#for an escapist isekai show

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

love corrupted children's characters <3

#random thoughts #horror #'they need to stop doing mascot horror it's just kid stuff but scary' but.... is for me 👉👈 #think it should be done more specifically with yandere romance horror. sunny day jack is not enough to feed me i need more #especially since sunny day jack isnt even like actually a children's character i think he's just a super fucked up vcr ghosy #anyway adulthood as a corrupting force compels me #everything used to be just fine in gundrop village until YOU showed up with your maturity and your taxes #now everyone is suddenly going through super mental puberty without the tools to cope with it #like there's a transitional period in media for kids vs teens vs adults imagine just SKIPPING BEING A TEENAGER #the caramel cattle are getting sick there's a sugar water drought and everyone's mentally ill now #also now everyone is aware of the concept of meat and where it comes from and OH GOD WE UNDERSTAND DEATH NOW #all these simple lessons aren't so simple anymore and god everyone is just WATCHING them from EVERYWHERE ENDLESS EYES #bad character traits which were previously inconsequential unless needed for plot are now all-encompassing #puppy love evolves and god imagine sex ed in a 'if someone touches you in a way that makes you uncomfortable thats no good' world #NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT SEX #mc someone isekai's into their beloved escapist kid's show and ruins everything by being an adult #not even as a political message just a thought experiment

[gremlingottoosilly]

Asking out of curiosity since you HC König as a man in his late thirties to early forties, what interests do you headcanon König to have? Like music taste, fashion, movies, shows etc? Interested to know! :)

His fashion is whatever shop he can into without a flock of consultants watching his every move. He has outgrown the stutter and excessive anxiety in social/retail settings, but he still finds the small talk that most retail workers are engaging in annoying. Besides, he hates the stares and whispers that always follow his imposing figure...he would shop online, but it's very hard with his body, so he usually finds himself stuck in some semi-sport brands like Under Armor, because they cater to the muscular giants like him and he doesn't really care all that much about fashion. He has money, so he usually buys stuff in bulk - he can wander into some fancy store sometimes, but he can't, for the sake of his life, understand why he would need a belt made out of virgin crocodile leather if he can just wear his gear in a civilian setting. He doesn't like shops for younger people, like H&M, because he saw slim pants here once, and his nuts immediately started to feel the phantom pain. I headcanon Konig as a Loser(TM), so this man still watched Shounen anime at his grown age. I actually wrote about him watching Kakegurui in Lovefool, but I feel like he would be really uncomfortable about fan service with school girls, so he usually watched battle animes and shows with action that don't relate to real-life military. He likes escapist shows with fantasy, often reads books, and watches isekai shows - even though most of them are really stupid if you're not 16 years old, so he watches them just for the sake of nice graphics. He doesn't like to watch movies about military, even though he is a huge history of war nerd. He specially doesn't like movies about most recent wars because there is a big chance he fought in one of those, so it brings back bad memories. He can be a sucker for a really flimsy comedy with dirty humor and barely any plot - he likes to just turn off his brain while he is on leave. His anxiety and the requirements of working as a leader fries his brain bit by bit, so when he is at home, he likes to just stare at the wall sometimes. It all changes drastically when a woman appears in his life though - he will literally consume any of your interests, from silly romcoms to shops like Zara, he spend so much time being alone that he is ready to mold his personality for his wife.

#cod #konig x reader #konig

[babygray]

Something I am watching this season:

Atarashii Joushi wa Dotennen (My New Boss is Goofy)

After the stress of working under an abusive boss caused his health to decline, Kentarou Momose finds a new job and starts working under a new manager, Yuusei Shirosaki, a competent, stoic-looking man who is surprisingly air-headed from time to time. With the support and care of his new coworkers, Kentarou slowly heals from his past trauma and begins to enjoy his work life. Based on the manga by Ichikawa Dan.

This past year, I've seen quite a few shows about guys that escape their abusive, exploitative, stressful jobs. Most of them, unsurprisingly, were isekai fantasies. For example, the titular character of Handyman Saitou in Another World was a competent but severely unappreciated worker who found emotional and professional fulfillment after traveling to a fantasy world and joining an adventurer party as their support thief. And Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead's Akira Tendou was so ground down by his abusive, exploitative workplace, the fact that zombies have taken over Tokyo is nothing compared to the joy of not having to go to work anymore.

These escapist fantasies, where something (like a truck or a zombie horde) helps the downtrodden worker leave their bad situation and puts them in a new, more refreshing place, are enjoyable, but these characters are pushed into freedom by an unknowable, uncontrollable, and ultimately unreal force.

My New Boss is Goofy's Momose doesn't escape his abusive workplace because an outside force pushed him to do so. After one last straw of abuse broke him and one inspirational advertisement sparked something inside him, he took the first steps needed to leave that job and search for something better for himself.

This was incredibly brave of him. But the story makes it very clear that the abuse he went through left a lot of trauma that will take time to overcome, not to mention the stomach ulcers. His new coworkers are kind, considerate people, ready to support him in any way they can, and they're not alone. At least once per episode, we see how strangers react to Momose and Shirosaki's interactions, both the goofy moments and the heartbreaking ones.

At least once, a complete stranger was pulled in to the point where he helps Momose avoid a dangerous situation. At least once, Momose's interactions with Shirosaki helped someone else escape their own abusive workplace.

Despite how we might feel, we're not alone, and we don't have to deal with life's struggles on our own. We are surrounded by people willing to help and that we can help in turn.

Momose has people that care about him, and watching him slowly recover from the physical and mental damage he endured fills my heart with gentle warmth. It's a funny, fluffy slice-of-life story that leaves me feeling relaxed and happy.

#atarashii joushi wa dotennen #my new boss is goofy #tv corner #as opposed to the reading corner posts #i just wanted to talk a bit about how there's a lot of 'escaping the abusive rat race' stories #there's a lot of BL vibes in this but i don't think it is BL. #there's also a cute cat. #ooh! ooh! and sugita tomokazu plays the dark-haired boss. #only noticed it when he did a distressed cry of one of the other character's names #i'm getting a little better at recognizing seiyuu voices... #well. his voice anyway...

