#intended to rank the episodes at some point but forgot so like

[shoceted]

have you ever made a ranking for each of the kamen rider seasons you've watched? which one is best for newbies, which one is your secret favourite, which one made you cry etc

i have made a ranking actually! i have a tier list that i very rarely share publicly because there's some spicy takes on there. but here's some thoughts on each season i've completed at this time because you gave me the excuse anon >:]

ryuki: i... really wish i liked ryuki more. i respect it immensely for what it did for the franchise and i think it's got themes, which is more than i can say of some seasons. but for the most part i ahhhhh... didn't love it? it's not my least favorite season i don't think but it isn't one that i'm going to revisit any time soon. i do love ren and shinji though; as a known sucker for a grumpy/sunshine primary/secondary red/blue pair they got me and they got me hard. i definitely am going to write some renshinji someday. and those last two episodes are some good fucking television. but overall ehhhh. i really do wish i liked it more though if only to fit in with everyone else :( (and it's not just the fact that it's heisei phase 1 that's the issue bc i'm loving decade and blade so far! and kiva also is there!). but yeah at this time my favorite ryuki is the one from japanese boy band mazzel stream carnival

double: DUB E X CRIME N THE CITY! i fucking loved w. it's just straight up damn good toku. and it literally took a single episode preview for terui ryu in all his stupid wet cat angstiness to captivate me forever. a single episode preview. like i will always remember finishing the 1st arc, seeing the episode preview for ryu's first episode right after, and being like "fuck" even though i intended to leave off there for the day and watched his first two episodes. DAMN U SECONDARY RIDER SYNDROME. i do think w would be a great place to start getting into rider tbh because it's just so good!!!!!!! i don't even have a lot to say about it but not in a bad way. it's just really really good. watch w. and make it soon. if you have not already. love is strong girls go on

ooo: so one thing you should understand is that i am literally watching ooo right now. like i'm sitting on my couch typing this and also watching episode 19 of kamen rider ooo. i legit watch through the entire second arc all the time. i think it's a very close second or third for my favorite season ever. eiji at the very least is tied for my favorite primary ever and that's saying a lot considering how much i love my other favorite primary ever. (which we'll get into.) ankh is just like me fr and i am going to eat his gender and HINA. BEST GIRL. 10/10. the very first ooo fic i started working on after watching this show (which i might fuck around and try to finish at some point even) is from her pov!!!!!! because i love her. AND DATE AKIRA IS THE MAN EVER (AND THE LEAST REPRESSED SECONDARY CONGRATION YOU DONE IT). the story the comedy the action the epic highs and lows of a hippie and his underwear and of a bird and his ice pops and of a girl and her brother and GAHHHHH. i love this show so so so much. i would absolutely start with ooo if i could go back in time. and i did not secretly cry, i cried a lot. openly. i want to make my boss watch it. i love ooo. i've been trying to design a hawktigergrasshopper shirt for months. i am literally watching kamen rider ooo right now and i will until i go to bed. you count the medals one two and three life goes on anything goes coming up ooo [i start crying]

fourze: my first exposure to kisaragi gentaro was when i watched heisei generations final for the first time, where i promptly freaked the fuck out because holy shit it's fuckin fukushi sota jesus christ jesse eisenberg moment. i actually watched one fourze movie (the winter one, bc i'm a h!p fan and manoeri is there. nadeshiko my beloved) long before i'd seen the series and forgot this. anyway i watched fourze in... like february-march i think? and i ADORED IT. kengo/gentaro is a top tier rider ship and i also have a wip of them that someday i will finish. the kamen rider club is SO GOOD (tomoko and jk are both just like me fr and miu!!! aka tomoyo sepakoi!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm the only person who liked that show!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and meteor's suit is so pretty and fuck man the power of fucking friendship. i cried at fourze too. it took me like two hours to watch the two-parter where gentaro gets his final form. i love this show man. it makes me look up at the moon and think about happy things. my space kids. FOURZE YEAH!

wizard: so unfortunately i have the popular opinion that wizard is really long and poorly paced, especially towards the end. but that's straight up my only criticism of it. like that's it. i put wizard in the "free therapy" tier of my list initially but then moved it to "free therapy but you're a little bit high." haruto is a fucking excellent primary rider who i adore he's so my type i hate it here and like it makes me want to rewatch good morning call bc shiraishi shunya pretty and nitou... is definitely the character ever. to quote my own joke it's like one of the writers watched indiana jones on shrooms and had the idea to create the secondary of all time. (it's been like 10 years since the end of wizard do u think he's figured out that he's into haruto yet.) and RINKO MY GOD and koyomi... koyomi/haruto is proof het rider ships can also dissolve your bones... but most importantly. NARA SHUNPEI. HE IS JUST LIKE ME FR. lowkey highkey kinning him from his very first episode. i love that man. he just wants 2 be useful and you know what me too. but yeah so WAY too long but definitely good idc what anyone says; i ain't gonna hate a show that has the same moral as no pressure by novel core.

gaim: HEY SO DON'T START WITH GAIM. DON'T DO IT. DO NOT START WITH KAMEN RIDER GAIM. I AM SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE. GET LIKE A FEW MORE SEASONS UNDER YOUR BELT AND THEN WATCH GAIM. i am speaking from experience. okay. now i feel like gaim has a negative reputation nowadays. BUT. despite popular belief gaim is not peak sexism in kamen rider (like dude... kiva. what the fuck.) so that is that myth busted; also the ending is so beautiful and tragic but overall good if you dedicate some thought to it! and the characters are fucking wonderful! like in any other show i wouldn't care about zack and he's like in the eternally rotating top 3 gaim characters for me. i fucking adore kamen rider gaim. it's about growing up and it's about fighting against your oppressors and it's about pokemon go and dance crews, what could possibly go wrong. like as much as i hate micchy (which is a lot bc he reminds me of my toxic ex rip <3) i can't deny that he's an incredibly well-written character. kouta is an excellent primary and his journey throughout the series breaks your heart, but isn't that what growing up does? takatora is such a well-executed character that it's fun to watch other people react to how the show makes your opinion on him change. and god, kumon kaito has been giving me brain worms since 2015-2018. crimson lotus of misfortune, tragic banana boy, would-be tyrant, gay ass. no matter what anyone says, he's a great character. bananaorange is one of my favorite rider ships ever; it's either tied for first or a close second depending on the moment. and MAI. mai!!!! ray of light. if she was a tarot card she'd be the star. i love that girl. but DON'T START HERE JUST LIVE MORE

drive: so my plan for this year is all of heisei phase 2 + decade and i watched drive pretty early because i knew i would have complicated feelings on it, because i'm black and i'm never comfortable with positive portrayals of cops in fiction. and i was... kind of right. like there are things i loved about drive (heart. namely. fucking adore heart. had me from the moment he said "that roidmude might have been a monster to you but to me he was my friend." i love love love heart so much. he was my lockscreen for MONTHS this year.). i think that everything after episode 40 or so is great. and i relate to gou as much as i relate to shunpei, except in the opposite direction, so him suffering and breaking down and dying of flowers and stuff is really easy, and also fun. and CHASE. he is the fictional character that i think of when i read the word babygirl. but it's also... like... a show where cops are out to kill an entire species... and that makes me uncomfortable. and i abhor that fucking belt. like spoilers but you see a man getting tortured and you just LEAVE???????? THIS IS YOUR FAULT AND ALSO WHY DO YOU NEVER TELL KIRIKO ANYTHING. AND ALSO, SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN DRIVE. seriously drive would have been p e a k if they weren't cops and kiriko was drive. i also wish heart and shin had more homoerotic tension with each other cause idk i would have liked to see it? anyway. drive. fwiw i think the way it ends is way worse than the way gaim ends, so :) spicy take for the day i suppose. so relationship status it's complicated. also i think shin is boring .

ghost: MY FRIENDS BORN IN THE SAME ERA AS ME WE THINK THEREFORE WE ARE!!!!! I LOVED GHOST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! like seriously if wizard is no pressure ghost is jenga and to complete the trio of novel core therapy songs ooo is thanks all my tears and i'm always a sucker for media where the moral is that life is short and sometimes painful, but it's beautiful, and it's yours, and that's why you should see it through to the end. ghost genuinely makes me want to keep living. I LOVED GHOST. the pacing problems aren't a problem at all if you're not watching week to week i swear. takeruuuuuu my sweet baby my son who i raised myself. also nishime shun is super cute and only like a year older than me,,, i'm fine takeru is such a good boy and if you hate him you will die and go to hell. makoala my boys. they sure are gay aren't they. anyway i'm always a slut for older brothers so i love makoto and if alan was red instead of green i would want to eat his gender. and kanon is so precious but AKARI GOD DAMN IT I LOVE HER SO MUCH. PRETTY SCIENCE LADY IS ALWAYS MY TYPE. but i cannot pursue her because takeru/akari is one of my favorite rider ships ever and fuck you toei they're so fucking married by now. they have to be!!!!!! i refuse to live in a world where they're not! so they're married. thank you. they're also criminally underrated and i think i'm gonna publish my first het rider fic about them because they are so fuckign cute. goodnight. ghost is great. episode 6, my god, one of my favorites in all of rider. AND THE BELT NOISES. COCAINE IN THEM.

ex-aid: so my best friend in the whole world jack (hiiiiiii jack if you read this i love you) had been telling me to watch ex-aid for about two years before i watched it and now i know why: ex-aid has a disease in it and i don't just mean the bugster virus. ex-aid gives you a disease called ex-aid disease where you can't stop thinking about ex-aid. it infects you from the moment you watch it for the first time. symptoms include telling other people to watch ex-aid. watch ex-aid. i listen to excite at least once a day from monday to thursday on my way to work. i have one (1) gashat (tokimeki crisis for my wife who i am married to and is my wife, poppy pipopapo) and it is one of my greatest treasures. i. love. ex-aid. I LOVE EX-AID. kagami fucking hiiro god damn it, i should've known that the scene in sepakoi where kaneda cries would've had a lasting impact on my psyche because wow that boy can cry and be repressed about shit LIKE HIS GIANT CRUSH ON EMU WHICH HE SO HAS, MR. BL ASS SETO TOSHIKI GLOOMY GAY SADBOI. cough. i truly love all the characters though. it's just that kagami hiiro permanently altered my brain chemistry. the adhd lets me write gou and the autism lets me write hiiro. he's like my fucking muse. just god ex-aid is great the belt noises are great the suits are great the villains are great the soundtrack is great my wife is there (poppy) taddle legacy is my favorite final form ever and god it's such a beautiful fucking show. i miss takahashi shit like this because it's genuinely hard to believe geats was written by the same guy. i adore ex-aid. now would i start with ex-aid. no. do i know people who started with ex-aid. yes. but maybe once you've got a little early heisei phase 2 under your belt dive into the god damn gamer doctors. i'm on a mission right now. EX-AID. STREAM PEOPLE GAME

build: so build was my second season of rider, which i watched in late 2020-early 2021... aka when cherry magic was airing. i fucking loved cherry magic and i'll always be grateful for it because lmfttf was a really important fic in my personal fic writing history. but this is not about magic virgins this is about build which... really is another ryuki to me, but it's above ryuki for now because it really is enjoyable and akaso eiji is there and everything, but i don't feel very passionately about it. now when i first watched it i was ~*depressed*~ so that might be part of it, but it didn't have the power to bring me out of that depression that the season i'm going to talk about next does. it just was something i watched and then had watched. be the one's a great song though and the story is really good objectively. i'm also... about to commit sacrilege but it's fine here goes i'm not really into best match as a pairing??????? it doesn't feel as organic as some other rider ships and that sours me on it. while meanwhile you have shit like renshinji where it was 2002 or whatever and that changes my brain chemistry because oh! you genuinely were supposed to read this as friendship! while best match is like. explicitly bait for fujos. like advertised about being about heated drama between men, as opposed to naturally produced heated drama between men. but i did like it and i even have one of the best match rings (with the other with jack). no complaints about the story. but it's not something i'm super into. but they say it's a good place to start for a reason.

revice: so tl;dr at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 i was super depressed for a whole bunch of reasons. and then one summer day i found out that japanese pop singer and member of girl group beyooooonds maeda kokoro's older brother was the guy who was gonna star in the next season of kamen rider. so i decided to give it a shot. i genuinely just decided to give it a shot because of that. and it saved my fucking life. at first it was just that it was miles away from the aforementioned bunch of reasons i was depressed, something to look forward to every week that just didn't have anything to do with it. i'm a sucker for any tokusatsu show that's family-themed, so 8-10 did insane things to my brain chemistry. but really it had me from episode one. because ikki. igarashi fucking ikki my beloved. a fictional character has genuinely never gripped me like this. i literally buy merch of him every time i get paid. he is so special to me because his story was exactly what i needed to hear, and also because he's the prettiest guy on earth, my god. he's so my type that it's like he was created in a lab. i love igarashi ikki so much that actually we're married. like yeah does revice has problems? is the theme song not good? does the behind the scenes stuff & presence of kimura subaru (and again i'm black) make me uncomfortable? YES!!! BUT I ALSO LOVE THIS SHOW! it is a reason that i am alive and typing this right now! kamen rider revice is extremely special to me and my favorite season of rider ever. i don't know what could ever take its place. i love it so much. i collect vistamps of past seasons i've watched (eagle and jackal are next and i already have kamakiri and kong). the music aside from livedevil is fucking wonderful, the spinoffs are wonderful, heated drama between WOMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BETWEEN WOMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a show that means so much to me and is so close to my heart. i love it so much and it's unmatched and it probably always will be. i'm so glad i watched it. thank you, past me.

#asks #unfortunately i took an edible so this is way too long . rest in pieces

[themattress]

Disney TVA Finale Ranking

For every Disney TVA series that features continuous plot/character development.

13. The Ghost and Molly McGee - ???: It doesn’t exist yet, so it ranks last at the moment.

12. Milo Murphy's Law - Sphere and Loathing in Outer Space: Milo Murphy’s Law is a depressing failed experiment of a series. For its first season, it was a spiritual successor to its creators previous show, the episodic hit Phineas & Ferb, but with more of an overarching narrative that was incredibly silly but also had some legitimate heart to it. But that arc’s finale ended up being the second season’s premiere, where the main cast of Phineas & Ferb crossed over and totally stole the spotlight from the characters we’d actually been following. From that point on, the “Phineas & Ferb effect” never went away, leading to a jumbled mess of a second season arc involving aliens and relationship drama and Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz annoyingly inserted in at every turn that concluded in this underwhelming finale that was so clearly not intended to be the series finale when it was made. There’s no real closure nor satisfaction to anything, leaving viewers nothing but the show’s wasted potential to dwell on.

11. The Lion Guard - Return to the Pride Lands: After the final battle, we had two more episodes left in this series and they just feel so bland and perfunctory. There’s no real conflict left, no character arcs still in need of concluding, it really just boils down to connecting fully to The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride and explaining why we never saw nor heard of Kion during the events of that movie. I forgot this finale almost as soon as I saw it; that’s how weak it is. 

10. Star vs. The Forces of Evil - Cleaved: Perhaps the most notorious of the finales on this list, “Cleaved” and the three episodes leading into it really feel like watching a train that had so much momentum behind it derail, crash, explode and burn. Everything from the pointlessly disjointed story, underwhelming endgame threat, out-of-nowhere character turns, waste of important characters, failure to connect enough to the show’s past, brushing aside the horrific implications of destroying magic, and the resolution that puts the show’s freshly hooked-up main ship above everything else come together to create a woefully unsatisfying conclusion. But hey, at least it is a firm conclusion, and one I’ll always remember for just how bad it is.

9. Big Hero 6 the Series - The Mascot Upshot: While this show got screwed over by executives big-time and this short, silly story being the finale is emblematic of that fact, it does accomplish exactly what it needed to: wrapping up all lingering story threads (the Noodle Burger Gang, the unexpected bond Hiro developed with Momakase, and eliminating the last trace of Obake’s evil from San Fransokyo) and leaving things on a feel-good note.

8. Wander Over Yonder - The End of the Galaxy: This is the most standard kind of “good” finale that a series could ask for when prematurely cut short. It’s got the highest stakes to date, the biggest personal conflicts for the protagonists to deal with, the main villain at their diabolical best, and an ending where the status quo is retained while also leaving a clear path forward for new developments which fans can imagine for themselves. It’s a shame that the series couldn’t continue beyond this point as was planned, but what we got was still solid.

7. Sofia the First - Forever Royal: The plot of this finale is very weak. The whole Mystic Isles / Protector Sofia / Wicked Nine story arc felt half-baked to start with, and not enough had been done with Prisma / Vor to feel like her / their status as the Final Boss was earned. However, the characters make up for this. Given that Sofia the First has mostly been episodic throughout its run, you don’t quite realize how much Sofia and her family have grown until you reach the end. The things they accomplish along with the new things revealed about them elevate this finale beyond its flimsy story, with special mention going to my boy Cedric. Once you reach the end credits, you definitely feel like this show wrapped up very nicely.

6. Elena of Avalor - Coronation Day: While this finale has something of a rocky start, partially owing to the (presumably network-induced) wasted potential in how this final season’s arc progressed, once Elena and Ash Delgado have gotten trapped in the Spirit World and Esteban aligned himself with the Four Shades, things pick up and the quality stays high to the very end. The character development is on point, especially for protagonist Elena and antagonist Esteban, and the Four Shades end up selling the apocalyptic threat they pose, especially Cahu the Time Shade who gets away with some of the most horrific shit ever put on a show that airs on Disney Junior. And the ending where Elena is officially crowned Queen of Avalor is just perfect, capped off by a delightful surprise guest star appearance.

5. DuckTales - The Last Adventure: While it’s disappointing that Huey’s arc peters out halfway through in favor of Webby, some long-hanging elements are paid off in a shockingly underwhelming way, and this already long finale honestly needed even more time to fully flesh things out (ex: the resolution to the battle against the Phantom Blot, which as stands is totally off-screen), it’s counter-balanced by so much strong material and a shining heart, with the finale doing a fantastic job at tying the series together as a single, grand, three-act story.

4. Tangled the Series - Plus Est En Vous: There is very little to complain about with this finale. We get the full-on Sun and Moon-powered battle between Rapunzel and Cassandra that the series was building to, perfect cappers for the redemption arcs of Varian and King Edmund, the Big Bad Zhan Tiri having the last of her backstory filled in and then becoming an active threat in her demonic form, Eugene and the other side characters banding together to buy time for Corona’s survival, and Rapunzel getting to save the day alongside Cassandra to the point where she’s the one who cuts her own hair this time. The biggest quibble would have to be Cassandra’s turnaround and departure feeling rushed, but otherwise this was an above average conclusion to an above average TV show based on/continuing a movie.

3. The Owl House - Watching and Dreaming: Starting in “Thanks to Them” and continuing in “For the Future” before concluding in “Watching and Dreaming”, The Owl House’s finale really pulls out all the stops and makes the most of Disney having cut the series short. Every character gets their time to shine and wrap up their arcs in a satisfying way, every core theme of the show is driven home beautifully, and the action and animation is at its peak. Yes, there are problems due to the aforementioned executive meddling from Disney, particularly in how some questions are raised but either never fully answered or answered in too rushed a way to be impactful, but on the whole Dana Terrace and her crew pulled off an excellent ending. 

2. Amphibia - The Hardest Thing: Starting in “The Beginning of the End” and continuing in “All In” before concluding in “The Hardest Thing”, this was a finale that I doubt anyone expected to be as amazing as it was. Amphibia started out as just a cute, fun little show about a teenage girl trapped in a world full of talking frogs, and concludes in the most epic, intriguing, philosophical and heartfelt way a story can possibly conclude in. I could bring up nitpicks like the Final Boss battle being ridiculously quick and perfunctory, or how Sasha’s conclusion is marred by her backstory episode getting left on the cutting room floor, but these things feel insignificant when compared to just how good and fulfilling the finale is overall.

1. Gravity Falls - Weirdmageddon: This three-part conclusion (or four-part, depending on which way you’re viewing it) is often cited as one of the best finales to any television show, animated or otherwise, and it’s not hard to see why. Everything just feels like it’s coming together here, everything the show has ever been and was always building to. It’s exciting, it’s funny, it’s scary, it’s thought-provoking, and by God is it emotional. The final end credits are some of the best, most downright perfect I have ever seen, making you really feel the worthiness of the experience that was this show. It’s certainly not being topped anytime soon.

#Disney #Ending #Finale #Opinion #Comparison

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Yeah, Phase 4 retroactively creates problems with the previous phases. The Eternals could have helped A LOT in the fight against Thanos. What If gave us a really cool scene where Ultron sliced Thanos in half...except wait...he was in Vision's body. So was it only because he was Ultron-enhanced, or could Vision have defeated Thanos THE WHOLE TIME? So Wanda was born in '89? That makes her 26 during AOU. I thought she was a teenager. Didn't Steve call her a kid in CW? Those are just a few examples.

Eternals from their trailer alone, caused that problem: Where the hell were they during the entire MCU??? And like, trailers implied MAYBE they cant intervene unless ordered to do so, which could have explained it....but no, the actual film basically showed they could have intervened ANY point, but didn't and therefore, behold the worst thought out MCU introduction of characters yet....besides a-lot of characters anyway.

What If...? really caused a-lot of problems like that: like you pointed out, could Vision have sliced Thanos in half the entire time, or was it cause of Ultron? We will never know. Shuri is said to be sixteen in Black Panther, but uh....that's a tall six year old then in What If...?, given Iron Man is ten years before Black Panther. Why didn't they just go back for Peter in Star Lord T'Challa??? Can't Ego just reform while T'Challa is gone in finale, therefore rendering T'Challa's effort to nothing? What happened to Wakanda after Erik was imprisoned by the Watcher in finale??? Do they know what happened to Erik and therefore, can call off the war??? What the actual fuck was the point of ZOMBIES, since none of the heroes show up in finale??? Why not remove ZOMBIES as a result and put Gamora's episode in? WHY WAS LOKI THAT EASILY DEFEATED IN FINALE? Why does Peggy have the winter soldier suit when she wouldn't be going through Winter Soldier, cause Bucky never fell off the train here??? The only episode that didn't leave me questioning shit was the Party Thor episode, and even then it got me annoyed at the lack of Jotun Loki in the actual MCU.

