#the manga is like. here. have all these narrative and thematic reasons as to why zoro and luffy are pretty much soulmates

[general-cyno]

I've been musing about it for a while, thanks to some posts I've read recently too, and honestly... one of the (many) fascinating aspects of zolu to me is the way they share parallels/connections and or similarities to important figures in OP's world. spoilers for the most recent arcs and reveals ahead!

perhaps the most blatant and one of my personal favorites, are luffy and zoro's similarities to roger and rayleigh. as OP's mc and someone who's on the road to become the pirate king, luffy's own similarities to roger have come up a lot throughout the story and they've been acknowledged or pointed out by other characters like shanks, rayleigh himself and yamato, for example. from the goofy parts of their personalities, to the strength of their wills, and their dreams, luffy and roger's parallels are consistent in OP,

and as seen in rayleigh's brief memory of their first meeting, the straw hat luffy received from shanks was originally worn by roger back when he was young.

albeit the circumstances are a little different - with them stumbling upon each other by chance vs luffy going out of his way to meet zoro after learning of his name and reputation - this first meeting is still reminiscent of zoro and luffy's, with both ray and zoro initially rejecting roger and luffy's invitations to join them in their journey.

as for rayleigh and zoro, there's also a bunch of parallels between the two!

due to his previous time as a bounty hunter in the east blue, zoro made quite a name for himself and as OP progresses, his renown as the pirate hunter and the straw hats' swordsman is only second to luffy's. he was also the 2nd straw hat to get a bounty, and he's usually right behind luffy whenever their bounties go up. similarly, rayleigh was (and still is) considered a legend second to roger himself, strong enough that garp still views him as a powerful foe the marines can't easily defeat and managed to scare blackbeard away from amazon lily without an actual fight, despite the latter's strength.

there's other stuff too: the eye scars, both zoro and ray being greatly skilled swordsmen, their love for booze, being users of all three types of haki and even their epithets! from what I've read from other OP fans in discussion threads and through some internet search, rayleigh's title of "dark king" in jp is actually the name or word for pluto (the god of the underworld, roman mythology's equivalent to hades) in said language. in comparison, "enma", the name of zoro's most recently acquired sword and the "king of hell" title that he claimed after defeating king in wano, are a direct reference to the buddhist deity of the same name in jp mythology, also known as yama - a god of the underworld in charge of judging souls.

from the most recent flashbacks of the god valley incident, too, you can see the physical resemblance between these duos:

(as a bit of a side note, I think it was nice that rayleigh not only took it upon himself to mentor luffy, he was also the one who protected zoro from kizaru in sabaody and after the timeskip, during the straw hats' reunion in the archipelago and as they bid their farewells, zoro went out of his way to thank him for everything too.)

all in all, considering how close roger and rayleigh were (to the point roger called him "partner"), their strength, reputation and their overall journey with the roger pirates crew - the fact that luffy and zoro share more than a few clear similarities/parallels to them is really good imo, and it speaks both of the importance of their relationship and of the kind of figures they're bound to become, or are already becoming, in OP's world and ongoing history.

although it'd be sweet to have zoro and luffy directly refer to each other as partners as well (which kid and killer, another captain/first mate duo, have done too) I'm not sure it'll happen, if only for the sake of keeping the relationships between luffy and the crew balanced, so to say. still, like I said, knowing how close luffy and zoro are and that they share parallels with other captains/first mates, I think that says a lot about them regardless and the importance they hold for each other and the story as a whole.

another interesting resemblance between zolu and characters who are connected to one another involves, of course, shanks and mihawk - both of which are not only acquainted with each other, as rivals and friends of sorts, but also served as luffy and zoro's mentors/guides at different points of their lives and presently stand as their eventual foes to face in order to reach their goals of becoming the pirate king and world's greatest swordsman.

aaand last but not least, because it's yet another favorite of mine: joy boy/nika and shimotsuki ryuma. I sort of talked about it in another post, and I find it pretty cool. nika and ryuma come from different eras and don't exactly have much to do with one another but luffy's DF awakening and defeating kaido led to "joy boy" (since luffy refused to take credit for it directly by name) being hailed as a hero to wano that's comparable and only rivaled by ryuma, who in the past defended the country and was considered a legendary swordsman, whose sword shusui (that zoro wielded for a while) is a national treasure even.

since the hito hito no mi: model nika is a mythical zoan and vegapunk's speculated that devil fruits come into existence as manifestations of hope and wishes (or a potential for human evolution someone's desired), among other things, nika's existence as an actual god is kind of a subject of current debate in the fandom BUT. the fact remains that whether real or myth, he's still mentioned in old texts and his story has been shared among those enslaved by the WG, as a call for hope and freedom. in addition, even though he was human, ryuma also became revered as a savior figure and a sword god by the folks of wano.

so when you have luffy embodying the sun god of joy and liberation,

and it turns out zoro is none other than a descendant of the shimotsuki (frost moon) family, who resembles the former daimyo of ringo and the god of the blade ryuma,

well. those are some crazy parallels luffy and zoro share outside of their equally kinda crazy and meaningful relationship, as individuals and crew.

[delawaredetroit]

In what ways is Izuku “rebellious”? It changes with the tide and the vibes, sure, but from what I recall of the manga Izuku never really gets very far in the process of stepping outside of his society and his role as a Professional Hero.

For all the thematic stuff going on about saving people, most of his attempts to actually act out turn into self destruction and a vague sentiment that he’s learning something about recklessness. Hell, even in the current arc, he literally abandons someone who ‘looks like they need saving’ (Eri) because his work supervisor said “this isn’t the time for that attitude”.

His rebellion is mostly in just, not giving up ideological priorities in bad situations? He enters fights he shouldn’t and makes risky moves because his priorities don’t focus on himself so much as the people around him. And even then, the story doesn’t tend to reward him beyond the bare minimum — saving kouta arguably cost him too much to also save Bakugou, or the whole post-jakku arc rife with people Izuku can’t save despite his whole ‘world on my shoulders’ thing there, or when he focuses so much on todoroki’s trauma in the sports festival that he loses sight of his actual ‘win the sport festival’ goal.

I guess my main thought is a bit lost in the weeds now, but… I dunno, “rebellion” just feels like too strong a word for Midoriya. He doesn’t fit in the world he lives in but nothing about it feels intentional on his part so much as the hand of the author setting done tracks for a narrative theme.

I was going to trash this one because if you have an issue with language that someone else put in an ask, you should take it up with them and not me. But there are a few points I want to address here.

I take issue with your point that "[h]ell, even in the current arc, he literally abandons someone who ‘looks like they need saving’ (Eri) because his work supervisor said 'this isn’t the time for that attitude'”. Izuku had to physically held back by Mirio in that scene and Eri had to run back to Overhaul herself before Izuku relented. He was never shown agreeing with Sir Nighteye on his analysis of the situation.

Rebellious is not quite the right word for it, which is why I made the distinction that Izuku isn't much of a rule follower. This story is largely from Izuku's perspective and he has multiple biases. I've discussed it a bit here how Izuku often acts outside of expectations because of an unconscious lack of faith in the existing hero system. The reason "rebellious" doesn't fit Izuku is not because he doesn't often act outside of the rules, but because he does not perceive himself as acting outside of the role of a hero.

The basis of their society is that everyone has a quirk they suppress. The best train to become heroes and get permission from the government to use their quirks to help others/defeat villains. Izuku inherently violates those norms in multiple ways: (1) by moving to help others without a quirk, (2) using his quirk on multiple occasions to save without a license, and (3) attempting to save/understand villains.

[tenebriskukris]

Oshi No Ko Chapter 163 - My Thoughts/Analysis

Three chapters before the end. I don’t expect anything more than a horribly written, badly paced mess of a final few chapters by this point, but maybe the manga will surprise me. By being even worse than I’ve come to anticipate.

Interesting way to start off the chapter. We’re back with Goro for some reason? And Sarina after what is likely some surgery? This definitely didn’t actually happen. It almost reeks of a happy “what-if” scenario right here.

The next few panels seem to solidify that. It’s some sort of delusional happy ending for Sarina and Goro. Neither of them were so lucky in their fates so as to almost get everything they wanted.

Sarina recovering and becoming a B-Koamchi idol alongside Ai…it’s cute and all, but I’m more interested in the why this is being shown rather than marvel at this pitiful attempt at moving the reader’s heartstrings. I’d be more willing to engage with the narrative and have more sympathy for everyone involved here except for the fact that all these recent chapters have just eroded my ability to care with some of the worst writing that I’ve seen in a piece of media since the later seasons of Game of Thrones. Actually no, that’s an insult to GoT—at the very least the earlier seasons of that show were actually good, while as much as people harp on about the earlier parts of OnK, that much is mostly because the anime carried its mediocre story.

Is this a dream? And now we’re back with Aqua and Crow Girl. Are we deus ex machena-ing now?

The world is a virtual image created by observation. Not everything is true. It’s like the world looked completely different before and after you were reborn. Crow Girl is Literally Just Saying Words. It’s so unsubstantial that it feels like I’m chewing on air. These words don’t even fucking relate to this entire dream sequence at large!

In the end, who was I? Are we going to finally get the nail in the coffin for people who don’t want to believe that Aqua=Goro?

Was this actually the wrong choice? AQUA YOU LITERALLY HAD TIME TO CONSIDER THIS POSSIBILITY WHEN YOU PLANNED THIS DOUBLE SUICIDE BULLSHIT. If you were hesitant in leaving everyone else behind, you could’ve, you know, not fucking went after Hikaru after Nino was captured? If he feels sad over leaving people behind there are so many ways for him to survive these contrived series of events that I’m sorry, Aqua you’ve done fucked up. He’s had more than enough time to plan out a series of events that doesn’t end with him dying, so Aqua “regretting” that he might’ve caused more trouble with his actions is just so stupid that it kills my suspension of disbelief faster than Goro falling to his death in the first chapter. 

Through reincarnation, you possessed Goro Amamiya’s memories and will [...] however within your body there are genetic factors that were inherited from Ai and Kamiki. Interesting that she doesn’t mention the concept of a soul here, but everything related to Crow Girl is just a nonsensical thematic mess half the time. Considering that she said that Ai’s children were soulless in one of her first appearances I’m surprised that people take these words to mean that Aqua=/= Goro when the rebuttal to that argument is given so early on in the manga.

This entire bit of Crow Girl hugging Aqua and holding his face and such…I dunno. I don’t quite know how to feel about it? What’s with all this sympathy for Aqua when she was sitting on the fence and giving out breadcrumbs to Aqua and Ruby? If she cared enough to stop this scenario she could’ve easily pulled enough strings as a fucking god to save him, since she is Right There to keep Aqua from dying. I would say that it’s almost out of character, but that gives this series too much credit because Crow Girl is more of a plot device rather than an actual character.

The rest of these scenes are nice except they feel too much like throwing a pity party when Everything that came before it was just so shite that this payoff tastes cheap. I’m supposed to feel emotions coming from this scene, but all I can think of is how fucking stupid these last few chapters were if this was the end result of that entire clusterfuck. It doesn’t hit its mark by a long shot. 

That was all of you, Aqua Hoshino. And with that, all that is left is the keychain. I’m sure that Ruby’s going to be holding onto that keychain for dear life alongside Aqua himself soon enough.

That’s it??? There are—were—four chapters in this blasted manga to get through and THIS is one of those chapters??? As heartbreaking and or heartwarming as this chapter was, it could’ve easily been folded into the last one simply because there wasn’t much substance from this chapter or the last! Hell, even putting that aside, with only a handful of chapters left in the series this chapter should’ve been focused on something more substantial rather than deal with character beats that should’ve been very well established beforehand!

Let’s get down to business. Do I think Aqua is going to live after this chapter? My answer hasn’t changed since the last chapter, but I do have more thoughts to give on it now that this chapter’s dropped.

There are only three more chapters left in this bloody series. Three chapters to wrap up the story as we know it so far. As much as I greatly dislike the way Aqua’s revenge plot has panned out, with Hikaru pretty much down for the count as of this chapter, I think plotline that much has been dealt with. That only leaves a couple of loose ends to wrestle with. If the manga is keeping up this breakneck pace to the end, then I do think it’s possible to wrap this whole mess up. It won’t be the best way to do so by a long shot, but it’ll certainly end. There’s just one thing that I think has to be addressed in the span of these final chapters.

An author has a responsibility to wrap up loose threads when a series inevitably gets closer to the ending. While this series has dispensed with many, many small plot threads that have headed nowhere in order to sprint towards the end of the manga, there is one plotline that I believe needs to be dealt with before the series concludes. The issue of Aqua and his love interests. For better or worse, this plotline has defaulted to one of, if not the main hook of the series since the revenge plot has been so shallow throughout a good majority of the series.

There needs to be a clear “winner” for the Aquabowl, so to speak. 

While fans on all sides will point to various chapters and say, Aqua has romantic feelings for Kana, or, Aqua wants to rekindle his relationship with Akane, or Aqua loves Ruby, the sheer fact that multiple of these interpretations exist within the context of the series itself this close to the ending needs to be addressed. Love triangles often soak the reader with intrigue and suspense before being dispensed of later down the line after it has served its narrative purpose. If the series isn’t going to pivot towards an open ending, then that needs to be addressed before the end.