[jaekaicx]

*slams my hands down on the table excitedly* what are your thoughts. On any topic. Literally anything I wanna hear them

!!!!!!! KFNSKNSJS OKAY!!!! im glad you wanna hear my thoughts fjdhjsjsjsn

(im so sorry for putting this off for so long kfnsksn my mind just kept on blanking every time i tried to answer this. but !!! i have something now so here are the thoughts you asked for !!!!)

so my last reblog got me thinking about the way amphibia is presented as an “isekai with a twist.” but it also got me thinking about the owl house and how its also presented as an isekai with a twist. and i just think its really interesting how the two of them go about it in different ways

one of the main similarities is how there’s a sort of awareness of the fact that an isekai story is taking place, and the isekai-ed characters sort of enabling the story and making it happen out of a sense of wish fulfillment. with marcy, they didnt have much of a choice since they had no clue the music box would actually work, but we all know that if given the choice, marcy would say yes to getting isekai-ed in a heart beat. and in a sense, he actually did.

(disclaimer: i wholeheartedly believe that marcy was NOT at fault for getting the trio sent to amphibia. he helped find and open the box but that is NOT the same as knowingly sending you and your friends to a deadly frog world and nearly getting them killed. im gonna bring this topic up a bit more, so in case anyone sees this and tries to use this to paint marcy in a bad light leave right now)

and then you have luz, a kid whos lived basically her whole life with one foot in both worlds. shes longed for the chance to live in a world of magic, to live out the fantastical tales she grew up reading about. and when she finds herself in the boiling isles, she chooses to stay for her escapist wish fulfillment.

but heres where the two shows branch off. for one, marcy isnt the focus character while luz is the main character of her show. but with amphibia, marcy gets pretty much exactly what he wanted. they end up in the heart of newtopia, the capital of amphibia. they get taken in by the kind king, they’re given a title and rank and responsibilities and quests, and he goes on all sorts of wacky adventures, making a name for himself in newtopia. marcy essentially gets the whole isekai package (except for the chance to experience it all with their best friends)

meanwhile, luz actively chooses to stay in the new magical world, only it doesnt exactly live up to the azura series like luz had hoped. she ends up with a sort of “fixer upper isekai.” the boiling isles isnt all glitz and glamour and sunshine and rainbows. its dangerous and gritty, and while people can fly on brooms and use magic, its flawed and dark and actively rejects a lot of luzs attempts to create it into her isekai fantasies. season 1 is dedicated to hammering the message that, no, the boiling isles is not a place of wonder and excitement, but can be more “realistic” than earth itself

and yet, luz still manages to forge her own story despite it all. she gets her wake up call in season 1, but it doesnt stop her from making connections and finding her place in the boiling isles. she does end up getting her “isekai story,” except it only happens when she isnt actively forcing it to happen. the first time she does try she nearly gets herself killed. instead, its through her big personality and allowing herself to just be her that gets people to open up to her, and luz is able to get her found family and support network. and by the time the actual plot kicks in, when the portal is destroyed and the stakes get real, luz is able to face it because of her strong connections in the boiling isles and what she learned in her time there

..and then theres marcy. now, when i mentioned that the boiling isles was dark and dangerous and gritty, that wasnt to say that amphibia isnt either, because it absolutely is. its just that its easier for marcy to dismiss the dangers of amphibia, while the boiling isles makes you face it all first thing, but its not so bad once you face the brunt of it.

with marcy, he isnt exactly forced to confront a lot of it until it all blows up in their face in true colors. sure, marcy probably has faced danger a countless amount times in their work under king andrias, but thats likely only because he chose to. he could have easily hidden behind the walls of newtopia and no one would have stopped them, but they chose to go into fieldwork and serve with yunan on the warship. and even then, its not dangerous to the same extent as anne being dropped in the middle of the woods after opening the box, or sasha ending up in literal jail right off the bat. no, marcy got lucky, and was able to see amphibia as the wish fulfillment he’d been hoping for

only. it really wasnt in the end. sure, it was all fun and theres a prophecy and possibly even cool anime powers, but it all had a cost. marcy couldnt get away with their escapist tendencies forever. and while marcy arguably had the best introduction to amphibia, they also got the worst of it in the end

all that to say, amphibia and toh are both sort of “modern isekais,” but they both go about it in different, interesting ways. toh is a sort of “twisted” isekai, given how luz isnt just given an isekai story, but instead has to learn to step back from seeing the world as her fantasy before being able to deal with the actual main plot. meanwhile, amphibia deconstructs the whole idea of an isekai in the first place. its explained really well in the post i was talking about earlier, but tldr its an isekai that almost refuses to be one, focusing instead on this regular girl that just wants to get her friends back and go home. its funny, because toh is kind of an isekai with extra steps, while amphibia has the isekai in the background except its not exactly an isekai but its not not an isekai? just with less wish fulfillment and more consequences

but yeah i just thought it was pretty interesting! both toh and amphibia subvert isekai tropes, but toh still has a large focus on plot while amphibias story focuses solely on anne and the shenanigans she gets into. except those shenanigans eventually turned into saving the world

#amphibia #toh #the owl house #marcy wu #luz noceda #hfkjsjsjsbs finally got around to answering this yes!!!!!! #ty for asking moth!!!! sorry it took so long #been wanting to do a toh/amphibia comparison for a while #this isnt too organized but i hope i got the point across #dana and matt are shaking hands in isekai trope subversion #j answers #ask #mothicalspoken #jace rambles #k.txt

[papirouge]

Hii papirouge I hope your day has been well and that you have many more blessed days to come 🫶

I wanted to get into watching anime (I was looking into trying sailor moon and some studio Ghibli movies because those are popular) and wondered if you had any recommendations?

Also: I keep seeing the creepiness of modern anime (namely the pedophilia and other degeneracy) and am seriously wondering what happened between old school anime to now??? The old stuff seems much more normal and sane in comparison.

Hi baby🌞 this is such a lovely entrance djzkdksksk now you got me by the feelings so I'm going to try my best to answer even though I haven't watched anime since YEARS 🥴

There's this preconceived ideas that older anime (80s-90s) were less harmful than today's.... which is true to some extent (especially when it comes to female representation : don't you find interesting that WOMEN are absent from modern anime/manga? only teen or children..... which breeds a generation of pedophiles/men who can't cope with mature women. At least in the 80s we had Versailles no Bara, Cat's Eyes, City Hunter female characters, etc. The FEMME Fatale trope was thriving) but there was definitely toxic/creepy things even in old gen manga.