Wanda's age just like Shuri's is now, is a confusing mess. Born in '89....but like you said, called a kid in civil war and in Age of Ultron, Hawkeye comments about her going to high school and such, so like....did they only decide to make her an adult so she could be shipped off with Vision like the way she is??? Why not make her an adult from the start?? Especially given her actor is obviously older then a high schooler, like, would have saved so much fucking confusion. Black Widow is still an example to me really- her backstory was ongoing confusion throughout the MCU and when her film finally hit....she suddenly has a family out of the blue and suddenly that kill on her record??? New twist villain, SO SHE DIDN'T KILL HER AT ALL. Oh and don't worry, she got a grave via Yelena.....wait, what do you mean that doesn't fix how Endgame treated Black Widow??? Loki over here also changing shit, aka making Loki think he was responsible for his mothers death when....its a mixed bag: he told them where to go, but he didn't know they'd kill Frigga and even in guidebooks, its mentioned Frigga sacrificed herself to save Jane....still another MCU fridging, but still. You also got how they weakened Loki suddenly in favor of Sylvie, but that's a whole other story really with me and problems with Loki show....

And then you got Hawkeye only NOW deciding to make Clint deaf and alluding to maybe prior incidents in the MCU as the cause....when that's hard to tell as where was his hearing aids during Endgame and crap??? And why only NOW add the netflix characters like Daredevil and Kingpin??? Just wait until they find a way to add mutants though....that's when it'll be a true clusterfuck.

#anti mcu #mcu critical #i hate loki show if it aint obvious #and also dread mutants being introduced #cause it'll be bad either way #and also hate what if...? if it aint obvious #intended to rank the episodes at some point but forgot so like

[thealogie]

before delving into hot mash summer, here is everything I watched or tried to watch during detox mash spring, ranked not at all based on quality but SOLELY based on how much they helped me detox:

-the handmaid’s tale. This is torture porn and I couldn’t finish it. I was PMSing so I cried at several points where the women living under slavery touched fingers or risked it all to help each other because gestures of devotion and love in the face of unspeakable violence and atrocity always get me. But overall this show was manipulative and had nothing to say, so it did not distract me from the shit Alan Alda pulled 40 years ago. -5/100

-the Americans. i didn’t get far in this rewatch. every episode I was thinking: this is the 80s, why aren’t they watching mash? what’s Elizabeth’s stance on mash?! I bet she thinks it’s American propaganda. I bet Philip looooves it and has totally bought into it though. Has Philip styled his own non-threatening American masculinity on Alan Alda? On that Alan Alda Ms. Magazine cover. The complete lack of discussion about mash was jarring simply took me out of that world completely. Nearly unwatchable. I now know that mash does come into it later but the dragging out was just not believable to me. 0/100

-black sails. True neutral. Did I enjoy rewatching a show that didn’t make me go “what does it mean? what does it MEAN???” every two minutes? Absolutely. Love knowing everything that they intended. however, it both reminds me too much of mash AND simultaneously is too complete/logical on its own to help me “detox” from mash. 5/100

-Chernobyl: things start to get interesting here. The “Jared Harris trying to speak truth to power while people die in cold climate due to man’s hubris” cinematic universe undoubtedly shared some themes with mash (communism, military leaders gaslighting you about whether you’re being bombed/whether there’s a nuclear reactor core etc). Overall though I think the realistic tone, the nature of the tragedy being explored and gritty grim dark aesthetics really managed to make me not think of mash for prolonged periods of time. 20/100

-the terror: in mash I learned the names of people from s1-s3 right away even though I started with s4. In the terror my brain was working overtime to remember anyone’s name beyond the core five that I forgot about mash about prolonged periods of time. But then crozier would do something incredibly put upon and “I must obey my own morals” and I’d be like “oh wow I really do love gay captains that’s a thing.” Altogether I’d say this show is high in detox value and holds a special place in my because it’s the first non-mash show I managed to watch this spring. 25/100

-Silicon Valley: the perfect show comfort show. Just gay enough, just funny enough, just meaningful enough. It doesn’t score any real points in its satire of the tech industry but it lets you laugh at them the way arrested development (the original run) made us laugh at bush. The ending reminded me a little of mash (in that it’s sad on a character level but the logical/correct conclusion to the narrative structure) and sometimes I felt a little “my poor little meow meow” about Jared Dunn. Altogether though a solid 90/100 on the detox scale.

-house md: I rewatched three episodes and the feelings it was able to unlock in the secret parts of my brain were such that they cannot be measured on a x/100 detox scale. i felt so insane I started rewatching breaking bad which had made me so ill in 2013 I promised myself not to rewatch it again. I rate this 🦐🦐🦐🦐 out of 💣💣💣💣

-breaking bad: this show has nothing in common with mash but the level of anger at Walt/hyper empathy for Jesse it is capable of making me feel creates the exact same physical sensation as watching mash. In some ways 100/100 and in other ways -1000/100

-better call saul: just distant enough from mash AND no all-consuming hatred for the protagonist. Lawyers? Check. The flounciest little fruity scam guy you could ever hope for as your protagonist? Check. Your OTP is canon and in cahoots? Check. Slow burn and fake married AU? Check. The only thing is that Jimmy sometimes in his gayer and flouncier moments reminded me of Hawk and the fact that his love interest is a blonde who seems straight laced but is boiling with rage and even scammier than him deep down did not help.....overall though a solid 90/100

[shortnotsweet]

The Allegory of the Tin Man, the Dictator, and the Knight: a Dissection of Ironqrow and a Character Arc of Failure

“There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men who were best of friends. They were so much happier when together that they were seldom apart.”

— L. Frank Baum

A brief Ironqrow meta and character analysis of James Ironwood, the ultimate screw up, in three parts.

I. Qrow and Ironwood’s Homoeroticism in Canon Source Material and its Translation

II. Ironwood’s Repressed Characterization and the Inherent Chivalry of the Dictatorship

III. Ironwood, Alone

Qrow and Ironwood’s Homoeroticism in Canon Source Material and its Translation

Within the Oz series, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow are layered within homoerotic subtext, even if it is included unintentionally. Tison Pugh’s analysis Queer Utopianism and Antisocial Eroticism in L. Frank Baum's Oz Series posits that the land of Oz as portrayed within the series is a largely asexual environment of suspended adolescence that involves the deviation of binary gender norms, and of performative heterosexuality. Pugh refers to it later as a “queer utopia”. Men are portrayed as a lesser military force to women, and heterosexuality is a flimsy presence at best; all signs of procreation within Oz are stifled. While this could be chalked down to Baum not wanting to get into the subject of sex and exploration in a children’s series, it does contribute to a particular tone with real-life critiques of capitalism and a particular deconstruction of gender norms. Ozma, who will become the ruler of Oz after the Wizard and the Scarecrow respectively, for example, is originally a boy named Tip (the name itself holds phallic implications) who is “transformed” into a girl. The strongest military force is one of all-women led by a rebellious female general. Pugh observes, “At the same time that Baum satirizes...women as leaders…he consistently depicts women as more successful soldiers than men, and female troops appear better capable of serving militarily than male troops…[the] male army comprises of twenty-six officers and one private, and they are all cowards…” and cites the Frogman’s declaration that “Girls are the fiercest soldiers of all...they are more brave than men, and they have better nerves”.

RWBY itself isn’t opposed to this kind of subversion, either in its characters or its relationships. There’s an obvious effort to include LGBTQ+ representation (albeit primarily in the background), strong female characters are prevalent and make up most of the main and supporting cast, a character’s gender is not strictly reliant on its source material, and BlackSun, while cute and a valid ship in its own right, is treated as a heterosexual red herring to Bumbleby. Additionally, there have been a lot of hints by the voice actors, writers, and creators on social media that Qrow himself is queer, the infamous Ironqrow embrace included.

Admittedly, if I wanted to write an essay about the likelihood of Qrow being LGBTQ+ or having some kind of queer identity, I would probably focus more on his relationship with Clover, which had a lot more overt and probably canonically intentional Gay Vibes, and despite having known Qrow nowhere near as long as Ironwood has, it has just as much, if not more, to extrapolate. Unfortunately, that’s not the main point of this essay, although it remains relevant. While I personally don’t doubt that Qrow has had sex with women or experiences valid sexual attraction to them, I get the feeling that it is, to a degree, a performative act and a masculine assertation of enjoyment intended as a coping mechanism. It plays into the trope of the handsome, tortured alcoholic (best exemplified, perhaps, in the MCU’s Tony Stark, Dean Winchester in Supernatural, and critiqued in the superhero episode of Rick and Morty) who sleeps around just to recall the feeling of intimacy, or because he associates sexual ‘degradation’ as a reflection of his worth. Real self-deprecating, slightly misogynistic stuff. Qrow’s recall of short skirts, as well as his brief exchange with the waitress in an earlier volume, reminds me of one specific interaction between the Scarecrow and his own love interest. Within the series, the Qrow’s source-material counterpart, the Scarecrow, has one canonical love interest, the Patchwork Girl:

“Forgive me for staring so rudely,” said the Scarecrow, “but you are the most beautiful sight my eyes have ever beheld.”

“That is a high compliment from one who is himself so beautiful,” murmured Scraps, casting down her suspender-button eyes by lowering her head.

Pugh points out that the two of them never develop this relationship further than flirtation, and heterosexuality is reduced to a “spectral presence” lacking the “erotic energy [driving] these queer narratives in their presence”. Specifically, Qrow never reveals a serious or long running heterosexual love interest - he is not the father! [of Ruby] (despite much speculation that he and Summer Rose were involved) and he and Winter never really moved past the stage of ‘hostility with just a hint of sexual tension’ - and there is no debunking of potential queerness. His interactions with Clover (deserving of an entire essay on its own) seem to support this interpretation, and is more or less a confirmation of some kind of queer inclination or identity. Again, the “queer utopia” of Oz comes at the cost of the expulsion of the sexual or the mere mention of reproduction - still, through this device, same-sex relationships gain a new kind of significance with the diminishing nature of heterosexuality. Speaking of queer narratives, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man have the most tender and prolonged relationship of perhaps all the characters in the series, exchanging a lifelong commitment:

“I shall return with my friend the Tin Woodman,” said the stuffed one seriously. “We have decided never to be parted in the future.”

Within the source material, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow voluntarily live together, and are life partners in nearly every sense of the word. The second book in the Oz series is The Tin Woodman of Oz. In summary, the Tin Woodman recalls that he had a fiancée before the events of the first book, forgot all about her, and now must search her out so that they can get married. Who does he ask to accompany him in this pursuit? None other than his no-homo life partner, the Scarecrow. Although this sounds like a stereotypical heteronormative storyline, “this utopian wonderland...rejects heterosexual procreation...First, the Tin Woodman does not desire...Nimmie Amee...” and even acknowledges that due to the ‘nature’ of the heart that the Wizard had given him, he is literally incapable of romantically or passionately loving or desiring Nimmie, and by extent, women in general - to me, that works perfectly as an allegory for a gay man who is literally incapable of experiencing legitimate heterosexual urges, but ‘soldiers on’ out of obligation and societally enforced chivalry. “The Tin Woodman excuses himself from the heteronormative imperative...Only his sense of masculine honor, rather than a heteronomratively masculine sex drive, impels the Tin Woodman on his quest to marry his long-lost fiancée.” Again, Ironwood’s character follows the lines of propriety within the sphere of the wealthy elite, and his persona as a high-ranking military man and politician, as well as the conservative values instilled within Atlas, prioritize duty and obligation. This kind of culture is stifling and in a lot of ways aloof, as the upper class deludes itself into believing that it is objectively better and more advanced than its neighboring territories. *ahem the myth of American exceptionalism ahem*

“There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men who were best of friends. They were so much happier when together that they were seldom apart.”

I think it’s funny that the characters that Ironwood and Qrow are based off of are canonically the closest of friends, who coexist almost as a unit. In contrast, the first introduction we get of Ironwood and Qrow is a hostile exchange where they’re at each other’s throats, never on the same page, and never in sync, not when it matters. Indeed, Qrow snaps at Ironwood for his lack of communication, which is a recurring issue between the two of them on notable occasions. If the source material is anything to go by, there should be a significant relationship between the two of them, or at least some kind of connection, even if it goes unspoken or unacknowledged. To be fair, in RWBY’s canon, I think there is.

I’ve seen this joke that while Qrow hates the Atlas military, the only people he really seems to flirt with is Atlas military personnel. “Ice Queen” is something I interpreted to be partially hostile, partially mocking, and partially flirtatious, in equal spades - the voice actors and creators have indicated that it was flirtatious, and there was a whole Chibi episode dedicated to the concept of Qrow and Winter’s extrapolated sexual tension, albeit in jest. I might argue that his use of abbreviates aren’t reserved for people he dislikes, but for people who bring out his playful side. “Brat”, “Pipsqueak”, “Firecracker”, and “Kiddos” are all drawn from a place of affection, however short or mocking it may seem, because that’s what crows do: they mock others.

Qrow has little nicknames for people; while it’s not exclusively a sign of affection, I do get the feeling that ‘Jimmy’ is an informality that irks Ironwood, but can also be interpreted as Qrow giving James what he needs, rather than what he wants.

Glynda is by no means a pushover, but in assuring him that while he does questionable things, he’s still a good person, she’s softening the blow and probably further enabling deeply rooted and pre-existing traits, many of which contribute to his problematic control complex. It is established early on that Qrow resents the military (as he should), and it is implied that he’s spent a fair amount of encounters harassing and provoking military personnel (Winter being the most evident example of this), and has insulted the military numerous times to Ironwood’s face. He lectures Ironwood about the way he conducts his operations, his inability to communicate, and basically what a complete, inconsiderate asshole he really is.

What Ironwood needs is someone who operates outside of the pretense that he works, breathes, and lives under, and just tells it like it is. Jimmy isn’t all that - he’s a person, just like the rest of us, and he can flaunt all the titles that he wants, but James stripped down is still just Jimmy.

Qrow also is the kind of person who pries, who is insistent, and not particularly sensitive. For someone like Ironwood who has a lot of (physical and emotional) barriers, logically, in order for him to receive genuine understanding, Qrow fits the profile of someone who is invasive but not exploitive, who sees past the cracks in his armor and takes him for what he is. What is just important is that whoever Ironwood is with is someone who makes him want to try not only to be better, but to be real; thematically, General Ironwood seems to have a great respect for but a deep struggle with authenticity. He clearly resents the ignorance and frivolity of Atlas’s wealthy elite, as evidenced by his support for Weiss at the dinner party in announcing that “she’s one of the only people making any sense around here”, while struggling to project the facade that he’s carefully created.

See, we don’t have evidence that there is something going on between Ironqood and Qrow so much as we have enough evidence to inconclusively say that there’s not not something going on. I think there’s enough evidence to support the idea that something could be going on, or was going on.

When Qrow saves Ironwood at the Battle of Beacon, who is under the false impression that Qrow believes him to be the culprit of the attacks, his eyes follow Qrow and we get a closer shot of his awed expression; we the viewer can only imagine what he sees as Qrow arcs through the air and slices down a Grimm from behind his back. The focus on Ironwood’s expression portrays something like shock (so Qrow wasn’t trying to attack me after all, but then what the hell is he doing?), maybe wonder (I can’t take my eyes off of him, I can’t look away), maybe respect (I know he’s a good Hunter, but I’ve rarely seen him in action), but it is unfiltered nonetheless. In a show where fight scenes are vital to the progression of the story itself, the dynamics of these fights are at their best when they are character driven, whether it is revealing or reinforcing something about the characters and their relationships, or it is deciding their fates. There’s something to be said about characters being given moments together in battles, and what that says about the significance of their relationship. The best example of this might be the battle between Blake and Yang vs Adam; it served to give Adam what he deserved, help Blake and Yang reach closure in certain aspects of their own trauma, and solidify the bond between the girls. Similarly, Qrow and Ironwood’s moment is meant to reveal a theme that will later be revisited in volume 7; trust. Ironwood is startled but not shocked when he believes that Qrow distrusts him to the degree of attacking him, and is ready to attack or defend as needed.

Qrow tells him what he needs to hear, more or less: YOU’RE A DUMBASS. Ironwood is, indeed, a dumbass. While he does extend the olive branch of trust and good will to CRWBY and co. this trust is highly conditional and proves to be, while from a place of desperation and sincerity, at least partially performative.

When Ironwood snaps, he snaps hard.

Amber’s voice actress tweeted early on, joking that Qrow has two Atlas boyfriends, and Arryn has made comments, too. It’s one of the older ships, and the crew is certainly aware of it (“...extended chest bump...”).

Kerry has stated that he finds the Ironqrow relationship interesting, and wishes it had been explored more (additionally, allegedly lobbying that Ironwood’s arm in the Ironqrow hug scene be slightly lower). I’m not saying that they’re going to both make it out alive, or canon, or even that romantic subtext was intentionally woven into the script. All I’m saying is that I think their relationship is interesting too, especially when the subtext of their source material relationship is taken into context, and the way their characters are positioned is suggestive of some sort of compatibility, even if it is a hit or miss kind of opportunity, and I have the sinking suspicion that it was missed on both accounts.

The Tin Woodman of Oz concludes,

“All this having been happily arranged, the Tin Woodman returned to his tin castle, and his chosen comrade, the Scarecrow, accompanied him on the way. The two friends were sure to pass many pleasant hours together in talking over their recent adventures, for as they neither ate nor slept they found their greatest amusement in conversation.”

Ironwood’s Repressed Characterization and the Inherent Chivalry of the Dictatorship

“I don’t give a damn about Jacque Schnee...what about the other two? Do not return to this office until you have Qrow Branwen in custody.”

“And that’s not all we’ve lost...I had Qrow in my hands, and I didn’t do what needed to be done.”

Observe: Ironwood, at this point, does not care about politics. I doubt he’s ever wanted to, or ever liked it (if his tired outburst at the dinner party is any indication) but his Knightly qualities (we’ll get to that) have, up till this point, prompted him to adhere to them for both power and etiquette. James surrounds himself in a world that he understands and despises; more than anything, he’d like to be a general, a commander, and the Knight in Shining Armor archetype, because warfare is something he understands. It is a testament to his (superhuman) willpower that he forces himself to become fluent in the language of politics, and to live and breathe in it. To clarify, Ironwood sees himself as a man who does what needs to be done; if he wants to change and control Atlas, he will have to involve himself in its politics.

Likely, his resilience has contributed to the way he views himself and what he deserves, as someone long-suffering and almost martyr-like, a silent hero doing what needs to be done. But at the moment, he’s lost his goddamn mind coming undone. He’s murdered and jailed his political dissent (and might have considered executing prisoners), but at this point, that’s all that Jacque and Robyn are to him. First he dismisses Jacque, narrows it down to the two escaped prisoners, and finally reveals what’s really on the forefront of his mind: Qrow, free and out of his hands.

[ When recalling this dialogue, please do so while imagining a bad recorder cover of the Titanic music playing over the background. Here is a sample. ]

In the most recent episode, Ironwood seems to have gone off the rails even further. The fact that Winter, his most faithful lieutenant, is losing her unshakable faith in him, says a lot about how hard he’s fallen off the deep end. In Winter’s mind, I think that she sees him almost as a surrogate father figure, or at least a patriarch who can be positively compared to Jacques in every way. The previous volumes go to lengths to compare the two as adversaries and showing James in a favorable light; Winter is in her own personal horror right now, because she is beginning to understand that Ironwood is a man who may not be her father but is just as susceptible to corruption, and may have been that kind of person all along. Skipping over the...ah, genocidal tendencies, and the fact that he’s proposing to kidnap Penny’s friends to force her to obey him and likely is starting to realize that Winter is the perfect bait (let’s just say that “Ironwood is not good with kids” is the understatement of the year) Ironwood wants Qrow back (in captivity), I think that it’s significant that while Ironwood registers that Robyn is gone as well, his first priority is Qrow, probably for two reasons. On one hand, he still refers to Qrow by his first name, instead of the formal Branwen. Of course, that doesn’t have to mean anything at all. They’re colleagues within the same age range, both members of the same secret brotherhood and similiar skill sets.

On the other hand, it reminds me of the moment when Qrow and the kids first fly into Atlas, and they see the heightened security, and Qrow mutters, “James...what have you been doing,” under his breath, sounding concerned, apprehensive. He’s not addressing the kids, he’s talking to himself; he regards James much more seriously both as a potential threat and a friend than he’d rather the other know, and I think that James’ focus on Qrow at this point is similiar, only not only is this a sign of them knowing each other well, but of Ironwood’s slipping control. He offered Qrow his trust and camaraderie, his last attempt to keep a handle on his humanity (or, his heart). Qrow, in return, withheld vital information, got close with another operative instead, then allegedly killed him and and escaped ‘rightful’ imprisonment.

The Tin Man is offering Qrow his heart, at least proof of it, and the Scarecrow [and co.] steps back to observe the situation, and assesses that no, what you are going to do is wrong, and I cannot agree with it.

Ironwood is not an objective person, as much as he wants to be. He’s angry, desperate, scared, and humiliated. Worst of all, he’s rebuffed, and he’s taking Qrow’s escape personally. First, he understands that Qrow is a threat. He’s Ozpin’s best agent, he has years of field experience, and he knows too much, probably more than James knows. Second, they have history.

