#which is fine because this is a shonen

[problemswithbooks]

ngl my only praise for bnha was kinda the endeavour arc, but uh,,, yeah wtf was that chapter. "endeavour was right all along, he shouldve kept pushing the child!!" blegh

Yeah, I agree.

I really don't like the added ice Quirk from any angle. Sure, you can argue it gives more of an explanation on how Touya will inevitably survive, but it's weak at best. Ice doesn't heal burns and no amount of cooling would fix someone whose been burned to the bone all over their body. Ice or not he should be dead--I would expect Shoto to die if he ever looked the same way, even though he has ice. If the solution is going to be so nonsensical and handwavey anyway, and it undermines the themes and characters so much, might as well just drop it.

Touya's ice adds nothing and only negatively effects the themes and characters.

It's framed in a way where it can be seen as rubbing salt in Enji's wounds and showing how bad a father he was because Touya was perfect the entire time, but that only implies that Enji should have kept training Touya despite the physical pain it caused him. It's just weird because the story is shitting on Enji for one of the few things he did right. The issue never should have been that he stopped training Touya--it should be that he didn't replace that one on one time with some other safe alternative. Enji should have spent quality time with Touya regardless of Quirk, but he didn't. Yet, now it implies that the training would have paid off if Enji had just stuck with it.

This chapter also sort of props up the Quirk marriage he had with Rei. Her family was apparently full of inbred racists who would have sold her off to anyone with a big enough paycheck. It also gives more support to the idea that Rei was 100% on board with the Quirk marriage because that was what her family had been practicing for years anyways. On top of that the marriage worked first try with Touya. Touya's existence is no longer showing that trying for a perfect Quirk had detrimental consequences all on it's own, but instead that Enji giving up on Touya was the only reason he didn't achieve perfectness.

It also guts any character development Touya could have. He's now right, he was always the son Enji wanted. His constant suicidal and self harming actions get him exactly what he always wanted. He's literally being rewarded for being suicidal--which is a huge problem. He no longer has to come to love himself outside of his Quirk, see that he should always have been cared for no matter how useful he was to his father's ambitions.

It really does leave a very bad taste in my mouth with all the implications and twisting of the themes. I doubt any of it was intentional, but the execution is very flawed and I highly doubt these issues can be fixed going forward. It's just makes me really sad because Enji's arc was the one I was most interested in because it was actually showed how hard change is and was about an adult character rather then a plucky teenager. Yet, it's getting to the point I kind of think Hori might have had a better story if he'd left Enji a one dimensional asshole and killed him off given how he's written this side-plot.

[ttomuras]

the last five chapters were extremely rushed and the ending feels generic and boring to me. like i literally joked about how there is going to be a timeskip, deku is gonna be a teacher and they’ll have a pull-out-your-ass solution about how deku can still be a hero. joked in a “this is too goofy” way just like ppl joked about “this is our hero academia”. this feels v?? goofy?? but in a not fun way for me

[redhotarsenic]

I lied actually Valantinez has one entire prosthetic leg and one prosthetic foot on their other leg they’re both the same shape just the extra tech in the leg one lets them shoot out of it

[soup-du-silence]

Impressions/favourite moments from Ch 9?

god where do i start

there's a whole essay to be written about how their dreams were just mirrors of each other because they're too fucking obsessed with each other to imagine life without each other, that Jamil keeps dream-Kalim around in his perfect world when he could have just conjured a life without him, where's he's fucked off forever, or where they never met? Explain to me WHY dream-Jamil is a horrifyingly chipper, overly-friendly parody of himself but still brainwashes Kalim instead of just pouting and saying "noooo kalim dont wake up you're so sexy we're best fwiends haha" which I can't not read as implying this is something he's fine with? has been fine with?? (we got a hint about the conditions of the manifestation of Jamil's signature spell! we've long known Kalim's been sworn to secrecy about it and he takes that promise so seriously that Jade couldn't get it out of him but like!! I still want to know the details!!)

That they had the most ridiculous shonen jump little boy slapfight because they're both SO stunted and they've been together forever but they never got to be normal-ass kids about it and they finally got to air their grievances with each other because they're trapped in a dreamscape where there's no repercussions to finally just throwing hands and calling each other names? That when push comes to shove Jamil still instinctually puts himself in danger and pushes Kalim to safety?

there's an essay to be written but I'm simply too yaoi poisoned to be the one to do it, I'm sorry. My only note is that I think the fight should have devolved into sloppy makeouts.

[maoam]

Naruto most likely sees how the world around him works, and it affects his behaviour, especially since he craves for acceptance.

Notice the difference in his reaction when another guy says he likes him in part 1 vs part 2.

(Sorry for a bit poor quality, it was difficult to find an accurate translation, most were viz translations which didn't convey this convo very well). In part 1 he's just annoyed, because he doesn't like Kankurou as a person. He didn't even think about that "I like you" could have certain other implications. But in part 2 he's straight up creeped out by Kakashi saying the same thing, eventhough the meaning and intention is the same in both.

Naruto's reaction to Kurama mentioning his kiss with Sasuke was also way too over the top. Like really comical. Naruto was putting on a show in front of everyone. But whenever he's with Sasuke, he forgets all about this, he is fine with waxing poetry to Sasuke, or Sasuke being close to him...

My guess is since he went through puberty he also learned things about himself and thus started to become more sensitive to such things. Thus internalized homophobia.

Take this scene for example. He seems a bit uncomfortable being there. Sai was probably made to be like this (inappropriate, talking about p*nis all the time, being compared to Sasuke, challenging Naruto about his fixation on Sasuke) so Kishi could introduce more such themes into the manga. He's rather clever about this.

Another guess (it could be both combined) would be that since Jiraiya is so aggressively straight man (to the point he has to introduce himself by saying he's not into men lol) living with him for those years during the timeskip could have affected Naruto's mindset even more. But it's funny how Kishi keeps stressing over and over how Naruto finds Jiraiya's er*tic books boring. Also unlike Jiraiya who peeps on women for p*rverted reasons, Naruto does it as a prank, and in order to practice his oiroke no jutsu. Kishi is trying to show how they are different. I remember on one discussion forum one guy actually brought up he noticed Naruto's changed behaviour after he came back with Jiraiya! Like that he was even more gay and more sensitive to gay things. See, other people notice too.

Then he calls Konohamaru's boy-on-boy jutsu "nasty". Naturally, it's a shonen, Naruto can't have a comically interested reaction like Sakura to something like that, it wouldn't fly. Thus the internalized homophobia. But I also think he didn't want to see Sasuke who he's possessive over being with Sai like that lol. And Naruto really isn't one to talk considering what he came up with later.

Look how proud he looks. Little hypocrite. He's been working on those twink bods more than rasengan lol. Kishi wasn't very subtle with that comment. Also Kishi fought for this moment with his editors for YEARS because he just really needed to write this down. It was just that important to him...

Of course Naruto's repression comes up when it comes to Sasuke as well. Here he admits Sasuke is attractive, but then immediately backpedals on it. His real feelings just slipped.

Later, he was thinking about Sasuke, his mind consumed by Sasuke, but when Sakura and Sai appear his whole body language changes and he immediately claims he was thinking about a date with Sakura. He didn't want to be vulnerable nor let anyone know about his real feelings at the moment. He is hiding behind a heterosexual facade.

But sometimes Naruto doesn't even think of backpedaling on it. He is with his supposed "crush" yet unlike anyone else who would try to get closer or maybe flirt, he is just thinking about Sasuke. This is actually a moment that made many people raise their eyebrows. Including people who didn't like narusasu, or people who didn't ship anything. Specifically because it's written like a clickbait, as in Naruto says "he is happy" and Sakura going "huh?" and because she's his supposed crush who is taking care of him as I said most readers would expect next page have Naruto say something that would emphasize his crush on Sakura. But no, he goes on about Sasuke. No matter how much ss/nh insist we see gay everywhere, many other people picked up on Kishi's writing at many points during the story. But anyway, even with the internalized homophobia, Naruto's love for Sasuke is so strong he can say crazy things about Sasuke to other people and to Sasuke himself that things like "I'm starting to like you" (a completely average thing to say to another person) can't compare to, and still be unbothered by it.

Finally there is the interaction with Minato. Naruto wants to look good in front of his dad so he hesitantly agrees Sakura is his girlfriend, despite how in the previous arc we were shown that Naruto knew Sakura still likes Sasuke, and was angry at her when she tried to confess to him. So he is obviously not serious about Sakura being his girlfriend, but he is saying it to Minato hesitantly. Yet when his dad is leaving he doesn't want to lie anymore.... but he's also hesitant about admitting he hasn't found a girl like his mom wanted.

About the last part, I think it's referring to the armadillo scene? I think it was Kishi's typical humour, like how Naruto saw Haku in makeup and feminine clothing, and assumed Haku was a girl, but then was told Haku is a boy and went "oh okay, I didn't know that kind of thing existed". Here there was instead an armadillo that somehow looked like it was wearing makeup (??? idek or at least looked feminine) and since Naruto needed to write down whether the animals were boys or girls (a ridiculous cover up mission they made up to hide the war was going on from Naruto lol) but then it was flipped over with everyone else and Naruto saw its p*nis and went "even if heaven and earth switched places, a male is still a male". I guess Kishi likes this kind of thing lol... his d*ck jokes...

I know it says "the world might flip over" here but I know it's actually that proverb "even if heaven and earth switched places" that's often used in Japanese.

EDIT: this got flagggged by tumblr so I had to edit sus words.

[itsnothingofinterest]

This is probably a weird note to end my time with MHA's run on; but I find it so strange how I still see people calling Tomura out on just being a destruction-hungry villain with supposedly no plan or follow up...as though he is unique for that simplicity. Especially after the ending we got. Like, Deku and All Might never really had a plan when they were reshaping society by beating up the enemy and everything worked out fine for them, but does anyone call them out for just using violence to mindlessly solve everything with no further plan? (Well, yes. Me. Right now.)

Because like, really thinking about it; how different was All Might's plan from the start of his career to take down AFO and become a symbol, and Deku's plan to end the villains and bring everything back, from Shigaraki's plan to end hero society and bring about a world accommodating to the League? It all seemed to boil down to the same basic premise of Step 1) Beat everyone & everything making things worse, Step 2) ...it all just kind of works out from there. (I guess All Might planned on being inspiring and uplifting, but then we could also count Tomura's plan to be imposing and...uplifting but for different people. Deku was winging it every step of the way though.) Everyone's getting on Tomura's case for doing nothing but destroying; but all evidence from when the heroes do it suggests violence & destruction works. And it just never fails to bug me when people call Tomura out for stuff that's fine when heroes do it.

