#this is vaguely hinted at in an (anime-only?) filler episode

[sabakos]

There's no way that Natsu Dragneel doesn't smell fucking terrible. To begin with, fire magic in general has to make it's practitioners just absolutely reek, since it's putting their body in the equivalent of a sauna mixed with burning sulfur. Couple this with the fact that he's an orphan raised by a dragon unfamiliar with human hygienic practices, and that his best friends are a cat and a girl with her head too far up her own ass to smell anything other than her own shit, and it's not likely he's even aware that it's a problem. There's probably a reason that he "decided" to live in a cottage in the middle of the woods far away from everyone else, and the baths he takes(?) in the river probably aren't helping much if any. By the end of an arc the dude probably smells like he lost a fight with swamp-assed burnt rotten egg.

[recurring-polynya]

So you ever try to wrap your brain around Yachiru being Kenpachi's zanpakutō? It seems to violate all known (manga-canon) mechanics.

So, to be honest, that particular plot twist hit the note in my head that says “Yes, this is pleasing and not entirely unexpected to me!” I think it’s the fact that the idea of his zanpakutou being embodied this whole time made more sense than ::gestures vaguely at all of Yachiru:: this.

I don’t exactly remember, but I think I may have been spoiled on this one--I got spoiled on a lot of the Bleach endgame, and that always affects the way a plot twist lands, so please take my opinion with that grain of salt.

I think there were a lot of hints along the way-- that although Yachiru is very, very strong and somewhat bloodthirsty herself, she always seems more interested in seeing Zaraki gets the fights that he wants, and watching them raptly, deeply invested in his happiness. She doesn’t actually act like a child, she acts like someone would expect a child to act-- mischievous and silly, but she does not grow and explore or, most importantly, assert her personhood, the way a real person does. She never seeks to grow stronger, or to fight for herself. She wears the lieutenant’s badge and goes to the meetings, which she neither complains about, nor takes any interest in. A real child would either not put up with this shit, or seek to be taken seriously in this role (try to imagine young Byakuya, for example, being named a lieutenant). Most importantly: She is constantly trying to give him directions and they end up lost every time. We thought it was a running gag, but it was a metaphor.

It also seems to me that the other child characters in Bleach grow and age at times when their powers are developing. We see Rukia, Renji, Gin, Rangiku, and Shuuhei as powerless children, and then they age to teens when their powers develop. Toshirou is definitely seen as a smaller child in his Rukongai flashbacks, and it’s implied that he is currently at in impasse with his powers, having difficulty with the upper levels of his bankai. Even so, though his body is stuck in an adolescent state, he has the faculties and personality of an adult. Yachiru, if I am figuring things correctly, is older than Rukia and Renji. It seems like she must be an enormous outlier in the Bleach universe, and it’s frankly weird that, say, Yamamoto wouldn’t take a greater interest in her (unless he knows exactly what she is, and I suspect that both he and Unohana both do).

Unless I’ve missed something, we hardly know anything about zanpakutou-spirit dynamics within the Bleach manga canon. As far as I know, we only ever see two-- Zangetsu and Zabimaru. I think it’s safe to say that Zangetsu already violates all known normal mechanics. I also want to point out that I was a lot more pissed when Zangetsu turned out to be Yhwach (or whatever that was, please no one explain it to me I don’t want to think about it). It was telescoped well enough, but it poisoned a character who had always been there for Ichigo as a mentor and source of strength and it gave me the same yucky feeling as when they killed off Han Solo-- I do not like this. This does not feel right or enhance the story.

We don’t get a whole lot of Zabimaru either-- they can manifest on their own, and do so in order to bother Renji. They seem to be a fairly simplistic being-- they want to fight and be strong and are impatient with Renji’s (very reasonable) desire to take a minute to think things out.

Nobody asked, but I feel like it might be helpful if I unleashed my personal headcanon on Where Zanpakutou Come From. In the Zanpakutou Spirits Arc, the episodes are prefaced with a voiceover that says that zanpakutou are born and die with their shinigami, and I am sorry, anime filler arc, I reject this. One of my favorite Bleach phrases, which seems like it should it could have come from some angsty hurt-comfort fanfic, is “There are no ghosts in Soul Society.” (it actually came from a filler arc episode where Ikkaku, Nanao and Hanatarou get lost in the sewer). But I think there are! When shinigami are killed and reborn in the Living World, presumably, it is as a normal human with no powers. I like to think that some essence of their power and their zanpakutou are left behind, free-floating, nameless, formless, but with some distillation of the principles that guided their shinigami’s life. This ur-zanpakutou attaches itself to a young, spiritually strong person, and becomes intertwined with their soul. They develop a form based on the thoughts and memories and hopes and fears of their shinigami, and their names and specific powers are born of the union of zanpakutou and shinigami. Noble souls often get zanpakutou passed down from previous generations, who take the form of a grandparent, or form that their grandparents zanpakutou had. For kids from the Rukon, I think that most zanpakutou spirits takes the form of a barely remembered mother from the Living World, or a particularly frightening woodcut from a favorite storybook. As an aside, this theory also explains why almost every Rukongonian shinigami we see died as a child-- it’s easier for a free floating zanpakutou spirit to bond with a child’s developing psyche. It’s also a reminder of one more way that Zaraki himself is an outlier.

Zaraki is a really messed-up guy, I think we’re all on the same page there. Like, he just really needs a shit-ton of therapy, I can’t even start. He was a feral murder-child, and I think he saw Unohana as a mother-figure who rejected him. Unlike Ichigo, who needs a wise, experienced mentor to guide him through his warrior journey, Zaraki needs validation that he is a Normal Guy with Normal Murder Thoughts and Feelings, so his subconscious shapes his zanpakutou into another feral murder-child to love him and be his family. Zaraki doesn’t know how little girls act-- pink hair seems good? Stuffy people hate kids, right? It makes perfect sense that Yachiru would go fuck around with Byakuya. Zaraki finds all of Yachiru’s antics hilarious-- the names she makes up for people, the way she climbs all over Ichigo, her general proclivity for going ham. Zaraki is an incredibly simplistic person. My favorite Zaraki parts of Bleach are where you think he is about to get real deep and have some sort of insight, and it turns out to be “I’m gonna stab you, but I’m gonna use both hands” or this entire problem-solving process I’ve pasted in below, which ends in him finding Tousen by letting Tousen stab him. He’s just stupid, bless his heart, and having a murder gremlin for a guiding light just... tracks?

The weirdest thing about Yachiru is that she has her own zanpakutou. I spent about 10 minutes thinking about it, though, and decided that she’s just a recursion, and that the weird feeling I get thinking about her is exactly the way I feel about writing a function that calls itself, and I find that little paradoxical frisson to be kinda cool, actually. The second weirdest thing about Yachiru is that there does not seem to be any connection, thematically, between Yachiru and Nozarashi. After he finally learns his sword’s name, I would have liked to see Zaraki have a trip to his inner world (like Ichigo does, in the midst of battle) where he meets an adult spirit who has qualities of both Yachirus (which he absolutely does not recognize) and that there is some interesting explanation of Nozarashi’s special abilities. To be honest, I couldn’t even remember what they were. Kenpachi has always been one of the strongest Bleach characters and so much about him is just iconic, and then his bankai was just completely bland and unmemorable, with no symbolism whatsoever. Lame.

[firstagent]

Review! Digimon Adventure: (2020) Episode 45: Activate, MetalGarurumon

In this episode, for some reason Gabumon decides he wants to run around a track. For some reason this leads to MetalGarurumon. These reasons will not be given.

If you had asked somebody familiar with the trappings of shounen anime but clueless about Digimon what was going on with this current string, they’d confidently tell you the show’s been waiting for the manga to advance the story farther to know how to proceed with Millenniumon’s inevitable revival. Like Angemon’s return and the random appearances by BlitzGreymon and Ponchomon, getting MetalGarurumon doesn’t change that. If anything, it makes the lack of story progress even more annoying. Now they’re falling so far behind they have to burn major evolutions in perfectly average filler material. Nothing about it is egregiously wrong and any spotlight on Gabumon is welcomed, but don’t leave this with any impression that the show is doing anything but spinning its wheels.

As much as we like seeing Gabumon take a star turn, it’s a version of Gabumon we’re woefully unfamiliar with. We get Gabumon as Yamato’s loyal companion and his playful rivalry with Greymon, but the obsession with running? That’s… new. Maybe that’s the reason Yamato and Garurumon did nothing but run through the plains for multiple days back when plot was happening to Taichi. When an episode is going to feature somebody, it’s best when the logic behind it tracks. Sora’s adventure with the Pomumon and Koshiro’s visit with Gerbemon didn’t need any explanation. Here we arrive at a racetrack and Gabumon is suddenly possessed by Sonic the Hedgehog.

This sudden character attribute we just learned about drives the entire episode. The introduction to Machmon is now more confrontational, which is the only way you’re picking up on his problem. Machmon, and the problem itself, is as fine a character and as fine a dilemma as what we’ve gotten used to in this run, where his willingness to open fire on his opponents is chalked up to his competitive streak rather than a more sinister influence. After demanding a clean rematch, Yamato, Koshiro, and Taichi investigate while the others trip over each other trying to have any presence. With the exception of MetalGarurumon, it’s the same routine as always, and hangs on a main character doing something totally arbitrary.

At least within the confines of this episode, Gabumon’s characterization is enjoyable. We’ve gotten moments here and there where the kids are allowed to be kids, and the essence of all this is giving a Digimon a chance to indulge himself with a run around a racetrack. It’s that preservation of fun that bolsters Gabumon as much as anything, and the suggestion that Machmon isn’t having fun troubles him more than being rammed into and shot at. Yamato is very much the supporting player here, following Gabumon’s lead with an admirable devotion and getting into enough trouble to prompt WereGarurumon to evolve. It’s nice to see it play both ways. With Yamato’s hesitance to provide unnecessary help well behind him, we’re left with a healthy, loyal, and ultimately kind of dull relationship.

Does it justify MetalGarurumon? So far the only thing we have to go off of is WarGreymon’s first appearance. From that, the only criteria are the understanding of a tight bond, and the need for a little more power. That seems more like a Champion-level prerequisite. The crest factor is present, sure, and Yamato going to bat for Gabumon, who fights to help Machmon, qualifies. In this context, with nothing on the line but a single Digimon having a rough decade, the stakes don’t justify the pomp. It also doesn’t help that the crest attributes haven’t been formally introduced yet. Technically, we have no idea that Taichi represents courage and Yamato represents friendship! Really the only bit of consistency is that new evolutions don’t seem to have much point to them and centering an episode’s conversation about one is foolhardy.

Thing is, beyond that, there isn’t much else to talk about. Other than Yamato, Koshiro is the only one with any real presence in the episode, even taking the random race jobs into consideration. The track and Parasimon’s presence are vaguely referential, but hardly to the point of nostalgia. If they were playing that card, the Grand Prix would be populated by someone other than a brand new Digimon and Parasimon would be going after a train for the third time in franchise history instead of a motorcycle. You can squint and see how elements of this episode could be highly enjoyable. Put them together and it continues to be a mediocre slog.

My Grade: C

Loose Data:

One easy fix for both Gabumon’s sudden enthusiasm for racing and everyone else’s lack of relevance is for all of them to get caught up in the excitement of a top racing facility and wanting to do a lap. It’s actually a little weird that Agumon and Patamon at least aren’t interested in giving it a go.

Why is anyone surprised that the race format is anything goes? The Grand Prix did exist in-universe, and even out of universe the short and the game don’t lend themselves to pure tests of speed and maneuvering. Hell, you can get away with half this stuff in NASCAR!

That upside-down fire-attack-as-thrust maneuver to save Machmon from the wall? Somebody in the writer’s room thought of that in their sleep and were dying to work that into an episode.

Yamato, Koshiro, and Taichi say something menacing about the big turn at the end being the key to unraveling the mystery. Other than its obligatory place for the dramatic finish, it has nothing to do with unraveling the mystery.

If the Lilimon cheerleader outfits on the girls weren’t enough of a hint that they were desperate to find something for the other characters to chew on, putting one on Takeru clinched it. Remember that someone in the cast had to have suggested it, someone had to make Takeru wear that, and someone had to prevent Yamato from coming to his brother’s rescue. That someone is obviously Mimi.

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[cateringisalie]

9 years later and we have at last got a new Eva film and the end of the Rebuild project.

