#so if the characterization sucks i'm sorry!!!!! i just felt she was the most fitting for what i need to get off my chest now

[rei-caldombra]

Mashle- The Surprise Hit of Spring 2023 Anime (for me)

I was very pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this show. I had not heard of it at all before it aired and just checked it out because the premise sounded fun and very appealing to me. For anyone who doesn't know, short summary is that it's basically Harry Potter but Saitama from One Punch Man is the main character.

I went into this expecting it to be a parody where it just craps on stereotypical H.P style magic school stuff, which I did want to see. Not because I hate magic (I don't), but because I think the premise of a physically overpowered character entering a magic school is a great way to parody it. I also am into fitness so I enjoyed when it indulged a bit in that area. These points have their appeal but likely would not keep me interested for 12 episodes if all it did was make "lol magic sucks" gags. What really made me get into the show is how it still takes magic seriously for the other characters and world as a whole. Characters with powerful magic are not treated as jokes or made to appear weak. To me the comedy feels less at the expense of magic and the characters and more so just laughing at what Mash can do to circumvent it. I feel it does a good job of poking fun at magic while also appreciating what it can offer.

I must mention the most insane and truly noteworthy thing about this show. It’s absolutely bonkers. This is a fantasy anime that not an Isekai. Someone remembered you can do fantasy without an Isekai and still do “fish out of water” elements! Joking exaggeration aside, this is genuinely a breath of fresh air. In case you did not see my last post on Vending Machine, I do not inherently dislike Isekai. But as you likely know the anime space is oversaturated with Isekai and has been for years now. It's nice to not have the thought of "real world" stuff taking away from the fantasy.

The show is actually pretty funny. I don't think the gags about Mash overpowering magic ever got old or overplayed. What helps with this is my point before about how the other characters were allowed to have magic on magic fights that were taken seriously. This broke up the routine of waiting to see what funny way Mash brute forces his way through things. And in these fights the other characters were genuinely capable of defending themselves for the most part. If Mash always had to come in and save them, or if Mash always felt completely invincible, I would have liked it less. But towards the end we do see that there is genuine danger.

I do have some criticisms, the biggest being some of the characters. Mash, Dot and Lance are solid characters with fine characterization and likeability. Mash and Dot in particularly are a bit more memorable. None of them are outstanding but I genuinely like them and think they bounce off each other pretty well. On the other hand... I'm sorry but Finn is such a nothing character. After his introduction he does not do anything of note other than talk with the characters. He does not directly participate in any fights and his presence offers very little other than reacting to the main 3's strange personalities. Lemon is also not very interesting or memorable and sadly is a very stereotypical female character in a group of male characters. Like Finn she does not really get to do anything and ends up being a damsel in distress at the finale (just remembered that he did end up needing to be saved too). These two largely have the same problems but it's a little more notable for Lemon since she is the only relevant female character and gets relegated to not having any genuine role in the story until she needs saving. I personally do not think her crushing on Mash is as offensive as her treatment in the story, but it is again very stereotypical and does not give her any unique identity. The main 3 all have clear personality traits but I really can't think of anything for Finn and Lemon. Both these characters to me have nothing really to them and lack agency in the story.

To end on a positive note, the OP and ED are both bangers. The action scenes are also solid, with some very interesting magic powers and ways that Mash combats them. I really enjoyed the fights as a whole. The presentation of the show is pretty solid.

I think it's a pretty good show. Putting aside my issues with Lemon and Finn, it has a lot of good jokes, great action scenes and interesting concepts on how magical and physical capabilities can collide. I'm looking forward to getting the next set of episodes next year, and I'm really hoping we get some redemption for Lemon and Finn.

But keep in mind that what comes later does not always affect what already happened and imply there was foreshadowing or hidden depth. Their characters can be improved, but it won't change how mediocre I feel they were here. I don't like when people try to use hindsight from future content to say, "they were actually great characters all along" when it's clear from the writting that it was not intended from the start. Sorry, I won't buy that with this lol. Thanks for reading!

[beatricebidelaire]

There was a kind of comfort when she was with him. When she was with him, she could be just herself, and he would be her friend. Unlike with most people, she was a carefully curated mask, aiming to help, aiming to please, but never herself.