My personal interpretation of Ironwood is something this:

He’s a sad, sad, lonely bitch. What Ironwood longs for, just like his source material counterpart, is a heart. He will go to any lengths to achieve this, because he believes that he has self awareness and therefore is able to check and balance himself. He treats his subordinates well, is diplomatic, skilled in a variety of trades, fighting the good fight, and longs for the affirmation that yes, he is a good person, and yes, he’s had a heart all along. He just strays from the path, and loses his way.

This is symbolically represented by his partially mechanic exoskeleton; we have no idea how far the cyborg extremities extend, or how deep, but we do get the visual notion of humanity in conflict, or a man’s soul deconstructed and split between the cold efficiency of machinery and the very real warmth of a human body. Ironwood wants to appear human, and benevolent, and genuine, and in return, loved; he is human, and he could be all of these things. If my reliance on the source material holds any merit (although I highly doubt it), then there is also a potential struggle with sexuality, (Glynda herself even explicitly and exasperatedly references a testosterone battle between Ironwood and Qrow, suggesting a regular overassertation of masculinity) and a further incentive to achieve love and subsequent acceptance.

To clarify, I do believe that there were less-than-subtle allusions to Ironwood and Glynda having a vaguely flirtatious history, taking their shared scenes and background dancing into account, but this, again, does not “debunk” the presence of queerness within a narrative; it could be an assumption of heterosexuality, or performative itself, or just not an exclusive interest. Besides, Ironwitch isn’t what this essay is about. I’m not trying to persuade or dissuade someone of the notion that Jimmy is gay, or straight, or something else, only that the potential ambiguity exists. What I do think is most important is that James doesn’t openly ward people away, not when those people aren’t under his command and are technically outside of his jurisdiction. He’s friendly with Glynda, tries to extend trust to Qrow, is kind to people in the aftermath of battle, and overall clings to diplomacy as his first weapon. He wants to be accepted, to be liked, and to be welcomed. This is not an outrageous want, nor is it uncommon. Unfortunately, Ironwood’s understanding of love and acceptance is entangled within the concept of control, and he associates unquestioned compliance with this Want.

Ironwood’s introduction into the series shows him being openly cordial, and very considerate, especially his interactions with Glynda and Ozpin. He’s a gentleman, he’s apologetic, and, as Glynda assures him, he’s a “good man”. She doesn’t really elaborate on what a “good man” is, exactly, but we might presume that a “good man” is a person with good intentions, who strives to do what’s right, regardless of his options.

Here’s the thing - one similarity between Ironwood and the Tin Man is that they both have the capacity to love, but they fool themselves into thinking that they don’t; before the Wizard gives him a ‘heart’, the Tin Man suggests that he is only kind and considerate to everyone in Oz because he believes he needs to overcompensate for what he lacks, and is therefore doubly aware of how he treats others. However, the Wizard knows no real magic, only tricks and illusions, and what he gives the Tin Man is essentially a placebo that enables the Tin Man to act towards and feel about others the exact same as he always had, only with the validation that what he feels is authentic. Similarly, Ironwood has always had the option to be empathetic and not fucking crazy open to collaboration, which he’s very aware of, until his own paranoia cuts into his rationality and compels him to cut himself off from all allies and alternative perspectives. He then uses his difficult position and responsibilities to justify unjustifiable actions, to rationalize irrational urges, and to gaslight and brainwash his subordinates into compliance.

The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything.

“You people with hearts,” he said, “have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful. When Oz gives me a heart of course I needn’t mind so much.”

Qrow sees through this, however, and not only seems incapable of following orders himself, but disrupts the decorum that Ironwood is used to. In return, I think we see a little more of James that he’d like to reveal.

“If you were one of my men, I’d have you shot!”

“If I was one of your men, I’d shoot myself!”

In case this entire ass essay doesn’t make it obvious, I do really ship Ironqrow. I’m open to other pairings, definitely, but this one in particular is just more interesting to me. It feels more revealing, more subtle. I have more questions.

In hindsight, maybe the dialogue example above ^ didn’t age well, considering where they’re at, but I do like how their professional animosity is flavored with a kind of camaraderie, and understanding. This exchange isn’t exactly playful, but they’re taking each other seriously - and, like repressed schoolboys, taking the piss at each other in a childish way, and isn’t that part of the fun of banter, when they’re so focused on each other that they forget to act their age? In a lot of ways, this is a really fun dynamic to watch. They’re opposite-kind-of-people, which I like, at least on a superficial level, and I can easily imagine them tempering each other in ways that would make them ultimately happier people.

They even look well-coordinated, with similar color schemes that lean on the opposite sides of the shared spectrum (white, grays, reds and black); I think the decorative design on Qrow’s new sleeves are supposed to be more ornate simply to communicate that Qrow is committed, and willing to be sentimental, but some viewers have suggested that it resembles the pattern on James’ weapon, Due Process (the revolver is based off of the Tin Man’s pistol, although, curiously, in The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow was the only character to carry a pistol, and the commentaries suggest that the 2007 Tin Man miniseries was the “basis of the allusion”. Does that mean anything? I don’t know. Probably not.). Still, it raises the questions: who was in charge of designing the team’s new clothes and gear? How much input did Atlas get, and was this intentional? Personally, I think that the vine-like pattern on Qrow’s sleeves also bear a resemblance to Ozpin’s staff, a subtle reaffirmation and foreshadowing of his allegiance in contrast to Ironwood, but I digress.

They can also deliver that UST kind of banter that takes up their attention, and get up really close to each other, in each other’s faces, and just be pissed, which I think is very sexy of them, mhm. Enemies to Colleagues to Reluctant Friends to Lovers is a trope that I very much appreciate. Gaining some sort of common ground at the Battle of Beacon only to reunite, tired and battered, after the shit has already hit the fan? Slow burn kinda vibes.

That hug between them was something genuinely vulnerable and a sign of Ironwood letting his guard down because he is tired as fuck. It also was uh...kinda fruity.

Ironwood approaches closer, and Qrow scratches the back of his head, a characteristically nervous gesture that he’s made before; it’s a nervous twitch, manufactured nonchalance. He has no idea what Ironwood wants, but he does know that Ironwood wants something. James is the one to initiate the hug, and Qrow startles and even freezes up before relaxing into it. He seems suprised, but gives the bisexual eye roll of grudging fondness. This is out of character for James - Jimmy - but Qrow doesn’t think that Ironwood is a bad person. He leans into the hug, and the camera cuts out before they separate, suggesting that they probably end up standing there for a long ass time. You can also see from the side shots that it’s a close hug; their torsos are pressed up against each other, front to front, and there’s not a lot of wiggle room. James must be really goddamn depressed. It’s a long, manly, intensley heterosexual hug. Like I said, kinda fruity.

Other people have analyzed the hug shot for shot, so I won’t get too into it, but I think that it was intentionally left as a double red herring; some people thought that maybe he bugged Qrow, and after finding out that he didn’t, we were forced to conclude that this is a genuine olive branch. To find out that Ironwood is sincere but was still susceptible to corruption is that second subversion that I didn’t really expect. I hadn’t prepared myself for it, at least, and neither did Qrow. I wouldn’t go as far to say that Ironwood’s descent into fucking craziness paranoia is triggered by Qrow not ‘reciprocating’ or something, but I do think it’s interesting how the volume opens up with a signifigant interaction between Ironwood and Qrow, only for Qrow to spend the rest of the volume homosexually bonding with Clover, while Ironwood basically has no one as emotional support (again, his subordinates do not have the power or the place to be viewed as equals and the veil of formality is one of isolation). Qrow initiates nothing further, and nothing further happens.

Ironwood’s downfall, in a thematic sense, is that what he Needs is a heart, and when he gets that chance to demonstrate tolerance and empathy, James ultimately rejects his Need (a heart) and his arc reverts into one of villainy. To be specific, Ironwood is essentially a fascist dick, and that is not very sexy. (Speaking of dicks, the thought of Ironwood’s dick makes me laugh. I bet in the RWBY universe, people have made memes about that. I do not accept criticism because I am correct. Anyway,).

Dictators are charming, charismatic, and one of the pillars of their method is absorbing potential political opponents into their own administration to reduce the threat of rebellion, to appear openly tolerant to their supporters, and to further consolidate power. A good example of this would be Mean Girls, which runs on a comedic commentary of dictatorships as a political structure of power. I hate to compare James Ironwood to Regina George, but Regina’s posse includes Karen and Gretchen, two of the only girls who might take away from the authority she holds over the rest of their school, both in their wealth and attractiveness, and Cady’s interesting backstory and conventional attractiveness is the main reason Regina draws her into her own sphere - because she detects a potential threat. Much in the same way, while Ironwood likely has good intentions, his efforts to win over team RWBY and co. - including Qrow himself - is a logical way to consolidate resources. His willingness, at first, to cooperate with political opponents (ie Robyn) is because he’s not inherently evil, and he has nothing to lose. It’s when he is openly opposed and diplomatic gestures no longer hold the necessary weight that he snaps.

In one really interesting meta about Ironqrow’s archetypes (that I reread occasionally just because I really love it), @onewomancitadel posits that Ironwood is framed within the archetype of the Knight in Shining Armor, which should inform us of the moral consistency of his character. The meta was written around the beginning of volume 7, I think, and obviously we have a lot more character development and information to go off of now, but I think she makes a really interesting point about the nature of parallels and how that might help drive Ironwood as a character. I love her analysis of the visual of Ironwood stepping out of an airship wreckage, onto the street, the smoke billowing around him to reveal his cyborg prosthetics, and of the intentional framing. Once his uniform is stripped back, we see a man who is literally half-armor, which could be indicative of a lot of things. He’s emotionally guarded, he’s used as a human weapon, and he wants to be a line of defense. In her words, “The symbolism is really obviously put into perspective of his actions in trying to do the right thing: in the flesh (his true physical self) he is literally a knight in shining armour. From the ground up. Even if it's unseen or distorted by his uniform, his nature is still true.”

While Ironwood clearly has gone down a darker path in the most recent volume, I think this analysis holds true in a crucial way. “Ironwood is working with different information, and he’s doing exactly what he knows: stick to his knightly virtues, even disgraced.” Disgraced, indeed. Ironwood is holding onto his knightly values, and doing what he believes is right. If not right, he believes that it is necessary. The problem is that these values are manifested within Atlas’s sociopolitical-military culture in an inherently toxic way - his response is, at this point, neither rational nor empathetic, but it can be explained partially due to his cultural (flawed) understanding of justice, and because of the extenuating circumstances. The harsher the conditions become, the more difficult it is for anyone to project a facade that is not sincere at its core. If James is to uphold his Knightly virtues, he needs to be a protector, a leader, and a servant all at once while operating under limited intel with dwindling trust. All he has left are the few key players still in his grasp, and the control of the people he is responsible for.

To digress: generally, knights take an oath. It could be to a King, or Lord, or some noble, but Knights are supposed to operate on a code of honor, and chivalry, and to uphold these values throughout the land as an extension of whoever they have pledged themselves to. The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a really good example of the way that, back in the day, chivalry and honor was supposed to place knights on a moral high ground compared to the common people.

In the middle of a celebration in Camelot, an obligatory tradition that has since lost real value but is rehearsed because Camelot fears that failure to uphold traditions that once had meaning is disrespectful, a Green Knight interrupts the celebrations and offers a strange challenge that boils down to a fight to the death. Gawain volunteers because accepting this challenge is what is expected of him, and Arthur would be humiliated if his knights, supposedly the best in the world, would not rise to the challenge. Gawain - and to a certain extent, the rest of Arthur’s knights - are fickle, in a sense, because their adherence to this code is performative, and it allows them to delude themselves into moral superiority and lie both to the commoners and amongst themselves; their identity as knights is based on a falsehood. Gawain is offered the first blow, and after beheading the Green newcomer, is horrified to see him become reanimated and immune to mortal blows. He invites Gawain to receive his own - likely fatal - blow, and gives him a time in which to meet, before promptly leaving.

Throughout the story, Gawain is tested in a variety of ways - in his final test, he fails, and allows his greed for self preservation and the fear of death to lead him to lie to his hosts and proceed to his meeting with the Green Knight under dishonest pretenses. While he is spared at the last second and becomes a better person (after it is revealed that Morgan le Fay orchestrated the ordeal to spook Queen Guinevere) - and by extent, a truer Knight, by the end of the story, the superficial and hypocritical nature of Arthur’s court is still in question, and still unanswered.

See, the entirety of Gawain’s trials was a test, not necessarily for him, but for Arthur and his court as a whole. Morgan wanted to prove the fickle nature of Arthur’s knights. The Knights of the Round Table were considered the best in the land, and to discredit one was to discredit all. What use is tradition if the meaning is empty, what use is chivalry if it is performed for reward instead of merit, and what use is loyalty if it is blind and unearned? Returning to Oz, the Tin Woodman, or Tin Man, grew to be made of tin because his axe became enchanted by the Wicked Witch of the East to sever his own body parts instead of the lumber he tried to cut down. A nearby tinsmith replaced each amputated limb with one of metal, until his entire body became tin and his meat body had been entirely discarded. Something to note is that Nick Chopper’s, (General Ironwood’s) wounds are technically self-inflicted. Each time he swung his axe, he made the decision to continue, knowing of the end result each time. In losing his bodily functions, the Tin Man believed that he had lost his humanity and ability to love.

The tragedy of his origin story draws a pointed correlation to Ironwood’s current dilemma; his unwillingness to stop, his self-imposed isolation, playing into the hands of the witch, and finally, the decision to let go of his ability to love remain consistent throughout both stories.

Watts even refers to Ironwood as a “Tin Solider”; a reference to the Tin (Woods)Man, no doubt, but could also evoke a soldier clanking around in metal armor. Ironwood is a Knight in Shining Armor, through and through. He wants to save the world, but at the terrible cost of civilian autonomy and possibly life. The problem is that he’s pledged himself to a discriminatory and hypocritical system, and his code is something that can easily be misconstrued by fear ( @disregardcanon ), much as Gawain’s own values. The Tin Man is, after all, still a man, and if we’ve learned anything from real fairytales, it is that men are fallible, whether or not they are made of metal.

Ironwood, Alone

he’s a lonely bitch

I know I f- up, I'm just a loser

Shouldn't be with ya, guess I'm a quitter

While you're out there drinkin', I'm just here thinkin'

'Bout where I should've been

I've been lonely, mm, ah, yeah

— Benee, Supalonely (2019)

You do get the sense that Ironwood is riddled with self-loathing conflicting with pride, with self-doubt clashing with competence, and that he is the kind of person who longs for things without verbalizing. Maybe his dad never paid enough attention to him as a kid. Maybe he suffered some terrible physical and emotional trauma, which might as well be assumed, given the extensive nature of his cybernetic limbs. Maybe (probably) he’d be more well-adjusted and would’ve made better decisions if the people around him trusted him and were a little more open. To be fair, though, he is the one at the wheel, and he is making the calls; no one else is to blame for his mistakes, and to pretend otherwise is to deny him accountability. I think we do enough of that in everyday life, in excusing powerful men of their responsibilities. To his credit, I do think he wants to help people. I think James also wants to project the personality of a leader who is stoic, controlled, and measured. He is charming when he wants to be, sympathetic when it suits him, and influential in just the right areas. He is not a sociopath, but he is a politician, and in a lot of ways, those are the same thing. We see in his brief flashes of temper, often prompted by Qrow, or most notably by Oscar, that this is not a calm, stable person. This is someone is on the verge of exploding, who is so fucking angry that he is not in control that it’s killing him, and so he is going to lash out and kill the things that are not within his grip. If the people beneath him will not reciprocate the heart that he offers, then he has no real use of it. James Ironwood does not begin this story as a bad person. This is a tragedy, in however many parts it takes.

I read, in one very smart and very put-together analysis that I cannot find and properly credit at the moment, that part of Ironwood’s (many) failures can be seen in Winter, and how, like Ozpin, he has appointed a woman as his talented, no-nonsense, second chain in command at his right hand. In this way, Winter is an intentional parallel to Glynda, who is, without question, a bad bitch. In theory, surrounding yourself with strong individuals is a demonstration of self restraint, in implementing your own checks and balances. James wants to project that he is powerful, yes, but he is reasonable.

I take this to mean that, to some degree, even if it’s unintentional or subconscious, Winter serves to boost Ironwood’s ego.

The issue with this is that within the inherently hierarchical structure of the military, Winter cannot question, undermine, or challenge Ironwood in a way that is particularly meaningful and their relationship is one of commander and subordinate before colleagues or equals (link to a fantastic post about Winter’s role as the Good, Conscientious Soldier by @fishyfod). Whereas Glynda is free to argue with, converse, and be as combative as she needs to be with Ozpin (although their power dynamic is arguably one of commander and subordinate albeit informally), Winter cannot temper Ironwood effectively, and through the illusion of equality, Ironwood is further isolated.

His head and arms and legs were jointed upon his body, but he stood perfectly motionless, as if he could not stir at all.

Dorothy looked at him in amazement, and so did the Scarecrow, while Toto barked sharply and made a snap at the tin legs, which hurt his teeth.

“Did you groan?” asked Dorothy.

“Yes,” answered the tin man, “I did. I’ve been groaning for more than a year, and no one has ever heard me before or come to help me.”

The Tin Man needs oil to lubricate his joints; without it, he cannot move, and he is rendered helpless and inanimate. When Dorothy and the group find him, he is entirely isolated with no one in sight, and he has been there for such a long time that he has begun to rust. Similarly, Ironwood needs valued voices of dissent to keep him in check. His colleagues were able to serve that purpose in the beginning, and out of them, Qrow is the best example of someone who doesn't take his shit, openly questions him, and looks down on the performative decorum of the military culture that Ironwood is surrounded by. What Ironwood needs is to be flexible and adaptable; his Semblance, Mettle (heh, metal, very nice pun, RoosterTeeth), is a double edged sword in that it gives him supernatural focus and willpower - enough, perhaps, to flay/chop off your own limbs - but it blindsides him, and is only further prolonging his pain.

There is a lot of sympathy to Ironwood’s character, as much as I’ve ragged on him for being an authoritarian, kind of a dick, and bad with kids. There are moments, such as the previously mentioned dinner party, where he shows his colors a bit, and when he assures the students at the Vytal Festival that there’s no shame in leaving before the battle begins, and in giving Yang a prosthetic arm before her father even has to ask. As far as Generals go, it seems that he’s seen soldiers come and go and understands, at least in his best moments, that not everyone is the same, and not everyone has power of unflinching determination to rely on. Ironwood performs his best when he tempers himself because he understands himself, and others. It’s when he fails to self-reflect that his hypocrisy shows through. Glynda points it out, too, as does Qrow; Ironwood advocates for trust but often fails to give it himself, going behind Ozpin’s back, being absolutely shit at field communication, and now the whole fascist, borderline-genocidal keruffle he’s gotten himself into.

I think that Ironwood reaching out to Qrow was his ethical last stand, his last chance and conscious effort to choose the right path. Qrow is unequivocally an equal, not like how Ozpin is the Big Boss, the authority that James becomes disillusioned with and tries to overthrow. He wants someone to trust, desperately so, and Qrow wants that too, but narrative subversion has hands. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man have no brain and heart respectively, and are in need of them. As it turns out, Qrow is actually a pragmatic guy with solid principles angled against authoritarianism, and Ironwood is a dick who would rather enforce martial law than to empathize and tame his military-shaped boner for one second.

I might conclude that someone like Qrow might be best for Ironwood, but that does not mean that someone like Ironwood would be the best for Qrow. Qrow has a brain after all, but Ironwood does not choose his heart when it matters, case in point. Even the intro of the current season features Salem and Ironwood on a chessboard; his white pieces are disappearing, dissolving into dust, as hers transform into Grimm. Ironwood is isolating himself by depleting himself of allies. As this post by @hadesisqueer points out, Ironwood isn’t even positioned as King, the supposed commander, but the Queen, the most versatile player on the board that is so far underused, since he hasn’t moved from his spot. Ironwood’s refusal to unify against Salem is his failure to strategically utilize the best resources that were available to him; soon, the pieces will be swallowed by the dark.

James is guilty of something that a lot of us are guilty of: doing a Bad Thing for what we have convinced ourselves is a Good Reason, when in reality, it is actually a lot of Very Bad Reasons. James Ironwood is a Knight archetype, through and through, and he is charging forward to do the right thing. He is afraid, he is lying to himself, and he will never surrender.

“All the same,” said the Scarecrow, “I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one.”

“I shall take the heart,” returned the Tin Woodman; “for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”

Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her two friends was right, and she decided if she could only get back to Kansas and Aunt Em, it did not matter so much whether the Woodman had no brains and the Scarecrow no heart, or each got what he wanted.

The lesson of James Ironwood is a lesson of failure, and of the way that we succumb to fear, because that is Salem’s agenda, really, in the end: fear. It’s the negative emotions, fear being first and foremost, that draw in and empower the Grimm, and it’s fear and uncertainty that causes chaos. It is when Dorothy’s friends give into their fear that they are truly defeated. FDR’s assertion that “The only thing to fear is fear itself” holds true here; it’s not so much that these characters are afraid of losing their lives, their loved ones, and of the dark, but that they do not have the love or the resources to be brave for themselves or for others.

Qrow as a character is introduced as one who is already defeated, in a sense. Half of his team is gone, dead or estranged, he’s forced into the shadows of espionage to protect a world he knows is darker than it should be, and he’s fighting a losing battle with alcoholism. As charismatic as he’s written, he’s referred to as a “dusty old crow”, a hunter of renowned skill but past the prime of his life.

