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multitrackdrifting · 11 months

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Well I didn't write my thoughts on the last ep cause I was playing FF16 but I'll explain why I didn't like the ending (despite loving a lot of the episode) under the cut

There's a lot of ways you can end a political sci-fi story (which Mobile Suit Gundam tends to be) and some of the worst ways it can end is a bleak "and nothing got better" and that often is the resolution for a lot of them, but it's not that bad when it's clear that the isolated conflict would just be covered up and whatever amidst the conclusion of that story. The very grounded and "realistic" stories in UC might fall into this kind of area.

I am of the opinion that more often than not it's bad practice to criticise what isn't there, that is unless you have a legitimate reason to feel that way. In this case, I feel that they brought up the earth subplots and kind of just used to thrust the story forward without actually having anything meaningful to say about Earthian emancipation or even validate that the companies in the story made that place a fucking hell hole in any meaningful fashion. You hear about a lot of the going-ons from people from Earth for sure, but you barely have it in your periphery for the majority of the season except for about 3-ish episodes.

My greatest fear as I've expressed to many friends and other people I talk to about G-Witch is that they would hand-wave all the problems away with a time skip and sadly we got literally this exact thing.

The spectacle and wonder of the family conflict tying up nicely & the canon lesbian relationship is pretty heavily overshadowed for me by the complete dismissal of the very subplot threads they opened in order to describe just how bonkers the Benerit group is/was.

OF course, I am labouring under the assumption that there is no season 3, and IBO didn't even announce theirs till like 4 months after Season 1 ended on a massive cliffhanger but this story did not end on one.

There's no seething and spiteful earth orphan in the epilogue, or any inclination that the story will in-fact continue and that leaves me feeling all the way wrong about how they handled this especially since I have to wait half a year potentially to find out if they plan to make more (which I imagine they will if not specifically to sell more Gunpla).

Of course, you might say that "oh this is a more personal Gundam story" and I don't even really feel like that's a good explanation of why the ending almost feels antithetical to the story itself like, yeah Benerit got dissolved and all was well and eveyrone became friends which is acceptable in your average shounen story but this pretty much felt like an ass-pull in some ways especially when you take in that they neglected to do anything with Earth except => guel gets kidnapped and goes to earth and briefly helps orphans and guerillas => miorine accidentally helps stage a false flag attack and pretty much nothing else?

Like that kind of irks me in the same way that playing FF14 Stormblood and there being almost nothing about Ala Mhigo irks me.

Of course, I am happy that SuleMio is a happy family not just with Prospera, but all of her daughers including Eri.

It's just... way too neat? I seldom call something an ass-pull but hand-waving that Earth is still in strife and barely any consequences were faced by the broader corporations outside of the dissolution of Benerit would be a compelling point if, like Hathaway, it had something to stand on top of (which is that in UC, fucking nothing ever changes, Unicorn happens and Hathaway's Mafty Uprising still happens in spite of Banagher's wager on possibility lmao)

I dunno, I feel happy that they're happy but really upset that they really just dumpstered everything to do with Earth and it just swept so many of the real questions that the very story we watched each week implied it would even try to answer.

I'm really hard to annoy, I love meathead shounen, I love serious and nuanced political writing in anime (e.g. MSG UC & Eighty-Six) but it's not the space magic that annoys me, I'd be a hypocrite to love Gundam Unicorn and hate it here - it's how they just time-skipped everything to a neat and tidy conclusion.

Of course, maybe a S3 announcement (which I have firmly held is probably coming) would change my mind, but yeah this was a great episode but a terrible finale.

Honestly, I even felt irked by the fact that Suletta accepts her mothers choice so plainly and I get it - the parental bonds thing is somehting I don't take for granted, anyone who has had complicated feelings about their own parents understands how a person can come to be like "you've hurt me and the people around me, and yet I still care for you" - I get it! But I really do not like how inconsistent it feels to be cleaning up the bodies of her classmates one episode and kinda shrugging everything she did off in a time-skip but this critique specifically is down to the jarring pacing that others had been complaining to this point - I suppose I am guilty of getting caught up in the spectacle but I almost snapped my neck at how hard this ending veered off

Of course, the natural commentary for this will be "selling off Benerit's assets and aiding Earth is a functional and practical way to help Earth" except that it almost feels like it comes out of nowhere due to the lightspeed pacing of this finale.