Much was made at the start of Rebuild of the desire to introduce Eva to a new audience. 1.0 more or less leant into its original goal and restaged episodes 1 to 6 of the TV series with a bigger budget, CGI, some more blunt and early reveals and a few weird alterations for the existing fan base. The Angel numbering was off; everyone knows Lilith is stuck in the basement, Seele just default to their monoliths. Kaworu is actively introduced at the tail-end rather than alluded to in the opening titles. As an intro, its fine (though most would agree the equivalent stage of the TV series isn’t really a struggle to cope with either), though a few stylistic and environmental changes lead many to conclude this was a direct sequel to End of Evangelion. 2.0 seemed content to build off of the intro but steer away from the relevant section of episodes – roughly 8 to 17. Recognisable moments like the falling Angel, the corrupted Unit 03 and the ribbon angel and Unit 01’s impossible reactivation share the screen with altered relationship dynamics. Now we get Mari one of the few wholly new characters who gets to open the second film in a wildly dramatic fashion. The key of Nebuchadnezzar (which does at least re-enter proceedings in the final film, but I am even shakier on what it is or used for – even fandom seem to have struggle to explain this as anything other than a blunt drop-in replacement for the Adam embryo in the TV series). And come the end its time for Third Impact already, Shinji altering the world around him to rescue Rei from the depths of an Angel. Kaworu uses an unfamiliar spear to incapacitate Shinji and the preview hints at a story further from the rails than ever. 3.0 is as promised more or less completely divorced from anything Eva had done before. Just not the off-the rails version 2.0 advertised. Some will be quick to note that none of the Rebuild previews have entirely accurately advertised their subsequent instalment; 1.0’s features at least one key scene that never happened (Mistao slapping Ristuko in a seeming allusion to the Sea of Dirac Angel) while even the sequences of animation that did make it look nothing alike. Which is fair, but even then 2.0’s bears absolutely no resemblance to 3.0 and even 3.0’s very strange preview doesn’t really jibe with 3.0+1.0 ultimately. 3.0 is post-post-apocalypse and with a whole 14 years just evaporated between films. There’s a distinct last third of Nadia feel to it. About the only part similar to a former incarnation is Kaworu and Shinji’s relationship which while not even roughly mapping to episode 24 serves the same function; to make Shinji distraught before the climax of this story. But 3.0 is also the point where that initial premise of the series slams headlong into the drift from familiar territory. Where the film is a quantum leap away from the mystery terms and slow reveals. The oddities and confusions pile up given the glimpsed state of the world, the strange gridded moon, the sea of Eva corpses, the strange state of Lilith in the depths of Nerv. An awful lot happened while Shinji was (for reasons no one has explained or seems to care about except me) IN SPACE and the film only ever alludes to the sequence of events occurring between these two films in the broadest of strokes. Which if done a certain way can be compelling though I did not find it to be the case here in the slightest. It’s a huge struggle to build up even a vague idea of what went down and that’s with heavy deferral back to the TV series again. If you’re new, none of this means much of anything. Even mixed media doesn’t help. The reveal there was a limited run manga of events prior to 3.0 had a potential for answers, but upon reading a synopsis... Nope. Helps not even a tiny amount. Also this mixed media attitude is never to be encouraged. So, I didn’t like film 3 much at all. Film 4 does little to not be based on where it left off. Which is a small mercy that it doesn’t effectively toss everything out again and skip further ahead in time. And 3.0+1.0 does at least make use of some of what 2.0 revealed and setup in the spirit of trying to get this into something cohesive. It fails, but it tried. Maybe the points it touches on were the intended direction of the films. Maybe Anno changed his mind on this one. It’s not like Rebuild’s failure to cohere should be a surprise – the title of the film is simply confusing in sequence. Titled neither 4.0 nor 4.44, instead we have the pretty inexplicable 3.0+1.0 which is just annoying to type. Even thematically this doesn’t feel right given its more like 2.0 mushed into 3.0 but I suppose that’s technically film 5 so... Unless, 1.0 here is supposed to mean the original TV series or EoE, which... End of Evangelion figures unexpectedly largely in the film. Could be that its meant to infer some collection of the Eva cast (the original pilots + Mari? The Ikari family + Mari? The pilots from 1.0 (Shinji and Rei) plus the pilots from 3.0 (Asuka and Mari)?). The other part of course, is that the three prior films had titles in the form of [Thing](Not)]Thing]. 3.0+1.0 decides to dispense with this entirely and instead is titled “Thrice Upon a Time”. Nothing like confusing matters (and instead media library ordering) by not only giving the film a title that puts it before the 3rd film (since prior to this cinema releases are .0 and the home media (excepting the first release of 1.0) are triple digits of their instalment number) but also has another reference to three within it. It might be some kind of holy trinity allusion, some play on Third Impact, or an acknowledgement that this is theoretically the third version of events surrounding the end of the world (if you take TV series as 1, EoE as 2, and Rebuild as 3). Also potentially a literary reference about cyclical time and messages from the future which is all well and good and fits into a whole other essay about how Rebuild and FFVII Remake are operating on the same basis and making many of the same mistakes by both trying to be fan-service for the new fans and draw in new ones and do the big fan-moments similarly but diverge wildly off in others. Good start! The final film starts with bombast as per 2 and 3 (and thus focused on Mari) though the setup and point of the action is possibly more confused and less explicable (which is saying something given 3.0 opened with retrieving Unit 01 from space. No, I will continue to complain about not getting this. Yes it was very exciting but why was Unit 01 in space? In a strange crucifix coffin. Anyone at all?) – and only vaguely connected to anything resembling the plot. At least 2.0 and 3.0 had some immediate and long term stakes with a cover for Kaji stealing something and bringing Shinji into the plot. This film opens with a scrounge for spare parts in a red Paris that the tertiary cast make no longer red while Mari fights off a massed horde of Evas while battleships are puppeteered from orbit. It’s all terrible cool and everything, but given at no point do we even begin to understand what is going on or what the stakes even are. Which is a problem with the latter half of the sequence. 2.0 might have started with an Eva vs Angel fight but while there was ambiguity over the situation it at least seemed to lead into the eventual plot. Here we’re getting Eva spare parts for later and a whole dose of new terminology the film has no interest in explaining. Which is par for the course for prior Eva incarnations but again, I feel there was more explanation setting the weirdness up. Here we are reduced to keywords that sound important. The film proper opens with our familiar trio of Eva pilots winding up at a village with their old classmates (which of course, to follow the proliferations of 3 all the way down and also match to Tokyo-3, is in fact, Village 3. The far future sequel to Resident Evil 8 presumably). Who are necessarily now 14 years older than them. Asuka is naked (in a sequence to contrast to 1.0 and 2.0) or in her underwear for far too much of this sequence (and just as creepy as 2.0 got with this) as Shinji struggles in the aftermath of Kaworu’s death, Ayanami (critically not the Rei of 2.0) learns about life (and visits a library with – I’m not kidding – a poster for Sugar Sugar Rune on display. I like to think not many in the audience caught this slightly odd reference). 30 minutes of the film are taken up with Rei being happy and contented with her life while Shinji slowly recovers and re-enters polite society (sulks, throws up at the sight of the DSS collar, is insulted and force-fed). There’s a good case for this section just being an unnecessary time filler, though you don’t need to fill time in a film that is 2 ½ hours. But if it was cut down, perhaps it would have the same strange feeling as 1.0 had where the aftermath of Shinji’s second Angel fight lead was mostly skipped and left that part of 1.0 feeling strangely hasty and actively (and badly) abridged. Maybe that’s just my familiarity with the source material again. There’s still an edge of weirdness in the air on the film hits the 45 minute mark; even prior to this gigantic sections of the land are missing, and some things just float around now (apparently because). Past this mark is where weirdness creeps in; the barriers keeping the village from suffering the fate of Paris – the structures a curious match to the Cocytus facility at the start of 2.0. There are headless Eva copies who roam the landscape. An indicator on Ayanami’s suit runs down. Shinji is advised to talk to his father before he loses the opportunity forever. This one made me laugh, and even Asuka comments that given who Shinji’s father is and what he’s done don’t really make this plausible (or sensible). Ayanami concludes her pastoral life and this stage of the film by transforming back to her original white plug-suit; her AT Field then dissipates and she bursts in a familiar spill of LCL. For such a previously central character, Rei or Ayanami or Lilith will have exceptionally little bearing on the remainder of the film. The plot now kicks in properly as Gendo decides enough is enough and he’s going to be doing some world ending. Our Eva pilots are ready but not the same; we have Asuka, Mari and Shinji. And standing orders for Shinji to be shot if he tries to pilot anything (but given we’re at the end of the world and basically the original plan fails to stop Nerv bringing about the end of the world, that people still try to shoot him is... a little weird and an almost pointless resolution of factors the quaternary cast brought up in 3.0). The entire rest of the film is even more impenetrable and confusing than Kaworu’s sweeping explanations of what happened between films 2 and 3. If 3.0 fumbled the ball on being newcomer friendly 3.0+1.0 actively doesn’t care. Not that familiarity with series helps since so much new terminology is thrown at the audience. The entire cast – literally the entire cast – are not only caught up on but also understand the varying levels of psychological, biological and religious nonsense that Eva has formerly wielded as something almost coherent. You, as audience member, are not privy to a fraction of this understanding and thus left to flail for the remainder of the film making what you can of the maddening breadcrumb trail of exclamations and partial explanations. Shinji is no help here and infuriatingly asks barely a single question about what is going on (thankfully he does prompt Gendo to explain a few things – presumably where even the staff had gotten lost on what was supposedly going on). For existing fans, you might get a sense of it by application of known quantities from the previous incarnations (I pity newcomers struggling to make sense of this). What the Lance of Cassius is a thing introduced abruptly into the series – and contrasted with the Lance of Longinus you can muddle through to get some idea of what was going on. 3.0+1.0 however, decides that even that grip on its story is too much and adds a bunch more unnamed spears. Some of them formed from Lilith. This is a thing of some import apparently, though ultimately is effectively buzzword name-checking. We know who Lilith is in context from both 1.0 and the TV series but how that relates to spear formation is beyond me. And then there’s the part where one of the flying ships (there were four made according to Seele’s plan. Seele, the former sinister puppet-masters, who died in film 3, and if the flying ships were their idea or this stated at all, I had totally forgotten it in the last 9 years (checking wikia seems to indicate no one else knew this either so I feel vindicated). Seele feel an artefact of the old Eva Anno has no time for – EoE had what equated to three groups vying for control of the process of human instrumentality. Seele are adhering to a prophecy of sorts, Gendo is trying to subvert that process for his own ends, and Misato is trying to stop it. In terms of economical story-telling, the distinction between Seele and Gendo’s goals in causing Third Impact are so slim as to be basically zero (few critical differences though), I suspect Seele were deemed unnecessary and shuffled out of proceedings hastily despite their continued name-checking at this late stage) is turned into another spear because if all the spears are used up, the end of the world can’t be averted. You will have to forgive me for failing to notice how and where most of these spears (save three) wound up or what most of that means or why or how or anything. But we have a budget to squander and why not channel the Gurren Lagann energy for action one last time? And there is some action, this presumably part of what a good section of the audience have waited for with baited breath, that thing the TV series so rapidly lost interest in; that EoE staged for narrative cruelty. Smashy giant robot action time! So we get billions of Eva enemies for Asuka and Mari to cut through without problem. They explode and fall away despite exhaustively overwhelming numbers. There is a palpable lack of threat here. A few hitches but nothing the pilots can’t cope with. It’s just empty fan-service, a boast about how much can be rendered into a single frame. We get Asuka, unable to stab critically important Unit 13 (looking distinctly Unit 01-like just with four arms), and then hooking into an odd leftover thread from 2.0. Her accident in the activation test of Unit 03 has left her with a part of herself now more correctly classified as an Angel. And like 2.0 for surprise value, her Eva has special Angel blood injectors to again overcharge her Eva (which seems to be a thing in the latter three films – turn the Eva safety off and go beserk. As if Unit 01 didn’t do that all on its own in the first and second film). And this too fails. But this too is just another moment of important and pretention. Where the audience is meant to gasp at Eva/Angel hybridisation (not that the dividing line between Angles and Evas is ever completely clear (not least Unit 03)), at Asuka revealing herself to be part Angel (as if Kaworu and Rei weren’t established examples). So her Eva bloated and animalistic is... just another moment. We saw this in 2.0 with Mari releasing her limiters. We saw it in 3.0 in almost the same way. The distinction isn’t meaningfully different to the last few times the Evas were let off the leash and became more brutal. And just like the prior times this escalation of Eva body horror, ferocity, blood and over-indulged violence doesn’t actually help the situation. Asuka fails in her task as the Unit 13 counter-attacks. She’s saved by getting pulled out of reality moments before her end. Of course this being narrative, this being Eva; Gendo, the architect of this situation, is three steps ahead. Misato’s flying ship is badly and perhaps critically damaged so Gendo can retrieve the limbless body of Unit 01 formerly powering the flying ship. Shooting Gendo doesn’t work thanks to the key of Nebuchadnezzar (which did... Uh. Something? Kaji noted it as the lost number kept as a spare in 2.0 which implied Angel or Eva or... No I don’t know nor can I make sense of what it’s done to Gendo. Wikia informs me that while it’s never seen on-screen past the one time, its case is in some shots of 3.0. How amazing) and he leaves. And thus, of course, Shinji must get in the f-ing robot once more. But we’re back to the confident, more certain Shinji who 2.0 birthed as we enter the last (but still very long) final stage of the film – and restage End of Evangelion. Curious of course; EoE by turns can feel like a legitimate replacement for the final two TV series episodes or a bleakly, darkly, disturbing and flippant retort to the low-budget metaphysic version of the TV apocalypse. EoE to some has been not so much the intended ending (though buying a complete set of the old Eva in Japan will always net you the 26 original TV episodes, the four amended episodes and EoE), but more a poisoned chalice for the people who wanted a less introspective version of the end of the world and the process of human instrumentality. Anno was free to do what he wanted and veer off the tracks here – he can’t get away from the end of the world – this is integral to Eva’s base concept. 2.0’s glimpse of Second and the starts of Third Impact depict a process completely unfamiliar from the TV series’s version (reading Wikia explains some of 2.0’s imagery but is still bewildering with reference to 3.0+1.0’s reveals). In Rebuild, the end of the world is staged in the space below the strange aftermath of Second Impact, in an anti-universe where humans cannot venture. And yet, we are still clearly revisiting End of Evangelion. Not exactly the same, but a lot of imagery (the symbols in the sky, the gigantic form of Lilith at multiple points, the crucifix explosions across Earth’s surface) – to say nothing of some actual sections of animation – are taken straight from the 1997 film. Those moments and images were haunting and disturbing (the more overtly sexualised imagery has been completely removed). Clearly no matter what was said at the time or in the interim, EoE is in fact how the ending must play out; this is, or has become, what happens externally and internally when these characters attempt to force a next stage of evolution. The End of Evangelion will always be the end. ...just not quite the same. Not least it is missing most of the infamous moments (Shinji in Asuka’s hospital room is notably completely absent). There’s no moment where Shinji strangles Asuka, Komm Susser Tod is missing entire (in favour of something similar sounding but in Japanese), the live-action sequences of the empty cinema or the world without Evas aren’t utilised (though some live action footage is included), Rei betraying Gendo and beginning Third Impact outside his control etc. It's actively absurd to type this, but Lilith – Lilith! – has less character here. Which is so astonishingly absurd given the only depiction of Lilith we get is effectively Rei/Rei was Lilith the entire time, but those introspective sequences hinting at something more involved with Rei or the points Lilith does talk directly to Shinji are gone too. This shouldn’t be a surprise – we are after all missing a Rei character at the climax. Mostly. 3.0+1.0 almost expects you to remember the last time you saw Eva end the world and contrast it to this new version. The EoE imagery, the footage of Lilith descending from the crucifix, the looming figure of Lilith rising as humanity ends. Even something like the sequence of the backsides of cels running backward is reused – this footage also cribbed from EoE and played out on a wall between two characters. The animation breaks down into scratchy storyboards and later degenerates from finished footage down to outlines, animatics, and storyboard. The end of the world is this time around is more heavily meta. Both EoE and the TV episodes “staged” the process of Instrumentality (or parts of it) for Shinji. It occurs in filming spaces and on sets, there’s lighting equipment and dolls as stand-ins. The strange artificiality of pulling back the curtain on the TV or film production, or else the effect of  setting the camera back further than you should for filming a theatrical experience. But even that’s a false layer given a true pull-back would be to people in front of computers or previously drawing key-frames. Here the staging is more blunt still. It begins with an Eva vs Eva fight between Gendo and Shinji in the anti-universe where their brains make sense of the impossible space with artificially staged areas of familiar locations. A fight in a city has a huge sheet as a backdrop and carboard buildings the Evas kick around. They fight in front of Nerv headquarters and in Misato’s kitchen. A blow knocks over a section of scenery and sprawls Shinji in the studio space surrounding the set. A crossroads of sort where Shinji will move on from Gendo to meet with Rei, Kaworu and Asuka. The major difference to EoE is that the end here is much more concerned with Gendo; we dive into his psyche and his past. His isolation and desire for it. This feels extremely confessional for Anno all things considered given Gendo was always previously kept at arm’s length. This feels revealing about the man behind it all, a reflection of the director. He has admitted during production that at his stage of life he is far closer to Gendo than Shinji – I think this is barely obfuscated here. The flashback is more about understanding Gendo and how Yui changed him than anything about Evas or the end of the world. Gendo’s motivation is revealed to be the same as always; this is how he gets to be with Yui again. Odd details catch as this past plays out. And is that Mari in his memories? Mari, who Fuyustuki calls Mary Iscariot upon meeting her and has prepared something for her. Which feels much more like religious buzz words; there’s an obvious implication coached in that selection of a name, but how it actually relates to the story or the circumstances is really unclear. Nor am I clear on what Fuyutsuki prepared. He explodes into LCL like last time too. The process is so close to EoE but the mood is lighter and the reasoning behind the cast a little different. Asuka is part of a clone series – same as Rei. Just without the physical signifiers that Kaworu and Rei exhibit and the prior short-hand for clones in this universe (as noted, their design is intended to invoke lab rats). Nice consistency there. The beach ending from EoE is re-done under a blue sky; Asuka is saved thanks to Shinji and Mari working in concert. Kaworu’s beach meeting with Shinji is restaged, the newer, confident Shinji discussing the circular system that delivers Kaworu into his place at the end of the world. So Eva has happened before, meta-wise or time-wise or dimensionally. Take it as you will, no interpretation is more valid than another. Only that Kaworu remembers them all. It’s happened before and it’s expected to happen again. But Shinji’s different now, so the end of the world is different. Now it’s time to move on; Kaworu is left with Kaji to tend the earth assured the cycle of Eva productions is at an end – both have been dead all this time. Anno’s attitude to his seeming forever association with this one franchise his and his desire to set it down and move on? EoE finished in space; 3.0+1.0 finishes beneath the Antarctic. The idea of Unit 01 living forever as a testament to humanity is no factor at all Shinji intending (and his parents possibly driving) the final riddance of the Evas from reality – none can be allowed to remain. But now, the film takes an odd turn, and as with EoE, there’s the coda. In EoE this was the beach scene. For Rebuild: The sun shines, the sky is blue. An adult Shinji sits in a train station and meets with Mari. She’s older too now; the pair share a kiss and run from the station hand in hand. So. Uh. Yeah. That happened. There’s Kaworu and Rei seemingly alive and well as adults. And Asuka of course. But Shinji winds up with Mari. Mari who knew everything the whole time and might somehow have been part of Gendo’s group at university and known Yui and no, we are not getting any insight into those peculiarities! (or more plausibly it could be Mari’s mother who looks near identical to Mari but... What are we meant to take from this, really?). Mari who met Shinji in a handful of brief moments and has never spent any actual time with him. Mari won the love-triangle! But this is not some simple alternate reality, a different better take world where the cast existed in something resembling our reality; Shinji still wears the exploding DSS collar given to him before rejoining the giant robot fray. Mari effortlessly removes it from his neck. The film ends with a live-action sequence – this is reportedly Anno’s hometown. The world without Evas; we passed the relevant date while 3.0+1.0 was stalled. Shinji made it to 2014, or more plausibly past it in a world without Second Impact. And he’s happy, well-adjusted, and... Not really recognisable as Shinji. Shinji now exists in the present, not the future as he had for so long in pop-culture. But he’s in a different 2021; a world without the pandemic. And that was Rebuild; a project intended as a new introduction to Evangelion that blatantly had its entire core conceit revised at least twice (the 4th film delayed because of Shin Godzilla and then a struggle to write at all) that increasingly and confusingly leant more and more on its famed initial incarnation even as it veered increasingly and erratically away from the familiar sequences. I liked 3.0+1.0 more than 3.0, but can’t help but still bemoan whatever 3.0 was going to be when 2.0 happened. The alternate other sequence. And despite it all, despite the allusions to a repetition of Eva and of this being the break in the chain, even those working on and involved with the film see even this as a definitive end. Even Anno’s not convinced that’s the last word. Eva will come back all over again; naturally – there’s money to be made here, and what’s yet another alternate take to add to the TV series, the manga, the games, the other manga, EoE, Rebuild and so on. Kaworu apparently is indeed doomed to revisit this forever alongside everyone else and also remember that for once he was gifted a true end. An impossible conclusion for modern pop-culture it feels.

