me.”

“Or what?”

Despite not being too far from the colored flushes of busy Shibuya in Tokyo, Jujutsu Tech has a grandiose view of the stars. Especially if you sneak up onto the roof of the dorms, edging slightly past the lower hanging trees. You can stare up at the endless void of space and get an eyeful of the stars blinking down at you without having to squint through gaps in leaves. You can sit quietly and feel the gentle breeze caress over your exposed skin. And you could pretend you are alone until the creaking of a second pair of feet echoes behind you.

There’s no need to turn, having already known who the second pair of skittish feet belong to. And knowing that, means knowing what you want to say first,

“I don’t know how to do this for the rest of my life.”

“You don’t have to. Sorcerers don’t usually live long enough for it to matter.”

“It should matter!” Satoru snaps, he glares at you sharply, “I should’ve been able to be a kid! We should’ve been able to be kids!”

You sigh quietly, looking off to the side, afraid that staring too deeply into Satoru’s uncovered eyes may have the same effect as the sun, “The life of a sorcerer is pointless. An under-manned army that gets no thanks. You can accept that and come back, or don’t. Don’t, and go live a more fulfilling life, knowing that you are the strongest and knowing that you made a choice unlike any other sorcerer before you. But someone else will have to take your place.”

Satoru blinks up at you slowly. His long white lashes frame his eyes, his cheeks are sunken and thin. Eggshell, almost, in color. His chest rises, a loud inhale flowing with the movement before he blows it out just as noisily, “That’s bleak.”

“Right?”

“You sound like you’re guilt-tripping me.”

“Maybe a little.”

Because maybe you are. But you mean every word you say.

Satoru can make any decision he wants, but he will have to wake up knowing there are many lives he could’ve saved. And he’ll pretend it doesn’t haunt him the same way Suguru tried to. And he will fail the same way Suguru did.

“Whatever you pick, just remember that Shoko and I are still your friends,” you sit beside him and lean into his side, “We were friends with Sugu’, too.”

“I know. It’s just hard.”

His skin is warm and flush against yours. His head leans onto yours. Hair soft and tickling your forehead.

“Then let it be hard, but don’t pretend you’re all alone.”

And Satoru can’t very well leave you and Shoko and Kento to die as the only remaining students at Jujutsu Tech, so he will return and doom himself to the life of a sorcerer. And he will kill Suguru so that you do not have to.

#jjk x reader #jjk x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #gojo x reader #geto x reader #shoko x reader #shoko ieiri #satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo #suguru geto x reader #suguru geto #jjk movie marathon event

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screampied · 2 months

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what other animes do u watch that u recommend other than jjk?💗

-🐙

well 🙂‍↕️ IT DEPENDS bc everyone’s taste is different. i will list some of my favorite animes though.

naruto. trust you gotta watch it. i’m like such a big naruto geek it’s kinda sad 💔 skip the fillers and watch the movies if you want. so many lovable characters. believe me tho, don’t watch boruto. it’s ass. naruto + shippuden is PEAK

jjba. some arcs are very boring especially the first one (in my opinion) BUT U CAN NEVER BE WRONG WITH JOJO

assassination classroom. oh gawd this is such a comfort anime but the ending threw me off ??? cried for days. ITS SO FUN THO i love recommending asclass bc it’s such a silly lil anime 🙂‍↕️

the disastrous life of saiki k. this series is so !!!! another fav comfort anime of mine plus i adore the manga. THE DARK REUNIONNN. i love this anime so much

haikyuu. okay with haikyuu i’m gonna be real sports animes are not my thing plus when i got recommended to watch it i was like “it’s just seasons of guys playing volleyball 🧍” BUT LOOK ITS SO GOOD. i sat down and watched it and didn’t expect to love it sm omg. there’s so many characters to relate / kin plus the manga is >>>>

hunter x hunter. very good anime, very good manga. i feel like im the only person who likes the chimera ant arc? 😭 best arc in my opinion 🙂‍↕️

neon genesis evangelion. JUST WATCH IT

black clover. again, JUST WATCH IT. i’m gonna be honest i only watched for yami 🚶‍♀️

angels of death. SO GOOD. very gory and dark but it’s only one season which sucks. there’s so many twists also !!! i’d also recommend tokyo ghoul because it kinda reminds me of that

#✰ミ݁ ׅ ࣪ 𝒔𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒓𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒆.#🐙 anon #soul eater too FUCK #WATCH SOUL EATER RN

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centrally-unplanned · 10 months

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I watched the Scott Pilgrim anime! I was deeply ambivalent, which I am sure is a shock to no one who knows me and saw it lol. I think I have a sequence of thoughts, so I will tackle the obvious one first to get it out of the way: Marketing, Adaptation, & Genre Drift in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

Starting from top, if you don’t know, the Scott Pilgrim anime is not an adaptation of the original source material, but an alternate history version of the events where the titular Scott isn’t present for the majority of the episodes and Ramona Flowers is the main character. Which has been controversial! Not…amazingly controversial or anything, this is an extremely low stakes scenario and from my analysis the majority of people liked it. But controversial enough to get insufferable Kotaku articles “explaining the backlash” which don’t explain the backlash well. Let me see if I can do a better job - its fun to set low bars for yourself to clear after all.

The backlash starts with the marketing; really just the professional drama-trolls would have objected beyond an initial reaction to Netflix announcing Ramona Flowers vs the World; as a concept it makes a ton of sense, and it is essentially what they actually did (well, we will get into that). But that is not how it was sold:

“Join Scott in his fight for love, life, and rock!” I’d love to, still waiting for the invite! This is the first teaser for the show, and if you do a quick “frame count” it pretty equally privileges Scott & Ramona both, but Scott is still on top and it deliberately hides any sense that it is an alternate timeline. It even has this screenshot as one of its final moments:

Which I am pretty sure does not appear in the actual anime! If it does its in some flashback alt-timeline scene in a later episode, not its implied context (in the actual episode Scott ‘loses’ this fight). I can show more evidence - casting the original cast of the movie to make it seem like a ‘recreation’, statements by O’Malley where he plays deliberately coy with the idea of how similar it's going to be, and so on - but I think I don’t have to, because it was intentional, you don’t have to read the tea leaves on this. The bait-and-switch is part of the marketing, not an accident from it.

That is the step 1: people are thrown about being deceived. The step 2 is simple - this is a deception about an adaptation. I am someone who constantly complains about shows sacrificing cohesion & storytelling for “the twist”, but its too common these days to be that mad over it in a mass way. My designated punching bag over at Kotaku points this out:

This is a recurring theme for metatextual work like Final Fantasy VII Remake and the Rebuild of Evangelion films: initially they’re presented as retellings of beloved stories, only for it to become clear at some later point that they’re going to take more than a few liberties and tell a different story entirely.

The difference here is that FFVII and Evangelion are remakes, not adaptations. FFVII is a video game being made into a video game again; Evangelion is a tv show + movie being made into a movie series. The FFVII decision was controversial, but fundamentally you can just go back and play the original game; fucking everyone hated the idea of the Evangelion rebuilds being remakes because that is pointless, the originals have aged amazingly, and they had to deviate to justify their existence (they failed at that, but a story for another time). Meanwhile, Scott Pilgrim is a comic, that has never been a TV series, or an anime. There is the movie, but did you know a bunch of comic fans hate the movie? You see a lot of comments like these all the time (from a discourse reddit thread debating the new show):

Personally, I thought it was fun. I agree with a lot of your complaints honestly, but I don’t understand how you liked the movie? I can’t stand the movie because I feel like the characters are all flat, especially Ramona who has absolutely no personality at all.

I disagree btw, the movie is great, but it is a loose adaptation - hell it was released before the final volume of the graphic novels was finished, it has a different ending! A short, cohesive movie could never adapt a long-form, episodic graphic novel. And its live action, stylistically very different. So this TV show was both branded as, and was expected to fulfill a demand for, a first “real” adaptation of the comic, that people wanted. The fact that Evangelion deviated in its remake is a poor comparison. Questioning that people want full adaptations of works they enjoy isn’t really worth our time.

Now I personally don’t care about the above two - I am explaining the debate, but they aren’t problems for me. Step 3 is where I start caring - I think Ramona Flowers vs the World is a great idea. They thought they made that, and I wish they had. But in the process of telling the bait-and-switch of the story, they also bait-and-switched the genre. There is this great quote from O’Malley about the original graphic novel’s story from an interview (whose headline we will revisit in another post, don’t you worry):

Yeah, I mean, when I was writing Scott Pilgrim the first time, I just wanted to come up with a very simple story engine: fight, fight, fight, get to the end. That gave me something to hang all this other stuff on, all this slice of life hanging out in Toronto.