They really fumbled writing Earth in this story - yeah, there are nice subtleties in the ending but it still feels way too rushed and jarring for me to like actually find it enjoyable. Bodies don't make a good gundam ending (see: Gundam Unicorn), and space magic doesn't make it bad either (also Gundam UC lol), they just brushed off way too much.

The "incremental change" argument holds decent weight if there was any explicit inclination to continue the story from the time-skip (which I would like to see, preferrably with an Earthian protagonist at the centre of their emancipation struggles).

It was indeed nice to see the Earth girls integrated into Miorine's company, and Sabina does comment that they're not sure if it will amount to what they want - and Mio, far more mature than her younger self, steps towards that future bravely and that's cool.

I like the characterisation of the ending - but yeah, how they kinda just blitz the Earth stuff does not sit right with me.

I did like seeing all the kids being friends & being together after all they've been through, and that is a nice way to tie-up the story, but the way they kinda just use that to justify why they barely explain the rest is wild.

Course, I know I'm probably in the minority here - but pacing doomposters were right - this was a pretty abysmal ending because of how little time they had to work with.

I loved every single episode of this season, except the ending. Loved the first half of the episode, but the latter half is just way too neat and that's not because it needs bodies or something - it really does just feel like "and then it got marginally better".

I know the ending itself explicitly acknowledges that nothing may change, but as I said previously, that only works if you have something to lean on which this story does not since it's unclear if it's even going to get another season.

Systemic change, in reality, is quite incrimental and often feels infinitismally small - and that notion might be more compelling in this bittersweet epilogue if the story had taken more pains to actually explore the earthian-spacian conflict.

Yes, they discuss conflict-sharing/war-partitioning on the different segments of Earth, but they do nothing with it at all other than laud it around as a talking point without making the viewer ever face it except when Prospera attacks Earth. I feel like so much of the Earth-side of the story is left in the abstract, and do not argue to me that it's in the subtleties of Earth house and the things that they say.

I felt like the fella in Plato's cave hearing about something and the only time I actually felt the human side of that story from the people that live on Earth was when Guel was a prisoner of war for an episode and when Miorine has to face the disappointed people who realise they're being attacked.

I had faith the ending would not go "and then it got better", and I know many people will hate that I choose to take that interpretation, but that is pretty much the summation of my feelings about how rapidly they pushed this aside. I love this series, I ahve been gassing this series every single week since like episode 3 - but this ending was unsatisfying - it's not enough to make me hate the series but yeah, I wish we had something more substantive to look toward with future stories or more time spent stressing the "other side" of this conflict.

Yeah, the Benerit group at large is on trial on TV, and there's signs that the world will change & we see future generations of kids on Earth, but I don't think it hit quite right for me. It's not a lack of grit, it's just like, you're enjoying the payoff without the adequate build-up and I feel like I'm possibly not alone in thinking this.

Earth was just a bargaining chip and an elusive idea in this season, and I really do not like that so much was left in the abstract. You can "subtext" anything into existence, but no amount of referential dialogue is going to make up for the lack of a grounded and meaningful representation of their struggle since Sophie and Norea got axed (I did not mind this at the time), and they portrayed every other Earth character outside of Gund-arm as a villain.

I really feel like this aspect of how the story was structured was ultimately quite disappointing and thus, I am annoyed at the resulting payoff.

The romance side of things was cute, and I thoroughly enjoy how thing were tied up with them - especially that Suletta loved her family despite everything (this does not boggle my mind).

But yeah my gripes with the lack of idk time to talk about Earth actually boggles my mind beyond belief.

It's incredibly difficult to feel the actual weight of "yeah Benerit was dissolved and assets redistributed lol" while being presented with next to zero context for what that means and what it could mean. Way too much is left to the imagination and while that's fine in certain kinds of stories, in one wherey ou barely even grapple with the Earth context that you've described to this point it's kind of bonkers.

Yes, I get a lot of people will feel catharsis with this ending because what they're watching for and what I am watching for may be different - that's perfectly okay, but I'm not gonna act like ti didn't disappoint me that we got the most explicit form of a hand-wave (a time skip) to end out an otherwise fantastically written series.

I do not like that one bit and I do not apologise for believing that either.

Here's another scorching take: the next season should focus on Earth, not how the Samayas heal as a family - there might be room for both, but with how neglected Earth felt maybe it's time for a POV change in this world bc they really did FA with that.