Which, yeah, let's touch on how it did just work out for Deku that way for no logical reason, least of all anything he planned. He punched out the big bad just like All Might and now things are like a hundred times better than they were under All Might with no more Tenkos abandoned in the street. If stuff like that just happens if you punch out your enemies hard enough, then why couldn't that happen for Tomura? Maybe if he had destroyed the government & hero society it would've, idk, been so fear/awe-inspiring that all the villains would've been nice and cooperative under the PLF and everything would've been fine. Or something. No more contrived than what we saw with the old lady plot line, MHA is just a series where that stuff works out. Heck, one time it actually did just work out that way for Tomura:

Again, violence and destruction works in MHA. I mean; duh, it's a shonen manga.

Plus all this is ignoring the fact that, unlike those two, Tomura did have a follow up to the violence. He did have a step two, or at least one & a half, after "beat down all the bad guys in the country." Rather than just going "and everything will work out from there," he had his guys plan for the future so he could say "and Spinner, Toga, and RD et. all will make sure everything works out from there." (Admittedly, not much; but also, not hopes and dreams.) He did have a plan, it was just the plan from the Overahul arc, where he was last asked to have a plan: leave it to his allies.

And hey, that means it's actually better than what we saw from genius All Might and brainiac Deku. So why are we still, even after everything was over, acting like there's some expectation as a villain he didn't meet? I guess it's just in the nature of a 'tantrum-having man-child who wants nothing but destruction' to put more forethought into the future he wants to build than the society-uplifting greatest heroes.

That or maybe everyone had really detailed follow-ups for when they won that Hori never went much into, but that'd render this post a bit pointless so shhh.

[philosophiums]

Megumi Rant bc I'm So Tired

I was gonna talk about 271 and the ending chapters of JJK in general, specifically focusing on how Shonen Jump puts a hard end date on each series it publishes (which are based on conversations with the mangakas, sure, but with no leeway once it’s determined because SJ wants to keep cycling through new publications in order to keep making money - and those hard line end dates cannot possibly account for, say, sudden illness that would prevent a mangaka from releasing a chapter) and how it’s the best end to the series that many fans could have asked for given that info, but I’m tired and I don’t feel like yelling at a wall, so here’s a rebuttal aimed at a lot of Megumi hot takes™ I’ve seen since, really, 269 dropped.

Obligatory thing up front bc I know the JJK fandom hates reading and critical thought more than anything in the world, and that it operates on a very "but what about me" mentality: It's totally fine if you are dissatisfied with JJK in general or even just the ending. It's totally fine if you have mixed feelings about the way the story was wrapped up. It's totally fine if you think it could have been handled better even given the above information in the link above on how SJ operates. I'm not telling you to feel a certain way, but I'm walking you through the end of the story (read: Megumi's character specifically) bc I am so fucking tired of reading bad takes about "Gege hating Megumi" or whatever.

Holding everyone's hands as I go through these. Let's take these steps in shedding directionless rage together.

(Forewarning that this is long as hell. Gomen.)

Common Argument Number 1: Megumi didn’t have a character arc/didn't grow as a character

The first thing that needs to be understood to realize why this is wrong is that all of the characters in JJK have arcs based around power - gaining it, losing it, being overwhelmed by it, and so on. This is not new information as of the last few chapters; we've known for years now that JJK isn't a story that's focused on deep introspection nor prolonged emotional development. Power. Cursed Techniques. That's where Gege kept his focus. However, it's impossible to write a story with heavy themes of loss and fear and love without touching into a character's emotions at all, some of which become central enough to turn into arcs. (We'll circle back to this in just a moment.) The second thing that needs to be understood here is that, in the general sense of All Media (and not just JJK), not all character arcs have to span the entire length of a story. A full and complete character arc (which is to say, the movement that happens while a character is actively changing) can happen in half of a story or less, and it is no less satisfying for having done so. Now, what does all of that have to do with Megumi? Very explicitly, it means that Megumi not only experiences growth as a character, but that he also goes through not one, but two character arcs. ((He's not the only character with two arcs, but he's the reason for this post, so you guys can track down the others on your own.)) Both of his arcs are complete, in my opinion, even if they're not 100% satisfying. But satisfaction isn't the argument here, so we can touch on that later. Maybe. Megumi's first arc (his power arc) starts right out of the gate, but it doesn't begin to take shape until the chapters at the detention center (I would argue it specifically starts to become an "arc" [which is to say, experiences movement] right at the point where Yuuji dies - this is the inciting incident in Megumi's story), and it concludes during the Culling Games (the exact place of it's conclusion is a little waffle-y for me but it's between either the moment he is able to use his technique to beat someone solo within the depths of his shadows OR the exact moment that Sukuna looks at him and thinks that he's strong enough now to be Sukuna's vessel). This arc follows Megumi coming to terms with the reality that if he wants to save people, he needs to get stronger and he needs to get more in touch with the side of himself that is/creates his CT. And he accomplishes that. Is there more growth in this department that he could have had? Yes, absolutely. Taming Mahoraga, a fully realized domain expansion, etc. All of that could have happened, but none of that needs to happen in order for this arc to be complete. He sought power, he got power, and he used it to save people. That's a fully realized and completed arc. Megumi's second arc (his emotional arc) happens during the time Sukuna is wearing him like a suit. This arc has nothing at all to do with anything that happens before this point in time (it has nothing to do with power, nothing to do with fighting, nothing to do with saving people). Before this, Megumi's emotional state is fairly stagnant; any goals and/or momentum that he has outside of wanting to become stronger are usually skipped over or not acknowledged at all. Once his bodily autonomy is stripped from him, all that's left is emotion. And we get to see a complete emotional arc here - starting in stagnation, inciting incident of being possessed, and then the slow chipping away of his resolve as Sukuna kills his sister and performs a ritual to suppress Megumi's soul completely. Megumi is at his lowest point here, but he overcomes it and chooses to live. That's a complete arc. That's a conclusion. No amount of wanting him to mourn Gojo or of wishing for This, That, or The Other things change the fact that his arcs do in fact reach natural conclusions within the story.

Common Argument Number 2: Megumi didn't have a satisfying conclusion

I think this argument is a bit of a pull from a misunderstanding that revolves around argument number one. People are looking for an arc that is wrapping up in the final chapters, and they're upset that they're not finding it. And the reason they're not finding it is because, as mentioned above, Megumi's arcs concluded before he regained consciousness post-Shinjuku. Also, this may come as a shock to some people, but "satisfying" is relative. Which also means that I can't exactly argue against what people are feeling, because in this specific instance, it's all feelings based. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to try!! I already covered that Megumi fully concluded both of his arcs, so it's not that he's lacking in power or emotional development. I think what people get stuck on is what Megumi says before he begins to fight back against Sukuna: that he wants to try to live for someone else. A lot of readers seem to take this as a step backwards for him, a return to who he was before everything in the story, but I disagree. I think it's actually a large step forward for him and, beyond that, I think it's realistic beyond simply satisfying the narrative. At the beginning of the story, Megumi is living for nothing. It's common for the fandom to think he's living for Tsumiki, but she's fully comatose and cursed; I doubt that he's living for her. At most he's living just in case a miracle happens and she wakes up, but that's not living for her. He's in what I think of as a transitional space, and he's stuck there. He's the only one in his year at Jujutsu Tech, he's not trying to develop his CT, he's just existing - going on missions and rolling his eyes at Gojo and doing school work. At the end of the story, Megumi actively chooses life. He had a way out, he felt that in many ways he was already dead - or at the very least, that he was irredeemable and better off dead. But he chooses to live. He chooses to fight back. And, more than that, he chooses to become an active participant in life. Yes, for him that means living for Yuuji, but even that still requires wanting to keep going, wanting to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He wants to face the world and all it has to offer - despite all the bad, and maybe in spite everything he went through. That's a satisfying character conclusion in my eyes. Everyone wants realistic representation of the struggle surrounding mental illness and how victories with them are not as "grand" as for neurotypical people until they're actually presented with realistic representation. Then all of a sudden it's "bad writing" and "unsatisfying" because the character didn't end the story without any gaps or holes and with a perfect little bow wrapped around their neck. God forbid there be an implication that a character gets to continue to live and grow beyond the last page. Anyway, just because he didn't have the conclusion you wanted for him that you built up in your head after years of living with the fanon version of Megumi you created doesn't mean his conclusion was bad or unsatisfying.

Common Argument Number 3: Megumi's characterization went right back to how it was during the Culling Game arc

...Duh??? I mean... where else was his personality and his behavior supposed to go? He spent a month completely suppressed by Sukuna. The only thing he was going to do without intervention is regress, not progress. What happened to Megumi when Yuuji reached out to him was him coming back to himself - and the only "himself" he had in recent memory was who he was immediately before Sukuna took over. Character progression cannot happen in stagnation, and stagnation is all Megumi had while he was suppressed in the bath™. Expecting any of that to change him for the better or to push him in any "forward" momentum is, quite honestly, ridiculous. The only direction Megumi could have gone is backwards, and he is (which means also we are) just lucky that he was able to be dragged into the version of himself that had already grown and that was waiting for his return.

Common Argument Number 4: Megumi didn't do anything during the fight against Sukuna

What gets me about this stance is that it seems to be the only one shared between the "shonen bros" who only read manga for the fight scenes and the hardcore Megumi stans who wish so desperately that he was the main character of the series. But like... what do you want him to do, here, exactly? Somehow find within himself the urge to get up and fight what seems to be a losing battle after watching his own hands kill not only his sister but the most prominent adult figure in his life? Resist all on his own (with no prior arc moments to support it) whatever mystical magical bs makes the bath™ work in keeping his soul suppressed? Do you want a good and well-structured character arc with logical emotional weight, or do you just want your favorite character to defeat a villain that is not "his" villain? I'll wait. Megumi's struggles during this story arc are internal, and his inability to fight is reflective of that. If he were to be resisting against Sukuna the whole time - trying to wrest control of his CT back or attempting to attack Sukuna's soul himself - then we would still be sitting in his power arc during this time. Megumi's inaction is physical representation of the inner turmoil and struggle that he was in during the fight, and I don't think that's very hard to understand. He is fighting; it's just that he's fighting himself. And he wins that fight. And he does do something in the fight against Sukuna. I firmly believe that Megumi choosing to live sealed the deal on Sukuna's death. Why else would Sukuna have been panicking so hard and doing everything he could to keep Megumi depressed and stuck in the ruts of his mind? If Megumi hadn't chosen life, hadn't decided he wanted to keep fighting in that moment, Sukuna would still be kicking. I don't think it's a stretch, actually, to say that Megumi delivered the blow that weakened Sukuna to Yuuji's kill shot. Megumi was integral to the fight - he just needed to go through his emotional arc first.