I grew up with Sailor Moon, and most of this stuff flew over my head back then, but for example Usagi daughter (Chibi Usagi) had a flirtatious relationship with her father. Little Light studio YouTube channel has a whole playlist of videos exposing the cursed messages in anime I linked one of their video in one of my post in the my #animewasamistake tag, and they go as far as the 90s (with Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, etc.) So it's not new

I like flexing over the fact that I never watched a Ghibli movie. Most adults obsessing over those movie scream emotional retardation syndrome. I feel the same about Disney fans too (both demographics overlap anyways). Ghibli movies are filled with paganism so I'm losing my mind whenever I see Christians worshipping them🙄

The Isekai genre is a whole escapist cope anyway (beside Ghibli movies, there's also Kimi no Na/Your Name that did a lot of waves a few years ago) It's only featuring kids or teenager through coming of age stories, and it baffles my head that grown adults are obsessing and identifying so hard over such thematics.

Adulting in Japan sucks, that's why most of their entertainment revolves around glorifying youth & childhood (and entertainment material for adult is often sex related), a time where they are still free of pressuring social expectations, have an entire future before them to create and fantasizing about parallel dimensions where we can fix everything.... but we don't need to bring this regressive copium in the West. I think anime culture is part of why so many adults act & sound retarded today. I'll get roasted for saying that, but people above 25 years old enthusiastically watching anime have something wrong with them.

Ultimately I wouldn't recommend you to watch anime bc there's an obvious (mental & emotional regressive) agenda in it.

The only safe and clever anime I can think of is Shōkōjo Sarah. I grew up watching it and it made the person I am today. It's really emotional and bittersweet (still an happy ending though !!) but watching it will really show you how much of a gap there is between today's anime. Shōkōjo Sarah tackles real stuff (death, abuse, poverty, bullying, social class injustice, etc.).

Anime stans would argue that nekketsu too explore great values (friendship/newfound familly, courage, perseverance, etc.) but all this positivity is overshadowed by all the trash around. Senseless fighting, violence, ABSOLUTE ABSENCE OF ADULTS, PARENTS OR PARENTAL AUTHORITY, female characters devoid of any personality beside having big breast and being a side buddy/love intereset of the main character (hence why most male anime fans have such a warped view of adult femaleness)..

Avoiding manga/anime written by males is already a great way to sort out shitty manga. But even female author are shoving mysticism (Fullmetal Alchemist), weird romantic dynamic in their material (I'll never forget CLAMP obsession to do child/adult couples in Cardcaptor Sakura) and unecessary (underage) female sexualization (let's not forget Kimetsu no Yaiba main character's 14 y.o sister having her breasts doubling size & popping out of her kimono whenever whatever demon who's possessing her comes out).... I feel like the anime/manga industry is so porny & scrotified that even female author go with the flow to get success.

#anime culture was a mistake #andwere

[paulisweeabootrash]

Review: Love in Hell

Happy Halloween! I bring you a tale from the underworld that I have been meaning to get around to talking about for years but my copy of this manga has been in storage and buying a second copy seemed silly. But I finally have it again!

Love in Hell (manga, 2011)

Volumes read: 3 (whole series - omnibus)

Rintaro has died unexpectedly from a fall while drunk and found himself in another world full of magic... unfortunately for him, this is not an escapist isekai, but just a traditional afterlife. It is one of the many hells where people go between reincarnations.

Rintaro, you see, is an asshole, and he is basically unaware that there's anything wrong with him. Upon meeting his newbie demonic overseer Koyori, who tells him where he is, he is totally dismissive and pokes her horns to see if they're real. When she reacts... uh... in an unexpected way, is he embarrassed? Does he back off or apologize? No, he tries to force himself on her, and is immediately shown what happens to people who try to pull that crap in the underworld by Koyori's senpai Momone and her assigned sinner, Yukihiko, whom she has recently relieved of his skin for a similar offense. Really, this first chapter is the perfect intro to the story of Love in Hell because it is a sample of what to expect throughout. If an unsympathetic protagonist doing and experiencing bad things is something you can't or don't want to look at, you know right away to stay away.

For those of you still interested, let's proceed. Koyori was so shy meeting Rintaro because she is brand new to the sinner-punishing business. And yes, it's a business. The demonic economy runs on a currency, "vexes", which overseers earn based on their assigned sinner's suffering. And the pay rate is outrageously low. Koyori has to stab Rintaro in the eyes and then smash his head open with a club to earn enough vexes to buy him a pair of misprinted novelty boxers as a replacement for her initial effort at clothing him (tying her iPod around his waist as a loincloth). Rintaro promptly gets to work... looking for ways to avoid punishment, find alternate methods of earning vexes, and turn his stay in this hell into something he can tolerate. Understandable, sure, but also a bad move on his part.

See, hells are like holes: when you find yourself in one, you should stop digging, and by the end of the first volume, he has ended up with a larger load of sins to work off than he arrived with. Meanwhile, he gets to know some of the other denizens, both demon and human, and starts to get some perspective. Rintaro starts to sympathize with at least some of the demons, and to learn more about them, including that there are some things that are out of bounds even for them. It also begins to sink in that he hasn't been a good person, but that he also hasn't been too bad compared to so many other people. He's in a relatively mild hell, actually, and the truly heinous and unrepentant are thrown in the abyss to suffer at the hands of much more extreme demons.

However, working off his karmic debt is still not worth it to him to continue suffering, especially after he does something that manages to lose the little bit of atonement progress he gained, and he continues to search for another solution. And as you might have guessed from the title, he develops romantic feelings for Koyori in the meantime. But he still needs money, both for himself and to pay back an unexpected kindness from another sinner, so he ends up taking jobs that demons want kept quiet. These range from gathering a dangerous aphrodisiac plant to letting a newly-trained demon practice basic punishments on him. But then, one of those clients restores the lost traumatic memory (see "Content" section for spoiler of what the memory is, since traumatic is the right description) that shows Rintaro the real reason he is in hell, and just as we get this big reveal... the plot trips over itself.

Just as he comes back out of the chapter of flashback, Rintaro dumps exposition for a few pages that really feels like it would have gone better in natural conversation. This wraps up in a scene that, in Yukihiko's words, "is so sweet it's hard to remember we're in hell", but is immediately interrupted by the surprise return of a particularly obnoxious sinner introduced early on. The sinner kidnaps Koyori, hands her over to one of the truly deranged demons of the abyss, and a dramatic love confession, gesture of self-sacrifice, and deus ex machina ensue, resulting in Enma Himself wiping away Rintaro's remaining need for atonement and granting him the wishes to (1) send the person he wronged straight to heaven and (2) become a demon. All in the last chapter.