Dorothy’s three titular companions are defined by what they lack; in the same vein of the Disney I Want song (a main character’s main monologue song in which their wants and desires that motivate them throughout the rest of the film is laid out in song; ie Part of Your World, Reflections, How Far I’ll Go), the Lion, Tin Man, and the Scarecrow want bravery, a heart, and a brain respectively. RWBY relies on flipping the script of its characters based on what the audience might expect from the source material; Ruby is not just a helpless little girl - her introduction is a badass with a scythe. The Scarecrow is a chronic alchoholic. Cinderella is a victim of abuse, and is also a villain who wants to set the world aflame. Subversion, subversion, subversion.

There are obviously parallels between the characters in RWBY and in their own fairytales to keep them in character, and part of the fun is spotting those clues and occasionally connecting the dots to anticipate the direction of the narrative and certain connections between characters and the significance of their arcs. While I’m not aware of Dorothy Gale’s RWBY counterpart, if she has already been established or is yet to be introduced, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Ruby has adopted a Dorothy-eque persona and can act as a surrogate in a way. She begins as a sweet, naive child eager to join a world of color and excitement, who initially believes that she has “normal knees” and is thrust into a political scheme full of powerful and older players. She even has a small dog as a companion, Toto Zwei, who seems like an odd addition, since he’s usually sidelined and basically forgotten about except in a few spare moments, unless he’s there to draw further comparisons to Dorothy. She may not be from Kansas, but she is first helped by Glynda (the Good Witch), and later expects assistance from Ozpin, Qrow, and the later Ozian counterparts. I find it a peculiar detail that for Ruby to be Little Red Riding Hood alone, she is surrounded specifically by Dorothy’s companions. This, of course, only increases the importance of the relevance of the Oz series in particular and the characters that are borrowed.

In the case of Ozpin’s inner circle, Dorothy’s closest comrades (sans Toto) differ in crucial ways to their source material. (After finishing this essay, I found a much better, condensed explanation by @neopoliitan )

Disillusioned by the Ozpin, the Wizard (who has been projecting an illusion of a failsafe) and overwhelmed by the rise of the Wicked Witch of the West, Lionhart (the Lion), gives into his cowardice and ultimately forgoes the arc and redemption of his character from the source material; as such, he is by all definitions, a failure and a premonition, as Ironwood eventually follows. If RWBY is a dark take on classic fairytales, then it is only fitting that these characters are charred husks of their fairytale selves - these are people, and some people are selfish, scared, and cowardly, and they do not overcome these traits.

This is all opinion based, pure speculation. I have no idea what will happen in the next episode, and whatever goes down will be...shit will hit the fan. I’m under no delusions that Ironqrow is going to be canon in a healthy, tender, endgame sense. They’re both kind of losing their minds, and Ironwood is shitting absolute bricks. No, they’re going to try to kill each other, and I personally cannot wait for Qrow to cleave this man in two. (Not sexually, just, literally. Like, with a scythe.)

On that note, I think that the RWBY writers are good at callbacks, at drawing attention to their own connections, and if Ironwood and Qrow’s inevitable confrontation is scheduled, then it will include visual callbacks to Qrow saving James at Beacon, maybe shot for shot. Their visuals have only gotten better as time goes on, and I imagine Ironwood’s eyes widening as Qrow leaps through the air, scythe drawn, in recal of a moment so long ago when they weren’t on the same page, but they were at least on the same side. When Qrow brings the blade down, there will be no enemy behind him. Only Jimmy James. The difference between the two of them will be that Qrow isn’t fighting out of fear, but out of love, for what happened to Clover, and to what could happen to his girls.

Qrow’s reliance on alcohol, as well as his (mostly) feigned nonchalance is meant to fit with the motif that the Scarecrow has no brain, and, had he a mind to desire anything, would desire it most of all. His role is, also, notably, gathering intelligence for Ozpin (his character is also based on Munnin from Norse mythology). There is so much about Qrow that is an act and so much that is not, and I think that this act is born both from this motif and from his own cynicism, and the alcohol contributes to this act. However, he eventually gets sober after Ruby expresses legitimate frustration, and he understands that he’s putting their lives at risk. While one could say that he gave up drinking for the kids, I would argue that the kids - Ruby in particular - made him want to give up drinking for himself, to better himself.

While Lionhart and Ironwood betray the people depending on them, Qrow’s love for his nieces (and for the kids) allows him to deviate from this pattern. The answer to fear is perhaps not merely bravery - Qrow’s triumph is love.

Ironwood knows triumph in the context of a military state, but he’s backed himself into a corner. Soon he will find himself alone and friendless. Hopefully, his last stand will not be in vain.

#ironqrow #james ironwood #qrow branwen #rwby #rwby8 spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby meta #ok this is all just based on my opinion ok #like i ship ironqrow but ironwood is a dicktator if u know what i mean #he is probably gonna die but anyway #ironqrow meta #winter schnee #snowbird #also includes links and credit to other posts and metas #I just had to get this off of my chest ok

[peepspersonalperspective]

MY PICKS: Top 10 K-Dramas

Disclaimer: These are totally subjective choices and I've justified them as per my preferences. Consider them friendly recommendations and let me know if you disagree. Also, I've discovered the wonderful world of K-Dramas over the last couple of years and they've really evolved not just in storytelling but also production value so I personally prefer the more recent ones. So for example I haven't put a very popular pick like My Love from the Star simply because I've seen better stuff since (don't shoot me). Anyway, 가자!

MEMORIES OF ALAHAMBRA

This is my first recommendation for anyone who's just starting out watching Korean television content simply because it's so different from what new viewers expect it to be. It's so gripping and thrilling. I would expect nothing less from Song Jae Jung's writing.

So it's a sci-fi show, set in Spain, about an augmented reality game, that seems to have physical implications in the real world, sending the lead, Hyun Bin on a rollercoaster ride to find answers. Exo's Chanyeol has a recurring role as the game developer, so that's exciting too. I learnt that he was cast because of his love for PubG. Lol.

Every episode will leave you wanting more, and you'll find yourself as desperate to search for answers as Yoo Jin Woo (Hyun Bin).

Granted, mid season, it gets a little complicated, especially with newer nuances of the game unfolding, but fret not because the characters are discovering the secrets of the game with you. So they're as confused as you would be, and that's why this show is so good! More so because the graphics are excellent! You can tell they really spent money on ensuring high quality work. You will really feel like you're part of the game with Yoo Jin Woo.

Anyway, if you are an EXO-L, or you like gaming, sci-fi, thriller and Hyun Bin, this show is great!

2. W - Two Worlds

Another piece of awesome from Song Jae Jung. I would still rank this show a little below Alahambra, because I think the makers made improvements from this sci-fi drama in Alahambra, in the sense of storytelling. Still, W is just as intriguing.

Oh Yeon Joo (Han Hyo Joo) gets sucked into a comic book where she falls in love with the lead character of the comic book, Kang Chul (Lee Jeong Suk). Sounds like a typical romance drama right? Don't be fooled because there are many many twists and turns along the way.

I feel like there is metaphor in there somewhere about existentialism, the creation and destiny. But maybe that's just me reading into things.

Lee Jeong Suk is extremely desirable as Kang Chul, unsuspectingly charming and endearing, and Oh Yeon Joo is an absolutely relatable character, and how she deals as an ordinary girl thrown into extraordinary circumstances is genuine.

I would say this drama is wholesome, with sci-fi, suspense, thriller, action, romance, filial relationships, and more. And while it's usually difficult to jam pack all this into one show without screwing it up, W emerges exceptional.

3. Extraordinary You

This show is so cute! If you want just a light hearted, quirky show, this is the one for you.

It's about characters in a cartoon becoming aware of their existence in a cartoon. But don't worry this is NOTHING like W.

The best part about the show is that it's not about the main characters of the said cartoon. It's the story about the extras finding their way in that world, hence the pun intended in the title. The main characters (of the cartoon) are actually the most dull, because they are bound by the laws of stereotypical high school romance. But the real stuff is happening on the sidelines, with Kim Hye Yoon as Dan Oh and Rowoon as Haru.

Dan Oh is a hilarious character and Kim Hye Yoon does a fantastic job of switching emotions when she's in and out of a scene in the cartoon. One minute she goes into character mode, next minute she's bitching at the sorry fate of her character when she wakes up, to the astonishment of the characters surrounding her (who aren't aware of their reality yet).

Rowoon has a quiet charm about him that perfectly complements Hye Yoon. Check it out for a chuckle and a taste of something different.

4. Crash Landing on You

This show is hard not to like. Apart from the poorly picturized tornado carrying our leading lady over the border to North Korea, this show is a wonderful Netflix and Chill kind of show, I think.

The cultural disparity between the South and North is interesting to watch and also entertaining. Like when they mention buying mobile games at an App store (a literal application store in a Pyongyang market).

Ri Jung Hyuk (Hyun Bin again) and Yoon Seri (Son Yejin) are such a delight in comedic, romantic, and dramatic scenes. But the scene stealer for me was Yang Kyun Won as Pyo Chi Soo, and his unshakeable nationalism that he is ready to set aside for some shampoo and conditioner.

The interesting thing is going into the show, you have an idea of the longevity, so ofcourse, Seri's journey back to the South ain't going to be easy, also her relationship with Ri Jung Hyuk is doomed, and yet you find yourself rooting for them at each step, crying with them during their failures and crying with them even in their triumph. But the most tears were shed for the least expected character, who simply left us all heart broken.

5. Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo

In a world where women are expected to behave and look a certain way to be considered attractive by someone they're vying for, here's a food hogging, tomboy, weightlifting champ, with her first crush.

The premise may rope you into the show, but midway you realise that the heart of the show is in its characters, and without realising you become so invested in them that you feel their fears, insecurities, and cherish their victories with them.

This coming of age show really relishes on the quirks of each character, friendship, love and aspirations. It's not a very dramatic story which is probably why it didn't rate very high during its broadcast, but that's part of its charm, and that's why it's been able to gather a significant cult following since.

Lee Sung Kyung and Nam Joo Hyuk portray the most sincere friends and eventual couple. Their relationship blossoms in the most organic manner and it's so heartwarming. They're not cheesy or unrealistic; they even beat each other up! I don't think I've seen that level of comfort portrayed on screen so well before.

Watch out for guest appearances by Ji Soo and Lee Jeong Suk.

6. Strong Girl Do Bong Soon

I'll be honest, this recommendation is mainly for Park Hyung Sik. He's amazing in the show. And there could be no better supernaturally strong petite girl than Park Bo Young, either.

So there are actually a lot of things happening in the show, story wise, but I promise it all comes together in the end. There is quite a build up and I'm happy that it pays off adequately.

This is like a superhero show with all the spices and flavours of a Marvel movie, but K-Drama style. There's an invincible villain, some idiot gangsters for comedic value, romance (a love triangle infact), functional training, a point of lost hope for Bong Soon, and then her resurrection as a superhero.

It's all there, and more.

But Park Hyung Sik.....

7. Itaewon Class

This recommendation is simply for the refreshing change of representation on TV. I know a lot has already been spoken about it already, but I have to admit that that's what sets this revenge drama apart. That, and the music. Dayum, Start by Gaho is so catchy! And let's not forget V's Sweet Night.

This show starts off slow but give it 3 episodes before it gets to the real shit.

Park Saeroyi is almost too good to be true, and in that lies his shortcoming. His character is so strong that while watching him I forgot that Park Seo Joon was acting. And despite some unnerving moments I found myself rooting for him. He has some strong motivational lines too, like about his choice for a better life. His determination is almost unreal, as he goes on to take down his mortal enemy.

Some of the best scenes, though, are of Jo Yi Seo (Kim Dami), a sociopathic enterprising genius. She was the one who actually kept me hooked to the series. She added some much needed flair to the show, and as it appears to Park Saeroyi's establishment.

Actually, every character was strong, every character had a strong backstory and motivation for the action, and most importantly they never broke character.

Watch out for Park Bo Gum's special appearance.

8. Love In The Moonlight

Speaking of Park Bo Gum...

This show is all kinds of weird in the best way! A girl pretends to be a palace eunuch and falls in love with the crown Prince. That is so messed up!

But that's the fun part! And Park Bo Gum and Kim You Jung make it a wonderful ride. Full of quirky romance, political conflicts and hidden identity issues, this show is addictive af!

And even though this wasn't in the show and was just a promo, be sure to watch Park Bo Gum's Bombastic dance. It's adorable!

9. The Third Charm

I'm sure this is my least popular recommendation. But something about watching this show was so cathartic. I highly recommend it for those who may have gone through heartbreak ever in their lives.

This is probably one of those rare times when I was lost in the story instead of Seo Kang Jun's eyes. Hehe. This story is about an on again off again couple and their journey through life together and apart.

This was meant to be a healing drama, and it really does take you through the emotional evolution that comes with growing up. I think it's the perfect medicine for a healing heart.

10. It's Okay Not To Be Okay

This show! This is my current obsession. Kim Soo Hyun's comeback couldn't have been more perfect. Seo Yeji couldn't have been a more perfect casting. And the two leads couldn't have had a better chemistry.

This show is all kinds of whimsical and I love it. Also a healing drama, this show deals with.... Baggage....to put it simply. Some baggage may be bigger than other baggage, some even irrevocable. But seeing all the characters overcome this baggage is so fulfilling.

But the charm of this show is in Ko Moon Young's (Seo Yeji) craziness and the Tim Burton-esque setup, that really makes one perceive fairytales in a whole new way. I mean I always knew that fairytales were sanitized German folklore, but I never thought to find a very different messaging from the material. The parables are ingenious, and it really is a pleasure to watch each and every person on this show.

Special mentions: Goblin, Reply 1988, 30 but 17/ Still 17, My ID is Gangnam Beauty, Hotel Del Luna

#tvshow #kdrama #memoriesofalahambra #w two worlds #hyun bin #crash landing on you #extraordinary you #rowoon #haru #kim bok joo #weightlifting fairy kim bok joo #lee sung kyung #nam joo hyuk #ahn bo hyun #strong girl do bong soon #jisoo #itaewon class #park seo joon #love in the moonlight #park bo gum #the third charm #seo kang joon #its okay not to be okay #kim soo hyun #seo ye ji #netflix #tv #tv show

[simon-newman]

Newman’s Anime Reviews - Kimetsu no Yaiba

Hello Everyone and welcome to my first anime review in… Nearly 4 years?

*Cough*

Yeah - I know - I am still supposed to write the Seven Witches review… I have no excuses. I will get to it. SOMEDAY!

But today I’m going to talk about another anime. The first title from my 2021 anime challenge.

Actually this is the only anime from the challenge list that I’ve picked myself because I’ve been intending to watch it for a while now.

I’m talking about

Kimetsu no Yaiba

Now - I didn’t really know what I’m getting myself into. I’m not sure if this counts as an achievement but I didn’t know shit about this title outside of:

Some people I know highly recommended it to me,

Nezuko is the best girl (and a demon)

There’s some dude wearing boar’s head as a mask,

Swords

Apparently it’s about killing demons

This is everything. EVERYTHING I knew when I started watching.

First things first however - let's start with the premise.

We meet our protagonist - Kamaboko Gonpachiro as he’s living his harsh but happy life with his large family. Monjiro takes on the responsibility of caring for his mother and younger siblings as the oldest male in the family after his father’s death before the start of the plot.

We join our protagonist as he goes down the mountain to sell charcoal at the nearby village and promises to come back with a lot of goods and food for the New Year’s.

Right off the bat we’re presented with beautiful scenes of  a loving family life our protagonist enjoys and I’m not going to make any anime veteran jokes about it.

Long story short - Tontaro’s trip lasts longer than he expected and he ends up staying the night at the village. It is then that we learn about demons that prowl the night of Kimetsu no Yaiba world. Evil creatures of darkness that feed on the flesh of humans. We also learn about demon hunters who protect people from those demons.

Gengoro resumes his trip back early in the morning but thanks to his keen sense of smell soon realizes that something is wrong. Very wrong. He rushes forward to get back as soon as possible but it is already too late.

There was a demon attack during the night and his family got killed with the sole exception of his sister Nezuko who was turned into a demon.

Surprising a demon hunter who appears shortly after Nezuko manages to regain her senses and has strong enough will to resist attacking humans. Thus begins Kanjiro’s journey - to become a demon slayer himself, avenge his family, protect others from what happened to him and find a way to turn his sister back into a regular human.

Sounds easy, right?

  I’ll be honest here that while the beginning was executed beautifully I must admit that I wasn’t really feeling this anime right away.

It seemed like your standard shounen anime from the start. Greatly executed despite being very cliche but still not outstanding.

Tragedy to set our protagonists on their way followed by the training arc and Jangoro finally becoming a demon slayer while Nezuko changes in her own way to be able to live without consuming humans - surprising experienced demon slayers.

It is only after that that the real story begins and we follow Tanjiro as he starts his mission as a true demon slayer himself.

Truly basics of the basics if I were to be honest. At that point I couldn’t really complain about anything in this show but at the same time nothing really stood out. As mentioned - the story was cliche. The fights so far were so-so. Animation was good but at the same time I knew that Ufotable isn’t showing it’s best yet. Somehow however it all just worked - together with music which really played into my tastes - yes - I really enjoy the music in this show (make it the one thing i really liked at that point).

But then everything changed with the Asakusa Arc.

Oh no! It’s Michael Jackson! RUN!

  The introduction of the Big Bad Muzan, his Twelve Demon Moons and the possible way of turning Nezuko back into human set our vague goals in place and Kentaro finally had a clear mission to accomplish.

What’s more - from this point on the fights become far more entertaining as well.

I did get the impression that this progress might be done too rapidly but thinking back it’s a good thing actually. We got too used to 150 episodes of nothing important happening and now any sort of early development seems rapid.

Before you say that I contradict my statements from earlier reviews hear me out: While we do meet major antagonists early on we don’t really get much from it outside of direction in the story. The Big Bad doesn’t make a move himself and is not even fought directly but becomes aware of Tangoro’s existence and wants him gone.

This is a good development to happen early in the story to keep the stakes high while not resolving anything just yet.

But this is not the end of improvements.

In the following story arc (Tsuzumi Mansion Arc) Santarou meets with two fellow demon slayer newbies - Zenitsu and Insouke who add some team dynamics to our already decent story and IMO further improves the fights we get to see.

As for the new team members… Zenitsu starts out pretty annoying at first with his extremely cowardly demeanor while Inosuke is the polar opposite with a fearless, rash personality.

I might be overthinking it but I see Inosuke as a parody - of sorts - for a character I personally dislike - Kirito from SAO. Both are dual-wielding master swordsmen with a feminine face (and for added bonus they’re both voiced by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka) but while Kirito’s strong because he’s the protag (Gary Stu) Inosuke is insanely ripped from his harsh life in the wilderness and… Well… Pretty much insane.

Pretty amazing, aren’t I? Pretty amazing, aren’t I?

  This change of pace - going from just Gentaro and Nezuko to a 4 man team with Zenitsu and Inosuke - marks the difference between the first and second half of this anime (and i forgot to mention it’s a whole 26 episodes show - not the 12 episodes short we got used to in recent years).

While the first half was kinda decent but not outstanding the second half is really, really entertaining to watch. Both the characters get a lot more chances at interaction and development and the action steps up from what we’ve seen before.

In short - two story arcs I’ve mentioned above supplemented what was lacking before. Things I wasn’t even clearly aware of initially.

Without a clear mission for Tenpachirou to accomplish we’d just descend into a monster-of-the-week formula and without more team members we’d be left with no means to explore our protagonists’ character in full.

What’s of Ponjirou extreme kindness if we don’t get to see him affect people with it outside of one-time-only interactions and his good relationship with his sister?

Yes - you can show it time and time again but from this point on it comes out more naturally and as I’ve mentioned already - we get to see it affect people in the long run - something I hope we’ll see further in the story.

Left to right: Boss Honey Badger, Sleeping Badass, Best Girl and Cinnamon Roll.

  Which brings me to this sad point…

Despite being a full 26 episodes show it still feels more like an introduction. We barely get to the right formula in the midpoint and conclude the fight against the first real enemy shortly before the anime is over. Souchirou’s journey has only just begun.

I’ve really wanted to write this review after watching the following Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen. That’s for multiple reasons.

At this point I know that this story arc is going to further up the stakes with the Upper Ranks of the Demon Moons getting into action but at the same time I’m really excited to see if Ufotable is going to show us what they’re capable of in terms of animation.

Because I think this anime deserves it.

Sadly - while the movie was out already I didn’t manage to watch it before writing this review.

Kamado Tanjirou vs Lower Moon One - Enmu.

  To sum it up - It was an interesting experience to see the anime develop in front of me - from a decent cliche show that didn’t make any major mistakes and played all the tropes just right into a really good and entertaining show in it’s own right.

My final assessment of the show is also the result of a certain niche this anime fits into. Namely the enjoyable sword fight scenes.

I’m definitely going to watch the movie when I’m able to and dive right into the following seasons of anime if they are made.

At this point something with this anime resonates with me - this show feels “just right” for some reason.

There’s also an added benefit of it not being dragged into infinity. From what I’ve heard the manga is already finished and we could get a definite end line before the story gets watered down into tasteless money grab.

Something to be appreciated when it comes to shounen manga…

Well. It is time to wrap up this review as well.

With all the above being said my final verdict is...

  Final Score: 8/10  +Newman’s Mark of Quality

Status: Completed

Sentence: Butterfly Mansion rehabilitation training (I bet I’d enjoy it after a while).

 Next: Code Geass

#Anime #Review #Kimetsu no Yaiba #Demon Slayer #Nezuko #Tanjiro #Inosuke #Zenitsu

[rachelbethhines]

TTS Songs Ranked Worst to Best

Someone asked me to rank my fav and least fav TTS songs a while back, but I’ve since then relistened to the soundtrack and there’s a whole bunch of songs that just forgot about, so here’s a more accurate ranking now that the songs are more fresh in my mind

32 .  Life After Happily Ever After (Reprise)

This song is infuriating, because the finale is infuriating. Listening to this song just makes me angry all over again because it reminds me just how unsatisfying the ending to TTS was. I wanted to turn it off at several points. I barely can get through it despite it being so short. It doesn’t help that the soundtrack leaves all the dialogue in there and fails to actually end the song. It just cuts off before the final note.

