#running back to this post to say i did make the bnha analysis blog. it's empty rn but if anyone here likes my silly little analysis tags

[everypanelofizuku]

Chapter 50 - Kill 'Em Dead

[stillness-in-green]

Hi, are you still working on the AFO Retcon Essay? You mentioned a few times you are not sure if Horikoshi retconned AFO's original plan or if he always intended for AFO to take over Tomura, but made AFO act somewhat contradictory from the start regardless. Did this ever make you feel like there are too many possibilities in regards to Horikoshi's original intentions to take into account and could therefore make it harder to write the essay?

Hi there, and thanks for your interest! I did actually talk about this a good while back, towards the beginning of the year; you can find that post here. It says pretty much exactly what you did and goes a bit further--that I'm so distrustful of Horikoshi as a writer that I have no idea anymore what might have been retconned and what was his intention from the start, and further, that even if something was his intention from the start, I don't trust him to have laid the groundwork for those intentions with honesty or good faith.

Instead of the AFO Retcon Essay, what I've been poking at instead is some sort of massive retrospective of all the problems with BNHA's endgame. That's going to require a reread on my part, and some decisions about formatting--namely, do I want to do the reread privately, on my end, and then write the Mega Chonky Essay and post it when I'm finished, or do I do it publically, read-along liveblog style, documenting the problems as I go?

At the moment, I'm leaning towards the second. I have some tentative ideas about keeping a running list of (to use a witticism from the Twitter fen) Themes & Such, ideas and ideology the series sets out and how well it lives up to those ideas--or how it fails to. I'd also like to keep track of things like character arcs and foreshadowing, documenting things with an eye to where those arcs go, what the foreshadowing amounts to, whether the series keeps its implicit promises, and so on. I suspect it would wind up looking something like a cross between the heteromorphobia essay and my chapter thoughts posts.

On the other hand, a format that deals with one group of problems at a time could feel more focused, discussing all the evidence at once of any particular topic rather than having to keep many (many) plates spinning across a retrospective of the entire series. I also already have the broad outline for that, since it was my plan last time I was seriously poking at the idea. It would probably still end up being posted in multiple parts; the parts would just cover different groups of characters or aspects of the series per installment, rather than e.g. each installment covering an arc and everything in it.

I suppose there's nothing stopping me from doing first the former and then the latter? I'm planning to reread the whole series anyway, after all.

In any case, I like that kind of installment-based format not least because I'm also in the early stages of getting a Patreon set up aimed at supporting my meatier chunks of fandom writing and potentially giving people some ability to point me at this or that topic. A multi-part analysis of BNHA--something in a similar style as my documentations of heteromorphobia, the problems with the anime's adaptation of My Villain Academia, or even, to reach back to an older fandom, my episode-by-episode write-ups on Human Debris in Gundam IBO!--strikes me as a good way to get that off the ground.

I've got one or two things to finish getting off my plate before then, and I'd want to wait until the last volume of BNHA officially comes out (12/4) just in case of any thirteenth-hour surprises, but keep an eye out! I'm not inclined to paywall my writing, but maybe an early access sort of model? I'm also going to want to find a blogging site that's more aimed at hosting long-form writing than Tumblr is. We'll see!

In the meantime, to give everyone an example of the kinds of things I'm looking at tracking through the story, one of the things that most vexes me about the ending is how it not only fails to resolve its contradictory ideas of saving and heroism, it feels to even recognize those contradictions. Here's a chunk of my notes on that topic from the outline of The Mega Chonky Essay in its current form.