I'm sure I'm missing things, I'm sure I forgot things. But this isn't college and I'm not writing for a grade. What I am is tired of both Megumi hate and Gege hate. Megumi is a well-written character who is good representation of depression (at minimum), and who is also not the fucking main character. Like, I'm sorry that the character you project your mental illness onto acts mentally ill, and I'm sorry your favorite character is a side character who is written like a side character. These things tend to happen.

Yes, obviously, more could have been done with him and the wrapping of his character (and all of the characters) if the ending wasn't rushed, but that's not Gege's fault. Blame capitalism if you want to point fingers. JJK isn't the first manga with a rushed ending for exactly that reason, and it won't be the last.

Okay, I have to force myself to stop talking or we'll be here forever but:

The ending of JJK is not "bad writing," it's the best outcome that could have happened given the time constraints and publication constraints.

I agree that it would have been nice to see acknowledgements from the characters of the trauma they went through, but also I think that those things realistically take time. I don't think it's unreasonable that their first instinct would be to pretend that everything is normal for as long as they can. However, Megumi was not handled poorly, and he was not abandoned by Gege, and Gege does not hate him. He was well-written start to finish, and he was given a lovely ending that leaves his future wide open for possibilities.

Take a deep breath and stop trying to be the loudest voice in the room. Look at the text and supplement it with reality and the hard truths of a really shitty work culture, and understand that being upset is valid, but it's not valid enough to justify seething hatred for a mangaka whose entire work you probably read for free <3

[homoerotic-shonen-rival-showdown]

wildly impressed that I have gotten more people complaining about ace attorney than people complaining about the m/f ship on the bracket. I got like one ask about that and they were chill but I'm having people asking for disqualifications in the finals

no that is not happening like half of the contestants weren't from shonen series I would love to stop getting notifications about this please

it is the actual finals and I am still getting people complaining about things not being "technically shonen" like buddy ace attorney would not have made it all the way to the tournament finals if I gave a shit about that

[epickiya722]

Sometimes, I forget that there are people who find protagonists like Izuku, Tanjiro and Yuji "boring" because "they exhibit typical shonen protagonist traits" and one of them woukd be "They're nice, they're kind, they're all sunshine".

Which, okay, have your tastes, that's fine.

But when it comes to characters who are kind and/or nice, there's layers to them.

Just because a character is nice, doesn't mean they're kind and vice versa.

A character can be the most evil one in that story and still show kindness to some people somehow. A nice character may be the one to do immoral things, Yuji being an example.

The reasons for why a character is nice and/or kind varies, too.

Some are just genuinely born that one. Some may be selective as to who they show those sides, too, because of their own morality. Maybe, a character is being kind or nice to also manipulate others. Some characters may choose to be kind because who will, despite the cruelty of the world?

Also, I feel like, even with people outside of a fandom, they hear or seen a character being nice and kind, they just stop at that and don't think they're capable of being ruthless.

Like, Tanjiro canonically has a pure soul, but multiple times he has shown he is not only a menace in a fight, but he has shown to be one in casual situations. Sometimes, he's not even aware he is because he is so nice.

Izuku, he's a sweetheart, too. But even he will just shut off that "sunshine" to literally tear into you. He has been told in canon to hold back his emotions, the most prominent one being his anger. When he's angry, go apologize!

Yuji, look, let's be real... he is sunshine and rainbows, but that boy is probably the least sweetest one out of these three examples. Hold back? Yuji don't know what that is. No, no, he really don't. I kid you not, this kid doesn't. You can't even use the fight against Junpei as one because he punched Junpei UP into a window. Had Junpei not have that shikigami, he would have gotten major injuries.

My point is!

Just because a character is kind or nice or both, it doesn't mean...

A) it's the only trait they have.

B) they're not capable of not being kind or nice.

I think some see nice and kind and associate it with being "soft" in a derogatory manner.

Which, first off, there's nothing wrong with being soft.

I'll be honest, it will sound silly (go ahead and laugh actually, I encourage it), but if you asked put a character like one of the mentioned protagonists in front of me along with their villain and asked me "who I'm more scared of" I'm pointing at the protagonist.

Listen to me. Don't let that cuteness fool you.

With a villain, I am well aware of that villain being evil and will hurt me no matter what I do.

With someone like Yuji or Tanjiro or Izuku, they look nice, they look kind but it's like you have to be careful to not to trigger them in a way to set them off. You're caught off guard but those sweet faces and then next thing you know, BOOM! You got knocked out.

If anything, as much as people like to clown on these characters, they're only just following the footsteps of the ones before them.

Just like those legends, they started from the bottom and grew stronger over time and even with being a chill person or don't want to do evil, that doesn't exempt them from being not "a sweetheart".

I said it before, but a sunshine character to me is a character who is warm but lethal, like sunlight.

[linkspooky]

Okay, so I received an ask in response to an MHA critical post I received last night that I originally responded to, but then decided to delete the ask and the original post because I didn't want to get into an argument.

However, I feel like I should address one of their complaints about a post I made last night. That I was being too dismissive on the cultural reasons for some of the writing choices Horikoshi made because I am obviously not a part of the culture that Horikoshi grew up in and is commenting on in his piece of work.

I tried not to dismiss the cultural reasons entirely in the post though, I just said I don't think you can entirely blame Hori's writing choices on them. My cited example was there are other shonen jump mangas that don't go out of their way to gruesomely kill their villains (which is what I'm taking fault with.) I understand that the death penalty is a common response to murder in japan, but within the realm of fiction of shonen manga doesn't have a trend of killing all their villains.

But yeah, that might have been a shallow argument.

So there are different lenses of fiction you can criticize Horikoshi's writing on, because every piece of fiction is in fact influenced by the culture it's in, as well as obviously the author's personal life and unconscious biases but that's not all. There's also genre to consider, and influences / inspiration the author might have taken from other works.

For example, there is also genre in particular MHA is written as a response / commentary to both western comics and classic shonen jump manga. Horikoshi said in an interview:

“Probably have to be Goku and Spiderman. To me, when mentioning heroes, these two are the ones that I think of. In Goku’s case, it’s the reassurance that everything is going to be fine he brings when arriving.” 

There are multiple critical analysis lenses that you can analyze a story from. If you're talking about MHA from a feminist lens then you're likely to stick to topics relevant to that, like say japanese feminist movements. If you're talking from the sociopolitical angle then it's relevant to discuss collectivism, and especially how it inspired the Todoroki Family. However, my intent wasn't to dismiss sociopolitical reasons as why Horikoshi chose to write the story this way, but to say it's not the only reason that informs Hori's storytelling choices. MHA isn't just one thing it's multiple thing, me deliberately choosing to talk about MHA as a response to both eastern shonen manga and western comics is a valid critical lens to apply to the manga. You can talk about both obviously, but that was a pretty short post. Perhaps I didn't word my post the best but please try to be understanding that I can't make a post covering all of my bases on leaks night.

For a manga where Horikoshi cited his concept of heroism comes from Goku and Spiderman, they both don't kill their villains, Goku specifically let Vegeta live so if those are his inspirations the choice to kill every villain is weird to say the least.

I can make the argument that MHA fails as any kind of meaningful commentary on comics in general because it doesn't seem to understand the comics it is taking inspiration from. The X-Men are the underdogs in their story, not members of the privileged class they are the outcasts. Batman doesn't kill people because he believes that most of his mentally ill victims turned villains deserve a second chance and he can't dictate who deserves recovery and who doesn't.

If anyone reading this post is curious, here are posts by @siflshonen that discuss both the manga influences and comic infleunces easter and western infleunces on MHA, and also the cultural ones. They are also really long posts because those topics require a great length to discuss critically. This one is about MHA's manga DNA in regards to Bakugo's character, and specifically references Yu-Gi-Oh and Kaiba's character as well as Jonouchi as response for Bakugo's development arc from bully to best friend. This one discusses more about the nuances of collectivism. This one is in reference to the Todoroki family, it discusses both collectivism / japanese family roles / honnae and tatamae concepts that the Todofam is critiqueig, and also how Enji is inspired by eastern ideas of heroes while All Might is inspired by western ones. (Therefore it's not a wrong critical lens to compare MHA to other shonen manga and western comics because that is literally what the manga is taking inspiration from and commenting on).

Here's a powerpoint presentation by @sans-san that discussed Hegemonic Masculinity in Tokyo Ghoul in terms of work culture and how the CCG is inspired by that, which I think also applies to Enji's character as well.

This post by @bnhaobservation spoke about how the Todorokis decision for not disavowing or abandoning Toya after he was sentenced to life in prison would still be a progressive ending to the TODOFAM arc, and while I still wouldn't have been satisfied by that ending I'd at least be able to accept it. That is however, not what we got, we got Toya dying a slow agonizing death while hooked up to life support. So we could have still gotten a slightly softer ending where Toya's at least allowed to live that would have still been in line with the values of the culture that produced MHA.

This post by @bnhaobservation also talks about how the Todofam plotline can still be seen as progressive in some ways in regards to his criticism of Enji's parenting, because of certain outdated attitudes of parenting that still exist about Enji pushing Shoto to his absolute limits.

However, I don't want to debate the person who sent the ask, I just wanted to clarify I'm not trying to make a reductive statement that sociopolitical circumstances have nothing to do with Hori's writing choices, but that you can also analyze it from a lens of genre, commentary on comics and shonen manga, and also the predecessors he's taking inspiration from. All of these things have an inspiration on Hori's storytelling choices.

Since I'd rather not debate, now that I've gotten clarifying things out of the way I'm actually going to use this post as a book reccommendation.

Here's Shigaraki with Underground, one of my favorite books. It is a non-fiction work from famed fiction author Haruki Murakami about the Saren Gas attacks.