Killing Aqua off here would render all that utterly meaningless. It would be unsatisfying in a way that would forever damn it simply because of the fact that it’s the equivalent of pushing the reader’s face into a plate of shit and the author saying, “Wow! That’s a good ending because it made you feel bad!”, when after such an event the reader would like nothing more than to refund the time investment they had in said media. It’s daft. It’s insulting. It is essentially telling the fans that all of the time they spent with this character and the romance angle—doubly so because of the fact that this little romance angle had little to no plot relevance for the vast majority of the series—was worth less than nothing because Aqua was going to die all along—and he even didn’t die dramatically, either, though maybe that would’ve softened the blow, but he died in a horribly executed confrontation that culminated in a half baked dream sequence where there were more than a handful of ways for him to come out of it alive.

While there are media that can intentionally make an unsatisfying ending work, with how these past few chapters have been, such an ending would likely fall flat for an abundance of reasons—but since we’re just talking hypotheticals, I won’t make any sweeping statements just yet.

Of course, all of this assumes that the authors are, you know, making good narrative decisions. The buckshot pacing and flow of the last ten, twenty, even thirty chapters have just been a complete garbage heap in quality. There are many things I can feel in predicting within a series that’s still ongoing thanks to performing enough media analysis and understanding how stories like OnK are structured as well as the tropes therein.

What I cannot predict are the authors making irrational(read: BAD) decisions and or torching the media and running. It’s why I was so vehemently against the idea that Akane wearing a fucking wig and disguising herself as Ruby to fool Nino. It’s why having both Aqua and Akane independently coming to the conclusion that Yura was murdered was such a surprise to me. It’s why Aqua meeting Crow Girl offscreen wasn’t something that I’d seriously considered before I read that chapter.

These are, quite frankly, objectively bad decisions. I’d made my disdain for these narrative beats known many, many times throughout my various analyses as well as given my reasoning for Why these decisions are bad, so I’m not going to go over them again, but suffice it to say that these are the type of plot beats that high school teachers tell their students what NOT to do. And yet they happened nonetheless.

I can only predict what a competent author that tries to give payoff to the various plot threads in a piece of media can attempt to do next. What I cannot predict, however, is someone who is haphazardly throwing plot threads and beats around like crumbs throughout the manga with little to no intention of following them up satisfyingly or has any desire to actually pace these chapters with any degree of competence. It’s the equivalent of asking a sane person to try to wrap one’s head around the mind of someone that’s on some of the hardest drugs in the world. There’s literally no use in doing so because both parties have fundamentally different thought processes. The fact that this slop is being published must mean that the editors for this literal godforsaken series must be high, drunk, or are being blackmailed. It’s an insult to all of the actual good manga writers out there that don’t even get a speck of popularity that this series has garnered.

That leads me to my next point. It’s also completely possible that Aqua just fucking dies here. It’d be a horrible decision, don’t get me wrong, but it'd be completely on brand for the series which has already made so many poor choices this close to the end. It’d just be one final shit pie to eat after the author cooked a buffet of garbage.

If that’s the case, I’d expect Ruby following Aqua soon after. Sad, I know, but that girl literally made it her mission to kill Hikaru after she found out that Goro was dead and was willing to go to lengths that Aqua just wasn’t in order to get her revenge. Losing the person she cares about most after finding out he was alive all along only for him to fucking die again??? I wouldn’t be surprised if Ruby just walks into the sea after she hears the news.

Completely unsubstantiated thought that just crossed my mind. Calling it now. Aqua and Ruby both die in the next handful of chapters before they reincarnate once more and then meet each other. It’d be almost an inverse of that whole, “two lovers that committed double suicide get reincarnated as twins” Japanese superstition that I’ve seen talked about. That’d be a godawful ending but we’re already scraping the bottom of the bucket with this series. I wouldn’t put it past this series. It is on the table, after all.

Three chapters left. I’ve lost all hopes for a good ending for the series for some time now, so I’m just sitting on the rollercoaster waiting for the ride to finally come to a close.

[aotopmha]

I'm finally catching up with the manga for Vinland Saga because the season 2 material overall is just ridiculously solid, but I'm also always sad when a great story defaults to old, uninteresting tropes that I think could fairly easily be avoided.

After episode 18 of season 2 I decided to finally pick up the manga to see what happens next (so spoilers here) – and, yes, as is easy to assume, Arnheid dies.

It "makes sense" that she dies in context, but so few stories seem able to avoid this trope of killing the cool female character to make you sad and the more it is done, the older it gets to me.

And the biggest issue to me here is that I feel like you absolutely could've made the same narrative point without killing her.

As far as I know Ketil and his farm, Einar, Arnheid or almost anyone else in this arc aren't even historical. Thorfinn, Leif and Canute are the only characters to currently have the most historical backing.

Vinland Saga is a hyper-dramatised narrative combining history and the fantastical Icelandic sagas and it usually does a good job balancing the historical and fictional aspects of the setting, but the discussion of "realism" within these types of stories is always interesting to have.

Thorkell can throw Thorfinn against trees and long distances in the air, breaking countless bones and he survives and is fine through so much hurt, yet the story can't bring itself to have Ketil hit Arnheid a few times less or just a little less hard or even have Snake interrupt a few moments earlier, so she could at least recover.

I only made it to her death scene right now and it almost even made me tear up. (I think I probably will cry when it happens in the anime.)

It's a well-written scene in isolation, but there is also an element of strange thematic disconnect to have the characters directly tell you the very solid reasons she could have been kept alive on the narrative level.

She could've found new hope and a new life travelling with Thorfinn and Einar and be one of the women joining them on the ship to their journey to Vinland.

The whole arc was about Thorfinn finding/rediscovering (new) meaning to live, so why couldn't have Arnheid?

It's the first time I've taken issue with the actual writing of the story, which is fairly impressive (took almost 2 whole seasons) – any issues I had prior to this were fairly minor (pacing with Canute's arc, for example), but this really bothered me because the narrative literally kept none of the reasons to write Arnheid out, either.

Her previous husband (and child) already died. Leif gave money for her and aside from that, Ketil seems to be heading to be captured, dead himself or simply surrender to the king and stay where he is.

(We'll see where that goes.)

Einar, Thorfinn and Leif are now free men and have no beef with Canute and even if they were to run into issues with him, Arnheid would have little to do with it.

And even if they all survive and at one point give chase, I think Ketil, Thorgil or Snake could be taken on by Thorfinn and Einar.

My point is, it feels like killing Arnheid was writing a sad scene for the sake of writing a sad scene.

I think tragedy works when it has backing. And I think this has some character backing (her rejoining her husband, additional motivation for Thorfinn and Einar), but I think at this point not much thematic backing or even plot backing.

People often say characters deserve better simply because they like them, but I think Arnheid absolutely not just deserved better because she was a cool character, but because she deserved better writing backing her character.

It's so strangely jarring to me because I think the story has been so good otherwise.

I know at least one other important female character should show up to be a mainstay if the story keeps to history and that character should be there to stay up to the end, but it's also a bummer that the first female character in the story with any depth got such a jarring ending.

I'll hear the story out (I'm currently at chapter 93) because this is still right after Arnheid died, but I really doubt there could be any reason the story could give me that'll make her death feel less like shock value.

[thyandrawrites]

I've noticed you've been referring to the current war in bnha as the final arc. Why is this the final arc? It feels very much like we are hitting a major turning point rather than any conclusion. All the character arcs feel very incomplete espically as you've point out how no one is really getting through to the villans and rather going in circles. I could see this being the final arc for the "old school heroes" but not for our protags. What's your reasoning? Not trying to be rude just curious

There are multiple reasons why other fans and I have been referring to it as the final arc:

1. Horikoshi originally announced that the series would end in 2022, then later amended that his predicted timeline was a bit too hopeful because his pacing was too slow and it was taking him longer than expected to wrap things up:

2. Chapter 306 was titled "The final act begins", giving a feel for how the story is slowly headed towards an ending. That was the beginning of the rogue arc btw. It's been over 70 chapters since then

3. The present arc is the thematic apex of many character arcs. Even all the secondary charas are getting their time to shine, when they've been mostly in the background before. We're finally seeing the main trio face off against their villain foils, which was set up as their main narrative challenge. After that, there wouldn't be much of a story to tell, so that too contributes to making this feel like a standard final arc.

4. Deku is now facing off against AFO, who was notably absent from the war arc, and who is the main antagonist of the series and "final boss". Add the fact that Deku is now mastering his multiple quirks and that ShigarAFO now has his own multiple powers, this arc is already set up as a pretty standard battle shounen overblown final fight with super high stakes. The only thing I see after this is an epilogue.

That being said, I agree that it doesn't yet feel like the characters (at least on the hero side) are yet developed enough for a wrap up. But that's just a pacing issue. The set up is there. It's just going very slow because Horikoshi wrote the heroes as faultless so far so he's struggling to get them where they need to be now imho. Tho honestly this arc is already a repeat of the war arc, and I don't really see a good way to end this in a fight cut short and interrupted, a regrouping e re-strategizing, and then yet another war. It would be pointlessly repetitive and kinda dragging its feet, and the heroes would just be in the same exact place as last time. Hence, I see it ending here, especially with Hori's intention to wrap up the manga soon-ish

[digitalcactusblog]

Im sooo sorry if im bombarding you about vnc all at once it's simply. Mochijun is one of the best mangaka out there there's simply no one else who does it like her 🤧

This is technically just a matter of personal preference, but in my eyes it's an imperative that one reads the manga before watching the anime. Mochijun makes use of her medium so MASTERFULLY that the anime adaptation kind of sucks all the charm out of her work. The only thing it has over the manga is that it's voiced, really... I think the anime is the novelty property for Vanitas. Like, here's the pictures!!! Now do you wanna see the pictures talk to each other?!?

The other reason why I'm so insistent you should read the manga before the anime is because the latter tends to give people a skewed impression of what the series is about. The direction of the anime seems to place more importance on the moments where there exists romantic/sexual tension between characters (dramatizing them, lingering on certain angles and shots, cutting out certain scenes to make room for the romance/sex) whereas the manga didn't emphasize it quite as much? They're still important elements in the story, but I think the manga's framing makes it more clear that those elements exist as subsidiaries to the larger motifs surrounding sexuality and love. The people who adapted VnC seemed to miss out on the deeper ideas supplementing these voyeuristic moments, and as a consequence of lacking intentionality, the thematic depth thay did end up translating into the anime is like a narrative skeleton rather than a complete work with a well-rounded narrative.

Ohhhhhh yeah I see, yeah I think I'll probably read it first?? I have so much manga I want to read 😂

[gainaxvel3o]

I feel that rewrites get a bit of a bad rap, at least in the idea that deviating from canon inherently taints it. A lot of my favorite stories and franchises thrive on constant reinvention and rewriting of the source material to fit the interests of the creative staff, even when they run contrary to what came before. Is Rise of the TMNT a bad show because of its shake ups to the traditional team dynamics? Is FMA 2003 a bad show because it decided to switch gears midway and tackle different themes than the manga? Are any of the Sonic cartoons bad because they don’t follow the games canon? I don’t see too many people mad that Starship Troopers The Movie was the total thematic opposite of its original book, so I don’t think rewriting an existing media is the issue here, exactly.

In my opinion, the problem with bad rewrites is the same problem that bad fanfiction runs into, in that both are largely reactionary pieces to an existinting source material. These aren’t your characters, this isn’t your story, your playing with toys and what you do with them says a lot about your priorities as a writer, whether keeping to canon or throwing it out when its convenient. Fanfics and rewrites hit a ceiling when its a writer trying to “fix the flaws” of the source material to their liking, because its all too easy to make it not about bulding a strong narrative, but airing out your grievances without poetry. Does focusing on this one character actually help the story? Maybe there’s a reason why this element was cut? What does it say, for example, that you feel the need to have these characters reconcile when the original story had them broken up for a reason? At best, you get a dry retelling with extra fluff but no personality, and at worst you make a 7/10 series look like a 10/10 with your fixing attempts.

To use an official example, I think a lot about the Dragon Ball Super manga that ran in tandem with the anime. Both followed a set of guidelines from Toriyama about how events would play out. Toyotaro would often introduce his own ideas into the story. That in it of itself was never the problem.

His ideas, however, were either ignored later or were needlessly convoluted.

Toyotaro introduced a stamina weakness to Super Saiyan Blue, that when you use it multiple times in a row it decreases its power by 10%. This was used to explain Vegeta losing to Hit during their U6 Tournament fight. The weakness does not sound like a bad idea in it of itself, until later events in the series ended up having Goku and Vegeta use Super Saiyan Blue repeatedly. The weakness never came up again.

Okay, but that was a minor plot hole in the grand scheme. A much bigger problem is when Toyotaro decided to forgo the anime’s ending, where Zamasu became an evil spirit that destroyed the universe (somehow), we have an ending where Merged Zamasu is repeatedly split and multiplied across ever slice by the heroes. That sounds much more logical then? Not quite, because Toyotaro still keeps the ending where Future Zeno erases the universe due to Merged Zamasu’s influence. In the anime, Future Zeno was getting rid of a cancer afflicting the entire universe. In the manga, Future Zeno comes across as more of an asshole, because all he had to do was erase the Zamasu clones instead of wiping out the entire timeline. Sometimes, what sounds like a logical fix may in fact make your story worse, especially without thought put into making it work in context. 