In conclusion, I sitll like the show, but this ending was really unfulfilling. I know that winning a battle is not winning the war, but the story took pretty much no pains to eloquently depict the struggles of Earth properly this season despite me thinking that the vast majority of episodes were absolutely fantastic in spite of that.

I think Suletta, Mio and Guel were quite well-written and most of the supporting cast too, but this flaw in the narrative structure is insanely glaring for me and call that pretentious if you want but I genuinely believe what I said here

Edit: I guess, the ending just doesn't say anything super daring that that's pretty disappointing.

Edit 2: I completely forgot to go on a rant but, that the use of a WMD (space laser) was not even a point of intrigue for a future conflict is also wild.

#g witch spoilers #dont hate me its just my opinion

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dvasva · 6 months

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Tbh? I think the radiant emperor duology deserves more critique than it gets in its tag, so after stewing it over for a couple weeks and also discussing it with my friend, I have decided to do it myself.

So. Spoilers for She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned The World ahead.

First off, so nobody accuses me of hating the series, I liked the series. I'd say I'd give the first book a 4.5/5, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I like both books. I truthfully skipped the fisting scene, it triggered some dysphoria that I wasn't comfortable with personally but I don't have problem with it existing in the book, it's good where it is, no changes.

No, my critiques come mostly from the second book, hwdts. Which sucks because I absolutely loved Baoxiang in it, it's a well known fact that my ideal type is pretty, really mean, characters. ('What about Madam Zhang?!!!???!? Shes mean and pretty!!' I hear you ask. Give it a second cause i will get to my beloved madam zhang) So, my critiques are mostly organized as 'The first part I didn't like in Hwdtw that signals the thing that became my biggest issue, the bits in the middle that i did like along with the bits that I felt didn't really work well, and Act 3 which is where my issues really were exacerbated.'

By the end of book one, I had a general annoyance but acceptance that Ma Xiuying was a bit of a weak character, and not weak as in 'dang shes a woman and cant fight' or any other sexist way you may interpret that, but weak as in structurally, she didn't really have as much depth as other characters. I thought she didn't have as much time put into her character as others. And yeah you could have a million character analysis essays over Ma and her place in the story and etc, but for me, her setup for the next book as potentially having conflict with Zhu or her own morals was the most interesting part of Ma. In general I think a lot of people tend to overlook this flaw partly because Ma is a cis lesbian character and the main 'love interest' in a book that is usually marketed to people as sapphic, which yeah there is certainly a sapphic relationship in the book but I think saying it's a major part of the book is really giving the relationship a load bearing wall ot isn't strong enough to carry. The Radiant Emperor Duology is not a romance, first and foremost. To describe it as a wlw romance is gonna leave people who read ot specifically for that reason kinda dissappointed by the end of book 2.

My big critiques didn't start until book two, and a particular scene, though. Ma, at the start of book two, was generally filling the niche of 'nagging wife' to zhu, which yknow, is a fine place to start from. I was a little disappointed there was no further discussion of Ma's disapproval of the morality of Zhu's actions, and in fact the dead child was pretty much entirely forgotten by Ma in favor of being Zhu's wife. Which, yknow, sure.

The Scene I had issue with happened (Spoilers once again) after Zhu finally captures Ouyang and imprisons him at her base of operations. Ma, dressed in her empressly regalia enters his room with the intention of being the bigger person. She walks in, looks at the stripped down and humiliated general who killed her father and famously is also really a women hater, and tells him she forgives him for killing her father. And then she gets upset and cries when the prideful general who hates women gives her a dressing down and taunts her and is like 'I'm glad I killed your father'? She nearly cries because Ouyang was mean to her (notably only cause he was mean to her and didn't gracefully accept her forgiveness, not because he killed ehr father) and runs off to Zhu. And Zhu responds with 'Wow, he's just a weirdo, everyone likes you and everyone in existance immediately knows you're a good person and you change people.' Which, my friend suggested before she finished the book, was a case of Zhu placating Ma and dismissing her feelings which would be an interesting dynamic.

Really my hangups with this scene come from multiple parts.