Its such a nice summation of what Scott Pilgrim is - the fighting against the evil exes? Its all sizzle and jokes, none of it matters. Its a plot device to structure the real story, which is a slice-of-life romance drama, coming-of-age narrative, and extremely intimate portrait of Toronto’s scene of indie music venues and hipster coffee shops. The joke is that Scott is dealing with all this crazy video game/anime shenanigans on top of actually having to navigate very grounded past emotional damage and present challenges of adulthood. The heart of the comic is not the fight scenes, some of which literally happen in the background while other characters are talking, but scenes of a group of friends hanging out at 11:00 PM at a dive Korean restaurant:

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off meanwhile is not built around this cast. Its built around a mystery plot and Ramona Flower’s evil exes, who she is investigating, and Scott Pilgrim, uh, checks notes travelling to the future and fighting his …aged enraged alternate self from the original timeline…? Anyway, Ramona’s evil exes are mainly joke characters, comic reliefs who engage in crazy shenanigans. Half of the episodes are structured around them, and their episodes are filled with extended comedy bits and very-long fight scenes. Episode two has a 13 minutes long fight scene between two of them, including build-up, over control of the League of Evil Exes. Hell, they don’t even live in Toronto - a ton of the new anime takes place in New York City and a bit in California. The comic meanwhile has panels just…explaining locations in Toronto sometimes:

Listing the hours of operation, its so cute! The anime has no time for this in between its sci-fi plots and fight scenes, and its far cheaper for it.

The decision to focus on shallow characters like Ramona’s exes is downstream of the decision to focus on Ramona without Scott -besides the exes the rest of the characters are Scott’s friends, who Ramona gets to know through him. Which is the final point here - who are the characters people love from Scott Pilgrim?

All of Scott’s friends ofc. Characters like Lucas Lee are memes, not people. Obviously Kim Pine, Young Neil, Knives Chau and so on appear in the anime. Sometimes they have great scenes - like the adorable scene of Knives & Kim playing music together, Knives’s first time really trying to jam:

Which goes absolutely nowhere from a character perspective - Knives & Kim barely interact after this. It sets up Knives doing a comedy-meta musical for the plot, sure…but that’s boring in comparison to real emotional connections, Knives doesn't have an arc. But they can’t have more, because our main character Ramona Flowers doesn’t know these people; she wouldn’t just hang out with them, and she is busy with her mystery investigation. She sees them when she needs them for plot reasons. Kim and Knives and Stephen Stills are much flatter this time around (Julie, to her credit, kicks ass in this one).

Obviously I could point out that Scott & Ramona’s relationship in the anime, given that they have literally one date before Scott vanishes, has no depth to it, but that is easy. The funniest way to summarize this character issue is if you check the tags on Tumblr right now, you are going to be awash in Scott/Wallace shipping posts. Like I swear, at times its straight(?)-up 50% of the posts going on, its a rabid gay horde out there lusting for this sugar daddy/baby dynamic. Which makes sense, they have so much sexual tension & emotional depth as friends…in the comic. In the anime they barely know each other! Wallace hates Scott and interacts with him maybe a half dozen times, primarily to tell him to move out, then does his own shit. This is all people projecting comic!Scott/Wallace onto the current show.

There are more downstream consequences of these decisions & other issues (like the overdone meta elements, or abandoning most of the indie-music aesthetic) but this has gone on long enough. The point is that telling a different version of the story would actually be fine. It would disappoint some fans, sure, but if done well you would likely win them around. Hell, the original comic’s ending kind of sucks, good time to polish some things. But if you change the main character and the genre and the cast focus and all the character dynamics…at a certain point its just its own new story now. A story irrevocably tied to the old one, but not about any of the things the old one cared about. I think you can see why that would be a harder sell than Ramona Flowers vs the World, even if it was a good zany action comedy anime in its own right. You will get backlash from this level of drift - and you will deserve it.

Also fuck Lisa am I right? Jeez, 0 out of 2 for moving picture adaptations. What you get for being blonde I guess.

#scott pilgrim #Ash adaptation analysis #essay

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wanderersrest · 3 months

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An Abbreviated History of Mecha Part 5: It's (Dahlia of) Wednesday, My Dudes (2000-2010)

I apologize for nothing.

Welcome back to An Abbreviated History of Mecha! Last time we left off, the 90's had come and gone, bringing with it a whole cavalcade of mecha shows as well as Pokemon in its wake. Now the Torchics have come home to roost, as Pokemon explodes in popularity in the 2000's. This means that mecha shows can no longer rely on child audiences in order to make their money. Add onto this the slow shift into the modern seasonal format throughout the decade, and we begin to see the start of the decline of mecha.

Though not all is bad news, as a fair bit of mecha stories would come out and become some of the most iconic stories of the decade. Heck, this era of mecha stories is rife with at least three examples of "Not Like the Other Girl" mecha shows, two of which are pretty bizarre as "Not Like the Other Girl" shows.

So with that out of the way...

Wake up, Dann!

FLCL (2000)

So, uh... what a way to start, huh?

FLCL (pronounced fooly-cooly) is a Studio Gainax/Production I.G. OVA series made in 2000 supposedly as a way to relieve the studio's stress from working on a little series called Neon Genesis Evangelion. FLCL is, to put it lightly, very bizarre while also being surprisingly heartfelt.

FLCL was another major [adult swim]/Toonami series in the US, and like The Big O before it, the folks at Toonami would eventually reach out to Production I.G. to produce sequels that, in my opinion, generally fail to capture the energy of the original.

Bionicle (2001)

LEGO would release its BIONICLE line of Technic toys in 2001 as a last-ditch effort to save the company from financial ruin, and boy would it succeed. Building off of the success of Throwbots, BIONICLE would have a serialized adventure centered around the six Toa as they fought against the forces of the evil Makuta.

Bionicle would last throughout the decade as well as a little bit into the next, until LEGO, who was at a much better place financially at this point, decided that it was time to pull the plug on the series. Bionicle would receive a reboot in 2017 only to be shut down a few years later.

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (2002), Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny (2005), & Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom (2024)

Coming in with a bang, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED would air in 2002. The first series of the Cosmic Era timeline is, without a doubt, one of the most important entries in the entire Gundam franchise due to how it renewed interest in the franchise. Gundam SEED would also be the first series in the franchise to use digital animation over the more traditional cel animation.

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED would be followed up with Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny in 2005. There were plans for a movie releasing shortly after Destiny wrapped up its run, bit it wouldn't be until 2024 that the film, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom, would finally release.

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is also a, shall we say, very contentious series to talk about. While it is almost always one of the most popular entries in Japan, the series is a lot more hotly debated about here in the west. A lot of people tend to downplay this series' importance (*cough*Professor Otaku*cough*). But that is not for me to say, as I have never really watched Gundam SEED or anything related to it.

Xenosaga (2002)

Returning to the director's chair in 2002, Tetsuya Takahashi and the newly formed Monolith Soft would release Xenosaga for the PlayStation 2. Acting as a spiritual successor to Xenogears, Xenosaga brings all of that complex Gnosticism goodness to a new console generation. Originally planned for six games in total, Xenosaga was ultimately cut down in size into three games.

Eventually, Monolith Soft would be bought out by Nintendo (if I had a nickel etc.), and Takahashi would be given another chance to explore the Xeno series once again. But that's a story for another time.

Diebuster/Gunbuster 2 (2004)

Releasing in 2004 as a sequel to 1989's Gunbuster, Diebuster would be the third of Gainax's Big Four series. If you're wondering why Diebuster is the fourth, that's because this OVA series would be the starting point for a lot of the members of the team that would give us Gurren Lagann in about four years.

With the slow death of Studio Gainax, both Diebuster and its older sister series Gunbuster would transfer ownership to Gaina (formerly Fukushima Gainax) at some point in the 2010's. Gaina has plans to make a Gunbuster 3, though that will have to wait until they at least wrap up production of Grendizer U later this year.

Megas XLR (2004)

Meanwhile, Cartoon Network would also see the release of the mecha parody series Megas XLR. Originally an alien robot whose head has been replaced with a car, this series would lovingly riff on a lot of the tropes present in old mecha shows like Mazinger Z and Getter Robo. Unlike most other shows at the time though, Megas XLR has become hard to find since it wrapped up its run. A lot of that has to do with, if I remember correctly, legal issues.

Gun X Sword (2005)

2005 would see AIC Productions release Gun X Sword, a mecha sci-fi/western mash-up directed by Goro Taniguchi. Set on the wasteland planet Endless Illusion, Gun X Sword pulls a lot of its aesthetic sensibilities from shows like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, though another show that may have helped influence Gun X Sword is...

Mobile Fighter G Gundam?! I really hope that's a stretch from me...

As a series, Gun X Sword is often left out of the conversation when it comes to 2000's mecha shows. A large part of that stems from people incorrectly assuming its just a ripoff of Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, which is only remotely true due to some more superficial elements like the planet of Endless Illusion being similar to Trigun's Gunsmoke, and Van's name being a riff on Vash the Stampede (a joke early on is that Van is constantly changing his title).

Psalms of Planets Eureka Seven (2005)

In 1999, a group of former animators for Sunrise would leave to form Studio Bones. While they had worked on a fair bit of shows prior to 2005, including one RahXephon, Bones would come to be known for, among other shows, Psalms of Planets Eureka Seven (or just Eureka Seven for short). With a unique style and a focus on romance (specifically the romantic relationships present amongst the main cast), Eureka Seven would leave an indelible mark on a whole generation of mecha fans.