A good rewrite can come from spiteful places, but they can’t grow from there. Even as you’re tearing down something, you have to offer something in return, or else the rewrite becomes boring. If you’re going to rewrite canon, tell a story, even if it goes against the original! Ask yourself, what is this rewrite trying to do, how can I make what I want happen in a way that’s narratively satisfying? If the original isn’t finished, then all the more reason to deviate and plan out your own ending.

Tl;dr, if you’re going to rewrite canon, make sure you write something good out of it.

[kuboism]

Bleach Canon Vs. Studio Clown Episode 1

Intro to the series

WARNING: Long read but theres plenty of pictures

The first deviation we’re greeted with is what the anime presents as the arrival of hollows into the human world. With a likely artistic rendition of them forming from the shadows of Hueco Mundo and dripping/bleeding over into the human world like splotches of ink, after which they disappear - unable to be perceived by humans.

A/N: Which, kubos to the anime, is rather neat.

The anime also decided to incorporate the first volume poem which is the thematic beginning and a great establisher of the mood/themes of Bleach, which roughly translates to: 

我らは 姿無きが故に それを畏れ

“We fear that which cannot be seen”

And then they curiously add a line to this poem? 

姿無き故に敬う

”We revere that which cannot be seen"

A/N: Which, initially seems on brand with the spiritualism of that “which is not seen” - the shinigami, DEATH itself if you will. However, unlike the themes of “fear” and “fear of death/the unseen”, “reverence” is not really a theme prevalent or definitive for bleach. Reverence is not particularly reserved for death or death gods, but antagonists with themes of divinity/the Soul King himself, but I digress.

Next off the bully scene has a couple of missing/reworded lines, as well as some of the delivery changed, but overall it’s not significant enough to mention.

I also wish they’d kept Ichigo’s shit yourself scary face from this moment right here, since it really underlines how serious and personally invested Ichigo is in bringing small justice to the souls of the departed, but I can only pray a future remake does include it.

^ I am disappointed in y’all :/

vs.

v Karma delivery, bitch

Then for some reason the next scene is changed significantly:

In the manga, it builds up slowly to Ichigo’s reveal of supernatural abilities with the iconic TM character profile intros (which I can see why weren’t recreated in the anime, but I sure wish they put them in....)

with him spooking the bullies off with the ghost girl right behind him

Versus his scary face doing the job instead.....

It’s a small change, and I can see why it would be opted for - we don’t really know if they even saw the ghost in the first place (then again you could argue that would spook them anyway). There is a tonal difference in the long run though. The manga emphasizes once again *why* ichigo is scolding them in the first place - he sees the people disrespected by them knocking down the vase, he wants them to acknowledge their actions *because* in his mind, there are real victims he knows from it. While in the anime, since the ghost is not yet introduced, it feels more like “you are disrespectful to the dead” in a more generalized way vs. him actually being acquainted with the dead and treating them like the living. 

(Again, not sure why change it so much at all........the suspense and reveal are in the manga just the same.... but ok)

As well as cutting off this small moment where you can see Ichigo’s very human (and cute!) interactions with the ghosts. To him they’re just as real as the living, and he lends them a hand whenever they ask for help.

Also lmfao this 4kids level of censorship.....

It goes on rather faithfully for a while, no significant omissions, then Pierrot decides to randomly replace Yuzu’s lines with Karin??

Manga:

Anime: 

Which is an odd choice, given that not only does Yuzu sense ghosts just fine (albeit at a much lesser level than her family) and that later comes into play with Fishbone & Grandfisher, but Karin literally later admits that she doesn’t even want to acknowledge their presence, so why the change....?

They also cut short Karin’s little talk about Ichigo’s stats, which is a fair change for screentime’s sake, but mentioned for the record.

There’s a bit of a divergence with Yuzu lore, when the manga explicitly states she sees them, but not “clearly”, the anime focuses on her barely sensing them. I guess it doesn’t matter that much in the long run, since she is not that prevalent in the story, but it’s here for the record nonetheless.

Anime: 

vs. 

Manga:A

Also this next bit was removed, probably for the sake of pacing (which, totally fair!!), but it’s funny and I love the Kurosaki family so here it is:

It does make the flow a bit better in the manga, since this talk of selling his talents distracts Ichigo and creates an opening for his father to strike, in the anime, the same is done with Ichigo just randomly saying 

and thats where his father attacks him, which isnt really an issue, just kind of funny of how the manga is like:

Ichigo’s distracted by his sisters plotting to sell him out and hence Isshin has his chance to strike back

vs the anime being like:

Ichigo randomly thinks about dinner mid convo about ghosts and thats what distracts him from play-fighting with his dad 

gfdkhlgfdg okayyyy....moving on 

In the manga this scene is interspliced with Ichigo’s inner monologue about the nature of his powers (with hip jargon like “for real” courtesy of Viz ) 

(but my beef with Viz translations are for another day)

Also the line about “He told me more ghosts than ever have been haunting me” has been given to Karin for some reason, probably to make her feel more included in the scene/Ichigos life.

Notably, Isshin’s response is changed from “What?! He talks about stuff like that with you (Yuzu, singular)” to “What?! He talks about stuff like that with you guys?” as well, again probably to include Karin more into the dialogue. (Mmmm ok....)

Minor detail, but Karin’s lines has been changed to more “boyish” speech structure in the Japanese dub, which may seem insignificant, but ...... that is for later. 

.....

This little exchange

 is replaced with: 

Which, seems innocuous adaptation differences, but Yuzu’s lines keep decreasing and it’s a short enough moment to like....include and establish how motherly Yuzu is acting towards Ichigo.....but ok...huh. 

And now we get into the big boy changes.

So, probably for the sake of grounding the supernatural element of the series, the anime decided to skip time to the next morning and introduce the hollow attacks with a news report.

Which.....is an interesting choice. I am assuming this is addressing how the real world perceives the hollow attacks, which Bleach doesn’t put too much effort into addressing, but very soon after this we learn about stuff like memory replacement and other various technology to keep things under wraps so this is either redundant or implying that shinigamis have not been doing their job, which hm......

Next off is the bizarre choice to paint Isshin out of the picture for the night

Not sure why, but ok

Again, where’s the shinigami with their Kikanshinki (memory replacement devices)??? Pierrot where’s the lore coherence......

Anyway, Ichigo goes to replace the girl’s vase, but suprise-surprise she’s gone-zo. Wonder what happened to her.....

(And....again, people vehemently don’t want a reboot when the anime looks like this? )

So Ichigo hears a scream and a hollow scream and follows the sound (Ok?).

Totally random hollows attack. Which Ichigo somehow has never seen so far? Mind you, this isn’t like in the manga, where Fishbone was sent by Aizen specifically after Ichigo to make him aware of it. These are random-ass hollows attacking people, so how come Ichigo suddenly sees them. Ya coulda played it safe Pierrot, and stuck to the book, but we got plot inconsistencies episode one so let’s party.

The girl is, of course, not eaten and they run away.

She trips at the most inconvenient moment. (can ghosts trip? Ghost don’t even have legs in japanese lore and Kubo draws them floating around so okkkkkkkk)

(ok ok, im just being petty, bUT YKNOW)

(convenient tripping on deadass levelled ground is convenient)

(also God I really want that bag Ichigo’s got on his shoulder, it looks so nice)

Random-ass hollow closes in and 

BOOM

Rukia

(Now, if the rest of Bleach and the manga didn’t exist I would like this moment. We get a glimpse into Rukia’s abilities, into shinigami as a concept and we don’t really get to see her slice and dice hollows that much overall so the moment itself is rad in isolation.

Now, unfortunately for Pierrot’s screenwriters, Bleach manga exists and so does it’s lore, which again, would not be inconsistent with each other if the adapation was faithful. Now, Ichigo sees a shinigami, for some reason, for the first time in his 15 years of life. All of a sudden. 

You could argue, that much like in the manga, this is all part of Aizen’s plan TM, but like, she literally leaves right after leaving Ichigo gaping in awe ghfkjgdf. Why’d Aizen give him an appetizer, I really don’t understand how this change is benefitting the narrative in any way. It’s ....dare I say....generic.)

Rukia yeets the hollow

(why is this kid suddenly not wearing shoes?)

and goes off on her merry way, leaving Ichigo shooketh

ALSO RUKIA MA’AM THERES A FUCKING STRAY GHOST RIGHT AT YOUR RIGHT????? ISNT IT YOUR LIKE....JOB.......... TO HELP GHOSTS MOVE ON??? i know killing hollows is the fun part, but like ghjkfdlgfd ??? are you gonna ignore her???

( his fucking face ghfjdkgdlfgfd)

So after this wholeass pointless detour (you’ll see why it’s pointless in a moment)  we timeskip again (the filler is strong in this one. These 6 minutes were worth not coming up with something cohesive and removing scenes that actually make sense ah yes)

Ichigo is in deep thought TM about who tf is the stranger he’d just seen. Likely mulling over the monsters and how this person was able to slay said monsters. Probably thinking how unusual they are.

and as if on cue

the stranger makes their presence once more

(my God these faces gfhgkldfg)

....

Now let’s briefly address what happens in the manga instead.

Instead of the whole timeskip scene with the fight, Ichigo simply returns to his room on the same day, and oddly enough recognizes the species of the butterfly he sees? (nerdy boi! nerdy!! boi!)

rukia arrives much the same

(With the little text emphasizing how he’d never been aware of soul reapers, which is unsurprising given their secrecy, and makes sense in the long run since their first meeting is specifically orchestrated by Aizen. Two species that werent meant to interact brought together by his schemes.)

Back to the anime:

Ichigo pauses to ponder who tf they are and why the fuck they’re there.

and then the anime has the gall to suddenly revert to sticking to the manga, which like.... Ichigo kicks her for no reason? I guess because she isn’t answering? Even though Ichigo knows she has a sword and can wield it? Reckless boy.

Manga Ichigo thinks she’s a burglar, therefore, unsurprisingly, is comfortable kicking her outta his house. It’s a silly moment, but it also shows how accustomed or stupidly brave he is with the supernatural.

In the anime Ichigo asks her who she is instead of all that, and she responds pretty similarly to the manga

AND THE NEXT SCENE IS WHERE IT CLICKS WHY THEY WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO REMOVE ISSHIN FROM THE HOUSE.

(Ichigo and Rukia addressing the pointless filler, this leads nowhere)

Rukia check him out like she’s checking if the oranges on sale dont have mold on them 

slapstick ensues

and Rukia decides to answer his question.

Vs. the manga in which Isshin doesn’t leave his children home alone for some random conference and is actually used very efficient for two reasons:

1) building up on the burglar gag with actually funny slapstick that is based on a previously established joke

2) Instead of Rukia just saying “oh usually people can’t see me”, we get an actual demonstration of it, the reader gets to see “oh Isshin can’t see her - she must be a spiritual entity,” which further clicks with her surprised reaction at him being able to kick her in the first place.

The next scene is the classique Pierrot censorship.

Ghost girl runs away from what I’m assuming is Fishbone.

Aside from not showing her get eaten, the scene is pretty much delivering the same message, 

bUT

BECAUSE OF THE STUPID ASS FILLER WITH THEM MEETING RUKIA BEFORE THIS, I CAN ACCUSE RUKIA OF NEGLIGENCE.

UNLIKE THE MANGA, where Rukia arrives the night before and is specifically seeking Fishbone, therefore having no time to help this girl pass away, 

This vvvvvvv

could have been prevented if SOMEONE DID THEIR FUCKING JOB THE DAY BEFORE VVVVVVV

(I rest my case. Thank you Pierrot for making Rukia either negligent or an idiot. Awesome, And mind you, these changes were unnecessary. The manga’s pacing is fine. They could’ve extended scenes. But nope, had to go for making them meet beforehand.)

Anyway, we get to see some actual stakes in the manga

The next scene which is this in the manga 

has two changes to it. Firstly, obviously Isshin being consoled by Yuzu isn’t included since he isn’t home in the anime, and even if he were, I can see why that would be removed, cute as it may be.

And secondly, due to them having met prior Ichigo asks two additional questions:

And Rukia nods at both, which means she acknowledges that she had seen the girl the hollow was after and yet did nothing to help her pass on. 

(Reminder the Bleach anime was in production WAAAAY past the first 4 volumes, which gave a good general idea of the series, which y’know, was fine to adapt as is.

You’ll see these changes add up into becoming inconsistent with further Bleach lore. There’s a reason people call Bleach a hot mess, and I’m afraid Kubo ain’t really it.)

(Volume 14 Note from Kubo where he talks about the anime being announced)

Back to the series

Pet peeve time: Wish the anime was half as expressive as the manga

These scenes are supposed to represent

This panel:

(Nitpicking? Perhaps, but idc)

So uh, this scene is odd

Again, because of the addition of that filler with the hollow

Ichigo has seen her in action

And they even added Rukia trying to convince him 

even though, yknow???

