#when i try to write something emotional it's all too obvious and hamfisted

[greentypewriters]

i wonder if i will ever be able to write anything i think is good

[dereksmcgrath]

I had said before that the number 108 can be unlucky. It wasn’t unlucky at all for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. But 108 is kind of unlucky for this episode: not only are we focusing on the Villains, but we just aren’t giving their story the structure and emotional weight it deserves.

(I either opened with those remarks or just made a bunch of corny jokes about how “Meta Liberation Army” can be abbreviated as MLA--and I’m saving those jokes for a future review.)

“My Villain Academia,” My Hero Academia Episode 108 (Season 5, Episode 20)

An adaptation of Chapters 220, 221, 222, 223, and 224 of the manga, by Kohei Horikoshi, translated by Caleb Cook with lettering by John Hunt and available from Viz.

My Hero Academia is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Spoilers up to My Hero Academia Chapter 325.

When I teach literature, I refer to the plot as a problem: it is something that the protagonist is trying to solve. This problem can take various forms, but it is often as an antagonist that the protagonist confronts. When this episode has the Doctor refer to a “villain” as someone “who turns nonsense into action,” that’s kind of the point: the villain is here to get the plot rolling. Without them, you don’t have a hero, you don’t have a story.

It has been long accepted by a lot of fans and scholars that superheroes tend to uphold the status quo. I think the first time I gained awareness of this popular argument--although likely not the first time I encountered it--was Dr. Horrible’s mangled remark that “the status is not quo.” More recently, however, I have been reading academic books on superheroes, and not only does that argument persist--that superheroes represent law, order, and upholding traditional norms even in the face of new evidence or out of sheer obliviousness to the need for systemic change--but the argument has become that, if a superhero story does not have the heroes doing something to effect systemic change, then it’s not a good story. I may be misunderstanding that argument, but if I don’t, then it’s not an argument I can stand behind.

The argument is that superhero stories tend to reduce complex issues to having avatars for each side of the issue--the good guy and the bad guy--get into a fight, where we are focused on the spectacle rather than on seeing actual people engaging in the actual work needed to address problems not on the individual level--again, one good guy physically fighting one bad guy--but on a larger scope.

I am oversimplifying this argument, as even those same scholars will point out that, initially, of course there were superhero stories that had the protagonist taking the fight against the system. Superman is one of the ones named most frequently, whether in his initial comic book premiere doing what police and media would not to face down a corrupt senator (a sign of things to come in his later fights with Luthor and in Justice League Unlimited) or fighting the Klan (in the meta sense, fighting their analogue on the radio show and, more recently, literally in the comics). It kind of makes Superman look like one influence on the Peerless Thief in My Hero Academia, but we’ll get to him far later in these episodic reviews.

Even with that exception of Superman, it’s not hard for me to agree with the argument that heroes prop up the status quo. That has been the plot point for My Hero Academia and why this war against the villains has been incoming: a system that depended on just All Might, now depending on a wife-beating abusive father like Endeavor with his crimes not popularly known, has a level of corruption that cannot stand up with just one man’s shining example of honest goodness and integrity to be the Symbol of Peace. It was why I appreciated the manga eventually showing that, yes, there was an entire network of assassins within the Hero Public Safety Commission to keep All Might’s hands clean--and, in retrospect, while Lady Nagant was our first named example, given what Hawks ends up doing to Twice, deadly force may be frowned upon by law in MHA but has to have been something Hawks was told he had legal authority to do. (Also, as I will never stop pointing out, Endeavor unintentionally and unknowingly killed another Pro Hero in Vigilantes, and we’re just supposed to pretend that was fine.)

But going back to this academic argument, about how superhero stories tend to stick to one-on-one battles and don’t let the heroes effect systematic change, I’m ambivalent. There have been a range of superhero or superhero-adjacent stories that have the protagonist making on-page, on-screen, obvious work to not just get into fisticuffs with the bad guy. I already pointed out Superman’s first appearance and his fight against the Klan. I can also identify other examples, some hamfisted like Captain Planet, others more nuanced like Korra reaching out to Kuvira in The Legend of Korra. While the scholarship I read bristles at the idea of reducing these fights to just avatars for good and evil, I shrug and say that kind of comes with the territory of a superhero story. I hate justifying tropes: it’s like saying “this fanservice is acceptable because that’s part of the genre”--which leads to its own set of problems, especially when I hear fools defending sexualized fanservice that is just not needed for the story and is abusive by gender and representation. Heck, The Brave and the Bold animated series had Equinox and Batman battle as giants representing the avatars of chaos and order--which is confusing enough, with Equinox having a vaguely yin-yang motif that debunks any clean separation between chaos and order. And yet, here I am, arguing that this kind of fanservice of a hero and a villain beating each other up is to be expected: you have a debate about ideals of what a hero should do when you see Iron Man and Captain America each representing a side in a fight, whether the poorly handled comic book Civil War or the better film version, and even then, that film also lets the individual personalities get in the way of saying anything meaningful about government oversight and individual agency, ideas better handled in that other Captain America film, The Winter Soldier, and even then that film also gets stuck in just being about Steve and Bucky’s relationship.

All of this is me saying that, when you add a superhero to the fight, you’re going to feel disappointed that almost nothing systematically changes in its setting, not only because, as I’m hinting, these are stories about individuals fighting each other and not stories about the individual against society or nature, but also because a superhero can only change so much of their world for the better before that world no longer looks like our own or a new societal problem has to emerge to create the problem that is the plot itself for wherever the story goes next. Once a hero makes the setting into a utopia, either a new problem emerges to show the fiction of that story and that a dystopia is always married to a utopia, or the utopia is revealed to be hollow (Shigaraki’s word of the day) and fake. My Hero Academia already showed the utopia of a world where people get to live with their Quirks is fake, not only by (largely necessary) regulation of those Quirks but also, as we’ll see more with Spinner, Compress, Toga, Gigantomachia, and others, looking different, or being socially aware, or having disabilities, or being the “wrong” size, excluded you from that society.

What I’m trying to say is that, once you add superheroes into a story to fix the problem, you can’t show what systematic change looks like. How do you write a story where it makes sense that no hero came to save Tenko Shimura from becoming Tomura Shigaraki? What’s a story like My Hero Academia supposed to do to show the problems with a society, if you have superheroes who can fix those problems by beating up the bad guys?

Solution: You have the bad guys beat each other up.

In this corner, the League of Villains, people who were made outcasts because they did not fit in--which reveals the flaws of a society that is not accepting people who may not be able to change their past or their bodily conditions.

And in this corner, the Meta Liberation Army--which reveals how society breeds people in business, media, and politics who abuse laws and societal norms to elevate themselves and create a social Darwinist nightmare.

Granted, these are some foolish schmucks for starting up this fight in public, but I’ll address how the MLA just doesn’t work in a later episode review.

But for now, let the fight begin. No matter who wins, at least we see how society at large allowed these Villains to emerge--and we can either see All For One’s dictatorial forces get wrecked, or see Re-Destro’s fascistic oafs get wrecked.

Unfortunately, no matter who wins, the Pro Heroes are going to lose, too.

I am overly impressed with myself for realizing all of this. And I say “overly” not only because this is arrogant of me but also because I’m pretty sure just about every other person following this series already came to this conclusion: if you want to show actual systematic change, you have to show what the villains are up to, because they are the ones showing the holes in our society that need to be fixed. Either a villain exploits those holes to cause damage to people, or the villain is themselves representative of unfairness in the system and, by breaking the law to save themselves and others, are unfairly maligned as villains.