I would also argue, due in part to personal experience, that Eurkea Seven is one of the "Not Like the Other Girl" shows, though I think I can see why some might disagree: You need to have watched Eureka Seven first in order to make a claim like that, and boy is the original TV series hard to find online.

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (2007)

The year 2007 would see the publication of the first novel in the Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn series. Gundam Unicorn would be an important series in the history of Gundam due to both its popularity and the fact that it represents a changing of the guard, as Universal Century Gundam stories would now be handled primarily by Harutoshi Fukui instead of series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino.

I think I'd also be remiss to point out that Fukui is a rather divisive figure when it comes to Gundam, as the original Gundam Unicorn light novels lean much more into fascist apologia than any other UC series. This would, thankfully, be almost entirely cut out in the animated adaptation of Unicorn that would air in the 2010's.

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (2008)

2008 would see a trio of mecha shows that would more or less serve as a capstone to the 2000's as a decade. The first I will cover is Goro Taniguchi's Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. Mixing in smaller mechs similar to that of Armored Trooper VOTOMs along with actual magic, Code Geass would cement its legacy amongst mecha shows by being one of the "Not Like the Other Girl" shows.

Which is weird, because the plot of Code Geass is that the show's equivalent of the British Empire is able to conquer most of the world through its use of the show's mecha, known in-universe as Knightmare Frames.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (2008)

Also releasing in 2008 is Sunrise's Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Leaning into real life elements like the rising awareness of terrorism while taking inspiration from Full Metal Panic, Gundam 00 would be the second of the three mecha stars of 2008. Whereas Gundam SEED would be Gundam's first foray into digital animation, Gundam 00 would up the ante in what is possible. If anything, part of Gundam SEED's legacy in the west is marred due to it's release being sandwiched between Turn A Gundam and Gundam 00, both of which are considered to be some of the best Gundam shows in terms of animation quality.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2008)

Capping off this post is Studio Gainax's final series of their Big Four, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Created as a celebration of mecha stories, with Getter Robo in particular being a primary inspiration, Gurren Lagann is oftentimes considered to be the single most HOT-BLOODED entry in the mecha canon. What helps is this series would build off of the general tone of shows like its big sister show Diebuster as well as the aforementioned Getter Robo. I would even argue that other shows such as Mobile Fighter G Gundam and The King of Braves GaoGaiGar also had a hand in shaping this series.

Gurren Lagann is also, bizarrely enough, one of the "Not Like the Other Girls" shows. If you thought Code Geass was a weird example, then Gurren Lagann is far and away the most perplexing example of these types of shows. At least the other three have a "plausible" explanation as to why they're considered to be different. Gurren Lagann is pretty similar in terms of character dynamics and themes, not that similar to pretty much every mecha show I just compared it to.

Conclusion

That more or less wraps up the 2000's in terms of major works in the mecha canon. It's not until the next decade that we really see mecha works go into a true dark age, though the nature of the dark age is largely overstated. The 2010's is marked by a lot of duds, though I will not touch on the two biggest duds of the decade in the next post. It should be noted that the 2010's also has some major hits scattered throughout the decade, though a lot of them tend to be legacy titles from existing works. We'll also see two major entries in the canon appear from western creators that will also homage the works of old.

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.̵̘̀.̶̡̦̄.̴̯̓͜t̷͖̆u̸̠̰͂n̴͇͗͘ḛ̶̥̇͑ ̷̘̃ḯ̶̻̋n̶̰͛.̴͈͈͋̀.̵̖̈́.̶̡̻̋

...