LITerally the previous day???

Anyway  in the manga, where Ichigo has reason to be distrustful of her and her claims since y’know hes never seen her or a shinigami in action, but has enough proof that she’s a ghost bc his dad didn’t see her, he simply dismisses her before she can reply, and instead of just getting angry for being called a pipsqueak

she shows both Ichigo and the audience proof of her spiritual powers by binding Ichigo and forcing him to quietly listen to her explanations.

(To reiterate - Anime Rukia  has to verbally try to convince Ichigo WHO SAW HER FIGHT A HOLLOW THE OTHER DAY that shes no ordinary ghost. And because of that, she has no other reason to use Sai on him other than that shes mad she was called a pipsqueak bc she just tried to verbally convince him shei is a shinigami. When they could just adapt the manga and have her both demonstrate her powers and put him in his place at the same time. Wild.)

Also CRIMINALLY BORING SHOT, WITH CRIMINALLY BORING RUKIA

#NotMyRukia

LOOK AT THE MANGA

LOOK AT HER SMUGLY OWNING ICHIGO’S IGNORANT ASS #FuckYeahRukia

Also the subs may not show it if you’re watching it on Netflix, but anime Rukia says “I am not allowed to lay my hands on humans outside orders,” which like, you ARE LITERALLY DOING THAT. Manga Rukia is fine with bullying Ichigo, but she draws a line at killing him, but man Anime Rukia, you give no fucks about the laws huh.

why so cheerful?

(also Rukia be right tho)

(specifcally compared to hell you could say Soul society is a resftul place lmfao)

Also anime salary man gets to rest in peace, even like, pray and shit

Meanwhile the manga

YEET TO SOUL SOCIETY

(also notice how we’ve been robbed of ichigo’s silly socks

I swear the anime knows how to suck the soul out of the manga 

Get it? Soul! haha ....moving on.)

Really Rukia? One of your jobs?

GUESS YOU WERE OFF DUTY HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I’M SORRY BUT LIKE, SEE HOW POINTLESS THIS FILLER IS UGH!!!)

(Again pet peeve but look at how ugly this screen is COMPARED TO THE MANGA)

(What have they done to you, queen)

(also they never mention the name Konso ( or as Viz calls it here -”soul funeral”, thanks Viz)

Next on, not a pet peeve, but an observation:

Anime Rukia keeps her sketchbook in her kimono

Manga Rukia keeps it at the titty

Yep, which you neglected to do the day before,

she literally says “With the konso I did just a  moment ago” like she used the word before. Like you can contextually get it, but why cut that line out of the dialogue if you don’t change the next line it’s referenced in?

There’s also a dialogue change from the manga’s well, Viz uses “vaporize” which is not a bad choice given the specific wording Kubo uses, but the original says 

昇華 • 滅却

sublimate/convert • extinguish

which is a clever little nod/foreshadowing to the nature of souls in bleach and that they can be “converted” in and out of a hollowfied state. 

While the anime just says “to slay hollows”, and albeit it lacks the little nod the manga has to offer, I can’t see how they’d include it in the anime at that stage so I’m fine with them simplifying it to like, an exorcism.

A better question then Rukia - WHY DIDN’T YOU SEND OFF HER SOUL????

also WAIT THE GIRL IS STILL ALIVE?? she’s dead-dead by this point in the manga.

BULLSHIT !!!  YOU LITERALLY EXPLAIN LATER WHY!! ACTUALLY YOU EXPLAINED EARLIER WHY!!! YOU LITERALLY SAID THIS, 1 MINUTE AGO :

Anyway, Fishbone almost grants her the priviledge of escaping this God-awful anime, but is suddenly stopped?

AND CAN TALK??

wait WHY DOES FISHBONE TALK?? GHFJD isnt this supposed to be  a juicy reveal for later when Ichigo realizes “hey theyre not actual complete monsters - but used to be humans!” Hm, ok.

Also leaves her alone? Damn ok...

Reminder:

Moooving on...

Speaking of the manga, this little moment is missing:

Since there is no pointless filler that would make him ask about the ghost girl therefore exposing Rukia’s slacking off of her duty, Ichigo realizes that there must be a hollow nearby bc in the manga he actually has braincells to spare. 

Also wiping off the Baron’s moustache moment is gone 😢

Missing and dearly missed is also this moment, which consolidates how protective Ichigo is of his family. He only needs to hear Yuzu scream to click that the hollow is nearby and his family is in danger. I feel like anime Ichigo should be even more worried since his sisters are alone but ok??

Also foreshadows their dynamic of Rukia trying to stop his reckless attempts at pushing himself to protect his family, bc yknow....she has her own Kaien trauma to process.

Next off....

This is .... a choice....

They were very eager to give Yuzu’s lines to Karin just a couple of moments ago but now this whole exchange:

Where we see a very pragmatic yet soft side of Karin

She doesn’t know what is happening, and doesn’t expect her brother to fight it - he just wants him to be safe, because she loves her family. At least warn him before it gets to him and hurts him.

is replaced with this:

Yuzu, sweetie, what do you think he can do to achieve that.

I guess at least Anime Ichigo tries to get Rukia to do her job as she looks down on Yuzu in silence. 

But compare it to the manga:

#MyRukia stops by Karin to check for a pulse and reassures Ichigo that his sister is alive.

Manga Ichigo is NUMBER ONE oniichan in town and doesnt have time to call out to a stranger to save his family - HES BEYOND READY TO GO FIGHT, RECKLESS AS IT IS, EVEN THOUGH HIS OWN FAMILY BEGS HIM TO JUST RUN. because he cant let himself be unable to protect them. He cant live with himself if he doesnt try his darnest to protect them.

*elevator music playing as ichigo tries to get rukia’s attention but she fucks off downstairs, but instead of doing shit he just does the worm on the floor*

which I guess is more realistic for a teenage boy, but Ichigo is literally traumatized by being unable to protect a family member. Y’all think a ghost he’s never seen before is gonna stop him? 

Yooo, pathetic. #NotMyIchigo

[thisisatesttai]

How Bleach: TYBW Can Save Its Ending

This October, we’re going to get the final season of Bleach, adapting the Thousand Year Blood War arc and the end of the series.  It's already set to expand on the ending from the manga, presumably making the final battle with Yhwach longer and more climactic.  But Bleach isn't just about the fighting.  The manga's finale also presented us with a rather odd epilogue, which even its staunchest defenders admit came largely out of nowhere. Fortunately, I think by extending the final battle in a few specific ways, Bleach can not only salvage its climax, but set up its epilogue in a way that will better satisfy its fans.

First of all, I shouldn't even have to say this, but there's no reason why Renji should be the one to accompany Ichigo to fight Yhwach in the final battle.  Renji, who has no business even being alive at this point in the manga.  The series started with Ichigo and Rukia, it's always been about Ichigo and Rukia, and it should absolutely, no question, end with Ichigo and Rukia fighting against the final boss.  This isn't even a shipping thing, this could and probably would be played completely platonically, but thematically, they should be the ones to face Yhwach together.

So let's say the anime gets up to chapter 685, Ichigo and Renji go off to fight Yhwach, and Rukia stays behind with Orihime.  It doesn't come up at all in the manga, but Orihime should be at her lowest point right here.  She ostensibly realized her dream of fighting by Ichigo's side--and they lost.  For a character whose major flaw is her insecurity, this should be a devastating blow to Orihime.  I think the only reason (narratively) to have Rukia stay behind with her is because she is the perfect person to give Orihime the pep talk she needs.  Rukia, who Orihime has always compared herself against, can be the one to tell Orihime that she needs to stop measuring herself against Ichigo, that he already likes her for who she is.  This speech is what the IchiHime ship is lacking, a moment where Orihime lets go of her hangups surrounding Ichigo and learns to fully be herself.

In the meantime, Ichigo and Renji go up against Yhwach and Renji loses the fight, because that's what he does.  As the stakes are raised, Rukia has to tag in, and now we get the final tag-team against Yhwach.  I don't think it's worthwhile to speculate as to how this battle will look, but their bond should be what allows them to beat him, either by unlocking new powers, by strengthening their resolve, or even just because they fight well side-by-side. It's the very final victory lap for this iconic series, and this is the only way to conclude it.

And then, the epilogue will make more sense.  Ichigo and Rukia's bond has been cemented as this unbreakable beacon for the series, as it has always been written, and it paid off in the show's final moments.  Plus, Orihime will have gotten some closure and it'll even be a little heartwarming to see that she's grown up and married Ichigo after all, implying that she took Rukia's advice to heart and it was enough to get her what she wanted.  I don't know what we're going to get from Bleach come October, but I think these are two no-brainer changes--if they're even changes, I feel like Kubo had them in mind when he wrote the ending but wasn't able to include them--will change Bleach from one of the most lackluster shonen endings for a series of its scope and influence, to one of the greatest.

[gamesception]

The Promised Neverland is kind of really good, actually?  I mean, yeah, I’m late to the party as usual, but I just binged the first season of the anime, and then the manga from that point on (the site I was on didn’t have any of the second season, but apparently it diverges from the comic and gets bad anyway, so maybe just read the comic to begin with).  And, I mean, spoilers, obviously, but I’m going to get into some extremely major spoilers here so if you haven’t read it or if you’ve only seen the first season of the anime maybe skip this post and read the manga, but...

...

I’ve tried and failed to write a big long post about all the ways it’s so good, how the main three characters are each so compelling, how its pitch dark but not cynical or misanthropic, with mortal stakes but not gore-porny, positive and optimistic without being trite or naïve, how choosing Emma out of the main three to be the primary protagonist and viewpoint character keeps the story from becoming a masculine militaristic power fantasy, how the antagonists are treated as characters and not just monsters - even the ones that are literal monsters, about how the story never supports or glorifies the idea of sacrificing the weak so that the strong can survive, about how empathy and understanding and a chance for peace are extended to every single villain without putting a burden to forgive on victims and without ignoring the need to fight those who refuse the offer of peace and uphold the status quo, how the story opposes oppressive hierarchies at every turn - not just those the monsters use to control the human children at the farms, but also how the monster elites use access to human meat to controller the lower social classes of monster society, and even to an extent within the human resistance.

But there’s just way too much to talk about to get it all into one big giant post, and I don’t have the stamina for a big extended ongoing project right now - or else I’d return to one of the like 12 I have on hold.

But, like, to pick just one thing....

ok, so eventually we learn what the monsters are and why they eat people.  They’re a weird sort of organism that can temporarily take on the characteristics of things they eat.  Eat a bird and grow wings, eat a bug and grow an exoskeleton, eat a human and gain a humanoid body and the intelligence to become self aware, learn language, form societies - for a while.  But if they go too long without eating people, then they lose their minds and revert to a bestial form.  In order to save the humans, the resistance leader Minerva plans to wipe out the monster society altogether.  After all, they literally have to eat humans to continue being people, there is no possibility of peace.

Protagonist Emma, though, has seen not just the horrific human farms and their cruel and corrupt rulers, but also their towns and settlements, their families and children.  She was even saved at one point shortly after her escape by friendly monsters who opposed the farm system, and even though it seems impossible, she wants to save both the humans and the monsters.

A more typical show, at least among those with premises as dark as The Promised Neverland, wouldn’t take Emma’s side in this.  She would be forced to ‘grow up’ and face the fact that she can’t save everyone.  Her naivety would get someone killed to break her heart and teach her to be hard and cruel as if those things are virtues.  Or, more likely, she wouldn’t be the viewpoint character to begin with, she’d be a side character whose ideals would get herself killed in order to elevate the male characters’ angst and justify their violence.  Either way, the message would be “Emma’s ideals were unrealistic and could never survive contact with the harsh reality of the world.”

TPN instead takes Emma’s Side.  She finds monsters who maintain a humanoid body and intelligence without eating humans, and they’re able to spread that trait to the rest of monster society while the humans all escape to the human world.  Now, as much as I don’t like the grimdark ‘there is no peaceful option’ hypothetical version of the story, this development could have been handled pretty badly.  Like, just reading it like that, it sounds like the story raised a big moral dilemma and then chickened out of it.  But that’s really not how it comes off while you’re reading it, for a couple reasons.

First of all, Emma meets the non-human-eating monsters early in the story, long before we get the explanation of how monsters in general work.  So by the time we learn that the monsters must eat humans to maintain their self identity, the audience already knows that there are exceptions and that an alternative exists.  The story never sets this up to be a moral dilemma in the first place, so when the issue is bypassed it doesn’t feel like it’s undercut itself.

More importantly, though, is the thematic & metaphorical content.  Because the monster society is a pretty explicit metaphor for unjust human societies, and monsters represent the people who make up such societies.  Not just the aristocrats who benefit from the unjust society, or those who directly enforce and uphold it, but also regular people.  People insulated just enough from the suffering and death that their lives are built on that they can turn a blind eye to it, but aware enough of their complicity in that suffering that they construct excuses to justify their part in it, and by proxy excuse those at the top who actually benefit from and shaped the society as it is.  People living lives simultaneously just comfortable enough to keep them docile, but precarious enough that they’re too caught up with struggling to maintain the tenuous grasp on the lives they have to feel like they can work towards anything better.  Monster society in TPN is a cage built out of the corpses of humans cattle, but built to imprison and enslave the monster civilians who eat them.