[onf-headcanons]

ONF IN PSYCHO PASS AU (PART 3)

Setting : angst, murder (influenced mass murder), futuristic society, you can read the introduction post prior reading this AU headcanon (for a better understanding cos some keywords will be slightly difficult for non anime audiences)

And warning long post and shipping hinting (I wont write it over explicit but if you are anime audience you can get the hint of which character I based so its suggestive should you integrated anime counterpart to ONF couterpart) if you are uncomfortable with that just kindly ignore it. Only adding it not just because to follow original series but also for the AU/headcanon storyline conflict purposes

Below is the known situation when the story starts in Yuto's POV

Yuto - Inspector

Changyoon - Inspector

Hyojin - Enforcer former Inspector

Jaeyoung - Enforcer

Minkyun - Analyst

Seungjun & Minseok - dead

And again sorry if its messy (Cos mainly I just want this AU to exist and making it to a birthday gift for myself XD)

The whole structure is followed the anime,but I will skip filler/solo case episodes and fast paced-ify to focus on main storyline. Also I will tweak my words/wordings to a more simpler format so that I wont cause you all headache.

1-6

(loosely based on episode 9)

Due to recent events, Hyojin felt that Yuto need to get an upgrade on his skills of being an Inspector. He has good hunch but he still needs a proper profiling skills. Yuto mentioned that he did get to learn profiling skills on his training but both his seniors felt it is not enough because of his inexperience.

Even though a bit apologetic, Changyoon agrees with Hyojin that Yuto need to catch up to obtain veteran skills as soon as possible. (He only joined 8 months ago) . They both have the same person in mind who could help.

It is off day for Yuto, so Hyojin arranged them two to go visit a former professor of training academy.

The former professor is nice enough to agree on giving Yuto a crash course in profiling and extra tips for observant skills. Back in office, Changyoon advises Yuto that he better be careful and Yuto has to keep his own stance when approaching with people like their professor.

"One must have their own clarity so that their hue does not get clouded by others easily." Changyoon says to Yuto with a stern look. Yuto understands Changyoon's points.

And since they got their young culprit for previous case, CID tries to interrogate her. Changyoon and Jaeyoung tried to talk with the young girl during Hyojin and Yuto's absence but fruitless.

But when Yuto goes into the room to give it a try, the girl starts to open her mouth but not confessing or revealing details. Instead she made a request while looking at the one way mirror behind Yuto.

"That man with red hair, he is your dog isn't it?" the girl's choice of word made Yuto uncomfortable. "I will only speak to him alone if you allow me to, no cameras, no writings and no one behind the mirror."

That request was bizarre, the whole CID understands the risk of doing that as well. Jaeyoung also offers to step up and increase the interrogation with a bit of violence, but being rejected by Yuto. "She has kept quiet for that long and you think suddenly change interrogation tactic after request was made will let her mouth loose? I don't think so." Yuto tries to convinceJaeyoung.

Minkyun is worried, not about Hyojin's interrogation skills, but should there is something deeper, he is worried that Hyojin might get caught up into it. The only thing that can save CID and Hyojin from trouble was digital record of what happen in the room, be it video or audio.

Hyojin only pats Minkyun's shoulder and gives him a reassuring smile. And then gives Changyoon and Yuto both a nod before heading out the monitor room.

"Don't get clouded and played by the criminal, Hyojin." Changyoon blurts out his concern before Hyojin's presence exits entirely from the space the team was in.

Hyojin unplugs the surveillance camera and to let the young criminal feels assured, Hyojin brought in a few piece of papers and tape to tape up the one way mirror so that those who are behind it could not see what is happening inside.

Outside/behind the one way mirror, Changyoon is letting out sighs of regret of letting Hyojin going in alone and without any record to be left. Is not that he does not trust him, but since the system views Hyojin as delusional, how much of Hyojin they can trust without going against the system? He is worried to the extent he is rubbing his stomach due to gastric. Yuto notices that but Changyoon brushes him off and endure it alone.

Meanwhile Jaeyoung and Minkyun agreed that tech department should come up with a mini audio recorder that wont gain suspicions

Back in the interrogation room, Hyojin finally sits in front of the girl who is smiling eerily towards him. Hyojin did not back off, but he is not with his bright persona and his tone is cold as he speaks, "So, I heard you wish to talk to me? "

The girl leans forward, still smiling while contemplating at Hyojin's face. "Yes, I have been dying to see you in person." she whispers. "If I remembers precisely, Hyojin? Am I right?"

Hyojin's hunch starts to alert him, he does not like this. He clearly understood immediately that the girl is trying to get on the upper hand for the interaction. But he persuaded himself that his name might have been leaked during the process of catching their culprit, could be his colleague or Changyoon calling him and the girl heard it, happens occasionally.

But he quickly adjusted his mentality. He raises an eyebrow and leans closer towards the girl, "So you go through all the length just to get caught and meet me? I don't think I have that kind of charisma though..."

The girl lifts her hand and rest a side of her cheek on her knuckles/back of her hand, her eyes were still locked with Hyojin's. " You underestimated yourself, mister." she hisses. "And no, I let myself got caught because I still wanted to live."

Hyojin is not a fool and by that phrase, he can tell there is someone behind the young criminal from her words. And this smart minor, is trying to seek refuge from CID/Bureau. What kind of existence behind her, so frightening that even a murderer with a grotesque MO felt intimidated? Or was it because she is still a kid?

"Now that is rude," the girl breaks of the silence, "To go off into your own train of thoughts while ignoring a young lady in front of you."

Hyojin knew he is busted but he still kept his cool and poker face. He was an Inspector/detective before though. "My bad." Hyojin apologies while mirroring her posture and smiles at her fondly. "So why do you even wanted to see me anyways? "

"That's because I heard a lot about you. To the extent that my ears are going to bleed." she replies. "It was boring listening to it, while I do hope he talk about himself more."

Hyojin raises a corner of his lip and mutters. "Are you sure it's fine for you to drop hints like that?"

The girl only laughs and pushes her upper body backwards, her back comes contact to the back rest of the chair she is sitting. "That is to make sure you are paying attention."

"So how is he like?" Hyojin asks with a interested expression.

The young girl's smiles broaden as she thinks of the said person. "Brilliant. smart and handsome. " Her smile vanishes as she continues, "But my instincts tells me that you definitely wouldn't want to get to his bad side."

"Is he your partner in crime? " Hyojin asks and the girl shakes her head.

"More like a consultant or a middle person. "

"How did you come in contact with such dangerous existence?" Hyojin tries to sound as concerned as possible. "Is it group?"

The girl shakes her head again and starts to tell her story how she met her consultant for crime at school. He approached her during her own free time drawing in the art classroom. (This part you can follow anime where Makishima interacts with the young girl)

"Why are you betraying him now?" Hyojin asks after he listened.

"I put all the pieces together and I figured out that, you, could be his weakness." She smiles at Hyojin again. "Its a woman's instinct and I am pretty accurate for most of the times." She winks at Hyojin while at it.

"How so? Was it something he said about me?" Hyojin tries to sound that he is intrigued.

"The context since its vague. For most of the times, he goes Hyojin once said blah blah blah... or Hyojin once did blah blah.." the girl mentions " But I can tell that he cares about you a whole lot."

"He tried to tell me some stories in one go everytime he monitors me doing my work but I could not focus to all of it because I was busy cutting up my artwork, I only remembered how he laughed when he said you are a red-hair maniac." the girl recalls. "And that is how I recognized you."

"Did he showed you a picture of me?" Hyojin chuckles

"No, " she retorts, "He said you will never lost your love towards dying your hair red. Never once he met someone in his whole life has such obsession with dying their hair red. Should the two of meet again, he is confident to recognise you instantly."

Hyojin could not help feeling confused, his circle was not large and once he has turned into Enforcer, his ties were all cut and he is living in seclusion/under confinement by the system. So who is this someone who seems to know about him in a personal level?