Honestly, especially since Rintaro and Koyori's relationship is based on them basically being each other's first real adult romantic opportunity, this feels like there should be more development here. There just needs to be some breathing room between Rintaro's realization that Koyori is the first person he has ever opened up to and a dramatic declaration of love, you know? It feels like this was rushed or edited down to be completed in three volumes when it was originally paced for four (or more?). I will freely admit this is toward the high end of the Shit scale before we even get to the Weeb Ass Shit Scores just because of that massive last-chapter stumble. There's a difference between "trashy fun" and "just unambiguously unenjoyable", though, and this is mostly on the fun side for me, so maybe check it out next time you need some more demons in your reading schedule.

-----

W/A/S: 5/7/6/!

Weeb: I think most "foreign" aspects of this story are explained or easy to grasp, but there are also passing untranslated things like "senpai" and extremely Japanese tropes like the obligatory peeping in a hot spring scene that will make non-otaku audiences go "what?".

Ass: This is certainly not something I would want people reading over my shoulder. The demons do not wear much clothing, the humans they're assigned to tend to wear even less, and although sexualized nudity isn't that common, you can bet it takes up a whole page when it does show up. However, sexual content is mostly used for gross-out gags (sometimes regrettably homophobic ones) or examples of what not to do.

Shit (writing): Ugh, several points of shit just for the last chapter. Otherwise, it has some pluses. Although Rintaro's character arc hinges on a "recovered memory" epiphany, a trope I don't really appreciate, he is still interesting to watch across the story because he changes gradually and unevenly, and it's not hard to see that he would have responded very differently if the big reveal had happened earlier, perhaps lashing out more instead of self-reflecting. Koyori gains confidence and maturity as she goes from a stammering new hire to the mastermind behind how the big reveal was revealed, but I wish we had seen more of her side of the story actually play out. The author also leaned too heavily on a recurring joke that masochists like being in hell, I think. It gets old fast.

Shit (other): The characters and their environment are distinctive and consistent, and although the "demon = kinky" trope of many demons' clothes is not at all original, I feel like a bit more effort has been put into making their outfits, uh, make sense than I've seen with other "kinky demons" before. Also, to me, the trick of remembering an event from a previous chapter by sticking a copy of the panel or page in a thought bubble is admittedly clever but also kinda lazy.

Content: Warnings for violence of the regular, twisted, and sexual varieties. I hope I've made it clear that if you don't want to see depictions of demons punishing people in ways that range unpredictably from graphically horrible to slapstick-but-still-horrible, nor what sinners did to receive those punishments, this is not for you. I also didn't want to spoil what the big reveal is, but if you're already thinking this isn't for you, you should probably be aware of it. It turns out Rintaro is in hell for abandoning his childhood friend when he saw that her father was both physically and sexually abusing her, which set off a whole cascade of events including his total failure to form new friendships and her suicide. I'm kind of surprised this manga has only an "Older Teen" rating, but I guess Seven Seas doesn't think it's quite extreme enough in either sex or violence to get "Mature".

-----

Stray Thoughts:

Maybe the author has fleshed out what he didn't get to the first time, since there's a spinoff from another sinner's POV, so maybe I'll check that out too? Oh, nope, from this description, it sounds like it's a completely unconnected story. Damn.

It's odd that souls who have worked their way out of this hell can go to heaven, since that isn't traditionally part of Buddhist cosmology, so I don't know whether this is an example of Western influences on afterlife-related story tropes or just a loose translation choice.

#manga review #weeaboo trash #love in hell

[moonsinkfoxgirl]

-- スライム倒して300年、知らないうちにレベルMAXになってました 第1話 ／ I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, Ep.1

Shots fired at Japan’s (over)work culture.

#for an escapist isekai show #that moment was pretty profound #and really well executed #those screencaps don't do it justice #slime taoshite 300-nen shiranai uchi ni level max ni nattemashita #slime300 #slime taoshite 300-nen

[valerianavow]

@sonofrose had a good post about pacing earlier that I've been trying to put into words for a while. It's about the kind of show Amphibia is and what it shows on an episode-to-episode story. I want to spin off of that a little bit and talk about what Amphibia feels like it's written as to me.

Amphibia is a "portal fantasy" story. In Japan, the name for this genre is "isekai", or "other world." These stories are structured in a very specific way, usually only deviating on a few story beats from author to author. They're all about escapist wish fulfillment.

Ordinary children are the heroes [...] Selected as the CHOSEN ONE, the ordinary child travels to another wold, grows wise and strong, overcomes trials and challenges, succeeds, & returns home. This so-called hero's round is a circular journey, ending where it began. - Michael O. Tunnell, Children's Literature, Briefly

- The Hero(es) find a way to another world that's challenged by Evil.

- The other world gives them powers, maybe a cool sword, and sometimes has a prophecy that says only the Heroes can defeat the Evil.

- The Heroes have a few setbacks, and then excel in what they do and defeat the Evil. The world is saved!

- The Heroes come back home, to Earth, and then the story ends.

There's a million stories that fit this description, blow by blow. Peter Pan, Chronicles of Narnia, The Phantom Tollbooth, Wizard of Oz, Inuyasha, Digimon, Sword Art Online... from classical fiction to current media, the list is very, very long. Most plots stay the same. Relying on those story beats means the author can expand on the points between them, detailing a world, characters, and unique plot twists that the author wants to communicate as they go without spending too much time with a challenging concept. And the key thing is: the adventure ends when the Chosen One comes home.

Portal fantasy is the rawest form of escapist wish fulfillment fiction that exists. It's a great story concept, the idea that other worlds exist and that fantastic adventures can happen if you only open the right door. Earth isn't interesting. The problems and boring reality of Earth is the starting and ending point, giving the protagonists a simple contrast with the magical adventures they're on. Earth sucks! School sucks! Parents suck! Learn to swordfight, fight evil and save the world! Then go home, return to the mundane - but remember that magic truly exists. It's a really solid plot and one we know and love as a culture.

From the start, Amphibia seems to be a classic portal fantasy. We're shown that Anne, who's thrown into this fantastical other world, can do wild feats of strength, and we learn she has a close friend from Earth locked up by an antagonist somewhere else. The story's clear from there- the Hero has to gain power, experience the world, and then go and rescue her friends and set up the Evil to defeat.