Hanging the story on the fantastical element of monster biology would divorce it from that essential metaphor while also endorsing an outright genocidal worldview, and TPN explicitly calls out the plan to wipe out the monsters altogether as just that - genocidal.  It never even pretends to entertain the notion that the audience should accept that plan as the right choice, even while it doesn’t condemn Minerva for pursuing it. When Emma is proposing her plan to Minerva, the deal she strikes with him is ‘I will try to make my peaceful solution happen, and if I succeed then you cancel your plan to wipe out the monsters’.  Minerva is eventually shown to be lying when he makes that agreement, but Emma isn’t, and note the if there.  If Emma’s plan fails, then she - and thus the narrative - accepts that Minerva’s plan to save the children is still better than leaving things as they are, even if it means wiping out all the monsters.  After all, the society IS monstrously unjust, and even the lower classes within that society ARE complicit in that injustice.

Minerva’s problem isn’t even presented as a matter of him hating the monsters too much to see a route to peace with them.  The story doesn’t frame the conflict between Minerva’s and Emma’s plans as hate vs. love or revenge vs. forgiveness.  It’s instead more of ‘hierarchy and division bad, mutualism/openness/relying on each other good’.  The point is to show how Minerva’s role as a figurehead who believes he has to project strength to uphold the hope that the other humans have placed in him has worn away his ability to rely on others or to be open to alternatives they offer, leaving him with rigid and inflexible thinking.

So when Minerva learns about the monsters who don’t need to eat humans, he doesn’t see an opportunity for a better outcome - potentially even an easier outcome since he doesn’t have to make enemies of the entirety of monster society - rather he sees a threat to his plan to starve the monsters back into an animalistic state.

And if that whole subplot isn’t explicit enough, Minerva’s internalized need to project strength also results in his physical body wasting away in secret from a condition he believes to be untreatable, but the moment he finally breaks down and admits he needs help Emma is able to point to a solution, one that again doesn’t come across as a cop out because again it takes the form of another character the audience was already introduced to a long time ago.

In a story arc that the second season of the anime adaptation apparently cut entirely, wow the more I hear about anime season 2 the worse it sounds.  And after the first season was so good....

...

Anyway, I tried to pick just one thing and this post still turned into a colossal gushing word cascade, and there are so many other elements to talk about.  Like how The ‘Mothers’ and ‘Sisters’ are menacing villains with seemingly no empathy for the children, but when Sister Krona realizes she’s lost the power struggle with Isabella she leaves the kids tools to help them, and then when Mother Isabella realizes the children have escaped, she covers up the route they used in order to buy them a little extra time to get away.  It’s these little touches - just as much as the short backstories that follow them - that show us how, while they might uphold the system out of fear for their own lives, and might have rationalize their part in it in order to live with the horrible things they’re doing, the mothers and sisters don’t actually hate the children.  Knowing that makes it believable when in the end Isabella does turn on the system, and every single one of the other mothers and sisters join her.

The bit when the fighting is mostly over and she tells the Mother at the house “it’s over, now we can just love them” and the other woman breaks down crying is so sad and human, it makes me tear up thinking about it..

Like I said, all the villains are characters, not just monsters.  They all have motivations for the horrific things they do - sometimes irrational, often selfish, but not even the most unforgivable of the monsters are just evil for evil’s sake.

Again, I’m rambling.  It’s just...  I’m used to these sorts of pitch dark dystopias being, for lack of a better term, kinda fashy in their messaging?  Or at the very least deeply cynical and misanthropic and just kind of mean spirited.  And TPN is so completely the opposite of that, in so many ways.

[tenebriskukris]

Oshi No Ko Chapter 166 - My Thoughts/Analysis

One last ride. I want to lay these chapter reviews to rest better than the series dropped the ball for its ending. As always, spoilers for Oshi No Ko Chapter 166 below.

And we are back with Oshi No Powerpoint. Can this manga actually organically show events or is this entire chapter going to be more slideshow?

No—it is indeed more slideshow. Fantastic. Ruby doesn’t even get to be a fucking character in a chapter dedicated to her. Of course. After being sidelined for a good half of the manga this is how the authors deal with her character. By having her get over Aqua in such a half assed manner that it doesn’t feel earned, doesn’t feel resonant, and simply does not make sense considering how she was when she found out Goro was dead. That girl has nothing now. Why is she still striving to become an idol when there’s no one waiting for her at the end of the day when there’s nothing that the narrative has done to make us think she could get over this tragedy?

More slideshow of all the characters. It seems I was wrong. Most children’s television shows can salvage a more cohesive and thematic ending than this slop. I don’t even care about the new B-Komachi member, Kana and Akane’s appearances, even Ruby at the Dome. It’s just a hollow and empty slideshow that’s trying to evoke emotions that aren’t disgust at the ending.

It’s incredible that Ruby turned out to be Ai 2.0 when the revelations made in Chapter 122-123 onward said that she doesn’t want to be an idol that lies and now here she is, being an idol that lies. Thank you Aqua, for being such a supreme idiot. Ruby’s time as an idol will fade but I’m sure she’d rather have that transient career rather than have you alongside her.

The final few panels are a kick in the teeth for every fan that’s gotten invested in this series. I’d say that I would be surprised but it’s become obvious that the quality of this manga has massively declined for ages by now. This ending is one final reminder of that fact. 

And that’s the end. Analyzing it further is a useless endeavor. It’s a pile of shit and no amount of pretty art will be able to refute that. I could list off any number of reasons Why I think the ending is a hot steaming pile of garbage but for an ending that fails in so many ways that one could say pretty much anything negative about the ending and it’ll hit somewhat accurately. I don’t even want to give it my time and effort in gesturing to just how bad it is when it’s so plainly obvious. There’s no satisfaction in ripping apart the chapter’s guts when it’s already rotting away in the ground.

This is not a good ending. I don’t want to hear anything about tragic endings and the nature of revenge and tragedy and all that bullshit. All those claims might have some merit if the ending wasn’t a Windows Powerpoint Slideshow that forced its content down the readers throats. Even leaving that aside there are a whole host of subplots that never got addressed, character development that was aborted in this manga’s womb, a complete disregard for the themes established in the previous parts in the manga—it’s just—bad. Bad in a way that’s almost like a “fuck you” for being invested in the manga in the first place.

Tragedy in itself does not make a good ending. Sadness and moving on does not inherently make a good ending. The buildup and relevant character beats for these characters contradict the message this chapter is trying to sell. This ending feels divorced from everything that came before it. I can almost smell that this is a first draft kind of ending that came before everything actually happened.

I’d say that I want the series to put me in my grave so it could let me down one last time, but knowing how bad it fumbled with this ending I don’t even trust it to do That. 

I almost want to see how the anime tackles this ending if only because I’m sure that it’ll be canceled before it can even get close to this point. Could you imagine adapting the clusterfuck that were the last couple of chapters? The utter mess that was the movie arc? I can already smell people defending this ending saying it’s actually good because it’s a tragedy and that there was a host of foreshadowing involved. On almost every scale I can come up with in regards to ending does this series’ finale just fucking suck.

On more content adjacent to the manga but related to the series itself; apparently there’s one bonus chapter that’ll be released with the volume? People are really coping that it’ll save this manga but as far as I’m concerned it’s absolutely nothing. No, it’s less than nothing, because it’s the equivalent of a pie to the face after eating a shit sandwich. A joke at the reader’s expense. How despicable. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another Kaguya-sama crossover. Any additional content that this manga vomits up wouldn’t change the fact that this ending exists in the first place. One final cherry on top of a pile of shit doesn’t change much after all is said and done.

There is also a light novel that focuses on Akane and Kana coming out for some reason. Incredible. Even after all of that the authors are still trying to milk out fans for their waifu bucks when they were handled so shoddily. But the lowest common denominator and yuri fans will be eating, I suppose. If they get disappointed by the quality of the work, that’s as much as they deserve, I guess.

Doing some light research on reactions to this clusterfuck of an ending reveals in an interview that this was the ending that the author had in mind all along which—well. I wouldn’t trust the author to write a book for children after this ending, let alone another manga. But this world isn’t an ideal one so he’s managed to hitch his horse to another manga artist and is now on the way to make yet another manga. From what I hear he’s already 2 for 2 with shoddily written endings and mediocre series so it’s surprising that people let him get away with crap like this.

I don’t think I’ll be touching any of the other works by the author with a ten foot pole. I wouldn’t even recommend this series to anyone simply because of how bad everything was so close to the end. There are better media out there that don’t waste the readers’ time and handle its themes better. An ending is the last word that the author has on their series and more often than not when a series’ ending is garbage it sullies the rest of the work by proxy. Every single arc before this one will be stained by the knowledge that its ending was so shoddily written that it dispenses with everything that came before it.

Guess that’s the end of the line. I’d say that it was a pleasure, but that would be a lie. Perhaps that’s fitting given that the manga claims that lies are love and never quite did anything with it.

[boycottyashahime]

Hello! Anti-Sessrin person here. You said if this couple becomes canon it will ruin Sesshomaru's character development. I would love it If you could elaborate on that because you're always so eloquent and smart. It's ok if you don't feel like it, though. Have a nice day!

I've actually been looking for an excuse to sit down and write out a cohesive post on my thoughts about this. Contrary to what the shippers want to believe, my interpretation of Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship doesn't have anything to do with my moral objections to child grooming. I happen to think there's plenty of evidence for a filial interpretation in the text.

First, I'd like to preface my little essay here by saying I'm going off the manga alone. I haven't seen the anime in a long time, because I dropped it when I got a little tired of trying to reconcile the inconsistencies between the two mediums. So, if you read this and have an impulse to say, "hey, what about that thing in episode such-and-such...", keep in mind that I probably just don't remember what you're thinking of.

So, let's go back, alllll the way back, to Sesshoumaru's first appearance. Here's a guy who tears off a dude's head for no other reason than to get the attention of his subordinates to demand a boat. Here's a guy who's spent a long time looking just about EVERYWHERE for his father's remains, not to pay respects, but to plunder them. Here's a guy who feels ENTITLED to rob his dad's grave for treasure he deserves simply for being his father's son.

Sesshoumaru begins his journey as a selfish, spoiled, entitled brat. He doesn't fit the usual profile of a kid throwing a tantrum on the street because he wants the expensive toy sitting in the window; he's very posh and very reserved, but fundamentally, his motivation comes down to the simple fact that he wants Tessaiga. It doesn't even really have anything to do with respect and admiration of his father, otherwise he wouldn't have been so eager to rifle through dear old dad's bones to get at a sword when he had another heirloom right there at his hip. Only Tessaiga was representative of the sheer destructive force he wanted to wield, so he ignored the fact that his dad didn't seem to want him to have it.

This is important, because at first, Sesshoumaru doesn't seem to think of his father in terms of the guy's intentions or the steps he takes for the sake of his sons. Like most rich spoiled kids, Sesshoumaru views the Inu no Taishou in terms of his prestige and how that priviledge can be appropriated for selfish ends. Sesshoumaru wants Tessaiga not because he needs it, but because it's a birthright, and reinforces his legitimacy. When it's clear that Tessaiga seals Inuyasha's youkai blood, keeps him from going berserk, Sesshoumaru loses interest in Tessaiga - it's just a crutch for Inuyasha, and there's no prestige in taking it from him or using it for himself.

Sesshoumaru doesn't start to REALLY consider his father's intentions for the swords until later in the manga, when it comes out that Tenseiga was originally part of Tessaiga, and Inuyasha was meant to get the Meidou Zangetsuha attack eventually as well. It's at this point that Sesshoumaru starts to question if daddy actually HATED him, to give him a rather neat power disguised in a lame shell, but only to develop it so Inuyasha can have it instead, even after Inuyasha already got Tessaiga in the first place. It kind of looks to Sesshoumaru that Inuyasha gets all the powerful cool shit their father left behind, and that there might have been some favoritism coming down HARD on Inuyasha's side.

Above, you can see Sesshoumaru has two interlinked but distinct issues that are addressed throughout the story - his lack of compassion and empathy, and how tied his identity is to his father's favor and prestige. These two are somewhat separated in the narrative; there's a kind of pause in Sesshoumaru's development while a bulk of the middle of the story deals more with other characters and their development, but there is a little bit of a thematic connection between the two halves.

We'll start with the development of Sesshoumaru's compassion since, well, that's where the story begins working on his character. Right before Rin shows up, Toutousai let's Inuyasha's group in on the sword Sesshoumaru carries around and what it does, indicating that Tenseiga requires a compassionate heart to function. A bit ham-handed, but RT isn't very subtle most of the time, so we'll allow it. This sets up the next few scenes in which Sesshoumaru is unable to move and must play captive audience to a little girl doing the literal opposite of what he's used to. Sesshoumaru's habit is to show up and kill things, with no thought to the years of history, relationships, thoughts, emotions, etc that he's snuffing out. But while he's reclined injured in the woods, Rin demonstrates actual LIFE and the preservation of it, that part Sesshoumaru never gets to see. It's made all the starker by how BAD Rin is at caring for herself, let alone the strange monster she found in the woods. She does exactly nothing to help Sesshoumaru, despite how hard she tries, and is even injured by others in her attempts. She is the very picture of vulnerability, the opposite of the strong and capable Sesshoumaru.