1. Ma' few character traits including being observant and reading people really well (a thing she's praised for in book 1) and having good social intuition are completely thrown out by her thinking being alone with ouyang and forgiving him would be a good idea and then her being shocked and upset when he spat on her forgiveness. And

2. Zhu's response is never once treated by the text as her dismissing Ma and placating her, and Zhu's statement despite never being shown to be true before and that moment being the first time it's ever mentioned, ends up becoming Chekov's moral purity by the end of the book, where the plot hinges on Ma being able to magically heal a damaged character's mind enough for Zhu to win in the end. Which I will get back to. There's a lot of other stuff happening between here and the end.

So, before I get back to Ma and her role in the story, I'll address some other bits from after this scene. Both problems and things I enjoyed generally.

Madam Zhang and her parallels to Baoxiang and her being the absolute queen of dissociating really was interesting (before act 3). She was a very compelling character who I completely understood and felt positively about. She had a way more interesting relationship with gender imo than Ma did, especially in book 2. I didn't really like that she was overwhelmingly shown having sexual villence done to her, that felt weirdly like a punishment. But, I did like her a whole bunch, and I liked the look we got into her head. She was probably my second, maybe third, favorite character in the whole book until Act 3.

I really, really liked Ouyangs dynamic and relationship with Zhu. The weird sexual tension between them, their weird kinda nonsexual but also kinda very sexual S&M relationship. It was somehow the most sensual, sexual part of a book that featured Madam Zhang having sex with multiple people, and Zhu going down on Ma, and a lot of other mentions of sex or scenes involving sex. Tbh I feel like, in a way, Ma was left to the sidelines for most of the book because Ouyang became the primary 'love' interest for a hot second there and the only reason Ma could get her spot back was Ouyang and Zbu's separation. Also, from what I've seen when people talk about this book, they always kinda try to express Zhu and Ouyang's dynamic as very nonsexual and nonromantic, as platonic mostly. And there is no inherent superiority of romantic over platonic, but I think to insist that it is only platonic, and not a strange swirl of romantic, platonic, sexual, frustration and relief, and a swirl of familiarity and vulnerability all wrapped into one, is doing the dynamic a bit of a disservice. And ther is, imo, very clearly a subtle hint of romantic intent and interest on Ouyang's part before he realizes Zhu has a body he hates.

Which is also another point I didn't like. Ouyang and Zhu's relationship end felt off. The entire bit with the pirates felt off, but especially how Ouyang found out about Zbu's body, and how Zhu reacted. I think Ouyang finding out second hand, from a combination of being suspicious and from Jiang saying it, was a poor way for that to be revealed. I think there was a better way for that to happen that woyld have felt more like a betrayl to zhu than this did. The fact that Zhu and Ouyang were so in tune and could see each other perfectly, but this one thing was a blind spot for both of them because of how unaffected by gender Zhu was compared to how overaffected by gender Ouyang was is a really interesting thing to explore, an interesting disconnect between two character's whose entire basis for their relationship is 'like recognizes like'. I think Zhu seeing it as a betrayl would have been more impactful if she had presented this informatuon to Ouyang herself and been rejected than how it went down. And, I think her not realizing Ouyang would be disgusted that he felt connected and felt a sameness to someone with a body he found grotesque and that he feared would have been more interesting for zhu, who views herself outside of womanhood and didnt really think that other people would not see her outside of womanhood, if she was the one who told ouyang herself.

Also, less importantly, think going into Ouyangs annoyance that zhu kept moving his target further away was a good move but it wasn't expanded on as much for my taste. I also really liked it when (spoiler) Xu Da dies, and that entire part despite some minir bits, was extremely good in that Zhu finally has tasted loss. She had, up until that point, been riding a wave of positivity, she was the underdog who won over and over again despite all the odds and despite her own reckless choices. So I did appreciate that everything went wrong for her at least once. that would have been, imo if other things were changed, a good place to end a book two in a three book series. Which will make sense as to why I mention it im a bit.

I also didn't like how Ma was nonexistant unless the plot was like 'ok we need to remind people that Ma exists.'

And there's of course other stuff but those are the main points of acts 1 and 2 that i wasn't fond of or that i liked.

Act 3 is a wholely different behemoth which can be encapsulated with 'I wish it was longer but also different' (courtesy of the convo my friend and I had).

My friend and I both agreed that we liked this kind of courtly drama game it was playing. My friend doesn't tend to like the structure or writing style of a lot of the chinese wuxia, danmei, or courtly drama translated books i read, so it was nice to know that the genre content isn't the issue for her there.

