#actually my one real gripe - except for that first episode stuff which is kind of abrupt and never reaaally given the time it needs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vickyvicarious · 3 years

Text

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

#leverage #leverage redemption #leverage spoilers #leverage meta #my meta #this turned into a BIG ol ramble #i planned to write like a couple of sentences for each point but noooo

95 notes · View notes

beybladefanboy · 3 years

Text

Beyblade Seasons Ranked

Here is my personal ranking, from worst to best, of the seasons of Beyblade Metal Fight: Metal Fusion, Metal Masters, Metal Fury, and the awkward spin-off Shogun Steel. Yeah, let’s get into that:

4 Shogun Steel

Honestly even if I did like Shogun Steel for what it is, it would still be at the bottom just by default. It can barely be considered part of the Metal Saga. The main characters in the last three seasons are either absent or reduced to supporting roles in favour of new characters who aren’t nearly as interesting or likeable. It is by definition a spin off. It feels very disjointed from the rest of the series because of these factors along with the lighter tone, the changes to the Beyblade system, and even some continuity errors particularly with Fury. Bringing back Doji again was also the biggest leap in logic this whole series made and feels downright lazy. The whole story just feels like a watered down Fusion with many of the story beats being similar and some characters never growing past mere echoes of the old characters. Some of the bey battles are fun and Ren and Takanosuke are decent characters but there’s a reason this show doesn’t get much attention. It falls into the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy trap of being overly dependent on original series sucker punches for its appeal and not putting as much effort into the new stuff. So as a result, the new stuff, some of which has potential, isn’t as fleshed out as it should be. This show is honestly fine on its own but awful when compared to the Metal Saga and it is comparing itself to the Metal Saga. This show intentionally put itself in the Metal Saga’s shadow and seemed content with being just that: a shadow of greatness.

3 Metal Masters

Okay, this is where I’m gonna start pissing people off. Don’t get me wrong, Masters is great and I don’t think it’s clearly worse than the other two seasons or anything. I think the main three seasons are very close in quality and putting them in any kind of order was incredibly difficult. However, I do think Masters is slightly weaker than Fusion and Fury. First off, it introduces Masamune. I don’t like Masamune. I find his whole “I’m the number 1 blader” shtick incredibly obnoxious and he’s everything I don’t like in real Americans: self absorbed, disloyal, big mouthed, entitled, and just annoying in general. He did have good character development over the course of the season but I personally can’t stand him. The pacing of this season also isn’t the best. With the exception of the Dark Tsubasa arc (which I’ll get to!), the season is just a normal world tournament until they get to America, which I don’t find very interesting. Kenta is also criminally underused. In Fusion he was basically a second main character and there are some episodes specifically following him. Then in Masters, he’s pushed aside in favour of side characters. People say Fury underused characters, and I’ll get to that, but holy crap, Masters gave Kenta no room to grow. Aside from him though, the other characters are used really well. I particularly like how Kyoya and Ryuga are incorporated. This is actually the season where I grew attached to Ryuga during my viewing in December. I was starting to like him in Fusion but this season cemented my newfound attachment. This season also gave us the dark Tsubasa arc, which is one of my favourite plot points from the show overall. It’s a fascinating look into the mind of a character I already really liked and it allowed Tsubasa to develop a lot. I love the conclusion that you cannot drive out the darkness in yourself, you have to accept it as part of who you are in order to properly control it. It’s brilliant, and I can personally relate this message to my own life. The dark Tsubasa arc is probably the strongest part of the season overall as the rest of it until we get to the HD Academy conflict kind of drags for me. However, when we do finally get to the HD Academy conflict, it is very fun. The whole “spiral energy” thing was actually pretty creative and while brainwashing isn’t a new concept for this show, I think they went more in depth with it in this season and it was pretty interesting. So yeah, still a really good season.

2 Metal Fusion

If I was ranking based on nostalgia, this would be number one. In fact, it probably deserves to be number one. However, I do have a few problems with this season that hold it back and it’s not the pacing. Actually, out of all the seasons, Fusion probably has the best pacing. The main villains, Doji and Ryuga, are introduced early in the season and all the characters are developed throughout the season, building up to the final tournament: Battle Bladers, which is also set up fairly early. The story is predictable but very well-structured. My biggest problem with this season is the plot twist with Gingka’s dad. Not only is it painfully obvious, but the reveal of the twist drags the plot to a screeching halt for nearly an entire episode, hurting the pacing and making an entire episode an exposition dump. It also made Gingka’s dad a terrible character. You can argue that him abandoning his teenage son and making him believe he was dead was for the greater good, although I personally still think it’s messed up, but breaking Gingka’s point counter like that was a step way too far. That moment serves to further the story by forcing Gingka to work harder to get into Battle Bladers. But did it have to be his dad who broke the point counter? I argue it didn’t. Gingka’s dad was flat out abusive to his son on that occasion and was pretty cold to him in general as Phoenix and yet the plot and even some of the characters praise Ryo for doing this. Why?! The way the story is structured puts Ryo in the right for abusing his son which disgusts me. That is my biggest problem with this season and possibly the whole series to be honest. I hate it that much. However, apart from that and those random filler episodes with Sora that in my opinion were boring, this season was really solid. Like I said, the story is told well and the characters are all introduced and developed well. Battle Bladers is definitely the highlight of this season, having the most intense battles and hardest hitting moments. Those episodes are exhausting to watch, because of Reiji and Ryuga. Reiji was randomly introduced in Battle Bladers and decided to try and rival Ryuga in how much he could traumatize the characters (and younger me). I have no idea why they decided to do that, but it worked. Ryuga in this season is the best villain in the whole series. He has such a presence to him: his (dubbed) voice, his sadistic expressions, his abilities, the music that plays when he’s onescreen. He’s over the top but in my opinion, Ryuga is the perfect balance between entertaining and intimidating. He’s even slightly sympathetic by the end of the season when he gets taken over by dark power and is seen trying to fight its control. They managed to both make Ryuga an irredeemable psychopath and found a believable way to redeem him. I love that in the end, Gingka isn’t fighting to defeat Ryuga, he’s fighting to defeat the dark power, which came from the greed and hatred of humans. Basically, the problem isn’t humanity, it’s humanity’s greed/hatred and being consumed by these feelings lead to evil. That is genius. This season also had two of my favourite battles in the entire series: Kyoya vs Ryuga, and Gingka vs Ryuga.

1 Metal Fury

Yeah, I said it. Fury is my personal favourite season. It probably has more wrong with it than Masters and Fusion but honestly, Fury’s strengths more than make up for its weaker parts for me. The only problem I have with Fury that actively hinders my enjoyment is Kyoya’s poorly handled arc, which I’ve been over multiple times and wrote a whole fanfiction rectifying. To sum it up briefly: it was rushed and weakened Kyoya’s character when it had the chance to develop him. I will admit this season also had too few episodes. I don’t think it was rushed per say, it just feels like parts are missing. There should’ve been more leading up to Nemesis’ revival and an actual epilogue episode because as it stands now, Fury ends really suddenly without much actual confirmation of where the characters we know and love ended up. It’s kind of jarring. Overall however, I really love Fury. I love the adventure style story and there's so much variety to the bey battles this time around, both in terms of the beys themselves and the stadiums. It’s just more interesting to watch. It also did a great job giving all the major characters victories, not just Gingka. This is something Masters also did well and a gripe I have with Fusion: Gingka gets all the major victories in Metal Fusion and pushes the other characters to the wayside. Well, Masters and Fury fixed this issue in my opinion. The very final fight of Fury against the shadow Nemesis could’ve been executed better in my opinion. However, it hits all the right emotional beats for a final battle and still grabs my attention rewatching it, so I can put aside my criticisms of it while watching it. Also, I like that “destiny” is something these characters are controlling themselves and can go either way rather than being some unstoppable force that they will all give in to eventually otherwise they’re villains. Because that’s how Yugioh does it and it’s probably my biggest problem with that show. In that series, it feels like the characters are all just blindly accepting “destiny” and those that don’t, Kaiba and Marik most notably, are deemed villains for wanting to take control over their lives and not be governed by some invisible force. Yes, I know Marik went to some horrible extremes using this logic but it still bothers me that the only characters in that show that don’t throw their lives away blindly following someone else’s whims are deemed villains. It’s just kind of messed up. Fury thankfully subverts this. “Destiny” is not an unstoppable force in Beyblade, it’s the will of the characters and those characters are allowed to make their own choices. It makes the story more interesting and the characters more likeable because the characters are the ones driving the story, which feels so much more natural. Yeah, I really like the characters in Fury. Honestly, I’m more attached to Yuki, King, and Chris than anyone introduced in Masters and the other legendary blader characters all bring something different and interesting to the table that I don’t think older characters could have. I also like how the old characters are used. Sure, Tsubasa and Yu are underused this season. But guess who also got a lot of focus last season? Tsubasa and Yu. And some of the characters who were underused in Masters, Kyoya and Kenta, get more focus in this season. They did mess up Kyoya’s arc in my opinion but the effort is there and I appreciate his presence before and after that. Kenta especially was severely underused in Masters so this season decided to make him relevant again and they did it in such an endearing way. You all know how much I love Ryuga and Kenta’s friendship. It’s one of the things that should have gotten more focus but what we do get is good enough build up. This season was the one that drew the most emotion out of me during my most recent viewing and that was because of Ryuga and Kenta. I was devastated by Ryuga’s death (even if he may not actually be dead, that’s certainly what it felt like in the moment) and the scene where he gives Kenta his power was the most touching moment in the entire show for me.

Well, that ranking probably pissed some people off. Again, I love the classic three seasons. (I’m not a fan of Shogun Steel but it has its moments.) Choosing between the three of them like that was incredibly difficult, especially Fusion and Fury. In the end, I just had to go with my gut.

#beyblade #beyblade metal fight #beyblade metal saga #metal fusion #metal masters #metal fury #shogun steel #metal fury is underrated #i mention Yugioh as well #I talk about that show on my main blog #I do recommend it #but damn do I hate the way it handles the destiny theme #honestly fury is the only story I've seen that handles the destiny theme well #fusion handles it decently too #but the way fury did it kinda blew me away

28 notes · View notes

halfpint55 · 4 years

Text

A Defence of Kataang with regards to how they are portrayed in TLoK (it’s long but there’s headcanons at the end)

Note: This is not about shipping wars. This is a safe zone. This is not about Zutara vs Kataang. This is me defending Kataang and the characters themselves...from the writers.

I initially wrote this as a response to a post that got me heated. My reblog just made it too long so here it is as its own post.

Now this post ripped apart Kataang as a couple but more than that said some stuff about Aang himself that hurt my heart. I didn’t really want to pick on this post but its condemning of Kataang was based almost entirely in what we know of them as parents in TLoK and honestly it’s that lil nugget of canon that I take issue with. It has bothered me from the get go because it doesn’t make sense from a writing and story perspective, and it’s been pissing me off since I watched it.

TL;DR nice and early bc this post is gonna be a long one:

This particular condemnation of Kataang rests almost entirely on the SHITTY way they were portrayed as parents by the writers of LoK, and in all honesty, on this particular topic, canon should be ignored.

Overall Kataang parenting is of my biggest gripes with LoK because in terms of writing it’s totally incongruous - it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t align, and it makes zero sense for what we know of those characters, and I don’t know if I can ever forgive the showrunners for allowing it to be written it into canon.

I will also preface this by saying I like LoK - love it. I had a scroll through the comments and reblogs on this post, and a lot of the hate towards this portrayal of Kataang ended up being blamed on the “terrible writing of LoK” which is not where I stand at all. That being said I am so angry at the writers for this one.

The other portion of the concurring comments that were very hateful towards Kataang came from Zutara shippers and honestly for me, although I do ship Kataang, this not a just a Kataang issue. I’m of the belief that Zutara would’ve just as easily been written to have similar issues due to very similar dynamics - Zutara also would have been two powerful benders from very different cultures, and with Zuko/Aang (whoever you ship w her) having a massively important global leadership role that is embedded in who they are, and therefore impossible to ignore as a factor in their relationship.

Now let me be clear, my desire to reject canon on this front is by no means me wanting to believe the best of my faves, and not wanting to hear a word against Aang. It’s not even necessarily a defence of Kataang bc I ship it that hard (I mean I do but I can set that aside for the sake of argument if that’s what you need from me here).

The first, and main issue people have with Aang/Kataang in Korra, is the first point of the original post:

So why in hell would [Katara] be okay with Aang ignoring TWO of their children’s complete existence once he found out they had an airbending son?

And I agree with the post on this front; Katara would not have allowed her children to each be treated differently by their father. I had the same initial thought when watching LoK, and it’s the reason I hate and want to ignore the canon of LoK so badly.

As much as it hurts to think of, we have to accept that Aang wouldn’t have been able to stop his preferential treatment for Tenzin from bleeding through into his parenting just out of a desperate desire to save his culture (which is absolutely understandable - doesn’t make it okay, but it’s understandable; Aang suffered an incredible loss, a massive cultural trauma which he alone carries the burden of). So of course he wasn’t able to hide how excited he was, and forgot to be mindful of his attitude and behaviour towards Kya and Bumi. So this aspect of canon Kataang? Yeah, I’m with it. So far so good. EXCEPT the most unrealistic element of canon is now that Katara would let him. I simply do not believe for a second that Katara would’ve allowed Aang to be the kind of parent LoK painted him to be.

However, I do not think it would’ve been a point of contention between the two of them! Katara would pull him aside, Katara would gently (but firmly) point out what Aang mightn’t be able to see for himself - he’s focusing too hard on Tenzin.

And Aang would listen.

All throughout A;tLA the two of them often help the other sort through their stuff. Aang has a great track record of being receptive to Katara’s advice and help (calming him down when discovering Monk Gyatso’s body, The Desert when he Appa is stolen, Serpent’s Pass when he’s bottling his feelings about Appa being missing). He’s also just so receptive to others’ ideas - he just goes with it and trusts in his friends (think of his trust in Katara’s plan to rescue Haru, his trust in staying behind with Sokka in the library to get the eclipse info). Aang’s humility is one of the most incredible things about him and it’s at the core of who he is. He would absolutely be able to hear Katara telling him he’s focusing too hard on one child - he would be open, and he’d listen.

So to me now canon just does not make sense at all. it does not align with their established character traits. And yes, people change as they get older and grow into adulthood but honestly, the elements of their respective personalities that we’re talking about here are pretty core elements of who these two people are.

Katara has always been fiercely protective of those she loves, strongwilled, stubborn, and ready to (vocally or physically) fight for what she believes is right and that wouldn’t disappear as she gets older. She wouldn’t let Aang’s preferrential treatment slide.