“̵͇͗͂͠͝Ï̴͇̮̝̽̾ ̴̡̜̯̽̽͜f̵̠̘̈́̔̽ể̸͇̗͐͜l̸̻̟͓͉̀͆t̶̢̫̱̜̔́̾͠ ̸͈̙̜̟̊̅̈́t̵̗̟̤͓̿̂̂͑h̶̖͌͌e̶͕̣̅̒ ̵̡̞̀b̶̪̾̾̓̀ù̵̳͊͑͑ľ̸̢͕̺̭́ļ̸̛̰̈́̍̀é̵͈̯̳͐t̵̪̱̾͜ ̸͖͖̃t̵̥̓͆̄̕ȅ̷́̅͜͜a̵̬̘̙̻̋͆͠͠r̷͚̲̟̠̆̔̄̈ ̴̩̂̌̋t̵̨̳̆͜͠ḥ̸̥̿̈́̂̐r̵̩͇̀͛̿͗o̵̟̮̙͋ͅȕ̵̧̳̙̆g̷̜̜̏̐h̶̡̤͔̃̚͝ ̴̨͈́m̴̳̦̅̎̑̕e̷̼̼̣̭͑͝͠.̵͚̌ ̵̟̺͕̈̎̎́Į̵͕̿ͅ ̶̖͙̑͆̔͝f̶̠̉̂̃ḙ̸͝l̵̻̈́̌̈́̃t̷͇̣̱͐͋̀͆ ̸̙̲̎t̸͔̝̀͠h̶̛̜͔͋̿͌͜é̵̦̼̆̋̓ ̶̞̂̕b̴̰̲͈̽́̔u̶̯͛̇̓ḽ̸̭̮̘̔̇͋͘l̵̰̒̇̇ẹ̵͑͠t̵̡̼̫̙͌̈͆̃ ̸͉͙̀̓͒͝t̸͓̣̮͚̽̈́̽ē̷̬̲ą̷͇͙͐̈͑r̵͇̮̬̾ ̷͚̞͕̎͑ͅt̴̤̥̽̏͒ḩ̷̬̌͆́r̴̯̓̍̿̕õ̸̝͓ṳ̶͈̫͒̎͠g̴͍̯͒͌́h̸̰̯͖͕͊͗̕ ̶̳̫͛m̸͉̏̉̋͜e̸͖͉̭̱͗.̵͓̗̞͓́̏ ̷̺͕̖̀I̵̫̟͌̓̄̈́ ̶̢̞̯͗̾͂̽ͅf̸̲̝̖̈́͜ë̴̱͓́́l̸̫͓̪̆̾͝ţ̸̱̟̼͒ ̷̱̇̚t̵̲͔̻̋̏h̷̠͋ẽ̴̢̦̤̦̔ ̵̻̠̊p̴̞͗r̴̗͉͐̒͑e̷̘͙̼̩͊̾s̵͇̰͐s̶̪͔͚͛͌̍ű̴̱̪͖̌̊̎r̶̪̬̿̈́ḛ̷͐̐̑ ̸̝͙̉͗̎̑a̴͍̜̾̒͝n̸̡̹̓d̸̨̲͎͎̏̃̄ ̸̛̱̙̦̤͌͝͠ȉ̵̡̟̱͖͘t̷̢̛̥̉̀ ̷̛̺͖w̶̨͋ȃ̶̢͕̃s̷̢̤̦̀̊̈́͘ ̵̛̥̲̰̂͂͗͜m̵̦̋̔̀y̵̮͈̼͐̋ ̸̥̹͕̦̿̄͘b̴͉͔̑͂̓ṛ̵̇̿̇o̵͖͎̗̰̊̾ẗ̶͙́̈́͑̀͜ͅh̶̢̺͉̖͌̔̓͝e̶̬͍̝̞͛r̵̗̩͛̐̂,̶̤͎͎̉̊̎ ̸̨̖͉̬̇͑̈̅h̸͇̏į̴͉̄̚s̷̨̝͈̽̓̅ ̴̟̩̃f̵̦͖̩͂̏ȉ̸̡̯̳̈́̈̾ś̶͙̺ṭ̵̜̯̭̓,̸̮̭̇̓ ̸͚̜̃̑ḿ̷̻͈̓y̸̡͌̊̓ ̵̞̈́̇c̷͍̘͌̃͜͠h̵͖̉͘e̸̮͙̊̎ş̵͚̚t̸̡̗́̈́͋̑͜,̸̜͋͠͝ ̷̧̣͎̙̓͌͝͝a̴̖̥̅n̶̡̯͆d̶̢̠͛̿ ̵̭̈́I̴͎͚̺̥͆̋̕ ̸̧̥͙̦̔w̷̭̐̈́å̵̢̙͔s̷̖̋̿ ̶̫̘̾͊l̴̨̧̙̐́a̸͎̹͕͕̔̓̾y̷̧͈͖͚̌̀̂̊i̴̠̝͗͌̕͘n̵͙̻͌̄g̸̛̥̯̹̫͝ ̷̣̔̋̀͠ọ̸̀̾̃̃n̵̰͐ ̷̼̄͂͗m̴̟͘y̵̩̻̺̪̎̽̐ ̴͔̹̀b̸̛͆ͅa̵̡̧̬̓c̴͇͝k̸̢̐̍̏́ ̸̼̠̳͕̑̃̏͝ä̷̫̣̂̓͝n̴̫̬̐ḓ̵̎̈͝ ̶̦͈̈́̆̓͜t̵̨͗̎̈h̶̭̗͔̣̋̑̆̕ę̷͈̗̰͑ ̷̛̪͎̞͒͌͝s̵̼̝̽͝͠ͅk̶̰̠̥̔͘y̸̝͐̆̓̈́ ̷͉͖̳̀̈w̸̛͇̝̭̺ȁ̶̳̥̰̐̉̄s̴͙̊̈ͅ ̶̟̐̿b̴̭̞͗̔̓l̴͉̰̓ų̴̒̓͘e̴͍̟̐̋,̷̡̀̎ ̷͈̈́̈́̉a̴͈̠̓n̴̽̾̊͜ͅd̴͙͍͇̲̾ ̴͇̭̩́̂͐m̸̛̭͉̈̒͂ỳ̴͙͔͉̾͂̽ ̴̻̙̊͝m̴̨̽̚o̵͍̠͆̓t̸̡̻͖̫̉̈́h̴̛̗̺̖̾ë̶̖r̷̥͗ ̵̟̱̞͖̎̿̒͝ḥ̷̂o̷̧̓̓ļ̵̻̜̊̇l̵̖̬̹͑ḛ̴͚̈̕r̵̪͈͈̭̄̈́̃́ȩ̴͇̥̽d̴̨̼͓̿̽͂ ̴̻͎̬̩̔͐́a̴̫͔͐̃̽t̶̩̏̏ ̷̦̭͋ȟ̴̺͚̤͖ḭ̸̝̺̐̆͗m̶̞̄̋͘͠ ̶͌ͅá̶͉̜̜̪̈́̆͂ń̵̘̪̮̉̃d̸͔̥̟͌͂͗͝ ̶̛̺̪̲̩́̑t̸͓̱͐̀͗͊h̴̠̮̄̐̽͝ę̶͔̏̈́̄͝ ̷̗̖̌̉͝ͅb̷̭̄̚u̷̮̎̇̃̀l̸͉̣̓l̵̦̺̟̔͗̾͜͝è̴̡͔̝̲̑͌ț̵̮̽ ̵͎̗̏̀ȟ̷̹̝͕̀́ȃ̷̪͒̋͜d̸̞̤͕̦̈́̑͠͝ ̸̻̤͆̈́̊͝n̶̼̆͌̑̈́ē̷̳͔̝͙͌́́v̷͍͙̻̘̈́ẽ̷̗̞̳̓͝͝ͅr̴̾̽͜͠ ̵̣̜̂̌͠ͅh̷̦̜̦͚̓i̴͓̠͖͐ţ̸̂̋̿̾ ̶͕̑̕̚ͅm̴̛̥̈́ế̸̟̠͔̳,̵̱͖̳̲̊ ̷̨͍͛a̶̗̞͝n̵̯͇̿̏̚d̸̙͎̭͆͊͠ ̶̬͍͐̇t̴̢̛̲̖̟h̴̙̿͗̎͜è̷͖̱̞́̇̀ ̵͉̆͘l̷̡̬̀̌̌̒e̷̢͋̈̃̓͜g̷̢̢͉͜͝ï̵̟͈͉̞̇̆̐o̴̺̜̒́̔͜n̸͉̏͌ṇ̷̀͝a̶̡̖̓̽͛̍i̸̬̮͂͋̕r̵̲̗̈ë̶̮́ ̵̨̣̓ẅ̷̲̹͓̗͗h̵̻͉̠̱͑̓o̶̹̱̺͉̕ ̶͖̝͚̎͆̂̓s̸̛̛̰͓͜h̵̤̐o̵̭̝̹̅̇͑͜͝t̴̠͊̋̾͐ ̴̠̰̞̟̇͒̾͠ḿ̸̟̤̗͈̊͗ȩ̸̟̏ ̸̻̀h̴͕͈̹̾͛͌̓a̵̻̬̝̰̅͛d̵̨̘̀ ̷̢̹͉͑̿͜n̷̯͔̏͊̌o̷͙̟͔̍t̸̢̮͖̋ ̶͈̞̀̒ͅy̸̠͈͋̿e̷̮̬͍͂͛̑t̵̝̓͐͜ͅ ̶̨̛͓̌̐͐p̵̳̏̎̌̕͜u̴̗̎́̉l̵̢̩̩͇̆̍l̴͚͗̀̔̅e̵̞̼̐̎́d̶̜̲̃͊̈́̚ ̴̨̡͍̀̀̚̚t̶̘͙̤͙̍͋̚͝h̷̢̯͋è̵̹̳͑͒ ̴̳͋t̷̰́r̸̛̭̭̪ĩ̵̯̭̄̄g̶̻̹̥̅͛̀͠g̴͍͓̻̑̿̈́ͅẽ̴̦̞͚̾̀r̴̥̖͈̭̂͆,̷͖͕̊͜͜ ̵̧̤̪̻́̕â̵̯͂n̶͖̊͝d̶͉̠̭̠͆͂ ̵̗̫̪̬͘͠s̸̫̫̱̫̚o̴̡̤̘͊͒̈́ ̸̙̯͋̋ͅÍ̸͕̃ ̶̬͂́͆͝k̵̬̻̊̀̋͝ï̵̪̫̖̜ḻ̶̡͐̈́̂̄l̴͍͎̘̙̊̐̅͠e̵͛ͅd̸͎̰̋̊̾ ̴͇͖̗̃̽͠ḩ̴̟̓̀͆̕ĩ̸͚͐̆ṃ̵̧͍͙̊.̴̮̰͗̓ ̵͈̿̄͐Ḯ̴͖͎̊ ̸͓͍̮̲̀͝͠ḏ̶̘̲̐͋̕r̷͍̔͜a̴̧̛n̵̘̾͗͝k̷̰̋͑͝ ̵̪͙͎̆ḑ̴̱͙̔̈ë̸̙̝́̿͝ë̴̻̓͝p̷͖͔̔̎̎ ̵̢̪̣́͆͠ȁ̴̭n̵̡̧̗͒̌d̸͉̠̔͘ ̴̺͔̠̟́ḵ̵̫̈́̀͛̕ḯ̸̪l̵̠͋̂͋ͅl̸̼̯̬̲͛e̸̯̯̿͜ͅd̶͚͚͕̺́ ̵͎̩̃h̶̪͚̏̚î̵̩͍͍̲̒͗m̵͈͘ͅ.̷͚̼̪̺͐̈́”̶͙̌̊͝

#anime and manga #mecha #mobile suit gundam #mobile suit gundam seed #gun x sword #eureka seven #megas xlr #code geass #gurren lagann #diebuster #flcl #gundam 00 #gundam unicorn #xenosaga #dann of thursday #an abbreviated history of mecha

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m1ssword · 5 months

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My favourite retro animes with their perks and perils

Let's start straight away!

1. Lady Oscar / The Rose of Versailles

(70s)

Such a lovely manga/anime series. The story follows the life of a military general's daughter Oscar and Marie Antoinette. Oscar is raised like a boy to succeed her as the commander of the Royal Guards at the Palace of Versailles. The story is set in France before and during the French Revolution.

Perks:

Strong multidimensional female lead

Surprisingly historically accurate

Interestingly captures the large scale of femininity and being a woman

Cool soundtrack

Interesting fact: this anime inspired the makers of Berserk (1997)

Perils:

You'll cry

2. Lady Georgie

(80s)

Lady Georgie tells the growth story of a girl named Georgie who lives in peaceful and pittoresque Australian countryside. Georgie doesn't know the secret about her origin while the rest of her family knows it.

Perks:

absolutely endearing setting

the storytelling of their childhood is beyond cuteness

reminded me of the book "The Little Princess" by F. H. Burnett

Perils:

I was a bit weirded out by the love square (?) which included her two adoptive brothers

The ending is not satisfying and the manga is even worse

The love between Georgie and her main love interest is quite bland

3. City Hunter

(mainly 80s)

City Hunter is a humorous anime classic from the 80s. The story focuses on Ryo Saeba, a famous underground sweeper in Shinjuku, and his partner Kaori Makimura. They together help different customers - which are all beautiful women, since Ryo is also well-known for his lecherous habits. Kaori keeps Ryo in check with her hammer.

Perks:

fun anime with a lot of seasons and movies

interesting characters

pictures the city life of Japan in the 80s

Perils:

the love story between Ryo and Kaori is sometimes frustrating

The fetishism of women in almost every episode starts early to feel like a worn joke (notice the time context)

Episodes follow the same plot almost every time, may start to feel repetitive

Tsukasa Hojo, the maker of City Hunter, has also done an another manga named Angel Heart which shares the same characters with City Hunter but isn't it's continuation. I don't yet have a full review of AH, since I'm currently watching it. Thus far, I have cried during every episode, it's good but different. (Please tell me in the comments would you like to have full review of AH)

And a lot more...

There is a lot more retro animes that I didn't mention in this post, like Candy Candy, Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, Utena, Ranma, Akira, Lupin the III, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Berserk (1997). This is just my list of favourites and I hope that you would like to share your favourites in the comments!