That being said, I’m not a big fan of the “[Insert villain’s name here] was right” arguments. Yes, Magneto is justified in his goals and ethics, and the debate is the means he takes to them, so his existence is to show why the X-Men are screwing up and need to be more radical. Yes, Killmonger is right that Wakanda’s isolationism is reckless and allows for travesties to persist, but his choices are largely out of individual desire for vengeance, so he’s an example that T’Challa can follow. Taken too far, though, and you get people who preach anti-establishment notions without having an alternative or are just trying to sound edgy rather than actually pointing to the actual problem: it’s someone who celebrates the Joker without recognizing that, no, you don’t want to be that asshole, or who celebrate villain-turned-hero Vegeta just because he looks cool and without appreciating what steps he took to change and what fall he experienced before he got to the point of being a villain.

In all these cases, if done poorly, you have the same tired trend of a villain existing only so long so that the hero changes for the better. It’s as tiresome as I unfortunately sometimes feel reading post after post celebrating how complex and sympathetic the League of Villains’ members can be when, still, a lot of them are just assholes using empty excuses to defend atrocious behavior (primarily, just All for One) or, for the most part, are people put into desperate situations (Shigaraki, Toga, Spinner, Dabi, Twice) who are doing the best they can (Twice, Spinner) even if their actions are not defensible (Toga) or also out of line (Shigaraki) due to their own refusal to seek the legitimate help they need to work through their issues (Dabi).

It’s hard to read posts online calling the League members sympathetic when we have not had a chance in the anime to know their full story. And as with the slow revelation that this setting is not really as welcoming of people of all shapes and sizes as initially hinted, so too do the villains’ backstories show that they were justified in some actions they took, except for those that led to deaths. Too bad none of that really pops up in a meaningful way in this episode that would rather tease out Shigaraki’s back story, keep dangling the obvious answer to who Dabi really is, and short-sells what should be a meaningful friendship between Twice and Giran but is just dropped as fast as Shigaraki takes off Twice’s mask. Jeez, Shigaraki, that is a dick move to Twice…

But I’m already on Page 4 of this rant, so let’s get to the episode already.

Pulling back the curtain yet again, these reviews tend to follow a pattern. Since I first wrote about the MHA anime, my process would be to first re-read the chapters, then watch the episode in Japanese, then watch the episode in English, so as to retrace my steps in how I first encountered most of these stories, as well as to see any patterns in the production process moving from manga to anime to localization. But with this episode, that practice was made nearly impossible given how prevalent the hostility towards this episode, this arc, and this season have been, especially when a friend shared numerous reactions from other viewers about this episode. Seriously, for all the whining I just did the previous four pages, you could read this person or this person who are much better at explaining why the introduction of Re-Destro to the anime sucks, for more than one reason.

So, I had a different approach: I already had the flaws to this episode shared with me by other viewers, then I listened to the English dub, then I re-read the chapters, then I watched the Japanese dub with English subtitles.

And, boy, am I grateful I took that approach, because this episode is a ton of talking--too much talking. For an anime adaptation that cut so much of Spinner’s Leonardo from Ninja Turtles narration, I’m shocked that they kept the boring parts of his narration and cut the only good parts, including the very opening that had a lot more action and gave us a reason to sympathize with these Villains.

I know I’m a snob regarding animation; I have expressed before how, despite my love for animated works, I tend to appreciate them more for what they do with storytelling rather than the spectacle of the visuals. I really dislike works where the value of the work is in the animation alone: I am here to see a story unfold, and if there is no narrative, no plot, no beginning-middle-and-end, then what I’m encountering is a museum piece, not a work of cinema. (Feel free to bash me for that hot take: I’m still railing against Patty Jenkins’s ridiculous argument from this week.)

And as with most forms of karmic punishment I experience, I pay the price: if I rail long enough about works that are only all about the animation and not the story, then my punishment is an episode where all we get is a lot of story and not much in the way of animation. Yet I can’t even say we got a story here, so much as back story, exposition, needless narration--it’s Blade Runner only bad. As much as I have loved how this anime’s storyboards stick so close to the manga panels, the pan over the League listening to Shigaraki’s vague back story felt like the least interesting way to handle this scene, especially when it excises so much of Spinner coming around from questioning Shigaraki to sympathizing with him. Who would have imagined cutting so much of Spinner’s initial narration and the opening from Chapter 220 would screw up how to adapt Shigaraki’s back story from Chapter 222.

The anime cuts how this arc begins in the manga: Chapter 220 starts with Spinner facing off against an extremist group that hates him for his reptilian appearance--a moment that would have garnered more sympathy from the audience for these Villains than this episode is exhorting. We needed a scene to get behind these villains and agree with them, before we are shocked to hear Shigaraki say what we have long expected, that he just wants to destroy everything and make everyone as miserable as he has felt, to wake us up that, no, you may sympathize with these outcasts (to use Twice’s one-word self-description), but you shouldn’t agree with Shigaraki’s goals. (I know Shigaraki relents somewhat when asked by Toga, but it’s hard to backtrack from “destroy it all” to “destroy it all but not the stuff my friends like.” How on Earth is Shigaraki going to destroy Izuku when Spinner somewhat admires the guy and Toga...well, yeah, best left unsaid.)

While watching this episode, I also was reviewing other topics about anime and manga I’m going to go into more detail about later this month, and one topic of discussion is the assumption that anime and manga, by their visual style and story tropes, especially shojo and shonen, tend to be about big expressions--emotional outpours in words, movements, facial expressions, and actions to more easily communicate what is happening, regardless of context.

I hate to keep repeating “ambivalent” in my reviews (another academic word I need to expunge from my lexicon for a bit), but I’m ambivalent about that argument, that anime and manga, especially shojo and shonen, are better at communicating. If your character is unreadable, that likely has an intentional reason: we don’t get much of a read on the Doctor in this episode, not helped by his mustache and glasses, but we also don’t get a read on what Shigaraki is up to.

This episode only heightens my regard, not just about anime, manga, shojo, or shonen, but in animation and comics at large, that not everything is readable in what a character is planning.

On the one hand, I do agree that visual works tend to make ideas easier to comprehend for some people who can engage with such visual works. As someone who teaches English literature and writing in a United States setting, I use comics in my teaching to cross language and cultural barriers, especially for students for whom English is not their primary language or who are the first in their family raised in the United States. And this teaching approach also helps in reverse: I include manga and anime in my teaching to show how not all details cross language and cultural barriers in a one-to-one correspondence, hence the challenges of translation and localization, and how all of us struggle to make ourselves understood within our own primary language to someone else who is fluent in that language, let alone trying to translate into another language or to present ourselves in a different set of cultural norms.

On the other hand, anime and manga are not a fixed genre. Yes, I agree that the images tend to emphasize big eyes, big expressions, and big motions--but that’s like saying all animation is Looney Tunes, or all animation is Disney, or is Dragon Ball, and so on. Likewise, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, shonen is more than just one type of storytelling, and the same goes for shojo. This arc of My Hero Academia is placing focus, after admittedly far too long, on the Villains as the protagonists--and their behavior pokes holes in the idea that things are obvious, when the Villains are themselves such liars, so crafty, have their own hidden agendas, are keeping secrets from each other. It’s as if their behavior is a commentary on this plot and how BONES is adapting it: the Villains are keeping secrets, so this plot is going to keep its secrets for just who Re-Destro and the Meta Liberation Army are, what their personalities are like, and what Shigaraki and the Doctor have in mind for getting what he wants. We’re even kept in the dark as to Shigaraki’s full back story; we’re in the same position he is, knowing just little bits and able to make assumptions from a handful of visual cues and memories, without fully knowing who the hell Tenko is. Add to that Spinner’s struggles to narrate all of this and to get into Toga’s mind and Shigaraki’s mind, as well as Dabi’s own secrets and agenda with Hawks, and we have a story that blows up the notion that anime and manga are easier for reading a character’s mindset: no, they are not always easier, not when the creators deliberately mislead the audience or keep them in the dark for a surprise.