31. Hook Foot’s Ballad

Does this even count as a song? Why is it here on the soundtrack but not the Hurt Incantation? Did Menken really waste his talent writing a joke and did the showrunners really waste money and limited resources on this?

30. Friendship Song

Bland, boring, and pointless. It was clearly written as a marketing stunt for the radio disney charts and not as anything to do with the plot of the series. They just throw it up on screen to fill out the running time and don't even let the whole song play through. It’s pitiful.

29. Waiting in the Wings (Reprise)

I didn’t think much of the original song one way or the other, but the reprise is soooo dumb. The plot twist it introduces winds up ruining the whole show and sabotaging both Cassandra’s and Rapunzel’s characters. It’s not even a nice sounding song on it’s own. The kid’s voice is irritating (who I’m sure is doing her best, but really little kids shouldn’t be made to sing professionally as a general rule) and the melody just as bland as the first time it was played. The only reason to like this song is if you’r a mega fan of Cassandra’s or her VA, which I am not. (Note: this is not a criticism of Eden Espinosa, I just don’t happen to follow any of the VAs in this show)      

28. Through It All

I like the instrumentals in this song, and that’s about it. Everything about this song is wrong. It doesn’t fit the story, it’s a misuse of the cast and songwriters, it’s a waste of valuable screen time, the melody is dull, and the dang soundtrack had to throw in that lame dialogue about ‘greatest threat ever’ at the beginning. If you want a pump up song in your story then you got to earn it. You can’t just tell us things are bad, you got to show it. A joyful horseback ride and everyone sitting in a bar safe and sound isn’t threatening or depressing enough to warrant a cheering up session. Plus the song itself doesn’t add anything to the overall story.

27.  The Girl Who Has Everything

Sometimes I think the writers were willing trying to sabotage themselves. It’s as if they were determined to make the only two main female characters in the show unlikeable bitches in season three.   Don’t believe me? The creator Chris has said this song only exists to highlight how much easier Rapunzel has things than Cass and went onto say that Rapunzel was in the wrong during their conflict because ‘she held Cassandra back’. (Oh yeah she totally ‘held back’ the grown woman who left on her own accord, returned on her own accord, and then assaulted and tried to murder a bunch of people for no reason of her own accord.) But this song does succeed in furthering season’s three narrative that Rapunzel is a spoiled selfish brat. Shame the story fails to address this setup and never has Rapunzel learn to be a better person. Rather the narrative bends over backward to tell us how special Rapunzel is without any sense of self awareness and this song falls into that same trap; making it both irritating and pointless.

26. Listen Up

Yeah, I talked about this on my salt marathon, but I just don't like this song very much. The melody is fine but the lyrics are a real miss in my mind. It doesn’t help matters that the song is indeed pointless in the grand scheme of things.

25.  Livin’ the Dream

This is much on the same level as Listen Up as it features the same problems. It doesn’t add to the narrative and the lyrics kind of let it down. I placed it higher just because I like the melody a little more.

24.  More of Me

This song is a lot like the Friendship Song in that it was created to be an end credit song for the pop charts and you’d be forgiven in forgetting it even exists. However, it at least got to actually play all the way through. I think this song was a real missed opportunity. I honestly believe that it should have been the opening theme song of the show instead of Wind in My Hair. It’s more built to serve such a purpose and it’s a waste of resources not to actually use it. Alternatively, I would have accepted it being reworked into the actual series as a character song. Especially since we’re missing a song in season three due to budget cuts.  

23. Wind In My Hair

Speaking of theme songs, I think I would like Wind In My Hair a lot better if i didn’t have to listen to it every episode. On its own it actually has a lot of things going for it; a nice melody, interesting instrumentals, good singing, ect. Unfortunately it’s just over exposed, and none of those elements lend themselves naturally to an intro song for a tv show. In fact the theme song feels really out of place and is edited oddly to fit the shorter intro. 

22. Wind In My Hair (Reprise)  

Honestly the theme song is mostly comprised of this reprise, but it has the opening instrumentals from the OG song frankensteined onto it. This means that the version that plays before every episode is on fullblast all the time to keep the energy up, but that’s not how the song is suppose to go.  The actual reprise that plays in the pilot builds to a crescendo, starting soft and melancolony and getting louder and more hopeful and determined. It sounds a lot better in full because of that.  It’s still too overexposed though. Both these songs would probably be higher on the list of not for the theme song version. 

21. With You by My Side

This song is fine. It’s nothing special, but it’s not bad either. What knocks it down the list is the fact that Lance isn’t in it, despite Lance being right there.  Like don't bother hiring a famous Broadway singer if you’re not going to have him sing!  But that speaks more to the poor writing of season two than anything else. This song also doesn’t really add anything to the narrative as, contrary to what the writers intended, it doesn’t actually enhance the emotional impact of Cassandra’s betrayal later in the episode. The song itself is just tacked on and doesn’t take the opportunity to lay down any foreshadowing for that plot point.  

20. Next Stop Anywhere

Another perfectly serviable song. It’s not bad but nothing outstanding. It gets the job done. It’s also really ho-hum and the soundtrack keeps all the unneeded dialogue, which is a pet peeve of mine. 

19. Waiting In the Wings

Despite it’s hype, I never thought much of Waiting in the Wings. It’s got nice instrumentals and Eden Espinosa gives it her all in the singing department. The problem is it’s too generic. It’s a bare bones basic ass ‘I want song’. Cassandra's movations are weak and unsupported by the narrative, the melody is boring, and it honestly doesn’t add anything to her story. I mean it should, it’s her character solo, but because she’s written so poorly the song just winds up undermining the character in the end.   All I’m saying is that, this is not the song from season two that I would have nominated for the Emmys. But it’s still Alan Menken, it’s still nicely performed, and given the rest of the competition for that year, it did deserve to win. 

18. If I Could Take That Moment Back 

This song is also pretty generic, but it’s less boring than I See the Light, (yeah, I said it, I See the Light is boring) so that’s a win in my book. Ergo this holds the title of the only New Dream duet that I enjoy. But there’s better stuff on this list. 

17. Next Stop Anywhere (Reprise)

Well no, I take that back. The reprise of Next Stop Anywhere is also technically a New Dream duet. It’s still not anything amazing, but it works for what it is. Plus, Adria’s opening dialogue in the soundtrack version doesn’t bother me quite as much as some of the other dialogues choices that were kept in.  

16. Stronger Than Ever Before 

I really enjoyed this song in the moment. It’s catchy and fun, and it finally has Lance doing something rather than ignoring his existence. However it is borderline unnecessary in terms of story placement, and I’m slightly mad at it now that I know that we could have gotten a Rapunzel and Varian duet but it was scrapped for this instead.   

15. Crossing the Line

Keeping with the theme of ‘songs I have conflicting emotions about’, we have Crossing the Line.  This song is confused. It starts and stops, the melody isn’t clear, the orchestration is playing tug of war with the singers for dominance, and it’s basically Alan Menken and the show’s creators ripping off Frozen. (I guess he’s kicking himself for leaving that particular project?)   But it’s interesting. I never heard anything quite like it. It’s memorable even if it doesn’t fully work. It’s got these interesting bits and pieces to it that just never quite comes together as a whole. Some of the lyrics are some of the best Glenn Slater has ever wrote and is far better than the story actually surrounding the song. Yet there’s other lines that are total cringe. Sometimes the song is bold and catchy and gets you all hyped up, and then other times its limp and staggering and feels so awkward to listen to.  Yet it’s not boring or generic and so I have to place it higher than the rest of the songs that’s come before. (Also, there’s some amazing orchestral covers out there that really pulls together the various parts really well, just fyi) 

14.  Nothing Left to Lose

I really don't like this song.  I’ve been one of its biggest critics ever since it was leaked by the marketing team earlier this year.  And yet... I can’t in good conscience place any lower on this list.  All of the problems I have with it are the exact same problems I have with Crossing the Line. It’s confused, the various pieces don't line up, the instrumentals are competing with the vocals, the song’s progression is weird with it’s constant key changes, some of the lyrics are good while others are absolute shit, ect and so forth.  It also actively works against the story it's trying to tell. The song wants you to sympathize with Cassandra, but her lines are as shallow as a puddle and makes her look like a sociopath. Especially when she’s physically attacking Varian through out for no reason. Also neither character learns anything from the exchange and it fails to impact the story.  By all accounts this is a bad song.  But I’m Varian trash.  There I said it. You happy?  Varian’s parts in the songs are fine, good even, and the song is anything but bland. I would rather listen to a mess then be bored to tears by a competent yet standard four chord pop song. 

13. I’d Give Anything

This song is nice to listen to. Story wise it absolutely sucks and shouldn’t have been in the finale at all. But it sounds pleasant.  This is one of those songs that could pop up randomly on the radio and I would just think it it a nice sad break up song. I can’t say that about some of the other misplaced songs in the show. This one however, you can very much, absolutely divorce this song from the narrative and it would be fine.  Now that’s not good writing, and it’s very much a waste of limited resources, but I’m rating the music here first and story second. 

12. Buddy Song

The Buddy Song also absolutely did not need to exist but it also sounds nice. Plus, it makes use of Lance so I’m a little more lenient towards it.   I can’t however place it higher since it really is just Alan Menken ripping off Alan Menken. Like, I would not be at all surprised to find out that this was originally a deleted song for Aladdin or something.  

11. Bigger Than That

What can I say, Lance just gets good songs. When the show bothers to give them to him.  Unfortunately, it’s not the best placed. It kind of interrupts the more important drama of Be Very Afraid, and probably should have been saved for a later episode. Especially since it hinges on a plot point that is contradictory to Lance’s character.    We should have gotten a Varian and Rapunzel duet here and given Lance his own episode in the second half of season three. This song could have easily been refitted into being a bonding moment for him and the girls. That would also have filled out the season’s original songs to the usual eight instead of only  seven.

10. Life After Happily Ever After

Now we’re getting to the good stuff. The top ten. The best of the best.  This song makes the cut for three reasons.  1. It lyrically and musically interesting 2. It does the job of furthering the story and the characters  and 3. Eugene’s part is so damn good.  Like this song could have easily fell down into the ranks of ‘fine but generic’ if it wasn’t for the bridge with Eugene. That puts it over the top and to my mind makes it better than anything from the OG film. (well almost anything, Mother Knows Best is still great)    This is the barometer by which I measure all of the music in the series. Is it better or worse than Life After Happily Ever After? Because this is the level that I equate good musicals with.  What keeps on the tenth spot and not higher is the dialogue that still left on the soundtrack and the lack of a Cassandra introduction. That and also the rest of the songs are just flat better. 

9. Hurt Incantation 

Hurt, Decay, Reverse, whatever you want to call it, this was such a cool fucking concept. One that was utterly wasted by the show.  I place this so high because it just sounds awesome! It looks good too, and it offered up so many possibilities from a story perspective.  What lets it down is the lack of follow up for it and it’s too short. There’s needed to be another verse. It also should have been on the actual soundtrack instead of  Hook Foot’s Ballad.  (The Heal Incantation also was sung in What the Hair, but I’m not counting it since it was written for the film) 

8.  The Girl Who Has Everything (Reprise)

I hate the initial song and the set up that it took to get here, but I love this reprise. It’s perfect. This is what the story needed more of. Rapunzel taking her life into her hands, and her proposing to Eugene would have been the perfect capstone for her arc.  In fact I’m angry we didn’t actually get that. There’s absolutely no reason why Rapunzel couldn’t have done so and we could have had her and Eugene engaged during the second half of season three. How much better would have it been if Cassandra threatened their wedding plans and that’s why they couldn’t go through with it until after the series ended? So much more tension that way. 

7. I Got This

This is a really good song that actually futhers the characters and the narrative. Moreover it’s refreshing to see the heroine not be perfect and to fail sometimes due to her own inadequacies. It’s just a shame that the series didn’t follow through with this set up, but I appreciate the attempt all the same.   

6.  Set Yourself Free

This is the only song in the series that’s an actual satisfying pay off for anything. Music wise it’s nothing too special, but in terms of context it just works. We were sorely deprived of such resolutions and songs with actual meaning in the show. 

5. View From Up Here

This song is too good for the episode it actually appears in. We needed something like this back in season one to introduce Cassandra with. It also sadly doesn’t fit with the wider narrative after season three. However I shall still appreciate it as a ‘what might have been’ type song. 

4.  Let Me Make You Proud 

The only reason why this song isn’t higher is just overexposure and I’ve no one to blame but myself for that. I’ve listened to this song way too many times. As such it tends to alternate between this, View from Up Here, and the next song on the list. But make no mistake it is glorious. Fantastic instrumentals, set up, and of course amazing vocals. 

3.  Everything I Ever Thought I Knew

Yes, I know this plot point didn’t lead anywhere, but it works for this song at least. Also Eugene’s VA is a really underrated singer. He sounds nice and he emotes really well.  Though I’ll be honest, this jumped up to third place because it was fresh in my mind after listening to the soundtrack before making this list. I’ve always liked the song and I do rate it highly, but it can change places with Let Me Make You Proud and View from Up Here at anytime depending on my mood. 

2.  Let Me Make You Proud (Reprise)

This song is heartbreaking!  Story wise it probably shouldn’t exist because it gives away the twist too soon, but who cares, it’s awesome!  Varian’s arc is the most compelling in the show and the only thing that saves TTS from falling into mediocre obscurity; and it’s songs like this that help make the arc stand out even more than it already does. 

1. Ready As I’ll Ever Be

I said it before and I’ll say it again; Ready As I’ll Ever Be is the greatest thing Alan Menken has ever written in his entire career!  If you know anything about the multiple award winning songwriter then you know that is no faint praise and I do not dole it out lightly.  This song is the reason why this show even has a fanbase. People are still getting into the series because of this song. And no matter how many times you listen to it just rocks!   It’s complex, layered, moody, and with a fantastic beat and energy. The performances are wonderful and the instrumentation glorious. It belongs in the hollows of Disney’s greatest hits and not regulated to a spin-off tv show that failed to make its money back.  I weep for the lost potential that this song and this show had. It hurts to know that so many people will never see this flash of brilliance that has come out of the House of Mouse, will never know the wonderfulness that is Varian.  Ah, ‘c'est la vie’, I suppose. Tangled the Series got what it deserved, but it's crew did not. While I can not in all honesty recommend the series in full; I do sincerely urge any Disney fan to check out the songs at the very least. Especially this one.  And that’s it. There’s my official ranking of all the songs, and I hope those of you read my Tangled reviews appreciate the hours it took into making this. 

#tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #varian #rapunzel #eugene #cassandra #lance #alan menken #Disney #disney music #disney songs

[stellahibernis]

Lan Wangji: the Model Student Edition

AKA Lan Wangji’s costumes in the Untamed, part 1/9 

I got it in my head to write about Lan Wangji’s costumes in the Untamed for a couple of reasons. One, they’re extremely beautiful and worth paying attention to (as are all the costumes in the series!) and two, they do an excellent job of reflecting his mental state and where he is on his journey as a character. Hence, I’ll always look at them from two points of view, what’s actually happening in the costume, and how the choices made tie to what’s going on while he wears it. Note that I’m not going to even attempt to touch on how they connect to actual historical clothing (you’ll need an expert for that, which I’m definitely not).

I decided to make separate posts for each outfit rather than try to cram all of them in one post (or a few posts). I suspect this’ll be long enough anyway, since I’ll cover some common elements in his outfits in this one, and the images also add to the length. I tried not to go too crazy with the number of the images, although I suspect there’ll be more in the latter posts that cover some of his more elaborate costumes. I had a bit of fun with my image choices as you’ll see (also several times I forgot I was meant to capture stuff and just kept watching, as one does 😂).

Without further ado, let’s start with the outfit Lan Wangji had on when he walked into Wei Wuxian’s life. This outfit was worn mainly in episodes 3-7, briefly in episode 8, and also in WWX’s memories in episode 1.

The Costume

In my head this goes in the simple-but-formal category of LWJ’s outfits, meaning he has the full amount of layers on, and the fabrics are of the usual high quality, but they have no particular texture, and there’s not much embroidery. This almost feels like the basic Lan disciple outfit upgraded to a higher level, which goes nicely with the fact that even though he is the Second Jade of Lan, he’s also a student among the rest of them.

First some basics about the robes the Lan Sect members wear, possibly obvious stuff, but I’ll cover it anyway. They are usually made of fairly lightweight fabrics (that move beautifully in action scenes, I might add), although those of higher rank also have robes made of fabrics with more texture and weight. They’re always white or shades of blue, again more blue for those of higher rank (if they so choose), and the cloud pattern is usually embroidered at least somewhere (significantly LWJ has two outfits with no cloud embroidery).

Innermost layer consists of the white pants and the undershirt that seems to be standard for everyone, we see LWJ (in episode 43), LQR (in episode 33), and WWX (in episodes 42-45) all wear similar shirts. The actors aren’t necessarily wearing all the layers due to heat, but we’re meant to believe they’re always there and that cultivators are just immune to the sun or something. (In that bts video where they bicker on the boat we actually see Wang Yibo wearing the undershirt when he pulls back his sleeves, meaning he’s in five layers and somehow looks cool as a cucumber, while Xiao Zhan is dying of heat 😂). Next come two or three sets of robes, possibly always meant to be three, since the Lans are formal like that, but we don’t see that many with every costume. Then comes a sash to keep the robes closed, and for those of higher rank optionally another robe on top (which LWJ and LXC don’t always wear).

Here’s another look at the costume, with a bonus WWX. This was obviously chosen solely because it shows the silhouette very well.

As I mentioned earlier, this outfit has all the elements listed above, including a robe worn over the sash, but there aren’t too many details. The fabric is certainly meant to be silk, and possibly even is. Whoever did the hemming of the robe definitely struggled enough for it to be silk (modern detail that one, btw, you wouldn’t sew it like that by hand. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t just do that, making an invisible hem isn’t actually that slow, but maybe it’s still significant when you need to make so many costumes). The sash is very basic, with no decoration at all, but he of course has the waist ornament with the jade pieces and tassel, which is one of the two things he always wears, in addition to his forehead ribbon. The white shoes are maybe the biggest flex from the Lan Sect, just imagine how much time would be needed to clean and replace all of them, especially since the climate at the Cloud Recesses is definitely rainy, and then there are the night hunts.

Above is the top seen in detail, we have his first head ornament (which is very cute, IMO), and the forehead ribbon. Interestingly it’s pale blue rather than white (as I believe it’s in the book). Blue is slightly less stark against the skin, so that may have been the reason. Then there’s the embroidery on the lapels, the Lan Sect clouds done with white on white, basically the least extravagant you can get and still have them. We only see one more layer, I believe. There’s blue and white in the collar, but looking at how it overlaps I think it’s just one robe with two colors. But hey, a teeny tiny bit of color on him at least!

Another detail to note is that if he has narrow sleeves visible, there are always fabric bands wrapped around the wrists, yet another bit of complexity and formality to his outfits. He also has them with this costume, you don’t see them that many times because the big sleeves cover them pretty well, but we get a nice glimpse of them when LWJ and WWX are tied together with the forehead ribbon in the cave, see below. 

Yes, I capped the moment where they collapse to the ground after getting out of the cave. I have to get my amusement somehow, but it was actually the one where you can see the detail best. 😂 (I also tried the part where LWJ ties the ribbon but all the caps came out blurry, so this one it is). LWJ’s hand is the top one, obviously, and WWX has just a regular sleeve end there.

The Context

When LWJ first walks into the scene in episode 3, he’s at peace with himself in that his world makes sense, he has a clear understanding of who he is and what his responsibilities are. I’m not saying it has come without struggle considering everything to do with his mother (I bet LQR was just thrilled when he moved to the Jingshi, which all things considered probably hadn’t happened that long before the start of the story), but it looks like it’s something that’s been worked out. Also, when I say his world makes sense, I don’t mean that he’s completely happy about everything (if I had to define it, I’d go for comfortably neutral), just that there are no particular issues that he doesn’t know how to react to until WWX comes and turns everything upside down.

Much of the past timeline for LWJ is about his struggle between his loyalty to his sect and what he perceives as his duty, and his connection with WWX. This can be seen reflected in his costumes as well. Broadly speaking (obviously individual scenes can shift the focus for a time), when he wears predominantly white with wide sleeves (his more formal outfits) it signals that he’s particularly conscious of his duty and his upbringing, while his blue outfits with narrow sleeves (arguably more casual ones) come to play when he’s more forcefully pulled by his connection with WWX. Notably, he also wears one mostly white outfit with narrow sleeves, but we’ll get to that later.

At this point of the story, the real struggle hasn’t yet started for him, he’s (mostly) the perfect model student that he was taught to be literally from birth, and his outfit reflects that. He’s definitely thrown by the effect WWX has on him, as it’s most likely a completely new experience, but he also considers it nonsense that he intends to drop (or boring, as he has a tendency to say). When he sets out alone, I’d say it’s with the idea that he can just leave what happened in summer school behind and focus once more on his responsibilities. Clearly there’s some regret that he feels because of it, as we witnessed his undoubtedly warm feelings toward WWX when hearing his resolution in the lantern scene, but right after that moment he focuses on the Yin Iron once more and maybe chooses that road (only he doesn’t get to walk it alone, WWX is stubborn like that).

Next time, blue robes and the point of no return for LWJ just whooshes on its way behind them.