Aang has always been, and chose to be despite his loss, an optimistic, kind, believe in the best of humanity kind of person. He’s open to all points of view, he’s a good listener, he always tries his absolute best to find solutions that are good for everyone. And again his humility, his willingness to love, is who he is. He believes all humans (including fkn OZAI) and all life are sacred, he believes in the absolute right to life. The kid is a vegetarian for crying out loud.

Now the parts of the take in the post that hurt my heart to read about what OP thinks of Aang:

“Aang never made an attempt to establish anything resembling a real familial unit with Katara, basically just stayed around until she popped out an Airbender [...] she was treated like some trophy wife to give birth to airbenders and that’s it!”

I wasn’t going to address this in this post until I read the comments in the notes, because people seem to agree. They share the sentiment that Katara was reduced to “just a love interest” by the two ending up together.

However I do very much take issue w the notion that Aang “basically just stayed around until she popped out an Airbender” (and honestly that entire paragraph - we don’t actually know that Aang didn’t make an effort to establish a family unit). As much as the LoK writers fucked up in their portrayal of Kataang as parents, this is a much harsher judgement of Aang’s character as a husband and father than anything implied by Aang and Katara’s children. I just don’t buy that Aang would view Katara (or anyone he married, even if you don’t ship Kataang) as a trophy wife, whose only role is to have airbender children. He never has viewed her that way - he has always looked at her like she’s the sun, and the most important person to him after she pulled him out of the iceburg. He loves her the most of anyone on the planet. It does not align with his character, his values or beliefs that he’d think of her (or any partner) that way. He is so besotted with Katara for who she is it HURT me to read that part of your take. Aang simply would never. Look at how he looks at her!

What’s more is the unwavering respect and deference he shows Katara as his waterbending master - he recognises and loves her as the whole, complete, three dimensional, TALENTED POWERFUL INCREDIBLE WOMAN that she is. She is NEVER “just” a love interest for Aang. (But ALSO, do we respect Suki any less for being Sokka’s obvious love interest??? No. suki is written to be so badass that Sokka is HER love interest and I think Katara has equally badass energy but I digress).

Moving on!

OP made an excellent point that there would’ve been culturally different values between the two but I don’t think it would’ve been family that was the clashing point. Yes the airbenders value spirituality and enlightenment. But they lived together in massive communities! They supported and raised one another. Their community and culture was strong, and they were bonded in their spirituality! They value love, as well as enlightenment, peace, and the lives of all.

Now, again the points they made about the cultural divides within the Kataang family unit are valid, but also again I dislike how they chose to portray this in LoK. It would definitely be a struggle they faced as a couple. However I think they really missed an opportunity here with where they took it. Because they do at one point in the comics have Katara bring up the fact that their family will be a blend of two cultures, and she brings it up because Aang is trying so hard to bring balance back to the world by means of seperation.

They’ve known from the get go of being a couple that they’re going to have to navigate being a culturally blended family unit.

So I find it so shitty that they wrote it so that Kya got to learn the waterbending culture, Tenzin got Air and bumi got…nothing? It’s dangerously close to the way Disney does the “the girls are carbon copies of mum, and the boys are carbon copies of dad” thing (think Lady and the Tramp). It’s lazy. Especially when we had that “separation is an illusion” episode, AND things like Zuko learning different nation’s styles and applying them to his firebending, and Sokka learning an element of strategy or fighting from every nation.

So give us Kya using Airbending moves with her waterbending (maybe she invents the water scooter)! Give us Tenzin doing more grounded moves that Aunty Toph (or Lin, while they were together) taught him from earthbending.

There are much more creative ways to illustrate the bumps and troubles Kataang might have run into in trying to navigate incorporating equal parts of their cultures in their children and family unit. Even just smaller scale issues like food and meals - how do they figure out how to do mealstimes with Aang’s vegetarianism with Katara’s culturally significant Water Tribe meat dishes? And then even taking into account how picky little kids can be!

Give me a scene where they literally just ate moon pies for a week because toddler Kya would scream if you put anything else down in front of her.

Maybe Bumi demanded sea prunes over and over but Katara and Bumi are the only ones who like them, and Bumi bonds with his mother this way - they go on little one-on-one outings to water tribe restaurants in Republic City, searching for the most authentic sea prunes!

Kya maybe likes the water tribe fashions the most because it helps her connect with her namesake BUT Kya also has a playful sense of humour - not unlike Monk Gyatso - Aang sees how much she loved moon pies and teaches her to throw them with waterbending.

We know Tenzin was a calm, quiet, and possibly shy child. Maybe he loved to hole himself away learning crafts. Give me Tenzin learning to tattoo, Tenzin learning to carve (and carving his first glider - it crashes of course), but also Tenzin learning to carve water tribe adornments and necklaces. Katara tries at first but when she gets busy Sokka comes in and teaches Tenzin to break all the carving rules Katara has laid down (”it doesn’t need to be perfect my little pupil - let the creativity flow!”)

Tenzin may not be able to waterbend but that doesn’t mean he can’t learn other means of healing. As the littlest he spent a lot of time watching Katara work - she teaches him to tie splints, dress wounds, and yes deliver babies.

If you made it here I love you so much for reading. I love sharing my thoughts so HIGH FIVE YOU MADE IT, ur now my friend - the friendship is non-refundable sorry 😌😌

94 notes · View notes

popculturebuffet · 3 years

Text

Ducktales Reviews: How Santa Stole Christmas! or Scrooge is kind of a dick

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody! Christmas begins on this blog with the last new Ducktales of the season! Time to break out some eggnog, presents and warmth of good family, i’ve got a bushel of Christmas reviews planned for the season, and this one is just the start of htem. As you can probably tell by my enthusasim I love this holiday. Oh sure it has it’s bad sides, paticuarlly several jackasses making huge deals out of the fact some people say happy holidays because “there’s a war on christmas” when really their just petty morons who can’t accept theirs more than one holiday in the month and not everyone likes christmas. I do, but I know not everyone does, and that’s fine. But overall it’s a fine holiday with warmth, cheer, family, generosity and of course, what brings us here today, really damn good episodes and specials of television. It’s just a really warm and cheerful time that , whlie it can bring out the absolute worst in people.. can also bring out the best more often than not. And that’s why I love this holiday. If you don’t that’s just fine, but it’s my blog, I can love what I want. And I love this holiday.. and I loved this episode, a good end to a great run of episodes. So let’s rock around the Christmas tree and find out why Scrooge hates santa, this is How Santa Claus Stole Christmas!

We open with the classic night before Christmas poem.. only naturally since Della is reading it to the boys, it’s Scrooge’s version involving barbed wire and calling the man a traitor because what honestly did you expect. Though I find it ironic a man introduced in a Christmas story has a one-sided blood feud with Santa. The boys are annoyed with this and just want free presents and the presecne of a jolly fat man and don’t get why Scrooge hates him. And yeah.. all of that tracks. They were raised by Donald who, while he clearly spent several years at Scrooges tolerating this feud, likely figured the Feud was just some personal gripe of scrooges and that Santa had done nothing that terrible. Which given Scrooge isn’t personable on the best of days and the episode goes out of it’s way to point out Scrooge has no friends, is entirely accurate and Donald was, as always the sane one in this situation. Plus he was already mad at Scrooge, this was just another way to tell him to go fuck himself.

The boys hear what they think is Santa on the roof but turns out to be Scrooge, in full Scottish war garb manning traps with webby.. in full chimney camo... putting a knife to Dewey’s throat for siding with santa.. well okay pointing at his throat but still god damn. Every now in then i’m reminded how ready Webby is to murder someone. It never gets easier or less disturbing. The boys.. continue to make a good point: Scrooge says he’s the richest duck in the world and can provide them whatever.. but being Scrooge just gives them itchy hats made of cheap fabric, and bemoans them wanting a trampoline, a new electronic game, and a new phone. And while Scrooge can give them whatever he wants, it’s his money, he also could’ve put some actual thought into it and clearly views the holiday more as a transaction and less for hte acutal sentmient. Instead of giving them personal mementos, or making them personal mementos, or even just simply building them a sled or something, a simpler toy than what they want but still something nice that comes from the heart.. he just gave them the cheapest hat he could find and tries to guilt them for not liking his thoughtless present he probably bought in bulk for everyone in the manor and his employ because he’s kind of a dick sometimes. IT’s good storytelling though as it sets up that Scrooge.. can possibly be int he wrong, so when the main plot comes to his front door, quite literally, there’s some doubt as to wither he or santa is in the wrong. Speaking of which Santa is at the door. So cue the credits and cue the cut for the rest of the plot as is usual. Full spoilers, and full plot under the cut. Ho ho ho.

First a quick comment on the Holiday version of the theme, the same one from Last Christmas! IT’s really good, a really nice frank sinatra style verison of the theme. Good stuff. My only real complaint is like last time.. there’s nothing unique about it, it’s just the normal season 3 intro but with snowflakes. And that’s.. more on Disney than the creators. If Frank and Matt had the option they would likely do an entirely original intro.. it’s just Disney can be cheap when it comes to intros, see how possesed ludo stayed in the star vs intro long after that plot point was resolved, and only affords one a season. That being said they still have one up on most networks, who, with the exception of Netfix with she ra, never really let intros change more than once, if at all. I mean I get it, budgets are higher here than with anime, they can’t do a new song and intro every half a season.. BUUUT it wouldn’t kill more stuidos to do this more often and do a complete intro overhaul, as it adds freshness, and you can still use the same old theme, just over a new set of pretty images. Most just allow a few swap outs, Disney included, and while I get intros are expensive, this is something you can use for a whole season, or more, why are you like this?

Anyways one theme song and me complaning about an animation trend I don’t like later, we’re inside the Manor with none of the other adults present because this season hates me. I do actually get it this go round: Besides Della, Donald and Launchpad getting a full subplot in the other holiday episode, they aren’t really needed. In fact most of the episode’s present day is a framing device for the tale of how Scrooge and Santa met and why Scrooge hates him, so for once the minmal use of the supporting cast.. is actually done well. The focus is on Scrooge and Santa, a feud that’s had four years build up in real time, and two years in series and a bunch of months. So yeah, i’m okay with sidelining everyone for once, because this story really needed all of the space and there was no real place for them aside from the climax. This is Scrooge and Santa’s story, with Webby there as an impartial-ish observer. We’ll get to that in a moment. Also if your curious where in the fuck this episode fits on the series massively warped time scale.. i’m going with this and “The Trickining!” taking place before season 3, since “Astro Boyd” takes place in march, and “Forbidden Fountain” takes place in probably late april, huge thanks to a friend on discord for help with the timeline. Otherwise it just makes no sense whatsover and while it dosen’t TECHINCALLY need to, I prefer the series timeline at least making some rational sense. The world dosen’t have to but time still does. So the boys are at least 12, possibly turning 13. Congrats. Or maybe they just don’t age. I dunno.

Now time and plot concerns aside, Santa gladly gives the boys their gifts which is.. everything they listed: A mini tramp for Dewey, Legends of Legend-Quest 2 for Huey, and another phone for Louie, which Scrooge dosen’t get. But Louie gets it on 2 levels: One, the one he asked for is probably a nicer model and as someone who just got a very marginally nicer model on insurance, I get it, even if like Scrooge i’m fine as long as mine works, it’s still nice to have more space to do shit. And two, he plans to sell the old one and keep the money. So yeah the boys already loved Santa but now they have every reason to since, you know, Santa actually gave them what they asked for and Scrooge gave them itchy hats because he’s cheap not because he put the slighest thought into it. And no i’m ont letting him get away with that: Again, off list, perfectly fine. Right behind me on my sprawl of book shelves is Weird Al’s biography, a really fun, really intresting book with photos on his career. I did not ask for it, but my mom rightly knew I would love it and got it for me for my birthday, which is very close to christmas, the 16th if you were curious, anyway, and I’ve treasured it since.. and really need to re-read it. My point is you CAN get someone something they didn’t ask for and still have it be something they LIKE. I did that for most of my christmas gifts this year. Scrooge just, as I went on about above, didn’t give a shit and was a bit callous about it so yeah, Santa wins this round. But Santa naturally needs Scrooge’s help to save Christmas because his ankle’s sprained and he’s out of options. Scrooge.. naturally refuses because, as i’ve made clear this and past episodes, he can be kind of a dick and Santa is one of his worst enemies in his mind. Why help him? So Santa, reluctantly, offers Scrooge the one thing you can get for the man who has everything: An agreement to leave his house alone. The boys aren’t happy about it, but Scrooge reluctantly agrees to the deal. They prepare to mount up though the boys aren’t invited, as Scrooge thinks their too far in the Santa camp and Scrooge does not trust him. Which again is both accurate and fair on their parts as again, he gave them things with well meaning and love, he gave them hats he fished out of the dollar store clearance bin. I mean at least go for the dvd’s and blu rays man. Yeesh. Santa does lightly buy them off by offering them another present if their good boys. Though honestly given Santa in this universe, he probably was going to anyway and this is his nice way of getting them to stay behind to make Scrooge happy.

So as they take off, while Webby is wary of Santa, she is curious what happened, especially since earlier Scrooge actually did finally voice his gripe, if without any full length explination: Santa took Christmas From him. And Della might know that, Scrooge likely didn’t tell her or Donald the full story and Donald rightly didn’t buy it was that one sided. And it isn’t as we’ll see. Since the episodes divided up into two storylines, i’m once again splitting the difference. This time though I would like to mention the story is beautifully woven in, with both complementing each other: there’s some legit suspense as we wonder if Santa did something really that bad or if he’s lying to webby, or if Scrooge being Scrooge was just exaggerating or holding onto a grudge that was partly his fault. It’s genuinely well done to build up the story and helps really flesh Santa out as a character in both stories. i’m only not doing that because my short term memory, while good enough to hold the story for now can be spotty, and this is a lot less taxing on it. Also parts of this segment happen before the boys leave, but it’s easier this way. Sooooo...

Times Past: Santa’s Worst Christmas Some time ago... seriously I don’t know. Scrooge was born in the 1800′s and Christmas well existed by then, to the point there’s actually a story starring young scrooge published over seas. Granted the Duck’s are no stranger to christmas, as I already covered Christmas on Bear Mountain for Scrooge’s birthday, and will be covering “A Christmas for Shacktown’ sometime this December. It’s just something worth noting. But given this universe can do whatever it wants, having it invited sometime in the early 1900′s or late 1800s is fine just fine.