Perhaps it was because he understood the constant need to not offend others, to keep others happy, to try to offer help. Olivia was grateful to have him as a friend, could feel her shoulders slowly releasing tension when they were alone instead of having to talk to other people.

It was always weird to have someone genuinely like her as her, like her as a friend, not as a fortune teller or someone who they could gain information from. Sometimes she had the urge to tell him the story of her pre-teen years, when she had yet to join VFD. (Her parents died a little after that, and she was quickly swept in after their death.) She had the urge to tell him that it was always surprising that he would enjoy being friends with her, that anyone would enjoy being friends with her.

She’d known she was a little odd, growing up. Not fitting in. She was always so clueless about what the latest fashion was, about what everyone was talking about. It was okay, so she enjoyed different things, read odd books her classmates didn’t read, was bad at every kind of sport and did not know the popular singers others talked about. She liked her own interests and wouldn’t mind enjoying them on her own, even if it was a little lonely sometimes. But she’d always found solace in the books. Even if other people found her a little odd, she could live with that.

Except in the last two years of elementary school, when she transferred to another school, that she realized it became more than that. Her classmates didn’t just find her odd, they hated her and didn’t bother hiding that. They didn’t simply find her slightly weird - they hated her. She never really found out why - she hadn’t known then, and she still didn’t know now, years later. She did find out why they disliked one of her only friends at that time - because the other girl had hanged out with her.

Looking back, she couldn’t really remember exactly why they’d made her so scared at that time. When she tried to think back, her brain just went blank and refused to delve deeper into anything. It refused to load the memories. She was sure they’d never done anything physical - well, maybe a few threats about what they would do during dodgeball in PE class - but she’d managed to mostly avoid that. Plus, she was petite, that must made it a little harder to aim, right?  She was sure she’d been scared and worried every day, she remembered at least 3 quarters of the class were one big friend group, and they all disliked her. She remembered her friend who stood by her despite making herself a target too - how did she ever deserve such loyalty, she didn’t know. It’d lasted till almost graduation but then suddenly two very prominent members of the gang had a large fight and then they were all taking sides and suddenly lost interest in her.  She’d been thankful for that too, though she never found out what exactly caused the fight between them either. She was just grateful she could take a breath.

She had, in her adult years, tried many times to search her memories what they had done that terrified her preteen self so much, but her brain always refused to cooperate.  She wondered if she’d just been too sensitive and too easily scared and too eager to be like that she couldn’t stand most of her classmates disliking her.  At least they hadn’t done anything physical, she told herself. Maybe I had just been too sensitive, she told herself.

She still couldn’t remember. 

She thought she once remembered more.

In her first few months in VFD, attending all the trainings, she’d been quietly relieved that at least in this new environment she wasn’t universally hated. She was still a little weird, but there were other people with their own rare interests too, and it felt a little safer, a little more comfortable - comparatively, anyway. One of her fellow new recruits at that time liked socializing a lot and somehow became friends with one of her previous classmates that disliked her.

She remembered, to this day, finding out about that and the new recruit wanting to introduce them to meet, and the way she had vehemently said no and burst into tears. She remembered being fucking scared at the thought and the new recruit had quickly agreed to not introducing them and didn’t bring it up again.

That was a memory that stayed.

The sudden panic again, the tears, after finding out about how someone in her current circle knew someone from her past circle who were part of a group that terrified her so much that even the idea of seeing anyone from that group again immediately made her burst into tears.

That was the memory that, whenever she thought back to her preteen years, that came to mind the most. Unlike what exactly happened that made her so miserable and scared back then which her brain always gave her a blank when she tried to remember, the crying of that day, already in VFD and no longer in the same class as those people, was a memory that seemed deeply etched and she didn’t know how to forget.

It didn’t make sense to her, but it was not like she understood much about how memories and brains worked either.

From then on, she did her best to avoid being dislike, did her best to please others. She didn’t need others to like the real her, as long as they didn’t hate her, she would take that. If they liked her - even if it’s her mask and not the real her - she counted that as a win.

If, in the rare case, they liked the real her, and was willing to be friends - like he was - she was always surprised and deeply grateful, in ways she didn’t often know how to articulate.