(You can find the rest of this series via “lwj costume series” tag below, or through my blog contents page. I’d link for ease of access but the links made it disappear from tags, so. 😒)

#the untamed #cql #lan wangji #costume design #cql meta #lwj costume series #cql rambles

[hoe-doroki]

ana reads bnha ch31

previous chapter here first chapter here next chapter here

🤣 I almost forgot that the first thing this boy says is something that only Todoroki would ever say. It’s his intelligence combined with his denseness combined with his life informing his whole worldview. Guysssss, this post is gonna be so looooong. I’m so excited! I’m panting. Okay, let’s go.

Once again, Ana squeals: My boy is so smart!! I like to think I’m smart, but, in this situation (between Midoriya’s rambling) I’m not sure I would have picked up on that. Shouto is so sharp. But then he doesn’t pursue it. He doesn’t try to squeeze the info out of Midoriya. Not because he doesn’t think he could—if I were Shouto, I would look at Midoriya and figure there was a way to get him to talk. He already gave a hint by accident. I just think he has confidence that he’ll be able to figure it out if he’s patient.

I wonder if he does, though? I mean, after their battle, Shouto stops caring about this...doesn’t he? I think he does. Which is interesting, right? He only cares right now because he sees it as a threat. But once he doesn’t care about the threat anymore, he only cares about Midoriya as a person. Not any of this All Might nonsense. Ugh, Todoroki <333

Of all time??????? Guys, that’s very different from being the current number two hero. Like, where is this GOAT ranking? I mean, we know that All Might is the greatest of all time. But, surely, someone from, 50, 100 years ago could be the second greatest of all time. But no, Shouto’s telling us that out of everyone who’s ever been a hero (in Japan) Endeavor is the number two guy. Wowza.

My question about Endeavor is always: what’s your awareness level, bro? Like, it’s evident here that he doesn’t think what he’s doing as a whole is wrong. But does he think that he’s messed up at all? Because, look, him saying, “You think I’d tell you anything?” That’s could easily be him just telling All Might to eff off, no further motive. But I also think that it’s a shame response. He knows some of his “success” with Shouto is fucked, stuff that he definitely wouldn’t share with All Might even if he didn’t kind of hate him. So he hides that shame under his prickly attitude, so he has no reason to talk. Or he’s just an ass, idk.

(Yeah, in the dub he says: “Are you implying something?” Fishy indeed.)

That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Why is Shouto telling Midoriya this? @a-bnha-shoutorealm​ and I have talked our faces blue trying to figure out exactly this.

Obviously it’s triggered by the fact that he used his left side without thinking. And because he as the initial questions about All Might. And then he starts off this conversation by trash talking Endeavor which, at some point between his mother being put away and now, he has become comfortable with without fear of retribution (something Kim and I have also talked about ad nauseam).

But in two pages, he goes from this, to telling the story of his scar. Which I don’t think he’s ever told anyone before. Shouto doesn’t strike me as the type to need to keep things secret (judging by how he’s willing to blab off about Endeavor--while Endeavor’s there!--to the little kids during his and Bakugou’s remedial provisional license class). I think he’s just never had anyone he would consider talking to before. He’s been totally isolated by Endeavor--I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’s been homeschooled, actually--and clearly doesn’t have any friends. Not that he sees Midoriya as a friend yet, but he is the only person he sees as a near equal.

The most likely solution I can come up with is that he feel like he needs someone to understand, so that he can justify why he’s not using his left side. That he felt like Midoriya was judging him and he wanted to explain his motivations to the only person he thinks is worthy of knowing. Of defending himself to. Shouto’s not the sort to just get carried away, so I think it must be something more like this. Something he feels compelled to do.

Wow, it’s so interesting seeing this juxtaposed against everyone else getting to be normal teenagers, have normal childhoods. Goddd, it breaks my heart, Shouto! We’re seeing Mineta and Kaminari talk about going after some cheerleaders—of course Mineta needs to make an appearance in my blessed chapter about Shouto—while Shouto’s talking about the quirk marriages. I wonder if it’s supposed to juxtapose any more than those two things, though. Is it also showing that Shouto doesn’t take part in those activities? That he has difficulty believing in love and romance due to the sham quirk marriage of his parents’?

And look how heavily drawn his speech bubbles are now? What exactly is that meant to represent? Is it an audio cue about what his voice might sound like or is it just to represent that what he’s talking about is dark and heavy or is it for drama? Him getting carried away as he tells more and more personal details? I don’t read enough manga to know 🤣

Separately, here we also get a hint that Todoroki’s mother isn’t in the picture. “As I remember…”

Okay, this we need to talk about, because that’s the other question people have. Why is Bakugou eavesdropping? To me, it’s always been pretty simple. We have the two people in the class Bakugou cares the most about. The strongest guy in the class—who just won the thing Bakugou was supposed to win—and the pebble in his shoe who’s growing larger and larger every day. He must have seen the two of them split off and, legit, I think he has FOMO. Like, if these two are doing something, he has to know about it. I think a part of him fears they’re laughing about him. Assumes they’re teaming up against him. He’s definitely assuming it’s going to be something about him or that interests him.

He doesn’t expect this.

He knows he shouldn’t have stayed once Shouto starts getting really personal. Bakugou might suck at human interaction, but that’s voluntary. He knows what he’s “doing wrong” socially—he just doesn’t give a crap. It’s a combination of preferring to be the way he is and being too deep down the rabbit hole of  assholery to know the way back. He’s frozen here. Shouto’s story is captivating—so painful you can’t not listen to it. That close-up face of his. That’s someone whose world has been rocked. I remember the first times I became aware of real abuse, times when I realized just how bad things could be for people and it shakes your worldview, freezes you as you struggle to comprehend. Bakugou thought he knew what families were like, since his mom is rougher with him. He didn’t know that something like this could happen to a person via their parent’s hand. I think this is one of the only times he purely feels bad about what he’s doing, what he’s done. But the horror of Shouto’s story has him stuck, unable to walk away.

“Sorry for wasting your time.” What is that?

Does he realize that he said a bit more than he was really intending to? That he troubled someone else with his personal life when he doesn’t want anything done about it? Or is this because he realized that Midoriya isn’t going to say anything about All Might and because of that the conversation was a waste of time.

You know what, knowing our dense little Shouto, I bet it’s that last one.

And if Bakugou’s shaken, then Midoriya is only more so. God, I’m 9 years older than Midoriya and if someone told me something like this out of the blue today, I’d be panicking. This is a delicate situation. He’s just become aware of serious abuse, and someone has confided in him their deepest traumas regarding that. What the hell do you say not to make it worse?

I think he handles it as best he can. Really, I think what he says here is just about the best thing he could have. Because Todoroki is not in a place mentally to accept help. Not even close. But even just sharing his story, that he accepts help from others, is vital. This introduces the idea to Todoroki that he can get help. That working with others is okay. It hasn’t penetrated yet, but it’s the seed planted.

Overall: 1.7K. Over 3 pages. Sorry, all.

Well, guys, this is the peak for me (until Shoto Todoroki: Origin!!!!). I know it’s not the scene with the most action or plot, but I live for character backstory and boys having sensitive moments. This scene in the anime is what made me start to fall in love with Todoroki and the show as a whole. It took me weeks to get to the end of season four after this episode. All the ones before this? Six months.

Todoroki’s story is harrowing, yes. At the same time, we’re getting more worldbuilding. So far, our image of heroes is All Might and the U.A. faculty. We haven’t yet seen any hero that’s corrupt or abusive. But suddenly we meet Endeavor, both through Todoroki, and a couple interactions with All Might. We learn a little bit more about how quirks have affected society and changed since their first appeared. This chapter isn’t one dimensionsal.

And we get our first panels of our main three. I think maybe part of the thing is that Midoriya’s world thus far has been loud, fast, intense. But this chapter is quiet. Nothing but Todoroki’s low, quiet voice. You could hear a pin drop. Barely a movement. Even Bakugou is still. It’s such a change of pace. And when you’re barely expecting it—it hits hard.

Also, every time I double check to see if something in the manga happened in the anime, it always did 😅 My memory may be fallible, but that adaptation sure isn’t! (joke, please don’t come at me)

If anyone has anything to add, obviously I’m dying to talk about it.

#ana reads the manga #bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia

[survivorbehemoth]

Episode 15: "congrats daisy for winning season 7 of celestial: behemoth!” - Jules

congrats daisy for winning season 7 of celestial: behemoth!

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JIOFEOJIFEWOJIWOJI THAT SOUNDS SO BITTER BUT DYLAN SIR U HANDED HER THE GAME! HANDED IT TO HER! GOD! and its what she deserves!

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anyways. let it be known this was NOT MY FAULT.

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let the record show, before last night's tribal, I SAID SOMETHING WAS NOT SITTING RIGHT WITH MY SPIRIT!!!!!!!!!! AND???? what happened. look what happened.

Vocaroo

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still practicing my slide puzzles WJIJIEFIJWJIFIFWJEJWIEEJWIF

OH MY GOD I HATE THIS GAME I HATE THIS GAME I HATE THIS GAME!!!

this final 4 is absolutely amazing and i literally love all of them so much, but that just makes things 10x worse. i think that playing my idol on daisy was a huge risk and the fact that it is now a final 2 makes things a bit more interesting. my ideal plan was to have daisy in the final 4 with me so that i wouldnt be the next target, but now that she won immunity it just didnt work out how i intended at all!!

voting out jules and szymon is purely going to come down to which one of them will sway my way and it's going to hurt to send one of them to jury no matter what, but i just feel like i came all this way and not making top 3 would just suck so badly. so yeah, this sucks. i hate that no matter what i do im going to be upsetting people and hurting feelings but... i guess that's just the game! at this point im not even sure if i can win against daisy but it seems like she will take me, it just depends on whether or not i stay loyal to her if i win FIC or if i take whoever is with me in final 3.

much to think about, BUT I JUST CANT BELIEVE I MADE IT THIS FAR !!!!

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Jules is voted out 3-1. She becomes the 8th member of our jury.

Watch the Cast Assessment take place below:

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Szymon is voted out by Daisy. He becomes the final member of our jury.

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idk thought this would be cute to include my voting log and stuff hehe <3 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RiA0RUWX4TRpqBTgRzLJJ3fHu2jBqZ-bCJozFd3HcRs/edit?usp=sharing

Jules: https://youtu.be/6zKeJuOJKeY 

https://youtu.be/5dV_-X6Rv2U

https://youtu.be/N5tnq-4QAT8

someone (zach) asked me to rank the jurors from nicest to meanest...so here we go. ily all <3 <3

1. seamus (this will def come as a surprise, but seamus was the most levelheaded and nice one on the jury. he really never made a bitter comment even though he had every right to, especially at me/daisy/dylan and really anyone who was in after him except chips. like. he was the only person to reach out in pms after and it was immediate, he really comforted me and i really admire men who can have like good relationship w/ women that are platonic??? i know he's been like terrible in the past and i did call him on some stuff in hydravivor and ill be the FIRST to admit that i called him a crackhead on a daily basis but i think he's grown a lot!!!!!! idk. i think he's also the MOST self aware!!!! im a seamus stan, what about it?)

2. brandan (while brandan was kinda irrelevant game wise this season -- but not in our hearts -- he was very objective and a peacemaker. he had good reason to be MIA too so the fact that he got as far as he did means to me that he did form some strong social connections. and he did!!! with me, i think w/ conor, so idk, he had a role like i did in the game imo. i really liked him and he really brought a fresh perspective on things!!!)

3. szymon (he's only not ranked higher bc he's pissed off rob and he stands his ground a lot more outwardly than the first two, at least in the jury chat. also he's not had as much time as a juror. but even then, i think szymon is not a bad guy like some of the ppl make him out to be. like, idk, i think he made a mistake on a game level and he even admitted it and idk he's a legend. truly. im so glad to have met him and i think he was a really nice juror to have around while he was ACTUALLY around bc he stood up for me/daisy the way seamus did)

4. lovelis (lovelis makes some pointed comments but.....he's not dumb at all and so i don't think he's been bitter. also his pointed comments have been funny and mostly radiating the energy of the other Bitter Jurors so idk. i really like him on a personal level as well and have for a while so idk. i dont KNOW KNOW him but he's never been the type to make harsh comments without them having some merit to them. so i kinda trust his judgement even though he wasnt in the game long/an early merge boot. idk i think he's open minded enough and he's also someone who admits when he's done a Lil Too Much but he's really lovely. just competitive.)

5. chips (i dont think chips is MEAN per se, in fact, i dont think he has a mean bone in his body on a personal level. like WFIJFJIFWE I DONT KNOW HOW ELSE TO SAY IT HES SO FUCKING NICE!!!!!!! but thats why it's so funny to see him in games bc he's a lil lying, a lil backstabby and sometimes he's a lil passive aggressive. but its not undeserved. its also a pisces thing WEFJIEIEJWEFJIWEF i think what i saw in the jury house was sometimes chips going along w/ things, but i dont know, i really do not know much about chips game and ill probs ask him more afterwards?? but idk he was REALLY nice to me tho so FWIJFWEWFIFW i just dont trust him in games.......i dont know whats on his mind half of the time......)

I WANNA SAY FOR THE NEXT 3 MEN THEYRE HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY THEIR FIRE SIGN PLACEMENTS SO while i know some of them do hold resentment, its a lot easier to deal with and work with and with all 3 of them we've talked it out with/are going to talk it out. only #8 has been the MOST stubborn but idk imma let him do his thing & try not to pass too much judgement u know cause i dont need to waste my braincells on that

6. conor (knowing conor's astrological placements makes this make sense to me. but i wanna say that i think he's the type of leo to like be upfront, get it out, vent, and be fine? which is why i respect him a lot and i think we do have a mutual respect for each other. some of the comments he made were kinda rude tho and him fake liking astrology for social game was SO UGLY TO ME!!!! like i'll clown him for it for as long as i know him now cause....JOKE'S ON HIM!!!!!!! WJOEFWEOWEFO but that was kinda mean but def conor's come around and seen the light / has also reached out to me to talk. he's also admitted he left a mean speech in sbbb9 and regretted it so i think he might just shoot off at the mouth a bit. but BETTER THE DEVIL U KNOW THAN THE ONE U DONT and i appreciate the transparency NOW as opposed to the fakeness of him saying he liked astrology for social game. THIS IS A HILL I WILL DIE ON!!!!! im a fan of leos tho and he's a leo moon like me. so. i think we'll be fine. )

7. rob (i actually really REALLY like rob on a personal level but i really do not know if i could play another game with him, at least survivor, id be open to playing bb. i think ill say that the best thing about rob is that he's also apologized, was one of the first to when i confronted them all, me and him have a good personal relationship tbh!! but some of the game comments he made were p harsh and he's definitely a lil bitter but again, he's admitted it, i think while he's more up front -- i dont think i ever wanna be on his bad side in a game. EVER!!! cause we didnt even have any loyalty to each other in the game but he was SO harsh on my game like it was wild bc i dont think id ever be that harsh to ANY OF THEM ABOUT THEIR GAMES LIKE THAT???? anyways. its fine bc again he's apologized and he's owned it but PHEW he got a lil bit of a sharp tongue. really eloquent tho!!!!!!!!!!! love hearing him speak)

8. gage (last but least the southern belle himself................this man an aries and i dont know his other signs but him being an aries man is enough. they POP OFF!!!!!! a lot of times there's some truth to it, sure, but sometimes they just be popping off and FOR WHAT!!!!! i do understand gage's frustrations though but even he apologized for being too mean in HIS FUTURE FUCKING CONFESSIONALSSSSSSSS TO MEEEEEE so. idk. he's got an issue with letting things go in games and miss annajane calls him on a lot of BS and it does NOT seem to really knock him down but. gage is really wht u see is what u get, doesnt really own his faults but at least u kinda know where ur at w/ him. but he's still probs the meanest one in there but i do understand from a game level why he was so fucked up about it, especially after hearing FTC. its just that. i understand his position. BUT HE NEEDS TO TAKE A XANAX SOMETIMES I S2G GAGE I WILL GIVE YOU ONE!!! girl it is NOT that serious!!!!!!)

also forgot to mention that i admitted to gage that chris from s1 was NOT actually my brother and his jaw was on the floor <3 I GOT TO DO ONE TROLL THING RIGHT!!!!!! rip me/seamus' showmance serious!!!!!!)

okay just to add onto my last confessional -- the songs i think represent me best from this playlist game wise are: - perfect for you - punchin' bag - stayin' alive - flip - femme fatale/future nostalgia (for the girls alliance that never was....rip but also me/daisy at merge vibes) - X - the shortchange - TAKE ME AS I AM!!!!! THAT SONG IS THE ONE THATS BECOME MY SONG!!!! for this game especially!!!!! - over yet (the lyrics literally speak for themselves) - tough on myself (sorry for stealing ur song vincent) - seven devils - villains pt. 1 (i dont think i was a villain but i did stuff in this game that i usually dont and would consider villainous for myself FEWIWFEJIFEW i was in my feelings!) - passion & pain taste the same when i'm weak (me coming into the jury house and realizing they'd all snatched my wig w/ the edges and the glue.....i DID cry to this song for at least 2 hours! yes i did! WIFJWJIWEIJE) - tar ('under the stars -- pull yourself from the tar'. at the end of the day, this season was fucking stacked and there wasn't one person who was a bad player at all. at all.stars, if you will. i was under a lot of stars and from all the breakdowns in my game to me actually breaking down -- i GOTTA PULL MYSELF FROM THE TAR!!!! learn!! grow!! be better!!)

TOP 5 (not 'perfect for you'): - punchin' bag - take me as i am - over yet - tough on myself - tar

good for my whole journey imo!! the last 3!!! okay this is my ACTUAL last confessional okay thank u for everything!!! bye!!!

https://youtu.be/T5wRzWwlOp8

and here's my personal playlist for the org: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2E8KGCo1SrBgoJIQ9DycfM?si=96PWq-6ERCyisacQr3zPww

it is literally an hour and a half until the winner reveal and i really just have no idea what's going to happen. like in the back of mind i just have a feeling that im losing bc, yeah you know self-deprecation woo! but yeah idk i think i really gave this game my all and while i dont think i played it flawlessly, i still think i played a strong game i can be proud of :,)

having it be a live final tribal for my first ever like, jury questioning was just--- ugh wild but i actually think it went really well. just based on what people were saying it definitely seemed as if some of the jurors didnt really want to see me and daisy at the end or like, really werent consider voting for me but i think i was definitely able to sway some people who were willing to listen and definitely gave some of the jurors something to think about. so whether or not i win i do think that i had a really great final tribal performance, maybe it was even enough to sway enough people into giving me their vote?? WHO'S TO SAY

anyways this has been such a wild experience and it's surreal to think that it's ending in like, a little over an hour but no matter what happens i can say confidently that i will be able to look back on this season fondly and will be leaving it with my head held high bc I REALLY DID THIS LIKE!!! I REALLY MADE IT TO THE END!! WOW I STILL CANT GET OVER IT HAHAHA!! but yeah bye forever <33

Rob’s Last Video:  https://youtu.be/X3krxxfJ3oo

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Daisy wins in a 7-2 vote!

#superspooky

[the-lupine-sojourner]

Sarada, Princess of the Saiyans [’Season’ 1 Episode 3]

Hi! Sorry it’s been a while since I posted this, but uh here’s the next chapter of Sarada’s insertion! :) 

Here’s a Link to the first chapter, and Here’s a Link to the second chapter, for anyone who wants to catch up. I’ll be making a masterlist for each ‘season’ (aka each 25 episodes Sarada is involved in), and I’ll be adding that link when I make that list. 

Anyway, let’s get to the story! 

God Bless and Good Day!

~The Lupine Sojourner

The next thing I was aware of was a huge jolting crash. I barely stop myself from going headfirst into the computer. I hold my neck, already feeling a bit of whiplash. Blearily, I reach for the latch to get out. Guess we’d arrived. 

“Alien!” Someone screams as we exit the pod. I groan, rubbing my neck. I glare up at the edge of the crater and see several gathered locals, all peering down at us, most with fear, some with curiosity. I roll my shoulders out as I hear Vegeta and Nappa exit their pods. 

“My neck is killing me.” Nappa groans. 

“Yeah, think I got slight whiplash from the landing. It’ll fade.” I reply. Smirking, I float up, pleased to see Vegeta and Nappa joining me moments later, to panicked murmurs and outcries among the crowd. We land on the other side of the crater from the crowd, scanning the surroundings briefly and taking in Earth. Really not much here. 

No wonder it was so low on the rankings. 

“So what should we do with these gawking fools?” Nappa asks. 

“We might want to ask them about the Dragonballs.” I point out. “If the dragonballs can do what Kakarot’s ally from the recording says they can, they most likely are a treasure known to all.” 

“A good deduction, Sarada.” Vegeta praises, “However. If the dragonballs are as powerful as the ally says they are, wouldn’t it be wiser to keep it secret?” He counters. “After all, a powerful artifact like that should be closely guarded, right? Wouldn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.” He smirks, crossing his arms. I shrug and cross my arms, as well. 

“You make a good point there, Vegeta.” 

“Can I blow them up?” Nappa interjects. “They bother me.” I feel my eye twitch subtly. I didn’t want to kill anyone I didn’t have to, but if Vegeta says Nappa can, I don’t want to dig my grave by objecting. 

“Oh...I don’t know.” Vegeta says, still smirking. “Why don’t you decide for once?” I feel sorry for these earthlings. They won’t know what hit them. 

“Heh. Really?” Nappa asks. “Thanks, Vegeta. This is gonna be a lot of fun for me!” I move closer to Vegeta to give Nappa a bit more room and watch as he prepares to attack. 

“Don’t mention it.” Vegeta replies, chuckling. Nappa laughs, gathering energy in his hand and releasing it in a wave that comes up from underground, decimating the surrounding area in an impressively large radius. The wave increases and I imagine it could be seen from out in space. As it dies down, I view the aftermath. 

It was a painfully familiar picture. A rather large crater, crumbling city on it’s edges. 