With love,

Jessica

#retro anime #anime and manga #anime #retro #lady oscar #the rose of versailles #lady georgie #city hunter

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wszczebrzyszynie · 4 months

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OOOOGHHH i love giving recs!!!! if you like the haibane renmei type vibe i think no.6 is pretty similar?? its a revolution type story in like a dystopian world kinda?? another similar anime might be violet evergarden which is KNOWN for its absolutely gorgeous animation and amazing storytelling (about a girl writing letters for people. made me cry by like ep 3!!!)

and then flip flappers is a magical girl type thing with cool twists and animation and its wayyy underrated

the disastrous life of saiki k is pretty different and kinda just a slice of life but as a mp100 fan i really liked it and its pretty funny. its about a ridiculously op psychic guy who just wants to be normal but plot wont let him

then theres classics like fullmetal alchemist and neon genesis evangelion and cowboy bebop which are all known to be good

and for some newer ones theres chainsaw man (youve prolly heard about it but its well known for a reason ^^) and bocchi the rock (HILARIOUS slice of life about a introvert girl starting a band)

andddd i think you should try out anime MOVIES too!!! like ghibli movies and promare and your name and stuff. cant be beat

ty for asking for recommendations this is like coke for me even if you dont watch any of these !!!

ive seen all of these except flip flappers and fullmetal (which i recognize i should probably watch already). no.6 was life changing for 14 year old me but i would not call it similar to haibane renmei. and i really like chainsaw man (havent been keeping up with the manga after part 1 ended). I dropped saiki k (its fine on its own but the way people compare it to mob gave me very big expectations it just didnt live up to? same with mashle but mashle was worse) and violet evergarden (i watched it when it was still coming out and gilbert creeped me out)

#i waited for someone to recommend me eva with my eva header and eva mousepad and eva keychains #i dont really like eva #ask :)

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duhragonball · 5 months

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End of Evangelion: 25'

Yeah... that's...

"You don't understand!" is pretty much Neon Genesis Evangelion in a nutshell.

Or "You do (not) understand! (true²) Director's Cut" is how the franchise would put it.

Let's just get on with this.

I watched End of Evangelion last night. Well, early A.M. I took a nap and woke up at midnight and it seemed like the right time to watch a thing like this.

I did not enjoy the movie. I'll explain this, of course, but I wanted to get that out of the way up front. There are positives, sure, but I went into this thing hoping for a more satisfying conclusion than what was presented in the TV show, and I didn't get it. Both endings suck. There you go.

Let me back up a bit. So the TV series ran from 1995 to 1996. The final episodes, 25 and 26, were controversial because they were expected to wrap up the whole story, but instead they went in a bizarrely abstract direction. Both of those episodes apparently take place inside Shinji Ikari's mind as he struggles to accept being part of a collective gestalt of every human mind on Earth. This is the result of the "Human Instrumentality Project" a concept mentioned in Episodes 1 -24, but never adequately explained. The final episodes just skip past the part where Human Instrumentality was achieved and shows the result, without bothering to discuss the background or the cause, or the long-term ramifications.

From what I gather, the main reason Episodes 25 and 26 were Like That was because the studio was short on time and money, so a more satisfying conclusion was not practical. But since the series turned out to be so successful, they were able to take another crack at it with End of Evangelion. The film is very clear about its purpose as an "alternative" to Episodes 25 and 26. It's divided into two sections, numbered 25' and 26'.

I'm not sure the viewer is expected to pick one over the other. The original 25&26 take place in Shinji's mind when Human Instrumentality happens. 25' and 26' take place in the outside world, showing the events leading to Human Instrumentality and the aftermath. There may be some continuity issues to iron out, but a fan could easily accept both endings as canon.

That's not my problem here. The problem is not that there are multiple endings, or that the endings are too "abstract", or that the endings aren't "happy". Fundamentally, my gripe is that the endings are confusing. Perhaps it might be said that the endings are pathologically confusing.

I think this is one of those Big, Emotionally Raw Works, where you can't really discuss it without revealing something about yourself in the process. So let's do that. End of Evangelion makes me feel stupid. There's parts of the movie where I'm just completely confused and I have no idea what is happening or why. It feels less like entertainment and more like I'm about to take a test I didn't study for.

Except I did study, because I've literally been taking notes on this thing for the past three weeks. I was looking forward to this, and last night I'm near the end of the movie wondering what the hell I'm going to write here, because I don't understand what the hell happened in the movie.

So I poked around a fan wiki for a bit, trying to get a handle on some of the major concepts, and as I read the articles, I realized that a lot of this information just stone cold never made it into the TV show or the movie. There was one thing I looked up that had to reference a Playstation 2 game that released six years after the movie premiered.

It's not that I'm too stupid to understand Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's that the franchise appears deliberately designed to hide information from the viewer. You're just supposed to roll with it, I guess. Or spend days researching all this side material. Read the manga, read the wiki, read fan commentaries. I hate this. I hate this so much.

So maybe I'm not stupid. Maybe the anime was just badly designed. That would be comforting, except I still feel stupid for investing so much time into trying to understand this thing that seems purposely rigged to defy understanding. It's not just the ending. That's what everyone talks about, but the ending is just a symptom of a bigger problem. The beginning is really slow. Then the middle starts to get weird, and there's a lot of mysteries and subplots and lore that gets set up with the implied promise that "we'll explain later". And the ending(s) drop that ball. The surgery was a success, but the patient died.

I feel stupid because I got a reply to one of my liveblog posts, I think Episode 12, in response to some comment I made about all the characters having the same backstory. Ritsuko has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother. Misato has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist father. Shinji has a complicated relationship with his workaholic scientist father. Is that a theme or did they only have one idea? My point is that eventually it stops being clever and starts being redundant. Later, we learn that Asuka has... a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother.

"What, are you stupid?" asked the reply guy to my wry observation. They deleted it a few minutes after I saw it, so maybe they felt some remorse over the comment. Normally, I let these things slide. I might respond if I get legitimately hot about it. But this one got to me. "Am I stupid?" I asked myself last week. I seem to be complaining a lot about this show, but it's supposed to be a classic. Am I not giving it a chance? Am I missing something here? Am I just not smart enough to appreciate this thing? Am I just not trying hard enough?

If you're reading this, Reply Guy, please know that I didn't take it personally. I'm not upset with you at all, but I am trying to be honest with myself about this. This Neon Genesis Evangelion business has been frustrating me all month long. Now I'm at the end and it all feels very hollow, like I wasted my time.

I think that's my philosophy on life. I try to seek out new things to explore, usually stories, and sometimes they don't work out the way I wanted them to, and that's okay, because it's the journey that counts. Shinji Ikari keeps shutting down throughout his story, asking why he should bother doing anything, because he's too terrified of the possible outcomes of his actions. My thing is that bad stuff happens all the time no matter what, and you just sort of have to recover and move forward, because that's the only way to see what happens next. So I'm not sure if I can relate to Shinji or not.

Anyway, let's talk about Shinji masturbating in a hospital room over Asuka's comatose body.

I had heard about this scene, but I didn't realize how long and pathetic it is. Asuka had a nervous breakdown in Episode 23. This movie has to follow up on that, becuase Episodes 24, 25, and 26 each refused to pick up on her character arc.

Meanwhile, Shinji is wracked with guilt and dread over his battle with the 17th Angel in Episode 24. He had to kill Kaworu, but in spite of Kaworu's betrayal, he was still a friend to Shinji when he needed it the most, and he was such a good sport about getting killed, you know?

So this movie has to get us back to that moment, when Shinji and Asuka are at their lowest ebb, and I guess they decided that Shinji should go see her in the hospital because he's desperate to talk to someone about what's he's been going through. But Asuka's unresponsive, so he starts shaking her like he's trying to wake her up. Instead she just rolls over, which somehow exposes her half-naked body, and Shinji is so overcome with lust that he rubs one out right there and then. Doesn't even get a Kleenex, doesn't find a place to sit, he just whips it out and goes to town right in front of her.

I guess this is supposed to be a joke, but it doesn't land. It's not even a matter of the joke not aging well. Yeah, this is a 27 year old movie, but Shinji admits this is terrible behavior almost immediately. The "joke" didn't age at all. It was stillborn. This is like when you go to a graveyard and you see one of the tiny graves and the dates are from the same year. That's how funny this is.

The most charitable reading I can give this scene is that it represents the hypocrisy of Shinji's whole deal. He constantly insists that he can only do as he's told, because he's afraid of people not liking him if he makes a mistake or thinks for himself. But here he's doing some pretty disgraceful shit, and I sure as fuck didn't tell him to do this. did you? Did anyone? Of course not. He goes limp for most of the rest of the movie, but not here. Nossir. Seems pretty sure of himself in the minute or so it took him to finish his business.

The other aspect of Shinji on display here is that his ideal social interactions are one-sided. He's most comfortable with people when they can't see what he's doing, when they can't touch him back. That's why he wished for isolation in Episode 25. Here, with Asuka unresponsive, he's basically got the same thing.

I suppose the flip side of this is when Asuka kissed Shinji in the TV series. Her hangups are kind of the opposite of his, where she wants to be in charge of everything and everyone constantly showers her with praise for her achievements. She wants to kiss Shinji but she can't be vulnerable enough to admit that, so she orders him to just stand there and be kissed because she wants to "pass the time". And she makes him hold his nose shut because she doesn't want to be breathed on while she does it. I mean, they both have intimacy issues, but at least Shinji had a chance to consent to her weirdness.