“Bertrand,” she began. Impulsively. “Could I tell you a story about the school I went to before VFD?”

He raised his head from his book. “Of course.”

[takaraphoenix]

I believe you didn't talk about your opinion of Riverdale's season 2 yet. (You know, in it's entirety and not just of some scenes.) But now I'm left curious. What do you think of the rest of the season? And since you wanted to find out on your own: Did you manage to correctly identify the Black Hood before it was confirmed in the show?

Oooh. Oh, sorry. I just always post the excitement when something, ya know, exciting happens. Still unsure about lengthy ramblings that seem too off-topic from the blog. (Yes, I am still pretending this blog has a theme. Let me. xD)

Oh dear, how do I put all the things into words and in order?

To sum it up briefly as an intro: I’m disappointed.

Now, more in detail.

Starting with the things I liked. Which are significantly less than the things I disliked, hence the overall verdict.

Toni is an amazing character and I love her addition to the show. I just hope she will get her own plotline next season, because this season she was only there to either further Jughead’s plot or Cheryl’s. I’m also very eager to see Toni’s and Cheryl’s relationship unfold, because boy do I ship it hard.

I really enjoyed FP and Alice Cooper’s development this season, much to my own surprise. Alice came out being one of my most hated characters first season, but I actually liked her semi-redemption arc and... I... somehow now ship her and FP? I am very disturbed by that, to be honest.

And... with that, we kind of reached the end of the things I enjoyed this season? Which, yeah, sad.

I didn’t like a single one of the main characters’ plotlines this season.

Archie and how his relationship with his father slowly came apart over the course of the season - despite it being semi-mended in the end, this whole arch seemed unnecessarily forced and in contrast to their portrayal in the first season.

Archie and starting his own fucking gang. TWICE.

Seriously. He gives Jughead shit for being a serpent, but then he goes ahead and starts his own gang. And the fucking names. Red Circle. Dark Circle. Wow. Such creativity, much awe.

Archie running after Hiram Lodge all season long was just... intensely disturbing to watch. He just allowed himself to be sucked in deeper and deeper.

So did Veronica and with her it annoyed me even more. First season Veronica seemed so much like the girl who was against her criminal father. And now she just... doubled down on the crime hard. And I genuinely don’t know what she was expecting? Because the girl acted like what happened was somehow a surprise or something in the end, when she turned against him again. Like. What... What did she think would happen...?

Then there was Betty’s plot.

I liked that she confided in Archie and her friends about the Black Hood and didn’t just do a solo gig. But her trying to get her brother and them just immediately accepting the creep into the family without so much as a fucking background check first.

And Jughead literally went from the sweet nerd with a blog to the fucking king of the gang. Like. Good lords, slow it down some. It seemed so incredibly rushed just how fast he came to accept the serpents as his family and the school as his home. I think that his “becoming a serpent and becoming king of the serpents” plot should have been stretched out over two seasons.

Cheryl’s plot was... so over the top too. Conversion camp? Her mom trying to murder grandma? And... her characterization was all over the place too. One second she is the Queen with the power-moves cutting her mom’s oxygen, the next she is the crying girl in the corner, weak and helpless. I mean, I get that with everything that happened last and this season to her, she wouldn’t be fully stable, but it really felt more like convenient writing. “Mh, we need more tension, so how about Cheryl is utterly helpless and defenseless in the next scene?” turning into “Oh but we could use a badass move, how about she just attacks the serial killer with her bow and arrows and without being the least bit intimidated?”.

Also Cheryl and Rose now living alone in the mansion... Honestly, instead of making her sick grandma her guardian, I think auntie Alice should have stepped up.

The relationship between Cheryl and Betty is really fascinating and I would genuinely enjoy seeing more of it. Like, having Cheryl move in with them, she can have Polly’s room. She would be forced to live a more down-to-Earth life.

The whole evil twin of her dad thing was really unnecessary. I mean. Seriously. It added absolutely nothing to the plot.

Just, overall, there was way too much going on this season for my taste.

And not just too much as in too many plotlines, also just... too dark, too deep, too heavy.

This show is indeed taking the Desperate Housewives route, but it hits it harder than I expected.