By keeping so much of the audience in the dark, so that we become aware of how deceitful villains can be, and we are put into Shigaraki’s place of not knowing where he came from. This should be a set of brilliant choices by BONES to adapt this arc in this manner. But the problem is, no, almost none of this gets anywhere close to brilliant. It’s not brilliant--it’s frustrating, because we already know what is going to happen. You can just pull up the manga at low cost with a Viz account and read all of this in the order it was originally presented and get the answers ahead of time. And if you’ve been reading the manga all along, you already know how this arc ends, and you know stuff from the next set of arcs so that you do know already what Shigaraki’s back story is, what Dabi was really up to, who survives, who dies. You even learn more about Compress’s back story--stuff that really should have been hinted at much earlier in the manga, and could have been hinted in this adaptation but as of this episode has not.

Maybe that is why the anime removes Re-Destro murdering his assistant: it’s such an odd moment that it is challenging for me to get a read on Re-Destro, as he alternates in the manga between being very friendly and devoted to his comrades but also violent and heartless.

It may be obvious that I didn’t like much of this episode. I think when I stopped taking this episode seriously was when I heard the voices. Like I said, I tend to start with the Japanese dub first before getting to the English dub. And I have nothing at all against English dubs: I would not be listening to them as much as I have, often first before I ever hear the Japanese, and I would not be a fan of so many English-speaking actors in dubs if I had any animosity to the craft, their work, and the benefit they provide for creating a larger audience for these stories. And nothing against Larry Brantley and Sonny Strait, but some of this casting feels off. I wasn’t able to take this episode seriously as soon as I heard the voice distortion that was used for Re-Destro’s phone call: that took me out of the story. If I had the chance for localization, I would really need Twice or someone to call out how freaking ridiculous that Mickey Mouse voice sounded. You have freaking Sonny Strait here: use the Krillin voice, use the Chibi Ragnarok voice, use the Usopp voice--use something, really go bizarre here, it’s just a voice distortion device! And as I said, nothing against Strait, but when I hear Re-Destro when I read the manga, that’s not the voice I have in mind. For right now, HIroaki Hirata in the Japanese dub is closer to that smoothness I expected for this character. But I have no doubt Strait will do excellent as Re-Destro’s empowered form: think Strait’s role in The Intruder II from Toonami. It’s just that Re-Destro in the English dub is lacking that odd refinement I was expecting.

Granted, it’s the same problem for me when I hear Brantley as Spinner: I am making unfair assumptions that don’t suit the goals of the creators when it comes to this character. It is sadly not as obvious in this episode as it is in the manga: this arc in the manga starts with Horikoshi invoking Laird and Eastman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by having Spinner, who is already a sword-wielding reptilian martial artist, narrating just like how Leonardo narrating at the beginning of the very first issue of TMNT. I wanted a voice for the English dub that is like Leonardo’s, a little higher pitch and more youthful, like what Brian Tochi brought in the live-action Turtles film or what Cam Clarke and Michael Sinterniklaas bring in the animated versions. I think, for the Japanese dub, Ryo Iwasaki’s performance as Spinner is very close to what I expected. But that also may seem too obvious: Spinner may be young, but giving him an older-sounding voice can belie his inexperience, youthfulness, and naivete, similar to how people make assumptions about him by his reptilian appearance. The anime is putting me into my place--I think of Spinner one way other than who he really is, so I’m no better than the people around him who have discriminated against him for his physical appearance.

Just as I have a set of assumptions that unfairly influence how I would cast Spinner, I also think Re-Destro should have sounded more refined and less graveley in the English dub. But my expectations belie that, just the Joker whom he resembles, Re-Destro puts on this cultured facade to hide that he is just another violent gangster thug, someone who would kill his own assistant. I know I cited examples above about how complex Re-Destro is, but it’s hard for me to see him as sympathetic just because he’s crying over something he did out of his own volition: he coldly killed his office assistant Miyashita, his tears and kind words don’t suddenly make this a warm and cuddly death, we don’t get to think of him as our woobie. It only makes it more irritating that BONES so far has cut not only that scene of Re-Destro killing Miyashita but also Re-Destro’s TV commercial: it would clue us in that the reason he has that gravelly voice is because, no matter how much he tries to present himself on TV, he is not that kind of a man.

But since I invoked the Joker comparison to Re-Destro, yeah, I’m disappointed we didn’t get Troy Baker as Re-Destro, as unlikely as I imagine that would be to happen, regardless of Baker’s previous work with Funimation. It does lend a bit more to conspiracy theories on my part, though, given casting director Colleen Clinkenbeard telling Twitter followers to stop expecting Mark Hamill in MHA, it’s never happening--we can’t even get Troy Baker doing his Mark Hamill Joker.

(I’m not being fair to Baker: I’m not saying his Joker is at all bad--it is not, he has been excellent as Joker, especially playing him and Batman in the Ninja Turtles crossover film, but it is obvious Baker is performing the kind of Joker that came out of Hamill, so I’m trying to say he’s doing the “Hamill Joker,” rather than the “Nicholson Joker,” the “Ledger Joker,” or the “Caesar Romero Joker”).

It’s also a challenge to sympathize with these characters when we aren’t getting what this arc should give them: a re-introduction. I hate approaching this episode in a post-James Gunn The Suicide Squad world, but seeing how much MHA owes to not The Suicide Squad of the comics but that motif in so many superhero comics, there is that missed opportunity to reacquaint the audience with who are the members of the League of Villains. So, where the hell is my freeze-frame re-introduction to each League member? There was that fan theory a long time ago that Giran was really Present Mic in disguise: imagine doing Present Mic’s introduction of characters by name, Quirk, and pithy comment, only it’s Giran in the announcer seat this time.

(Don’t even get me started on how annoying it is to have Izuku handling the post-credit preview: give that to Spinner.)

Again, maybe it is brilliant for BONES not to include some re-introduction scenes, whether narrated by Giran or happening naturally in conversation between these characters. These Villains barely know each other’s back story, so there’s no artifice where they would believably share their back stories to each other in conversation in this context. And as I said, Shigaraki does not know enough about his own past, and Dabi is hiding his real identity. But when we’re stuck with Spinner as our half-hearted narrator, who seems not to know why he and Toga are still here with Stain being gone, and when Toga is this dull in her answer about what keeps her going after Stain’s arrest, and when Spinner himself seems not to know what he’s still doing here, all of that does not communicate a reason for us to keep going with this story.

I know this arc is going to get better, storywise at least, just based on how it went in the manga. I can only hope that the animation can capture the chaos that the original manga illustrations showed. But I am trying to think what a new viewer is going to do if this is their introduction to this series. I’m not invoking the Episode 7 Rule, I’m not doing a hypothetical experiment to gauge which episodes are the best to bring a newbie into this series--I am asking, honestly, if a fan was already into this series, and was watching it one Saturday morning, and a friend or roommate or relative saw them watching, they would be utterly lost about why they should care about this. Even the explanation for why Twice is indebted to Giran is presented as such an afterthought that does disservice to a potentially emotional moment, to what is supposed to be a pretty deep friendship, as deep as it can be for a weapons trader like Giran and an outcast-turned-criminal like Twice, so that, when Twice helps rescue Giran, we feel that emotional payoff.