This is a stark contrast, because anything less wouldn't be enough to create the necessary awareness of Rin's struggles that Sesshoumaru needs in order to use Tenseiga on here. And I know I've said this before, but I really cannot stress enough how obvious I think the symbolism is when Sesshoumaru uses Tenseiga for the first time; a phallic object gives life to a child, and the object's owner looks after that life throughout the rest of the story. He's not very good at looking after it, and it's clear that he's not sure about taking responsibility for Rin at first, because she pleaded for him to come back for her when he and Jaken left her behind to requisition a sword from Gaijinbou. To me, it's reminiscent of a teenager who knocked someone up, and ended up having to learn to give a crap about the result.

But, even if you don't accept that symbolism as particularly significant, Rin being a child, and human, and weak, unable to survive on her own, are important characteristics to how Sesshoumaru's compassion develops. Sesshoumaru is one of the strongest characters in the series, and he rarely has to worry about his own safety. And since he's in the habit of just murdering everyone he comes across if they're in his way, he's never had to worry about the safety of anyone else, either. When Rin comes into the picture, though, Sesshoumaru is faced with the uncomfortable reality of vulnerability in general. Through her earnest and incompetent attempts to foster survival in a world that can and does crush her, she's opened his eyes to how the disadvantaged, those without a powerful youkai lineage to rely on, have to struggle.

Rin herself has nothing to offer Sesshoumaru within this context of supreme vulnerability. She's not a friend, because she can't offer mutual support or use a skill to their benefit as a team. She's not a lover, because, well, she's a child and sexual/romantic attraction are conditions that wouldn't allow Sesshoumaru to extend his compassion beyond just her. As a mostly helpless kid, Rin has to rely upon Sesshoumaru and his power to survive, and Sesshoumaru employs his strength to keep her alive, getting nothing but a sweet smile out of it all. She gets all the benefits, he has all the obligations. This is PURE compassion - using one's advantages to another's benefit because you care about them, and not because you derive something from it as well.

This is why making Rin into Sesshoumaru's lover is a REALLY thoughtless take. It puts conditions on the compassion and muddies the message.

Moving onto Sesshoumaru's continued character development in the latter part of the story, the sword drama starts back up with slow, when Toutousai shows up and offers to reforge Tenseiga into a weapon. Sesshoumaru discovers that because he got angry enough to break his primary weapon in defense of Kagura's honor, he's triggered the next evolution of Tenseiga into something that can murder. Which is what he wanted at the beginning, yay! I want to point out here that Toutousai says Tenseiga noticed a change in Sesshoumaru's heart - anger for the first time for the sake of another. This implies that what Jaken said about Sesshoumaru getting tangled up in the fight against Naraku because Naraku kidnapping and using Rin to manipulate Sesshoumaru hurt Sesshoumaru's pride is actually accurate; he just really hated the thought of Naraku trying to use him, even if it was a failed attempt.

After going through HELL to develop the Meidou into a full circle (literally), Sesshoumaru then learns that the Meidou belongs to Tessaiga and Inuyasha, and that it's supposed to be handed over. Now, part of Sesshoumaru's angst over this idea, I think, is not just "did daddy love Inuyasha more?", but also the assumption that Inuyasha would have to KILL him in order to retake the Meidou Zangetsuha into Tessaiga. Thinking that your father meant for your little brother to kill you at some point to take your stuff is a pretty disturbing thought, to be entirely fair to him. This is why, when Sesshoumaru jumps into the meidou to take back control of the Naraku-possessed Tenseiga and breaks it deliberately, he spends the rest of the time in there moodily resigned to disappear. He genuinely believes that his father meant for him to die at this point, and even after they get out of there, he seems genuinely depressed.

This is Sesshoumaru's lowest point as a character. He's lost something he thought his father had meant for him, at his father's own wish, and he can't help but question why his dad would give him something just to take it away and give it to Inuyasha. It looks for all the world like favoritism, and since the Inu no Taishou is dead, there's no asking him what the hell the meaning of all this is.

This is all leading to one of the most infuriatingly ridiculous scenes I have ever seen in a manga - when Magatsuhi has crushed Sesshoumaru and everyone thinks he's been killed/absorbed, Magatsuhi is blown apart and rendered unable to reform by the shiny new sword clutched in Sesshoumaru's newly regrown arm. I could talk your ear off about how having Sesshoumaru stop being an amputee is erasure of consequences for his actions, or how being given back an arm is kind of a slap in the face for actual amputees, and where the mother f*ck did that sword come from anyway, but that's not what this essay is about, so I'll just keep all that to myself. The point of this is articulated by Toutousai when he says that Sesshoumaru had to let go of Tessaiga and his father's heirloom to stand on his own as a daiyoukai.

We've already gone over how Sesshoumaru is one of the most powerful characters in the series, who rarely has to worry about his well-being. He's just really strong without having to try. Sesshoumaru had already learned that he didn't need Tessaiga ages ago - he knew this when he learned that Inuyasha needed Tessaiga to keep from tearing himself apart eventually. But when he thought he had been passed down something from his father that was truly meant to be his, only to put all this work into it so that Inuyasha could have it, that embittered him again. It's not that he wanted the sword necessarily, but the thoughts and consideration of his father, who seemed to be putting everything he had into Inuyasha.

But his previous experiences protecting and considering someone (in some cases, multiple someones) weaker than him should have tipped him off. During the very battle in which he got his new arm and sword, he was actively helping those around him avoid Magatsuhi and keeping them close because he had a plan and the strength to carry it out. He was willing to take the extra step to protect Inuyasha and friends before trying to take care of Magatsuhi though, and that was the point. He put everyone else's needs ahead of his own, even Inuyasha's, and he did it without even thinking.

Toutousai just articulated what Sesshoumaru should have already intuitively known by that point. He never needed his father's heirlooms, the swords, his dad's power. They were unnecessary for him from the start. Inuyasha needed a leg up, because his own BODY could kill him after a while. But Sesshoumaru always had the capability of being great on his own. He just needed to finally separate his ego from who his father was and become his own person; stand on his own as a great youkai. While I don't agree with the execution, I can get behind the big lesson - don't rely on your daddy's wealth and influence to prop you up, and do the work to build a personality and identity of your own.

Which is ANOTHER reason why making Rin into a lover would be a thoughtless take. It would walk back Sesshoumaru's final lesson about being his own person apart from his father.

So, there you go. A comprehensive post regarding my take on Sesshoumaru's character development. I could add in a bit about Sesshoumaru coming to understand his father's consideration and the lengths he went to for the sake of protecting Inuyasha by having to give similar consideration to Rin, but I think this post is long enough, and that one statement on that aspect pretty much sums it up. Let me know if you would like me to elaborate on any of this, or if you would like to argue any of the points, I'm up for it. Might take me a minute to respond, mind you, but hopefully it won't take as long as it did to draft this behemoth.

Take care.

[thyandrawrites]

Why does Hawks need to die to gain redemption but yet Dabi gets to live? Sorry if that sounded like a hateful question, it's not I'm just curious because in a way it's like saying one is beyond redemption while the other is not. Does this mean if you're a hero and you do bad you're beyond redemption but if you're a villain and you do bad then you are not? I don't know I feel that defeats the purpose of a hopeful ending really. Shouldn't everyone have the same chance at redemption?

that’s not what I’m saying at all. Please don’t put words in my mouth. Being a hero or a villain doesn’t have anything to do with it, and that was never the reason behind my argument. Redemption arcs are just one type of regular character arcs. And yes, everyone has the same chance at getting one, so long as it fits with the forshadowing, because redemption is not something that you unlock when you’re “deserving” enough. That’s just christian ideology. Redemption arc are regular character arcs because what they portray is the simple growth of a certain character.

For that reason, I never excluded the possibility of a redemption for Hawks on pure principle. In fact, what I said is that Hawks is being set up for a redemption by death trope. I never said that he deserves death, or even that it’s what I personally want for his character. I was commenting on the direction that the story itself is setting up for him. You know, because commenting on narratives is what a meta blogger is supposed to do.

Narratively speaking, Twice is Hawks’ shadow. I talked about this here. He is Hawks’ humanity. He is Hawks’ longing for genuine bonds and Hawks’ desire to be of help to others. When a story makes a character confront their shadow, what it’s asking is for that character to come to terms with the things they repressed, and reconcile with their shadow. But Hawks didn’t do that. He killed his. He refused that reconciliation. He refused to give in to his personal wishes, to his emotions, and decided to be a tool for oppression instead. An agent of punishment. Thematically, a character who kills their shadow cannot survive the manga, because he’s refusing to grow, and a character who refuses to grow is narrative dead weight, something that hinders a story instead of pushing it forward.

Besides, even if you don’t understand shadow symbolism or for whatever reason don’t think that’s valid tool to interpret Hawks with. Let’s put it in different terms. Hawks’ central character struggle has always been self-sacrifice. He’s always giving up on his personal wants in order to do what others need from him. So one way to give a natural conclusion to his character arc is to make him sacrifice his most precious thing, his life, in order to protect what HE thinks needs to be done, what Keigo, not the system, feels is important.

Personally, I always wanted for him to break out of his cage and finally embrace freedom of choice, freedom to feel. But he already gave all of that up when he backstabbed Twice. He had his chance, and he blew it. Only his fall can now truly free him.

On the other hand, the central struggle of characters like Dabi and Shigaraki has always been that of being thematically more dead than alive. They were rejected by those who should’ve kept them safe and those who should’ve loved them, so the natural progression of their arcs is for them to finally be given that safety, that understanding. Killing them doesn’t make any narrative sense, because they are already “dead”. That wouldn’t be character progression, only stagnation.

[everythingsinred]

Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: The Anime (pt. 3)

The anime is a different species than the manga, something that frequently happens during the adaptation from page to screen. Since they’re so different, I’ll analyze them separately.

In the last two sections, we explored how the anime treated the start of NatsuMikan's relataionship, as well as how different the story can be with some added elements and feelings. In this part, I'll talk about some more manga divergence, with perhaps more of an emphasis on Natsume because there's some new themes added in regard to his story.

Episode 12 vs. Chapter 11

Another “filler” episode, filler in that the events are completely different than in the manga, is the 12th episode. Just like in the manga, Mikan finds out that her ability class is uninterested in participating in the culture fest, much to her dismay. She ends up spending the whole episode wandering around campus, watching her peers prepare but struggling to come up with something for her class to do. In the manga, she comes up with the idea for the culture fest on her own, but in the anime it’s a journey and it couldn’t have happened without Natsume. Whereas at this part of the manga, he can barely tolerate her, in the anime he already likes her and he helps her out in his own way.

“‘Tis but a flesh wound.”

She finds Natsume in the classroom by himself, reading his manga. She vents to him her frustration and admits her jealousy: his amazing alice has many uses at a culture fest while hers does not. He burns the tips of her hair but confesses that he’s not allowed to participate beyond being a spectator. When Sumire’s brother shows up looking for Hotaru, he finds Natsume and Mikan, insulting both of them but especially Mikan. Natsume sets his hair on fire and then tells her to go back and talk to her class. The back of his manga gives her the idea of the RPG, much to his chagrin since he winces when she thanks him for the help. He talks to her the whole scene, defending her from Permy’s brother and even helps her (indirectly) come up with what to do with the SA class.

They have so much in common, specifically about the culture festival, and Mikan realizes this and it’s part of the reason why Natsume sticks up for her here. Just like her, he knows how it feels to be excluded because of your ability class. The manga’s version of events seems a bit darker, but it’s hard to be depressed after the counterpart’s version, where Natsume and Mikan bond together over their shared struggles.

Although the class is on board with her idea, Jinno (again…) doesn’t let them participate, claiming that he wishes they couldn’t participate at all just like the DA class. The SA class gives up and Mikan blows up on them and runs away, running into Natsume, this time under a tree. She tells him she’s convinced that he’s lonely and wants friends, and she obviously doesn’t have any qualms with being a friend to him. She proposes the two of them spend the culture fest together, surprising him.

For all of their differences, after all, they’re more alike than they seem. Two outcasts befriending each other despite the school’s efforts to suppress their fun is empowering and uplifting and sweet. After all, despite how popular Natsume is, his worshippers mostly go along with whatever he’s doing and saying, rather than trying to find ways for him to have fun. For them, it’s more about getting Natsume to like them. For Mikan, it’s about getting him to smile, and that’s what sets her apart. She knows what he’s like, that he could easily tease her or insult her or cruelly reject her and yet she asks him anyway. She wants to include him in ways nobody else has, other than Ruka. You could easily see Mochu or one of his fan club members saying “Let’s ditch this anyway! Who cares! It’s lame anyway!” while Mikan gets to the heart of it. Natsume doesn’t actually think the festival is lame or boring. He just can’t participate and it hurts his feelings. “Let’s participate anyway,” Mikan says. “We’ll do it together because we’re both not allowed.” It’s what he actually wants someone to say to him, even if he won’t admit it.