In the NERV base, the crew wonder why they're still on alert status, since the last Angel was defeated. There should be no more threats, and it kind of makes sense for NERV to be disbanded. The only business left is the Human Instrumentality Project, and none of these ham-and-eggers know what that is.

But Misato has some information about it, which she mulls over while she's in her car. I guess? Let me explain this in more detail, because the movie never totally gets into the "why" of it all.

Okay, so the SEELE group has access to something called the "Dead Sea Scrolls". According to the NGE wiki, SEELE got it from the two angels that came to Earth, Adam and Lilith, in the distant past. SEELE has used the information contained in the scrolls to establish themselves as the secret rulers of the whole world. And they founded NERV, and its predecessor organizations, to study the Angels and figure out how to preserve the human race.

They talk a lot about Second Impact on this show, but they never explain exactly what caused it. Second Impact was not a meteorite strike or a rampaging angel who self-destructed, or even a lab accident. It was caused deliberately by SEELE, as part of an effort to contain Adam, who lay dormant in Antarctica.

If I understand correctly, this was necessary because at some point, Second Impact would occur anyway, and then Adam's children, the fifteen Angels we saw in the TV series, would come looking for Adam's body and unite with it, triggering a Third Impact that would definitely wipe out humanity. This is all supposedly explained in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So SEELE's play was to trigger Second Impact deliberately, so that they could confront the Angels on their own terms. This gave NERV time to develop the Evas to fight the Angels, and to shrink Adam down to a more manageable size so he'd be harder to find.

Once the Angels were all defeated, SEELE could then trigger Third Impact. See, the TV series made it seem like the objective was to prevent Third Impact, but that was never possible. Third Impact is inevitable, I guess, so the only way to ensure humanity's survival is to evolve humans into something that can withstand the disaster. Thus, the Human Instrumentality Project, which will combine all human minds into some sort of disembodied superorganism at the moment of Third Impact.

However, throughout the TV series, SEELE has butted heads with the NERV Director, Gendo Ikari, about how this plan is to be implemented. Gendo wants to transform humanity into something new. But SEELE seems to want to retain their human nature and just use the plan as a lifeboat until the disaster has passed. At least, I think that's the disagreement here. Like I said, I had to learn about SEELE's agenda from the description of the PS2 game. It's not exactly a shock that the cabal of worldly oligarchs should want to save themselves and hold onto their wealth and power at the same time.

Gendo, on the other hand, seems mostly fixated on reuniting with his wife, Yui Ikari, who apparently died in 2004 during an experiment with Eva Unit 01. In the TV series, it was heavily implied that Yui lives on inside of Unit 01. Since Gendo's version of Human Instrumentality involves drawing up human minds into a noncorporeal union, I guess he figures that this will include Yui's mind, even if she has no body. It's unclear in this movie if Gendo actually intends to include anyone but himself and Yui in this merger, but in Episodes 25 and 26 of the TV show, Human Instrumentality is presented like it's all humans, even dead ones, and Gendo Ikari talked about it like that's what his version of Third Impact was supposed to be.

I suppose the only thing keeping Gendo and SEELE from turning on each other was the Angel threat, but now that this is over, SEELE attacks. First they try to hack NERV's supercomputers, but this is foiled when they recruit the aid of...

...Ritsuko Akagai, who betrayed NERV in Episode 23 when she destroyed all the Rei clones they had in storage. But she's the only one smart enough with computers to block the hack, so she crawls back inside one of them and uses her dead mother's notes to build a more robust firewall or something. I think she j-pegged a RAM or something, I don't know.

Ritsuko wonders why she's even bothering, since she already turned on Gendo. They had been banging on the down-low, but she got fed up with him when she realized he loved his dead wife more than Ritsuko or her mother, who also used to bang Gendo on the down-low.

With that cyberattack fended off, NERV now has to brace for an actual attack. Admiral Clownshoes notes the irony of NERV defeating all those Angels, only for their final opponent to be the humans they were trying to save.

Tactically, the entire battle is a formality. SEELE runs the whole world, and they can send wave after wave of soldiers into the NERV facility, which is already badly weakened after months of Angel attacks and budget cuts. NERV's defenses were designed for dealing with Angels, and their greatest weapons were the Evas, except Unit-00 was destroyed in Episode 22, and Unit-02's pilot has lost the ability to sync. Nonetheless, Misato wants the pilot kids secured, since she knows SEELE's goons will try to take them out first. She orders Shinji to deploy in Unit-01, and even though Asuka's in no condition to fight, she has her put in Unit-02 and then sent to the bottom of the lake. It's not much of a hiding place, but at least she'll be safer there than inside the base.

Where's Rei? Well, no one can find her, but she's gone down to the room where they keep Lilith and she's soaking in that orange goop they have down there.

Perhaps anticipating this, Gendo excuses himself and orders Clownshoes to take over the defense of the base. Clownshoes seems to know what he's up to, and sends his regards to Gendo's dead wife.

At this point, it's basically a race to see who can trigger their version of Third Impact first. SEELE wanted to use the Lance of Longinus and Lilith somehow, but since the Lance is in space now, they now plan to use Unit-01, the only Eva created from Lilith. That's what makes it special, apparently. Units 00 and 02 were made from Adam, I guess?

Anyway, Gendo plans to do it by combining Adam and Lillith together. He's got Adam's body within his own, and he wants to join with Rei, who contains some essence of Lillith. This was Rei's main purpose all along, I think.

Meanwhile, Misato leaves her post to find Shinji, who was sulking in some corner instead of reporting to his Eva like she ordered. She saves him from some goons, but they're cut off from Unit-01, so she has to find a way to get him where he needs to go. She also has to convince him to cooperate, since Shinji's completely gone to mush in the midst of this new crisis.

As she drives him to where they need to go, she explains (most of) the necessary backstory to him. Second Impact was triggered deliberately to buy time for Human Instrumentality, and humans are descended from Lilith, just as the Angels came from Adam. So in that sence, the human species is collectively the 18th Angel, just another candidate to inherit the future of Earth. Humans, like any of the fifteen Angels spawned from Adam, have the opportunity to trigger Third Impact and secure their place as the dominant life form of Earth, but we had to beat all the Angels first to do it, and then find a way to survive Third Impact when it finally happened.

And while Gendo plans to do with with Adam and Lilith, SEELE wants to use the Eva series, somehow, so it's vital that Shinji use Unit-01 to destroy all the other Evas.

Speaking of destroying Evas, Asuka finally wakes up in Unit-02, which is currently getting battered with depth charges. She still can't control the Eva, and she just keeps whimpering that she doesn't want to die. Eventually, she hears her dead mother promising to protect Asuka, and she realizes the truth: that Asuka's mother, Kyoko Zeppelin, was absorbed into Unit-02, much the same way Shinji's mom was absorbed into Unit-01.

Now, at long last, Asuka can operate her Eva again, and she goes apeshit on the SEELE troops. They sever her power cable, but she doesn't care, boasting that five minutes is plenty of time to take out these creeps. This is honestly the best part of the movie, because they had reduced Asuka to a pitiful shell for so long, and now she's finally taking charge and whoopin' ass.

It won't last.

With the conventional forces beaten, SEELE sends in nine Eva Units of their own. These are units 05 through 13, but they all look the same, and I'm not even sure they have pilots. It's a pretty cool design for a "bad guy" Eva, but they don't figure into the plot very much. They're here to destroy Asuka and Unit-02, and Asuka has to destroy them to stop SEELE.

Meanwhile, Misato has almost gotten Shinji to the Unit-01 launch bay, but she got shot, so she tells Shinji he's on his own from here. Shinji continues to resist taking any responsibility here. He says he's not worthy to pilot the Eva because he hurts people. He killed Kaworu, and he "did something terrible to Asuka". So at least the movie recognizes that. I guess it was included just to show the audience that Shinji isn't exaggerating when he doubts himself like this.

Misato refuses to indulge his self-pity, and she doesn't care how much he cries or tries to use his past actions to disqualify himself. She tells him she's made plenty of her own mistakes, but she still learned something about herself anyway. Hey, I guess Misato kind of gets what I was saying earlier. I guess this makes her my favorite character?

Well, yeah, but I don't like how she gives him a long kiss goodbye, then promises they'll "do the rest" when he gets back. I mean, she dies immediately after he leaves, so I think she was just feeding him empty gestures to motivate him while she still could, but... that's kind of fucked up.

Meanwhile, Gendo and Rei reach the room where Lillith is to begin their attempt at Third Impact, but they find Ritsuko waiting for them. She pulls a gun on Gendo and tells him that she sabotaged the supercomputer while she was reprogramming it to stop SEELE's hackers. Except... when she tries to execute her plan, the computer doesn't do it. This is because it's been imprinted with the mind of its original creator, Ritsuko's mother, and apparently mom still carries a torch for Gendo, even after Gendo screwed both Akagis over. Gendo then pulls a gun on Ritsuko, and says "I truly..." but the sound cuts out as he says the rest of it, so we don't know what he wanted to tell her.