Scrooge is a coal salesman, selling people what they need but getting no shelter as he’s, again, an ass. But in the depths he finds Santa, whose having trouble puling his sleigh, and gets them in the previously closed door with kindess and saying he’s with me. We now get an idea of who Santa truly is: a kind, selfless soul who thinks nothing of himself, and is happy to offer a gift in exchange for something, but does so only in the most well meaning, warmest way possible. In short this Santa really is.. what Santa is at his best in stories; a kind, generous man who just wants to make people happy. He just gave a gift not because he wanted to bribe his way in, but because he was genuinely hoping for some shelter and wanted to be greatful. It also shows that clearly, even if something did happen.. Santa probably isn’t evil. A twist still could’ve come.. but spoilers.. it dosen’t. Santa is genuinely this kind and self sacrificing and noble. He’s just a good person.. and that would ultimately be the problem but we’ve got a lot of subplot to cover. So Santa parties with what are clearly going to be his elves, and turn out indeed to be elves at the end when the fire goes out and Scrooge is suddenly in buisness.. and he and Santa make a great team, as Santa talks him up and says he can deliver a whole year’s worth of coal all over the world by Christmas Morning, so Christmas DOES exist here, it’s just Santa didn’t which kind of tracks. Well played. I’ll keep my earlier mistake in there though. Keeps me fresh. But Santa offers to help.. after all what are friends for? And Scrooge says their not friends.. their partners.

And Santa says why not both. And a friendship is forged. And it makes sense.. while i’ts not as tight as it will be, Santa is a warm generous guy who helped Scrooge multiple times just to be kind: He helped him find shelter to repay his kindness helping him.. then helped him sell his coal, when he didn’t have to and while he upsold him on what he could do, did so not out of malice, but so his friend could sell MORE and with eveyr intention of helping. And this friend is someone he just met, is kind of cranky and rude.. but as we all know is a good person underneath and to Santa.. that’s what he sees.. the kind young man who helped him pull his sleigh when he didn’t have to and was already cold and miserable. And that.. that just warms my heart a lot. But Scrooge being Scrooge has a mystic artifact that could help: The Feliz Navidiamond, a mystic artifact that can seemingly control time he got off a spanish sailor needing coal. The two head in but encounter it’s guardians. The Magic reindeer! And that’s part of what I love about this episode: besides really getting christmas, we’ll get to that, it has a creative and intresting Santa origin baked into the show’s mythology that also shows off an intresting part of Scrooge’s past. Santa manages to pacify them with jingle bells and our heroes head inside. In the cavern they find a Giant Snowman.. because this show is fucking awesome and Santa’s attempt to be nice bacfires but Scrooge’s natural paranoia and gumption pull through. It shows off why they make a good team: Santa’s niceties helped them with the reindeer, and netted them future transportation, while Scrooge’s natural grumpus tendencies help when nice just won’t do it. They work well together: one’s a showman and the other hasn’t learned how yet, one is nice the other naughty. It’s easy to see why they worked so well together.. in both senses. They make it past the Snowman and find that the diamond slows down time running on “christmas time!”.. seriously a great pun and one of many this episode. This show had a chance to go all out on holiday puns this go round and they did not blow it.

But... sadly... and obviously the good times can’t roll forever and when we next return to the story it’s a year later. McDuck and Klaus coal is a MASSIVE concern, and Scrooge is eager to get started... but Santa.. wants to just give gifts instead. To do something Generous. Buisness just isn’t in him and he just wants to do something kind. It’s.. not a bad goal.. i’ts just not Scrooge. To Scrooge it’s a betryal of all he stands for: foreswearing profit to give something for nothing for seemingly no reason and to a younger even meaner scrooge.. it’s an utter betryal.. and a breaking point. Either his daft presents idea.. or Scrooge. And why yes this episode is dripping with ho yay and why yes this does resemble his painful breakups with goldie. And why yes is glorious.. Imean I wasn’t shipping Scrooge with santa before but now? Hot damn. But yeah the two have come to a parting of ways, and Scrooge bitterly leaves, while the elves reveal themselves. And my heart hurts “The Empire Builder from Callisota” bad so thank you and fuck you show. It also probably shows why Scrooge has exactly one friend, who also works with him so it’s complicated, in present day: He just dosen’t want to let people in... and now we know WHY. The first genuine friend he made, the first person he let into his heart.. betrayed him. It’s no wonder it took decades for Beakly, then the kids to get into his heart again: the guy’s been betrayed by goldie, in his mind betrayed by santa and as we’ve seen his own dad turned against him eventually. He had no one for so long, he built a wall all around him but the wall was too tall and it blocked out all the birds and the son. But this .. is a really damn good story that fleshes Scrooge out and explains his hardness. In the comics it was Glomgold.. here.. it’s much more personal and cuts much deeper. And I absolutely love it. This story could’ve neatly fit into life and times if it made any sense in Rosa’s timeline, and it would be just perfect there.

PRESENT DAY: Concentrated Awwww

The present day plot is a lot simplier but still fantsatic: Webby slowly warms up to Santa depsite herself.. despite Scrooge clealry seeing she is.. she sees the man is just.. nice. He gives her a new crossbow, a really nice one she probably didn’t even expect to get given you know, everything and knowing scrooge, and appricates the sentiment and slowly sees the man isn’t some monster, but just a jolly old fat man who wants to give presents. Even Scrooge seemingly warms up a little. We also get tons of cameos during delivery, as they visit tons of supporting cast.. sadly no Darkwing.. but this one was clearly meant to go anywhere and is clealry set before “Let’s Get Dangerous”, but tons of other great bits: We get the Drake recidence with Boyd getting a present.. and somehow also doofus whose filled his stocking full of.. something. I don’t want to know and you can’t make me ask. You can make me ask why the fuck Doofus gets a present, but it could be filled with bees or maybe Santa truly thinks theirs good in him.. which .. yeah tracks. I mean not their being good in him.. I think dr. loomis said it best.. I mean it was about micheal meyers but.. same diffrence minus the patricide?

I mean points for trying though Santa, you mean well you loveable bear in both senses of the word you. But anyways other cameos include Fenton, alsleep with his armor strewn about, aww, with the gizmo armor set to hit people with fruit cake. Thought that was against the geneva convetion but alright. Scrooge’s been hit with worse. We also get them visiting the boat and giving Donald and Della presents, awww. And of course I saved the cameo I put up top for last as Webby visits her closest friend and her gilfriend and gives both an adorable cheek kiss. Though only Lena reacts.. probably because this isn’t the first time Webby’s snuck into their bedroom at night but probably the first time it hasn’t been accidently creepy because she’s still learning boundaries. Also i did not realized they shared a room. Aww. Also it’s the first time we’ve seen their room, which as you’d image from a sorceress and a magical researcher/bookworm, it’s a massive sprawling library from what we see with a skull with a candle in it, a picture of a house, and a calender. IN short it’s perfect and i’m glad we finally saw their room.

So yeah things are going well and Webby finally realizes “Shit Scrooge is the bad guy in this scenario” at the end of the story, realizing Santa was just as hurt by the split as Scrooge was and that he had to make the harder choihce for the right reasons. Unfortunately, as i’ve said a lot this review, SCrooge is a dick and only coperated, as he wasn’t using the magical present sack, but his own filled with Coal to teach people about responsiblity. Thankfully, Scrooge realizes he’s been a dick to the globe when he happens upon little Jeniffer, a small pig girl who mistakes him from santa and takes his coal, meant to warm her fires.. and makes it into a doll. And resists his attempts to take “Coalette away”... Scrooge then rants and .. we actually get a good reason for why he’s being such a douche... as a kid he had nothing, and a gift of coal for his fires would’ve been welcmoed. He simply just.. dosen’t get the frivolity. He gets the warmth and joy of the season but not the gift part. And it’s only seeing this small, innocent child, play with a doll, he realizes “A warm heart can keep you going through the coldest nights”. And it’s then he finally realizes why his old friend did what he did.. because as i’ve been saying the real gift.. is in the giving.. of giving someone something that makes their memories glow and their heart warm. Even a lump of coal can do that in the right hands... a toy can get someone through the roughest times and it’s the WARMTH of the gift you remember, not the gift itself. I remember that book I mentioned proudly.. as do I remmeber the copy of the art of the venture brothers right next to me, or the copy of the people’s doonesbury my best friend mike bought me, and so on.. not because of the book itself... but because of the thought and warmth of someone getitng something for you because they care, not for their own reward, but just to make you feel nice this holiday season. That’s the true spirit of christmas. Naturally realizing the errror of his ways in true christmas story fashion, Scrooge is devistated by his own actions. And Santa is PISSED.. but Scrooge is now regretful.. if also pissed because Santa stormed in there and it turns out this was all a ploy to get his friend back... which destroys Scrooge’s anger as he realizes just how much his old friend missed him and how many years he wasted lashing out at him when , in the end, Santa was right. So with only so much Diamond power left, and time running out, what can they do to right this? Simple, Scrooge suggests splitting resources.

So we get a glorious shot of the three boys, and the twins riding the reindeer. Also we get Launchpad!

Who naturally wonders if he can crash a reindeer while Beakly thankfully stops him from murdering Dasher. So Christmas is saved and Scrooge and Santa exchange gifts: For Scrooge, a set of bells with their old company name.. and for Santa? a garage door opener. While Santa’s confused turns out.. it’s to turn off the traps. He’s welcome any time.. just use the front door. Cue a big hug, and Webby narrating us out as Scrooge wishes everyone a merry christmas once again letting people into his heart. I have.. the approirate response to that.

Final Thoughts: Excellent, easily one of the best of the season, the series and possibly of chirstmas show episodes all together, we shall see when I put together my list. And given how utterly excellent Last Christmas already is, it was hard to top.. but they did it. This was a warm, wonderful special that gets to the heart of christmas.. and really why I LIKE santa so much. For all the comercailsim around him.. he’ s a kind generous man who gets kids to belivie in magic for a while, wants nothing in return , with the offering of cookies just there to be nice and thank him for being a good person, and just wants best for people. He’s what’s best about christmas rolled into a person. And the series gets that and makes him the kindest guy around. It ends up being a story abotu Scrooge learning the meaning of christmas, an irony that’s not lost on me, but in a way that’s diffrent and unique from last time and works just as well. It’s just a warm wonderful epsiode with plenty of great gags and adventure and a beautiful, unique story at it’s core that could only be told here with tihs cast and this version of scrooge and that’s what makes it so damn magical. Easily a fantastic note to go out on. Next time on Ducktales: I don’t know! Next time this blog covers ducktales: We’re going back a few seasons to the only episode i’ve never seen, not even a little bit. It’s the treacherous summit of mt neverest! Until then, if you liked this review, reblog and all that good stuff, follow for more ducks, and if there’s an episode of any show you want me to cover, my cyber monday sale is still going till midnight central, and even past that if you get in a liittle past it, so you can comission a review of any episode for just 3 bucks right now, 5 if you get to this review after monday. So spend if you have it.. and if you don’t.. happy holidays to you anyway. Have a wonderful season.

#christmas #ducktales #how santa stole christmas #santa claus #scrooge mcduck #webby vanderquack #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #donald duck #della duck #violet sabrewing #lena sabrewing #weblena #launchpad mcquack #bentina beakly #doofus drake #boyd drake #fenton crackshell cabrera

24 notes · View notes

ranma-rewatch · 4 years

Text

Episode 1-The Strange Stranger from China/Enter Ranma

Alright, time to really start this thing off with the first episode, “The Strange Stranger from China”. I...don’t remember that being the name of the episode, but it has been about a decade since I last saw the series.

I feel like I remember what happens in this episode pretty well, it should just be an introduction to (some) of the main cast and kick of the dynamic between the two leads, but I could be wrong. Let’s see after the break, once I have rewatched the episode!

Okay first things first, the Opening. Musically, this song has always sat in a weird spot for me. It’s really freaking catchy and memorable, but it’s also kind of annoying? Like, there is a fine line between a great ear worm and a song you actually want out of your head, and “Don’t Make Me Wild Like You” by Etsuki Nishio is like right on that line. There are parts of it I think are adorably entertaining, like the whistle, and other parts where I kind of cringe. It’s not my favorite opening song of the series, but it’s not bad either.

Visually, it is Okay with a capital O. There is a reason Mother’s Basement has never done a feature on it. It is mostly just the cast running in place over pastel backgrounds, and some of them have the coloring that’s very different from what would end up being used later on once they appeared. That said, I have to give infinite props to Akane’s little snapping dance, because it is freaking adorable and I love ever frame of it.

Also, the title. What I said it was earlier, “The Strange Stranger from China”, was what Hulu has it listed as, and from what I can tell that was what it was listed as on DVD. From what I can tell from my expert translator, Mr. Google Translate, it’s kind of similar to the Japanese title, which says it is “He's from China!! A little weird!!”. But in the episode, the dub says the episode is “Here’s Ranma” which is what I remember it being. So...yeah. Apparently at some point they wanted to retcon the english title of the episode, but never changed the dub track to match.

So, what’s the episode about? Hell, what is this show even about? Well, the episode starts with a feminine person with red hair fighting a panda in the street, arguing about being betrothed to someone against their will, while onlookers watch in confusion. Then the panda knocks them out, and carries them away. Cut to the Tendo family estate, where Soun Tendo has received news that Ranma Saotome and his father Genma will soon be coming, and gathers his three daughters to explain the situation.

You see, in addition to being fairly well off in general, Soun is the owner of a dojo for the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts, and his best friend and fellow practitioner of the same art, Genma, made an agreement years ago to bind their families in marriage. Thus, Ranma will marry one of Soun’s three daughters. From oldest to youngest, they’re Kasumi, Nabiki, and Akane, who is the only one of the three to practice martial arts herself. When Soun reveals he has never met Ranma and has no idea what he’s like, his daughters are kind of pissed that their dad promised one of them would have to marry him, which is pretty fair.

Instead of the middle-aged man and teenage boy they expected, the red-head from before is dragged in by the panda, and they explain they are Ranma Saotome, to everyone’s confusion. Based on their body, everyone assumes Ranma is a girl, and Ranma and Akane actually become fast friends, sparring in the dojo. But after Akane has a surprise bathroom encounter with a very masculine Ranma that involves him seeing her naked, and vice versa, they learn the truth.

See, Ranma and his dad were in China training when they visited Jusenkyo, a seeming hot spring tourist trap, only to each fall in a different spring while practicing fighting there. Turns out all the water there is cursed because things kept drowning in the springs a long time ago. Now they’re both cursed. They each transform when cold water is poured on their heads, into a feminine body for Ranma and a panda’s body for Genma, and turned back with hot water.