Noticed that Hyojin is perplexed, the girl suddenly laughs.

"Oh dear, could it be you don't even know who he is???" She laughs while hitting the table lightly with her fist. "Oh my, what drama is this!"

"Looks like you got a fan, mister! An obsessed one." She exclaims while giggling at her thoughts. "Awwww....I feel very much sorry for him now. I was being slightly jealous but now...hahahahah"

This does not make any sense to Hyojin at all. There are so many criminals out there but this criminal mastermind admires a plain Enforcer like him with 0 notable committed crime, to the extent of executing a psycho hazard?

Hyojin decided to drop the act and asks the girl in a straight face who the hell is the person who told the girl about himself

The girl still finds the whole situation amusing , nearly laugh her heart out. She catches her breath while Hyojin patiently waits for his answer.

"I will tell you his name, he calls himself J-US." She wipes the tears rolling from her eyes due to laughing too much. "Does it ring any bell?" the girl questions Hyojin.

No it doesn't. But Hyojin regains his cool.

"I met a lot of people in my life, it will take some time eventually." Hyojin shrugs his shoulder.

"You'd better," the girl inhales before she tells Hyojin. "Poor him if you never remembers."

The girl then ends the topic by telling Hyojin that she will cooperate about her MO/crime. But what she told Hyojin in that room, is only for him exclusively.

"I don't think anyone will believe you if you told them that you got a fan." The girl's smile is back to the eerie vibe just like the moment when Hyojin comes into the room.

Hyojin leaves the room, closes the door and frowns as he goes into his train of thoughts again...

Who is this J-US?

Is the girl even telling the truth?? They never talked about the possibility of a mastermind in front of her so why did she and why can she see through CID's concern, found a perfect timing to prove the existence of a criminal mastermind?

And why she deliberately shared about this J-US to Hyojin only and purposely does not want it to be recorded?

Did she and the criminal mastermind behind wanted CID to break and having distrust amongst themselves? (If so its a smart move considering Changyoon's attitude towards Hyojin)

And should Hyojin told Changyoon about this J-US, will Changyon believe in him? Hyojin's hunch told him no.

And the most important point of all,

DOES THIS J-US ACTUALLY HAVE ANY THING TO DO WITH THE TERROR ATTACK FROM 2 YEARS AGO??

To be continued at part 4

[mythical-song-wolf]

Sugar Sugar Rune Remake/Reboot

Credits to two friends on the Kim Server for helping me construct this as well as give me moral support!

One, things from the anime mix into this plus the things from the manga.

Two, pacing is a bit slower with more ‘filler’ instead of arc after arc after arc in rapid fire succession.

Three, expand on certain characters more, foreshadow more things, etc.

Four, modernize certain concepts to better fit the current times, have some boys be in Pierre’s fan club. Have Chocolat & Vanilla take hearts from their female classmates as well.

Now in no order I will be listing some more ‘minor’ crap I guess

Duke’s relations and backstory is heavily hinted at but never clear, is he Vanilla’s dad? Chocolat’s dad? Houx & Saule’s eccentric uncle?

Houx & Vanilla’s relationship is something that’s more hinted at

Waffle (anime only kid) comes back but is... revised, I suppose

She acts as a mini-catalyst to Houx X Vanilla. Personality wise, she’s spoiled and bratty but doesn’t understand certain social cues due to her rich statues and lack of friends, almost a ‘What if’ of Vanilla if she didn’t have Chocolat

Her interactions with Houx are more than the one-off, so her infatuation with him is a bit more... expanded? I guess

She’s also gonna be around Chocolat & Vanilla’s age, either younger than them by a year or born on the same year just really late into it

Waffle’s Nanny is a Pseudo bodyguard and someone to keep her in line when she goes too far

Some of Pierre’s fan club Members, surprisingly, don’t have a Noir in them because they know better than to let hatred, anger, and jealousy get the better of them

Duke & Blanca get more focus, especially Duke

Houx & Saule get more focus because please give them something

Also an episode of what the ever loving fuck Robin was doing when the girls were in danger

An episode of Pierre’s familiar, maybe the cat and Duke share a subtle glance and nod?

More filler after certain big events because I need to know how everyone’s coping instead of them immediately being yeeted into danger again

Some angst over Chocolat when she collects Noir to try and drive off Orges or smth

Mages & their familiars bonding

Captain Glacier stays longer and potentially trains Houx & Saule or even Vanilla and Chocolat (maybe Vanilla learns some water/ice magic while Chocolat learns fire magic?)

He either stays with the kids or with Robin, if he stays with the former he’s the Adult Supervision during some Shenanigans

More world building

Filler that’s canon compliant, develops the characters, and/or expands the world

Episode Plot on Saule

Since Saule doesn’t have any subplots attached to just him (meaning Houx isn’t involved), I gave him one

Basically when they both get over their crushes on Chocolat, Saule starts to fall for a human

He’s slowly been falling for them in the background of many of the episodes, with some subtle points where we briefly see this Mystery Love Interest

By the time they realize, Saule’s heart is already so pink and getting redder by the day

This smacks Houx, Vanilla, and Chocolat in the face with what would happen to Saule if his heart turns red

It makes them realize how cruel and unfair it is to punish someone for falling in love

Chocolat is rightfully furious over it, Vanilla is concerned and terrified for her friend, and Houx is right dab in the middle, furious over this unjust system and deeply worried for his brother

Blanca watches on, being reminded of her own downfall when she wished to give her heart to a human. Duke doesn’t know what to do except comfort her, because she’s the only one he can really help right now

This can end two ways

One, it’s played off for laughs at the end and the person turns out to not be interested but wants to stay friends

Two, Saule risks it all and plans to ask them out, but someone beats them right to the punch (assuming he had a chance to begin with)

If it’s the latter, Saule’s near red heart quickly turns a deep black

Naturally the dark heart is resolved before any Orge can get it but it still frightens the kids because they didn’t know Witches could get natural Noir

If Robin, Waffle, or Glacier are present, they two guards don’t doubt the rules until they see the girls immediately want against it, Waffle is with the girls, concerned and furious

Other things

Chocolat’s grandpa comes over more often, there’s a point where he and Duke lock eyes and Corne briefly suspects something before Robin snatches Duke so they both leave (Robin knows that Duke also doesn’t like being around Corne and tbh he doesn’t need a reason it’s just that it’s Corne)

The point in time where Chocolat think she and Pierre are siblings is longer and she finds out they aren’t just before she would’ve been fully over her love for him

Either she figures it out with Pierre or Poivre tells her

When Poivre is revealed and tells her the truth in small doses (as to not shock them all so much that they all have some kinda crisis)

Also after Poivre is introduced, shenanigans

He and Chocolat interacting and both get a lot of hearts from the woman and men that go ‘awww look at him with his niece!’ and boys and girls being like ‘they’re so cute!’

He escorts the kids to school and he gets some hearts from some people

Oh yeah, the heart system and a bunch of other basic things get introduced at the start of every episode

The description of Noir starts vague but as episodes go by the definition becomes clearer, same with White Hearts

The start of the series is relatively slowish

Introduces the magic world, the hearts system, our MCs in the first few episodes

Introduces Duke & Blanca, expands on the magic

Introduces Houx & Saule, expands on the magic and current state of the Magic World

Pierre

Pierre hints to being an Orge are subtle, so subtle that it’s just a throw away idea to the kids until the Aquarium date happens

After that, they notice all the Noir he’s fostering in the Members

The Members also expand their ranks after that

Human world things

Robin educates the kids on certain holidays coming up so they don’t attract attention for not knowing something like Valentines

On some occasions, Duke puts in his own two cents

Later, depending on when in the timeline it happens, Poivre gives them descriptions in greater detail

Character relationships

Chocolat & Pierre

The two spend more time together before it’s revealed that he’s an Orge

Something just clicks when they meet at school

Chocolat feels like she knows him, something about him reminds her of the Magic World

The more time they spend together, the more she notices how he smells like the rain back home, how his hands are always so cold, how something about him just feels familiar. She feels like she can trust him, but doesn’t understand why

Pierre, we get his view of this later on, feels like he knows her, something about her reminds him of something, like a memory of something that doesn’t exist, something before his time with the Orges

The moment he meets the girls, he knows they’re from the Magic World, but that doesn’t explain to him why he gravitates to Chocolat. When Vanilla, the Queen’s daughter, is much easier to exploit than the stubborn Chocolat

His heart- his original heart0 reacted so strongly during their first meeting that he’s surprised he didn’t double over or much less flinch back at the sudden pain

He thought maybe spending time around Chocolat would let him get used to the sight of her without his two hearts clashing

Chocolat & Vanilla

They’re like family to each other, as close as cousins, since Vanilla was confided to be the Queen’s daughter while Chocolat was a free and normal child

Chocolat was free to have friends and have a childhood

Vanilla was restricted by her statues as the Queen’s daughter and her childhood was filled with lessons on top of lessons on top of lessons, with her only friend being Chocolat

Vanilla envy’s Chocolat’s freedom and bravery, as well as her social nature

Chocolat envy’s the fact that Vanilla still has her mother with her, as well as her kind heart and gentle ways, as well as her skills

The two wish they were more like the other

After Vanilla’s Noir is removed, they understand each other better

They talk about how they envied the other yet admired them too

They’re best friends, no matter who becomes Queen or whatever comes their way

Houx & Saule and Vanilla & Chocolat

Houx and Saule had brief but professional interactions with Vanilla prior to the start of the Queen Candidate competition

But the two still gravitate more to Chocolat because Chocolat is friends with a lot of people

The boys’ favouritism clearly leaned towards Chocolat, yet they also treated Vanilla with more care and focus her safety more

But as challenges and trials come their way, the boys start to protect both of them with the same ferocity

After sometimes, their crushes on Chocolat die down, Saule was never going to fall fully anyway, it was Houx that was too close to the edge of falling for someone who’s heart belongs to another

Saule has always been ready to move on but he was waiting for his brother to as well, because he’s not leaving him behinds

[makeste]

I was glad to see you enjoyed my Top 10 ask. You did mention you had a ranking for the arcs - would you do a ranking for them? Like, worst to best? (My guess (of the arcs you've finished): Internship arc, Hero Killer Arc, License Exam, USJ, Intro Arc, Culture Fest, Battle Trial, Pro-Hero arc, Final Exams, Sports Fest, Camino Ward, DvKp2; since you haven't liveblogged Joint Training Arc yet, no clue.) Just curious.

good morning evening everyone, and welcome to another Wednesday episode of “makeste tries to answer asks from two months ago while on the bus.” this one is a bit of an interesting challenge since it involves ranking and that always takes me a long time, but as you said, I did have an ongoing ranking of the arcs in my head, so we’ll see. at the very least the ones at the beginning and end shouldn’t be too hard, and you can probably guess them already. (in fact, you actually did.)

(ETA: yeah this took me two sittings to do, so I ended up posting it on the ride home lol. I just like BnHA you guys. almost as much as I like talking about how much I like it!)

okay so here goes.

14. Basement arc - yeah so let’s just go ahead and get this over with. this is the one and only BnHA arc that I actually dislike. fortunately it’s an outlier and suffered from a bunch of one-time issues, most of which stem from the fact that Horikoshi was apparently trying to write a longer and darker arc than usual. well he succeeded! and thankfully learned his lesson. and at least this arc gave us Eri and Mirio and some good Kirishima flashbacks and Chekov’s Quirk-Be-Gone bullets and the Highway to Hell. hopefully the anime can improve on the rest.

13. Provisional License arc - okay, so it might surprise a few people that this arc is all the way down here. let me explain. this is a perfectly fine arc, and I like it well enough, but it’s a bit longer than it needs to be, and not that much happens in it aside from our introduction to best boy Yoarashi Inasa, and the Great Toga Conspiracy (which is admittedly excellent). there are some great moments (Aoyama doing his best impression of “THE BEACONS ARE LIT” from RotK comes to mind), but overall it’s fairly forgettable, and it suffers from being placed directly in between my two absolute favorite arcs, which means I have a tendency to overlook it, which isn’t really the arc’s fault.

12. Hero Killer arc - this one is interesting because I really lost patience with it during my first read-through, but strangely enough when I watched it in the anime I actually really enjoyed it. it was also much shorter than I remembered. I’ve belatedly realized that reading it while doing commentary really slowed me down, because for the parts that I wasn’t feeling, doing the commentary took a long time and also left me dwelling on a lot of the things I didn’t like. but in actuality, Stain’s Annoying Rants aside, this is a pretty enjoyable arc full of Big Hero 6 flashbacks, hot revenge-driven Iida, Gran Torino’s introduction, Deku learning full cowl, Bakugou’s Best Jeanist internship, and Todoroki saving Deku and Iida’s lives by being glued to his phone when he really should have been paying attention to his own internship. get off that social media already Shouto.

11. USJ arc - this is a great arc, but it just feels small compared to everything that happens afterward. but it’s fun to look back on because there are lots of little hints for future developments to come. the traitor theory, for instance. and this is also our introduction to the League and to Tomura and the Noumu. and that final fight between All Might and the Noumu is still one of my favorite scenes in the whole series, especially in the anime. it’s so fucking good you guys. shit.

10. Intro arc - just FYI, I lump everything from the first chapter up until USJ into one arc since it’s easier. anyways, so this is roughly on the same level as USJ, but gets a slight edge because there are some iconic moments here. namely, the first chapter (which is still one of the best shounen intro chapters I’ve ever read, if not the best); Kacchan VS Deku 1; the entrance exam; and our introduction to the rest of class 1-A, particularly Ochako and Iida. oh, and Aizawa! gotta love how he starts out all ready to expel some bitches only to wind up falling in love with the whole class. fatherhood agrees with him.

9. Band AU arc - I actually love this arc. I just love all of the ones above it on the list a bit more, and I can’t really justify it being any higher than this. but it has The Band and the Babysitting Squad and Mirio being the best big brother in the world and Eri being just ridiculously, astonishingly cute. Gentle and La Brava are also great villains, if not quite my favorites. there are a few questionable plot holes in the arc, and it lacks any sort of big impact on the rest of the series, but it’s basically a canon filler arc and it’s so much fun and I can’t wait to see it animated.