• Nana says saving isn’t just saving someone’s life, but also making sure they’re smiling in the end. But that means that saving their life is the prerequisite. If Eri died smiling, her smiling would not prevent everyone from recognizing her death as a tragedy.         • “Perfect Victory” is defined as both “winning” and “saving” flawlessly—that is, every fight is won, and no one is left unsaved. This is introduced first as an ideal for Deku and Bakugou to strive for, with both of them needing to work on different parts of the equation, and continues to be an aspect of Bakugou’s characterization, as it comes up again in Joint Training. But it doesn’t stay locked to them, as All Might says directly to the American pilots that they can’t be allowed to die because the kids are aiming for a Perfect Victory.         • A pivotal question for Toga and the larger series is, given that Heroes are supposed to save people, how do Heroes justify killing Villains? Do they not think of Villains as people?         With all three of these ideas in place, the challenge becomes how to navigate the endgame to a place where all three concepts are honored/resolved. The ending must demonstrate that Heroes do see Villains as people while also being able to achieve their desired Perfect Victory—they must win against the Villains while also saving them, where “saving” means that the Villains’ lives are saved and they’re smiling in the end.         Or must they? After the first war, the series introduces another concept of how to save people, albeit one that runs directly counter to Nana's definition of a saved person as someone both alive and smiling: Gran Torino says that killing someone can be a way of saving them. He and Nana can’t both be right, so to confront and resolve that discrepancy, the story will have to acknowledge one of them as wrong. (Spoilers: It does not.)         In the end, Toga dies, and Deku kills Shigaraki, and if both of them die smiling, well, you sure as hell can’t say the same for e.g. Gigantomachia or All For One or Dabi or any of the thousands of unhappy Villains who wound up in prison (many of them likely bound for the gallows!), alive but decidedly not smiling. Heck, All Might, in trying to console Deku, moves the goalposts even more by suggesting that all Deku needed to do to get the credit on “saving” Shigaraki was make sure his inner child wasn’t crying anymore. Not only does he not have to live, he doesn’t even have to be smiling! An absence of obvious grief is enough!         Thus, you wind up in this place where you have an unsolvable problem: somewhere along the line, either someone failed or someone was wrong, and the story, in being unwilling to confront that disharmony, winds up undermining other established themes and goals. Did the kids “lose” because they failed to meet the criteria for the Perfect Victory? Was the definition of “saving” wrong? Was Gran Torino wrong or was Nana? Was the definition of Perfect Victory wrong? Was Toga correct in her fear that Heroes don’t see Villains as people?         No matter what the answer is, it runs afoul of some previously established Theme in the story. Even if the idea is that the ending is downbeat and bittersweet because the kids failed (and the story is using All Might’s goalpost-moving to resolve the dissonant definitions of “saving” in Gran Torino’s favor), that still means yet another theme is violated: that of BNHA being a story of how Deku+his classmates become “the greatest Heroes.” After all, the story also defined “greatest Heroes” for us! The greatest Heroes are those who can achieve Perfect Victory.

Whatever form this essay winds up taking, these are the sorts of concepts I want to discuss in terms of how the series sets them up compared to how it winds up following them through.

Thanks for the ask!

[bookwyrminspiration]

I don't know if you're going to see this but I'm new to the keeper fandom (I'm a heathen that doesn't read the source material because it's expensive and it's funny having no content) but I absolutly /adore/ this account and am currently going through each post because I crave detailed analyses of different media and characters and you deliver wonderfully! I am also very interested in your wings Au but I've got so much school work and haven't got around to reading it, but what you you rate it on an agnst scale to someone who. Doesn't read angst?

Also I hate you now /I'm/ thinking about the waste management /j

But in all honesty I feel like they would leave it to the gnomes to sort it out, maybe they have a team that just shoves it in human dumps so that they can rid their hands of it and continue to thrash the humans reputation towards elves?

hello, heathen! i am going to see this! welcome to the fandom, it's always fun to have new people. honestly, fair enough about not reading the source material. not everyone has access to libraries and buying an eight and a half book series isn't always cheap--I mean, the keeper series probably cost me at lest 200 dollars in total over the several years I acquired them, and that's with owning several of them in paperback! definitely not cheap! but it can also be a lot of fun just trying to puzzle things together and knowing some of the basics but nearly none of how things work (that's how I am with bnha. my sister is really into anime right now and watches it with the whole family, but I don't really care for it and just look things up and get spoilers all the time and I love it. same with demon slayer and promised neverland)

but ahh!! thank you!! I adore you in return, nonsie. you sent this a few days ago so hopefully you enjoyed your stroll through my numerous posts about keeper! oh damn this reminded me that I need to update my character analysis masterpost. I've been meaning to do that for several days. but back to what you were saying! I love doing detailed analyses of niche aspects of these characters, so I'm glad you like reading them! I mean, i literally did a post theorizing on why Tam actually likes to wear black and once wrote several hundred words debunking a single inaccurate line from one book (Neverseen) just because it bugged me so much. so if that's up your alley, you're definitely in the right place! I simply do not know how to shut up /pos