In any case, she calls him a liar after she hears it, so either he told her he loved her and she didn't buy it, or he said something really cruel and she knew he didn't mean it. Either way, Gendo shoots, her which normally would suggest his true feelings, except I think this Human Instrumentality business works on dead people too, so life and death kind of becomes meaningless in this movie. We see a ghostly apparition of Rei as Ritsuko falls into the LCL fluid. We also saw ghost Rei when Misato died, so this seems to be a thing now.

Meanwhile, Shinji makes it to Unit 01, but it's immersed in Bakelite, which Misato had ordered dispersed through the base to impede the invading goons. I'm not sure how it got here, though, unless the bad guys used Misato's own trick to secure Unit-01. So it looks like Shinji can't get in the robot, even though it's not a robot, and he doesn't even have to be inside the stupid thing to control it. He literally proved that on his first day on the job. Yo, Shinji, get in the robot, your mom loves you.

Meanwhile, Asuka seems to be doing just fine killing the bad guy Evas without Shinji, but just as she finishes the last of them off, the Lance of Longinus suddenly flies back to Earth and improbably stabs Unit 02 through the face. Uh... how? Why? What the fuck?

Also, all the Evas Asuka defeated suddenly reactivate. With her battery drained, Asuka is helpless to stop them as they crack open Unit-02 and eat it. I'm pretty sure Asuka herself is killed during this, but we don't see a body.

I guess this was the catalyst to get Unit 01 off its duff, as it finally breaks out of the Bakelite and grabs Shinji like it's gonna put him in. Unit 01 busts out to join the battle, and it's thig big impressive spectacle. It even has angel wings now.

But it doesn't actually do anything. Shinji just gets a look at what's left of Unit-02's mangled corpse and screams.

And that's the cliffhanger for 25'. There's a credits sequence, then a dedication note from the director, and then the second half starts as Episode 26'. So this is a good place to take a break.

If you're curious, the part where Eva 05-13 show up to confront Asuka is about where things ended in "Evangelion: Rebirth". But 25' is about twenty minutes longer than that, so I'm not sure what the significance of that cutoff point was supposed to be. I guess it works as a cliffhanger, but it's kind of dumb to have Asuka finally wake up and kick ass, only to get utterly destroyed a few minutes later. Then Shinji shows up to set up the real cliffhanger.

To be fair, this half of the movie is better than the second half. Mostly, it benefits from the parts where they actually show the characters recovering from Episode 24 and beginning to move to the next phase of the story. This was what the TV show failed to do with its Episode 25. Now, we get to see the SEELE vs. NERV battle that was only implied before, and we get to see how Human Instrumentality is arranged.

We also see why it needs to be done. In the original ending, it seemed completely arbitrary, like Gendo Ikari just decided this was a cool thing to try and he just did it to the whole world without asking anyone's permission. Here, it becomes clear that if Gendo doesn't pull the trigger, SEELE will, and it's just a race to see who can get their vision accomplished first.

And we actually get to see the other characters in this version. Asuka wakes up and gets her groove back, Rei's part in the drama is revealed, and Ritsuko and Misato get shot. Seeing this stuff makes me even more irritated that the TV series just jumped right past it all.

Still, this half of the movie has problems. For one thing, a lot of runtime is spent just showing troops slaughtering NERV personnel, and showing Misato leading Shinji to his Eva. Also, there's a healthy dose of Gendo and Rei just staring pensively at Lilith without actually doing anything. A lot of the footage doesn't actually progress the plot, and only Misato and Shinji's scenes are useful for providing exposition. Gendo and SEELE's words are too cryptic to be of much use.

The main point of this installment was to reinforce things we already knew: Rei's important to all of this somehow, Shinji is a sad sack, and Asuka is helpless. And maybe it needed to be reinforced in July 1997, more than a year after the TV show ended, but I don't think it needed to be hammered home this much.

And like I said from the start, this whole thing relies on a lot of ridiculous stuff that I feel like I should have been told about in the TV series. How did the Lance of Longinus come back? SEELE couldn't have arranged this, since they were the ones who were so upset about losing it in the first place. Why are there two methods to trigger Third Impact? How did Asuka's mother get sucked into the Eva and yet she remained in human form long enough to go insane and hang herself? Why did the bad guy Evas suddenly recover from their injuries when it was convenient for the plot?

Perhaps most critically: Why are they just treating Third Impact and Human Instrumentality like the same thing? Like if you do one, then the other one just automatically happens? Is that how it works? Then why were they so worried about the progress on that project? It could be done at will, right?

Oh, and how did SEELE figure out how to do all this stuff? They have their own fleet of Evas, which seem to work better than NERV's. They made their own Angel in the form of Kaworu. They seem to know how to make Third Impact happen, without Gendo's help. And however they got this far, they seemed to pull it off without anyone from NERV knowing about it. So why did SEELE even need NERV in the first place? As it currently stands, the only reason Gendo's ahead of them is because he's physically closer to what he needs to work with. SEELE could have nuked the base from orbit and hauled Eva Unit 01 from the wreckage.

Again, the whole movie just makes me feel like I missed an episode, except I didn't. I watched the whole thing, which leads me to assume that the next chapter will clarify everything, except it doesn't, as we'll see next time. See you there.

#neon genesis evangelion #2024ngeliveblog #end of evangelion #shinji ikari #asuka langley soryu #rei ayanami #misato katsuragi #ritsuko akagi #clownshoes

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pinkprettycure · 1 month

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You talking about Ultraman frequently has made me interested in the franchise myself. What shows/movies/etc would you recommend to a newbie like me who wants to get into the series? ^_^

Blazar was very newbie friendly and it has a lot of good standalone episodes like Planet of Music, Betwix Morn and Dusk, and The Wandering Zangill so you can pick up something like one of those and see if you want to watch the whole thing or not.

Arc is currently airing. This is the season that has Clover's VA as one of the main characters btw! it's only 6 eps in and I believe this weeks ep is going to be a recap episode so if you start right now you won't really be all that behind or anything since we're effectively on a break week right now . it DOES have references to Return of Ultraman but I haven't seen Return of Ultra and I don't feel like I'm lost or anything.

R/B is one of my favorites and I think it's one that would be very appealing to people who are fans of magical girl series. the plot heavily revolves around the friendship between the younger sister of the two Ultras and the villainess and the theme is family.

There's also the Ultraman Rising film and Shin Ultraman. Rising is an animated film that's an american take on the franchise in collaboration between Tsupro and Netflix, while Shin is a live action film thats an adaption of the original Ultraman series and is considered part of Anno's Shin series of films (Shin Godzilla, Shin Kamen Rider, and the Shin Evangelion/Rebuild films. "It's"Shin Japan Heroes" is just a marketing name but they do have commonality by being remakes and reimaginings of older stories.) Ultraman The Next is a good movie too but I do think you should watch it as part of a Nexus watch rather than as a starting point, and Nexus might not be a good starting point since it's more for like a teen and older audience with a darker vibe and does a lot of different things from other series so it could give the wrong impression. It's an excellent series but I think something like Blazar gives a better impression of what to expect from Ultra than Nexus.

A LOT of Ultra references itself also. but while I think references to older series definitely are more meaningful when you're familiar with them, I started with Mebius and I definitely think i'd appreciate it more on a rewatch, but those things don't mean you won't find enjoyment from the season, remember: Ultra overall is a family franchise so every season is somebodies first season! They're made with both the parents and grandparents who grew up with them AND their young kids who would be seeing them for the first time! Even Nexus being made for teen audience would have still been a lot of these kids first season, so it's always being made with the assumption that a good chunk of viewers have never seen another Ultra show n_n

#Asks #Anonymous #Ultraman X has a lot of crossover and cameo stuff and its from seasons I never seen #and would have been stuff the kids watching never seen either #Me not understanding who Zero is doesn't make me confused because X also doesn't really know who he is.#The intent is to make the new viewer excited to find out!

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mobileleprechaun · 15 days

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oubgh Tagged Game

I was kindly tagged by the eminent @femboty2k, thank you so much for tagging me!

This one is about introducing yourself with the following:

- One tv show

- One movie

- One album

- One game

However, she went the extra mile and did two each, so I'll do that as well!

TV Shows: Whatever Happened to Robot Jones and Making Fiends

I'm not entirely sure what it says about me that both of my picks here were ill-fated and obscure cartoons cancelled before their time, but I certainly hope it's nothing premonitory about the trajectory of my life!

Robot Jones was a full-on obsession for me when I was young. It's about a robot child having to attend junior high in the 1980s so he can understand humans better, and all the awkwardness that goes along with that. Something about it struck such a chord with me – probably the fact that the protagonist was a sheltered misfit who couldn't understand his peers. I was homeschooled until college, and all of my interactions with other kids were painfully awkward along those lines, so I guess I just felt seen?

It's a weird show, and the tone is pretty bleak. He's mercilessly bullied by both peers and authority figures alike, and episodes rarely ever end with anything working out for him. Maybe I felt seen by that too. It's kind of fucked up, and I'm 70% certain bits of it didn't age well, but for what it's worth, people still really enjoy the one episode where RJ comes to the conclusion that he's nonbinary. It's also lost media at this point, so there's an inherent rewarding feeling that comes with being able to find it at all.