It is honestly shocking that, for all the throwbacks, recaps, and flashbacks we get, including how Giran’s fingers match up to previous places where the League fought, that this still leaves a new viewer in the dark. And the problem lies at the feet of MHA arriving at a fifth-season slump: the series has gone on so long that things feel lazy and making far too many assumptions on what knowledge the audience is bringing. You’re not getting a bigger audience if you keep appealing to the diehard fans and the people reading the manga. After all, why would you keep doing ridiculous recaps and flashbacks if the fans already know what happened?

But speaking of the recaps and flashbacks, that should have been how this episode redeemed itself. As I said last time, if you re-worked the order of episodes to start with the Oboro Shirakumo story, that would be more shocking. But what if this episode could have been the very first episode of the season, and following the trend of previous seasons, make it a recap episode? We already had Izuku narrating a clip show, Class 1A at the pool, a photojournalist visiting the UA Dorms--it would be so much more interesting seeing “League of Villains camping in the woods while in the background Shigaraki gets squished by a giant.” Have the Villains tell campfire stories about how they got here: it would be a great excuse to re-use the animation and save on the budget. You could fit in a few gags, as Toga starts telling a really gruesome story but gets distracted by all the blood in it, while Twice’s story bounces between sugar-sweet happy and grim-and-dark chaos, while Compress and Spinner are stuck trying to keep them focused. It’d be a hell of a lot more interesting than how BONES somehow screwed up a potentially emotional volatile moment between Izuku and Amajiki that would put into question whether Izuku is going to have to kill a Villain and just how devastated Amajiki feels after Mirio lost his Quirk.

And speaking of whether Izuku is going to have to kill a Villain: obviously, this arc is setting up how much more dangerous Shigaraki is than UA gave him credit. Back in Season 2, I hated how Nezu and UA staff referred to him as a “man-child,” given the connotations that have surrounded masculinity and being a man. I wrote that before 2016; in this post-2016 atmosphere, and the increased prevalence of toxic masculinity, I am, once again, that annoying word ambivalent. I am likewise ambivalent how well this series has shown Shigaraki to be able to form the plan he does by episode’s end. We’re only told by Spinner how much faster Shigaraki is getting and how much slower Gigantomachia has become--but the animation doesn’t show that. And we’re being told how great Shigaraki’s plan is--when it sounds ridiculous.

By cutting so much of Spinner’s narration from the manga, we also don’t get a scene where Spinner confronts Shigaraki to ask him what is his plan. Up to that point, Shigaraki has said that, with Kurogiri gone over the last month and the computers at the old League hideout destroyed, they can’t reach the Doctor. Spinner is insistent: what is the plan? Shigaraki responds that he just told them--as Gigantomachia crashes through their hideout. The other characters explain for readers like me who aren’t following: Shigaraki just said Kurogiri was gone; to contact the Doctor, Kurogiri sought Gigantomachia; Gigantomachia would sniff out where Shigaraki is and bring him to the Doctor. Brilliant--that shows more attention to Shigaraki’s planning and scheming, and now, it’s not even here in the episode to make me think this guy is that smart. (This episode also had Shigaraki reveal his plan to have Gigantomachia attack the MLA, whereas it was Spinner who predicted that was going to be Shigaraki’s plan--so, again, we’re not letting Spinner stand out as smarter than we expected, either.)

I know Shigaraki is supposed to be our chessmaster, given his association with gaming, especially when he was faking his ignorance about shogi to lower Overhaul’s guard before defeating him and stealing his Quirk-cancelling bullets. But I’m having the same problem I had when following All For One throughout this anime: it just feels like these two antagonists are getting ahead out of sheer luck and because everyone else is a fool, not because either of them are that great as villains. Give me a Xanatos, give me a Luthor, give me a Norman Osborne (not Clone Saga Osborne, a different one). Show me Shigaraki is more than a pawn for All For One and the Doctor, because I don’t feel anything here, not even when we’re supposed to feel that Shigaraki has some legitimate concern for All For One that just isn’t getting communicated to me, whether by my stubbornness or because the content is not giving the animators and actors what they deserve. Eric Vale can sell the hell out of a scene, but Shigaraki’s talk about All For One is not giving that opportunity to the actor.

My remarks this time are a lot more disorganized and doesn’t really arrive at any conclusion. I have more to say about how this arc works and doesn’t work, especially when it comes to how ridiculous the MLA comes across in underestimating the League, but we’ll get to that next time.

[thesinglesjukebox]

JENNY LEWIS - WASTED YOUTH

[6.40]

Candy Crush do do do do do do do...

Alfred Soto: If hep cats (okay, me) sneered at Sheryl Crow during her peak for the size of her El Lay Rolodex, wait till Jenny Lewis releases the liner notes to On the Line. Benmont Tench! Ryan Adams and Beck productions! Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner! The strength of her hooks commensurate with her vocal command, she do-do-dos through another day in paradise in which her mother's heroin addiction and other candy crushes don't quash her commitment to a distance that deepens with age. She hasn't made a bad record yet. With these connections, though, it's a matter of time. Consider the grade a warning. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: As someone whose youth wasn't wasted so much as spat on, crumpled up, and nuked from orbit, I can relate. The warm, chipper poppiness, doot-doo's and all, is the musical translation of a coping strategy that I can't relate to, I can certainly acknowledge. (Though the framing device, "do you remember when [Dad] used to sing us that little song?" is silly -- sillier than the "candy crush" bit, which is non-literal and was good enough for Kehlani.) I just think I'd rather hear the song ("Listerine," maybe) that isn't the facade. [6]

Juana Giaimo: Jenny Lewis is an expert in irony, not just when she uses it in the lyrics but also in the way she sings. "Wasted Youth" is a clear example: the "doo doo doo" of the chorus, rather than sounding cheering, us exactly the opposite -- like a fake smile, too conscious that life is sometimes too hard [8]

Anthony Easton: Everyone thinks Lewis is Neko Case, but she's really Tom T. Hall, a great story teller, an underrated wit, and someone who knows how to swing. This is burnt-out '70s California, recast as Nashville, and its genial shrug towards addiction takes some aesthetic bravery. [8]

Stephen Eisermann: A weak attempt at modernizing Stevie Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac, this has an interesting enough melody but the lyrics leave something to be desired. I've never seen Jenny as a master lyricist, but mentioning Candy Crush is a pretty embarrassing attempt at pandering. Jenny can, and should, do better. [4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I've been on vacation for the past week, and I've spent most of it reading Inherent Vice. It's an interesting piece of faux-hippie fiction, willfully obtuse and circular in its plotting and dense and obvious in its drugged out decadence. It's the kind of book that will at once bowl you over with a moment of deep pathos that emerges from the morass and make you roll your eyes at a too obvious joke about weed or something harder. "Wasted Youth" doesn't quite ascend/descend to the level that Vice does, but it hits a similar balance between hamfisted drug writing and sincere emotion, all wrapped into a convincingly nostalgic pastiche. Jenny Lewis is a deft enough songwriter and arranger that "Wasted Youth" stays charming and not hackneyed in its early-70s vibes, and her ear for a hook wins out with the endless, "Baby Shark"-esque "Doo-Doo"s of the chorus, which lull you into submission by the track's end. [7]