And then Sasha joins the bad guys, duels Anne and falls off Toad Tower.

That moment, the end of season 1, is where all the expectations and logic that Amphibia is just another portal fantasy is shaken. There's setbacks in the Hero's Journey, but in these stories, the children work together- they find the meaning of friendship, they fight Evil, they prevail. They don't spend most of the stories separated from each other and off doing their own thing.

Season 2 spends a lot of time restoring the audience's assumption that things will come back to a portal fantasy's version of normal. We're given the quest, the hints at a greater force with the prophecy and temples, and a Chosen One, finally, in Anne herself. The girls are brought back together and are finally working together! They're learning what friendship means. At that point, it's reasonable to think that Sasha's the antagonist of the series, which is a clever challenge to the basic idea of portal fantasy. The logic carries through, still- even though Sasha's planning to betray them, surely her restored relationship with the girls will give us the good ending after she's defeated and remembers the True Meaning of Friendship.

And then Marcy's secret is revealed.

When Marcy thought she might have found a portal to a fantasy world, she was assuming she'd get that story we're all extremely familiar with- the trio would stay together, learn the meaning of friendship, keep traveling on "to new worlds, so we could have amazing adventures just like this one, forever and ever! Where we'd never have to grow apart, where the three of us could be together, forever!"

Anne and Sasha react in horror. It's brutal. It's a complete betrayal of their friendship.

And it's literally the pitch of any other portal fantasy story.

The world of Amphibia wasn't an escapist wish fulfillment fantasy. It's a real world, with real problems. But Marcy's speech isn't a mistake, and it's not a character flailing blindly. It's the pitch you'd expect when you start watching the show blind. "A child finds a magical portal to another world, goes there with her friends, and adventures with them, growing closer together as friends." It's the pitch Marcy herself would be very familiar with as a kid who read a lot of escapist portal fiction.

And it shows us exactly what the writers of Amphibia are trying to communicate with the show.

The original vision of this show was a lot grittier, a lot darker. [...] I really thought it would be super short. Almost one season, or half a season, like, super short. It made sense then that the tone was darker, grittier, and the story was able to resolve itself much faster. The story kind of ends with Reunion, like Anne and her frog family like "we're going to find a way out of here, I swear it", and that was all I had in my head when I first started pitching. And then obviously it blossomed into this much bigger thing. - Matt Braly, Cartoon Universe interview 2021 (emphasis mine)

Amphibia has always existed as a challenge and critique of the genre of isakei/portal fantasy. Braly's original concept was a story where the hero doesn't get to go home. It didn't end in the way you'd expect of that kind of story to end.

In the version of the show that we have, it does the same thing, in an opposite way. Anne goes back to Earth, the place where these stories end. And the story continues. Because it's not meant to be a portal fantasy. It's meant to be a story about Anne.

It makes perfect sense that the fandom thinks a lot about a version of the story that fits the classic beats of portal fantasy. We're all super familiar with it. It's a good structure of a story. We want to see the Calamity Girls work together, find the true meaning of friendship, and beat the Evil hand-in-hand before going home with a happy ending. That's not wrong of us. I personally love to exist in that space. It's a really rewarding one, with a lot of fun things that could happen.

But it's not the story Amphibia's interested in telling.

Amphibia doesn't care about the story beats of portal fiction. It doesn't care about the Hero's Journey. What it cares about is what is honestly one of the best reimaginings of a portal fantasy story that I've ever seen. The point of Amphibia's story is not that Anne is destined to fight some greater evil, or that Anne, Marcy and Sasha are meant to be the Chosen Ones. The point of Amphibia isn't the fate of a world in the face of an Evil that must be defeated by Good. The point of Amphibia is that Anne has a family who cares about her, and that she has a place to call home. That's the entire point of the story. Everything she does in the story is motivated by that simple thing. She's not meant to fight. She doesn't want to fight. Fighting hurts her, hurts her family, hurts her friends. It's not noble or heroic. The circumstances she's forced into to protect her family makes her pick up a sword, again and again. All she wants to do is protect them.

Amphibia is not a story about Amphibia. Amphibia is a story about Anne and the people who love her.

We're just along for the ride.

#amphibia #amphibia meta #amphibia analysis #amphibia theory #avowonder #anne boonchuy #sorry this is such a long one #it's my entire thesis of the show #hope it makes sense! lol

[malloyka]

Okay, so like, I know this isn't an especially new or revolutionary take by any means, but Amphibia's biggest strength as a show absolutely lies in it's character writing

Like every character is so FLAWED (in particular the 3 human leads) but so sympathetic, and none of them ever remain stagnant throughout the two seasons so far and it makes the characterisation feel so natural. And obviously when you have a fantasy show like Amphibia it's especially important that the characters feel realistic and relatable, because how else do you get an audience to cry over an orphaned frog child.

Tbh I could write so much about Anne and the Plantars or Sasha, but today I want to talk about Marcy for a bit because what can I say, I'm a neurodivergent teen, of course I love her.

Marcy is truly such an incredibly well-written character, in particular because her major character flaws basically exist to deconstruct the show itself.

(I'm sure this has probably also been talked about somewhere before, but honestly I just really like Marcy and feel like ranting about her lol.)

So the whole point of Isekai-like shows such as Amphibia is that they provide the perfect escapism, right? Consequently, we the audience are positioned to view the show in the same way that Marcy views Amphibia - as this sort of DND fantasy world where she can escape reality, something that is reinforced several times throughout the show but really comes to a head in True Colours. As a result, it essentially ends up forcing us the audience into questioning how we view the show.

And Marcy's betrayal/reveal scene in True Colours is such an amazing (but heartbreaking) moment, because it truly highlights how disconnected from reality she is. Like that line she has "I gave you this! I gave you everything!" is genuinely chilling.

Then this is all sort of culminates when Marcy gets...impaled. Even though it's been memed to death (haha) I think this scene is actually really important for Marcy's narrative as a character AND for the audience. Firstly, even the fact that they were bold enough to stab a child through the chest COMPLETELY recontextualises how we seen the entire show and I for one think that is so cool!!!

But it also provides Marcy with the realisation that Amphibia isn't her perfect fantasy world, and that she can't run from reality in this way.

