#reviews by ニッキ

[kairyuuyaps]

Disclaimer: I wrote this out way back when I was catching up with UnOrdinary (just never got around to proof-reading it). Iirc Season 1 had just concluded and all the hate Arlo got over the overwhelming majority of its runtime was still fresh in my head. Please bear that in mind when reading.

So. UnOrdinary. There's two people I want to really talk about, or rather, how incredibly toxic the social environment in this world is for everyone involved in it and the two characters that show this most blatantly: Arlo and John.

I never really understood all the hate Arlo got. I'm talking about back when the comments on the Webtoon chapters would consist of 90% "Asslo"-shaming. I feel like that happened because we, the audience, failed to understand what it was like being a royal. And not because Uru-chan didn't hint at it enough or explain it badly or something, no, we simply didn't want to admit that John's view of Arlo was skewed. Badly skewed.

The way this world is set up, you have basically three "types" of people, classified through the ranking system, and based on estimates of where you will end up in the system, kids are educated in very different ways:

High Tiers are taught one thing and one thing only: they're to lead, keep everyone else in check, make sure everyone behaves. Anyone who doesn't is their personal responsibility, fault and and direct consequence of their failure to do their duty. Also that ends always justify the means, no matter what. See Arlo, Remi, Sera before meeting John and rebelling.

Mid Tiers are directly or indirectly taught to feel inferior to High Tiers. To compensate for that, they are also explicitly taught to feel that Low Tiers are second-rate (or rather, third-rate) humans. Worthless. The story doesn't really feature focus characters from this group as of now, which might be why I can't think of a named character in this group off the top of my head. But these are the aggressive side characters that have Low Tiers do their homework, the kind that default to ranking battles whenever they feel questioned or that group that kidnapped Sera when it first got out that she had lost her ability.

Low Tiers grow up being taught they're the dregs of society. No matter what they accomplish in life, they will never measure up to High Tiers or even just Mid Tiers. Take the beating, keep your head low and move on. Keep yourself in the shadows, a life of being ignored is the best you can hope for. High Tiers rule and get whatever they want, by force or right of birth, Mid Tiers take the spoils, you live off the waste.

So when Arlo and John first clashed, it was destined to end badly.

What Arlo saw was a dude systematically rebelling against the order he had worked his fucking ass off on restoring for what he felt was everyone's safety and best interest. Arlo didn't see the institutional racism and bullying this was enabling. Why would he? All he's ever been taught to believe was that this order was the only thing keeping everyone from killing each other, and his experience with his role as King when Rei graduated and everything went off the rails only reinforced that belief. What he saw was a person risking to instigate what basically amounts to a school-internal civil war, and for no reason at all. Of course he'd look into it. Of course he'd try to stop it, by any means necessary. Remember, "the ends justify the means" and it's HIS responsibility to keep the status quo intact, HIS job as the King to keep everyone in their place, HIS fault if something goes wrong.

Meanwhile John was born as and lived a lot of his formative years at school as even less than a Low Tier. He was a cripple. Basically a punching bag ready for anyone to let their frustrations out on. All he saw was people with even the slightest sliver of power forcing their will on those below them. All he saw was authorities not only protecting this system, but enforcing it. All he saw was a a selfish world where everyone would use whatever power they had to get what they want. And then he became King. By this point, all he had ever known was force, so that's what he turned to. He was only in middle school, but his heart was bitter, angry and cold. He turned to what he knew and failed to see behind the curtains. He was (and still is) a child, how could we expect him to? So when he got expelled and forced to attend that "re-education class" he was in a very bad place. He was a kid that had only known hate and violence from the world, an angry kid incapable of seeing beyond his (for very little of his own fault) skewed world view, a lost kid in desperate help of help, guidance, and love; but what he got was even more hate and violence. And this time, it was very specific and targeted hate, violence with a purpose. No wonder the poor kid seems to have two separate personalities, they were literally BEATEN INTO HIM. Make no mistake, what he went through in that "re-education" class is torture, gaslighting and brainwashing. And I don't use these terms lightly. John is obviously showing an extreme trauma response and likely already had some form of PTSD (I am not a licensed professional, I am only going off of what little I read for my own interest) from being put into the position of King with no clue of how to actually fulfill the duties of what those duties even are (no wonder everything went to shit), and that asshole from the authorities used those cracks to completely break the kid.

Tl;dr: Season 1 John and Arlo are amazing antagonistic character foils to each other, John being the Lancer to Arlo's Leader if we're going by the 5-man-band dynamics, and the only reasons Arlo got as much hate as he did is the somewhat unusual choice of making the Lancer the sympathetic POV character and the Webtoon comment system being EXTREMELY polarising and detrimental as FUCK for any actual discussion for the chapter at hand. It's the Twitter of media discussion if we're being honest.

[kairyuuyaps]

So I just watched the last episode of Sk8 and I have... opinions.

I haven't really been looking forward to new episodes for a couple of weeks now and at first I thought it was just because of some of my own complexes not really jiving with Reki's storyline (which, to be fair, is indeed part of it, but not what I want to talk about here), but this final episode made it abundantly clear to me that there was more to it than just personal bias.