Vikram Joseph: Few songs sound truly timeless, but this genuinely sounds like it could have been released in any decade since the 1960s. Whether this is a good thing depends on your tolerance for plush, classic-sounding piano pop; I'm totally fine with it when it's done as well as this. Jenny Lewis's vocals on Rilo Kiley songs always had a frisson of anxiety underlying them, but now, in her 40s, she sounds so at ease here - even while singing wryly affecting lyrics about her mum's drug addiction, or when stretching skywards into falsetto. The melodies are achingly familiar; "Wasted Youth" feels like a comfortable sweatshirt you'd pull on when you're not trying to impress anyone. [7]

Josh Love: This is the sort of song Lewis writes in her sleep -- wry Gen X musings on unstable childhoods and drugs both real and virtual, superimposed over a Baby Boomer backdrop (in this instance, it sounds to me closest to Tom Petty). Lewis can pull this off for entire albums because her lyrics are frank and mostly stay on the good side of pretentious while her command of classic pop forms remains sturdy. Plucked out of its surroundings, though, "Wasted Youth" isn't likely to turn many heads. [6]

Iris Xie: I find it unfortunate that my first understanding of this type of music is the word "twee," Zooey Deschanel, Wes Anderson, Modcloth, birds' nest earrings sold on Etsy, and all other attempts at a "quirky," (what a fucked up word, now) retro feminine aesthetic with vintage dresses with swing heels. But, I also haven't listened to this type of pop-folk/country music since 2008, so I own that I'm a frozen dinosaur. But I don't know, "Wasted Youth" and its brand of wistful sentimentality, that slight 'doo doo doo,' and cliched sayings such as "the cookie crumbles," only reinforces my initial understandings. When I was 16, I would listen to these type of songs, look at vintage-style fashion blogs, and dream about dressing up in the aesthetics of older, twee, melancholy white girls in perfect pinafores. It was all aspirational, inaccessible, and not-representative to this Asian American highschooler, but it was an escape from going to school every day in a hoodie and jeans and grinding hard in AP classes. Now, I'm more secure in my identities and look, and listening to "Wasted Youth" with its mild rock overtones and how Jenny Lewis sings "I wasted my youth on a poppy," I understand more. The charm is in the nihilistic chipperness, with the helium of Lewis' voice catching and carving on her sentiments. It's a surprisingly dark song, repressing its emotions and leaving me with the feeling of my throat being blocked because the little feathery notes sound like they're covering up the sadness. Maybe the quirkiness and affectations are to cover up the despair, and that's Jenny Lewis' unique coping mechanism. Ultimately, it gives an impression that the song is laying waste to itself. I never really got around to doing that full vintage makeover, but in the end, we all have to find our own, true-to-us aesthetic. [5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: It's so tightly written that its aching lyrics about addiction find poignancy in the accompanying glossy production and whimsical "do-do-doo"s. There's small, near-hidden catharsis, too: the loping guitar melody that closes the song is a small, private unburdening. It leads into strings as if to celebrate the occasion -- onlookers won't see it as anything remarkable, but to you, it's something you've needed for a long time. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[thefantasticm]

Establishing Angst in AGBM

I am by no means a master of angst or conveying tension, and a lot of the times some of what I write that affects people the most was completely incidental. But I do try, and meet varying degrees of success depending on the scene. Here are some dank tools/things/advice I use and constantly keep in mind in order to help crank up the FEELS, and can apply to pretty much anything if you want some ideas as to how to do so.

1. Showing and Telling First thing’s first: ‘Show, don’t tell’ is absolutely ATROCIOUS advice. It is vague and unhelpful and wrong. Some things must be told. If everything were shown, every story in the history of man would sink to the bottom of the ocean, weighed down by a bloated scrotum of tedium and pedantry. There must be a balance, and yes, showing should be favored, but never to an extreme. I personally aim for a 70:30 ratio when it comes to showing and telling in my writing. It is a good ballpark to aim for because landing at 60:40 is still fine and 80:20 is also perfectly readable. Falling to 50:50 and below is where things start to get... bad. Anything below will usually be noticeably boring to even unpracticed readers. When it comes to conveying angst and tension in writing, emotions are key (so Cage has the right idea, but his execution is... well). It is fine and good and proper to tell the reader what the character is feeling, in simple terms. Yet it is something that must be balanced, as we’ve established. It is not enough to say “Hank was sad.” We must say “Hank was sad ABLOOBLOOBLOO.” And by ABLOOBLOOBLOO, I mean describing the physicality of that reaction. We’ve all been sad before, know what it feels like, so describing that churning gut, that beating heart, that sinking feeling - all of it helps to establish that sadness, and can make the reader feel it in turn. Maybe Hank will lash out with that sadness in an unhealthy attempt at emotional release. Maybe he’ll think about wanting to drink, or holding his gun, etc - and describing all of that becomes a showing of where that emotion takes him, depressive, reactionary thoughts that the audience can relate to. I say all that, but it’s also sometimes okay to just say “Hank was sad” and leave it at that. Sparingly, mind you... And exactly when those moments are most appropriate is a whoooole different discussion. 2. Third Person Limited This is less advice and more... information, since something like this is really at the mercy of the writer. Everyone has different preferences for how they narrate a story. I personally despise first person narration, I adore second person (in short bursts, it’s hard to carry a longer story with it), third person objective can be interesting or the exact opposite, and third person omniscient... well. In my very humble opinion, there is no easier way to suck all the emotional tension out of a story. If you are trying to tell an emotional story, third person omniscient is just... heinous. It can be great for grand, sweeping adventure stories, but when trying to establish an angsty emotional creep? Noooo fucking thank you. Holding the audience’s hand when it comes to how every character is feeling, giving information too freely - what a great way to remove any and all emotional stakes! Pick a character. A. One (1). Beyond that character, there can be no ‘outsider’ information. Everything must come through that one character’s eyes. They can infer, they can guess, they can assume the feelings of other characters. They might even be right most of the time! But the audience must never be told this through any other means. Which is why... Keep the narrating character uninformed. Nothing can dispel tension faster than certainty. Emotional tension and angst is most readily mined in what is uncertain. And God, this is such a fucking pain in the ass with ROBOT characters - not impossible, but fuck, I digress. Hank’s emotional hang-ups and struggles become more real and relatable when he does not know what Connor is thinking - when he projects, when he guesses, when he assumes. Hank does not KNOW Connor is in love with him, he simply perceives it, and convinces himself it is true, and thus convinces the audience. They see only what he sees, what he observes, and even when Hank is oblivious to it at the start, the audience is given the room and space to fill in their own conclusions because Hank does NOT know everything, and so when Hank has his ‘realization,’ the audience is even more convinced than he is! Absolute 9000 IQ shit, I know (it’s not). And so when Hank falls away from what he convinced himself of, which is separate from what the audience knows, it’s a little... gut wrenching? No, Hank, don’t doubt it! He does love you! But Hank can’t hear your screams from where he is... And when he comes back to it, when it is far more obvious, it has a much stronger effect. Can you imagine how fucking boring that shit would be if Hank was absolutely 100% certain Connor loved him from start to finish? Jesus. However, it’s important to give the audience a bit more to work with than just everything the main character perceives. Bits and pieces that the audience will pick up on, that the main character technically observes, but is something they do not out and out notice or give much thought to. Not every insight can and should be shared between the main character and the audience. The audience should have just a bit more information that allows them to draw conclusions that characters in the story might not otherwise think of. Which leads us to... 3. Dramatic Irony Mmm... Dramatic irony is just... *chef kiss* Mwah! It is beautiful and glorious. This is what makes the collective sphincter of an audience shiver with fear. I would not say it is my bread and butter, and good angst needs it not, but when it comes to a hard hitting tragic turn of events, no tool will smack an audience in the face harder than dramatic irony. Quick rundown: Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something the characters do not. Some of the most memorable tragedies make use of dramatic irony. Romeo and Juliet? The audience knew Juliet was asleep, not dead, but Romeo... did not. Oedipus? We know that’s his mom... Oedipus... Oedipus no! Dramatic irony is so powerful because the audience is given time to sense the impending doom but they are powerless to do anything about it. They want to stop it, but cannot. Helpless to watch things go wrong. The cold sinking feeling of your heart dropping to your feet. Dramatic irony can be hard to handle, since it will have little to no effect if you cannot get the audience invested in the story and the characters. It is also difficult in the sense that it can become somewhat silly if it is made too obvious. If the feeling of ‘oh god, x is probably going to happen’ comes too soon, the tension when it happens will not be as strong. On the flip side, if it comes too late, or god forbid, it’s not picked up on at all, it will fall flat. Not saying I did it perfectly by any means, but I did try. If you are looking to pull any sort of twist, or just fuck with the audience in general, dramatic irony is a great way to do so, without being hamfisted and preachy, or sudden and purposeless (like Alice being an android).