If you look close enough, you can see Natsume’s little blush.

She says they’re both on their own, unable to participate. He tells her to go talk to her class instead and reconcile with them. Despite Mikan giving him an offer that he wants to accept, he tells her to do what’s best for her. She is upset about her argument with her class, and just hanging around with him won’t make her as happy as she would be if she made up with them. He’s not selfish at all--he doesn’t want her company if it comes at the price of her happiness. Furthermore, he’s not upset in the slightest that after the episode they no longer have “we’re not allowed to participate” in common. It’s still something they bonded over and it’s enough that she can have fun, even if he can’t. She is impressed by his ability to know what’s wrong and help her in his own way. There’s a growing affection between them, where Natsume values her optimism and cheerfulness, and she values his secret and subtle kindness. She’s learning to see his hidden acts of kindness for what they are and appreciating them when she recognizes them. And no, he won’t tell her anything about the DA class except that it’s different than the other classes, but he doesn’t get mad at her for asking. He wishes he could tell her. It’s just not an option. The crow disrupting the songbirds on the streetlamp is so metaphoric, it’s kinda obvious. But is the crow Natsume, who can’t have fun like the songbirds, or is the crow Persona, who ruins the fun he sees?

Genuinely I’m shocked that Natsume survived this emotional ordeal. How did he not go into cardiac arrest.

Right after Mikan’s departure an onlooking Hotaru asks Ruka if he's glad nothing happened, as if something would’ve happened. Their connection and softness is something perceptible, even from a distance. He’s different with her, and both Hotaru and Ruka can see it.

Then Natsume passes out, implying that he felt poorly during his conversation with Mikan but didn’t let it show, probably so she wouldn’t worry. Knowing that Natsume had earlier gone on a mission where he presumably gets shot in the side adds a new layer to their interactions. After all, he hadn’t told Persona what was wrong when he’d asked and Ruka was surprised too, so it can be assumed that Natsume went back to his dorm after the mission and then patched himself up. Seeing as he is only ten years old, it couldn’t have been that good of a patch-up, and he is still injured. Natsume was grouchy because of the culture fest and because he was dealing with agonizing pain all day.

Kitty, you better not be dead.

In any case, Mikan asking Natsume to hang out is a sign of Mikan warming up to him, and wanting to spend time with him. This can be contrasted with an event that happens around this same time in the manga, though Manga!Natsumikan still hate each other by the time the Culture Fest is announced. He likes her in the anime though, at this point in time, and his rejecting her invitation is not because he doesn’t want to hang out with her, but because she still has a chance to make things right with her class and have a fun Culture Fest without him.

The Reo Arc (Episodes 13, 14, & 15 vs. Chapters 13, 14, 15, & 16)

The Reo Arc (the arc that turns Natsume’s image of Mikan completely around in the manga) is a bit pointless in the grand scheme of things in the anime. Don’t get me wrong, it’s more or less the same story and it’s still fun to watch, but it holds a different weight in the manga. In the anime, he already likes her at this point, so his feelings don’t change much, though they might have gotten stronger and possibly even softer (he seems very angry at himself for liking her before this arc, probably to keep his character in line with the manga, and after the arc he is much less upset about his feelings... or maybe just as upset but for different reasons). The Reo Arc was much better done in the manga. It served two purposes: to make Sumire one of Mikan’s friends and, most importantly, to have Natsume start liking Mikan.

If he already likes Mikan, then the anime should’ve focused more on the purpose of having Sumire and Mikan become friends but the emphasis does not change. It stays focused on Mikan and Natsume, attempting to serve a purpose that has already been served. Plus, the intervention of Narumi and the SA class seems very silly and was done to fill up time in the episodes. I also don’t understand why the culture fest started while Mikan, Natsume, and Sumire were in Reo’s custody, since that wasn’t the case in the manga and it seemed like they changed things for no reason, not even revealing the impact of that change. Furthermore, they were forced by this arc to then include Reo in the Circus Arc, which was undoubtedly the worst mistake of the anime. After all, including a potential big bad who just disappears after he kidnaps three kids isn’t satisfying at all. Narratively, they had to bring him back again as a villain, but the way they did it was lackluster.

Of course, not everything has to have some thematic significance and not everything has to be finely tuned to still be good, but there’s little for me to analyze if it’s so unchanged.

Though there is one scene, before anyone gets kidnapped, that has plenty of stuff to analyze and is thematically important. Natsume has a nightmare of himself entirely shrouded in darkness and surrounded by people whispering about him. He runs, because it’s all he can do, begging people to leave him alone. It’s almost sad that in many ways, Natsume acts so cold because all he wants is for people to leave him alone and yet this behavior is for some quite appealing (hence he has a fan club he couldn’t care less about) or so repulsive that his upperclassmen bully him even more. The dream then shifts to Persona telling him he has a mission, so on top of bullying and ostracization and exclusion, he is also forced into the position of child soldier, doing unspeakable things for an organization that does not care about his safety in the slightest. That’s how he feels, really, like there’s just too much for him to handle, and not enough good to make up for it. He’s shouldering so much pain and has nobody to talk to about it. But then there’s a light! And Mikan’s voice calling for him! And he reaches for her, because it’s the first brightness we’ve seen in this dream, and the first he’s seen in a while.

Unfortunately, that’s not where the dream ends. Natsume can’t reach her. Persona’s grasp is too strong, and he gets pushed right back down into the darkness. This is the most important part of the dream, really, but the part that gets most overlooked. Mikan is Natsume’s light, but he’s not allowed to have her. Natsume’s particular brand of coldness and cruelty to Mikan is to protect her. His life is nothing but darkness and her being his light only illuminates him, while it would bring her darkness and possibly even dim her light. You can’t mix black and white without getting grey--his life would brighten and hers would fade. Moreover, Natsume is dying. He won’t get to be with Mikan, even if he wanted to, even if it wouldn’t ruin her. He doesn’t have time. By the time he gets close enough, he’ll be dead, and it would all have been a moot point.

So much misunderstanding about Natsume’s behavior stems here, from the mistaken belief that he is cold and cruel and mean and distant from Mikan because that’s just the way he is, rather than the way he has to be in order to protect people from himself. From his back story in the manga we see that Natsume was always a snarky, unsmiling kid, but he wasn’t like he was when Mikan met him. He had warmth, passion, life, and the school snuffed that out of him. If Natsume’s head weren’t held constantly under cold water, he’d have a much easier time making friends, having fun, and being happy. He might even give wooing Mikan a shot, because as it stands now, he is not even close to considering it.

Anyhow, the rest of the arc is very similar to the manga, so we’ll focus on that for the next essay. I will discuss this more when I analyze the manga, because those events stay the same but matter way more in terms of the manga.

Episode 16 vs. Chapter 18 & 19

Mikan and her SA class have a labyrinthian Aladdin activity, accomplishable only because of their unique alices, but at first no one wants to play. It takes Mikan’s friends--Ruka, Sumire, and Narumi--to make the attraction popular. I’ll talk more about this in the manga section because it means more in the manga and the anime adaptation didn’t change the original much. The analysis will be much more satisfying in context of the manga, anyway.

Episode 17 vs. Chapter 20 & 22

In the seventeenth episode, Mikan and co. visit Hotaru’s attraction--featuring Pigula from the manga and a little competition attraction featuring chickens. The one noteworthy Natsumikan moment is Natsume conceding that “everyone has to be good at something” when it turns out Mikan is pretty good at the game.

That seems like it could be a compliment, but considering that Mikan is athletically talented and cheerful, she is good at things beyond a chicken game. It just so happens that this game plays on her strengths. Silly Natsume. Later on, Mikan shows her compassion for the little boy who screws up his chicken and Hotaru’s backstory is unlocked. In this episode, the emphasis is on Hotaru and her brother. The manga explores different themes, including Mikan’s insecurity about her alice and not knowing what she wants to do with it, as well as Ruka’s feelings about his triple-star status.

There is one thing that really stands out in the anime that doesn’t have the same meaning in the manga. Earlier, Natsume and Mikan bonded before the culture fest about not being allowed to participate and when she asked if he wanted to hang out with her during it, he helped inspire her to make up with her friends instead. After beating the labyrinth, Natsume got three wishes from Mikan and one of them was to spend time together during the festival. He doesn’t exactly put it that way, in the manga or the anime, instead opting to wish that she’d carry his stuff around, but ultimately he wanted what she had offered: to spend time together during the culture fest. It makes him happy and makes his festival experience so much better, even if she is a downer for some of it.

Summary

This part of the anime, we discover some more information about Natsume. This new information adds new layers to his relationship with Mikan. The scenes the anime adds give the story some extra richness, like the dream he has at the start of the Reo Arc. Because of the addition of Natsume's perspective, we can see more clearly why he acts the way he does, but also why despite all his acting cool, he's still just a kid that wants to have fun and be happy, and why it crushes him that he's not allowed to be a child.

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[linkspooky]

Maki and Megumi pt. 2

Maki and Megumi are distant cousins and two characters connected by their shared blood in the Zenin family, but usually they’re almost polar opposites. I discuss this in my previous post about the two. However, despite their differences or maybe because of them they work rather well together as complementary personalities. Here’s an analysis on Jujutsu Kaisen chapter 108 and why it was Megumi who showed up to fight with Maki. 

All of the fights in Jujutsu Kaisen aren’t just there fore the sake of showing off cool patterns, every fight and fight matchup has thematic meaning. That means there’s something the author has to say in comparing and contrasting whoever participates in a fight in Jujutsu Kaisen. 

We see Maki and Megumi fighting together again like they did in the Sister School Event, because they both have something to learn from this fight. The Shibuya Incident Arc is such an excellently planned out arc that there are several parallels already going into this fight.

1. NobaMaki Parallels

Ever since Gojou got boxed the theme of this arc so far has been that while individual strength is important, it’s not everything, and simply being stronger is never going to win you every fight. This is why we see characters who are strong individualists getting hit hard this arc. 

Maki’s entire current goal revolves around the idea of her own individual strength. The way she sees it, in order to fight for her place in the world, and prove her family wrong about her she has to get stronger than even the toughest Jujutsu Sorcery user in her family all on her own. 

This is something we see Maki has sacrificed several personal relationships for, including any kind of healthy relationship with her own twin sister who she was much closer to when she was younger. Now Maki’s bad relationship with Mai isn’t her individual fault, it’s the family situation that created the tension between them, and both Maki and Mai are bad at reaching out to each other or understanding one another. However, Maki even says as much to Mai that she has to prioritize herself. 

In Maki’s mind, rising up to the top alone is more important than anything else, even being together with her twin sister. Maki’s not wrong for thinking that way she’s just an individualist, she’s very strong and singleminded. However, an individualist mindset does not win the fight in every situation. Which is why her parallels with Nobara come into play this arc. Nobara, Maki and Gojou are all characters that strongly parallel one another they all seem to believe they can accomplish anything with their own individual strength. They are, highly motivated and confident individuals, and most of the time this attitude works for them but not always. 

Nobara is also someone who uniquely sympathizes with Maki’s situation. You can see her sympathy arises for two reasons, one Nobara’s always attuned to people who get judged by unfair standards (she hated the people in her small town for judging her only friend instead of getting to know her), and two because Maki fought back against that unfairness. 

Nobara tends to like people who fight back against their circumstances with everything they have. She tends to dislike people who succumb to their circumstances and lash out. She has almost no pity for them. (Just a reminder you don’t... have to sympathize with someone going out of their way to hurt your friend because they don’t know how to communicate their abandonment issues in a healthy way). This is the entire point of setting up the Maki / Mai parallel where Nobara sympathizes with one of them, and doesn’t sympathize with the other even though they’re both reacting to the exact same situation. 

It’s because the way Maki copes really really alligns with Nobara’s world view, which is that with self confidence and strength she should be able to overcome everything. Whereas, Mai who is part of the Kyoto school who tends instead cling to connections of other people around her. (To Mai, her connection with Maki was what was more important than being a Jujutsu sorcerer, hence why she feels abandoned. Mai’s so close to her Kyoto friends one of them literally tries to explain the situation to Nobara.) The Kyoto kids are in general known to be much closer and more trusting than the Tokyo Kids who all fight side by side, but tend to be distant. 

Two different ways to react to a situation. However neither one of them is wrong, and neither one will work for every situation. Which is why Nobara loses her first major fight in the Shibuya Arc so far, because her go to strategy was to use herself as a decoy and charge in alone. As a result she was taken by surprise. She was stronger than her opponent but strength was not enough. 

Now paralleling that situation we have had several comments in the last three chapters on how Maki is completely out of her depth. Yes, Maki is strong, however she’s still not quite there yet. 

Maki’s worldview is that strength is everything, so what can she do when she’s just not strong enough to contribute to the situation? Maki isn’t going to be as strong as two much older sorcerers when she is still pretty much just a kid. It’s impossible to become that strong that fast no matter how hard you push yourself. 

So, what Maki experiences is the frustration of reaching her limit. She’s strong, but not strong enough, and therefore she’s just getting in the way in this situation, and even had to be protected by a man she hates. 