8. Fanfic Lodge arc - you guys this arc started out so fucking cute and ended up so fucking tense. and this was our intro to the League of Villains proper, including Spinner, Twice, Tuxedo Mask, the prodigal Todoroki son, and my best girl Toga. Deku VS Muscular is still hard for me to read (his liiiiiiiimbs) but it’s one of Deku’s best moments regardless. and the angst at the end of the arc is almost unparalleled. god I love it.

7. Final Exam arc - a.k.a. the one where all the kids team up with each other to shoot their teachers in the fucking face. this arc has it all: Momo character development, Bakugou character development, TodoMomo, BakuDeku, and Aizawa being a total badass. (and All Might too, but he’s kind of overkill tbh. which is its own kind of awesome though.) there’s so much good stuff in this arc that this description is a bit vague because if I got any more specific we’d be here all day. it’s just a lot of good stuff that I like.

6. Joint Training arc - dudes I love this arc so much. class B and their array of ridiculously awesome quirks! class A and their impeccable teamwork! Bakugou joining the OFA Scooby Squad and showing off his new WIN AND RESCUE COMBO! Monoma! Shinsou!! SIXQUIRKS!!! god there’s so much great content.

5. Endeavorhawks arc - this arc would be even higher except that it’s a bit short (though it’s perfectly paced, so that might actually be a plus) and it doesn’t feature as many of my faves. but Hawks’s intro + our intro to The Great Noumu Conspiracy + Todoroki Family Drama + some of the best character development I’ve seen in a shounen manga (god I still can’t get over what a ballsy move it is to try and redeem Endeavor) = solid gold. and it’s so well done. and caps off with one of the best plot twists in the series to date, which sets up what promises to be one hell of an interesting arc later down the line. just. it’s so good. possibly the best-written arc to date, even if it doesn’t quite top my list.

4. My Villain Academia arc - and this isn’t even done yet!! and it’s still already this high!! Tomura flashbacks! Toga flashbacks! TOUYA FLASHBACKS???! (we’ll see??) creepy cults! my new favorite character One-Handed Giran, the biggest badass in the whole fucking series! worldbuilding for days! Dr. Robotnik! more Noumu shit! etc. etc. this arc has been non-stop goodness and I almost feel spoiled at this point.

3. Sports Festival arc - the most fun of all the arcs. I have rewatched the cavalry battle in the anime like a bazillion times. there used to be this show on Nickelodeon called Wild & Crazy Kids where kids teamed up for all these zany competitions (water balloons were usually involved), and I fucking loved that show, and parts of this arc kinda have that same kind of spirit. it’s just fun. and then to top it all off we have our Shouto character development, as well as Bakugou’s little character arc that he also has which is excellent. not to mention what is probably Ochako’s most badass moment to date. love it.

2. Kamino arc - guyyyys where do I even start? this arc is perfection. good VS evil. All Might taking a stand even when he’s got nothing left in the tank, because the world needs him and he won’t let them down. the sheer visceral terror of AFO’s introduction. my favorite character getting fucking kidnapped and being brave AF and his friends rallying to save him yesssss. and the reveal of All Might’s secret, which is arguably the most powerful scene in the series. I get chills every time. “my heart is still the heart of the symbol of peace.” if All Might had announced at that moment that he was starting a new religion I would have been like “yeah okay.” I would follow him to the ends of the earth. how can one man be that selfless and brave. anyways this arc is absolutely incredible and objectively one of the best in all of shounen.

1. Deku VS Kacchan Part 2 - nothing to see here, just two boys who’ve known each other since they were in diapers, who’ve done everything together and have always been together but have never actually understood each other until now. just the two of them finally opening up to each other, because the one who always tried to act so tough actually isn’t that tough, in truth, and in spite of everything, he trusts the other enough to let his guard down around him this one time. just two rivals, sorting out their shit and figuring out what it all really means. and their dad, helping to facilitate the whole thing because he knows that one day, somewhere down the road, this bond between them will mean absolutely everything. is this really even an arc?? it’s only like six chapters, and only one event actually takes place. but do I care?? yeah, no. Deku and Kacchan’s relationship is the series to me, so yeah. to me it counts as an arc. and not just any arc, but the best arc.

so there you have it! I hope I haven’t accidentally left something out lol. but this should hopefully be a pretty definitive list, at least for now. looking back at all of this really makes it sink in just how good of a story this is, though. damn.

[chromsai]

GX Review

I’ve finished my long, grueling trek through GX and so now it’s time for a quick review. I don’t want to make this too long because I don’t wanna continue rambling on the same points I made throughout my liveblog, so let’s get this goin’ already...

Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 52)

This beginning fourth of the show introduces us rather gently to GX’s trend of “filler” episodes, or, rather, episodes that introduce us to villains-of-the-week that serve as fodder for our protagonist (and sometimes for GX’s side cast characters). Yes, GX is that kind of show. While I’d say it’s worthy to note that not every episode or characters is exactly boring, what is boring is GX’s complete refusal to build up its own world beyond just the span of the perspective of a few characters. It’s such a shame, really, because the concept of a world which takes dueling to a whole new, professional and academic level is quite interesting but it’s not explored much this season. That being said, certain characters are fun and have interesting enough beginning development brewing up slowly, however the group of main villains introduced in the second half are almost all incompetent and lacking in any appeal to the main cast, and even less so to the audience. They’re overall forgettable, as are most of the episodes this season. It certainly doesn’t help the side cast’s appeal that the majority of the duels are dependent on Judai, the protagonist’s, victory, leading us to quickly (and appropriately) assume that even they are easily expendable. Still, there are fun moments here and there, especially when the show doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is something that GX later tries to “fix”.

Production value-wise, it’s passable in terms of animation and sound design (which admittedly gets repetitive), but not anything to write home about.

Overall rating for this arc: 2.7/5

Season 2 (Episodes 53 - 104)

Season 2 introduces a bit more of a proper overarching conflict throughout the next 50 or so episodes. We’re introduced to a cynical villain and a new rival for Judai that leads him to develop... or so we would figure. While it does indeed seem so at first that Judai is about to undergo a bit of growth, mainly Judai’s defeat to this new “rival”, Edo Phoenix, leads him to the discovery of a new archetype that he tacks onto his deck as easily as that. While this season has a bit less of the villain-of-the-week -esque episodes, it still drags along its cast to near helpless states, which Judai is expected to eventually save them from. The overall plot focuses on the main villain Saiou and his relationship with Edo, however the spotlight is stubbornly set on Judai and of course all other characters are as expendable as Judai is the protagonist, and oh boy is he ever the protagonist.

We get a bit more world building but nothing is ever expanded upon too thoroughly as all the world building we get is mostly through side-character agency, which, as you may have already noted, doesn’t ever last too long. Production value-wise, it’s about the same as Season 1. For me, the most enjoyable moments included expansion on Edo’s backstory and Hell Kaiser Ryo’s fall into the corrupted underground duels scene, but again... those moments aren’t too often. I’ll give this season a bit more points for at least keeping a consistent plot line running, even if it was marred with nonsense and irrational interactions between some of the more, in my opinion, potentially interesting characters of GX’s cast.

Overall rating for this arc: 2.9/5

Season 3 (Episodes 105 - 156)

Ho boy.

Not sure how many people read my review of DM, but this arc suffers from a lot of the similar issues found in the Doma arc of that show.

I want to emphasize that up until now, the show’s central themes (about... having fun with dueling... and.... believing in your cards (?), as well as... growing up (???), destiny(?!??!???)) have not only been vague and jumbled, they’ve also been laughably weak, so when GX decided to use this season to finally “get serious” about addressing it’s “maturer” tones, you can probably guess how that played out. Hint: it plays out as well as any fanfic tagged under the “#angst #war au #self-insert” tags you’d find on the 13th page of AO3 at 3am after your 8th shot of vodka because you’ve lost control of your life, just as this show has lost control of all sense of its identity.

It’s illogical, melodramatic, dreary, predictable, and just a drag to get through. When Judai’s “friends” aren’t sucking on his poor, abused teet, then you can bet the show is doing its damnedest to appeal for you to take your turn too. It envelops him in this over-glorifying aura that just screams “look at me, I can do the development too” but then falls flat, settling on an anticlimactic plot twist that makes you question why you didn’t just skip to the last episode.

It has a few quirks here and there, I’ll give it that. A few sassy lines from a character here or there makes it a clever show, right?

Overall rating for this arc: 1.5/5

P.S. Yes, this is the season every ardent GX fan wants you to see. This is the one that makes it “worth it”. Right.

Season 4 (Episodes 157 - 180)

Just when you thought the worst is past you, your beloved GX characters have made it back to their regular daily lives, more or less, but then, suddenly, you’re enshrouded by endless DAAARRRKNESSS.

DAAAAAARRRKKKNEEESSSSS.

DAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRKKNEEESSSSSS.

*Ahem*

Judai returns as well, having developed into a much less sociable young man. He’s oh so very pleasant to be around now that he actively ignores his friends, but, of course, this is due to the traumatic experiences he went through in Season 3. He’s now a grown up. A fully fledged adult. And mature. And the show will make sure you know this. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem.

Judai withstanding, which is now extremely difficult to do for this show apparently, I can promise you that none of your favorite characters will receive proper treatment throughout this arc and only a very limited number of them will receive a proper send off. And the plot for this arc? Well. It’s pretty DARK. As in there is not a single shining fleck of light emanating from this rushed story line of a final arc.

Overall rating for this arc: 0.6/5 (I stand by my belief that 4Kids’ decision to end their dub of this show at the end of Season 3 was the correct narrative choice to make for this show).

Final Overall Rating for this show: 1.9/5.

Final thoughts: My final calculated score may seem rough but I agree with it. GX is not well written and, to be fair, that may have been due to the fact that, as the first spin-off of this anime franchise, the show’s producers seemed to have had an air of skepticism when approaching it. While I enjoyed watching it as a kid, a fresher perspective on GX didn’t bode me as well as I initially believed it would. I did enjoy some of the cast of characters, but I found their written development overall disappointing. And Judai for me could have been a likable protagonist but he ends up coming off as pretty insufferable and egotistical by the end of the show. Despite this, I think the rating I gave it reflects that there is something salvageable from it: character concepts and alternative theories of its under-developed and underutilized ideas. Nevertheless, it almost hurts me to say this because I do still see it as having been a part of my childhood, but I see now that it is no longer a show for me and I think it’s best I’ll keep it in my past.

Bonus note: Having revisited some clips of the dub, I believe it to be the more enjoyable of the two versions due to the fact that it doesn’t tend to take itself as overly serious so its themes don’t come off as disingenuous as the original version definitely does.

[sol1056]

more asks: when retcons attack

tl;dr: harsh truth, y’all: there’s only one way out of this quagmire, and it’s not around or behind or above. It’s through. 

Let’s see. First in the list are the bunch o’ anons who want to know when Yoo left + when EPs changed + issues of S2′s writing (reveal, filler eps). 

Yoo has EP credit for all 24 episodes of S1/S2. (The three-part pilot is counted as a single episode.) Oddly, the Koplar brothers have 23 credits, skipping S1E2, Some Assembly Required. The outlines and story ideas for those episodes were probably hammered out back in 2014. Animation may get behind schedule, but it almost always does start well in advance. 

The fact that Yoo may’ve contributed greatly to the story outline doesn’t mean he has writing credit. It’s possible he made vague motions at “the team finds out Keith is part-Galra,” and left the ‘finding out’ to be handled at the script level. If Yoo did contribute enough to the story to get the EP credit for that, then he probably worked at the broadest strokes. If the episode is badly written, that’s on the writer and the story editor. 

My guess at who influenced which seasons: 

S1, S2: Yoo  S3/S4, S5: Hedrick* S6: Hedrick, with greater EP input (plus script) S7, S8: JDS and LM

* remember post-S3/S4, where the EPs’ interview tone was of not knowing what was going on. It’s possible that was more truthful than we realized at the time, if they’d left the scripts in Hedrick’s control. I have nothing to go on but my gut, but I wonder if the growing EP involvement was out of annoyance that Hedrick was setting up the pieces for Shiro’s return as Black Paladin, rather than his return and benching.

So THAT'S how EPs managed to steer the story their way, he wasn't there to stop them so they leaped at the chance post S2? And Hendrik could only try to make it make sense and keep the premise as much he could?

It’s the best explanation I can think of, at least.

With all the backlash, there’s no way [the writers] in this clusterfuck won’t spill the deets as soon as they can (in a professional way ofc) to absolve themselves for things they were forced to write

One way or another, most of the behind-the-scenes madness will come out. I can tell you this: if DW doesn’t give the EPs another show --- thus reducing the professional risk in speaking honestly --- we may get those truths sooner rather than later. If the EPs do prove to be paying someone under the table and are protected from their mistakes, we’ll still get the truth. It’ll just come at us sideways and in hints and allegations. But we will get it. 

That brings us to retcons. 

If DW want to fix VLD they can. It's only unsalvagable if EPs continue trashing canon and retconning things, and they will, but: the show has given so much to write plausible explanations: mind manipulation, AUs, messing with time, cryogenic sleep.

All of which aren’t new nor original to VLD. Those are standard SFF tropes, and anyone doing VLD (or some other futuristic SF series) will have those in their genre rolodex. The problem isn’t that VLD couldn’t tap those tropes, but that they didn’t throw them in because they were organic to the story. The EPs are proud of their rule-of-cool approach, and you can see it all over the story’s flaws. They threw in whatever seemed cool at the time and never thought of how it might impact anything beyond that one point of cool. 

And an anon with a lot of questions:

What's your idea of a well-written retcon?

A reboot from the ground up. 

What would you advise writers to be careful of?