On a clear spring day in 1995 five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas in the Tokyo Subway system. In an attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakami talks to the people who lived through the catasrophe and lays bare the Japanese Psyche.

For those who are unaware the Saren Gas attacks were a terrorist attack where members of the Aum Shirikyo cult released saren gas in the public subway system. It is the biggest japanese terrorist attack in modern japanese history and at the time and even the modern day it was a great shock to them as a whole.

The book consists of several interviews with the victims of the attack, and they are incredibly harrowing to read I remember crying while reading this book multiple times. However, at the end of the book after giving considerable time to let the victims share their stories Haruki Murakami also devotes space in the book to interviewing former members of the Aum Shirikyo cult.

Haruki clarifies his intent in his decision to include testimonial from the cult in the afterword of the novel. "As I worked on this book I attended several of the trials of the defendants of the Tokyo Gas attack. I wanted to see and hear those people with my own eyes ad ears, in order to come to some understanding of who they were. I also wanted to know what they were thinking now. What I found there was a dismal, gloomy, hopeless scene. The court was like a room with no exit. There must have been a way out in the beginning, but now it had become a nightmarish chamber from which there was no escape. [...] To all of them I posed the same question, that is, whether they regretted having joined Aum. Almost everyone answered: "No, I have no regrets. I don't think those years are wasted" Why is that? THe answer is simple - because in Aum they found a purity of purpose theycould not find in ordinary society. Even if in the end it became something monstrous, the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them and nothing else can replace it. [...] However, as I went through the process of interviewing these Aum members and former members, one thing I felt quite strongly was that it was't spite of being part of the elite that they went in that direction, but because they were a part of the elite. [...] However, we need tor ealize that most of the people who join cults are not abnormal; they're not disadvantaged; they're not eccentrics. They are people who live average lives (and nmaybe from the outside, more than average lives), who live in my neighborhood and yours.

Haruki interviews members of Aum Shirikiyo because he wants to make the point that the people in these cult aren't from a dangerous fringe element of japanese society, but rather they are normal people, some of them even highly educated. The capacity to commit those crimes exists in normal people, and also the capacity to fall victim to a cult.

The Ikuhara anime Mawaru Penguindrum is heavily inspired by both the Saren Gas attacks and the questions that Haruki Murakami asked in the Underground. Fully covered here in this article: Exploring Mawaru Penguindrum 2011 from a historical, cultural and literary perspective here.

Underground was Murakami’s attempt to interview survivors of the Sarin Subway Attack. Apart from learning the perspectives of ordinary citizens involved in that shocking incident, he also managed to interview several members of Aum Shinrikyo and tried to get their point of view on the matter. (In the Japanese edition of the book, the interview with the cult members were published in a separate book, titled The Place that was Promised.) It was an important piece of journalistic work that criticized the public’s attitude of questioning what happened, instead of asking the proper question of why it had happened. In the anime, viewers knew that an event took place in 1995 that affected all the characters, but what exactly was the event about? Why did the people do that? What social factors attributed to the occurrence of such event? These are the questions that Mawaru Penguindrum asked, and one that we were left to ponder on.

Ikuhara and Murakami both exist in the same culture as Horikoshi, Haruki is an incredibly prolific japanese author and he was born in 1945 but both of them are able to ask more meaningful questions about the society they live in then Horikoshi accomplishes with the league of villains and the todoroki family. Haruki Murakami emphasizes the humanity of the aum shirikyo members and that they are not lunatic fringe members, and Mawaru Penguindrum is about the extreme social pressures that people especially children can be a victim of.

Literature is influenced by the culture it takes place in, but it's also a response to that influence and the piece of art that Horikoshi wrote just isn't as thoughtful of a response than what was written by both Ikuhara and Murakami.

More book recommendations if you're interested. The Setting Sun, by Osamu Dazai. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. How do you Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino. In the Miso Soup by Ryo Murakami. People who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Perry. Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa (I'd argue this is an example of good collectivism). The Memory Police by Yuko Ogawa. Out by Natsuo Kirino. There was a couple more I wanted to include but they had cannibalism in them so I thought it better not to reccommend them.

[runabout-river]

The Mechanisms of Nobara's Return

The Setup

Her injury is the smallest transfiguration Mahito made without interference

This injury didn't kill Nobara instantly

Nitta used his CT to stop her from dying

Affirmation that Nobara has a chance of survival even if that chance is less than 1%

This setup itself is the biggest indication/confirmation on a meta level that Nobara's return will happen. Because otherwise, Gege wouldn't have written it like this in the first place or he would've written later scenes about her death more explicitly.

Nobara is the female lead of JJK and is often compared to Sakura from Naruto in that regard. I find it hard to believe that Shonen Jump would let Gege discard that lead so early in the story. It would also be an unpopular decision to replace the female lead with another female character (Maki) even for Shonen standards.

Temporarily replacing one on the other hand, is a decision I can see happening. I'm no expert in this but it's known that editors keep the number of female characters low in their titles in SJ. Gege most likely wanted to do something shocking as well, so this a course of action many would be fine with.

If Nobara's death had been meant to be final then not only in the story but also outside of it we would've gotten definite confirmation on it. Instead, I don't recall something like that being said. In story and outside, we have this wishy-washy Schrödinger's Cat situation going on.

Her injury

Idle Transfiguration cannot be healed with positive energy or any other means

That's because positive energy doesn't recognize damage to the body if it's in the same shape as the soul

At this point, her death was suspended in a similar fashion to how Megumi's death was suspended inside his exorcism ritual

This suspension can theoretically be kept up indefinitely as long as Nitta can use his CT

A popular theory in this regard, is Nobara learning Reverse Cursed Technique while at death's door.

Nobara is a Black Flash user, her use of cursed energy is more refined than that of the average sorcerer

Her learning RCT would parallel Gojo learning it after being sliced open. For her, it just takes longer

Having to use RCT constantly would also mirror Gojo, bringing her narratively closer to her teacher after being the one most distant from him

Her Return

Why did Megumi say she was dead?

Theory: because Shoko told him that she was dead:

Because Shoko thought it cruel to keep the hopes of Megumi and Yuji up. She still wasn't finished to try and save her though

Shoko was afraid of the higher-ups interfering in her treatment after Yaga was executed

Having Megumi believe that she died also makes Sukuna believe that she's dead, which makes her comeback unforeseeable to him.

Why don't we see her in the flashbacks?

To keep up suspense. But do you know who else we don't see in the flashbacks? Todo. And that guy isn't even dead.

What is she doing now?

We have some possibilities for the flashbacks:

Learning to function under her RCT

Learning to function on Nitta's CT

Training/secret missions with Todo

Recovering with her grandma/learning to use new forms of her own CT

For the current fights:

She's waiting her turn

Popular theory is that Nobara will use Resonance on Sukuna's last finger. If she does this too early, she will explode. My favorite way for her to do this is like this:

Utahime and Gramps will enhance her CT and she will attack Sukuna's finger right at the moment when Sukuna attacks Yuji to kill him, mirroring the Mahito scene.

Which are the instances where her death wasn't made explicit?

We never saw her corpse

She wasn't at the airport

No one talked to Gojo about her death, they only talked about Nanami

Only Megumi and Yuji talk about her death. The second and last time about Hana potentially replacing her

I think this is about it about Nobara's Return. If you have questions, I will answer.

...

I lied.

There is a way to heal Nobara.

And the person who's going to do that is Megumi.

Megumi will have to infuse one of his shikigami with Mahoraga's Adaptation ability

The Adaptation doesn't happen with CTs, it happens with phenomena

A transfigured body and soul is a phenomenon

After the adaptation, Megumi can order his shikigami to reshape or reverse the transfiguration

This Adaptation to Idle Transfiguration also has a second use: stopping the merger (or reversing it).

Kenjaku used Mahito's IT to change Tengen's barriers. If I remember correctly, he will use IT again in the future or the effects of IT will be relevant later on. And that's when Megumi will have his biggest role.

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Lily basically is the defintion off screaming child when a show she's watching suddenly dares to actually develop the plot and the characters within it, with Owl House being among the shows she's like this with.

Lorch's Terrible Top 5 Owl House Episodes (Part 3): Worst

1. Hollow Mind

2. Labyrinth Runners

3. Any Sport In A Storm

4. Edge Of The World

5. Reaching Out

[le-panda-chocovore]

I think the reason for all that discourse in the JJK fandom is that we had some expectations about what this story would be about, and we were wrong. I'd say it was our fault for having them, because Gege had his own story in mind and it isn't our role to tell him what to write/draw. But I'd also say that we were misled into having those expectations and then being deceived, because shock value is fun.

(I'm not in the AOT fandom so maybe I'm 100% wrong, in which case don't pay attention to me. I'm just rambling I'm not trying to make a point)

See there's not such a thing in Attack On Titans. I mean I know people are arguing whether a decision was good or bad or a character development was positive or negative, but no one is rioting the way JJK readers are even when someone dies, kills, or does worse (they do start a genocide lol). Because in AOT you know since the beginning what this story is about : surviving, war, and liberty. With time you learn that it's also about racism, destiny and injustice. But the story starts with death and blood and it never calms down, characters keep dying or getting hurt and no one's safe all along the story. So you just know it'd end the same way, you know what to expect, that power of friendship won't save anyone here.

But Jujutsu Kaisen is different, because it has all the codes of a basic Shonen. Everyone was comparing it to Naruto during the 1st season so you would believe it'd follow the same path. Of course there's fights and fails and suffering and death, because it's necessary for the growth of the protagonist. He'd learn he's not strong enough and he'd try harder and mature more and be better. Jujutsu Kaisen makes you think it's your One Piece-type manga where 1 person dies every 4 arcs and the main team survives everything, even when it looks impossible.

And then Shibuya happens and you're shocked because it's way to early to kill so many valuable characters in a row. Usually that kind of massacre happens during Big War arcs like in MHA. At first you think it's an interesting writing choice because it changes from other mangas, and you wonder how the main character will evolve from that. But then the training arc never happens, because shit keeps falling on them and there's a pile of deads and you start to wonder when it'd stop. Spoilers : it doesn't.

So at some point you realize it. This isn't a classical shonen. This isn't an happy-ending after a hard fight kind of story. There's no power of friendship to save them, there's no important moral path to keep following no matter what (like "I won't do to you what you did to me because it'd mean that I'm the same" no it doesn't work here), and there's not even a chance to run away from that cursed role no one wants to bear. There's no one protecting the kids anymore. The MC isn't strong enough and the mentors are dead and close friends are off-fight and the one person able to end this has to make the horrendous choice to give up his humanity.