I think a tonal shift like they did in True Colours was honestly kind of a risky move, but imo it absolutely paid off. This whole time the audience have been tricked into seeing Amphibia as a sometimes creepy but ultimately harmless escapist fantasy world, essentially just the way Marcy sees it. However, the seriousness with which the events of True Colours are treated is? Kind of insane? Like this episode really pulled NO punches.

Another thing which I think Amphibia is very good at, which is prevalent throughout all of True Colours as well, is the subversion of expectations. The obvious one is Marcy's unexpected impaling after Sprig already had a near death experience that was treated very seriously, but generally the implication that the show is asking the audience to question how we view it is kind of subverty as well, and definitely not something I expected from this show.

Idk if this even made any sense oops. I just love how reality setting in for Marcy (through her impalement) is around the same moment reality sets in for the audience, as we question where we thought this show would go, tonally speaking (unless you count Sasha being willing to fall to her death in Reunion, which I feel like is kind of glossed over like hello???)

Anyway

This is slightly more irrelevant but I also can't stop thinking about that one line Marcy has about the species based caste system in Amphibia, which is honestly a through-line that I hope they end up doing something with. Cause I gotta say I LOVE class metaphors in kids cartoons when they're done right.

#amphibia #amphibia meta #i reallyyyyyy hope im not just stating the obvious throughout this lol #marcy wu #i just find it hard to tell sometimes #whether what im saying is actually interesting or if everyone already picked up on it #but i hope this was somehow slightly interesting to someone anyway! #not dw

[artbyblastweave]

It occurs to me that there’s something that sets Amphibia apart from its contemporaries- The Owl House, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, that whole set.  At a high level, stripped of the context of being a Disney Kids show, Amphibia genuinely feels as though it lends itself by default to an outright tragic ending in service of it’s themes.

It isn’t as front and center, but Amphibia feels like a cousin to Infinity Train in that both shows are rooting around in the guts of narratives like The Phantom Tollbooth and Oz. At a high level, it’s a story about a shy but deeply genre-aware child who deliberately instigates an Isekai plot as a form of escapism, viewing the world she arrives in terms of tropes and RPG plot points- which works well enough that it blinds her to the many sketchy elements surrounding her own rapid rise to prominence, and the ulterior motives of her newfound “friends.” 

 It’s a story about Sasha, an Isekai protagonist whose hypercompetence, social-fu and self-identified role as “protector” launch her in a genre-conforming way from a prison-cell to the head of a rebellion, Elder Scrolls style- at the cost of most of her human connections and at massive “human” cost that she refuses to engage with because she views the Isekai setting as a backdrop to her own status as the protagonist. 

And finally you have Anne, who’s mostly just.... a person, who has the good fortune to land in a relatively low-pressure space where she gets held accountable for her mistakes without being punished, tortured, or elevated to an impossible standard, forms genuine familial connections, stays stuck in one central location long enough that she integrates into a community organically, and generally just... has a reasonably well-adjusted life as the child that she is, with a fantastical veneer. Unlike the other two, she never centered herself as the protagonist or as being more real, and her fuckups don’t stem from a mindset like that. 

And binding all of these arcs together is that by the standards of fantasy otherworlds, Amphibia really, really sucks as a place to live. It’s a death world where expectations of a short and violent life are baked into the culture. Aesthetically it’s viscerally gross and grimey in a way that even The Boiling Isles (a place made from rotting godmeat!) doesn’t play up to the same extent. They fight cannibals twice in a three month span. The main thing stopping most of the episodes from being straight-up horror is the fact that, again, it’s a kids show- there’s canonically a very large body-count associated with all of this, it just isn’t front and center.

This leads me to the big point I’ve had running through my head- when I talk out the plot of Amphibia at a high level, I feel like I’m describing the plot of a YA novel or webcomic or some other post-modern indie thing written specifically to deconstruct the otherworld fantasy, by centering a grounded protagonist with real emotional connections and giving her foils in the form of two close friends who’re running on escapist power fantasy logic straight into brick walls. 

Good things don’t typically happen to the foils in those stories. They don’t in this one either! Marcy’s deliberately-engineered Isekai fantasy got her extremely dead, and I think one of the big things preventing her from staying that way is the fact that this is a kids show on Disney. I think Sasha’s inevitable turnaround and reconciliation with Anne is gonna be facilitated by the fact this is a kid’s show on Disney. Please note I’m not saying that either of those things are going to be bad or poorly written- I’m looking forward to them- but I do think the thing making those plot points narratively necessary is the fact it’s a kid’s show on Disney.

 After all, Infinity Train is the other big work that went big on unpacking protagonist-centered morality, and book three purchased Grace’s character development with the brutal deaths of half the party and the permanent alienation of Hazel. That kind of genuinely tragic/bittersweet end really is an option for this kind of story, it’s just not one they’re likely to exercise- they can make their commentary on the genre and still pull out a happy ending.

#amphibia #meta #thoughts #amphibia meta #infinity train #infinity train spoilers

[choopsiepng]

I’ve been consuming an honestly problematic amount of isekai webtoons/manhwa lately, specifically the shoujo pseudo-medieval-fantasy-europe with lords and ladies and a legendary swordsman ML who’s the disgraced Archduke of the barren North kind, and the implications of the transmigration trope has been killing me.

A lot of the time, the MC’s life before getting trucked is hand-waved away. Their past doesn’t really come up much in the story unless its to show a few panels of their tragic backstory, or to justify a skill that the plot needs. Which isn’t a flaw, because these types of stories are supposed to be escapist fantasies. We’re here for romance and simpery. But a genre deconstruction would be great. Imagine a transmigration story exploring how dysphoric ending up in a new body would be. Imagine the grief of having your life ripped away from you— no more modern conveniences, no more tasting your favorite food, no more seeing the people you treasure. Who’s going to take care of your dog??? And— Imagine how horrific it would be to have a loved one’s body be hijacked by a complete stranger.

Man— the last one has so much room for inspiration. What if the person you transmigrated into had people who cared about them? How would they feel about the transmigrator? Would they resent them? Pity them? And since a lot of the time, people are transmigrated into heinous villainesses, imagine how complicated the people that the og villainess harassed would feel. The person who was so horrible to you is now replaced by a confused, and, honestly, pitiful stranger. Where’s all your hate and ire supposed to go?