First and foremost I'd like to make it clear that I still do enjoy the show as a whole. The fact that we finally got a skateboarding show is wonderful and the animation and characters were AMAZING. That being said, there are some (2)... story decisions I found disturbed my suspension of disbelief more than just a bit.

First and foremost, ADAMS' "skating", as the show likes to call it (the same problems are present with Shadow too, to a minor degree if only because we don't actually see him compete all that much). Most of the shit he pulls is just straight-up assault. From what I understood, the show is supposed to be much more sports show than it is a shōnen, which makes those "techniques" completely out of place. We're supposed to believe ADAM is this incredibly skilled skater, and yet basically all of his competitions are won through him literally hospitalising his opponents? Don't make me laugh. The fact that he changed the track to one he was very familiar with but Langa had never seen before for the final match doesn't exactly help his case either. I'm no skater, but I've spent enough time on wheels and Ski Slopes to know that being familiar with the track is a big advantage. Advantage ADAM wouldn't need if he's really as skilled of a skater as we're supposed to believe.

And second, what the HELL is up with that subplot about Ainosuke's political career and the redhead investigator??? That sure as fuck lead nowhere. And even if it WAS mainly setup for a possible second season or movie, it's a) really fucking shitty as such, even setup for future plot points should add something to the present story and b) it'd be setup for something that isn't even tangentially related to the actual plot and theme of the show??? How the fuck is that shit connected to skating??? This one didn't as much disturb my suspension of disbelief as much as it just really fucking confused me. Like seriously, what's its purpose in the story???

Also (and at this point I'm just nitpicking), why a beach episode??? Fucking why? There was literally no reason for it

[kairyuuyaps]

So like... I'm a relatively new Doctor Who fan. I've been forcefully introduced to it 3? 4-ish? (Fuck I'm getting old) years ago, so the first series I watched as it came one was 11, which we all know was... meh. I fell off the bandwagon a bit after that, so imagine my surprise a few weeks back when I found out completely by accident that series 12 exists and has already fully aired, Christmas special included. Anyways, I watched it and you get to read my thoughts on it. Well, mainly the series finale plot twist.

So. I mostly really enjoyed the season. Nothing too noteworthy to say about it tho, especially after letting it sit for a while. I had a really fun time watching it, and the buildup was decent. However, the only thing that won't leave my head is the repercussions that the Timeless Child reveal has on the established lore. More specifically...

How can River Song be a Timelord, if the Timeless Child is a thing? According to the explanation Amy, Rory and 11 came up with back then, it had something to do with her conception and early pregnancy taking place within the TARDIS and in close contact with the Timestream. However, series 12 and the Timeless Child "reveal" clearly states that the ability to Regenerate, the distinguishing mark of the Timelords, was obtained by gene splicing it into their DNA after basically stealing it from the young Doctor. So how the hell can it be, that River Song is a Time Lady???

Also, this would mean that the whole "The Doctor gets another 12 Regenerarions, just this once!"-thing was a ruse and just more manipulation of the Doctor by the Council. I never was a fan of the whole stick in the first place, but this only makes it retroactively worse. I will admit that it was properly set up throughout the series, but it also left a bunch of questions unanswered and I do not think it is backwards compatible, or at least not the way it is now.

[kairyuuyaps]

So I finished watching Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress not too long ago (because quarantine makes me bored and hadn't gotten around to it yet).

And it was... okay? I liked the music, the art and the setup wasn't bad, but there were some problems that are really bugging me.

First, the anime lacks coherence. The entire first half feels like one long prologue, and then as soon as Biba is introduced it feels rushed so that they can get to the part where he dies within the end of the season

Speaking of, secondly, what the hell is Biba?!? His character doesn't make sense. On one hand, his rage and thirst for revenge towards his father/the shogunate is justified. But on the other hand, they forgot to give him a reason to kill all those civilians. He certainly didn't need to in order to reach his goal of killing his dad. It's not like they were standing in his way, hell they didn't even know there was resentment between the Shogun and the "Liberator". He's shown to be smart, cold and calculating, then why would he just randomly cause Kabane-invasions in random stations he passes through? Even if he did have a proper reason, they failed to communicate it to the viewers and that's just as bad

Third, the worldbuilding feels lackluster to me. The only thing we are told/shown about the Kabane is how to kill them. You want me to believe that in a world with advanced enough scientific understanding that some random determined Steam Smith figured out the process to becoming a Kabaneri on his first try, there wouldn't be scientist researching the Virus and shit? The closest we got to that are the people experimenting with the whole Kabaneri thing. And they are a part of the Hunters, doing so in extreme secrecy (so much so that members are the only ones knowing Kabaneri are a thing in the first place), and working on refining Kabaneri, not on researching the Kabane outbreak itself

All in all it makes sense to me that it completely disappeared from the radar after that initial bit of hype which it literally only got because Attack on Titan was the center of everyone's attention at the time: there's nothing to talk about at all. Zilch