In AOT, you were shocked, but it felt logical in the sense of where the story was leading you from the beginning. In JJK, you feel betrayed and manipulated because everything made you think about those other mangas where people ended up fine, but it was just a cover.

Honestly you COULD have guessed it'd end that way. Many people did. You just ignored it.

You thought Junpei's death was an exception, the Major Point for Yuuji's development, the Shock Value Kill to put some depth nuance in the story. But in reality it was a warning, a taste of the future. There WERE signs after all, and Gege never pretended to write another Naruto. You were so used to the classical shonen that you read the signs and fell for the trick.

JJK has never been a nice story from the beginning, Sukuna was at the center of every event since the beginning. You can dislike what is happening but you cannot say it's bad, as in a scenaristic choice. Gege is a writing genius and unfortunately he's also pure evil.

You shouldn't have trusted a one-eyed cat after all.

[comicaurora]

I watched Castlevania: Nocturne the otger day and liked it a lot less than you seemed to, so I want to hear a more detailed opinion if you have one. Am I in the wrong to think it was more shounen and less "deep" in some way?

I'd say it's definitely more shounen. Introducing the "Richter can't do magic because unresolved trauma" thing right from the jump meant a Believing In Yourself powerup was pretty much inevitable, but I liked the execution of that scene enough that I didn't mind much.

It doesn't quite have the backbone of the original Castlevania, which was grounded so strongly in Dracula's apocalyptic grief - a motivation the audience is directed to find deeply understandable from minute one - that it gave the characters a solid thematic core to play off of. This let the writing stay pretty tight by letting Trevor serve as a foiling mirror for Dracula in their mutual disgust with the failures of human kindness, Sypha for Lisa in their altruistic use of their knowledge and their vilification for "witchcraft", and Alucard in the middle torn between worlds.

Nocturne is more loose and character-driven, but it still has a core theme - the argument over "the natural order" and how that plays into a fear of change from those currently on top. However, Richter doesn't really have a horse in that race, since his motivation starts and ends at Kill Vampires while everyone around him is more complex, trying to overthrow the aristocracy and free the enslaved and such. I think this makes Richter feel a little less important than Trevor was, narratively, because he sort of stands apart from the core philosophical debate at play. It took me a few episodes to get what his deal was and start caring about his self-actualization, and I think he's definitely got further to go. Possibly Alucard's presence in season 2 will give him more to play off of.

I think Nocturne has several independently interesting villains instead of one really good villain, which is a complaint I also saw about Castlevania season 4 - I liked Death just fine, but he really didn't work for everyone, and the secondary villains like Saint Germaine were much more interesting and complex. Nocturne does, however, pull off something Castlevania didn't as much, which is most of the characters acting on their own internal consistent motivation without cleanly falling into the "good guy" or "bad guy" box, causing them to slide into and out of conflicts and alliances depending on the circumstances.

I feel like Bathory is kind of a weak core villain with almost no human-level motivations or ideas beyond General Villainy, and the extent of her development being a darkest hour shonen villain powerup/frieza transformation doesn't help much, which is why I'm kind of holding out hope that they just bite the bullet and bring back Dracula. He's the nemesis from the Castlevania games, and while they gave him and Lisa a happy ending in Castlevania season 4, I don't think they need to keep him on the bench forever. It's been 300 years, Lisa is almost certainly long dead again and Dracula doesn't need to be full Mad With Vengeance Burn Down The World to still be a credible problem in need of a little Belmonting.

I had fun with season 1 of Nocturne with the understanding that the first four-episode "season" of Castlevania wasn't representative of the final shape of the story either. Sypha's character, for instance, was very flat before she and the gang went on their season 2 bonding adventure, not much more than some banter and infodumps. I think Nocturne did solid setup of the cast and the theme they'll be unpacking, and it has lots of room to explore these characters in interesting ways once they energy-ball-tennis Bathory out of the way first.

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed reactions, the bench, and the gems

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it! part 1 can be found here.

And we're back for part 2! Here's all the new stuff I finished this season, and one more I'll get back to later. As with before, these are sorted alphabetically within each category and are not ranked as of yet.

Also as before, the OP for each series is linked in the title. Check them all out if the header images aren't giving you the right feel for each show, but also check them out because most of them were actually pretty damn good this season.

[Solo Leveling OP voice] LET'S GET IT!

Mixed Bags:

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!

Your standard, quasi-harem “easily flustered Regular Guy wins over hot girls just by being really nice” shonen romcom. I really don’t have much to say about this one other than if you’ve seen My Dress-Up Darling, you’ve basically seen this already. The only thing that really sets it apart is the setting.

Tsubasa (voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki, in a FAR cry from his turn as Mahito in Jujutsu Kaisen) is a straight-laced Tokyoite whose family situation lands him in a small city in the frozen boonies of Hokkaido. While looking for the bus to his new house, he runs into a gyaru in the snowy wild, the underdressed, hilariously-proportioned Minami, and they hit it off. It turns out they go to the same school, there are other cute girls there who take a shine to him as well, it’s nothing new.

I ultimately don’t have much to say about Hokkaido Gals, but I do have a soft spot for series like this, and after reading ahead in the manga I felt obligated to see it through. This is all junk food, but it’s all stuff you’ve seen done better in other series. I also have a soft spot for gyaru in anime and manga, and while I do like Minami just fine, she isn’t Marin Kitagawa or Rumiko Manbagi. I don’t really have it in me to recommend this show to many, though, at least not until another season rolls around, if that ever happens. The manga genuinely does get a lot better as it goes on, but the really worthwhile stuff may not happen until a third season, and I just don’t see that happening. 

The manga has issues that the anime isn’t willing or able to solve, chief of which being the visuals. The art style of the manga is wildly inconsistent, and getting a mediocre animation team on this didn’t help matters at all. While the colors often pop nicely against the pretty, snowy backdrops, nobody looks all that great overall. The characters are recognizable, but they just plain don’t look great a lot of the time, nor do they look consistent from one cut to the next; I said that Minami’s proportions are hilarious, but just as hilarious is how wildly they vacillate from one scene to the next for the sake of trying to titillate the viewer.

My biggest takeaway from both the manga and anime was everything I learned about Hokkaido in the process, and if the series is taking subsidies from the island’s tourism bureau, then it’s a job well done. I want some goddamn jingisukan now. The OP is a great time, though. I’m shocked it took over a decade for us to get a proper “Uptown Funk” knockoff in an anime.

Metallic Rouge

I’ll be upfront in saying that this was my biggest disappointment of the season by far. This show had so much going for it, and what we got was… ugh.

There was an unbelievable amount of promise from the outset: This was Studio Bones’ commemorative 25th anniversary production, and coming from the studio that gave us all-timer adaptations like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Mob Psycho 100, not to mention later works from Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichiro Watanabe (including the Cowboy Bebop movie), you can’t fault anyone for having high expectations. It looked to be a fitting production as well: Watanabe’s influence shines through immediately in the gorgeous, lived-in cyberpunk off-world locales and racially diverse cast. Action takes the form of dope robo-tokusatsu transformation fisticuffs, and it’s entirely in 2D animation to boot. The first couple of episodes were killer, too; everything looked and sounded amazing, and there were just enough plot threads teased out that I just had to see how they’d unravel.

It brings me no joy, then, to say that Metallic Rouge collapses into a jumbled mess. I don’t even want to bother talking about what happens in the show because I don’t fucking care anymore. There are few media experiences more sobering than to have it dawn on you over a span of several weeks that “oh… this isn’t actually all that good, is it?” Episode after episode piles on with sloppy lore, weak worldbuilding, warring factions whose names you immediately forget, pointless double-crosses, and the most predictable twist you’ve ever seen. For a while I was willing to accept the fact that I didn’t know what was going on half the time and expected things to become clearer, but now I’m not entirely sure the writers knew either. The stakes apparently kept rising and everything just kept getting more claustrophobic. I’m glad it’s over, if only because if I had to hear “Clair de Lune” one more fucking time, I was going to go ballistic. 

There are several attempts at emotional beats, as the story is rife with tragedy and sacrifice, and every single one lands with a wet thud. Nobody gets enough time, motivation, or characterization for any of these things to feel like they actually matter, and that’s especially a shame because the finale might have been able to stick the landing if the previous episodes were less dense and better paced. Emphasis on “almost,” though, because just before the season ends, we get the absolute most pointless fakeout I’ve seen since The Rise of Skywalker, which is the lowest point of comparison you can make for any work of sci-fi.

This is especially frustrating because on paper, there is so much to like here. Rouge and Naomi are likable-enough deuteragonists with a fun dynamic, and they’d make easy yuri bait in a better show. The characters are all pretty and uniquely designed across the board, and the overall aesthetic, almost a pastiche of late-90’s anime futurism, is undeniable. The toku suit designs are neat and several of the action scenes are gorgeous. The score and soundtrack are outstanding (except for the aforementioned Debussy indulgence). I have few complaints about how the show looks and sounds; the style is great! All of my issues lie with the substance.

Metallic Rouge may have had all the ingredients, but it just needed more time to cook; whether that would have been by doubling the episode count or by more carefully planning the pacing and trimming some of the fat from the lore, I’m still not sure. Probably both. It probably needed better writers, too. Maybe it just isn’t as smart as it acts and there was no way to satisfyingly resolve the clumsy civil rights allegories that bring it uncomfortably close to the likes of Detroit: Become Human. So all of the above, I guess. I tend to adore stories that involve artificially-intelligent beings developing their own wills and emotions and learning to cut their own strings (the likes of Blade Runner, Nier Automata, even a couple of character arcs in the Persona series), but this ain’t it. I’m not even mad anymore. I’m just disappointed.

If there are two positives that will stick with me, though, they would be the absolute banger of an OP and, of course, Naomi Orthmann herself (pictured above, left). Outstanding character design. I’m mildly obsessed. She deserved a better show.

The Unwanted Undead Adventurer

This one isn’t even worth talking about, so here’s a brief synopsis, then I’ll add some commentary, and then we’ll all move on with our lives. 

Rentt, a beloved but mediocre adventurer in a fantasy town, gets lost in the mysterious labyrinth that all adventurers explore for personal gain, gets waxed by a dragon, and awakens as a shitty-looking CGI skeleton. He notices, though, that he’s able to level up better as a skeleton than he did as a human, and with the more monsters he defeats, the more he evolves into something closer to human. The rest isn’t really worth discussing.