Maki is getting picked on so relentlessly by characters here in order to put a crack in her world view. There are situations where her strength will not be enough. Even if she was the strongest person on earth (Gojou) she would still be caught in those situations. The solution isn’t to get stronger, the solution is to open yourself up to different possibilities and be flexible rather than try to solve every problem in one way. 

Maki even admits it. This was her mistake 1) refusing to listen to Nanami when he told her she probably should not be here, and 2) not going to meet up with Megumi because she wanted to prove herself. (Though in that dialogue she’s kind of also in denial about it, she says her real mistake is that she didn’t take it out fast enough but... the fact that Megumi saves her this chapter indicates that her mistake was indeed leaving Megumi). 

Maki’s mistake would have cost her her life, if Megumi had not shown up. Her narrative punishment is that one she’s put in a situation where despite being crazy strong, she’s just a burden to the others around her, and two isn’t able to overcome the situation with guts and her brash attitude alone and has to sit back and be saved. 

2. MegumiYuji Parallels

Megumi and Yuji are also strong narrative foils to the extent Nobara and Maki are. It’s no coincidence that literally right after we see Yuji lose a battle, Megumi comes in the clutch. What’s really interesting about this arc is that it’s a deconstruction of the piece of advice Gojou once gave Megumi. 

Gojou tells Megumi that he needs to stop downplaying himself for the sake of others, and instead learn to swing for the fences the way he and Yuji do. While this is good advice, once again it’s not entirely right. It’s also advice steeped in Gojou’s world view. 

Remember Gojou is someone traumatized by the fact that his only friend Getou went rogue and betrayed him. He once believed that as long as him and Getou were together as the strongest duo they could accomplish anything, only to be struck with his own powerlessness when Getou left and he could do nothing to save him, or make him stay. Gojou is someone who ever since then had a habit of taking everything on his own shoulders. Gojou’s advice is good to break Megumi out of his self sacrificial habits, but it also comes from a place of Gojou assuming that you’ll always die alone because nobody could ever fight alongside him after Getou left. 

Gojou’s decision to go alone into the subway system is the mistake that starts this whole arc up. When characters decide to cooperate together in this arc they’re rewarded, when they try to run ahead alone they’re punished. There’s a reason both Yuji and Megumi fought together before splitting off to fight on their own. 

This fight established that cooperating with another person is often harder than fighting alone, but also something ultimately worth it because strength would not have won Yuji this fight. The reason Yuji won is because Megumi’s strategy, and Megumi needed Yuji’s cooperation with him to overwhelm the enemy. 

Megumi, after unlocking Chimera Shadow Garden has developed into more of an individualist. He’s followed Gojou’s advice. The most important part of Gojou’s advice however isn’t that Megumi had to stop cooperating with other people and become more like Gojou, but rather the problem is Megumi’s way of cooperating with people is a tendency to sacrifice himself, and belittle himself for the sake of others. Megumi as a person is someone who is very repressed. 

There’s a reason Megumi was a delinquint in middle school, but is a very distant and quiet boy now. Megumi is someone who is always deeply angry, but instead of trying to deal with those feelings he represses them. He feels a deep hurt for being abandoned by his father, but insists to Gojou he doesn’t care. He feels deep protective feelings for his sister, but distances himself from her as much as possible. Megumi’s tendency to sacrifice arises from this, because he’s repressing himself. He thinks the only way he can help others is to sacrifice himself. However, true cooperation is what he did with Yuuji, it’s butting your heads together and both sticking up for what you believe in and finding a compromise between that. Getting along with people can often mean fighting with them too, and Megumi tends to be a very conflict avoidant person. 

In the current arc it’s Megumi whose grown in this particular aspect, and Yuji who hasn’t. The manga makes it clear that Yuji and Choso are pretty much neck and neck, the fight could have gone to either person. So, what is it exactly that loses Yuji the fight? 

This moment right here where Yuji decides that helping other people means sacrificing himself. He becomes more like Megumi, but is taking on a negative aspect of him rather than a positive one. This is also a flaw that’s been present within Yuji’s character from the start, he’s borderline suicidal sometimes in how willing he is to throw himself into danger and rather than focusing on survival he’s always trying to make peace with his death and find a good death. Yuji is someone who accepts his death far too easily, because he views himself as someone expendable. 

Yuji makes a decision midfight to keep fighting even if it means dying, instead of trying to live to the next day even though he promised Megumi this before the fight. 

That’s the flaw in Yuji’s logic. Him deciding to pull a heroic death in the middle of a subway tunnel isn’t helping anyone, whereas he could have made the decision to fall back and wait for help. Maki only got saved because Megumi was there to help him. In this situation mirroring Maki, Yuji was only saved because Getou’s surrogate family was there to help him. 

Yuji despite sacrificing himself for others is still really only thinking with an individualist mindset here. He’s making decisions without really thinking about how it will affect the people around him. Whereas, Megumi who has been the most cooperative character this arc, and also directly faced his tendency to take a dive so other people can succeed gets to show up in Maki’s fight. 

3. Future Predictions

There are several parallels between Maki and Megumi. Just to summarize, they’re both connnected to the Zenin clan. But while Maki’s entire life is dominated by the Zenin clan, Megumi doesn’t really care about his connection to the family. They both have sisters who are incredibly important to them. They also both chose to distance themselves from their sisters at one time, Megumi lost his sister to a curse and wants nothing more than to go back and apologize. Maki’s sister is still alive but she’s too prideful to apologize. They are both people who were taken in and helped by Gojou, Maki reflects Gojou’s ideology whereas Megumi is ideologically the exact opposite of Gojou and a much more cooperative person. 

They are set up as characters who have several similiarties, but almost always make opposite choices. Even from their family situations, Megumi was born outside of the clan but has a powerful Jujutsu Sorcery, Maki was born inside of the clan but was born with no Jujutsu Sorcery technique. 

The point of having such similiar but opposite characters together is so they can work together. They both have a lot to learn from each other, Maki has to learn how to more effectively fight in a team because there are going to be situations where her strength can’t solve everything. Megumi has to learn not to repress himself. Which is Maki’s greatest strength she never represses anything, because to her the absolute worst thing is the death of the self and having to let go of her pride. 

However, more than that Megumi and Maki being brought together now is likely because they are going to face an even bigger opponent than Dagan. Dagan is cute and all, but he’s not exactly someone who would bring about character development from them other than being a hard opponent to fight again.

However, one last similarity with Megumi and Maki is that they both heavily parallel Toji. Who just... happens to be running around right now. 

Maki and Megumi both share several flaws with Toji. He serves as a shadow archetype for both of them. 

The shadow exists as part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings.

A shadow archetype is a character meant to highlight the repressed flaws of other characters. Toji is made up of Megumi and Maki’s flaws, but rather than being a work in progress as a person, Toji let those flaws utterly ruin him. 

For Maki - Toji parallels her in two aspects, one her desire to prove herself stronger than everyone else despite not having a Jujutsu Sorcery technique through her own strength alone, and two her choice to abandon her family members. 

Toji represents the extreme consequences of Maki’s choice. Maki is much more sympathetic than Toji, but she still displays unhealthy behavior that’s not going to be good for her in the wrong run. The thing about Maki is that she can have both, she can have both her connection with her sister, and also want to become strong enough to prove her family wrong about her. She just refused to compromise. Toji is someone who followed his own selfish desire to the end and regretted it. 

He thought the only important thing was being stronger than his opponents, and because he only lived for that strength, he abandoned everything else in his life, including his moral and his own son. Toji is a bad future if Maki continues to make that choice. 

For Megumi - Toji is Megumi’s father (obviously), and while he never raised Megumi they are similiar personality wise. They both repress themselves to an extreme amount. 

It’s not that Toji didn’t feel guilty for abandoning Megumi and killing people, it’s just no matter what he did he always repressed it and refused to face his actions. He was so good at denying his own feelings that he didn’t realize how much he regretted abandoning his son until he was literally at the brink of his own death and it was too late to change it. 

Megumi is also someone who tends to seriously regret things. He regrets the way he interacted with his sister, because now she’s gone he can’t apologize to her. Megumi and Toji are both bad at handling their own emotions, and especially their traumas. Megumi’s reaction to Toji’s decision to abandon him is to put a lid on all feelings related to his father and pretend he doesn’t care. 

That’s never healthy and it’s likely the lid is going to come off when he faces Toji again. Here’s my prediction for the arc, Toji is going to show up and it will be Maki and Megumi who fight together against them, because he’s a shadow archetype for the flaws that both of them need to overcome. 

[hamliet]

I feel like people confuse heroes with what we know here in America as cops lol

What’s so wrong with Hawks killing Twice is that he’s claiming to be a hero. Heroes don’t kill. And people keep comparing them to real life cops who kill when they deem it’s necessary, or whatever.

Now don’t get me wrong I don’t think cops should kill either, but that’s a different discussion. But the bottom line is you can’t call yourself a hero if you can’t find a way to save people without killing someone else, and Hawks is doing just that, and the other “heroes” are allowing it, which in my opinion makes them not *true* heroes.

Why people insist on forcing cop values onto fictional heroes is beyoooond me.

So I got this ask like two months ago (at least; it might’ve been longer) and wrote out a response, but decided not to post it because it is a complex answer. With the diskhorse now revived and rearing its ugly head, I decided to refine a bit of this and post my thoughts. 

I don’t think a distinction between cops and heroes is really important, since as far as we have seen in BNHA... we aren’t really sure of the distinction, plus at least for me as an American, I can’t comment on Japan’s system (and there’s a major racism factor in the US).

We have seen heroes willing to kill in the manga (I mean, they were all trying to kill Tomura), though. This fits with this chapter’s (314) indication of a highly corrupt system. 

I also completely agree with you: in general (look extreme situations exist, but BNHA thus far isn’t in one; it will likely have one towards the end with AFO) if you can’t find a way to save a life without it coming at the cost of another, that isn’t something heroic to be celebrated, and that’s a cheap-ass view of justice (also as a personal value). It’s a tragedy, not something to be admired or inspired by or to aim for, all of which are generally responses to heroism as a concept (within our world and within BNHA). 

This idea--that killing is not heroic--is also reflected in the story for the most part: from chapter one, we are told a hero saves. We can thus conclude that someone who does not save is probably not intended to be seen as heroic in that moment (which is not the same as condemning them as a monster who cannot change). That is clearly a value of the story, so to uphold this, Twice’s death (since this is the scenario wherein this tends to be discussed) has to be wrong, thematically speaking. 

On the correlation of cops/heroes... it is complicated.

In general, I think it’s poor analysis to directly correlate fiction (especially when the work is from another culture than one’s own) to real current events, and particularly when they are so raw, real, and painful. At the same time, I also get that it’s impossible for brains not to make connections and see familiar circumstances in them. However, this doesn’t mean that 1=1 but instead is a blurry reflection in a mirror: the arguments and logic are not entirely removed from the real world, even if not intended to be 1=1 equivalents (by equivalents I mean direct representations of a particular real life event/concept). Even if the author does not intend the reflection, it can still exist and be picked up on by readers, or by the fandom in their respective contexts/cultures. This is not “wrong” of fans; we.all do this.

So, to return to how Twice’s death is analyzed within the specific context of fandom, I’m reluctant to equate it to the real world, while at the same time indeed finding it almost impossible not to shiver at the way the arguments used by hero stans mimic rhetoric from the real world. Personally, I do find it disturbing how many people come to my inbox and make the same exact arguments as “blue lives matter” folks. Of course it is fictional and therefore different, but it can trigger things especially given the current events in the US, where I live. I’m unsettled by said argument even with contextual and cultural changes taken into account, because on a “personal value” level, the arguments are just flat invalid, rooted in a very shallow understanding of justice, and prone to the whims of injustice. Additionally, many of the asks I’ve gotten do indeed draw on the real world “well it’s okay for real world cops/soldiers/etc” directly, which is partially why I think I’ve responded heatedly before, and why I think other meta writers have done the same. 

That does not mean these fans inherently have a certain point of view (many don’t); I’m just saying that the similarities in arguments specifically around the morality of using lethal force against a potential criminal is hella yikes for me personally, and I know I’m not alone in this (and also know that people closer to these issues than myself might feel differently too; there are no monoliths). Anyways, I wish more hero fans would acknowledge this when justifying Twice’s death. It’s fair to discuss it within the realm of the series’ portrayal of morality, and the story has been odd with the framing around Twice’s death: the narrative hasn’t called Hawks out (yet), while also portraying Hawks unequivocally as in the wrong during the actual murder (look at the panels again. Horikoshi drew them that way for a reason). 

But people often revert to real world justice arguments to vindicate Hawks, and... maybe don’t? 

Is Hawks brainwashed? To an extent, yes. He’s not more or less culpable than Dabi or Shigaraki just because the law gives him a license to kill. We can discuss ideological motives and how they impact the degree to which a character will be held responsible in a story because, of course, it is not the real world and is for a message, but that’s for another day. He needs a chance to free himself, but you can’t say that he did not do something wrong by killing Twice. That doesn’t make him a monster.

Anyways I think the fandom ought to be more sensitive and self-aware of the arguments we are making, and where they come from.