Once that’s all out in the open, everyone except Ranma and Akane thinks that, since Akane doesn’t like guys, she would be the perfect fiance for Ranma since he is ‘half girl’. Akane is still upset with Ranma, both because she has a lot of issues with men and feels betrayed that Ranma never said he was really a guy, and also because he saw her naked. Ranma claims it isn’t a problem because he can look at himself anytime and he’s more stacked, and the dynamic of Akane hitting Ranma for the asshole-ish things he says is born.

So, lots of stuff to talk about for an analysis. I think I’ll go with a compliment sandwich, bundling up what was rough for me around what I liked or thought was particularly interesting. To start with, aside from a few places where there was clear corner-cutting of reusing animation and kind of needless flashbacks, I liked the animation. The original mangka, Rumiko Takahashi, has really great character designs, and I love seeing her personal art style brought to life by the animation of Studio DEEN, a group I am not super used to complimenting.

In terms of plot, I think it’s a pretty strong opener. It introduces a lot of the main cast, even if some of them are depicted fairly broadly and not shown as the characters they’d one day become. This might sound odd, but I also really appreciate how female nudity is handled. Maybe it’s just because, if anything, the way most anime handle ‘fanservice’ has just gotten more and more over-the-top as the years go by, but the way Ranma 1/2 handled it feels like a breath of breath air.

See, in most modern anime, full blown nudity of either sex is never shown. Instead, feminine characters’ bodies are incredibly sexualized, with lots of emphasis put on the breasts and other body parts, without ever giving the full game away. By contrast, this episode contained several example of the feminine form shown completely nude, but it wasn’t treated like some mind-blowingly sexy thing, it was just kinda shown without much fanfare. I’ve currently watching the original Mobile Suit Gundam, which came out around the same time, and it actually does the same thing a few times. It feels more similar to how nudity is treated in, say, paintings or sculpture, more tasteful, and I just kind of think it’s neat.

What is definitely less neat...is the music. If I had to throw out right away my biggest gripe with the show, it is the OST. Not all of it, there are a few bits near the end of the episode that are actually really good, they’re the kind of music I remember being in the show. But the more silly, goofy tracks more common in the first half of the episode really don’t work for me. They remind me of the generic ‘Silly Person’ theme songs from the Ace Attorney games, and maybe it’s just me, but those kind of background music always take me out of the experience and grate on my nerves. That’s actually my only big issue so far, but it did make both times watching this episode genuinely hard to get through at points, it annoys me that much.

Now, I will say right now that I will be referring to Ranma using male pronouns regardless of whether he’s in his cursed form or not, and I won’t call him a ‘girl’ or a ‘woman’. If you didn’t know, sex and gender are not actually the same thing, so even if his physical sex is changed to fit someone who would be Assigned Female at Birth, his internal gender doesn’t change. No matter how Ranma looks, he thinks of himself as a man.

Corollary to that, it was this time going through this episode that I realized something that I’d never thought of before: Ranma’s experience in this episode, and in some ways throughout the series, is actually a lot like that of a transgender man’s. Ranma shows up at the Tendo’s estate and they all see him as a girl because of how he looks, only for him to reveal his actual gender. When he’s hanging out with Akane, and she thinks he is actually a girl, and they’re getting along, there’s a part where she tells Ranma that she’s so happy he turned out not to be a boy, and you can see Ranma’s facial expression, he doesn’t want to hear that. Clearly, yes, you can read that as Ranma wincing at the fact that she’s in for a rude awakening later on, but it also gives off the same kind of vibes closeted trans people experience when they’re misgendered by people they know.

In fact, when you think about how his curse really affects Ranma, when he’s in his cursed form, he effectively is a trans man. He still identifies as a guy, but his body has been changed so that it no longer represents who he sees himself as inside. It just felt like an interesting real life parallel in this episode, and I’m interested to see if I feel it shows up more later on. But for now, let’s move on to character spotlight.

For the first spotlight, I thought I should center on the titular Ranma Saotome. Obviously this won’t be the only time I focus on him, he’ll get more spotlight pieces as the series develops, so right now I’ll try to focus on the Ranma we see in just this one episode.

To start with, who plays him? Well, that’s a funny story, actually. Not only does Ranma, due to his curse, have different voice actors in each language for his cursed and non-cursed forms, but in the English Dub they recast his masculine body’s voice actor after three seasons. I’ll talk about that voice actor, Richard Ian Cox, once we get to when he actually becomes Ranma’s voice actor, so let’s start with the masculine form’s VA’s.

Now, the Ranma I first met when I was a teenager was Sarah Strange, a Canadian Voice Actress who is not known for much else. Her Ranma has mostly been the one I think of in my head when I think of the character. A little nasaly, her take on the character is very average joe, very ordinary high schooler. There’s some brashness to it, sure, but it’s actually kind of a subdued version of Ranma. Looking at it now, I actually feel like both of Ranma’s masculine form’s voice actors don’t quite fit the character, but for opposite reasons. Sarah Strange’s voice is so normal sounding that it dampens the more extreme parts of his character, Ranma at his most arrogant and egotistical. Like I said, I’ll cover Richard Ian Cox when he takes over the role, but I’ll say in brief here that his version of Ranma is the polar opposite, too over-the-top and aggressive.

In contrast, his original Japanese voice actor, Kappei Yamaguchi, feels a lot better to me, at least so far. Again, this is basically my first time seeing the series subbed, so I’ve only heard him for one episode as opposed to the 3 seasons I had with Sarah Strange. Still, Kappei’s take on Ranma is just as normal sounding as Sarah’s, but I felt like I could already hear a little more of the more emotional side of the character I felt Sarah never quite managed to capture properly.

As for Ranma’s cursed form, I was kind of confused, because the voice I was hearing in the episode wasn’t the one I remembered. For a while, I thought she must have just grown into the role over time, but it turns out that is not the case. For the first six episodes of the show, he was played by Brigitta Dau, who was then replaced with Venus Terzo. Now, I did not know this until literally right now, as I am typing this, so I feel like I don’t actually have much to say about Brigitta. Her performance felt a little off to me, but not bad. Venus, though, really owns the role once she takes over. Her performance as red-headed Ranma has always felt perfect for me, selling the idea that this is a teenage guy in a feminine body, and she’s really good at selling Ranma at his most dickish.

In Japanese, this form of Ranma is played by Megumi Hayashibara. Now, I would never ever say she did a bad job, but from what I saw of her in this episode, I don’t know how much I actually like her as Ranma. Maybe it’s just the pitch of her voice, but she doesn’t sound quite to me like a guy in a feminine body, but just like a very emotional teenage girl. Of course, I do not speak Japanese and it’s a lot harder to really judge acting in a language you don’t understand, so I could be spouting utter nonsense, but that’s my thoughts on her as of this episode.

In terms of Ranma’s character, they don’t really give much away with this first episode. We know he’s a good fighter, has a difficult relationship with his father, doesn’t like his curse and wants to get rid of it, and has enough stubbornness to butt heads with Akane and stand his ground. I also felt like they did a good job telegraphing Ranma’s general fighting style during his sparring match with Akane. He spent the entire time dodging her attacks with incredible ease, which emphasizes his speed. Generally speaking, I’d describe Ranma as a very agile, thinking-on-his feet kind of fighter, but that’s something we’ll see more of in later episodes. I was going to do a big thing about his personality, but I feel like anything more than what I’ve said hasn’t really borne out in what we have, so I’ll wait for another time to do that.

Like I said in my Introduction post, I will be ranking each episode as they appear, and as this is the only one I’ve seen in the rewatch, it is both the best one and the worst one so far. The real question is how it will stand up next time, when I’ll be able to compare it to the second episode, “School is No Place for Horsing Around”. See you then!

#episode 1 #here's ranma #the strange stranger from china #ranma 1/2 #ranma saotome #akane tendo #lgbtq #anime analysis #anime rewatch

17 notes · View notes

explodingcrayon · 3 years

Text

OKAY here are my Critical Thoughts about TLTTK which I still think is a really good, entertaining show and I kind of want to read the original book now... Obviously there are differences between the two as with any adaptation, but it’s a good story all the same!!

Major spoilers under the cut for the netflix series!!

Alright so my biggest issue is with the last two episodes, mainly with the last episode. Pacing was good the entire show until this last episode where they had to wrap everything up and end it. Which left it feeling like... weird? It felt “complete” but also there was so much that was left just empty?

I wish we had seen more Eviellan stuff (the place, characters from there, the actual conflict that they were suffering, etc.) but I guess I also understand why we didn’t, as Tiuri was the focus of the story? But considering the war was uhhh SIGNIFICANT to them, I wish that wasn’t glossed over as it was the more the story progressed. It kind’a makes me angry the more I think about it tbh LOL

His mom was locked up and that was a big thing in the beginning and then last 5 minutes we’re back home and everyone is being knighted and she’s just okay LMAO We don’t see her being released, reuniting with Tiuri, any moments or nods to Tiuri Sr. ... Idk, she was a tertiary character and that’s why IG

Honestly all the tertiary characters felt so empty at the end of the day LMAO The nobles in particular felt so pointless. Alianor gets caught by Viridian and then she just shows up fine in the epilogue. So like what happened to her??? Did he just knock her out or put her to the side or??? Why was she snooping anyway???? She accomplished nothing and was just sort of ~there~ the whole story. It made it seem like the alliance was going to be a bigger deal and then ended up being 100% irrelevant.

(Also with the alliance... this seemed so backwards??? Viridian, the son that was leading Unauwen’s army and fighting directly for it should have been given the throne, while Iridian was shipped off to ally with Dagonaut??? That makes way more sense??? But also seemed like it was going to be a bigger conflict than it was????? As in it didn’t matter at all????)

Likewise Iridian had no real role outside of his relationship to Alianor and his suspicions of his brother. And considering Alianor herself was p irrelevant in the plot, he could have been fine as a character without her. (And even then, his role in the story was minimal and he felt like milquetoast prince trope)

Bury Your Gays 😒

^But also like REALLY SUPER AVOIDABLE???? AND THAT JUST MAKES IT WORSE??? Tiuri survived with a stab wound for like 2 days at LEAST but Jisuppo dies 30 minutes later??? What, my boy’s not worthy of plot armor 10 minutes before the end??? Hate this shit ldksjfa

TBH I understand why they had to kill off all the coolest characters bc then it leaves Tiuri to be the protagonist, but also please stop killing the cool characters I want to see a story with them in it aaaahhh

I LOVED that we think Viridian is just a power-hungry general-prince until the last moment when we realize like. Oh. He was sent to conquer this other nation and being the one of the front lines with them, he’s pissed over how needless and cruel it is to both the Eviellans and his own soldiers. He wants to put a stop to conflict altogether, albeit in a really terrible way. He genuinely thinks he’s the hero of the story when instead he’s putting himself in the prophecy’s role of villain. That’s!! Super interesting!! He’s still not sympathetic as a villain, but I GET him. ...So it’d be nice if the epilogue had some sort of nod from the surviving King / upcoming prince Iridian that like “damn we fucked up with this whole war, maybe we should work harder to not be asshole monarchs and take care of our people + work towards peace and reparations.” Nope! Nothing of the sort.

In general it feels like there’s no real overarching closure with half the subplots? Mostly the background stuff: the nobles, the war, Lavinia’s road & mom, etc.

Where did Jabroot go???? Was he killed?? Did he get to keep hanging out?? Arrested???

The twist at the end of episode 5 is literally explained with a throwaway exposition line at the start of episode 6. Paraphrased, “So the magic works like this bc of this!” ???? I MEAN GREAT BUT COULD WE NOT GET MORE DETAIL ON THAT SINCE IT’S KIND OF A BIG DEAL??????

I LOVED the twist and HATED it. I loved it bc I genuinely did not see it coming and that is so rare tbh... But I also hated it for a lot of reasons which I will detail below:

1. It feels very like. White Savior area. The deuteragonist white character is literally the shining white light to defeat the darkness when my boy Tiuri has been RIGHT THERE,,, THE WHOLE TIME,,, DOIN’ ALL THE HARD WORK,,, Tiuri was a great MC and hero and he should’ve been the one with the magic, tbh

2a. It’s literally not explained. “So the magic is all around us, it’s not in blood!” Except the people who originated and routinely use the magic say otherwise?? So a 10 yo knows more about it than a civilization and culture that essentially founded it as tradition??? (Who, btw, are the POC versus the White country HMMM)

2b. Okay so even given that,, weirdness,, The magic is something everyone can access, you just Gotta. So you still have to answer what makes Lavinia so special??? Has she always had these powers?? Did they first manifest in the abbey (or the fog leading up to the abbey)??? Why did they manifest?? Is it just through high emotions like she said? Did her mother have magic too?? Where did this come from??

2c. Tiuri DOES have SOME connection to magic, because even as they said, he was hearing voices and such from it... So how is his magic different? How does it work? WAS his birth father a Shaman or was the audience just meant to infer/assume that? His mother seemed to know all about this stuff going on, so??????? I’m????? So many questions?????

NOW I WILL SAY... I did not read the book, or see if this is a book series or just a standalone or anything like that. So I don’t know how the story goes exactly when compared to this Netflix adaptation — how much they changed, or how much they left out. Maybe the denouement and epilogue were more informative than what they had time for in the show. But after some really great episodes leading up to the final culmination...! It kind of left me feeling, “hm :/“

So I still recommend it as a show and form your own opinion (esp if you read the book and have full context to the story)! But those are my hm >:/ gripes with it

#tlttk #txt it #these are not just 'meh i hated it' i tried to be as comprehensive as possible lol #they're mostly critiques based on pacing and the usual challenge of like #adapting a book to a limited time format for a series/movie #which is understandable

3 notes · View notes

darkpoisonouslove · 3 years

Note

So I finally finished season 6 of Once upon a time and what did I watch? The whole heckle and hyde story wasn't that good especially when they both die in just a few episodes. And regina splitting her soul was all kinds of yikes and a terrible message. Let's put every ounce of darkness I've ever felt into essentially a clone of me and hope this doesn't go south???? Especially because it kinda makes redemption seem effortless. Regina put in work sure but this felt like a shortcut to finishing it.

Season 6 is one of the worst TV seasons I have ever seen (season 7 is much better even if it is far from perfect; at least it’s interesting). The structure is just nowhere to be found, the whole shtick with the Land of Untold Stories was abandoned back in the first half of the season to never be resolved despite Operation Cobra 2.0 being an actual thing that they made a point of starting. The Savior storyline derailed into oblivion which was especially annoying because they already fucked up all their Savior lore just to stuff it in there when it was absolutely unnecessary (not to mention the disservice it did Rumple’s character). The only ones that get actual fucking arcs are Emma, Regina and Killian and even those are an actual joke. The whole thing is a fucking train wreck and it hurts to see beloved characters butchered like that. It’s bad. It is so completely and utterly bad. The plot lines that were left unfinished aside, the ones that they actually finished were absolute disaster. I have no idea what the fuck they were thinking with that season. Honestly, all it did was make everyone unlikable or at least less likable than they used to be.