If I’m being honest, I should’ve dropped this show much sooner. It looks kinda lousy most of the time, the plot (inasmuch as there even is one) is boring, character designs are forgettable (except for Rentt’s closest ally, Lorraine, holy hell) and it seems wholly uninterested in actually building its own setting. If it returns for a second season, I won’t be there, nor will I feel like I’m missing anything. Each episode felt like a chore to watch. I probably only saw it through because 1) I liked looking at Lorraine, I know what I’m about, and 2) I didn’t want to lump it in with the shows I did drop. The Unwanted Undead Adventurer isn’t as patently upsetting or frustrating as those three, but it just plain isn’t a very good show.

The Witch and the Beast

This show could have been so much more. I was drawn in by the gorgeous character designs and intriguing blend of Victorian gothic aesthetics and architecture with modern infrastructure, and very quickly disappointed by just about everything else. The first episode is an exceptional proof of concept, and almost everything that follows is an upsetting showcase of what could have been.

The story centers around Ashaf, a languid, chain-smoking agent of the governing church with a big-ass coffin strapped to his back, and his partner Guideau, a snarling hyena in a young woman’s body, as they investigate abuses of magic across the continent in search of nefarious witches. Guideau in particular has a bone to pick with witches, as the body they presently inhabit is the result of a witch’s curse, and they remain in furious pursuit of the one who cursed them. The curse can be temporarily undone by a kiss with a witch, allowing Guideau’s true body, a hulking brute confined to the coffin, to escape and wreak havoc. Meaning that on a few occasions we get a girl-on-girl kiss followed by a big dude wrecking shit. There’s also other investigations of serial killings, necromancy, and a cursed sword, and here’s hoping you like those, because the coffin breaks are few and far between.

This wasn’t great! By the third episode I had the sneaking suspicion that the animation talent on hand just wasn’t enough to support the aesthetic. While the character designs are exceptional, almost everyone looks awful in any shot that isn’t completely focused on them. This is especially true of Guideau, who looks so inconsistently off-model from one shot to the next that I’m still not entirely sure what they’re supposed to look like, and that’s kind of unforgivable when we’re talking about a main character. Everything looks too dim and too shiny at the same time, and action scenes look like shit more often than they look interesting. I can see so many flickers of something excellent (or at least really good-looking) in Witch and the Beast, and everything else that keeps those flickers from actually igniting makes it so much more frustrating to watch. Maybe just read the manga instead; the panels I've seen from it were uniformly gorgeous.

Actually, yeah, you should probably just read the manga, because for a season of anime, the pacing is atrocious too. It’s clearly trying to angle for a monster-of-the-week format, but each of these mini-arcs is a little too dense for a single episode, so multiple episodes are dedicated to these one-off curiosities, most of which do nothing to advance the plot or show off what the show does best. And if one of them isn’t particularly interesting, you’re saddled with it for the next two weeks like you've been stuck munching on a mealy apple. And I know you can only adapt so much in a 12-episode season, but the decision to end the season on a flashback arc and a lore dump was baffling. That’s not world-building, that’s lazy, and it made the show’s existing pacing issues feel that much more inane.

I feel like I was sold a false bill of goods. I can only imagine how the mangaka feels about this. Dull and uninspiring all around. What a waste.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

Isekai, unassuming high school boy gains a unique power, impending war with the Demon Lord, yadda yadda yadda. The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic isn’t anything new or special by any means, nor is it particularly well-animated or -paced, but at its best it’s silly and charming enough that it made a nice, brainless palate cleanser on Fridays.

Usato, your standard quiet high schooler, ends up walking home on a rainy evening with the popular, attractive student council president and VP, when an isekai portal happens. It turns out that it was just the seito-kai that was invited along for the ride (and President Suzune, as it turns out, is fucking psyched to get to be in an isekai), and Usato got caught along with them. When tested for magical aptitude, Suzune and VP Kazuki hit the jackpot with electric and light affinities, respectively, but things go awry when Usato’s reading turns up with healing magic. Terror strikes the palace as the intimidating dommy-mommy Captain Rose barges in to spirit Usato away from his new friends and into her squadron of goons to train him as a combat medic.

As character comedy goes, this one is actually pretty solid at times. Shogo Sakata is plenty of fun as the put-upon, lippy Usato (a much louder role than Chainsaw Man’s Aki Hayakawa), and Atsuko Tanaka (Major Kusanagi herself!) is a blast as the terrifying Rose, an uncompromising slave driver of a drill sergeant with a secret soft side. The dynamic between them is great, too; Usato is over Rose’s shit from the beginning and isn’t afraid to talk back to her, but before you know it, this transforms into friendly banter as Rose clearly takes a shine to Usato and knows he can handle any punishment she doles out. Suzune’s also a bunch of fun now that she’s broken away from having to be the competent, popular girl at school and gets to fully lean into being a complete dork.

Wrong Way also works decently as an isekai, because it makes an effort to stay rooted in high fantasy rather than fall back on JRPG mechanics, meaning there are no stat screens! It also avoids the trappings of wish-fulfillment isekai series by having Usato start out as a regular-ass guy; he’s not a Kirito type, just someone Rose sees as a rough gem in need of cutting. There are no cheat skills or OP weapons or anything, just a kid training every day to get stronger so he can protect the people close to him, and that’s the kind of anime protagonist you should want to be.

For better and for worse, I get serious mid-00s vibes from this one; watch the OP if you don’t believe me. Some of the colors pop uncannily in that early-digipaint-era way, and the animation is pretty middling; the most fluid animation we see is whenever Suzune is acting like a creep. Much like those mid-00s anime, though, Wrong Way may have benefited from being weekly (or twice as long) rather than seasonal. There’s a ton of planting with very little payoff, and it doesn’t feel like the actual scope of the story has even been addressed yet. We don’t even learn why the series has the name it does until someone literally says it aloud in the 11th episode. I may have to reevaluate this season after a possible second, if we ever get one, because this doesn’t stand too well on its own.

Of the anime in this “mixed bags” segment, I’d say I enjoyed Wrong Way the most, but it still had enough problems for me to keep it here. It’s not a particularly bad anime, but it’s not especially good either. I guess we can slot it into what Hazel refers to as “good mid.”

On Hold: 

Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (three episodes watched)

Man, what a title. That was the main draw for this BL series, which on paper is basically a gay version of the Mel Gibson vehicle What Women Want. 

Adachi (a surname that will always make me laugh thanks to Persona 4), a gloomy salaryman, has hit the big 3-0 without getting any, and now he can somehow read anyone’s thoughts just by making physical contact with them. Just as he laments that this is his life now, he accidentally bumps into his handsome, popular coworker, Kurosawa, whom he learns has been harboring a massive crush on Adachi this whole time. Well dang, what now? Kurosawa’s a really nice, thoughtful dude, but Adachi’s never even thought about being with a man before! And isn’t there something wrong with already knowing this secret? How can he even go into the office and look Kurosawa in those big, handsome eyes… every single day…

What I’ve seen so far has been pretty solid, if not particularly well animated. The visuals are really my only gripe here; I just put it off for way too long and didn’t have it in me to finish it on time to actually get this thing written and published. Yaoi isn’t my forte, which feels like a shortcoming on my end as a fledgling bisexual, and I’ve already remarked on the solid LGBT representation this past season, so I do plan on hopping back on this one.

I gotta say, the co-leading voice actors put in serious work this season. Adachi is voiced by Chiaki Kobayashi, who continued his role as Stark in Frieren, returned to Mashle as Mash Burnedead, and contributed to Metallic Rouge’s cluttered cast as Noid. Kurosawa’s seiyuu, Ryota Suzuki (of whom I’ll always be a fan for his masterful turn as Yu Ishigami in Kaguya-sama), also held down leading roles in Bang Brave Bang Bravern and The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. They’ve been great in the few episodes of Cherry Magic! that I’ve seen so far, and they’ll be a huge part of what brings me back.

The Gems:

Bang Brave Bang Bravern

I feel like the mark of a perfectly audacious piece of media is in the moments where I find myself incredulously shouting “WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING” at the screen, and Bravern made me do that at least once per episode. I have so many things to say about what makes this show great but all of it can be summed up as “it fucks so goddamn hard.”

A joint military exercise in Hawaii between Japanese and American mech pilots goes south as a sudden invasion by metalloid aliens portends certain doom for humanity. Just in the nick of time, though, a bombastic, autonomous mech named Bravern arrives from space and insists that ace pilot Isami Ao take his reins. Isami reluctantly agrees, and to his consternation, Bravern goes full tokusatsu on everyone’s asses, complete with fully-diegetic theme music, and keeps the threat at bay. With Bravern continuing to pester him to act as a pilot, Isami is forced to take up the mantle of a reluctant hero as everyone rallies around Bravern to save Earth. Tagging along is blond-haired, blue-eyed American pilot Lewis Smith, who gets to live out all of his Top Gun fantasies, right down to the latent homosexuality.

That last point isn’t a projection or anything: This show is legitimately gay as hell, and it rules. Bravern’s feelings towards Isami feel far more romantic than what you’d expect from a literal robot, and his description of how it felt to have Isami pilot him for the first time, as relayed to a grim-faced military council, is riddled with hilarious innuendo. Isami struggles not only with shouldering the burden of needing to be a hero to all of humanity, but also being beset on both sides by a loud, insistent mecha and a dewy-eyed gaijin, both of whom very well seem to want to get in his pants. Intricate rituals punctuate Isami and Lewis’ angsty relationship as these broad-shouldered, muscular men grow ever closer. It’s also worth reiterating that Isami is voiced by Ryota Suzuki, who also voiced Kurosawa in Cherry Magic!, and that may not have even been his gayest role this season. I’m not super well-versed in mecha as a genre, but I do know that there’s a lot of Warrior’s Bond-type stuff in these series, and Bravern lays it on thick. And hard.

This show looks killer, by the way. CGI implementation in 2D anime is still a touchy subject, but Bravern features some of the best I’ve ever seen. Simple cel-shading goes a long way to the point where, outside of some uncanny motion, Bravern himself feels perfectly blended into the hand-drawn animation. Mecha designs range from realistic military-style tech to otherworldly sentient robots, and battle sequences run the same gamut as the stakes rise. As goofy as all of the above may sound, it’s committed to being a grandiose, big-time mecha showcase.