4. Repetition This is also highly personal choice, but over the years in writing I’ve found that pieces in which I used repetition tended to have better reception than those that did not. Repetition, whether it’s purely through language (which is mostly what I do) or theme, can help really really really drive home a point or emotion to an audience. Repeating certain phrases. Or just one word. Maybe a character says something they said once in the beginning of the fic. Of course, all of this must be done in moderation, and the timing of it has to line up with whatever you are trying to convey to the audience. Sometimes the ‘thing’ you are trying to convey can even be nebulous and mysterious, but then the point becomes to make the audience think more about it, which makes them more invested, which makes the hurts a bit hurtier... I do this a lot by repeating questions. What would he change? How had they arrived at this point? Honestly when I put it out like this I feel a bit silly, and it doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for some, and that is what matters. Mostly... it works for me! 5. The Short Short Long ‘Something was holding him back, a lump lodging itself in his throat. He thought of Connor at home and the way he called him Hank, Hank, Hank. There was nothing unusual about it, but beneath Wilson’s scrutiny it felt private, it felt intimate, and Hank could not find it within himself to lay open something that all of a sudden felt so profoundly raw.’ ‘Connor was the one that was embarrassed. Intensely so, to the point it had rubbed off on Hank. This was not a situation he would normally give much thought to, but Connor’s reaction made him feel as if he had done something wrong, as if he had broken some unspoken trust between them; and as he stood there watching the android, so human in the smallest of ways, Hank felt dirty.‘ ‘Hank wasn’t sure whether he dreamt those words or not. It felt like he did, with the hazy dreams that followed. In them, it was not Hank who left, but Connor - the one that could not be held down by the words that boiled in Hank’s chest but lacked the strength to be spoken; the outline of his body as he stepped through the front door, bathed in sunlight, warping the vision of him until there was nothing left.’ ‘In what capacity? It didn’t matter, did it? Hank needed him and his chest felt light; how easy it was to admit it now, all of a sudden, as if the past ten days, those agonizing ten days, had never happened.’ ...Get it? I’m not sure if this actually does anything. But I like it, so I’m putting it in. Long Short Shorts are also valid. Really the idea is that the rhythm of the tension suddenly gets much faster in the final point, thus making it seem more desperate, and driving it home more. But. I could just be imagining things? Hmm... 6. What Remains Unsaid Sometimes a character will want to say something, but doesn’t. Or they’ll think something, but say something completely different. Or they will infer a hidden meaning, unspoken sentiment, from another character. The things that aren’t said should still be told to the audience! However you want to do it. As much as these things can work in comedy, so too can they work in angst. It’s a very simple thing, but this can serve to drive up the tension, and have the audience clench their teeth from it. Deceptively simple! The feeling of ‘just say it, dammit!’ is a near universal one and should not be ignored! 7. DURRRRRRRRRR MUH CLICHE There is no such thing as an ‘original’ story anymore. You can add your spins and your twists and your little tweaks, but the fact of the matter is that every ‘core’ of a story has already been written. There is NOTHING wrong with cliche. NOTHING. Themes and plots and twists that are common are common because they are usually effective. Anyone who insists otherwise is... as much as I’d like to call them stupid, I really would, what they need is to be educated. The reason people tend to shy away from ‘cliche’ is because when it is done poorly, it is often excruciating. It can be really awful. But one should not shy away from cliche for the fear of doing it poorly. Embrace it! Write it to the best of your ability! If a ‘cliche’ is where a story leads you, then it’s not wrong! Why did I include this? Because most of all this fear of cliche applies strongly to angst, sad tropes, tragedy, etc. After that? Fantasy adventure stories and romance. 8. The High Highs Angst is worthless without a counterweight. Personally I think I’m god awful at writing fluff, but you will never be able to write good angst if you can’t squeeze out some manner of happy scenes. And going back to point #1, you have to show at least one of these happy scenes. It doesn’t have to be over the top. It can even be bittersweet. Hope over happiness, in case you don’t want to go full joyous. Once you start really getting into the angst the happiness and the hope will likely start to diminish, but I say it is usually a good idea to leave ONE good upwards scene interspersed in there somewhere. My final hopeful scenes in AGBM were Connor returning from Washington DC, and to a lesser extent the beginning of their final argument. I used a lot of loaded language in that small span of time to make the drop-off even worse, but that is an entirely different post...

9. Never Reward Your Readers Never reward your readers. Never reward your readers! NEVER REWARD YOUR READERS!!!!

Tell your story how you think it should be told.

NEVER REWARD YOUR READERS.

10. Alliteration Doesn’t actually do anything. I just like it.

[jolteonjordansh]

Thoughts on Devas Arc

Okay, kind of weird to have this up shortly after talking about Battle of Adventurers (assuming I don’t take weeks to finish this one much how like it too me forever to finish talking about Pokémon Generations), but I want to get talking about this arc out of the way because I really want to watch more Tamers. And I can’t really move onto watching the next arc without writing my thoughts on the previous arc, or I’ll get episodes and opinions muddled up and it really disorients me. If my Adventure 02 thoughts ever felt like they were messy and disorganized, it was because I binge-watched the series in a matter of days unlike Adventure.

Note: I drew the line for the Devas Arc at the end of episode 24. I know some people argue that episode 23 is the end of the arc and 24 is the beginning of the next, but for reference: I am including episode 24 as part of the Devas Arc. It feels more like a transition episode much like episode 13 was for the Tamers Introduction Arc. And the way I see it, the Digital World Arc doesn’t start until they’re actually in the Digital World.

So Digimon Tamers finished up establishing itself and its world earlier. How is it now that it’s able to run free with all of these ideas it set up before?

So remember how I said there weren’t a ton of battles in the Tamers Introduction Arc and how it was definitely more story and character driven? Well man, does the Devas Arc kick the action into gear, and they manage to do it without really sacrificing some of the good storytelling elements that the Tamers Introduction Arc had started.

Right off the bat, there’s a much bigger battle with an Ultimate level Digimon in the first episode (Mihiramon) and it pushes Hypnos to utilize “Shaggai”--to send Digimon back to the Digital World, including threatening our beloved Digimon partners. When the Champion forms prove to be ineffective against stopping Mihiramon, Takato manages to get Growlmon to Matrix Digivolve to WarGrowlmon. And I gotta say, not only was this Digivolution really well-executed, it’s forcing me to go on a topic I really have done my damnedest to avoid when talking about Digimon, but I gotta address it. For the sake of organization, I’ll put it towards the end of the post. For now, let’s talk about all of the good and fun the second Tamers arc did.