Ever getting suckered into retconning someone else’s work to ‘fix’ it. 

Unless you are very, very good --- and I can count on one hand the writers with the right combination of curiosity and ingenuity --- you risk making even more of a mess by creating plot holes in the course of filling other plot holes. Just avoid it, and take some other job. 

Life’s too short to be someone else’s clean-up crew. 

Also what do you think about retcons in vld s7-8? ...If S1/S2 along with watered down S3/S4 [is VLD #1 and] S5-S6 is ... VLD #2, [can] another retcon somewhat fix things? It can't erase the damage or revert VLD to S1-2 sadly, but maybe cutting the infected parts will make way for future seasons/sequels to make Voltron VLD 1 again?

How? “Cut to Bobby in the shower, waking up to realize the entire season was a dream”? You said it yourself: it won’t erase the damage. The story is broken at this point. The best we can hope for is a band-aid, some paltry attempt at closure so we can all be done and move on. 

At the very latest, S4 was the last chance for the story to turn itself around. Keep Keith on the team, have Black reject the clone, have the clone attack, let the team deal with it, find Shiro, reverse the lion swap, take down Lotor, then Haggar, then return to Earth for one last clean-up and introduce new characters and setup the continuation. 

We’re thirty-one episodes past that turning point. There’s no going back now. Whatever fresh hell is currently springing full-grown from the heads of the nostalgia-obsessed EPs... well, it’s what we’re gonna get. 

We may get band-aids, but that original story and its promising setups are gone. Nothing’s going to change that. If that frustrates you, the answer is to pummel DW Animation TV with your complaints so they’ll realize that a) there’s a diehard fandom that wants VLD done right, and b) to make sure any redo has god-tier storytellers like Ehasz or the Hageman brothers. 

VA interviews prove EPs unprofessionalism

I think the EPs’ own interviews do that all on their own, tbh.

the EPs trashed canon by changing VLD's arcs and the natural storylines the VAs recorded, and let them take the fall for making "wrong" comments. ... Jeremy reassured VLD would follow logic: Keiths sacrifice will be addressed [and he’ll] be angry at Krolia for abandoning him, Lance will use his sword [and] be someone’s first choice. None happened.

I realize now I was wrong to side-eye the older VAs for seeming to not know what was in the upcoming season. Seems like they probably ended up recording multiple versions of the story. I wonder if they still do the group watching together when the season comes out (pretty sure they did it for S3 and S4, ‘cause iirc AJ was part of it)... it’s got to be somewhat subdued watching, now, to see none of what you’d thought you were helping tell ever made it to the screen. 

[vultruntrash]

Review Part II, Giant Robot Edition

Now that I’ve gushed about everything Voltron had actually done VERY well this season, much to my delightful surprise, it’s time for everything they did wrong.

...

within reason. Because there were many moments that were clearly used to set up for a later thing.

Season seven opens up with an episode dedicated to flashbacks between Keith and Shiro and how they became so close, as well as mentions of Shiro’s disease. Being oddly vague about exactly what he has, as well as being just too subtle of a romance between him and Adam for it to really stick to anyone who isn’t object to Representation. Now, I’ve had my fair share of relationships with both men and women in the past, but you can be way more obvious without actually stating it outright than you actually did.

You know what a lot of these flashbacks would have been great for, though?

THE ENTIRE TWO YEARS WORTH OF MOTHER SON BONDING WE DIDN’T GET TO WITNESS. I mean, how on earth do you miss an opporunity as perfect as that to explain the backstory of three characters we know less about than anyone else? Tell me how, because I would very much like to know why a perfect duo-episode setup like that was allowed to slip away.

Also: what the hell was the hell was the point of that Game Show? To waste time? Filler Content? A break in the monotony? Feels a hell of a lot like 4-4, and you know how I feel about 4-4. While it wasn’t nearly as painful, it was still mind-numbing and difficult to sit through for longer than five minutes at a time. And I mean that literally.

Now, Adam.

He died too fast.

There was barely anything to get a read off of him besides “This guy was once important in Shiro’s past, and now he’s going to defend the planet!- oh wait, he’s dead”

It was too fast, very unnecessary unless half the people taken out in the first wave are going to turn up again later. ALIVE. Like Veronica did. And in the even he’s actually, for real, dead, I Feel as much for him as I did for Rover. Heck, i think I felt more for Rover simply because that little droid wasn’t a huge dickbag

AND SPEAKING OF DICKBAGS

I don’t care what your name actually is. It could be Gary, it could be Johnathan. You are now Dickbag, and that is your name, your occupation, and your marital status. He’s logical and semi-considerate of his team, but the entire time when any paladin is in the room, he’s nothing but an asshole! He’s stuck in the same area as Keith more often than not, and he’s done nothing but stay sullen and bitter and glary-eyed the entire damn time.

I do not like him, is what I’m saying.

Same goes for the Admiral.

She blatently put the entire planet at risk because she wanted to ‘save Earth,’ without taking into the account she had been very clearly told the Galra DO NOT FIGHT FAIR. And despite multiple warnings that this alien race is both hostile and invasive, she decides to give them the benefit of the doubt and let it happen, only to have it completely backfire on her. She, the Bitch. The Admiral! Who should know the tactics of warfare cover to cover(assuming she gained that rank behind a desk) made a monumental tactical error that cost not only her life, but the potential lives of millions of people. Because of her pride.

Her noble sacrifice did not salvage remorse. She got what she deserved.

AND WHERE WAS THE WOLF THE ENTIRE BATTLE? WHERE WERE PIDGE’S TRASHAPILLARS? Nowhere. Wolfy could have helped, he wasn’t there. Where was he? We don’t know, the animals take a back seat when it comes to voltron battles. (Makes me wonder how they fared when the lions did actually fight. Must have been interesting to say the least.)

And last but not least, I want to talk about the Giant robot fight at the end of the season.

You remember the logic question, right? How do you defeat a giant heavily armed and deadly robot?

With a BIGGER one, of course! And with HEELS!

AND IT DIDN’T EVEN WORK! It got it’s giant-ass ass handed to it by that itty bitty flybot because it was huge and lumbering and slow, and how the hell did that even happen, even Shiro doesn’t know.

Flybot was probably the one thing I actually hated about the show so far. After all the crap everyone just went through, getting knocked out multiple times and being physically and psychically exhausted for hours on end, going on five episodes in a row, and finally managing to save the Earth from Sendak’s forces, they pulled THIS out of NOWHERE.

I would have been satisfied with Sendak being killed off, and then ended it with them prepping for another potential attack and then STARTING the next season with Flybot. That would have been fine! FLYBOT COULD HAVE WAITED!

I understand that you need to build hype for the upcoming season with cliffhangers and barely-noted hints throughout the series, and yes, it was quite a blow to see that Flybot was piloted by an Altean of all things.

But note that it’s very difficult to acknowledge the significance of that when you look at this:

And all you see is this:

So long story short: You are learning, Team Avatar

While I was very impressed by a lot I saw, there’s still a lot I’m not happy about, and I hope that plotholes like these are, at the very least, smaller by the time the fangirls start drooling over the season 8 trailer.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have fanfics to read and fanart to create. unfortunately. Kinda. It’s complicated.

See you all alter

~Wolf

[moonandwind]

What sauceribs don’t understand is that they cannot judge the relationship between an adult and a child as if it were between 2 adults.

Sesshomaru caring for Rin means nothing, it doesn't mean that he was in love with her nor that they would become a couple. So to me it wasn’t “obvious” at all. Sesshomaru did nothing different for Rin than a foster father would have done. And the fact that Rin encouraged Sesshomaru to get close to a woman she knew was in love with him is completely unnatural in Rumiko Takahashi's canon couples. Their relationship was strictly platonic in the original series.

The only hints vaguely romantic come from one filler episode of the anime, the 3rd movie and the drama CD.

And about Rumiko Takahashi, she’s not happy with Hanyo no yashahime, it’s clear. And the feeling I have about SessRin is that she has given her permission to please Sunrise and the fans, probably she doesn't hate it but neither she’s enthusiastic.

I feel like me and the rest of the fandom are being gaslighted by Sessrinners and the existence of Yashahime itself when they keep on crying out that Sessrin was “obviously the intended canon from the start,” and “who else was going to be the mother?” And like…no? Before the existence of that dreaded Drama CD (which itself isn’t canon and just satire) there wasn’t a single hint or shippy subtext pointing toward Sessrin ever becoming a thing in the future. I legit went back and skimmed through all the episodes (even the Sunrise invented filler ones) and chapters the two appear in and no interaction between the two could even be taken as ambiguous, it’s all very strictly platonic. Rin didn’t even have so much a puppy love crush on Sesshomaru, she was excitedly shipping him with Kagura and yet shippers, Sunrise, Shiina and Rumiko wanna tell me she was an intended love interest all along and Sessrin antis were “just too blind to the truth?”

This is literal fandom gaslighting. The only possible hint that exists in the OG anime that I might give shippers is Takemaru in the 3rd movie comparing both Kagome and Rin to Izayoi, but 1: It’s not any actual shippy interaction coming from either Sesshomaru’s or Rin’s parts and only exists from the observations of an outside observer who mind you, is currently clearly losing his mind and 2: All the movies are non-canon, so just like the Drama CD they don’t count. (Though in retrospect realizing that Sumisawa directed all the movies like how he wrote the Drama CD and directed Yashahime it most likely was intended to come off as a “hint,” it’s definitely not an obvious one that normal non-pedos who don’t have lolicon brain rot would ever pick up on, I know I didn’t my first time around and was frankly shocked during Yashahime’s initial announcement that Rin was actually being considered a serious candidate for the twins mother)

So let me get this straight, all the shipping “hints” that even exist for Sessrin are all from non-canon material? Not the actual original manga or show itself? And Sessrinners still wanna insecurely scream at the top of their lungs on how “Sessrin is canon” and the fandom has to be forced to accept it? No, fuck that! I know gaslighting when I see it!

I agree wholeheartedly - through Yashahime, we're told by Sunrise and affiliates that the only valid interpretation of the relationship between Sesshoumaru and Rin is a romantic one. We're told that it was inevitable that they should get together, that there was no other option for the two of them, and that this is a GOOD development instead of a regression. If we point out that a romance between the two was unsupported in the source material, and that the interpretations we took from it were much more platonic, we're gleefully dogpiled by shippers who insist that WE'RE the ones who were drawing those platonic interpretations from nowhere. Pointing to specific scenes and interactions that indicate Rin is not Sesshoumaru's equal, that she obeys him like the child she is, that Sesshoumaru plays the role of a surrogate father, are points that are dismissed without counterevidence and a handwave, if not ignored altogether. There is no reason to believe that these two characters aren't meant to be a couple someday, you're just looking at this through the lens of WESTERN morality, and antis are committed to an insane moral standard.

What are you talking about? I don't see a gaslight. You're just crazy.

Honestly, at this point, it's a wonder that we bother to back up our opinion of the matter at all anymore. Obviously actual evidence from the manga doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you can SHOW actually happened in the story and how your interpretation can be drawn reasonably from the text. All that matters is whether a writer at Sunrise with a VERY clear bias toward depicting these types of grooming relationships managed to get HIS interpretation widely distributed or not. Because if you're part of the official entity that officially OWNS the IP, your opinion matters more, I guess.

RT shrugging and yielding to Sunrise's version of the relationship certainly doesn't help matters. Though she HAS (at last) come out and said that she personally viewed Sesshoumaru as a parental figure to Rin, I don't think that she ever cared one way or the other whether people shipped them. I speculated a while back that the reason we never got her stance on the matter sooner was because she didn't want to alienate ANY of her Sesshoumaru fans, because him being one of her more popular characters meant that her voicing an opinion on his relationship with Rin might mean some people would stop reading/watching Inuyasha altogether and it would hurt her bottom line. I'm more convinced than ever that this is the case, because she out-and-out AVOIDED questions about Sesshoumaru getting together with Rin when she's older up until after the first season of Yashahime, which she would only do because she wasn't going to make them a couple, but she knew that her friends at Sunrise might want to take a crack at it at some point and she didn't want to close that door. She only went ahead and finally gave her own perspective when it was clear the show was a major flop after the mother reveal, and there was nothing left to lose by trying to recapture some of her lost Sesshoumaru fans by showing them a little solidarity.

Not sure how successful a move that was, given I know a LOT of folks who are still very upset and not buying anything Inuyasha branded anymore. I guess the only ones who will really know for sure are RT and Sunrise, as reflected in their plunging profits.

[avenger-hawk]

team taka and sasuke going around and freeing orochimaru's prisoners was such a nice arc! sasuke even got a cool title like ''the saviour of shinobi''! it's such a shame it got completely dropped, it's such a shame naruto's readers don't care about sasuke at all

So true.

(vague anti-team7, anti-s*kura under the cut)

Most fans only care about Sasuke as the counterpart of their (usually OOC) ship, like the one who always fucks up while the other one always saves and/or forgives him. Also, since I hate popular opinions like “you ain’t a real Sasuke fan if you ship him with anyone”, I’ll add that a lot of fans only care about Sasuke as their (equally OOC) self-insert character for justifying their emo phase.

It’s sad that Team Taka never got that popular, probably because when it was introduced readers were too attached to Team7 and wanted Sasuke back in Konoha so they saw the new team as a diversion and a threat, which they are, because honestly S*kura is boring and N*ruto’s personal story isn’t that flashed out in part 1, so Juugo, Karin and Suigetsu’s backgrounds and personalities are much more interesting, take Juugo and Kimimaro, Karin’s tragic past and Suigetsu’s mysterious one along with his brother, only hinted at.

When Suigetsu and Karin were fighting because no one took Suigetsu’s sword after the fight vs Killer B, Juugo made them stop saying “our relationship is like fish and water”, to remind them of how close they had become, and how they lost the sword protecting each other. It’s a very strong and beautiful way to define it.