This is as good as camp gets in anime; Bravern does for the mecha genre what Akiba Maid War did for yakuza film pastiche (I have also heard positive comparisons to Samurai Flamenco, which I’ll have to get on ASAP). It’s an excellent mecha show in its own right, and wildly hilarious to boot. Bravern himself is very genre-savvy and seemingly a bit of an otaku himself; he loves acting like a mecha hero, to everyone else’s chagrin. Several of the villains (also mechanical beings, voiced by an all-star seiyuu roster that includes Kenjiro Tsuda, the aforementioned Atsuko Tanaka, and Rie Kugimiya) are total dorks themselves. A CIA interrogator tries to waterboard a mecha at one point. Bravern is a deeply silly show, but its heart is planted as firmly on its sleeve as its tongue is in its cheek: For as wacky as it can get, the story still unfolds with a straight face and excellent emotional beats. 

This show also has the most unskippable ED of any anime since Chainsaw Man dropped a new one every week. I will not say what happens. You cannot predict what it is. Just watch it. One of the top YouTube comments on that video says “When I saw this ending after episode 2, I thought I was going crazy.” That’s a ringing endorsement.

Chained Soldier

On the heels of 100 Girlfriends completely rewiring my brain, I was raring for some more good old-fashioned anime trash. I was told that there would be plenty this season, but you can consult the “dropped” section to see how well that worked out for me. Chained Soldier came with some significant hype, and soon enough into the first episode I realized that I’d actually skimmed through this manga before (don’t ask why), so I was on board immediately. Now here’s some nice trashy fun.

The world is in peril thanks to creatures called Shuuki that can advance on our world via portals from another dimension. Women primarily lead the charge against these monsters, as this dimension produces a special fruit that can lend them (and not men) otherworldly powers to help them in the fight. Yuuki, a perfectly normal young man, ends up in grave danger as he stumbles into a portal, where he is saved by the beautiful Kyouka, a commander who is able to subjugate Shuuki at will and use them to fight others. In a bind, she asks Yuuki if she can subjugate him, which he agrees to by licking her finger and transforming into a monster himself, at her beck and call. Because of his utility in battle, Yuuki is enlisted into her squad of baddies (and also an 11-year-old), living in their home as a caretaker and answering directly to Kyouka as her “slave.”

I know. Hear me out.

I put “slave” in scare quotes because Chained Soldier fortunately isn’t going full Shield Hero on us; this arrangement has a give-and-take baked in. See, every time Yuuki completes his service, Kyouka (or whomever else takes advantage of this anomaly) is compelled to carry out whatever suitable “reward” springs from his unconscious, and this is where the ecchi kicks in. Sometimes it’s a kiss, and sometimes it’s something a little more; the reward corresponds to the length and intensity of Yuuki’s contributions to battle, so the heat can turn up in the form of, say, clothed face-sitting, a good scrubbing in the bath, or some nice, casual CBT. All of this is to say that “slave” is a bit of a buzzword here: It’s more of a dom/sub situationship with a lot of extra steps.

Yes, just about everything that isn’t an action setup is full-on harem trash, and Chained Soldier lays it on thick, right down to full-on nudity. Nothing about this show resembles high art, but I can’t help but admire such a high level of commitment to its aesthetic, including the sleaze. It fully commits to the bit and doesn’t even bother lampshading its own trashiness. Chained Soldier knows what it’s about, and I respect that. It also has the good sense not to sexualize the youngest girl, which is a point in its favor that I can’t award a couple other shows previously discussed.

And while this show is plenty fun, the action sequences often excellent, and the character designs usually delightful, there’s not actually a whole lot going on here. As I said with Mashle, I know that battle manga like this can take a minute to really get cooking, and as I said with Witch and the Beast, 12 episodes may not always be a sufficient runtime to adapt enough to break ground, but the debut season feels more like a proof of concept than anything else. That being said, Chained Soldier’s manga has a very effusive audience, and its praises don’t seem to entirely be about the boobs and butts, so I’ll wait patiently for the second season. I think it’s earned that much.

Delicious in Dungeon

This is the one I’m having the hardest time writing about because it so confidently and so completely speaks for itself that anything I could add would feel like scattering sawdust at the beach. Dungeon Meshi (I refuse to call it by its official English title) is a widely beloved manga among those who’ve read it, and for Studio Trigger to do an honest-to-goodness manga adaptation for the first time might as well be front page news among anime fans. 

The story follows Laios, the deeply weird human hero, as he delves back into a bizarre and mysterious dungeon to rescue his sister Falin from the belly of a dragon, along with his misfit party: The neurotic half-elven mage Marcille, the temperamental halfling rogue Chilchuck, and the dwarven warrior-slash-chef Senshi. The party is frequently low on supplies, so to survive the trip they’ll need to subsist on the most abundant resource in the dungeon: Monsters. Senshi’s aptitude in the kitchen helps ensure that everything is edible and sufficiently tasty, regardless of how nasty the monster it came from may have been. With monster obstructions out of the way and their bellies filled, our party delves deeper into the dungeon as the mysteries deepen in kind.

I love the character dynamics in this so goddamn much. Marcille and Chilchuck are frequently put off by the dubious monster food presented to them, but their consternation is worsened by the fact that Laios’ fascination with the monsters it came from annoys the shit out of them. I referred to him as “deeply weird,” but that doesn’t begin to describe his absolute galaxy brain, and I mean it as a term of endearment. Laios is deeply knowledgeable and curious about the fauna in the dungeon, and not just how they taste: He is vocally curious about how certain monster attacks may feel, sings along with siren songs, and even keeps a hardcover bestiary inside his breastplate. He’s one of those people you turn to if you have a question on a hyperspecific subject, but you have to be careful how you ask it or else you’re trapped for the next two hours. And I love him for it.

Even putting the comedy aside, there is a fascinating human element at play in Dungeon Meshi, and I can tell that that surface has barely even been scratched yet. Marcille is just as dogged in her pursuit of saving Falin as Laios is, maybe even moreso (remember what I keep saying about LGBT representation this season?). Chilchuck continues to convince himself that he’s only in the job for his own personal gain, but you can see that mask slipping. And I still wanna know what Senshi’s deal is. Even with the five major players I listed, there’s an increasingly deep roster surrounding them—showcasing a broad spectrum of races and ethnicities, both real and fantastical—each with their own histories and motivations, and I cannot wait to see how they play out and interact with one another. There seem to be much deeper themes at play here as well as we learn more about perceptions and grudges between differing races, oppositional magics, clashing ideologies, and the monetary incentives that drive both the dungeon’s exploration and its very existence. I’m here for it.

I’ve been holding off on reading the manga until the season is up in June (though I could crack any day), but I know a loving adaptation when I see one. Not that Trigger ever slacks off in the animation department, but they absolutely brought their A-game here. Everyone looks bouncy and cartoony in the way only Trigger can pull off while still looking as close as possible to Ryoko Kui’s source material (as far as I can tell). As with Frieren, the action sequences aren’t frequent, nor are they entirely what the show is about, but they look incredible every single time. And the food, of course, looks incredible, no matter how weird. This is practically a cooking anime and a fantasy dungeon anime at the same time, and both aspects are visually on point at all times.

I’m obviously speaking from my own bubble as one of the six people who still use Tumblr in 2024, but I rarely see new anime make a splash like this on social media every single week, and the ones that I do are usually the monster shonen hits like Chainsaw Man or Jujutsu Kaisen. Dungeon Meshi deserves the exposure and success it’s attained, and I’m excited to see it continue. I’d easily slot this right up there with Bravern as one of the best new anime of the season.

A Sign of Affection

I’ve seen a hell of a lot of shonen slice-of-life romances in the past year and change, so a nice fluffy shoujo like this was an excellent palate cleanser. There were a hell of a lot of Big Action Setpieces and panicky teens and grim dungeon crawlers this season, and at the end of the week I wanted to unwind with a bunch of pretty twenty-somethings falling in love with each other.

The show centers on Yuki, a young woman living with congenital hearing loss, making do at a public college after growing up at a school for the deaf. Though she’s able to get by with LINE messages and lip reading, she’s unprepared when a foreigner asks for help, but she’s saved by a handsome and mysterious young man named Itsuomi. He’s able to help out, and takes an interest in her when he realizes his fellow undergrad is deaf, and Yuki takes an interest in kind because he’s really goddamn hot. It turns out that he’s a polyglot and an avid world-traveler, but sign language is not in his purview. This mutual interest sparks the concern of her childhood friend, Oushi, one of the few people in her life who already use sign language, who wants to be sure that nothing untoward is happening. And it isn’t, because this is just a really lovely, low-stakes romance story.

This is pure, unfiltered shoujo at its best. Yuki’s internal monologue is peppered with flowery prose, and everything and everyone looks soft and beautiful. Fashionable, doe-eyed women and pillowy-lipped ikemen abound (seriously, holy shit, the lips on these boys) as the scope widens and the main love interests’ friends explore their own possible love stories. Itsuomi is very much of the “mysterious boy” archetype you’ll find in romance stories in this demographic, but he’s not hiding any sort of dark past like you’d typically expect; he’s just an interesting guy who keeps his personal life close to the vest. He’s a self-appointed world citizen who loves learning about how people of all cultures live their lives, and in Yuki he sees someone within his home turf who happens to live in her own world entirely. And it’s easy to see his forward behavior with Yuki as infantilizing at first (Oushi sure does, and I’ll get back to him in a second), but as they grow closer Itsuomi quickly becomes much more considerate of her boundaries and learns to accommodate her as he studies sign language and gestures that help ensure her comfort. This is a story about Yuki’s horizons broadening just as much as it is about Itsuomi wanting to be let into Yuki’s narrow world, and that sort of synergy makes for some exceptional romance.

A Sign of Affection deserves some credit for refusing to shy away from Yuki’s disability and making a point of depicting her world as one that does little to accommodate her. Very few people in her daily life ever bothered to learn sign language, she relies on a friend to take notes during lectures, and work is hard to come by. It’s an honest depiction that makes an effort not to be exploitative, which is a breath of fresh air. Not only that, but there’s some interesting meta-commentary in there: The only major conflict in the story stems from Oushi’s jealousy, and his reservations about Itsuomi possibly “taking advantage of” Yuki almost feel like he believes that he’s the only one who knows what’s best for her just because he’s done the bare minimum to accommodate her. He thinks he’s coming from a good place, but he winds up accidentally infantilizing her in exactly the way he thinks Itsuomi might. That’s a particularly interesting bit of irony!

