#consider this a little contribution to the lore of naruto

[gembug86]

Part II!

285 Marlin (Magical Princess)

An English witch. During the war, she served the Prime Minister using Beelzebub, the spirit of flies, and used insects from around the world to collect information that was difficult to obtain even for the secret services. She saved her country several times this way. Today, however, no one has much need for her and she has fallen from grace, barely being able to make a living as a street keeper. By Comparing the teachings handed down orally by her ancestors with the documents preserved in the British Museum, Marlin is convinced of the existence of the Shaman Fight and, seeing it as an opportunity for a new life, dusts off her techniques.

286 Samansa (Magical Princess)

She's an American witch who's spirit ally is Asmodeus, a slug. Foreseeing the future through tarot cards, she was a consultant to the wives of Presidents, but retired after she got married. As we age, we get less and less conventionally attractive, so she starts searching for the secret of eternal youth. It has been passed down orally in her family for generations, and she reaches the conclusion that the key to it lies in the Shaman Fight. "Eternal youth" is actually Hao's reincarnation technique, but she never realizes this. She finds herself fighting against Hanagumi. Her late husband was the director of an advertising agency, and she participates in the Shaman Fight against the wishes of her daughter and grandchildren.

287 Lil Red (Magical Princess)

She is a French witch. During the war, under the code-name "Little Red Riding Hood", she acted as a spy in the shadows with help from her wolf-shaped staff and Tara, a spider spirit. She provided information to the resistance, and thus contributed to the liberation of France. Apparently, she still coordinates French spies. She is the only single woman of her team, but hasn't given up on love, so she participates in the Shaman Fight hoping to regain her youth. She met Marlin and Samansa during a conference in Morocco at the time of World War II, and they have since been friends. She is also the oldest of the three.

288 Marlin, 289 Samansa, 290 Lil Red

Young Magical Princess (As young girls)

The Magical Princesses in their best years. They are ruthless in their old age and are descendants of three witches that aided Hao during the previous Shaman Fight. Their ancestors loved Hao, but were abandoned. Each of them married and formed families. Because of the era of fierce and ruthless witch hunts, they stopped their work and simply pass on spells useful in everyday life orally.

291 Anahol Pokki (Younger brother)

Self-proclaimed descendant of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, Anatel said that his younger brother Anahol is more devoted to the Universe. He is present at the Shaman Fight to cheer for the Niles, but finds himself a witness to his older brother's death. Turned avenger, he attack Jeanne and her companions. While investigating the X-LAWS, Hao takes notice of him and welcomes him to his group, even introducing him to the Cho Senji Ryakketsu. Perhaps because he is a genius, or perhaps because he is thirsty for revenge, Anahol quickly assimilates the fundamentals of the book. Meanwhile, the 10 000 spirit slaves that were allied with his beloved older brother commune with the gods of Egypt within the Great Spirit. He now lives a life of Nirvana, calm and entirely without rancor. Anahol's face is identical to his brother's, except his nose is three centimeters shorter.

292 Amneris

She's a nature spirit that used to be an Egyptian princess. She took the form of a cat, which were considered sacred animals in those times. Perhaps because she was a princess, she speaks to Anahol with poisonous words; she is a selfish, arrogant, and ruthless spirit. She is very good at shape-shifting aside from her cat appearance, such as her Sphinx form (when attacking Jeanne), or the goddess Bastet.

293 Mikihisa Maki (At 25 years old)

Mickey in hippy style, who dreams of the sixties, when he met Keiko in Funbarigaoka in 1983. Wanting to become like John Lennon, he leads a life of hardship. Compared to the mature and adult Keiko, Mickey lives a late adolescence, yet manages to impress her. Obviously, Mickey is an individual whom the important Asakura family frowns on, but with his innate talent and thanks to the advice of a mysterious cat spirit, he overcomes Yohmei's traps one after another. He is welcomed into the family and changes his surname. His band was called "Deer Flying". And in the lazy adolescence of the father you see the roots of Yoh.

294 Keiko Asakura (At 23 years old)

Strictly educated as a child to become a shaman, she rebels against the Asakura family and goes to Tokyo, where she finds a job as a clerk in a company that turns out to be tied to her family. Having grown up in the countryside, she cannot get used to the frenetic metropolitan life altogether. She knows a boy, but he is uncomfortable because of her shamanic powers and leaves her. After a while Keiko meets Mikihisa, a boy who does not want to grow up, and who falls madly in love with her. Thanks to her unexpected strength of will and her practical sense, Keiko manages to make sure that Mikihisa is welcomed into her family. Equipped with very strong powers, her personal spirit is the god Tamenojikara-O.

Notes:

-Marlin’s job translates as “street guess”, which seems to be a street keeper.

-The Young Magical Princess file seeeeems to only be referring to their ancestors? Like, everything after the first two lines seems to be about the past-Hao witches(since Lil Red’s file says she’s always been single). It’s kinda unclear.