as for the wings au: don't feel pressured to read it if you don't want to! if you stick around, you may notice me talking about it a lot, but that's just because it's a pretty big project and I like sharing it (in fact, I was working on it just before I started answering this ask), but you can absolutely interact with me and any of my content without paying attention to the wings au stuff at all. and it's pretty long, so completely understandable that you haven't gotten around to reading it! honestly don't even know if I would have time to read my own wings au...but moving on! for the angst thing, you might actually be able to find a few asks about it a little further back on my blog (I can't find it at the moment but I know it's there). one person said that as they are someone who prefers fluff, the wings au is the angstiest thing they've ever read. I don't think the au is downright bad, and there are certain things I can guarantee (like I can tell you right now none of the crew will die in this au), but there's a lot of other things that are up in the air. I can say that there is a warning before every chapter listing all the common triggers I can think to list (and if anyone has any personal triggers they are more than welcome to ask me to tag them). so even if a chapter is more dramatic than some of the others, you wouldn't be going in unprepared. i tag things like panicking, fighting, blood, mental spiraling, getting injuries, mentions of medical things, but it not much worse than what's in canon.

i think a lot of the angst comes from Sophie's introspection and attempts to understand herself and less from just reckless relationships and a desire to get hurt, if that makes sense. I guess overall I would say that it is angsty. not the angstiest thing out there, so if you've read angst maybe a 3 or 4? but if you've only read fluff before I'd knock it up to a 5 or 6. then again these are my personal opinions, and as I am someone who has read more angst my ratings are probably skewed.

so if that seems daunting you don't need to read the au if you don't want to! the only thing that would really affect your time here (if you choose to stick around! no pressure!) is that every other sunday is usually dedicated to the au, both with me posting the newest chapter and then prioritizing asks about it because it's relevant. doesn't mean i won't accept or answer other asks, just that they're usually not the first thing on my mind. so aside from that, reading or not reading the wings au shouldn't affect your ability to vibe and interact on here <33

but also like my waste management question is legit--what is their system? I've never heard Sophie mention a trash can before, so do they have them?? and then there's also the whole thing with sewers. all the houses have running water and functional bathrooms, but a lot of the houses are also in the middle of nowhere, so do they just...have their own filtration system?? or however that works? but seriously do they even create waste at all? I know they use paper, but what do they do with it?

it does feel like one of those problems the gnomes would be portrayed as being happy to solve because "the lost cities are out home" and they love helping and they don't need sleep and they're super efficient. and the elves would be very grateful and take advantage of them. idk I just think it's weird. and your idea of them dumping it into human landfills to make them seem worse fits well with the idea nilnaea brought up a few days ago about the elves not actually helping the humans with all that historical stuff, just taking the credit.

to summarize: welcome to the fandom! I'm glad you're here and flattered you like my blog! I'm here essentially all of the time, so feel free to send asks about anything and everything to do with the series and things you just like in general (I may be very kotlc focused but my propensity for talking ceaselessly does not end with this series). I hope you enjoy your time here!!

[localgayanimeboy]

Anime Overview 2018

So as the year comes to a close and this blog just gets started, I thought it would be interesting to look back on the shows I watched this year and just collect some general thoughts on them. I watched at least some of 14 anime this year, which is a decent number, considering the amount of schoolwork I’ve had and just my life in general, but I would have liked to watch a few more so that I would have more to talk about, but whatever. Note that some of these shows aren’t from 2018, I just watched them this year, so yeah I’m late to the party on a few things. None of this is actual analysis or anything either, just whatever came up over the past few days, so some of these are just a few short sentences and others are pretty long paragraphs.