I’ve seen enough shonen-oriented romcoms where an unassuming Regular Guy gets flustered as a way-too-casual girl pushes his buttons (hell, I’ve already reviewed two of those this season), so it’s nice to see the formula flipped for a shoujo as Yuki and her best friend Rin blush and squee over Itsuomi and his coworker Kyouya, respectively. A Sign of Affection isn’t afraid to get a little silly with it, either; plenty of these moments are punctuated by characters’ faces going low-detail or full chibi, and they are cute as shit every single time.

This one was just cozy as hell. If you’re into this sort of thing, swaddle yourself in it and bask.

Solo Leveling

I let this one collect dust after the third episode and didn’t pick it back up until the season was almost up, and honestly, I was kinda dreading it: The trailers didn’t look too promising, the show was slow to start, and it looked like yet another derivative JRPG-style dungeon crawler that managed to get popular. Turns out, nah, this show actually kinda fucks and the web novel series and webtoon it’s based on are popular for a reason. The story is nothing special, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a perfectly serviceable turn-your-brain-off action spectacle with a bit more lying beneath the surface.

In a modern-day South Korea where portals to mysterious dungeons open up and threaten the populace, those who can brave the dungeons, known as hunters, are an invaluable human resource. Once someone is assigned a grade as a hunter, they have that grade for life, barring some rare occurrences. Sung Jinwoo is at the lowest rung on that ladder as an E-rank, incapable of improvement, assigned the epithet “the weakest hunter of all mankind.” He mostly shows up to portal raids as a warm body to fill a quota, and one such job goes haywire as most of the raid party, Jinwoo included, is brutally slaughtered in an arcane secondary dungeon within a portal. He somehow wakes up in a hospital, unharmed, and able to access a digital menu before his eyes that exhorts him to do the One Punch Man workout every day, lest he incur punishment. He gets hilariously chadly in the span of a few days in the hospital, including an inexplicable haircut, and finds access to dungeons only he can enter and levels up within this new system.

This one gets off to a slow start and may have benefited from a longer premiere like Oshi no Ko or Frieren, but once the table is fully set, Solo Leveling really starts to cook. Jinwoo’s titular leveling process is a blast from one fight to the next, and as he moves to work in the dungeons that other hunters can access, it turns out he’s been training with the weights on. He’s suddenly fighting way above his pay grade, and after staving off attacks from hunters taking advantage of portals for nefarious ends, he is recruited by an ambitious corporate scion to make some real coin and establish an independent association of hunters.

While it can feel like there’s a whole bunch of table-setting between portal sequences, it’s some smart worldbuilding on Solo Leveling’s end to establish how portal hunting became a central pillar of this society, and doubly so how political and capitalist interests can leave a wide berth for corruption and bad actors. If there’s money to be made in hunting, of course people will find ways to make even more at the expense of others, both at the corporate and individual levels. There’s a lot of talk in there about “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” and that… makes me nervous.

Those are terms that can be used to justify immoral actions in the name of money, sure, but Jinwoo also uses them to justify his own process. To what end is he constantly improving himself? Sure, he's doing what he can to provide for his younger sister and their ailing mother, but I see less and less humanity in him as this goes on. There are constant hints at something far more sinister at play than just a dude getting stronger for himself, not the least of which being “the system,” the UI that implores him to keep taking on these “quests.” Something, or someone, seems to be guiding him. Whenever another hunter turns on Jinwoo, of course his self-defense instincts kick in, but system pop-ups instruct him to defeat X number of hostiles like it’s a normal video game scenario. There’s something eerily depersonalized about these encounters, despite them being full-on mortal combat, that gives me serious Ender’s Game vibes. Consider me intrigued.

I’d heard that the Solo Leveling manhwa’s main draw was its visuals, and though I had my doubts early on, I'm sold now. This is a pretty solid presentation! Hiroyuki Sawano turned in yet another banger soundtrack to punctuate all the action setpieces, helping to stitch together a fairly complete tapestry. Said setpieces are exhilarating and almost impressively bloody, and while the animation is nothing impressive in the day-to-day, it goes absolutely batshit when the gloves come off. Movement is inhumanly fluid and the visuals can go into the same loose, psychedelic territories we’ve seen in the likes of Mob Psycho and the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen. If this is the new meta for shonen action, I’m not complaining.

By all rights, this is a pretty decent show, but if I’m being honest, this one just hasn’t stuck with me much. And that’s fine! Sometimes I just wanna see some nutty action stuff and move on with my day. Solo Leveling hits that spot perfectly, and I'll be right back there when it returns for its next season.

‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess

I was surprised to learn that the gag manga this is based on, with such a seemingly simple premise, has been running for well over 200 chapters and counting. As the anime progressed, I was far more pleasantly surprised to learn that it actually works.

In a standard anime fantasy world where the forces of good are fighting the demonic Hellhorde, an unnamed warrior princess and her talking enchanted sword are taken prisoner and subjected to torture as they’re squeezed for intel. Said “torture,” as the title’s scare quotes would suggest, is mildly unconventional, as the demon baddie inquisitor, aptly named Torture Tortura, attempts to ply the princess by presenting her with tantalizingly delicious-looking food that she can only partake in if she coughs up some info. Naturally, the princess caves every single time, but her intel is often inane and useless, so the “torture” continues. It’s not all food, though: The princess is soon held out of arm’s reach of adorable baby animals by a gyaru beastgirl, pampered into submission by a spa-loving giantess, and is faced with a tsundere vampire faildaughter, who… tries. 

And you’d think that would be it; the joke wears thin and you move onto something else. Before you realize it, though, something’s changed: The princess and her captors are quickly becoming friends. The premise almost feels perfunctory: These inquisitors are actual people just doing their jobs, and whatever happens after the princess’ myriad confessions is fair game. There’s no malice or animosity, even during the “torture” sessions themselves: Everyone will have a blast and grow closer as friends, and then the princess will voluntarily go back to her bedless cell. It’s like Sam and Ralph after they clock out, except they’re almost always off the clock. Everyone is genuinely looking out for each other in all directions, and the only thing that keeps the torture going is the need for a status quo to return to, even as it grows more elastic. If anything, Time for "Torture" is a good example of committing to the bit without having to necessarily rely on it.

The real irony in all of this is that it becomes increasingly apparent that the princess is having her needs met in captivity far better than she ever did back home. In her proud proclamations about how she’ll never cave to the temptations before her (shortly before she does just that), the princess often talks about her upbringing and her time as the head of an imperial legion, but these stories often betray her lack of friendship or any of the little things that make life worth living. Her life as royalty was one of isolation and deprivation, to the point where she finds more freedom and fulfillment as a prisoner. She truly lives in a society.

Hellholm, on the other hand, has a surprisingly healthy approach to things like work-life balance, food, and leisure, and its most valuable prisoner is no exception. The Hell-Lord himself is a surprising exemplar of this; for as much as he looks and talks like your standard terrifying JRPG demon king, he’s a surprisingly good dude! He looks after his family, employees, and even the captive princess as if they are all one and the same; he exhibits strong principles and an aversion to conflict, sees to his employees' needs and wants alike, and is a supportive, loving father to his unbelievably precious little daughter (who also serves as a “torturer,” to the princess’ delight). He’s also a big time anime dork, and even bonds with a knight attempting to rescue the princess over their shared otakudom before sending him off peacefully. As “villains” go, he’s top tier.

Time for "Torture" is nothing groundbreaking by any stretch, but it’s a cute, silly time and it plays with anime fantasy tropes in the same way a six-month-old German shepherd “plays” with a cheap stuffed toy. How long the premise holds up is entirely up to you, but I had a lot of fun with it. I have no idea how this ended up being one of the better shows this season, but I guess it just scratched the right itch for me.

[nadekofannumber1]

I wish I liked some popular shojo more bc it’s legit a genre that gets way too much hate and is often discriminated against in publishing spaces even having its real genre being changed when being localized bc shojo is locked to a specific context. But since I don’t feel like I can advocate for it as much as someone who prefers shojo magazines like “Halloween”, I feel like a lot of my defenses of shojo josei fall flat to a degree when not discussing the very literal advertising discrimination (Kodansha loves changing genres on their site, instead of using publication or demographical categories, they just make shojo a more “romance” genre.) (also less and less shojo manga are getting anime adaptations in favor of live action shows, josei is treated even worse) (ppl also give shojo too much flak bc of misogyny, even though I’ve seen ppl watch shows with similarly awful qualities of other publication genres).

What I can say is ppl decide if something is shojo based on vibes just because jump’s brand is so identifiable. Even though learning about other magazines could easily let you get the read on the vibes and tropes of the magazine’s publishing contents easily, like, a lot of popular gangan manga hold similar fandom vibe because gangan is more woman friendly creativity wise. Though I must say that ofc more standard shonen like soul eater came out of that as well, along with a slew of adaptions of other material into manga (it is the manga publishing brand of square after all). But even beyond things like FMA they have properties like: Pandora hearts, black butler, nozaki kun, the royal tutors, TBHK, kokkuri San, the apothecary diaries, inu x boku, ojisama to neko, durararara. Of course with things like gangan online and subsequent apps a lot more of the content published gets more varied like daily lives of highschool boys, watamote, jahi Chan, my bride is a mermaid, vermil in gold, how I attended an all guys mixer. As a publisher, gangan is actually very unisex, which makes it have the vibe of being innately less hostile to women. But because it doesn’t have the vibe of being shonen shonen (tm) ppl don’t realize how they think of

I feel like this concept got out of hand but it proves my point that ppl don’t know the difference between a publishing demographic, and a genre. I blame jump for this and thus I mentally hold a rivalry with it (of course I have more legit reasons to beef with jump like how they protect nobuhiro watasuki makes me suspicious, even if I like a good amount of jump manga my mind has beef, there’s more to this but I’ll stop now)

I can say all this but I can’t defend shojo in the way I want to, I can’t say people are too hard on something like peach girl when I haven’t read it. People always act surprised when shojo is good, and I find that, incredibly weird. Criticizing tropes is fine, saying a romance sucks and you don’t like it is fine, saying that a lot of common tropes in said publication genre put you off from reading is ok too, but by treating all shojo the same is weird.

Society is when people don’t know that junji Ito is primarily a shojo mangaka.