-The “Obviously, Mickey is an individual whom the important Asakura family frowns on,..” line translates with a “not” before the “an individual”, which I removed, as it seems to contradict itself. I could totally see Yohmei finding Ryu on the doorstep and thinking “Gods, not this shit again”. :P

- Tamenojikara-O doesn’t seem to be any deity I can find. It sounds like an actual one, but google only find Naruto pages for it. Likely a slight translation error when it was put into Italian from Japanese. If anyone has any answers or ideas, I’m all ears!

-And that’s it! I love the KZB Shaman Files and wish more were translated. I love the lore, world building, and just kind of everyday trivia that they add to the story and it’s characters, especially the super side ones (like the Magical Princesses!). This is the only Star Comics volume I own, and I got it because I was super curious about what the Magical Princess and 2nd Hanagumi files told. I wasn’t disappointed!

#Shaman King #My crappy translations #Magical Princess #Anahol Pokki #mikihisa asakura #keiko asakura

[helihi]

RWBY’s writing and pacing

It’s not weird to be on Tumblr and notice how people’s opinions tend to be polarizing. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about politics or a simple tv show, the larger the fandom, the louder people tend to scream.

Last week, the FNDM went from “Does Illia is gay?” to Illia fits into the predatory evil gay trope and she might as well end up dead to fill the Bury your gays quota. Although we were able to see people in the grey area, the extremes were the loudest.

This week the discourse is as follows: RWBY’s writing is bad vs. “Oh my god, why do people always want action packed stories, you need some breathing in between and some exposition to set things up!”.

I’d like to bring an objective view on regards to this subject because I consider it to be extremely important when it comes to the show.

If you don’t ask for better writing, you’re not going to get any.

If you applaud mediocrity, you’re gonna get mediocrity.

RWBY’s writing has never been great. It has had fantastic set ups and scenes, but it has never been great. Yes, that also includes the time when Monty was still alive (Rest in Peace). I’m sorry, but the flaws have always been there.

I’d like to point the following things out for you guys to understand what I’m trying to say:

Volume 1

RWBY was barely starting, they didn’t have a big budget, so the episodes were short. This caused the plot to be very simple and every problem being solved quite rapidly.

The characters at first seem like tropes.

A shit ton of clichés.

Because of plot convenience, some characters act OOC to what we later know about them. (Since Jaune had to stand up to Cardin, no one of team RWBY or JNPR stood up to him when he was bullying Velvet and being a racist prick).

Blake being a faunus ended up leading to the volume finale and didn’t build up Team RWBY relationships and dynamics. We could have had a serious moment of self reflexion, not only Weiss realizing that she was putting every faunus in the same bag, but Yang and Ruby dealing with the fact that Blake hid who she was because of racism (also prompting a realization that maybe, until that point, they contributed to said racism by being bystanders).

However, vol 1 had great things on its side that allowed the show to continue.

Variety of characters.

Rich lore

Cool character concepts and weapons.

The show was funny.

I can accept that the start of the show was not the best, it was understandable giving how little budget they had.

Volume 2

The tone of the series becomes slightly more serious. We have new characters and new villains being introduced into the show. Something big is cooking and this is the first glance we get at it. The good include:

The humor is back.

That food fight scene eveyone loves.

The dance.

Papa Shcnee may not be a good person being foreshadowed.

Yang convincing Blake to go to the dance while also giving her space.

Dr. Oobleck being a great teacher and giving the girls an insight on themselves.

Neo and Raven making an appearance.

However, for some reason this volume seems really blurry in my head. Neptune’s character introduction is really bland, the in betweens of everything seem really irrelevant and most importantly: the season finale seems like a mid-season finale if anything.

Volume 3

My favorite volume; I’m going to be the least biased I can be. This volume featured a Naruto style tournament (I’m sure other animes did it before Naruto, but this one is the most widely known). This allowed the writers to show us some great battles, team combinations, and do some world building.

While the first half of the season relies more on comedy and action, when shit hits the fan it goes perfectly well. I have to say, the moment Yang gets caught after Emerald uses her semblance was the first moment since I started watching the show that I felt hooked. Somehow for the first time ever, I felt that something could actually happen. Stakes were being raised, and it shouldn’t come as anyone’s surprise that this season was the one that attracted as much fans as it did.

There are some bad things, unfortunately, about this season.

Ruby’s silver eyed warrior powers come from nowhere and it was only mentioned in the first episode ever.

A shit ton of new characters! But 0 depth to any of them!

We never get to see Team JNPR interactions that are not JP or NR centric, except that one time Jaune talked to Ren briefly in vol 2.

Seriously this volume needed more character interactions. We could have had Pyrrha interacting with team RWBY more. Even more team CVFY.

The FNDM grew exponentially, and the expectations to how RT was going to follow up to the fall of Beacon built up the moment volume 3 ended.