Regina’s arc in season 6 is one of my biggest gripes with the show because it is so goddamn awful on a fundamental level, except I think it is in the opposite direction of what you’re saying. To me having her split into a “good half” and a “bad half” meant that parts of her have always been good and other parts have always been evil and that was how it would be into eternity. It really undermined the whole idea of “evil isn’t born, it’s made” (which is one of the pillars on which this show is built) and redemption when it basically said that the evil part of her couldn’t be redeemed and needed to be erased out of existence which - guess what! - doesn’t work in the real world so what kind of message is that? Now the fact that Jekyl and Hyde both turned out to be evil could have been used to overturn this divide of good part and bad part but instead they made it clear that with Regina the split was clean and the Queen was the bad part since all of the darkness was in her heart. And Regina sharing the dark with her was some kind of closure but to me it didn’t scream self-acceptance and awareness in the way the writers probably intended it because there are still two HALVES of her. They were never supposed to exist as two separate people since their case was much different from that of Jekyl and Hyde (who looked like different people and didn’t have each other’s memories to differ from Regina and the Queen that were basically clones sharing the same mind). The fact that they remained split was despicable to me and I just don’t know what the hell they were thinking with that.

#once upon a time #ouat #regina mills #season 6 #ask #supersonichero1

3 notes · View notes

littlepurinsesu · 4 years

Text

V Watches MagiReco - Episode 9 Review

*Spoilers for Magia Record Anime Episode 9*

I... have mixed feelings about this episode O___O While some parts were definitely well-done (like, REALLY well-done), there were some others that left me a bit underwhelmed and wanting something more?

Don’t get me wrong, by no means was it not a good episode, because it was. But I’m gonna try my hardest to pinpoint why I felt that while some parts were amazing, others really could have been done better.

The phone conversation with Iroha and AI had some top-notch imagery going on in the background. As expected of a PMMM spin-off, every single frame probably has some deep and profound symbolism if you really wanted to pause and analyse each one. There’s never a dull moment on screen; even when all that’s happening is a phone conversation, they know how to hold your attention by giving your eyes a feast with that amazingly trippy and surreal kind of art style that PMMM is known for.

I, too, was a bit disappointed that Madoka and Homura didn’t show up, and by the looks of it, they probably won’t be making their appearance during Sana’s arc at all, which makes yet another major deviation the anime has made. But it’s not that huge of a deal to me because I know they’ll appear at some other point and I’m sure they had their reasons for making this change (hopefully for something better!). I’m happy to let the new characters take the spotlight; I actually think it’s a better choice than constantly relying on the Holy Quintet to build hype and satisfy the fans, which could actually draw attention and focus away from the main plot sometimes. This is how I personally feel, at least ^^;;

That being said, although I didn’t mind Madoka and Homura not being there, I did have some issues with Iroha’s entrance into the Rumour. It just happened... way too quickly and suddenly? I expected a bit more dialogue between the characters, especially since Yachiyo’s expression and comment about jumping off the tower not killing magical girls should have been a big indicator that she knows something (wink wink). I think that might have been a good chance to foreshadow the reveal that comes with Chapter 6, and maybe add a bit more mystery to Yachiyo’s unrevealed past. But the biggest problem I had with this scene was the way Iroha jumped lol. She just... jumped. Like it was no big deal. And it was even weirder because she technically “fell” while reaching out to catch Lil’ Kyubey, but there was hardly any reaction xD She also happened to be in the middle of a sentence while talking to Yachiyo LOL clearly that “jump” wasn’t a planned or prepared one xD I just really felt like the dialogue wasn’t finished or something was cut somewhere in there? They were talking and suddenly down she goes. I know I probably sound extremely nitpicky and this is just a minor detail that doesn’t really make much difference to the story (none at all, in fact), but I just found her apathy somewhat unrealistic and strange, which broke the immersion for me during what should have been a very crucial and heart-pounding moment. Unless Iroha’s just super brave and isn’t afraid of heights at all? Maybe? xD

Anyway, back to the positive stuff! Sana’s backstory was depicted really well. Again, absolutely amazing visuals (I especially liked the use of shoes and dinosaurs). And Sana’s bond with AI was portrayed even better than in the game, in my opinion. It was the most heartwarming and bittersweet relationship, and it’s amazing to see how AI slowly changes in Sana’s company. By the way, their chess game with little puppies and kittens was adorable omg x) I’d love to write more on Sana and AI, but I don’t really have anything specific to say except that I just really, really loved how their relationship was portrayed. Definitely the best part about this week’s episode.

And now comes my biggest complaint: Alina’s debut. As one of the most popular and interesting MagiReco characters, I’m sure the entire fandom was looking forward to how the anime would go about introducing her. I don’t know if I just set my expectations too high or anything, but her entrance was extremely underwhelming for me. And a lot of the reasons were exactly the same as my dissatisfaction with Iroha’s jump: too rushed and too many missed opportunities. She just kind of appeared out of nowhere, and while I do appreciate the “shock value”, what annoyed me was the lack of of a proper “introduction” she got. AI stated her name, and Iroha questioned if she was a member of the Wings of Magius, but we didn’t get any answers. There was no explanation on who she was or what she was doing there, how she got in and what her relationship with AI was. Game players would know, of course, but I’m concerned that anime-only viewers will have no idea what’s going on and probably also have no idea that they just met one of the most important and popular characters of the franchise right now. Essentially, they’re just gonna be seeing a very flamboyant and crazy girl enter and wreck havoc but with no explanation about why she was doing what she was doing or what her connection was with the current situation and the bigger picture of the plot thus far. She just comes in and steals the spotlight, and while game players know that she definitely deserves the spotlight given who she is, anime-only viewers are probably going to be left wondering why this random green girl just came in, who the heck she is, and why everything is about her all of a sudden.

Another crucial piece of information that got lost in that very rushed and chaotic introduction was the fact that Alina actually used the word “Doppel”, which is the first time the term has been dropped in the anime. But again, no one even responded or reacted in any way (at least do the cliche thing where the protagonist repeats “Doppel?” or something LOL), but no she just keeps rambling on and yet another crucial piece of information is lost in the shuffle. What makes it possibly even more confusing is that her Doppel really doesn’t look like the Doppels we’ve seen so far; it could pass as her shooting random bits of paint-like oozy stuff instead, so I’m really struggling to see how anime-only viewers are going to make that connection and put the pieces together.

And if her entrance was underwhelming, then her “exit” was probably even worse lol. She just... disappears xD It’s quite anticlimactic considering how it looked like we were gearing up for Sana vs. Alina, and then she just suddenly gets kicked out lmao. I get that she’ll be back really soon, but it still felt way too abrupt? I think my main gripe about everything to do with Alina’s debut can be summed up in two words: too rushed. There’s so much about her character that’s interesting and vital to the story, but everything either gets glossed over really quickly or just dropped here and there with no response from the other characters. Even if they didn’t want to get into details right away, which is also fine, they could still have slowed down and built up some mystery and tension so that we’ll want to find out more about her because we’re interested and curious, and not because we have no idea what’s going on. Her appearance should have brought some answers to the questions raised throughout the story thus far, but instead she just brought more confusion and chaos lol.

But her entrance wasn’t all negative! They absolutely nailed her mannerisms. Basically everything that makes her so infamously crazy was delivered flawlessly. Her expressions, her movements, her voice, her speech, her word choice... she definitely entered with a BANG and she’s no doubt going to leave a deep impression on viewers, whether they understand her deal or not lol. The voice-acting was also top-notch, as expected of her seiyuu. Alina’s one of those characters where you really need to hear her speaking and see her moving to experience the full extent of her "charm”, and I’d say the anime definitely delivered in that respect and portrayed her uniqueness in a strong and memorable way, so props to them for that :D

^ I really wanted to use this image for this week’s review, but it’s technically Sana’s episode so I stuck with Sana xD Oh, and another thing I definitely loved about her entrance was hearing her saying so many of her lines from the game battles ^^

... Wow I just rambled and ranted for four whole paragraphs about Alina’s introduction, sheesus... Onto some other stuff now, shall we? ^^;;

One of the most interesting things to me about AI was how her appearance changes to become more and more like Sana. This is another example where the anime is able to illustrate things that the game isn’t capable of, and while I’m not sure if it’s a change or I simply missed it in the game because of the static AI sprite, I definitely liked this little detail. It not only shows how AI slowly becomes more and more human, but also highlights the fact that her form resembling Sana implies the influence that Sana has had on her. Sana is all AI has really ever known about humans and the “real” world, and all the human feelings and emotions she gains are because of Sana. It makes perfect sense that when she takes on a more human-like appearance, it’s going to resemble Sana in some respect. The little detail with the crown near the end was also really sweet ;___;

I really do think “mixed feelings” is the best way to describe my overall impression of this week’s episode xD Sana’s backstory and her relationship with AI had me in tears, but Iroha’s jump and Alina’s debut definitely had me raising my eyebrows a few times. I can overlook the Iroha part as just me being nitpicky over a trivial detail, but I really do hope that they step up their game with Alina next week. They definitely did her justice on a surface level, but in terms of her significance and relevance to the plot, not so much. She’s such an important character and her appearance marks a major plot point, so I hope we get the explanations and clarifications needed soon.

I have even higher expectations for next week, since not only is the showdown with Alina something I’ve been looking forward to for a while, but I’m also hoping that they “rectify” some of the issues this week lol. Fingers crossed that Alina gets some better writing, and they continue doing the amazing job they’ve done so far with Sana’s story! ^^

Sorry I’m so much more “negative” this week compared to how I usually am with my reviews, but I was looking forward to Alina’s appearance so much and was really sad to feel any ounce of disappointment :( Hopefully next week’s review will be back to just me fangirling throughout hehe~

#magia record #magireco #puella magi madoka magica #puella magi madoka magica side story #pmmm #fandom #mine #anime #review #magia record review #v watches magireco

35 notes · View notes

sieben9 · 6 years

Text

“white out” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

Today on Once Upon a Time: Look, I found a villain!

though "ice cream lady" might not the most threatening name; we'll see how that shakes out

So. Episode's theme? Never, ever, ever give up. Which, is one I do like to see. What it lacks in originality, it tends to make up for in "stand up and cheer" moments. This one was... OK. Nothing special, but with some nice moments, and, of course, the villain reveal, which is always a nice thing.

Oh, before we go under the cut, shoutout to @idesignedthefjords who watched this episode with me, and who explained who the hell Bo Peep is to me. Nothing breaks the flow of a story like having to google the villain, I tell you.

OK, let's get the plotline out of the way that I wasn't too thrilled about: the power outage. Don't get me wrong, Snow completely losing her shit at the griping townsfolk was hilarious, but I also don't see what the point was, except "give Snow screentime". This doesn't resolve any issue she may have had with leadership, because this is not a leadership problem. Yes, it introduces the idea of "you're the mayor, now", but there was really no other way to do that?

And it seems like such a mean-spirited thing to do, on part of the townspeople. She literally just had a child. As in "less than a week ago"--how about you find someone else to fix the damn electricity?

it did give me the baby-high-five, though, so at least there's that

The flashback seemed to be mostly there to connect the Frozen characters more tightly to the established cast, which is good if they're going to stick around. And, as these things go, Anna teaching David how to use a sword is actually not the worst thing they could have gone with. I really liked their dynamic, for one thing, and for another, it's at least slightly easier to believe than "instant natural expert" David from the season 1 backstory. Yes, he's still a natural, but he learned from someone who actually knew what she was doing.

we do not talk about the hair.

It's been a while, so I may be misremembering this, but isn't it pretty much Frozen-canon that Anna has superstrength and a slightly violent streak?

Anyway, looks like David gets to join the ranks of "characters with less than ideal parents". Sorry, still not contending for the top 3, and I disliked the implication that having an addiction is the same as weakness (line in the sand: it's not. It's an illness, and if you disagree then you can fucking fight me, thank you very much), especially since there was no counterpoint offered. Still, being raised by an addict is tough on a child, and seeing David overcome his personal doubts associated with his father's death (which also hit pretty close to the realities of modern day real life, I might add...) and discovering that he is, in fact, not a person who gives up easily was pretty satisfying to watch.

And, in addition to that, I liked how it tied back to the present day plot, which mainly consists of "Emma freezes to death in an ice cave".

while in the company of a beautiful stranger, no less. gotta say, fanfic set my expectations WAY too high for that one

Some very minor issues aside, I kind of... loved this plot? Yes, it was basically just two people talking while sitting in a freezer (that didn't even bother one of them), but these two had so much chemistry, and their shared worries about their magic, and their families, and how they see themselves made for a pretty damn compelling character study in my eyes.

I also have the faint inkling that Emma coming to terms with her magic may just be a continuing thread for this season. Don't know why. Just a feeling. Maybe it has to do with the fact that accepting yourself, even the scary parts, was such a central element of frozen and that OUaT just goddamn loves its parallels. Could be that.

And, lest you think I forgot, here's my absolute favourite part of the episode:

"I know you're in there! You can give up on yourself, but I'm not gonna give up on you. And I'm not gonna go away just because you told me to. I belong here, and I'm gonna come back every day, because this is my house, too! ...and Imiss my room."

Just... bless Henry and his great big golden heart. Yes, the "let's pull back while I deal with stuff" approach may work in some cases (sudden relapses into evilness, for example), but Regina, just because you had to deal alone with most heartbreak so far doesn't mean it's the best way to do it.

see? bet that's better already.

Some little odds and ends that didn't fit elsewhere:

Rumple sure looked awfully guilty when Anna was mentioned, didn't he? ...buddy, if you turned her into something unpleasant, we are going to have words.

best gallow’s humour goes to Emma “you only want to know more because you know if I sleep, I'll die” Swan

I get that she was/is a horrible person and very nearly ruined your life, David, but breaking into a woman's home and stealing her magic staff is still kind of a not-good thing to do. You couldn't at least

And, finally:

I don't think Belle was ready for the honeymoon to be over quite yet, huh?

#ouat #once upon a time #ouat white out #sieben watches ouat #sieben talks #did i fall asleep while writing this?#well there's absolutely no way for you to prove it #so let's say i went to bed on purpose #::cough::

56 notes · View notes

kihocrystal · 6 years

Text

Spring 2018 - Final Impressions

Sorry this post is so late (again)! I had a *really* busy July, which really didn’t help at all. But anyway, here’s my thoughts on the shows that I finished this past season! All but one are sequels, though (and the one non-sequel was a carryover from last season)... Don’t worry, I’ll watch stuff like Megalobox and Hinamatsuri eventually! :’D

All “reviews” are listed in alphabetical order!