A few burnt shoes here, maybe a child’s toy there, glass shards glittering like uncovered jewels in the sunlight. 

All a grotesque picture of the life I’ve led alongside my brother and Nappa, who’s laughing at the sheer destruction he’d wrought. “Do you think I was trying too hard to impress them, you two?” He asks coyly. We float above where we’d been standing. 

I sigh. “There isn’t anyone left to impress, Nappa.” I point out. 

“I should have known better than to let you have any fun. I’m beginning to think we should have followed Sarada’s advice and asked them about the dragonballs. But,” He cuts off Nappa’s apology, “if my hunch is correct, they wouldn’t have known. Besides, no point squabbling over it now.” 

“Yeah, c’mon; a little destruction won’t affect the sale price of this planet.” Nappa adds. 

“We’re here for the Dragonballs, Nappa.” I retort. “Not necessarily to prep it for selling, although that could excuse our presence here against orders.” 

“We’re here for the wish only. I don’t give a damn about orders.” Vegeta cuts in, and then turns to Nappa. “You do remember the wish, right Nappa?” Nappa flinches a little. 

“Well...yeah. We were gonna wish for...immortality, weren’t we?” Vegeta’s frown deepens. 

“Good, and we need all seven balls. Now, let me ask you; what if one of the balls happened to be in the city you just destroyed?” Nappa deflates completely. 

“Uh...I’m sorry. I guess I just forgot about that, huh?” I sigh. 

“Look, Vegeta’s theory about them being hidden and well-guarded makes a lot of sense. More than likely, no one would hide something of that value in a city like this. But don’t destroy anything that big again, alright?” Vegeta nods in agreement and Nappa licks his lips. 

“Alright.”  

“Now let’s all forget about it. What’s done cannot be undone.” Vegeta says. “First, we need to find out who has the highest power level. He’ll be the one who took down Radditz.” Almost simultaneously, we click our scouters and the beeping fills the silence. 

“Huh?” Nappa gasps after a few moments. “More than half a dozen people on this planet have power levels over a thousand! How is that possible?” I frown. 

“I don’t know.” 

“How should I know?” Vegeta snaps, cutting over whatever else I was about to say. 

“Maybe they’ve been preparing for us.” I suggest. “Radditz did say we were coming.” Vegeta scoffs. 

“Lucky guess. For all he knew, we had our scouters turned off and didn’t hear a thing he said. That fool was an embarrassment.” He then clicks his scouter. “Now, we need to find the biggest power level.” He orders, redirecting us back to the task at hand. Vegeta scans one hemisphere and Nappa and I take the other. Almost immediately, we find the two largest power levels, almost equal to each other. 

“Just found two of them!” Nappa reports. 

“They definitely have the highest fighting powers on the planet.” I confirm. Vegeta turns, smirking excitedly. 

“Really? Good, then. This may be interesting after all.” Nappa grunts in agreement and we take off, flying towards it as fast as we could. 

“Heh. Amazing.” Nappa notes, “This planet’s weak gravity makes me feel like a kid again. I’m invincible!” I grin. It did make me feel rather giddy. I remember the first time I went into the training chamber with Vegeta and experienced increased gravity. We were only in there an hour, but when I came out, it was like I had wings. Everything was so much lighter. 

Those were the days…before Frieza started assigning us missions. 

Before we lost whatever innocence we had.  

Vegeta simply keeps flying. “Don’t fall behind, Nappa.” I caution, keeping my voice even, but I worried what would happen if one of us screwed up. There’s no telling with Vegeta sometimes. 

He is my brother, but even so, he pushes me harder than anyone, expecting great things. He says it’s because he sees my potential, but I think it’s just because I’m his blood and he doesn’t want to be embarrassed by his sister failing.

I shake myself and keep flying. Nappa stops clowning around, stays with us, and we continue in silence. Within the next few minutes, we arrive, and I must say…

Not what I was expecting. 

One of the figures is nothing more than a child, wearing some kind of baggy purple clothing, probably the Earth equivalent of our training outfits. 

The new figure, one with the second lowest power level, but not by much, is bald, wearing an orange and blue outfit somewhat like the other two, recognizable as yet another version of Earth’s training outfits. 

The largest figure is green and- -wait...he’s a Namekian? I’ve heard of them, sure, but I’d never been this close to one. He wears a similar outfit to the boy’s, all but confirming it was some kind of training uniform. He scowls at us as the others subtly begin to tremble. It was clear the Namekian was the strongest, and had the most experience. Plus, with him being a Namekian, according to intel I’d heard, he should almost certainly know about the Dragonballs and probably even where they are. 

All we had to do was get that information out of him. Hopefully without destroying too much of the planet or killing too many people. 

Nappa laughs, drawing me from my thoughts. “So, one more joined ‘em.” He muses. “What’dyah suppose these three are doing out in the middle of nowhere?” We slowly descend as Nappa’s talking, and I scoff. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” I ask rhetorically. 

“They were waiting for us.” Vegeta chuckles. “Yes, I’m sure of it.” Waiting for us in the middle of a wasteland was actually a smart move. 

The further the fight is from civilization, the less they had to worry about collateral damage. 

That means they intended to fight like hell. 

I find I can respect that, even if it was fruitless. Our power levels were simply too high for even the Namekian to defeat. Even Nappa could easily get rid of them. 

“Whoa, this is it! It’s really happening!” The bald one whimpers, shaking even as he assumes a fighting stance. “So. These are the Saiyans.” I smirk. “Can you feel those power levels?!” I blink, all smugness gone. ‘Feel’ power levels? That was a new one. Was it possible to sense power levels without a scouter? How interesting. “They’re even stronger than I imagined!” The shaking becomes more visible, fear evident in both the boy and the bald one’s eyes. “What’re we gonna do, guys?” As the bald man speaks, we descend. Then we land. 

“So, we meet at last.” Vegeta muses, arms crossed and expression extremely smug. Nappa chuckles and I find myself almost rooting for our opponents. They were fighting to protect their planet, and I respect their tenacity, despite their outward fear. 

“The pleasure’s mine.” The Namekian growls in response, and I blink. 

“Vegeta, he’s the ally Kakarot found to retrieve his kid. This Namekian is the one who killed Radditz.” I whisper, moving subtly closer to my brother. 

Regardless of if heard me, the Namekian continues. “I’m only gonna say this once; leave this planet! This is your first and last chance to get out of this alive.” 

“You’re right, sister.” Vegeta muses aloud, his smirk widening. “He is the one who defeated Radditz one year ago. I recognize his voice” The Namekian blinks. 

“...My voice?” He asks, almost to himself. I nod. 

“Didn’t Radditz tell you?” I ask rhetorically, tapping my scouter. “Our scouters also work as communicators. We heard everything that was said while Raditz was here.” I explain, crossing my arms and smirking. If I had to fight, I had to. This Namekian, however, might be very interesting to deal with. I wonder how much experience he has and just what he plans to do. 

“Wait, you said the green one was from Namek, right?” Nappa asks, ending my train of thought. I turn to reply to Nappa, but Vegeta beats me to it. 

“Yes, he’s from Namek, alright.” He says. “No wonder Radditz had such a hard time with him and Kakarot.” I nod. 

“That, and Radditz was an idiot.” I add. Vegeta chuckles. 

“That, too.” Something strange happens in the Namekian’s face. It’s almost as if he were shocked to hear that he was a Namekian. As if he didn’t already know that. He mumbles something, then appears to be wrestling with the information. 

“Piccolo, I didn’t know you were from space.” The bald one muses in slight shock to the now trembling Namekian. ‘Piccolo’ (if that’s his name) appeared mad now, ready to fight. “Course, it makes sense.” The short bald one continues. 

“You didn’t know?” Vegeta asks condescendingly. “Well, what a surprise!” His tone then turns amused. “Surely, you must have suspected something before now.” He continues. “The green skin and pointy ears are a dead giveaway, don’t you think?” 

“Not to mention the antennas coming from your forehead.” I add. Honestly, it was surprising he didn’t already figure it out, but stranger things have happened, I suppose. “Now, you were the one who told Radditz about the Dragonballs. So tell us; where are they?” I demand. If I played this right, we might not have to kill everyone. If this Namekian is smart, he’ll tell us and we’ll be on our way to immortality. The bald one pales. 

“B-but, no one knows where they are! Not for a whole year!” He protests. I raise a brow. 

“What?” I snap. Before the human can reply, Nappa cuts in. 

“That’s enough. We know the balls are down here.” He growls. “Make no mistake; we will find them. With you alive or with you dead; it’s your decision. Tell us where they are, or you will all be killed.” 

The Namekian, Piccolo, smiles. “I wanna thank you.” I raise a brow. What? “Because of you, I now know I come from the planet Namek. But this is my planet now, and no one is going to tell me what to do with it!” I gotta hand it to Piccolo: He’s very brave. However...

“I admire your bravery, but it’s futile.” I retort. “We’re far stronger than that fool, Radditz. You won’t win.” I warn, hands forming fists and eyes narrowing. “Now tell us where the Dragonballs are!” If we really had to fight, I had no choice but to go all out, no matter how much I didn’t want to kill these fighters.

“Back off!” Piccolo barks. “We’re not here to bow to your demands! We’re here to fight!” He gets into a stance. “So go ahead and do whatever it is you came here to do!” before anyone can do anything, there’s a buzzing sound and an approaching wind, then odd hovering vehicles appear. Before they do anything, Nappa shoots one down. I know better than to protest. Anything I said would probably be viewed as weak and soft. 

The two earthlings get into stances as the flying vehicles retreat. 

“I don’t think they’re going to tell us where the Dragonballs are, Nappa.” Vegeta muses wryly.

“Wanna bet?” Nappa replies, smirking. “Alright! Let’s see how strong you really are!” He clicks the scouter. “The kid’s at 1000.” He reports. I blink. Really? Impressive for an earthling that young. “The Namek’s at 1400, and the midget is at 1100.” I narrow my eyes in resignation. Too bad, though. They just don’t compare to us. Nappa scoffs. “You fools! Do you really think you can beat us with such puny power levels?” I refrain from pointing out that Nappa didn’t stand far above them, choosing to just watch. 

“Hey, Nappa, Sarada! Take your scouter off!” Vegeta suddenly orders. I do, glad to be rid of the thing. I never liked it except that it let me keep in contact with Vegeta. That’s the only reason I keep this thing around. 

“What?” Nappa asks, despite reaching for his scouter as Vegeta and I remove ours. 

“It seems they know how to concentrate their energy and raise their power levels.” Vegeta explains, dropping his scouter to the ground. “These figures are most unreliable.” It takes a second, but Nappa understands quickly, taking his scouter off. 

“Hey, right. Good call.” Nappa replies, and his scouter hits the ground seconds later. “Now I remember that pathetic loser Radditz let himself be fooled by all their power readings.” Piccolo realizes we’re about to start fighting and warns his allies to be ready. 

“Wait, Piccolo, if they’re stronger than radditz, and Goku isn’t here, then how do you expect to defeat them with just us?” The bald earthling asks. In response, Piccolo says nothing, gritting his teeth. Likely, he knew this battle wouldn’t end well, but was willing to fight anyway. I find a measure of respect in that. The bald one then gets back into a ready position, looking nervous but ready to fight. Again, I can respect their bravery, despite knowing it would lead to their demise. “Oh well, guys. Let’s just do it!” The poor earthling has no idea what we’re capable of, does he? He’ll learn soon enough. 

Vegeta then gets a look that says he has an idea. “Nappa, I believe it’s time to have a little fun with them.” he muses. I raise a brow. 

“How?” I ask. Vegeta just turns to Nappa. 

“Get those Saibamen out. There should be six of them left. They’ll do.” I snort. 

“Really? They’re as strong as Radditz. These earthlings might overpower them.” I point out, voice too low for the earthlings and Namekian to hear. Or so I thought. I didn’t notice Piccolo narrow his eyes in my direction.

“Nonsense. They barely handled Radditz. The Saibamen will be fine.” Vegeta replies and I sigh. 

“Alright then.” 

“Yer too much!” Nappa laughs. “You really know how to have fun.” Yeah, because watching a 6-on-3 battle sounds like a good time. I knew this opinion would be mocked and might get me into trouble, however, so I keep it inside as Nappa begins rooting in his armor for the Saibamen. 

“I don’t see any men.” The little boy points out, brow raised in confusion. 

“You will in a second.” I reply, smirking. I had to keep up the act, but I was concerned about this boy being in a battle such as this. After all, at his age (or at least, the age I thought he was; probably somewhere around 5 years old) I was still just sparring with instructors and Vegeta. I hadn’t been in an actual battle yet. Granted, I was going on assignments with Vegeta just a year later, but this was a literal child that was about to clobbered by a Saibaman. I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch the whole thing. 

Our opponents watch as Nappa fishes the vial out, and sure enough, there are six, as Nappa notes aloud. “Maybe these Saibamen can persuade them to tell us where the Dragonballs are, huh Nappa?” Vegeta asks, smirking. Nappa laughs. 

“Oh, I think they can arrange that.” Nappa replies, using his finger to make six holes in the ground and putting the seeds inside, covering the holes, then pouring the weird liquid that made them grow on the patch of ground the seeds were in. it seeps into the ground and I almost sigh. This would not be pretty, would it? 

“Uh….okay...what’re they doing?” I overhear the bald earthling ask rhetorically. 

“I think we’re about to find out.” Piccolo replies grimly. 

“There.” Nappa says, tossing the Saibamen container aside, watching the patch as we wait for them to grow and come out. It doesn’t take more than a few moments, Vegeta and Nappa chuckling as the little aliens pop out of the ground. I always found them ugly and fairly useless aside from training partners when I was younger. This was not how I wanted to spend my time on Earth, but if Vegeta says it’s what we’re doing, there’s no real arguing with him. 

“Well...at least...they’re shorter than I am.” The bald one (I really should learn their names.) mumbles nervously as the Saibamen set their eyes on him and his allies. 

“And you’ll die with your sense of humor intact.” I retort, chuckling. “You won’t live long enough to lose it.” As I say this, the Saibamen leap out and run in circles around the group, chuckling and grunting evilly and generally intimidating our opponents. They then proceed to wreck a few of the surrounding outcroppings to show off their skills and power. It seems to work. 

If these people thought the Saibamen were bad...this battle will be over with all too soon, and we likely won’t learn anything about the Dragonballs. 

“They’re brainless, crazy monsters!” The bald midget cries. The Saibamen return to us and I shake my head. 

“Not quite brainless, but not truly autonomous, either.” I reply. “More like, very obedient henchmen that are actually decently powerful.” He gulps, but remains in a fighting stance. 

“This should be a pretty good matchup.” Vegeta muses. “These Saibamen seem spunky.” 

“I’ll take the two on the left.” The short adult calls. 

“I’ll take the two in the middle. The other two are yours, Gohan.” Ah. So Gohan is the boy’s name. To his credit, the boy deepens his stance, determination in his face. I wonder…

The other earthling mentioned that someone named ‘Goku’ was on his way, but obviously not here yet. Gohan...Goku...hmmm...I’ll bet Gohan is the son that was kidnapped a year ago by Radditz. Which means, Goku could be Kakarot. I’d have to review the recording to confirm, but...I think I remember that mixup in the names.

“Okay.” Gohan replies, cutting my train of thought off. The air grows tense as the battle nears the start. 

I for one am curious how this will play out. The Saibamen were around Radditz’s power level, so unless the Namekian and his friends have trained and raised their levels a decent amount, I doubt this fight will last long. 

Despite knowing he’s against us, I almost want to protect Gohan. He’s too young to be fighting in real battles, even if he has a rather impressive power level for his age. 

There’s just something about him that makes me want to make sure he’s okay. 

But I know I can’t show this outwardly, so all I can do is watch and hope Piccolo and the other earthling protect him if things get bad, which they more than likely are.

After all, their power levels just weren’t comparable to ours and I seriously doubt they can match the Saibamen, either. I hate watching uneven matches like this. But I don’t really have a choice, so I prepare myself mentally. 

This might get bloody. 

These chapters will only be as long as the episodes go, so I cover what the episode covers, okay? I hope you guys are liking this story so far! I know I’m having a lot of fun writing it.

Okay, time skip info! Um, I think it’s about another 5-6 months, then maybe ten minutes after the Saiyans land til the meeting of Piccolo, Gohan, Krillan, Vegeta, Sarada, and Nappa.

The power levels of the Saiyans haven’t changed, so Sarada is still around 17500 or so. Now, Nappa mentioned the power levels of Piccolo, Gohan, and Krillan, so I don’t have to put it here. 

Anyway, hope you are looking forward to the next chapter! :)  

#Fanfiction #Dragonball z #DBZ #OC Insertion Series #OC #Original Character #Original Female Character #OC/Canon #Sarada (My OC) #Piccolo #Vegeta #Goku #Bulma #Piccolo/Sarada #Piccolo/OC #Vegebul #Gochi #Vegeta/Bulma #Goku/Chichi

[vanilla-blessing]

Why you should check out summer 2019 anime despite my previous blog post

I was mostly wrong about this season here’s qb’s revised

Hype rankings for Summer 2019

Cop Craft (Funimation)

COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED is the biggest surprise of the season for me. Coming from Millepensee, the studio and director team known for such Art as Teekyuu seasons 4-9 and Berserk 2016, this extremely sincere and wildly stupid Americanized take on anime fantasy adventure colliding with a hard-boiled cop drama is surprisingly highly enjoyable to watch for both intended and unintended reasons. 

The intended appeal of COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED hinges on a well-realized mashup of genres from a long running novel series, the buddy-cop teamup of an anime girl with a magical sword and a gruff but kind-hearted cop, and the dramatic thrill of one of the weirder spinoffs of law&order. The show promises an interesting setting where a magical portal ring to the fairy forest where anime-chans are real has naturally slotted into the organized crime of a New Yorkish city, resulting in a fresh take on well-trodden ground, and it actually kind of succeeds at this. In practice, watching loose cannon cops shoot guns at wizards while busting a drug ring who sling fairy dust is maybe the dumbest thing I’ve seen in years, but the story is so overly detailed, thought out, and delivered without an ounce of irony, unlike the recent terrible movie from Netflix that also attempted to do this premise almost word for word, that it wraps around to legitimately compelling. It also helps that this anime adaptation is being scripted by the novel’s author.

The unintended benefit of watching COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED is partly how completely absurd the words they are saying appear in English, producing some of the funniest out of context screenshots imaginable, the animation in execution ratchets between cool, frenetic action that contains distinct shades of a certain tennis club, and the hysterically awful cg that you’ve come to expect and love from the only team capable of producing Berserk 2016. When it’s good, it’s good, and when it’s bad, it’s incredible. 

In short, COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED is a two-for-one deal of the best of both bad and good anime. It’s also getting an English dub by Funimation and I can’t even imagine how good literally any line read from that will be.

The Demon Girl Next Door (Hidive, VRV) 

Despite my earlier protests, this is actually totally fine, good even. It avoids the fanservice problem I predicted completely and instead sets a relaxed comedic tone that quietly highlights small gags in a way that feels natural, which sounds impossible but they found the only director who could pull it off (Hiroaki Sakurai, known for some quite good comedies like Cromartie High School and Majokko Tsukune-chan). The content is actually pretty funny when delivered in a non-hyperactive way, since a story about a girl who is bullied into making friends after her family circumstances tell her to murderize a magical girl, told naturally, hits that level of low surrealism that works. Her friends also take this in stride, encouraging her to use this as an opportunity to go out more, open up socially, and suffer for their amusement. The magical girl in question, after heroically saving Yuko from being run over by a truck, also encourages her to defeat her and drain all of her blood, because Shadow Mistress Yuko is so much of a non-threat that Momo takes advantage of their impending ultimate confrontation to trick her into being her gym buddy. It takes place in a post-season magical girl anime landscape where the world has already been saved, normal people are used to weird episodic junk, and hitting demon puberty just another thing your friends will tease you over. 

It still probably shouldn’t be full episode length, but it actually does something with that length, and is definitely the least painful iteration of this kind of slower, long-form comedy that you don’t usually see in anime because it’s usually a terrible idea. Predicting this would end up like other entries in the incredibly cursed magical girl parody genre was a safe bet, but this anime is the rare exception and it’s actually worth checking out. 

Given (Crunchyroll, VRV) is on the noitamina block and it’s about boys in a rock band who might become more than friends. You’ve probably tuned out at this point and you’d be right because you know exactly the tone and style of this from that description but it’s executed well and written well and directed okay, so if you’d like this sort of thing try it out. There’s an interesting range of ages (the band has members in high school, college, and graduate school), a fun sense of humor, and the music is a standout in a season that has Carole and Tuesday in it, so that’s something.  

I forgot to mention Fruits Basket (Crunchyroll, VRV, Funimation) in my last post because i didn’t know it was continuing. It’s hitting its “stride” in being massively depressing so check that out still. It’s tragic and great. 

Granbelm (Crunchyroll, VRV) is a magical girl show I watched on a whim and turns out it’s actually a magical mecha battle royale. The color scheme is overly bright and the mechs look squashed, but it has girls snarling and yelling their heads off summoning beam swords so it’s different from what I expected. It’s got a G-Gundam energy with the multiregional cast and how the mecha fights are playing out, so if you’re fans of that, and magical girl, this is both at once. The second episode introduced a unique motivation for the main character, that piloting the mech helped her get over crushing nihilism, and I want to see where that goes, if at all. Combining the sometimes bleak and fun-sucking writing of overly dark and philosophical magical girl with what I can only describe as Domon Kasshu energy is a choice and I would like to see where Granbelm is going with that.

Misc variable hype list

O Maidens in Your Savage Season (Hidive) 

This looks gorgeous and it may be the most Mari Okada thing ever written, move over Dragon Pilot, but the manga has some uncomfortable elements that would translate poorly to anime, in terms of keeping me watching it.