Or, to get even more meta, what if someone is isekai’d into a transmigration novel? Imagine the identity crisis that the transmigrator would go through with the knowledge that they’re a fictional character as well! They’re so glad to finally be able to talk to someone from their world, only to find out that they’re the bland female lead of a mediocre transmigration novel. Not even a good one— nope, people online trash on her for having no braincells and following the original novel lmao. She finds out that there are thousands screaming at her for trying to set up the OG FL and ML. Comedy. Or angst critiquing transmigration audiences. Flip a coin.

The female lead starts to notice how blurry their memories of their past life are; how quickly and adeptly they adapted into living as a noble lady im pseudo-medieval-europe, how they’d always stumble into the main plot despite doing everything they can to live a quiet life. The mindfuckery. The gut-wrenching loss of agency. They were already despairing over not being able to follow the original plot. What are they going to do now?

“Is that why I keep tripping into the main protagonists?!!”

#transmigration #otome isekai #manhwa #isekai #webtoon

[anthurak]

Something I've had a lot of fun with lately is imagining RWBY in the context of an anime series. Because when you start directly comparing RWBY to all of the anime that have come out over the last 8 years, and try to imagine RWBY as being a part of that market, you start to realize something: 

As much as RWBY borrows from the anime medium as a whole, it just plain does not fit into any established anime genre. I mean, think about it; What genre of anime would RWBY even be?

Shounen Fight series? Yeah, how many of those have four girls as its main protagonists, have a cast predominantly composed of girls and women, many of whom are the show’s top fighters?

On the flip side, I feel like Team RWBY could be described as ‘what if you took the protagonists of a four-girl ensemble slice-of-life show and dropped them into an isekai monster-hunting show’.

Speaking of which, I think we could easily describe Remnant as being an isekai setting, without any actual isekai-ing. Which could help explain why part of the fandom has been desperately trying to crow-bar Jaune into some kind of Kirito-mold for the last eight years.

And while we’re on the subject of Jaune, in how many anime have we seen the creators introduce a bog-standard fantasy-hero protagonist archetype, and then make him a side character? And then spend the entire series utterly refusing to give that guy any kind of stock shounen power-up or anything resembling a harem, or any other kind of standard escapist power-fantasy element aimed at young boys. And instead craft him into a character wholly his own in the form of a helpful, supportive everyman hero who actually is an everyman. I have a hard time imagining a character like Jaune as he is in RWBY even existing in the current anime mainstream.

And there’s so much more, like Qrow having very real emotionally vulnerability instead of some standard edgy-antihero demeanor, or Raven’s whole character being an absolutely scathing rebuke the ‘daddy had a good reason for abandoning you’ trope.

The point is, I actually have to agree that RWBY isn’t an anime. It’s way too original to be one!

#rwby #rwby analysis

[r-h-isaac]

Shield Hero Ep 24

Because OF COURSE the only people that Naofumi starts warming up to are part of the antagonists' group. 

Why can't we have a good time without there being some cynical undertone? I swear, this show exists to take any good feels an isekai is supposed to give us, grind them into the dirt, and laugh at us for thinking we could have a fun outing in an escapist fantasy. 

#anime #first reactions #shield hero

[natsubeatsrock]

7 Things I Enjoyed in 2021 that Aren’t Fairy Tail

You know the rules and so do I.

Number 7: The Hunter's Guild: Red Hood

Given the cutthroat nature of the WSJ, many series that show promise are canceled early. A lot of series got the ax this year, including Phantom Seer, an honorable mention from last year. But seeing Red Hood end prematurely was especially disappointing. It was great to see a series take the various Grimm Brothers stories and make a fighting series with it. It doesn't seem as though WSJ readers and the folks at Shueisha agreed. Here's hoping the writer gets another shot sometime soon.

Number 6: Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

Yeah, this is going to upset some people. I found out about the authors Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay a few years ago. They teamed up with Peter Boghossian to fool a bunch of academic journalists into publishing bunk journal entries, including a feminist rewriting of part of Mein Kampf. (I wish I was joking.) Since then, the group has often teamed up to write and talk about how these studies aren't as helpful as people want to believe. I've been waiting to read this book for a while. I'm glad I was able to this year. The whole time I read it, I kept screaming "This stuff is cancer!" out loud as I read the quotes they cited. If you're interested in this but don't enjoy reading non-fiction at a graduate level, wait for their book Social Injustice to come out in a few weeks.

Number 5: Wandavision

Chalk this one up to being too behind on the MCU for my own good. I've heard a lot of praise for Far from Home. But I still have to catch up with Falcon and the Winter Soldier, let alone the movies from this year. Still, this was a great introduction to Disney Plus for Marvel Studios. After the fallout of both Avengers movies, Wanda grieves the loss of Vision by... holding an entire town hostage and creating a series of sitcoms. Most episodes pay homage to a different era of the genre going from the black-and-white era to the modern era. I'm not sure I could have expected to have as much fun watching this as I had. As a big lover of the mutants, I almost shed tears when we saw Wanda finally become the Scarlet Witch. I can't wait to see how this ties into the upcoming Doctor Strange film... after I catch up with the rest of the MCU...

Number 4: Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation

This series will likely be anime of the year for many people. However, my nod goes to the light novel version of the series. Mushoku Tensei didn't start the isekai genre or trends it uses. But it set the tone for where the genre would end up going. With the series making its name known to the West this year, it's not hard to see why. You're not getting an escapist fantasy about a guy living out his dream. Rudeus Greyrat is someone who recognizes he screwed up in his old life and is genuinely trying to make the most of his new life. This shows up in how he helps others and is tied to other parts of the series. If it weren't for certain plot points, this might have made it higher on this list. Still, I can't deny that I've had a great time reading this. I eagerly await the reaction to certain things coming up in the anime.

Number 3: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Haha, the game with the number 3 is my number 3. I've been meaning to play this for a while. As fun as FE is, I've had extra fun playing this particular game now. My first playthrough of this game coincided with me actually becoming a teacher. I can't say that it's affected my teaching abilities. However, as an addition to the Fire Emblem series, it's great to see this game hasn't divided the community as much as many other recent entries have. It feels like every new game I play in this series becomes my favorite. However, this has been the first game I've struggled to put down in years. I'm still on my second playthrough, and I'm having a ton of fun finding out more about the world and characters. This upcoming year looks to be a big one for Nintendo, and it will be interesting to see how they impress fans.