Amanchu! Advance - 8.0 / 10 (B-)

I liked season 2 as a whole! (Except for one episode / thing…)

QUEERBAITING SUCKS

I dunno if this is the fault of the anime or the source material…

…but this is still the most blatant example I’ve ever watched >_>

episode 11 didn’t need to happen!!! Why couldn’t Kokoro just… be a girl

or y’know, just let Pikari and Teko continue to “love” each other as they have! OTL

maybe why it annoyed me so much is that it’s like… a total bait & switch that went on for 2 SEASONS

to be fair, the reveal kinda went over my head? But when r/anime pointed it out, that’s when the salt began :/

yet the finale still has them blushing over reading thank you notes? It’s like this show wants its cake & eat it too

at the end of the day, the Kokoro stuff just… got in the way of Teko & Pikari’s interactions, platonic or not >_>

Also I’m one of the few people who actually liked the Peter arc

and it gave Ai some spotlight time!!!

it’s nice to have a little story arc to change things up (as opposed to an episodic structure)

(though I understand why many didn’t care for it… it leans a lot more towards supernatural than usual)

IMO they at least gave precedent w/ that one lucid dreaming episode w/ Teko, though

AND THERE’S ACTUAL SCUBA DIVING THIS TIME \o/

the underwater moments can be very magical… definitely the visual highlight

And the cast of characters is still enjoyable to watch too~ (def. a good group dynamic there)

Kokoro is considered a polarizing character for sure

I didn’t mind him that much until, y’know… his gender reveal led to the queer-baiting thing >_>

The finale was really nice though! It had pretty diving scenes and had cute Teko & Pikari moments~

In any case, this is still a very relaxing and heartwarming anime~

It has all the things I enjoyed about S1 here; it’s just the things added on top were a mixed-bag

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card - 8.0 / 10 (B)

EVERYONE IN THIS SHOW IS BEING VAGUE AS SHIT

But at least the mystery is interesting!

It’s just too bad it took like… 20 episodes to start getting any kind of explanation :’)

I actually watched the original series through a r/anime rewatch at the end of last year!

(meaning there wasn’t much time for me going from that series to this sequel)

I enjoyed the callbacks to the original series as well!

(including going from *anime* canon! i.e. the 2nd movie actually being canon)

The visuals look nice! Even though it almost looks a bit… *too* rounded in comparison to the original

I enjoyed watching Sakura capture all the new cards in different ways~

Even though this season was VERY light on plot (mostly), this aspect provided the action~

Also I enjoyed watching the character interactions too ^^

But yeah… the lack of overarching plot development and VAGUENESS kinda holds this season back

that being said, the final episodes set up some potentially interesting developments to come

and the finale itself *definitely* was not a conclusive one, so S2 better be confirmed soon!

Overall, I still enjoyed this continuation for the things it did right! I’ll be looking forward to a S2~

Darling in the FranXX - 8.0 / 10 (B)

Well this is/was a… polarizing show, to say the least.

I enjoyed it overall, but certain things about it hold it back from a higher score for me.

There’s two main elephants in the room with this series, really

#1 is… the heteronormativity

this was basically from the get-go, and in the roots of the story / themes itself

since the themes revolve around male/female partnerships & the importance of that… Yeah

one of the core quotes being “a female and a male aren’t complete w/o the other” …Yeah, again

also the sex-like positions of the “stamen” and “pistil” while piloting also doesn’t help

the workings of this world’s society has hetero relationships as the standard and doesn’t really allow for other options

(i.e. the FranXX piloting, Ikuno’s female attraction not working out in both operating the mech & her feelings for Ichigo, etc.)

at least Ikuno and Ichigo got a scene to talk about their attraction feelings & make up somewhat ^^

plus the Nines are basically gender non-binary but are seen as antagonistic forces for most of the show… Yeah

and just basic hetero things (like sex & pregnancy) were like being attacked in this show (when it’s not in real life???)

there’s an image meme that’s like “no, Prime Minister Abe… this will not get people to have babies” (…agreed :’D)

sure, there are *many* ways you can interpret this show, but the fact that so many people have seen it as such is Not Good

#2 is… the show supposedly “jumping the shark” towards the end

the main culprit of this (for many people) seems to be the “suddenly aliens!” reveal in episode ~20

this didn’t really impact my enjoyment of the show at all, but I definitely understand why people would be disappointed

in a way, it does kinda shift the story away from the themes it was using prior to this…

perhaps the lack of foreshadowing was another reason the shift in plot didn’t go well

plus it tends to directly riff off of certain visual cues from other mecha (like Eva & Gurren Lagaan)

Those two main gripes aside, the directing & visuals in this show were what kept me interested throughout

music choices, visual choices, etc. just really made certain moments better than they probably should’ve been

I enjoyed the characters as a group as well (even if most of them individually weren’t anything to write home about)

Goro’s a good bro, Ichigo went through good development, Kokoro & Mitsuru developed as a good pair…

Futoshi ended up being kind of a fat joke to the end though (& it was interesting that him & Kokoro didn’t end up together)

of course, Zero Two is the one everyone loved (& I liked her & Hiro’s dynamic as well)

sure, some people felt like she had “no personality” after she realized the truth about Hiro, but I didn’t mind the change

Plus I like that this show had a… pretty good ending, actually! (All things considered)

Directing as always was on point, and we got to see everyone’s lives over time (& Hiro + Zero Two eventually re-uniting as kids)

I just wish the main group got to see the two of them again :’)

though I do wish VIRM actually got full-on destroyed instead of a “we might come back” ending :/

and the ending was also kinda like “oh yeah, all the Children sent away didn’t actually die!” ???

This show will likely have a legacy not unlike Guilty Crown going forward, but I thought it ended better than that show, for the record

But yeah, this show is far from perfect and has questionable themes. But I still enjoyed it over all for the things it did well~’

Nanatsu no Taizai S2 - 8.0 / 10 (B-)

Unfortunately, not as good as S1 (but I still enjoyed this season overall)

S1 felt like its own self-contained story, but this season is clearly a “Part 1” for things to come

I wish Diana had more to do this season… she lost her memory early on and STILL doesn’t have it back

she was out of the main conflict (& separated from the group) for most of it :/

she also had these WEIRD ANGLES & POSES all the time… the fan service w/ her was *Really* distracting

the only consolation is that we got to learn some backstory for her & meet her fellow giants

oh well, at least she’s met up with King again and is enjoying his company by the end :)

The Gowther twist is interesting, but the way they revealed it was kinda… underwhelming

plus that *also* hasn’t been resolved yet (like many other things this season)

Some good moments this season were centered around Ban

such as his relationship w/ Jericho, time w/ a resurrected Elaine, and the small arc w/ his foster dad :’)

Also the final Sin got introduced w/ Escanor! PRAISE THE SUN

he’s a fun character; skittish by night and INVINCIBLE by day

The addition of power levels was kinda weird

it wasn’t necessary in S1, so why add it now???

The training arc gave us a full flashback to Melodias’ past w/ losing Liza, which was nice (and sad ;~; )

plus the vs. 10 Commandments fight actually showed Melodias full-on dying? That doesn’t happen much

it was a brutal death too! Hard to watch ;~;

plus they even changed the OP animation to reflect that he died… now that’s commitment

of course he came back later on, but there’s a catch… (since he loses some emotions every time)

There were some good fights, mostly during the “tournament” arc

(especially Melodias vs. all commandments… a sakuga highlight for sure)

The finale had a good stopping point, but it definitely makes clear that the story’s not over

so yeah, unlike season 1, this season *needs* a season 3 to be worth the watch

So yeah, there were some good moments & fights this season, but as a whole, it’s weaker than S1

Shokugeki no Souma S3 (Part 2) - 8.5 / 10 (B+)

I enjoyed this season! Continuing on the darker tone that the first half of S3 set up

This plot line of Central taking over the school is still my favorite plot point thus far, tbh

in other words, shit is finally going down!

…even if many of Central are just mustache-twirling villains :’D

Erina’s gotten great development from this arc too…! She’s not just a typical stuck-up tsundere anymore

her backstory is definitely a harsh one. It was great seeing her gain the courage to stick up to dad!

We also learned more about Souma’s dad! :O

Especially about how he was seen as feared, and the pressure of success got to him :’(

along with how this backstory tied into Asami’s motivations as well

Most of the season was kinda a gauntlet of opponents for the “resistance” to face off against

seeing Akira turn evil (for a bit) was interesting, but it’s a good thing he turned good again~

we oddly haven’t seen a lot of the Elite Ten in cooking action yet???

The final part of the season started off the big Team Shokugeki! …but it only got through the first round

the stakes are definitely high for this one, and also seems like the big conflict of this arc for sure

it’s just, y’know… the season ending in the middle is not a good look, really

at least the ending wasn’t abrupt; it was open-ended but still had a sense of conclusion

All in all, a good second half of season 3 (with some of my favorite plot content thus far!). Keep it up!

#amanchu #amanchu!#amanchu advance #cardcaptor sakura #cardcaptor sakura clear card #darling in the franxx #nanatsu no taizai #the seven deadly sins #shokugeki no soma #food wars #Final Impressions

3 notes · View notes

a-halfblood-named-coin · 4 years

Text

With Korra coming to Netflix, there’s been this whole WAVE of “no more korra hate!” And I’m gonna be honest here, I do, I do hate the legend of korra. Not because it’s more sexual or because Korras a headstrong women but I feel like they tried to be so different from ATLA, more mature and realistic that it lost a lot of the charm. It has other charms but I just don’t like them as much. So to prove I don’t hate the show without reason here are 3 things I liked in concept that they handled poorly in my opinion.

1. Korra herself

Having a headstrong, egotistical, women waterbender with lots of muscles and bravado was AN AMAZING choice to constrast from Aangs pacifist, peaceful and calmer mindset. I loved that part of Korra. But my problem is in her character development, or how I don’t think the writers remember what development means, development =\= pain porn. A lot of Korras ‘development’ was her getting beat to a pulp, having her bending removed, being wheelchair bound, etc. and by the end of the show she becomes more wary and scared of everything around her. Instead of what I personally wanted, which was for her to be underestimating the effort and work it takes to be a good avatar, get knocked down a few pegs by Tenzin or someone and come back stronger and more grounded. Still cocky but now she has the power AND understanding to back up her claims. I never wanted her to lose her ego entirely, or to fall so far she never comes back the same. Speaking of avatar stuff...

2. The removal of an avatars journey

This one is hard, because I understand why they did this but also removing it took a lot away from what made avatar so good. I think they removed the journey as to not just repeat the structure of the OG show, they didn’t want to seem like it was just Ctrl+ v with a new lead. But a big part of ATLA’s charm came from the world building , expescially since it drew so much from different parts of Asia and other groups, making a fantasy world with that backing and exploring it was SO cool. In Korra most of the show is set in Republic city, they leave a couple times to visit the various bending nations but they always go back to that damn city. I don’t hate the idea of modernizing bending, I wouldn’t place a show there but the thoughts are cool. Stuff like electric benders being 9-5 workers is funny and pro bending is an interesting thought but I think the overall setting is...tired. I have read/seen so many pieces of media set in either 1920s America or INSPIRED by 1920s America it isn’t even funny. It was an aesthetic time that’s for sure but I have seen it before and I’ll see it another million times. I don’t know why they would take a fairly unique setting and make a mainstream, Americanized version of it that is arguably more boring and less compelling. But this point is supposed to be about the avatar journey I hear you say and yourre right. The lack of a journey adds to the boredom, in ATLA they could continually have new locations and new people to keep the interest of that episode because they were almost always on the move. In Korra everything comes back to republic city, I got bored of looking at those city streets after the first season! Plus I think Korra as a character could have really benefited from a journey of her own, less focused on bending and more on connecting with the people she’s supposed to protect. In my dream version of this show, Korra gets knocked down but tenzin or smth and as a last ditch effort he sends her on a shorter version of the avatars journey to help her connect with the people and the spiritual realm. She could bring her merry band of idiots (except you bolin) and they could bond over their travels, learn about each other and actually have some meaningful conversations outside the parameters of the weird love thing they all have going on. We could see an updated but familiar world space, run into some familiar places and get into plenty of trouble and Korra could really bond with her people. Learn that understanding and listening are important skills for the avatar to have just as much as bending all four elements. It could all culminate in a trip to an air temple, she could speak her piece in a cool but honest rant about herself and her life and maybe as she leaves the wind could pick up and it would just...click. She would get her air bending in a hopefully more satisfying way than what was shown in the show,speaking of...

3.Changing up the bending/AS . Listen the way the treat bending in Korra is so fucking weird. 1st of all I cannot come up with any reason why a 5 year old Korra would be able to bend 3/4 elements. The thing about bending is that it is a lot harder than some of the characters make it seem (because they are all using their skills at an extremely high level) part of bending is innate skill, that’s true but you would be awful at it if you only relied on instinct. Take Katara from season 1 of ATLA, she can bend of course but it’s shaky and poorly balanced, she can’t do it for long and can barely move any water. This is because she has never been properly taught, once she gets some teaching she becomes one of the best waterbenders in existence, it took training to get her there. So I could buy (kind of) baby Korra bending them innatly when she is found by the white lotus, but a 5 year old who has only ever interacted with water benders should be bending all the elements as if they were water. Bending is all very different, each form is based on a different form of martial arts. The styles are different and require different points of concentration and movements to execute properly. Our little tyke is seemingly doing actually fire/earth moves...now where the hell did she learn those?? Anyway continuing into probably my biggest gripe with Korra is the treatment of Air bending. I like the fact that it is emphasized how much of air bending is about spirituality, more so than other bending forms. I like the struggle there for Korra. But I feel like she never actually listens to Tenzin, never admits he is right and takes on his teachings properly. She ignores his advice and fucks of during training (which is very Korra behavior) but there is never a point when she has to listen to him. She gets all her bending taken in another form of pain porn and when she gets it back, instead of having her realize how much her bending means to her and finally fucking listening to Tenzin and learning air bending the real way, she just goes into the avatar state (which is the least satisfying version of that display) and just...has airbending. And now for my last point, wtf was up with the avatar state?? In ATLA the AS was a dangerous state to be in for Aang and everyone around him, it caused him to lose control, kick ass yes, but lose his sense of self and him struggling with those complicated feelings about his biggest trump card was amazing. Korra however uses hers to beat children in racing games...I am not joking. They toned down its abilities so that Korra could use it more often but not beat the crap out of everyone... you could have just not had her use it for stupid reasons and kept it a power level at 3000?? Like why? Why does the fucking avatar need to have weakened avatar state so she can use it more often, should she be powerful enough on her own?? Maybe it could be harder for her to activate (because Korra does seem like the type to use it too often) maybe she has to talk to her past lives to figure out why she’s having such a hard time using it and it’s revealed that Aang in specific locked it away because she couldn’t be trusted. It could be a whole thing!! But no she just uses for stupid shit and never learns...