Top 3, Aka: Shows with Unbelievably High Amounts of Fucked Up Shit Going On (in no particular order)

Devilman Crybaby: What even was this. Like, I know what it was, because I watched it twice, and enjoyed it both times. But what was this. Everything about this show was insane, and yet somehow it came together into something that was both incredible and mostly comprehensible. I will say that I was sad to discover that the whole show was not going to be rendered in the crazy color schemes from the first episode, but maybe it's better that way in the long run, and the more desaturated colors in the rest of the show also have an interesting effect, so I'm not really complaining. I also wish i had gotten around to reading the original manga at some point during the year, since I know it’s completely different, but alas, school kept me away from it, even though I have a physical copy of the first half waiting on my manga shelf. Other things: I fucking love the animation in this show. Its weird and kind of ugly, but I love it because it’s supposed to look like that and it works perfectly for portraying all of the crazy things that happen. The soundtrack also absolutely slaps, 10/10. If you ever want to feel depressed listen to the last song on this soundtrack, it’s guaranteed to work.

Made in Abyss: So pretty much everything about this show is amazing. Even if the plot and world building hadn’t been incredible (which they were), the soundtrack and the art would probably be enough to keep it on this list. I didn’t really know what to expect here other than “children climb into a giant hole filled with monsters”, and I definitely did not expect it to be one of the most existentially terrifying shows I had ever watched, but here we are. Part of this is the actual scale of the Abyss, which is a kilometer across and a completely unknown depth, part of it is the fact that a lot of the characters, including some of the adults, are really adorable and do not blend in with the atmosphere of the show at all, and a lot of it is the fact that I am willingly watching two 12 year olds get mutilated and traumatized by going to a place that one of them physically cannot return from. But I also could not stop watching all of this go down, which I think the show is very aware of since unlike the other two shows on this list, which usually censored some of the fucked up shit in some way, nothing here is covered up or cut away from (unless it absolutely had to be for TV reasons), so you’re just forced to deal with it (points for one scene literally making me want to throw up). I love this show and I am so hype for season 2 hopefully next year.

Banana Fish: If you read my review of this, then you might be thinking what I am also thinking right now, which is that it might not be fair for me to make this type of judgement on this show since I don’t feel like I have a good grasp on it yet. Which yeah, you’re right, but there were enough really strong elements in this show to make it stand out to me as something that was worth my time, and despite my many problems with its execution, I still love this series a lot and have no problem putting it on this list. Some of the other shows on the complete list were also very good and could have ended up in this spot; some of them may have even been better shows at a technical level, but when I get right down to it, this show affected me more than the others, and just fit better into my personal preferences. It’s here because I feel like once I do have a better grasp on it, it will have earned its place on this list. It’s complicated.

Bottom 3 (also in no particular order)

Darling in the Franxx: I don’t have much to say here because I only made it 5 episodes into this. Mecha anime is already not at all my jam, and this was just, awkward to watch. If you’re unfamiliar, giant robot monsters exist in a post apocalyptic world that can only be defeated by mechas piloted by pairs of teens sitting in not-so subtle sex positions. It’s uhhh, yeah, interesting. Apparently there were some themes about adolescence and sexuality to be found here, but either they were communicated extremely poorly or I didn’t watch enough to get to those themes. It doesn’t really matter though, because I have no intention of ever finishing this.

Kado: the Right Answer: I have a whole post about this show coming up, but in summary, the first half is a masterpiece, and the second half is so bad that it was all I could think about for about 3 days after finishing it because I was so mad about it. If you do not like CG anime, this show will also not work for you, although that’s really the least of its problems. Also, queerbaiting bad. I will say this though: if the concept of this show interests you, go watch episodes 0-7 and then write your own ending, I promise it will be better than what actually happens. If you’ve already watched all 14 episodes, I’m sorry.

ACCA 13: I honestly have no idea if I actually watched this show this year or late last year, but I remember being upset because the premise was pretty interesting, but it kind of took a weird turn that I wasn’t expecting. It isn’t necessarily a bad show, but of the ones I watched this year, it was just okay. I also put it on this list because I can’t really remember anything about it other than that, so maybe I would enjoy it if I watched it again, but since it didn’t stick with me the first time, that seems unlikely.

Other shows I watched (again:no particular order)

BNHA/MHA Season 3: It’s BNHA. If you’re watching it, cool. If not, also cool. Season 3 was good, as always. I don’t really know what else to say here.

Hinamatsuri: Spring 2018 was pretty good to us, and I generally liked this show, although I wish it had stuck to more comedy in the later episodes rather than shifting towards a serious plot structure. Yakuza man attempts to raise a preteen girl with psychic powers who just appears in his house. Chaos ensues. Love that. It was weird, and I don’t really have any serious complaints, so there it is.