Number 2: Komi-san Can't Communicate

Do you mean to tell me that Netflix licensed two series about a character who meets someone who helps them make a ton of friends despite their social ineptitude? And hit both out of the park? Though, I've already given EZ a spot on this list in the past. This is a series that has been hyped up for years. Shouko Komi's popularity in-universe is only rivaled by her popularity in real life. When I saw that it was getting an adaptation, I was worried it wouldn't live up to the expectations. Not because of the source material, but if the studio would do the series justice. Needless to say, those fears were widely exaggerated. This was the most fun new anime of the year (not named EZ). Admittedly, I haven't seen much new anime from this year people would consider a standout hit. However, I doubt that anything from this year would have gotten my nod over it. Word of advice, this might not be the best show to watch on Netflix.

Number 1: Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel trilogy

To think these are the Ufotable movies making the top of my list. One of my big anime goals for the year was to get into the Fate series. I have a ways to go with the millions of spinoffs. But I've seen all of the main adaptations of the series. Part of me wanted to give this spot to Carnival Phantasm, just because. However, I can't say I enjoyed anything I went through this year as much as Heaven's Feel movie trilogy. Allow me to vastly oversimplify this series. Fate/stay night is a visual novel involving a series of battles involving famous mythical and historical figures fighting alongside people who use magic. There are three different routes: Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel. I'd have liked UBW with a different ending, and the adaptation for Fate isn't great. Heaven's Feel provided a ton of satisfying endings for characters I didn't think would get happy endings. This especially goes for the main heroine of this route Sakura Matou. I fell in love with her even during the first Fate adaptation. Watching Heaven's Feel made me willing to fight anyone who would see her unhappy. Also, screw Shinji Matou.

(This is an aside for the Fate series. If you want to get into the series, here's what you need to know. Either go through the UBW television series and then go to the movies first or Fate/Zero. Once you finish one, watch what you missed. You can go through the old Fate/stay night anime before UBW if you want, but it's horribly dated and mixes things from the other routes. You can also just go through the visual novels and get into whatever you want from there. Anything else is extra.)

As honorable mentions, the PV for Chainsaw Man might be one of the best anime I've seen, and the series will likely have a spot on this list. I did enjoy the Case Studies of Vanitas anime but not enough for it to make the list. I've been rewatching the old Sailor Moon, and I've been having a fun time. River City Girls is a great game that I can't wait to see the sequel for next year. Hilda and Cobra Kai will get new series additions after I post this, and it looks like they'll continue to be amazing. And, if you haven't given EZ a chance, the anime is an underrated gem. Give it a shot before the second season adapts some of the more crazy moments in the series.

Speaking of which, here’s my EZ list. See you!

[heroine-problem-blog]

Forgotten Realms: The Isekai Boom of the 90’s

There’s no denying it: isekai is the genre of the moment in Japanese nerd culture. The loanword identifying the genre literally means “different world”, and it features a protagonist from our own world suddenly finding themselves trapped in an alternate world, usually one dominated by Western fantasy tropes. The trend reached the US in the early 2010’s with Sword Art Online, with its protagonist Kirito trapped in an MMORPG. Isekai are generally adaptation of light novels, where they are so prominent that last summer, a short story contest banned entries featuring alternate worlds. Like most light novel anime, they’re usually aimed at young men already immersed in the genre, and their protagonists tend to have a degree of self-awareness about their situation.

Despite their recent surge of popularity, isekai series have been around for quite a while. Recently, I stumbled on an article that claimed that the genre barely existed until a 1983 children’s show called Manga Aesop Monogatari and the anime adaptation of Inuyasha, which began in the year 2000. This article is, to put it bluntly, dead wrong. One of the earliest examples of the genre is Crest of the Royal Family, a 1976 shoujo manga that is still running to this day. Inuyasha may have been a breakout hit, but isekai anime and manga thrived during the 90’s. US fans didn’t have a name for it at the time – we generally referred to it as “‘trapped in another world’ anime”. The main difference between isekai then and isekai now is the intended audience – 25 years ago, it was a staple of the shoujo demographic, rather than today’s escapist playgrounds for young men. Ordinary young women were pulled into alternate worlds where attractive young men told them they had a special destiny to fulfill. They went on grand adventures and usually – though not always – fell in love along the way.

Read More

#isekai #shoujo manga #fushigi yugi #twelve kingdoms #magic knight rayearth #red river #from far away #escaflowne #the legend of himiko

[fantasyinvader]

(exhales)

Shield Hero volume 15...restored my hope in the franchise. Not being sarcastic or anything, but it did. It did this by laying out what, all this time, the central premise of the tale,

Namely, how free or easy power can corrupt.

Like, it’s not rocket science here but it links so well with various parts of the story. From the flaws of the Heroes, to the motivations for it’s villains (who are all cut of the same cloth), it all ties back to this. Shield Hero is an isekai series, a genre infamous for being escapist power fantasy. What it’s doing is showing that simply giving power and abilities to someone isn’t going to teach them great responsibility, and without that it’s more of a recipe for a villain even if their intentions are good. Especially if you’re willing to sacrifice others in the name of said power.

The series had eased up on this following Naofumi getting his name cleared. It simply gave him more and more ways to get stronger, powerful allies, and giving those allies powerful weapons themselves. The cast ballooned, and everything after the Spirit Tortoise didn’t feel like as much of a struggle. Things would just seem to go Naofumi’s way at times, making him stronger.

During this we see Naofumi’s former status as an otaku start to make a comeback,as he makes more and more vague references to anime he’s watched. He becomes enamored with his familiar, acting loopy whenever Raph-chan is involved. More emphasis is placed on his cooking abilities, and it’s even revealed he has supernatural abilities he wasn’t completely aware of (like being completely immune to the effects of alcohol). He acts less like the anti-hero he was at the beginning, and focused on getting stronger through using the world’s game-like mechanics.

Now once again, he’s suffered a loss. One of his allies died from an attack he didn’t realize until afterwards would have killed him. He became overconfident in his abilities, and due to the enemy he knows about but hasn’t been investigating, Atla is dead. All those new abilities and weapons he’s picked up weren’t enough. Her final wish gave him and his allies a huge power boost, but at the end of the volume he’s left crying for the girl who loved him.

It feels all the stuff I disliked about the last 10 volumes was deliberate, lulling me until this hit. But yeah, it feels like this one battle, that unlike the Spirit Tortoise doesn’t even take up much time (that battle took two books, this took about a third of one), was simply meant to bring the story back to what it originally was after it looked like it had changed into the very thing it set out to critique.