The biggest problems I had with the ending though was 1. I think Baoxiang and Ma had an interesting dynamic despite it being really rushed and how distasteful I found the entire concept of Ma being such a good wholesome goody good good person that she could change Baoxiang, quiet his demons and fix him in some way. That was annoying in an otherwise interesting dynamic. And 2. I think Madam Zhang's character traits and cleverness and all that were wiped away to make her inexplicably jealous of Ma in a way that I don't think fit her character and just served to fit a trope of jealous empress who hates the favored concubine.

So, here's my major proposed changes.

1. Ma gets sent to Khanbaliq extremely early on. Like, act one maybe after ouyang is captured early. This serves three purposes. A. Ma has something to do and is more present in the story. this could be a good xhance to let her actually feel frustrated or upset at Zhu in some tangible way that needs to be resolved or talked thru eventually. B. she gets more time to build a relationship with Baoxiang, whose entire defeat hinges on him having a strong connection with her. and C. Her absence in the other parts of the book feel less like she's being ignored or forgotten. It makes Zhu's lack of haste more than just a way to annoy Ouyang, and turns it into an interesting moral choice. Should she rush to Khanbaliq to save Ma or trust that Ma will be ok in favor of gaining power? Her lack of haste means Ouyang leaves, depressed, and she loses Xu Da, all while she doesn't even have the assurance that Ma is ok, she is truly at her lowest point with nobody with her. If Ma is in Khanbaliq and that's explored, then Zhu and Ouyang can also explore their dynamic without Ma feeling a bit like she is battling for Zhu's attention.

2. Madam Zhang is suspicious of Ma, or feels actually tangibly threatened by Ma. In act 3, Madam Zhang's anger towards Ma feels really out of place. She got exactly what she wants, she is empress, her emperor isn't interested in removing her from her position and her position isn't threatened by anyone. Baoxiang won't get rid of her, he won't demote her, he has shown zero sign of ever even considering it. So, why is Madam Zhang jealous of Ma? Imo, especially since she very clearly has dissociated into oblivion and has no love or affection for anyone anymore, and no real desire or motivation to secure her position further aside from maybe producing an heir to make sure shes taken care of after Baoxiang dies, there's no reason for her to be inextricably jealous of Ma. It kinda just erases all of Madam Zhang's political savvy and cunning into jealous, petty woman, and that sucks. If she was suspicious of Ma's intention, or Baoxiang genuinely expressed spmething that actively threatened her position, her hatred of Ma would make sense, but instead she hates Ma cause Ma is ugly and spends every night with Baoxiang. She hated rice buckets concubine cause that concubine used a lot of funds and competition genuinely made her position less stable. She needs better motivation for hating Ma.

3. As I mentioned earlier, Zhu needs to be the one to tell Ouyang that she does not have a dick. That's just all around better, it feels more like a betrayl to bare your secrets and be rejected, etc etc.

4. The duology should have been a trilogy, with book 3 starting when Zhu is at her lowest, ouyang is dead, ma is in khanbaliq, Xu Da is dead, a new guy is the emperor. This is where a book three should have started. in a series that has so many important characters, i feel like it needs more space. she's in a 10 gallon tank when really she needs a 30 gallon tank. Lots of it, especially towards the end of book 2, felt rushed and the extra book will absolutely push that back a bit and make it less rushed.

Anyways that's my critique of The Radiant emperor duology. Once Again, I liked the series, its one of my favorites i've read all year. I don't dislike it, and having a critique or opinion about something doesnt mean I didn't like the book or understand the book (because obviously if i understood it i would understand why its flawless). I liked it, there are things I wish were different, that's it.

#radiant emperor #he who drowned the world #she who became the sun #radiant emperor spoilers #spoiler #i wrote this in like 2 hours at 4 am and i got lazy halfway thru editing it so if theres typos rip #i just needed to get it out of my brain #organized in text somewhere other than jamies discord dms #thank you jamie also #i have a lot of opinions on this duology #some i didnt even mention cause its 6:30 and i forgot #i think shelley parker chan wants to write nblm or mlm books tbh #i dont think they really wanna write sapphic books #and tbh im ok with that i think there should be more books about transmascs #the tiktok/tumblr habit of describing a book with tags really also doesnt help this book also #i think to say 'sapphic enemies to lovers' for this kind of book gives people the wrong impression #especially since once again i wouldnt really describe it as sapphic in the genre way #anyhow again so nobody kills me #i did like the books #i enjoyed them i loved them i did not hate them at all

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