The battles in this arc really take a step up, and it shows. They’re really good, full of action, and most of all: a lot of them are filled with emotion. With the exception of a couple of battles, I never felt like the fights were there just to be the obstacle of the episode. It honestly felt like each of these fights encouraged really strong character growth, had a story to tell, and built the world further. It also fixed my issue in the last arc of some insert songs being way too short-lived, since the battles are now far more fleshed out. But towards the end, there were so many new insert songs I didn’t even really get to soak them in (if anyone wants to point out names and links to me, feel free). There was even this one insert song at the end of episode 23, with this new animation that led me to believe it was a new ending. But nope! We get My Tomorrow right after it, and then episode 24 has an entirely new ending. It’s a one-time thing, and it’s really weird to say the least.

By far my favorite battle of this arc and of Tamers so far is the battle with Indramon, among the most cocky and powerful of the Devas. Not only did his fight take up two episodes and prove just how strong of an opponent the tamers were up against, it also helped give a surprising amount of development for Impmon. I was told Impmon would get a ton of character development, and my initial reaction was “Wait, this guy? He’s clearly just an annoyance for the group.” But no, they actually do a really good job making him an antithesis to partners like Guilmon, Renamon and Terriermon, yet he doesn’t come off as a true villain at this point. You do have to feel some sympathy for him during his futile battle against Indramon. Indramon being so ridiculously tough to beat just made his defeat all the more rewarding and enjoyable to watch. In the last episode with him, I kept worrying that the writers would actually run out of runtime for the episode and it would either feel rushed at some points or jarringly cut to another episode. But no, his whole fight was really well done and well-paced. Plus I’m not gonna lie, I was totally a sucker for the Blue Card that Takato’s friends made for him for another Matrix Digivolution. TEAMWORK!

The Vajramon fight that triggered Kyubimon’s Matrix Digivolution to Taomon was also really good too. I like this theme they have going with how things like a Digimon’s environment and partnering with humans influences their evolution and how the oh so “holy” Devas look down on it. I mean, I liked Kyubimon being a nine-tailed fox, but if they’re going to go with this kind of theme than I do prefer them being consistent with it. On the note of Matrix Digivolutions, I do feel like Taomon’s Matrix Digivolution animation is jarring for being traditionally animated while WarGrowlmon and Rapidmon get CG-animated evolutions. I do get why, because I do think with the way Taomon’s was done, it wouldn’t have looked as nice in CG and Taomon is sort of a more traditionally inspired Digimon while WarGrowlmon and Rapidmon have a more mechanical influence. 

I kinda couldn’t take Rapidmon’s Matrix Digivolution animation 100% seriously. I’m sorry, all of those percussions and sound effects were so ridiculous and out of place that I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s one of those instances where I feel the original sound team made some bad choices, something I think the Digimon dubs really screwed up on. I mean, Rapidmon is at least a more interesting form than Gargomon for me. The battle was at least neat, but they kind of made it misleading that Rapidmon defeated both Pajiramon and Vajramon in one blow, so that confused me a bit.

I will say, Digimon Tamers does a good job of making you question who the real antagonists are. Impmon seemed like a total douche from the start, but then they really begin to develop him in this arc, and a tiny bit towards the end of the Tamers Introduction arc. Hypnos seems like an obvious evil, but at the same time they have recruited the “Wild Bunch”--the people who created the original Digimon program and all seem like genuinely good people. Then you have the “Mystery Man” leader of Hypnos (I’m only referring to him as this because as far as I remember, they don’t state a name for him at this point), who seems like a totally evil guy, but he goes on about protecting the people and even the tamers, but has no regard for Digimon life. Even the Devas, who seem like the certain obvious evil of this arc, have to be questioned because at the end of the day--they’re fighting for survival. They even do a really neat comparison of the Deva and Asura, and how “good” and “evil” is based on perspective. Considering I’m a sucker for this kind of theme too, I really like how thought-provoking Tamers is trying to be, especially for a show aimed at a young audience.

On the other hand, one opinion that has not changed for me on Tamers is just how so, so stupid the pedestrians of this show are. If anything, it only gets worse! I get it, this is a minor thing and I shouldn’t be this bothered by it, but it just boggles my mind how far they stretch these levels! You would think that maybe, just maybe, between a giant flying Tiger rampaging over a tower, a cobra slithering through the subways, and a sheep capable of archery and a bull wielding fucking swords, that maybe, JUST MAYBE there would be an executive order of some kind to evacuate Tokyo and cancel school? But no! Nope! Only until a giant boar starts rampaging through the streets do the police think “Oh, we should probably try evacuating citizens!” After SIX different monster attacks (not counting Sinduramon and Kumbhiramon since the former caused a mysterious power outage while the latter was more of a nuisance than anything) does the Tokyo police force consider that maybe, JUST MAYBE Tokyo isn’t quite as safe as they think it is! Even then, after Vikaralamon is defeated, things go mostly back to normal with just construction workers taking care of city damage. Even on the night of this whole disaster, we see pedestrians walking around, shopping at some places without a care in the world and school continues as usual the next day. We do get some evacuation scenes and moments of Takato’s parents trying to search for their son, but even then they’re not panicking anywhere near as much as they probably should be.

I get that I’m probably making way more big of a deal of this than it really is, but it just boggles my mind how much bystander stupidity there is. Yes, it’s a TV show for kids and there are some huge levels of suspension of disbelief to be had, but again, you can only stretch that line so far before I have to question: “What the hell is wrong with these people?”

Still, as dumb as some of these bits are, there’s just too much good hanging around here. It isn’t until here that we get to really know more about Takato’s friends other than that Kazu and Kenta picked on him a little bit for seeming crazy. But I do really enjoy seeing them get to meet Guilmon and Calumon, play with them and get more involved with the events going on. I don’t think they’re bad characters--they’re fun side characters even. After my experience with Adventure 02, you would think I would be mad about Jeri’s existence and Takato having a crush on her too, but no, I’m totally cool with it. It’s downplayed and Takato’s crush is an innocent enough case of puppy love over the dumb, hamfisted comedy side plot that is the Davis-Kari-T.K. love triangle. 

Not to mention, I really have to commend how Jeri’s interest in Digimon was handled. She’s shy about liking it, but when all of her cards fall out in front of Kazu and Kenta, they don’t make fun of her or even question her. Hell, when they actually see her cards later, they admire her collection. As someone who’s been that girl, this was a healthy and natural way of handling this kind of case. The writers could have easily had Kazu and Kenta make fun of Jeri and do the “Haha, Digimon is for boys! You don’t know what you’re doing!” joke. But no, they never make fun of her for not understanding the card game. They never even make fun of her for liking Digimon. I mean, if I really had to pick on her for anything, it might be her over-admiration for Leomon, but it never got to the point of being outright obnoxious and it was funny at times.

Also, Leomon’s gonna die, right? I mean, he literally almost died the moment he became Jeri’s partner. Just thought I’d point that out.