And finally, volume 4 arrived.

Volume 4

There’s nothing wrong with a slow volume. It’s true that you can’t have a show 100% about fighting. The reason popular animes and good shounen fights are popular is because of the stakes set up by character motivation and the plot. The problem with volume 4 is not the lack of fights, but how bad it fails at exploring the characters after the fall of Beacon.

Jumping from one character’s story line to another one didn’t help either. The constant teasing with cliff hangers began getting really obnoxious here. Is Qrow going to die? Is he? IS HE??

Ruby: she gets no character development. The only scenes that could be considered part of her arc would be: Ruby waking up listening to Pyrrha’s voice, only to find out it’s Jaune’s phone; the small talk she and Jaune have before fighting the creepy Nuckelavee; the letter she writes at the end.

Weiss: probably the best written storyline of the volume. However, having her train and building up the possibility of her actually facing her father before escaping, only to have her running away in high heels was not pay off. You can easily find a way to write Weiss confronting her father before leaving Atlas to find her team and save the world.

Blake: she heads to Menagerie in order to see her family again and find the way to cope with what happened at Beacon. She felt extremely guilty and was really in a bad place. Having Sun be with her makes sense, he says it himself, but the execution was extremely poor. Sun didn’t give Blake a choice. Furthermore, Blake is not able to open up after what happened at Beacon because she gets interrupted every time.

Sun: I’m so sorry his character ended up being comedic relief. He could have learned more about how to deal with Blake, and provide her with more emotional support that he ended up doing but no.

Yang: although I agree with most people that the events of volume 4 don’t have a canonical time stamp (because Miles and Kerry wanted to avoid plot holes), her coping with the fall is awfully paced. Armed and Ready was not earned by the end of the volume. I’m sorry, but Yang is not ready to face her demons yet. She’s suffering from PTSD, clearly needed to talk about what happened at the fall, and her feelings for Blake are filled with rage and hurt.

STILL NO SILVER EYES EXPLANATION DESPITE THE FACT THAT RUBY ALMOST DIED. WHY DOES THE SHOW KEEP TREATING THE MAIN CHARACTERS AS CHILDREN?

Klein being a really good character but only making an appearance twice.

The good of the volume include:

Raven and Qrow.

Ren’s backstory.

Weiss’s family being explored.

Did you miss it? You might have blinked.

Volume 5

This volume promised a lot of fighting, and to be honest, I rather have better set ups. Most of the people who are defending today’s episode claim that those of us who complain want mindless action without careful exposition.

I would like to remind everyone, including Miles and Kerry, the golden rule or writing for an audiovisual medium: SHOW, DON’T TELL.

I was already alarmed when I saw that Illia had more character development in a short, outside the main narrative, than Ruby got in an entire season.

I have many issues with this volume, most of them involve awful writing.

Ozpin’s story: why are the characters of the show getting so little information on him? Story wise it makes sense that us, the viewers, to piece together the information of this important character little by little; but within the show it makes no sense that Jaune and Yang are okay with knowing as little as they do. HOW OLD IS OZPIN? WHO IS SALEM? WHY DOES SALEM WANT TO DESTROY EVERYHTING?

Menagerie: Filled with cliffhangers and the slowest moving story ever. I love politic centered stories. For crying out loud, when everyone dropped snk because of it, I was hooked as fuck. The problem is that once again, the writers give you small doses of a plot line that should already be over.

Raven: is she evil? is she an anti-hero? Can the FNDM stop judging Raven so harshly after barely having any sort of explanation to why she’s doing things?

Most of the exposition during this volume has been through conversations of things we already know. The only things that are new are: Ozpin turning the Branwens into birds, the Branwens joining Beacon to learn how to kill huntsman, Ozpin confirmed for wizard and creator of the maidens.

And the worst part is, the CRWBY has written amazing scenes. Exposition doesn’t have to be bad, it can be perfect when done right:

Weiss and Yang’s conversation during ch8 was so beautiful. It established some common ground with them, it served to show Weiss’s character development; Yang finally gets to open up about Blake. The physical and oral communication this scene has is perfect. I love it so much, this is what the show needs. (Also, the animation was gorgeous, imma cry)

Illia’s conflict: not only when capturing Blake does she confess her feelings, she tells Blake that she was so blinded by her love of Adam that she didn’t know what Illia was going through and why she is acting the way she is now. The stakes are high with her, and I honestly want her redemtion arc ASAP.

Jesus, I wish I didn’t have to explain all of this, but I’m tired of people jumping to conclusions without thinking why people are complaining at the pacing of the show.

RWBY’s writing has never been great, it has had good times, but the pacing as always been terrible. Volume 4 showed the cracks clearer than ever before because more people were watching and the bar was set higher.

Anyways, here’s me hoping next week’s episode is better. This further proofs that my brothers claim is right: “The only way to enjoy RWBY is by binge watching it”.

#RWBY #RWBY5 #Me