So that’s the end of my rant, 3 things I could get behind in theory that, in my opinion, they handled pretty horribly. If you like Korra, that’s great! Tbh I’m kinda jealous, I wish I could enjoy it more because I love ATLA it was a huge part of my childhood and I’d love to have more of that world. I have so many other feelings on Korra if anyone cares. Like the romance fucking with the show, the half assed rep, explaining the magic, side characters being wet paper towels with 1 character trait or Bolin being highkey romantically abused and no one caring but that’s for a different extremely long tumblr post.

0 notes

thatkrazymann · 4 years

Text

Throw a Watching to your Witcher.

So it has come to pass, another Netflix Drama series: The Witcher. For those unfamiliar, this new venture comes courtesy of one Andrzej Sapkowski, a polish writer best known for (drum roll please…) The Witcher series! The Witcher is a kind of dark fantasy series, like Lord of the Rings if it caught a venereal disease from a prostitute and also had an old, nagging injury from some old battle, like say, an arrow to the knee? The Witcher follows the adventures, or misadventures, of one Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher, as he travels the lands seeking to just live his life and do what he can to survive. If you are unfamiliar, a Witcher is a monster hunter, not a witch hunter, who has extraordinary abilities that have been granted to them via a forced mutation, they’ve basically been created to be roam the lands and kill various monstrosities for coin. But let’s get to the point, is Netflix’s The Witcher any good? I have played one of the games, read the books, seen the show(which apparently not all reviewers could be bothered to do but hey, why bother to fully work on something you’re paid for right?!) and after consuming all that media, I can’t say I’m totally a fan, but I can say that the show does indeed make for an entertaining watch for newcomers, and it’s at least better than season 8 of Game of Thrones so there’s a win right there.

As I have said, I’m not a devoted fan of The Witcher, I played the Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, I couldn’t really play the others because I don’t have a PC. I was interested in reading the books after playing the game and found them intriguing and a nice change of place. But with both the game and the books, I found myself really searching for a starting point which didn’t really exist. The show does actually have a much stronger jumping off point, giving the viewer a good baseline for the series to continuously build around. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have some issues and problems, especially to a newcomer I’m sure. There were plenty of times where I took a trip to the wiki page for clarification or to just understand what some character had said that everyone seemed to think was important, and there are still things that I’m not sure the significance of. The Witcher does succeed at doing some pretty good world building, the monsters and magic system are especially well thought out, though a little hard to grasp. But you can really see that care has gone into this series, the team behind the camera, and indeed the team in front of the camera, really do care about this world and the story that is being told, which is rare for a Netflix series I feel.

*Spoiler town ahead so if you want to know what I feel overall, jump to the end!*

If we want to talk gripes, I have a few but let’s start positive first, this is a rich story! There are so many things going on and multiple layers (like an onion) and the show really doesn’t stumble over itself too badly. A few things that did trip me up was the beginning of Yennefer’s story, why she sucked and then didn’t suck with magic, the girls who turned into eels for what feels like a test, etc. There were some minor quibbles but as the story progressed the true depth of each of the characters shone though. Now, acting wise, I didn’t think I would like Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, I can’t really tell you why, I guess because I just couldn’t see his face as a Geralt but he has a strong opening performance that only gets better the more we see him. Henry is obviously the actor that has read the books beforehand and absolutely loves them, and that pays dividends. I’m not sure if he did all his own fight choreography but man, it looks like he did and during those moments his love for the character shines through in the most minute of details. While I don’t see the same love for their characters as I do from Henry, Anya Chalotra’s portrayal of Yenefer is amazing. The fact that she manages to play Yenefer with a literal crookedness about her before casting that aside shows just how great she is. Anya does a great job owning many of her scenes but I feel like the character kind of stopped getting understandable character development after she met Geralt and her actions become increasingly more contrived. The side actors are all pretty decent, some kind of phone it in, knowing they’re in a fantasy setting where they can say “fuck” repeatedly and not have it seem out of place, while some play to their strengths and deliver really good nuanced performances, although the Ciri storyline has got to be up there for most useless storyline around. Hardly anything answered and really not much gained besides having her occasionally see that everyone sucks in the “real” world.

A weird but for me, ultimately pretty charming aspect of the series that may or may not be a deal breaker for you is the fact that the whole series is told a little out of order. It’s not as tricky to follow as Westworld, but it does make you do some work, and you know what? That’s fine! Working to discover something is kind of a nice feeling, especially when your guesses come true, even halfway so. It doesn’t block everything off behind this grand, final reveal , it just feels a little odd to be seeing events and have characters refer to passages of time in large blocks. The Witcher also succeeds in this by making sure that if you didn’t pick up on some or all of the hints, you don’t feel like a dummy, something which Westworld had no shame beating into me. I certainly think it could’ve been a little more complex with its narrative structure and I know a large group of reviewers and viewers will moan about how it’s unnecessary and that they just want to watch something and turn their mind off and enjoy but you know what? Art isn’t an anesthetic, it’s not supposed to lull you in and put you asleep, it’s supposed to tell something that gets your brain jogging, and while this isn’t a jog, it is a brisk pace for the brain.

Now, time for some proper looking at what may not in fact be too great with The Witcher series and there are certainly a couple things. As I previously said, the Ciri storyline feels very superfluous to me. We don’t learn much beyond the fact that she’s some kind of kid who harbours ancient, primal, magic, which sounds cool until you realize that there’s no payoff for that. Shit never goes down. Sure, Ciri screams and trees blow down, stuff happens but it doesn’t affect the world, I don’t care about that as much as I feel like I should. The Ciri storyline I feel could’ve been saved for the opener of the next season, to show and fill us in on what happened to her between the beginning and end of the first season, then you can throw away as many characters as you want. Dragging her story out without any payoff feels incredibly lacklustre. Another problems is in fact something that I did touch on as saying it was good, the side characters. While the acting involved is good for the most part, I don’t find myself caring about any of them Sure, a couple of them are good and memorable, but on the whole? They all feel like they don’t serve a grander purpose. Whenever characters reappear, they still haven’t changed much and it feels like using them to hide little bits into the hidden narrative layer would’ve been the way to go. The exception to this is Jaskier, who is always brilliant but also helps to give us, the viewer, a character we can relate with who actually does things in this world that change and affect others. It’s disappointing that even my favourite side characters for their amazing acting, like Stregobor, Tissaia, Mousesack, and Calanthe, never really bring something into the fold that I feel gives weight to the narrative, which brings us to my final complaint. The story feels a little dry and meandering, and while that can be acceptable for some episodes and others do help give a better view of the narrative, the episodes toward the end just really bumble about. Geralt hunting monsters or interacting with royalty is interesting and telling, watching Geralt have some kind of fever dream not so much, even if the fever dream is very emotional. Same with Yenefer, when she’s learning magic and fighting off assassin’s and interacting with Geralt? A+, good going, conversely, whining about wanting a choice that SHE made and saying she wants to take it back because she was forced to make it? Not so much. Worse than that, she goes on to protect what she wants to burn down for really no reason that I can gather. Things are interesting but also tedious with her and the world she inhabits.

So, at the end of all this, what are my feelings on the show? Should you watch it? YES! Absolutely. There’re only a couple things issues and they’re all pretty minor in comparison to other shows. The writing and pacing is a little sporadic and while the acting on the whole is good, with the except that some of the minor actors phone it in so they can say “fuck” in the same sentence as saying “the elves” or “butcher of Blaviken”, then you’ll be fine. Sure, a lot of those characters have weird motives or no motives and people bitch and complain about things that I really don’t think is relevant but that’s fine. My two biggest gripes are with a lot of the characters just being absolutely unlikable for the sake nothing or something I don’t understand, even after delving into the wiki, and the Ciri plot which could’ve been touched upon in the season 2 premier and it would’ve had more weight. The acting is fairly rock solid with notable love going out for Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra, Joey Batey, and Anna Shaffer. The fight choreography is some of the best I’ve seen and I really hope some kind of behind the scenes look at that is shown. So, all-in-all, I’d say a 7/10 to 7.5/10, and since a lot of people will generally think that’s bad, I’ll add this: I’m definitely gonna rewatch The Witcher, probably 2 more times (despite the “Netflix drama time commitment”) and I don’t think I’ll be bored or won’t enjoy myself! Give it a watch and let me know what you think!

#the witcher #henry cavill #review #netflix #geralt of rivia

0 notes

twilidramon · 7 years

Text

My JoJo (anime) Thoughts

So I got caught up on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and finished the Part 4 anime last night, and I just felt like writing down some of my thoughts. I’ve never read the manga so this is purely about the anime. There will be spoilers but I’ll make it as brief as I can!

tl;dr - I liked the series and can’t wait for Part 5, I am now in JoJo Hell

-----

Subbing / Censorship

I just wanted to put a quick, tiny note of this. Obviously with a series like JoJo, where characters are named after pop culture icons/songs, there’s gonna be some censoring of their names. Thankfully, most of these instances were spoiled for me due to the Best Friends’ Eyes of Heaven playthrough, in which they just spew spoilers for all Parts from their mouths like crazy. I don’t really care about spoilers so this wasn’t an issue for me, and it actually helped. My ears were able to pick up on the characters’ real names that weren’t spoiled for me (because I was expecting it) so I was able to autofill them in.

Some of the censored violence bothered me to a degree - it was annoying seeing those black bars everywhere; but most especially in scenes containing nude little boys running around with impunity with no censorship to be seen. Like, what?

Part 1, Phantom Blood | Part 2, Battle Tendency

Just gonna lump these two together, since they’re pretty much lumped together on Crunchyroll, and I don’t have too much to say on them.

Phantom Blood was a great introduction to the series, illustrating the conflict between Dio and the Joestars which would last a lifetime. The characters were... good: watching Speedwagon narrate and freak out to Literally Everything was hilarious and Zeppeli was fun, but Johnathan felt flat and very Typical Protagonist - there wasn’t much else that seemingly piqued his interest in the show other than Honor, Erina, and Killing Dio, aside from his majoring in archaeology which barely came up except for the Mask. The fight scenes were gory and great and the show did a good job at showing how frightening of a creature Dio was and became.

Battle Tendency was fun and full of humor, and I really like young Joseph Joestar. The characters were much better this time around imo and the dynamic between Joseph and Caesar was Good Stuff. Also each time Joseph said oh no it gave me a year of my life. Lisa Lisa was badass but I wish we’d gotten to see her actually fight Kars or the other Pillar Men, who were great villains as sort of stand ins for Dio. The final battle felt perilous and exciting, and Caesar’s death (though entirely preventable, because come on Caesar think for two seconds) was heart-tugging. Especially Joseph finding out. I didn’t cry, but that hurt.

I liked both these parts, but I liked Battle Tendency more. I might give Phantom Blood a re-watch, since my boyfriend joined me mid-BT and never saw that Part. We’ll see.

My boyfriend’s favorite joke by the way: “How did Joseph lose his arm? In a Kars accident.”

Part 3, Stardust Crusaders

Okay, so, there’s a bit to say about Stardust Crusaders.

Firstly, the negatives - characterization kind of takes a backseat on Jotaro and Kakyoin, and Avdol for pretty much the entire show. Avdol probably gets this less due to his importance to Iggy, Polnareff, and Old Joseph. But Jotaro being the main character... he doesn’t get much. Which sucks - because Stardust Crusaders ends up feeling more like its about Polnareff than a JoJo at all, until the end that is. Also the villains are more one-note and flavor-of-the-week because there are so many villains. They have to be in and out in the span of an episode or two (or three, in rare cases) because there’s a whole Tarot deck and Egyptian pantheon to get through in the span of ~40 episodes.

This is also the Part where the censoring of both names and gore/violence begins to stack up heavily. Jotaro’s smoking is censored for heck’s sake (just the part where his lips and the cigarette meet, not the whole cigarette) and there’s a scene where Polnareff is being eaten by the clay dolls of his sister and Avdol that is just. Really bad. But baby Polnareff can run around with his bepis hanging out so...????? I don’t know.

But I liked Stardust Crusaders - it’s a really fun globetrotting adventure story of this group of dudes just trying to reach DIO, and a lot of my gripes are tiny in comparison to that. Jotaro doesn’t feel like a main character because he doesn’t get a lot (Kakyoin gets far less, lbr) but when Jotaro does get something, holy shit is he a badass! He can do things!! He’s smart and crafty and kind of an asshole, and he really cares about his grandfather and his mother even though he takes any chance he can get to badmouth them. And his fight with DIO at the end? No other character could have done that - that fight was made for Jotaro and DIO. Literally.

The Stands were interesting to me, because there’s just so much that can be done with them. Every Stand is unique (except Star Platinum and The World, hueh hueh plot stuff) and it felt like a natural transition from Hamon - which returns in this! Old Joseph still uses Hamon, and in conjunction with Hermit Purple at times! The introduction of Stands make for an odd thought when you realize that Joseph had Hermit Purple even in Battle Tendency but, whatever, things get retconned all the time. I’m sure its fine.

Like I said, my gripes on Stardust Crusaders are small and have a lot to do with how the story is structured as a whole. JoJo hasn’t really dealt with this many main characters yet and of course some are going to get shelved, which is why...

Part 4, Diamond is Unbreakable

... Which is why I like Part 4 so much. The animation style has changed to a much smoother look, which helps a lot and the color palettes are weird and crazy and it works. DIO is dead (for good this time, right guys??) and the story focuses on a more compact narrative, in the town of Morioh, the people in it, and how a great big mystery can go unnoticed in a small community if you’re not looking for it.

Our heroes this time are Josuke and his group of friends, which slowly grows as the story goes on. Mainly, it focuses on Josuke, Koichi, Rohan, and Okuyasu (who gets the backseat too much, honestly) - but there are plenty of side characters like Yukako and Jotaro - yes, Jotaro is a side character in this and he’s better for it imo - to use now and then.

The story first focuses on the discovery of the Stand Arrows, and how they give people pierced by them Stands. Josuke and his small crew chase down Red Hot Chili Pepper throughout the town and deal with the Stand users that Okuyasu’s brother created with the Arrow - which sounds a lot like Part 3, right? Well yeah, it does - but there’s something else to it that I really liked. It wasn’t always the main focus of the story to fight the Stand users. There are joke episodes! Episodes where Stand users aren’t even bad guys (Shigechi and Tonio)! And these characters come back - Rohan is one of them, and he’s important in the second half of the Part.