Speaking of characters, I do really like just how much love was put into making them very human. We really see how much they care for family and friends. Henry really cares about his younger sister (though I wish we could know a little about his other siblings) and we see how close he is to his father. We see how tender Rika’s grandmother is and how Rika respects her, and even despite her distant relationship with her mother, Rika dresses up for her before going to the Digital World to make her happy. That really made me appreciate Rika’s growing sense of humanity throughout the series. Even Takato goes through a sincere and tough moment of trying to help his parents understand how he needs to go to the Digital World to save Calumon and explaining how much Guilmon means to him. He even admits to being a “bad son”, and it’s a really heartfelt scene. And how accepting and encouraging his father is was rather heartwarming to me, while it was easy to feel sympathetic for his worrying mother.

Hell, I have to appreciate how they even made side characters important in this. Some of the kids couldn’t even bring themselves to tell their parents they were leaving for the Digital World. But when Takato, Jeri, Kazu and Kenta all confess to their teacher about leaving, they actually make it a pretty touching and good scene even when their teacher hasn’t been a crucial character.

I have really enjoyed how Tamers has been sort of an inverse of what Digimon Adventure did, dumb pedestrian moments aside. It takes place in the real world first to establish the gravity of how dangerous it can be having Digimon in the real world, and the build-up to traveling to the Digital World is much more fleshed out and important than say, when the DigiDested in Adventure were sort of just rushed back into the Digital World a second time. It’s made this series really fresh, new and enjoyable. And with all of the build-up, I’m really looking forward to how Tamers will handle the Digital World Arc, especially with how great the connections between the tamers and Digimon has been so far.

This connection really stuck out to me towards the end, where the fight against  Vikaralamon felt really helpless and Shaggai was just about to completely eliminate the Digimon from the real world. Takato’s struggle of feeling his bond from Guilmon fade whenever he Digivolves further is really unique for Digimon when Digivolution has typically been treated as just the segway to victory more than anything. Here, it’s far more special. The scene where Takato begins to yell and holler at WarGrowlmon in encouragement, while seeming kind of odd, was really powerful and felt like a sort of reconnection between the two. And it worked towards winning the battle against Vikaralamon. It was honestly a really effective scene, and between that and the first Matix Digivolution Takato had with WarGrowlmon, I’ve really enjoyed how their bonds have worked. They truly feel connected, down to Takato feeling some of WarGrowlmon’s own pain. 

And between things like the tamers’ and Digimon’s bonds, Matrix Digivolution and some of the battles in this arc, this is where I have to segway towards the topic I mentioned at the beginning of this. I’m putting my Flame Shield up here. As much as I’ve avoided talking about it when discussing Digimon, now more than ever do I need to talk about this:

My God, did Digimon do it so much better than Pokémon, and 15+ years earlier no less.

To clarify, I’m talking about the Pokémon anime’s decision to include the “Ash-Greninja” plot device. Yes, it has been several months. Yes, I am still pissed about it because it’s so, so bad and actually managed to leak into the Pokémon games for no good reason other than shameless self-promotion. But enough about why I’m mad at Pokémon for this one thing. What I want to talk about is why and how Digimon did the whole concept better. I know I should be talking about strictly Digimon here, but this struck such a nerve in me that I cannot go on without talking about it. If you’re strictly a Digimon fan that knows nothing about what has been going on in Pokémon for a while, I’m sorry if this is confusing. 

First, there’s the idea of the bond. I cannot stress enough how badly the bond is executed in Pokéani. Greninja is a Pokémon that Ash merely starts his Kalos journey in. It’s not his first journey, not his second journey, but his 8th quest in his entire life (I am including Orange Islands and Battle Frontier here). By this point, he has caught and trained with over forty different companions. Sure, we can argue that all of them are special to him in some form, but why was Greninja, this one Pokémon, so different from the others? Why did he have such a “strong” bond with this one that he was magically able to synchronize with it and give it some powered-up form? No matter how you may feel about Pokémon’s mascot, Pikachu would have made the most sense for this kind of role because Pikachu has been traveling with Ash since he started his journey. The actual bond is there. They have experienced far more than what this new creature on Ash’s team ever has.

For Digimon, it makes perfect sense for Takato and Guilmon. While Digimon (at least in the anime) has humans with only one Digimon partner, it avoids the entire trap that Pokéani set itself up for--forcing this “bond” nonsense. But this idea works especially in Takato’s case because Guilmon is a Digimon that Takato created. Takato is the first person Guilmon ever meets. Guilmon learned from Takato, and Takato learned from Guilmon. They take care of each other and have learned entirely new experiences because of their meeting. There is a true, genuine, unique bond here that could not be replicated by any other individual in Takato and Guilmon’s lives respectively.

Back to Pokéni, sure, Greninja may be important to Ash, but he has been with him an extremely short time compared to so many of his other companions. It feels extremely forced and contrived in Pokéani--it’s there just to promote one of their new monsters rather than attempting any actual good storytelling. Not to mention, the “Ash-Greninja” plot device is there to simply give Ash his victories 99% of the time rather than earning them. While Takato continues to question his bond with Guilmon as he evolves further, Ash only feels a sense of failure once when he loses one gym battle with Greninja. One loss out of the many victories that have been handed to him by just having Ash-Greninja curbstomp anything that got in the way. It makes Ash’s own questioning of his own “bond” with Greninja extremely forced, and it only happens here. It’s not a continuous struggle to become stronger and trust his partner, it’s a plot device to help him win.

Takato’s struggle to trust and bond with Guilmon as he evolves is what helps him build his strength with Guilmon, not outright give it to him like with Ash and Greninja. 

This is why when I see Takato cheer Guilmon on and feel his pain throughout battle, I feel for them. I feel the bond between those two characters. I feel like they are truly connected and growing through that connection. When I see Ash “synchronized” with Greninja and somehow feeling his pain, the fights are empty to me. Ash nor Greninja aren’t getting any stronger. They’ve just been bestowed a certain level of power, and they just steamroll to victory with it. It’s why I cringe when I see the whole “synchronization” between them. I’m not cringing because I see Ash feel pain with Greninja, I cringe because all I can think is “God, this is so stupid and forced.” But when I see Growlmon Matrix Digivolve and see Takato cheering him on and, in a spiritual sense, fighting alongside him, I feel fired up and I want to see them win.

And it works the best with Takato and Guilmon because they are partners made for each other, there from the start and experience life together and develop this bond. Greninja was cherry-picked for Ash because Greninja was popular at the time, despite him having so many other partners--even others besides Pikachu--that had a stronger bond with him than this singular trend of a Pokémon. I would be so much less harsh on this if it wasn’t a faked “bond” excuse. If they had just said Ash’s Greninja was born with some super special ability just like how the “Battle Bond” ability in-game works under certain circumstances, I would still call it a plot device, but just accept it as a single dumb writing choice. But when they reason it with a bond that feels so ingenuine, so under-developed and so nonexistent, I feel so much more upset with it and it makes me love what Tamers did for Takato and Guilmon all the more. tl;dr: Matrix Digivolution > Ash-Greninja

I get that this whole part of the post could have been its own separate post in and of itself, and I really didn’t want to go into comparing Pokémon and Digimon too much. But this arc started character development that stuck out so strongly to me that I felt it was important to bring up. Maybe it comes off as a long-winded rant, but you know what? I still give Digimon so much more credit for nailing something that could have easily gone wrong and come off as so cheesy to the point of being stupid, but instead actually made the story and characters all the more investing and impactful.

But to wrap this whole thing up and in terms of the Devas Arc, I really enjoyed it. It upped the action just as I was hoping for while still maintaining great storytelling and doing such a good job of keeping me emotionally invested as well as developing characters, new and old. It’s really set my hopes high for the rest of the series and I really want to get to that Digital World Arc. I’m really excited to keep watching this show, and I hope it continues to surprise me.