Yoitsuiro Biyori: This is a show about 4 attractive dudes running a cafe. They have a very cute cat and help people with their minor life inconveniences. That’s pretty much it. And despite my love of fucked up shit in shows (see my top 3), I really enjoyed this one. Maybe more than I should have. It’s chill. There isn’t anything to complain about because there’s nothing going on. In fact, if I had to make one complaint, it’s that there are moments where they attempt to create drama for one of the main dudes. Stop that. Also a fun thing: you can feel free to ship none, all, or any combination of the main characters and all of these choices are justified by canon. I’ve rambled enough here. Watch this show.

Houseki no Kuni: Yes I’m late to the party here. I am aware. I’m not sure how I feel about this show yet though. I love the concept, and the animation looks pretty amazing for CG (also, that soundtrack… seriously good shit), but I can’t get over the fact that the plot structure of this show is just… weird? At the beginning I felt like I had a decent idea of what kinds of things would happen and what it would be about. And then it wasn’t that, which is fine. But I never felt like I had a good grasp on what it actually was, and by the end of the season, it had oddly looped back to the original concept anyways, which was confusing. I think this is just one I’m going to have to read the manga/wait on season 2 to fully understand, which is fine with me.

Gakkuen Babysitters: Similar to Yoitsuiro Biyori, there really isn’t much substance here to discuss. If watching teenage boys take care of disgustingly cute toddlers fits within your interests, then you’ll love this. If not, then there really isn’t anything here for you. Then again, I never would have imagined myself enjoying something like this, and I still had a pretty decent time with it, so maybe you’ll surprise yourself.

Baby Steps: Okay so I didn’t finish this, but I’m definitely planning to, because for some god forsaken reason I am in love with this show. I’ve never enjoyed sports anime, and this show looks like shit 99% of the time, but for some reason I could not stop watching it when I started it at the end of the summer, and ended up watching like 25 episodes in 2 or 3 days before I had to do something else. Why do I love this show from 2014 (I refuse to believe this was created in 2014 but I suppose I have to trust wikipedia here) about a high school student giving up his position as the smartest person in his class to learn to play tennis instead? It is a mystery to me. I don’t even know if I can really recommend it, but if you’re looking for sports anime, it's there I guess, just don’t expect it to look as good as pretty much any other sports anime.

Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens: Where do I even start with this show. I make no promises about if it is actually that good, but I do love it a lot (it would probably be #4 or #5 on the list). The concept here is that 3% of the population of the Hakata ward in Fukuoka are employed as hitmen, and from there you can probably assume with a good amount of certainty what kinds of outrageously wild situations end up occurring as a result. I don’t really know how to categorize this series, because on one hand I think a lot of it is completely serious, but on the other hand, there are multiple scenes in which the main characters, all of whom are hitmen or other criminals, get together and play baseball against other teams of criminals. And don’t get me wrong, the serious parts of the story are pretty good, but my favorite moments were things like the baseball scenes, where the show just does whatever the fuck it wants because why not? Even something that isn’t inherently weird or funny like trading business cards suddenly becomes the funniest thing ever because the reality of this series is that hitmen and torturers and all types of criminals run into each other on a regular basis and need a way to trade information about their services. It’s ridiculous and I love it.

Neo Yokio:How much of this did I watch? 1 episode. Do I feel mentally capable of watching another episode? Absolutely not. Did I enjoy my time with that 1 episode? I don’t know. I’m also not sure I didn’t enjoy it. This show defies categorization and maybe that’s okay. Is this even an anime? Uncertain.

And that’s it for this post! I’m already working on a bunch of stuff for 2019, so I should be able to post ~twice a month (that’s the goal, anyways), and the next Banana Fish review will hopefully be written by mid-January, so in case you haven’t seen me say enough about it yet, do not worry, there is a lot more. It’s sounding like my first anime of the year might be Forest of Piano because a friend recommended it to me earlier today (this may be surprising, but no I do not enjoy torturing myself with CG anime), so we’ll see how that goes and if there’s anything worth writing about. Anyways, Happy New Years everyone! Hopefully 2019 will be a good year for all of us!