Also their teamwork is way better and their fights much more interesting to see. Nevertheless fans preferred Team7 so Team Taka was given a support-only role, with occasional comic relief parts, as if they weren’t victims who suffered much more than other characters.

I wasn’t into Team7 so I instantly loved Team Hebi/Taka, just like I loved each and every moment of Sasuke’s narrative.  

As for Hebi formation episodes, I rewatched them some time ago and I loved them, there are many little amazing details, and the anime adds filler parts and interaction that are really cool, from Sasuke freeing Suigetsu then them two walking around to retrieve Zabuza’s sword, then freeing all the prisoners in Karin’s hideout so she won’t have to look after them (which is when Suigetsu tells everyone to spread the word about Sasuke being the savior who’ll bring peace to the shinobi world) and a filler flashback of Sasuke and Karin’s first mission together under Orochimaru, then the manga, non filler part where they free Juugo and Sasuke protecting Karin first and taking Juugo’s strong blow without even flinching and telling him he has no intention of fighting, then (after a longer filler part where Juugo attacks Sasuke, which is cool because of feral Juugo and calm Sasuke) telling him that he’ll be his cage, which is a very selfless thing to say to someone he just met and whom he just needs to retrieve Itachi. 

Team Taka moments not only are about amazing and interesting characters, but also about showing Sasuke’s personality in a way that Konoha didn’t highlight as much. In Konoha he wasn’t leading his team, unlike with Taka, and his leading style is really cool and fitting with his flexible, non-dominant/not assertive/passive, in a word, YIN personality (fight me) that doesn’t impose his will and always offers something in return before asking for something. It’s really entertaining to see him so aloof surrounded by Karin and Suigetsu’s bickering and Juugo’s bipolar personality, or to see him napping with them around, Juugo napping as well, Karin reading and Suigetsu flaunting his sword, and I could go on and on because even though I mostly focus on other things both on this blog and in my writing, I have a lot of headcanons about Team Taka that I try to add to my fics whenever I can, because they’re really important for Sasuke.

In short, Team Taka is the best team.

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: Death Parade

An anime about death, set in a food-service purgatory where people must play games to be judged and have their ultimate fates decided, with an inappropriately upbeat OP, and a good balance of distinctive characters and intriguing world building?

This is the most on-brand thing for me, it’s literally just missing a couple pairs of glasses and a dog.

I was turned towards the series after hearing it be described on (I think) Desert Bus, and I thought ‘Okay, I’ll add it to the queue’. Then, when trying to decide on what to follow Samurai Champloo, I chose to give this intriguing show a go as my bedtime anime.

I watched the first episode, and thought ‘Eh, I have time for another episode.’ And watched three more episodes.

The next day, I binged through the remaining eight episodes. I so very rarely binge through a series that hard. It’s usually one or two episodes a day, dragged out if I’m watching it with my brother and our schedules aren’t aligning. I don’t typically have the attention to just burst binge.

Death Parade was balanced just right to really grab me.

Now, I must write about it. As is my duty. (Spoilers ahead!)

Okay, let me temper my previous excitement a little bit, because the episodes were arranged in a manner to trigger a skinner box reaction in me. The episodes mostly alternate between one about judging guests (which I loved) and an episode about the world and myth arc, which I was less enthralled with. So I saw the first episode, which established the structure of Two Dead Guys arrive, get manipulated into a classic game ramped up to craziness, and we learn about their lives so we (and Decim) may judge them. That was pretty cool, and I wanted to go another round.

So I went onto the second episode, which flipped the perspective of the first episode to introduce Decim’s new assistant and teach about the world. Which is fine, but I still wanted to see another game! So obviously, I had to move on to episode three, which satisfied that desire and was really cute, and I wanted to see if the games would continue. Which, fortunately, episode 4 delivered on, so I got a nice trio before laying my head down for sleep.

But, as the series continued, the problem remained: I was really into the episodes that focused on the series gimmick, but when it tried to focus on the overarching arc, I became unengaged. Because while the moral question of judging the deceased and what contexts should and shouldn’t be used were interesting, the effort to keep the higher levels and specifics of the organization vague meant I had no context to Oculus or what Nona’s trying to accomplish. I didn’t see enough about the extended cast to care about what they’re trying to do.

What I had hoped to see is more of what they did with Ginti, taking episodes to show how the other Arbitrators perform their duty. Compare and contrast the styles of them to help highlight to inherent problems with the system, and maybe highlight how Oculus is outwardly affable, but deeply sinister under the mask.

If there’s something I wish caught on more in anime, it’s Princess Tutu’s plot structure.

That’s right! Let’s take a detour through ballet time!

One thing that all media (including film franchises and other animated works) needs to learn from Princess Tutu is putting in the ground work.

You know when Princess Tutu gets to its actual premise? Season 2. The first season was entirely a formulaic Magical Girl show, a format series creator Ikuko Itoh learned from her time working for Sailor Moon. The entire first season exists to lure the audience into a complacency and educate them about what a Magical Girl anime is, with a few hints to a larger meta-arc. The end of the first half resolves the collectathon of the series, and would’ve made a passable series on it’s own.

Then the character who’s been acting as a sort of narrator steps up with a chuckle and basically tells the audience ‘Wasn’t that quaint? Well, hold on, because we’re going wild now.’ There are a couple episodes of the second season that seems to be just more of the same Magical Girl trope work, but then the central cast shift roles and the subversions and meta blooms.

And that’s not emotionally possible without spending thirteen episodes establishing a formula and the cast. It’s why Princess Tutu is essential anime.

Boy is that a risky premise. Because to do that, you have to trust viewers to take the first season in good faith.

You wouldn’t be able to pull off Princess Tutu nowadays, with reviewers only giving shows three (and sometimes only one) episodes to sell them. If it’s not a Shonen face-punch show, studios seem reluctant to commit to multiple episodes. 26-episode animes are becoming increasingly uncommon, with thirteen being the norm.

Death Parade is a twelve-episode anime.[1] Less than 288 minutes to tell a complete story, and I’m not calculating out the OP and EP on that. It’s not enough space for the metatextual story it wants to tell. Not enough time to make the audience complacent with the current Judgement system before having someone slide in and say ‘charming fantasy. Now, let’s explore the flaws.’

Decim makes his big judging mistake in the very first episode, and it’s called out in the second episode. I thought of the same objections the Black-haired Girl presented, but was willing to take it for granted the arbitrators were relatively omniscient in their judgement. That’s called into question immediately.

Which would’ve been okay if the thrust of the series (or just the first season) were independent formulaic stories where dead people arrive, play games, remember their lives, and Decim (or other arbiter) makes their judgement while the audience deliberates for themselves how to feel about.

Kind of a Kino’s Journey (2005)[2] thing, you know? No overarching plot for the first 12 episodes. Only in the last episode of part one would someone question the ethics of the situation, then in season two we can unveil and build upon Nona’s schemes. We’d have had the time to know the cast a little better, and give actual weight to attempts to reform it.

Heck, maybe even have time for a solid resolution beyond a ‘Well, that happened I guess’ and Oculus adding a new rule.

Want to go real wild? Have Chiyuki take over Decim’s job at either the end of season one or the end of the series. Either had merits.

As it is… the story is too crowded in the actual twelve episodes we got, so I can only focus on the Death Games, since those were independently strong.

Heck, it was obvious they were intending parallels when Ginti got Mayu hanging around his bar, but the two didn’t receive enough screen time to be properly compared to Decim and Black-Haired Woman.

Do I put too much weight on wanting more episodic shows? No… it’s the industry that’s wrong…

However, this pacing is only the major misstep. The art and animation is fantastic, the writing is good when focused on the gimmick, and the elevator operator manages to toe the line of Yu-Gi-Oh hair yet still remain just understated enough.

Like a good episode of Kino’s Journey, Death Parade doesn’t dictate what your take away should be. It merely presents the story to you, and the actions and reactions of the characters, and lets the viewer reach their own conclusion. When should a character’s sins condemn them to the void? And how can context shift that? Is the extreme situation built into the games a fair way to judge someone’s character?

Admittedly, I’d probably reincarnate everyone except the police detective,[3] but I’m also a softy frightened enough by the concept of oblivion to not wish it on anyone.

The mystery around the Black-Haired Woman is also compelling, even if it ended with the usual generic Test of Character. I like recurring motifs when they’re actually addressed in the plot, and Chavvot was a good example of that.

Maybe if they focused on how the Black-Haired Woman personally would’ve judged the games she was witness to, it would’ve been stronger. There’s parallels to be drawn for most cases: Death Seven Darts has doubt leading a man to self-destruction; Rolling Ballade is a tale of lost opportunity; Death Arcade[4] is literally about unintentionally hurting your family through selfishness; then episodes 8 and 9 are the most emotionally intense as they pose the question “what is justifiable violence?”

Death Parade is plagued by its raw potential, and failure to give a satisfying ending. It’s a series whose soul deserves reincarnation, if I ever saw one.

Okay, that was cheesy, sorry.

Just watch it, if you can do so legally. It’s good!

If you enjoyed this… stumbling ramble, feel free to send me questions and comments, I love any excuse to over analyze media. And consider supporting me on patreon. You’ll be granted early access to my work. I make good stuff sometimes! Thanks for indulging me.

Kataal kataal.

[1] Not counting Death Billiards, which I haven’t gotten around to yet… [2] I resent that I need to specify between the two series. [3] Also maybe Light Yagami, who makes an inexplicable cameo, and knows what he signed up for. [4] Which my gut reaction was to discount as a filler episode.

[otakween]

.Hack//SIGN - Rewatch, Episode 6

-Sigh- Another episode that felt like filler and the animation was wonky again. I like that the themes of mental illness are becoming more apparent though. The conversation between Mimiru and Tsukasa sound like one between someone who’s depressed and a friend trying to break them free. Mimiru seems to understand that Tsukasa is only a jerk to her because of mental issues/trauma and that’s why she’s so patient with them. Also Subaru hints at Tsukasa’ depression alluding to them being “trapped.” 

My theory about the show is that it’s about unhealthy coping methods. As Tsukasa spirals out of control (losing control of their guardian and most of their sanity) they A. Isolate themselves B. Shun any sense of reality C. Welcome the reality of The World as their only reality. This is basically saying extreme escapism = baaaaad news. A good message for otaku I guess. I feel like this message is also in the lyrics of the opening theme “Where passion hides its feelings.” Tsukasa’s running away from their feelings, probably about their traumatic childhood.

Notes: 

-I feel like whenever Tsukasa goes into the fetal position it makes it really clear how depressed/confused/lost they are. Helps the audience sympathize.

-Not entirely sure what Mimiru and Sora’s plan was? What is Sora even going to do with Tsukasa when he gets them? Steal their guardian or something?

-Tsukasa continues to be super vague with Subaru “Don’t ask me. I don’t know myself sometimes.” ooookaaaay...

-Crim’s got big ol’ eyelashes lol

Attempt at a Summary:

Mimiru confronts BT who denies doing anything wrong and then strikes a deal with Sora to rescue Tsukasa. Sora charges into the dungeon and PKs the guarding Crimson Knights and runs into the chamber where Subaru are chatting about leaving each other alone/stopping sketchy behavior. Tsukasa agrees to leave with Sora cuz...they just want to leave I guess. On the way out Crim attempts, and fails to stop them.

Tsukasa bickers with Mimiru outside the dungeon about how she is “using” them and storms off. Mimiru seems satisfied that Tsukasa is free now. She runs into BT who tells her to look at the boards, there have been sightings of monsters (plural) that look like Tsukasa’s guardian. These clearly aren’t part of the game’s programming and therefore might be dangerous.

The episode ends with Tsukasa shutting themself away from the rest of The World hoping to “not do anything” or “talk to anyone” ever again. Good luck with that, kid. 

[lesmotsincompris]

Thoughts on GoT S07E06

Since everybody was discussing the leaks, I decided to watch the leaked episode and almost forgot to post my thoughts here as usual.

Anyway: that was terrible, y’all. That was a whole new level of terrible.

The show was awful long before this, of course, but I think this episode perfectly encapsulates how poorly written it can be. Every scene has a lot to tear apart, but let’s try to keep it short:

Winterfell

Oh boy, did that hurt. What D&D have done to Arya isn’t simply character assassination; they murdered her character, shat on the corpse, set the poop on fire, and put the fire out with vomit.

Arya’s lines during this episode seem to come from an anti-Sansa thread on Reddit. It’s so viciously misogynystic and victim-blaming that I’m losing all respect for fans that buy this kind of bullshit reasoning (and I’ve seen them with my own eyes).

Again knitting is brought in a negative context. Again Sansa is called stupid. Again Sansa is portrayed as an ambitious bitch because she didn’t act as the ideal victim is supposed to act. Again Sansa’s forced marriages are used against her. Again we have another reminder that Sansa was raped, because gods forbid we forget it. This isn’t dealing with trauma, this is rubbing in the audience’s faces one of the most hated scenes of this show.

It’s ridiculously out of continuity too. Everything Arya herself did to survive is ignored (hanging out with Tywin on season 2, anyone?). Also she couldn’t possibly think her sister helped the Lannisters get rid of Ned, she was fucking there. If she saw Sansa’s pretty hair and dress, she must have seen her crying and screaming in despair. Watch your own damn show, D&D!

Once more I must ask: what is Littlefinger still doing in this story? He’s trying to put Arya against Sansa, but why? What does he gain with that? Why is Sansa still listening to him? You can’t give me Sansa being snarky at him in one episode and fully trusting him in another, it just doesn’t make sense.

Sansa was rude to Brienne for no reason, and sent her away purely because D&D needed Sansa alone and unprotected in Winterfell again. It’s so forced it hurts.

Apparently Jon didn’t give any news in weeks. Great job, Jon. But hey, couldn’t they use their fucking omniscient robot brother to see what stupidity Jon was up to this time?

I was giggling during the entire briefcase scene, not even The Room can aspire to be this bad.

Dragonstone

“Heroes do stupid things and they die” is the supreme maxim of Grimdark™. It’s also clearly not what GRRM is going for in the books.