That is to say, the first season offers a genuinely intriguing, vaguely over-dramatic mystery that happens and that brings an unlikely band of protagonists together to solve it. Following seasons will so desperately try to top it that the dramatic event is completely blown out of proportions and loses absolutely all grasp on reality.

And that’s what happened this season.

We get a serial killer. And the mafia. And a psycho imposter brother. And an evil twin. And a conversion camp. And a gang war. And a serial rapist. And a drug problem.

That’s just too many “and”s.

First season worked perfectly. It had that one mystery that they had to solve and then some sub-plots around it. That mystery was one murder.

Now, to your other question regarding the Black Hood: HONESTLY HALF THE TIME I FORGET THAT HE IS A CHARACTER ON THIS SHOW.

Hal is so bland and so unimportant. When he made his first appearance this season, I legit went “OH right Alice has a husband! Ooops!”.

I figured it out at one point, but then they went misdirection with that second, or third, I lost count, Black Hood and I grew doubtful because why the fuck.

Last season, with daddy Blossom, it took me really long to figure it out. But when it was revealed, it was a thing that made sense. They set the mystery up so you had to work to figure it out, but it made sense plotwise.

This one? They purposefully wrote it so it doesn’t make sense.

There is no legit motive. They retconned some “Oh by the way his dad was a murderer but he pinned it on someone else and momma brainwashed him and Betty’s words in the last season finale were a trigger to turn him into a serial killer” so hard that it’s just pathetic.

And how he conveniently managed to stop killing when he got it pinned on someone else. That was literally only plot-convenience to make the viewer believe they got the right guy, because Hal had no logical motivation to stop killing. It was never about hiding his crimes? He literally wrote letters and made phone-calls and flaunted it in everybody’s face, why would he find a scapegoat and then stop killing? That’s just... bullshit. He should have, logically speaking, gone after like Hiram Lodge or some other scumbag criminal.

Nothing about that shit could have been guessed.

I mean, I did guess that Hal would be the son of the murderer. Or the one surviving child from the murder. But then they put the janitor in and killed that.

Last season’s mystery came natural. This one was forced in every way of the word.

That just completely took the fun out of it for me.

Well, that and the sheer amount of cruelty and brutality this season. There was no fun this season. Last season still had its lighthearted moments. This one didn’t.

It’s not just taking a bad Desperate Housewives route, that route is crossing streets with the bad Teen Wolf route of going grittier and darker and removing all color and fun from something that used to have color and fun and then somehow expecting that to be good. It is not. It never will be.

Either make something gritty and dark from the get-go so it attracts the right crowd of people, or make something that has jokes and lightheartedness in it and embrace that. But don’t attempt a genre-change like that. It’s a failure.

The musical episode was really out of place for me too. It didn’t fit to the tone of this season at all. Fun musical stuff could have gone with last season. Not to mention the musical could have been Kevin’s plotline. But... Kevin kind of didn’t get a plotline at all. He got one episode of musical thrown his way and that vague shit about him fucking in the woods and that was, essentially, it.

I am also not a hundred percent sure; did Betty and Jughead actually fuck or just make out...? I usually look away when they start undressing on screen and only look up again when the scene is over. I fail to see any reason for sex scenes at all, period, in literally any show, but especially so in a show about supposed teenagers? It’s just... weird for me. But if they did, fuck you show. I want asexual Jughead. Also, this ship has zero chemistry.

And can someone maybe get Betty a therapist now? Last season with her turning into psycho Betty with the fucking wig was already Really Disturbing, but she doubled down on that hard this season? And? Is she supposed to have some form of... personality disorder? Is that intentional? Either way, she helped cover up a murder this season and got psychologically tortured by her father who is a serial killer, so yeah please get her professional help.

So, yeah. That’s it.

I found this season too forced, too dark and too brutal and if the show doubles down on those elements with the same rate that it did from season 1 to season 2, then season 3 is going to be DCEU levels of dark and gritty.

I really hope they will slow down and that they will start remembering that you don’t have to rush from one traumatic, brutal event to the next murder to the next attempted rape and so on, but that you can... pause in between and put something more light in, to even things out. How do writers keep forgetting that...?