Making Fiends is also pretty bleak, but in a very silly and fun way. It's about a town that lives in mortal terror of Vendetta, this extremely cruel grade-schooler who is able to make monsters (fiends) that can serve her every whim. However, her nasty little gangster baby life is turned upside down when a very dense friendly girl named Charlotte comes to town, and Vendetta finds herself terrorized for a change.

I was obsessed with this one too and was a young stan of its creator. I love that it's about two girls just being dumb as all hell and having weird and fucked up things happen to them. Nobody's boy-crazy, either – both of these little gremlins just get to be people. Neither of them are particularly deep in terms of characterization, but they're so much fun to have a romp with, and they get to fill that slapstick-heavy role that's usually only reserved for male characters. Also, the humor is super fucked up and morbid, but the way everything is delivered will just keep you hooting. It's definitely less emotionally exhausting than Robot Jones.

Movies: Chicken Run and The End of Evangelion

Weird pair, I know!

Chicken Run is another of my childhood obsessions that persists to this very day. It's a fun and surprisingly poignant tale of an insurrection on a farmyard and the brave hens (and one mostly useless rooster) who make it happen. Aardman just knocks it right out of the park with the quirky designs of their ensemble cast and just how rooted it feels in its 1950s setting. The villains are fun, the heroes are fun, somehow Mel Gibson doesn't completely ruin it, and I dunno, it's just very cozy. I could rewatch it over and over again. Also, Mac is best girl.

End of Evangelion is not cozy at all! It's the fucked up and horrifying ending to a fucked up and horrifying anime, and it pissed a lot of people off at how mean-spirited it felt, but like... it's a fucking masterpiece, like it goes incredibly hard. Every element of it – the music, the voice acting, the visuals – it's all stunning, like all the way through. Yes it's sad and upsetting and very strange, but that's just how the anime went. None of it feels out of place, either. I can go back and watch Episode 1 again and not feel like EoE mismatches tonally. I still think about it on the regular, and I still bop to Komm sußer Tod.

Albums: Spirit Phone and Act II: The Father of Death

I've picked these two because these are both albums I always feel the need to listen to as a whole rather than piecemeal. There's some other amazing albums that I feel dirty not including here, but these two are just the ones that hit me the hardest as albums, and I have to be fully honest with myself about that.

Spirit Phone came into my life when I desperately needed it. I had just lost my youngest brother and was trying to find my first apartment after years of being my parents' adult subject. It was such a heady and wonderful thing for me, all these skrunkly-ass songs about the occult and the inherently fucked up nature of American culture. I played it on repeat for almost a solid month, and it gave me the strength and optimism I needed to muscle through the most terrifying time of my life. It's still such a cozy and wonderful thing for me, and I thank Neil Cicirega from the bottom of my heart for putting it together.

The Protomen: Act II wasn't something that got me through a crisis, but it was a fucking crazy-ass bop and a solid goddamn chaser to their first album, which I also love listening to as a whole. The story of Thomas Light's descent into living as a pariah in his own city after his own friend turns on him is masterfully told by this band, and every track hits like a truck. The whole subplot with Joe was incredible, too, and that guy who sings as Wily is so fucking good, and Panther is ridiculously versatile... I still get goosebumps thinking about Breaking Out. Gorgeous album through and through.

Games: Sonic & Knuckles Collection and Cave Story

It might be cheating to include the whole collection as one game, but I don't give a phuck!!!!

I was like 7 or 8 when I got the Sonic & Knuckles collection on CD-ROM, and holy fuck, y'all. I knew I loved The Adventure of Sonic the Hedgehog on TV, but getting my hands on that game about spoiled me rotten. It just felt so perfect in every way. Having gone back and played earlier entries in the Sonic series really gives me an appreciation for how well they perfected the formula here, it's just so smooth and refined. Going back through each stage playing as Sonic, Tails or Knuckles is so good, too, like you really get a feel for how much there is to explore with their different styles of movement. I just love it so much, it's so cozy and so jammed to the brim with pure fun.

Cave Story was something I encountered later in life, and was pleasantly surprised to find as a free download. I was not adequately prepared for what a ride this humble-looking little platformer would be. God, it was such a wonderful challenge, sometimes frustrating, but always so compelling as to keep me coming back. And what a beautiful story, too, and what a gorgeous setting. I full-on cried at many points. Pixel just put his whole heart and soul into this game, and it's so sickening and unfair that he got fucked over by that shitty licensing deal. If you haven't already, please show this man's work some love. It went hard enough that when Undertale was first announced, I assumed it was going to be a Cave Story fangame. 😝

waow that's media!!! I must tag four people; @sammytoesis, @fetus-cakes, @johannesson and @badgrlebie. But if you wanna do it too, DO IT!!!!

#tag game #this was fun ty again fembot!

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kolbisneat · 22 days

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MONTHLY MEDIA: August 2024

The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting cooler. The summer is waning. But the monthly media posts carry on. Here's how I spent the month of August.

……….FILM……….

Wendell & Wild (2022) I don't want this to be one of the last major stop-motion film to ever be made, but the filmmakers put so many stories into this that I wonder if they thought this was their last shot. Essentially a 12-course meal from a great restaurant: the accomplishment is impressive but the whole is overstuffed and some of the smaller portions were undercooked.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024) The lightly surreal elements of the movie were great, but there's a point late in the story when that surreality kills all of the momentum.

Spice World (1997) Still holds up.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) Still amazed at how well this pulls off what it seeks to do. But maybe I'm biased because I love practical effects, puppets, and action scenes that serve the narrative. We may not get another D&D movie but I'm glad we have this one.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) Based on other live-action multiverses, I went in with modest expectations, and this was a pleasant surprise. Maybe it's because it continues to do what Deadpool does well. Thoroughly entertaining in the moment.

……….TELEVISION……….

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Episode 1.14 to 1.20) It's been a couple of years since I stopped watching (mid season!) but luckily one of the episodes was essentially a recap of what's happened so far. Really ramping up in the abstract and the philosophical and I'm a big fan. These kids are meeeeeeeessed up.

Made for Love (Episode 2.01 to 2.08) I only really caught the first season in pieces but I knew enough going into this season that it really clicked! It hit me the same way early Black Mirror episodes felt, only with more humour, depth, and nuance. It's a real shame there's no plans for season 3.

……….YOUTUBE……….

I think this will be a Short Video by Matthew Colville A really great reflection on making art in the social age, the algorithm, communities/audiences, and how these can clash with the natural impulses of creativity. VIDEO

I'm What the Culture Feeling (The full story of Kendrick Vs. Drake) by F.D. Signifier Almost 3.5 hours but for someone like me (who knows next to nothing of this world, these artists, or this conflict) it expertly breaks it all down to paint a complete picture. Really great watch. VIDEO

……….READING……….

Cards On the Table by Agatha Christie (Complete) Top-tier Christie. The premise is so fun, and while I know the multiple detectives appear in other stories, it's a nice introduction to these characters. This book made me want to learn how to play Bridge.

The People of the Black Circle and A Witch Shall Be Born by Robert E. Howard (Complete) I have this collection of Conan stories and after a years-long break, decided to read a few more. Both great! The latter puts Conan in an almost supporting role and it's fun to see him take on a secondary role to the story. Keeps it interesting. And the former is such a classic pulp story (cults, magic clothing, a giant snake) that I can't help but love it.

Delicious in Dungeon Volume 14 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) It's been a 6-year-long journey for me and while I couldn't be happier with how it ended, I'm sad that it's over. Still so impressed with how well it stuck the landing for me. Do I wish there was more of a wind-down with these characters? Sure. But I really respect an artist who knows what they want to say/do and says/does it. Very excited to see what Ryoko does next.

Hellboy Library Volume 1 by Mike Mignola with John Byrne (Complete) Without being hyperbolic, this is one of my favourite contributions to the craft. So confident and fully-formed right out of the gate. Excited to reread this series.

……….AUDIO……….

The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess by Chappel Roan (2023) Technically I started listening to this at the end of July. I saw a positive review, figured I'd check it out, and it felt like that was at the same time everyone else in the world was talking about her. Love an album with such a focused perspective.

Currents by Tame Impala (2015) In recent years I've been really enjoying Tame Impala's one-off songs (Barbie and Dungeons & Dragons soundtracks, their collaboration with Gorillaz, etc.) so I figured I'd really dig into this album. Easy to listen to both casually in the background and with a magnifying glass just pouring over the lyrics. Love it.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) Only got a few sessions in this month but the crew is still reassembling the skeletal pirate they trashed years (real time) ago. Now they're about to face a big electric centipede to recover his legs.

Oz: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The Mof1 crew split the party and one half casually shopped and planned while the other half discovered a secret testing facility full of captured magic-users.

Wonderland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) We got in a single session of Wonderland and it was a small party but a lot of fun! Also the first true character death of our playtesters. Luckily we had backup characters though character 2 ended the session losing their arm. Hey that's Wonderland.

And that's it. See you in September!

#Monthly Media #Kolbisneat #Andrew Kolb

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