So they defeat Red Hot Chili Pepper and his user and on to part two of DiU - Kira. And boy, is Kira a doozy. His Stand power is a foil to Josuke’s - destruction versus restoration - and he’s just. Good. A really, really good villain. He’s smart and deceptive and Not At All There and he’s good at what he’s doing - and its only when Rohan and Koichi meet Reimi, a ghostly girl killed by Kira and Rohan’s childhood friend, that they even know something is wrong in Morioh in the first place.

So they chase Kira, and they find him after the death of a friend makes the group emboldened. Kira gets away, but the hunt is on. Everyone is looking for signs of Kira, and he gets cornered again, which leads to even more shit. There are more Stand users but this time they’re more disposable, as they’re assassins more than just people hit by circumstance. The final fight of Crazy Diamond versus Killer Queen was great and the Bites the Dust episodes were heart-wrenching to me.

There’s just a lot that I liked about DiU and I could talk for a while, lol. But I won’t, this is long enough as it is.

#twilight ramblings #jojo's bizarre adventure #good lord look at me just dump this shit out #long post #spoilers #im sorry mobile users #just felt like rambling about jojo since its been a while since ive liked a show #PART 5 WHEN

3 notes · View notes

duhragonball · 3 years

Note

Jumping onto the anime split another anon asked about earlier, I have seen some purists and elitists hate the split because they hate that some fans like the Kikuchi Soundtrack for DB but prefer a different soundtrack for DBZ. Never mind that these same purists and elitists didn’t complain about DBZ Kai using a different soundtrack (at least before the “Yamamoto Scandal” lead to the Kikuchi Soundtrack being reinserted in the Saiyan to Cell Sagas).

Good point, Anon. Kai just isn't on my radar, tbh, because it came out in 2009, long after I had already experienced the episodes that Kai was re-editing. I'm aware of Kai having a different score, and I've even enjoyed listening to it on YouTube, but I keep forgetting that there's a whole other cut of DBZ with a different score.

But a lot of younger fans got started on Kai, because it was available on cable TV and in video stores, and so on. So it shouldn't surprise me that there's a schism between "Kai loyalists" and "Z traditionalists."

What does surprise me, is that there's a schism over the BGM for Dragon Ball and DBZ, because Shunsuke Kikuchi did both. I'm assuming this is less about the composer and more about "We had a perfectly good set of songs, and they just ditched it all in favor of this awful new stuff."

I find that humorous, because one of the major bones of contention about the Funimation dub was the Bruce Faulconer score. "Oh, the Faulconer score ruined everything!" they would cry, except half of them probably thought the original score had already ruined everything.

What amazes me is that, in this day and age, you can pretty much watch this stuff any way you please now. I have my Orange Brick sets, and I can watch subs or dubs at will, and I can also watch the dub with the original Japanese score. It's letterboxed, but if I cared enough, I could buy the un-letterboxed editions somewhere. If I liked the Kai version better, I could buy that. If I hated Kai, the Orange Bricks are still available for purchase. If I hated all of the anime productions, I could just buy the manga.

But there are still people who complain! I think this is why we've seen an uptick in fans kvetching about aspect ratios and "faithful" remasterings. In the 90's, subs vs. dubs made some sense, because in the days of VHS you didn't always get a choice, and when you did, the subs were on one tape and the dubs were on the other, and most people couldn't afford to buy both. So I can see how there would be some tribalism over that. But now you can get just about any version you want if you want it badly enough. I think that's why the "purists" gripe about things that aren't likely to ever change. If they get what they want, they'll just move the goalpost, because complaining is all they ever really wanted.

What frustrates me is that so much of this is just gatekeeping and tribalist bullshit. I'm about to go on an old man rant, so maybe I should put a cut here.

Okay, so about me: I'm 44, so I'm old enough to remember the 90's, but I didn't get into anime until about 1999, when I was 22. Before that, I remember in college when I'd go down to the dorm basement to watch TV, and sometimes there'd be a group of people setting up a VCR to play some anime tape they had. It was a whole communal experience back then. Anime was expensive, and you probably needed a circle of friends to share tapes like that. But I can't really speak on that experience because that wasn't my scene. I'd just come down the stairs, see those guys setting up, and I'd give up on any aspirations of watching "Star Trek" that night.

When I got into anime, it was because of "Toonami" on Cartoon Network. Toonami played it smart, because they ran a lot of American cartoons from the 60's, 70's and 80's, and they would sprinkle a little anime in there too. For me, it was like sneaking cat medicine into a piece of salami to get me to eat it. And they lowered the cost-of-entry. All I had to do was turn on the TV in the middle of the afternoon.

By 2001, I was writing Tenchi Muyo! fanfic, and I saw all these older guys pissing and moaning about the dubs, and Cartoon Network censorship, and this-that-and-the-other. They were mostly complaining about kids and teenager who got into their fandoms through Toonami, but they were also talking about me, a 24-year-old man with a job who understood that Cartoon Network can't show naked titties on TV. Of course they painted swimsuits on everyone in the onsenscene. What the fuck else could they do? Why was there an onsen scene in the first place?

But it was easier for them to cast the new influx of fans as idiot children who hadn't even seen the """real""" version of Tenchi and DBZ, with actual swearing and sexual harassment and so on. One time I bought a Tenchi manga collection at a comic book store, and the guy just assumed I was just as anti-Cartoon Network as he was, because I looked old enough to be on the "right" side. I didn't want to bother telling him that CN was the only reason I was buying the thing.

Over time, I realized that this was more of a cultural thing than anything else. The established fans had to go out of their way to get into these shows--watching bootleg fansubs or buying tapes through mail order-- but the new fans were just channel surfing one day and got hooked on a safe-for-TV edit. The older fans would complain about the edits, the dubs, the music, but those were never the problem. The problem was just that these new fans didn't share the experiences of the old fans. They were watching the same show, but they didn't watch it the same way, which meant they were now bad somehow, or incomplete.

After so many years, I had hoped that the schism would die down. Dubbed DBZ had become a fait accompli, and nobody was interested in spelling "Vegeta" with a "B", and Toonami airs at midnight now, because it's a nostalgia show for kids who grew up with it in the 2000's. But there's still new things happening, and new fans who want to create division. When all those video games came out in the 2000's, I remember seeing GameFaqs dolts arguing over whether the game would run better on XBox or Playstation. So I guess it shouldn't be much of a shock that Dragon Ball Kai is a line in the sand for some people. There's probably some 30-year-old who thinks the only right way to watch Z is to watch Toonami like he did when he was ten.

But the arguments over the Japanese BGM only proves that there's no finish line for this sort of thing. Well, I guess one day, enough people from my generation will have died off, and later generations will just accept that there's multiple BGMs, because Dragon Ball's been around for so long. But by that time, some other division will come along.

And I'm not saying people can't have differences of opinion on things. I think Dragon Ball GT fucking sucks, but I know a lot of people love it (for some reason) and I try to respect that. Some people love Super, others hate the entire thing, and I'm kind of in the middle, because I despise parts of it and love other parts of it. There's room for nuance, is what I'm saying.

But a lot of the cranks I've seen, they aren't interested in nuance. They just want to make blanket statements. "Everything after Episode X is garbage, and if you like it, then you're garbage too." "If you experienced X this specific way, then you're a true fan, but otherwise your experience doesn't count." Just stuff like that.

I think a lot of that is based on this inability to see beyone one's own self. Like, okay, I don't like GT very much, so it would be very tempting to just assume that no one likes it, or that no one can like it. And that mindset--that GT is objectively bad-- would lead me to think that anyone who claims to enjoy it is being dishonest or trolling. That mentality is toxic. I'd go around treating GT-likers as if they were despicable enemies, and encourage others to do the same.

And I think that's where this DB vs Z thing got started, to circle back to the original topic. I can understand where some fans didn't like the Z branding, or the new music that went with it. But loads of people did like it just fine. That doesn't make them wrong or evil, or delusional. It just means there's a difference in tastes. Nothing more.

But the reason I wanted to compare that schism with others is because I want to warn anyone reading this: Don't fall into that trap as you get older. When I was younger, I used to see all these old farts lambast my generation over dumb things, and now I'm an old far and I see so many people my own age criticize younger people the same way. That's bullshit. I had hoped we would all break the cycle together, but no. For some people, they just don't notice that they're even getting older. They just get crankier and more out of touch and they assume it's the rest of the world's fault. That's why you see people treasure the early stuff (like OG Dragon Ball) and hate on the newer stuff (like DBZ). It was like that 35 years ago, and it was like that 20 years ago, and it's still like that today. It'll probably always be like that, but you can make the decision to rise above that sort of elitism.

#ask duhragonball

2 notes · View notes

drink-n-watch · 5 years

Text

Genre : Isekai, Slice of Life, Comedy, Short

Episodes : 24

Studio: Sunrise

Do you have a favourite neighbourhood restaurant? A little comfy place that feels more like a friend’s house than a business. A friend that charges you for food but also has the yummiest dishes in the worlds and a lovely assortment of cute girls to serve you. It’s even affordable for regular visits on a lowly guard salary! I’m sure you can picture it. The inviting atmosphere and delicious smells wafting from the kitchen. The laughter of patrons mixing with the passionate explanations of the food the staff and chef are happy to share. The beautiful bottles of Sake lining the bar like soldiers preparing for battle. Of course, you can’t forget about the dimensional wormhole going through the place linking one world to another. You know, the usual!

I have a few anime niches I tend to gravitate towards. Whenever these elements are present, I’m likely to give the show a chance. Stuff like time travel, comedic criminal action, Yokai and, large amounts of food. Anime food has no calories!

somehow it’s still delicious

I remember seeing Isekai Izakaya pop up a few seasons ago and the title was all I needed to know that I wanted to see this one. Unlike a lot of anime fans, I have no particular feelings about isekais whatsoever. I do however really appreciate a good Izakaya so I was sold. It only took me this long to get to because it’s a two cour show. And this is how you know I go into series blind! Because I knew from the start I would definitely be watching Isekai Izakaya, I avoided reviews and somehow never found out this was a short program. Boy was I stoked!

Of course, shorts do have some biases against them. As far as they go Isekai Izakaya isn’t that short. Each episode runs about 10 minutes and is followed by a 5-minute vignette which alternates between a real-life cook showing us how to make easy versions of the food in the episode at home, and guided tours of real-life Izakayas around Japan.

It’s also a fairly solid production. Designs are simple but they don’t look cheap or lack in detail and work well with the context. There isn’t all that much actual animation but what’s there is smooth. Above all else, the art is wonderfully consistent, something that seems to be a challenge even in considerably more expensive series.

The minimal soundtrack added nicely to the light ambiance. And the voice acting is in fact quite good. It’s not flashy and I didn’t notice it much as I was watching the show but thinking back on it now, every single character was embodied really well. They were fairly simple roles, sure, but no one sounded wooden, overacted or unengaged. In fact, they embodied the roles with a sort of natural charm. Kudos to the casting director, great job all around. I’m not sure why I’m so surprised by this but there you go.

surprisingly fun is good description

And you know, a “story” like this doesn’t need more as far as production goes. I put story in quotes not because I’m some kind of wiseguy, it really may not be the best term.

Isekai Izakaya is a very episodic slice of life. You can easily skip an episode here and there without losing the thread at all. It has a simple and repetitive story structure. The Izakaya itself bridges two words the back door leading to what is possibly our world (although that’s never really shown or specifically confirmed but there are enough allusions to safely assume), while the storefront gives on what seems to be a feudal Germanic nation with two moons.

Every episode a citizen of the titular other world stumbles in the Izakaya is confused and fascinated by the unfamiliar foods and tableware, the friendly staff explains the dish they cook for them and plows them with beer and the customer leaves completely delighted by the experience. As the series wears on, we start getting to know certain repeat customers but the basic template stays the same.

some things never get old

And there’s something delightful about it. This simple premise of good food bringing people together. It’s just so easy to watch. But be warned, this show is also likely to make you very hungry and thirsty. Actually prompted me to go buy a bottle of Sake. There’s not much depth to it but the easygoing atmosphere is delightful. I would call it a poor man’s Yatsubori Briori except that sounds a little scathing. I mean it as a compliment!

We don’t get to know much about the characters they don’t feel incomplete. Rather like people we just don’t spend that much time with. Nothing much happens but the recipes are interesting (although super salty!) and whenever we get a bit of backstory it fits well with the rest of the series and is set up properly.

The only thing I personally found unfortunate is that this is such a rich premise that I would have liked to explore it more thoroughly. For instance, Nobu (the name of the Izakaya) obviously gets its ingredients and supplies from our world. That’s why people marvel at the glasses or the fact they have pepper. But they get paid in Isekai currency. How does the exchange rate work? How are they staying in business at all?

I may be missing the point

Also, the owner and waitress who opened the place together don’t seem in any way surprised by their unique situation. They are already used to it in the first episode but I would have liked to see them freaking out and getting their bearings. Everyone is a great customer, inviting and optimistic. No one is accusing them of witchcraft and questions about how they manage to keep drinks cold in the summer or other things of the sort that seem marvellous to the Isekai locals, simply get brushed aside and forgotten with no one even attempting an answer.

For the purposes of this particular story, the main narrative beats could have been kept unchanged even without the Isekai aspect, while all the more interesting questions and possibilities created by it aren’t taken advantage of. This is more a general gripe and doesn’t change the fact that Isekai Izakaya is pleasant light entertainment for when you don’t feel like thinking too much about anything.

Basically perfect for me!

omg!

Favourite character: Nikolaus

What this anime taught me: how to make Karage. And to replace noodles with beans sprouts to lose weight…

The best audience is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk

Suggested drink: alaska from a parallel universe

Every time anyone takes a drink – join them!

Every time anyone says “whatsontap” – switch t beer

Every time anyone almost spent the rest of their life eating something – get a snack

Every time anyone blows on their food – take a sip

Every time we see the two moons – take a sip

Every time anyone says “prosit” – raise your glass

Every time anything is a perfect pairing – take a sip

Every time anyone is getting married – switch to champagne

Every time a recipe calls for salt – drink some water

If you enjoy pictures of anime food, you may want o go see my Pinterest or Imgur for this one!

Isekai Izakaya : Japanese Food in Feudal Germany Genre : Isekai, Slice of Life, Comedy, Short Episodes : 24 Studio: Sunrise Do you have a favourite neighbourhood restaurant?

#anime #comedy #isekai #Isekai Izakaya #short #slice of life

1 note · View note