We had a scene with the sole purpose of delivering exposition that Jon is in love with Dany. Is he? Why would he be? What evidence have we seen of this? Oh no, but it’s a lot easier to have a character established as "clever" saying "he loves you" than actually showing the process of two people falling in love.

For all their speech abut sparing the innocent, Tyrion says they’ll burn King’s Landing if anyone touches Dany. See, the smallfolk are only important if they bend the knee, otherwise they can die. So much for wheel-breaking.

(we still don’t know what that means, btw)

Again Tyrion tells Dany what to do and how to act; I’m gonna stab with a knitting needle anyone that calls this show feminist. I don’t think Tyrion is wrong in everything he says, but having him mansplaining Dany constantly is annoying. If he “believes” her, why doesn’t he let her to think on her own? If he doesn’t trust her to do it, then why does he follow her?

I can’t blame Dany for being hostile to the whole succession talk. Yes, it’s an important matter, and one book!Dany still has to address, but it came very suddenly and when they had other more important matters to deal with.

Tyrion doesn’t want Dany to go and she goes, and again the narrative will prove Dany wrong for not listening to a man. Fuck this show.

Beyond the Wall

Aaah, le crap de le crap. Don’t get me wrong, Winterfell stuff made me roll my eyes so hard I could watch my own brain cells dying. But Winterfell was filler, while this is supposed to be the big moment, the “go go go, shock shock shock” we’ve been told about, the core of the wham episode of this season.

And it sucks.

Tormund says that smart people don’t go looking for the dead, and I have to agree with him. The whole plan of capturing a wight and touring it around Westeros was incredibly stupid to begin with, so it’s hard to feel bad for the characters when things go inevitably wrong.

Less than five minutes into this episode they were already joking about Gendry being assaulted by Melisandre. Fuck this show.

Gendry being sold to Melisandre, much like Tyrion killing Davos’ son with wildfire, becomes a “look, those characters know each other” gag. This is a very poor choice and ignores the fact that those characters met under traumatic circumstances that deserve a stronger reaction than that.

Of course you don’t hear Beric “bitching” about being killed six times, that would mean death and trauma carry any weight and in this show they don’t. Not anymore.

I’ve been complaining for a while that the show seems to have forgotten why Jorah was exiled, so they answered me with him admitting Ned was right. That’s great, it would have been a significant character development… if we had actually seen it. Character development is a character going from point A to point B, not suddenly being on point B with no indication of how they got there.

Then Jon says he’s glad Ned didn’t catch Jorah. Why? Does Jon knows that Jorah was exiled for selling people? Is Jon okay with that? Since when? He barely knows Jorah and no relationship was portrayed on screen before this moment, why this sudden concern with him?

Sandor says he hates gingers, which is another nail in the SanSan coffin for the show. We already that’s D&D’s NOTP, but the petty ways they find to demonstrate it always amuse me.

I joked about this being the Ultimate Bro Trip - All the Extras Edition, but boy I was right. There’s everything one could expect from this sort of event: sexual assault played for laughs, dick jokes, the most disgusting reference to Tormund x Brienne, heavy-handed hints of R+L=J, lots of walking for nothing, lots of shitting all over GRRM’s careful worldbuilding, lots of dudes bonding over stuff that makes me hate them as characters, poorly executed action with no real stakes. A true winner!

There are small things that worked for me. I kinda like Beric’s speech to Jon, or Sandor turning around when they burn Thoros’ wound. It’s a simple but effective way to remind the viewer of Sandor’s trauma. It doesn’t cost much in terms of dialogue or screentime, and keeps the character consistent and fleshed-out. But those were isolated moments, and isolated moments are not enough to save us from this torture of a scene.

I like the surprise element of the bear attack, but it was too shaky and confusing for my taste. Gendry says the bear has blue eyes, but I could hardly see the bear itself? And how can I care about characters dying if I can’t even see who’s dying? After some point it was The Revenant - Westeros edition, and still not the silliest scene in the episode.

The white walkers now die like vampires from Buffy and one stab is enough to finish them. Worse, they’re following the route of 'kill the boss, every minion dies’. I hate this trope, I’m sure there’s a name for it. It’s particularly bad in this case because now the white walkers’ impressive numbers don’t mean anything; just kill the extra blue dude with a vaguely Japanese armor and presto! Also, you know, it contradicts what we’ve seen so far including in this very episode.

Despite them walking for ages, Gendry goes back to Eastwatch pretty fast. The white walkers are kind enough to wait for no fucking reason while Gendry sends a raven, the raven reaches Dragonstone, Dany gets ready, and Dany flies to the Wall and beyond. This should have taken weeks, but apparently it happens over a day or so.

Look, when people talk about ‘teleportation’ in this show, we don’t mean that the writers must depict every beat of the trip. We mean that the trip needs to make sense considering everything we know about the setting and the resources available in that world. It doesn’t have to be super accurate either, just not physically impossible like this was.

The white walkers not attacking the group makes the previous Plot Armor evolve to a Plot AT Field from Evangelion. If there was going to be battle anyway, why the waiting? You’re already bending space and time for Daenerys to arrive, so I’m sure there would be better ways to have the ice dragon scene without all this contrivance.

The dragon saving scene would have been awesome if not for all the implausibility that led to it. It’s hard to be invested when you’re already angry and disappointed. The contrivances don’t stop there, and Jon takes two levels in stupidity and keeps fighting all macho when everybody else is safe on dragon back. Also Daenerys loves him for some reason.

That spear throwing was the funniest thing. Congrats to whoever did the dragon animations and noises, though, that was a great job. Emilia Clarke’s nearly-crying face would have been a great start for one of Daenerys’ more emotional moments in the show, watching the death of one of her children. Too bad this is basically all the reaction she’s allowed to have.

Jon got Viserion killed out of sheer stupidity and stubbornness, but somehow Dany loves him even more for that! She wants to wait for him, even if that endangers her other dragons. Back at the Wall, she waits for his return, not perhaps a sign of Viserion. When he apologizes for being the worst, she’s not remotely angry at him. It was “good” that her dragon died, because now she understands. Now she knows that in this show men are always right and women pay a dear price for not listening to them.

Can’t see the narrative goal of leaving Jon behind or him falling in the water. Nobody actually expected him to die, even if he should have. Then you have Uncle Benjen Ex Machina holding thousands of White Walkers on his own, as if that somehow prevents a few of them from going after Jon. This whole scene accomplished nothing but stretching our suspension of disbelief further, as if there was any left at this point.

The walkers somehow put chains on the dragon to pull it. Why not just make the dragon fall on land? Viserion returning could have been cool if: a) it wasn’t a product of a conga line of plot contrivances; b) they didn’t take four years to show us his eyes opening, as if this wasn’t ridiculously obvious.

Daenerys can’t mourn her fucking dragon, she’s too busy finding the Ultimate Man to Listen To. What prompts Jon to decide that Dany is now his queen? Why does he call her Dany? How does Dany know the Night’s King name?

More importantly, why do I still care to ask about all this questions when the answer is “D&D are fucking dumb and they’re hoping we are too”?

Extra notes

Should we start printing Euron’s picture in milk boxes? And what happened to Theon?

Fuck this show, fuckindammit, that was a lot of time and energy wasted just to get angry.

[asagimeta]

okay so it seems everyone's coming together for a final confrontation/end, but I'm admittedly dubious about how the show will pull it off in just one hour (maybe with limited commercials, but...).

Supposedly the episode is extra long? But you’re right Anon, it’s very hard to imagine the show pulling off the ultimate battle royale in under two hours, but there ARE ways, sadly, none of them are what I would call “favorable”…

Possibility 1: The Shounen Anime Ending- This is probably the ending you’re thinking of and that most people are expecting, basically all of the mains get shoved off into their own personal battles and we see clips out of each all stitched together until they end and the Final Showdown between Main Protagonist and Main Antagonist ends, then everyone walks into the sunset or whatever, an example of this would be something like….

Scott goes off to fight the Anuk-Ite head-on wile everyone else stays behind to fight the hunting party, Stiles and Derek go against Kate and Chris and Peter go against Gerard wile the baby pack goes against Gabe and the others, resulting in Nolan and Sydney going to the side of the supernaturals instead, eventually Gerard kills Monroe, Lydia and Malia run to help Scott, the hunting party is mostly defeated/put out of commission and everyone else runs to help Scott only to be struck by the Anuk-Ite’s powers and they each face Their Biggest Fear (such as Stiles vs Void, Derek vs Jennifer, Malia vs Corinne, Lydia vs .. I don’t know? Lenore? eh) and they either look like they’re going to win or lose their respective “battle” when Scott defeats the Anuk-Ite and the hallucinations stop, after that Gerard is “surprisingly” not dead and someone has to kill him (maybe Chris, maybe Monroe wasn’t dead either and comes back to kill him, maybe Stiles, who the hell knows? Clearly narrative doesn’t play a part in these decisions) they all walk off into the sunset (er… sunrise?)

Hardly comprehensive and ofcourse there will be other moments like Ethan and Jackson meeting up with the gang and such but that’s a *BASELINE* for how these sorts of Final Battles go

Possibility 2: The Favoritism Ending- This is the kind of ending that fans really fear, where they take three to five of their favorite charectors to develop and the rest fall off to the sidelines, the golden children get their time in the sun for their own battles, get some badass moments and, you know, actual development, tie up some loose ends and give them time to shine, wich is actually pretty great… for the golden ones, the others? They might get a couple of moments but they’ll mostly exist in the background with a line here or there and may just end up as canon fodder, an example of this would be something like…

Scott, Stiles, Derek, Lydia, and Malia (just for example, I doubt they’d actually give it to these five given how the season has been going, the turnout is much more likely Scott, Malia, Lydia, Liam, and Peter or Theo) get their mini battles (much like stated in Opton #1) and actually get some time to breathe between fighting, have meaningfull conversations, affirm ships, talk about “after”, have charector development moments, maybe even get an epilogue ending (we know Scott, atleast, will have a two-year jump into the future even if we don’t know what it is) however…. Liam and the others? Barely anything, the good guys will get in the background of the battle and probably have a few throw-away lines, maybe a kiss between Mason and Corey and a three-line argument between Liam and Theo, the bad guys will do alot of killing eachother, partly due to the Anuk-Ite and partly due to people like Nolan and Sydney changing their minds, morally dubious people like Theo and Peter are probably canon fodder and we probably won’t see more than a breif toss scene of people like the sheriff- if we get one at all

Again, this is just a baseline, but still

Possibility 3: Regular Ol’ Deus Ex Machina- I mean this is pretty simple, we get some form of options one or two with the mini battles and then someone evolves like a pokemon on steroids, maybe it’s Scott (probably) or maybe it’s either Gerard taking down the Anuk-Ite or, far far more likely, the Anuk-Ite taking down most of the hunting party, leaving only one enemy instead of several, where either Scott or The Pack as a collective take down The Big Bad once and for all, this one has alot of variations on who gets powered up and how but it’s the essential idea, if we’re lucky it’ll happen early and leave most of the episode for tying up loose ends, if not… welp

Optional Possibility 3.5: Deus Ex Machina  + A Midsummer Night’s Dream- Essentially the Anuk-Ite would be Deus Ex Machina’d and the hunting party really WOULD disband the way Scott thinks it will with people having a “Huh? What happened? Why was I about to shoot you oh random stranger?” sort of reaction, wich would be one of my worst fears as an ending for this show but… unfortunately it’s still possible

Possibility 4: The Reset- Wherein all or part of Teen Wolf has been a dream, vision, hallucination, or part of a different universe, examples of this include but are not limited to:

-Scott waking up and going outside to find Stiles waiting on him to go find Laura’s body-Stiles waking up from the ice baths screaming-Lydia waking up from virtually ANY of her visions (as far back as 3A or as recent as her “turned to stone” vision from last episode)-Mirrorverse: IE, someone (probably Lydia) finds out that at some point they dipped into a different universe and gets them out somehow (alot like the way Grimm ended)-Narration: Someone is telling this as a story to someone else (I know there’s been a rumor going around that Scott is telling it to a random omega) and this person will, likely, get cut-off midstory by the person they’re telling it to so they can clean up the episode with “Well we won ofcourse” (*gag-hack*)-Peter’s coma: There was a theory that Calicokat and I came up with fifty billion years ago where this is all a sort of dream of Peter’s when he’s in the coma with some things really happening in reality (IE: He has a nurse named Lydia who can talk to him telepathically, Derek and Laura really did come back to Beacon Hills but since he only hears from Derek he assumes Laura is dead, Scott McCall is his other nurse’s son and Stiles is the sheriff’s son so they’re around often-ish, etc)

Honestly, there are ENDLESS possibilities for this one and very few of them are necessarily more over the top or improbable than the others, if we get a reset, it’s just as likely that Stiles is coming out of the ice baths as it is that Scott is waking up the even of episode one, pinning down exactly what it is will be close to impossible but most likely if this is it then they’ll do a real mess of the episode beforehand and everyone will die (IE: the ending of Grimm) or it’ll be interrupted mid battle sequence, so the actual plot/fights/etc won’t really matter

Possibility 5: The Bleach ending- The ending wherein the entire audience stares at the incomplete wreck that had a “The End” stamped on it and gives a collective “WHAT THE ****!?”, AKA: The worst possible case scenario

Additionally, there’s always room for any of these endings to be hooked up with a twist (such as the episode ends well but at exactly one minute till the end someone snaps their fingers and Stiles blinks, looking around and seeing that he’s in Eichen, where he’s been the entire time) or an “adventure continues” type of thing where further adventures are implied (either vaguely, like in Rosario + Vampire, or strongly hinted at with some critical twist like Hannibal)

There aren’t really alot of clean ways out of this, sadly, wich is especially unfortunate considering how much filler we’ve had since 6A that could have been better spent tying up loose ends and talking backstories and such so that the final battle could stretch over TWO episodes instead of just one extended one