Crunchyroll actually did pick up Symphogear AXZ and XV, against my pessimistic attitude. 

Ensemble Stars (Funimation) is okay.

Fire Force’s animation is fire af but the girl who lives in her own hellish fanservice series is about to be introduced and this part of the series is kind of slow so it would take a lot of effort to elevate the material until it gets to the “good stuff”. David production seems willing to give it their best shot though, so we’ll see.

Vinland Saga started slow, quiet, chronological and ultimately strong, but it took multiple episodes to get there, which is why they aired 3 episodes in the first week. I think I still prefer the high octane opening chapter of the manga, but they’ll get there soon enough so it’ll be a non-issue in a few months anyway. I recommended this before and I still do. WIT studio is clearly playing for the longer game, setting themes that encompass the whole series first rather than the fleeting themes of watch the bad ass viking slice the mans, but it is currently missing the energy people associated with that opening volume or two. It will probably pay off though.

#COP CRAFT DRAGNET MIRAGE RELOADED #sentai subs are a gift from heaven #this hand of mine burns with an unfulfilled and nihilistic attitude #bus p*rn

[nextstarblazers]

EPISODE 13

“My home! Mother! Father! Mother! They were gonna meet me here at the bus stop! Where are they? Mom, dad!” - Derek Wildstar

The next episode of STAR BLAZERS didn’t make all that much of an impact on me when I was a younger viewer, but it is absolutely chilling as an adult, even with all of the editing that was done to it. It’s an episode that captures the real-world pain experienced by the animators who made it, and contains a number of sequences that I’m surprised made it onto American airwaves in what was marketed as a children’s cartoon. For all that it pulls the worst of its punches, it still hits like a ton of bricks.

There are a whole string of episodes right here in the middle of the first YAMATO series whose content wound up being blunted and neutered quite a bit by the differences in broadcast standards between the United States and Japan. Consequently, many of these episodes are largely treated by American fans as being filler between the big, satisfying battles–whereas in reality, they are among the most satisfying installments in the canon, at least before they were tampered with.

This particular episode starts off with an unrelated prologue, in which Leader Desslok is called away from a relaxing soak to award a medal to one of his front-line generals, Lysis. Lysis tells Desslok that he’s heard about the Earth ship encroaching on Gamilon territory, and he asks for the honor of being allowed to destroy it. He’s to be the next recurring enemy that the Star Force will face over multiple episodes, and he’s instantly painted as far more formidable and dangerous than the late Colonel Ganz.

Meanwhile, for no readily apparent reason, Wildstar, Conroy and the Black Tiger squadron is flying a scouting patrol ahead of the Argo. They come across a Gamilon patrol and engage the enemy in combat. This winds up being another underwhelming space dogfight, especially to viewers who were fresh from STAR WARS, but it was still a step up from the previous one in Episode 4. During the skirmish, one of the Gamilon planes is damaged but not destroyed, and Conroy lines up a killing shot (”If I do get him, Wildstar, it’s one less we’ll have to fight tomorrow!”) But Wildstar has a different idea, and he and Conroy shoot tethers onto the crippled Gamilon fighter, towing it back to the Argo.

In the fighter bay, everybody is excited about the prospect of seeing just what a Gamilon really looks like (”I wonder what those Gamilons are really like!” opined Eager, “I guess judging from their advanced science, they must be extremely intelligent creatures!”) no one more so than Doctor Sane, who’ll be conducting the examination. Everybody seems to have forgotten about Episode 6, where Wildstar, Nova and IQ-9 got an up close look at a Gamilon soldier. But that guy wound up buried in an ice slide on Titan, so this is really the first opportunity anybody on the Star Force has had to speak with or study an actual Gamilon.

STAR BLAZERS tries mightily to disguise the fact that, as Doctor Sane makes his examination of the enemy pilot and the crew watches from the observation deck, Derek Wildstar is growing more and more agitated–to the point where he races downstairs and breaks into the examining room. This whole sequence is heavily edited from YAMATO, in which Wildstar doesn’t just jump at the guy, but rather grabs a knife from Doctor Sane’s tools and attempt to out and out kill the helpless prisoner. Wildstar is suffering from post-traumatic stress, and we’re about to find out why.

The episode segues into a flashback to the events of seven years earlier, at the start of the Earth’s war with Gamilon (and it’s pretty incredible that they whole affair lasted for seven years, given the technological superiority of the Gamilon forces, to say nothing of their eventually-revealed need to emigrate to Earth.) Again here, STAR BLAZERS needs to take some liberties, because this extended flashback clearly takes place in Japan, in the traditional Japanese home of Wildstar and his family. All sorts of cuts and trims needed to be made to transform the place into the location-neutral “Great Island.” 

The sequence opens with Derek and his unnamed mother meeting his older brother Alex at the bus stop, as Alex is returning home for leave from Cadet School. At home, friends and family gather, and Alex is peppered with questions concerning reports of interplanetary bombings that are beginning to spread. The older Wildstar sibling hasn’t got any better intel to provide to his family. (Sequences of the gathering dancing traditional Japanese dances and eating in the style of the culture were all excised.) Derek himself is shown to be a sensitive and emotional child, who is a bit jealous of all of the attention being lavished upon his elder sibling.

That evening, “Great Island” is bombed, awakening both Derek and Alex and causing the latter to be called back to his post. These sequences are plainly very visceral for the Japanese animators who are crafting them, working out the complex emotions of the only civilization to have had an actual Atomic Warhead detonated upon its cities. Again, STAR BLAZERS softens all of this in tone, but even the footage that remains is quite powerful and chilling when viewed with knowledgeable eyes. Also affecting is the scenes of the devastation left in the wake of the bombing, and the manner in which the citizenry pull together to help one another out during these difficult times, a reflection no doubt of the true experiences of the Japanese.

Things grow more dire as the Earth in total, and Great Island in particular, is bombed many times. Construction begins on the underground cities that the survivors will relocate to, enormous city-sized bomb shelters situated deep below the surface of the Earth. But building them takes time, and the population rows ever more panicked and fearful about its survival.

Derek visits Alex at his base, bringing his older brother a Bento lunch that their mother had made for him. (STAR BLAZERS has Alex call it “chocolate cake” even though it is fairly clearly sushi and rice balls–sushi hadn’t quite come over from Japan yet at the time when STAR BLAZERS first aired.) Derek is a scared kid, and he rejects Alex’s encouragement that he should go into the armed forces. “Oh, I forgot,” the senior Wildstar says, “My little brother doesn’t believe in fighting.” This is worlds away from the Wildstar that we have witnessed throughout the first half of the series, who can hardly restrain himself when the opportunity arises to lay the smackdown on some Gamilon attackers.

Back at home, Derek’s mother and father head out to the bus stop to meet his returning bus. Along the way, they share a lovely little story about their proposal of marriage, one that serves to humanize them both a bit (despite the fact that neither of them is given a name.) Wildstar’s mother muses that it’s still a lovely place, despite all of the surrounding devastation. But Derek has missed his bus home, and so mom and dad are still standing at the bus stop when a planet bomb lands practically on top of them, vaporizing the both of them almost instantly.

Again here, STAR BLAZERS cuts the actual moment of impact–which is a good thing, as it’s a pretty difficult moment to watch. But there’s no getting around the fact that Mr and Mrs Wildstar are very much dead, and that Derek is now an orphan. What’s more, as Wildstar, himself caught up in the shockwave from the blast that overturned the later bus he was on, makes his way unsteadily to where his parents are meant to be waiting for him, it is clear that he blames himself and his delay as the reason why they had been standing at ground zero. The rage and trauma and guilt turning him from the sensitive butterfly-collecting child we saw at the outset into the angry, revenge-hungry young man of today.

Back in the present on board the Argo, Venture, IQ-9 and Doctor Sane are able to talk Wildstar back to his senses, and he drops his knife, ashamed of himself. But it’s only a momentary reversal, as the Gamilon pilot takes this opportunity to go for the weapon, intending to end his own life in ritual suicide. Wildstar is able to stop him by knocking the blade out of his hands, but then he loses control completely, pummeling the Gamilon crazily until the two of them are spent, tear-filled, breathless sacks upon the floor. STAR BLAZERS cuts all of this business with the knife and the suicide attempt, but does allow Wildstar to go apeshit on the prisoner, a more violent action than most other episodes might have allowed. With everything that needed to be trimmed here, I expect that the bar was set a bit higher in terms of what was deemed acceptable for this episode.

STAR BLAZERS also introduces a bizarre bit of nonsensical business that wasn’t in the original YAMATO episode. As Avatar and Sandor attempt to interrogate the prisoner, the narrator reveals that, before each mission, each Gamilon pilot has his memory erased so that he can’t provide information to an enemy if captured. The source material simply had the captured pilot being of low enough rank that he knew nothing of value that he could tell the Star Force–I’m guessing that somebody realized that just the location of Gamilon itself would have been valuable intel that any pilot was sure to know, hence this contrivance.

Either way, the finale is the same in both YAMATO and STAR BLAZERS: the Star Force is operating with a very limited food supply (a situation that will grow more dire in the coming days), so they can’t afford another mouth to feed. Once Sandor has repaired his plane, Avatar orders the Gamilon released. And for all that food is a precious commodity, Avatar makes his wishes known to Wildstar subtly: “You know, he hasn’t had anything to eat all day.”

In the hanger bay, just before he takes off, the Gamilon pilot is surprised when Wildstar races up to him and gives him a package of food to take with him on his journey home. The two enemies share a smile between them, and the tension is broken. We’re told that the pilot eventually made his way back to his unit, while the Star Force continued on towards Iscandar–now with only 305 days remaining until the human race is completely wiped out.

#Star Blazers #Space Battleship Yamato #Yamato

[amisbro]

Deep Dive:  Utapri Movie and beyond

So earlier today I was telling a friend of mine on twitter in @heavens-saved-my-life that I was going to be talking about UtaPri because its that time when we get closer to the start of all the chaos with all the big releases coming out and I have to start to think about WHAT is possibly going to happen soon. Now before we get started I must make mention of this The title is “UtaPri Movie and beyond” BUT we are going to start with the buildup FIRST and THEN get into the actual movie and beyond cos a lot of crazy s**t is about to go down for UtaPri and we need to really take hold of it Let’s get started

Alright so between NOW and the end of the year the big things that we already know are happening/coming out are as follows Shining Live’s 1st Anniversary around the end of this month QUARTET NIGHT’s Duet Dramas in October A Shuffle Unit MV CD set in November And the first Drama CD for Oto/Van/Ai on Van’s birthday no less...interesting time for his birthday to be sure! You will note that I omitted for now the “STARISH BEST” CD and the HEAVENS “Mini Album”.  I did that because as of now we don’t know when those are coming out but I think its safe to say that they are going to be sometime at the end of this year but its a matter of “When”.  It should also be noted that the QN event will be taking place in November as well so that is definitely something to think about when we look at how jammed up this year is with events and releases THIS however brings us to the Duets and thinking about the idea that ,with the releases ending February of 2019, that the Movie couldn’t be that far behind right? WELL... Something I have been thinking about recently is that Broccoli has had the project for Dolce Vita going LONGER than the movie coming up.  The game was announced at the 6th Anniversary with HEAVENS being revealed at the Anniversary before this one.  Now when you take into consideration also that ,at least for Western markets, the gamecards for the VITA stop production as of March of next year then things get interesting. Now...how would this effect the movie? One thing I keep thinking about is HEAVENS’ role within the game and the movie coming up.  The CDs are “trio” CDs and that could lead for some interesting potential given that they are going to be considered “drama” CDs. One thing I have wondered lately is this:  Are the CDs just going to be the song for the units and then the Drama OR...could they do this  Track 1 is the Trio song 2-4 would be a solo song for the members of the units track 5 is the drama then a couple more for the off vocals Another way they could do it (if they wanted to) would be like this Track 1 is the drama Track 2 is the main song 3-5 are solos 6-9 would be the off vocal versions. THIS is something I was thinking about for the CDs and if this is what they would do then I’m cool with it.  If they do just the “dramas” and the one song that’s fine too...but there is something I considered over the past few months IF (and I mean IF) they are using the CDs to do the the story and then the movie is the concert...that could be an issue.  The reason is that because the CDs are never sold with an English translation on the booklet (and this CAN be done...I own a couple of CDs that have the JP lyrics and the English or Romanji so its NOT like that can’t be done) then the fans are fucked unless someone LITERALLY buys each CD with the intent to translate all the dramas and even then by the time those get posted are you still interested in them? Now let’s talk about the game and why I was wondering about the track listing For at least the first two seasons the CDs had one song which was the insert for that character/group and the other was used for a game.  If I remember right the ones for S1 had songs from “Debut” in them and then 2000% was for one of the All-Star games...so far those are the only ones of memory I remember being used for games that were on the Anime singles.  If they are planning to have songs for all the characters in the game then you need to create a B-Side for each one of them UNLESS Brocc intends to use the songs from S4 for that purpose but then that would be weird cos you are using “old songs” to market for the game...see the problem? Now this is just Dolce and MLKingdom I’m talking here...we haven’t even DISCUSSED beyond that! Well before that we have to go over this as it pertains to HEAVENS 2019 is going to be a very interesting year for the group that you could argue SHOULDN’T be in the position they are.  They are a group that ,let’s be fair, WAS an Antag group in Season 2 that got beat ,should have disbanded but got saved, and then reappeared at the end of Season 3 cos apparently Shining and Raging were in cahoots the whole time up until all hell broke loose with the EiiOto episode.  Ironically THAT has become a pretty popular ship in Japan with all the fanart I see for them together (even the fem versions which is interesting). (and for anyone curious Yamato/Kira and Eiji/Yamato is apparently a thing over there too) The thing is that HEAVENS SHOULDN’T be in the position they are and even I can freely admit that.  Brocc has allowed them to remain long enough where they are gaining a following (at least on twitter) and now they have a store coming and their own radio show next year.  THIS makes me wonder Brocc’s plan with the series because you CAN’T just stop it after starting to give HEAVENS their own store and stuff now.  Maybe if they were kept as pure Antags and they were beat in S2 and gone I don’t think anyone would care but now the group is about 5 years old in total with 3 being a 7 member unit and getting traction.  THAT could have either BEEN in the plan from the start with them OR it could have been something that was pure accident...I’m very close to thinking the latter. HEAVENS’ future I think will be determined with their single coming up near the end of this year (and the possible concert for them after that) because if they start to really get traction in Japan (and Korea as well from what I have seen which shocks me somewhat) AND they can start to become more accepted in the West like STARISH or QN did then we have the makings for a genuine rivalry because you will have 3 very strong and healthy fanbases that want to see what is next for their groups. THIS brings me to “What should Broccoli do after the movie?” Let’s say the movie does well enough (and with three years production time it kind of better at this point) and Brocc sees that UtaPri is still being supported strongly at least Domestically in Japan (and to a lesser extent internationally) they might consider doing a “10th Anniversary season” for the Anime in 2021 which ,if they do, I would LOVE for them to do one season that is purely HEAVENS and no distractions and the reason is this IF we are to assume that this movie will be the “send off” for STARISH (and possibly QN and I am not sure about either right now) then it would be nice to see HEAVENS get a run on their own so we can develop them NOT as Antagonists anymore but more as people that want to establish their own identity and brand.  I think that is part of the issue Broccoli kind of has with them now is they are so stuck on doing things for them like they are STARISH or QN that all people might see them as internationally is “carbon copies: and that is what I want to see them get away from.  Show US that HEAVENS is more than just a “rival group” and show us what makes them special.  I think some of us kind of ALREADY know but some might still need convincing and I get it but how is going to be the important part. Do I think Broccoli has a plan for HEAVENS right now?  I do but what is going to be interesting because if they keep tying them to STARISH then they can’t grow as a group cos they will live in their shadow to be honest.  Now they have QN members to deal with and ,even though they stuck up for them at the Triple S, the idea that QN would want to see them “grow” would be an interesting development. Keep this in mind too In a good number of these its one HEAVENS member to a STARISH and a QN member.  The ONLY one that is different is the one with Nagi/Shion/Syo and its a very interesting thing there because the question I would ask then is this “What role will the QN members play in these dramas?  Are they the buffers between HEAVENS and STARISH members or are they going to side with their Agencymates?” I still think that it would be interesting for them to introduce a manager for HEAVENS and come up with some plotline where they get infatuated with Nanami and that could cause a unique bridge for Season 5 because ,if you want to keep it going, you could have now two separate things going with Shining and Raging offices going at it for the ultimate popularity...okay STARISH might win in the end in that season BUT as we know in the real world HEAVENS has beaten STARISH in the peak ranks before.  There are #’s to back this up. Again though everything I am going on is speculation.  I think for now its going to be interesting because of the fact that the “Drama CDs” are ending at the end of February so I’m wondering when you would air the movie?  One idea I had was in July because ,look it up, and its the 8 year Anniversary of Season 1 next year in July.  I think that would be a fitting bookend for the Anime for sure. OH...there is ONE OTHER THING I thought about recently While the Anime hasn’t been officially/publicly declared as “ended” I did recent;y think about this The month that the season STARTED in was October One thing I have noticed at times is that when some Animes air any other time of the year they usually are going to get another season.  Now...I looked it up and one of the last Animes I remember watching start to finish that has had a “definitive end” at this point is K Project because ,despite the OVAs that are coming out, there has not been a new season announced. For those of us that forgot K Project’s “final season” aired from 10/3/2015 to 12/26/2015...almost parallel to UtaPri no? The difference between K Project and UtaPri was that when they showed Adolf Weismann sitting in Shiro’s old apartment they basically said about K Project “Game Over” The thing is that at least made some kind of sense cos you got to meet JUNGLE in the Movie a little bit and we saw them TRULY get theirs in “Return of Kings” so that ending fit like a glove The end of Season 4 for Utapri for SOME might probably signify the end of the series (and if it is then fine I can live with it somewhat now) but the thing is with UtaPri there was no one that NEEDED to “get theirs” and in reality all the groups should have been allowed to be happy.  Okay we know what one of the final scenes for the season was with all of them singing “Legend Star” together but think about this from the perspective of a HEAVENS fan after watching your group get the crap kicked out them to a degree with the ending not so much being “happy” but one of those you reluctantly come to terms with cos you think eventually you get YOUR moment and you are happy with it. I think that is why I am reluctant to think Brocc is just gonna pull the plug on the Anime when it no doubt still makes them money along with their CDs...I defy you to show me that it doesn’t and if you can then great but right now I think its probably one of their more popular franchises so why can it?  If they think Classical Stars is going to blow up like UtaPri they MIGHT be setting themselves up for a cold dose of reality BUT we’ll wait and see. I think for a lot of fans (myself included) the day we have to accept UtaPri is “over” is gonna be hell.  Like when it happens we are gonna be in tears because of the fact that ,no matter what group you affiliate with or who your “best boy” is, UtaPri is going to be such an integral part in all of our lives that NOT hearing from any of the members of STARISH ,QN or HEAVENS would SUCK! What does Broc have in store for us after the movie in 2019?  Hopefully a lot more content musicwise and hopefully they keep expanding UtaPri because there is still A LOT of growth for it to have but they have to be willing to not pull the plug before it reaches its peak potential. Anywho I believe I kept you long enough.  I hope you all have a grand rest of your night and I will see you in the next post take care my fellow Princes and Princesses

#Amisbro #deep dive #uta no prince sama #I had A LOT of shit on my head #hopefully you enjoy this cos I wanted to write this for a good while now

[t-oresama]

"A Celebration in Animation: The 100 Greatest Cartoon Characters in Television History" by Marty Gitlin and Joe Wos

Synopsis: Few morose thoughts permeate the brain when Yosemite Sam calls Bugs Bunny a "long-eared galoot"or a frustrated Homer Simpson blurts out his famous catchphrase "D'oh!". A Celebration in Animation explores the best-of-the-best cartoon characters from the 1920s to the twenty-first century. Casting a wide net, it includes characters both serious and humorous and ranging from silly to malevolent. But all the greats gracing this book are sure to trigger nostalgic memories of care-free Saturday mornings or after-school hours with family and friends in front of the TV set. 

Published: 2018 (Lyons Press) Genre: Non-fiction, pop culture, ranked list Rating: 3.5 out of 5

WARNING: There are some spoilers in this review (they don't mention the ranking of the shows I'll mention, just the shows themselves). The cover of the book already spoils things in this regard, but just in case you want to read this yourselves, you may want to skip reading this review until then! :D

Reader Review: Okay, so at this point, I'm literally going to start making a new tag/sub-series of reviews called "judging a book by its cover", because yet again, that's what I did. Heck, I'll even go back to my old reviews and tag them as such I went back to my old reviews and tagged them as such. Working at a library is a blessing and a curse in this regard... Anyway, my allure to this book's cover came from Teen Titans' Beast Boy being smack-dab on it. And with my undying love for the original Teen Titans series, I was instantly curious as to what ranking he'd been awarded (THAT, I will spoil; it'll be in the tags). And I've always had a love of both cartoon history and countdown lists, so this book was right up my alley anyway. 

Now, as much as the internet likes to make fun of WatchMojo on Youtube ("Top Ten Anime Betrayals" memes, anyone?), you have to admit that you yourself have watched at least one of their countdown lists, or a countdown list from someone else (ScreenRant, Looper, etc). There's something inherently interesting about putting things, specifically things we see in pop culture, in a ranked order, and the possibilities of the subjects of these lists are limitless so there's something for everyone. That being said, it drives me crazy when people get so mad or defensive about the entry order of a top 10/ top whatever number list, whether it's "How could THIS be #1???", "How could this NOT be #1???", "What about ___???", you get it. So going into reading this list of the top 100 cartoon characters in all of cartoon history, you really have to understand that these are the, albeit well-thought-out and industry-knowledgeable, OPINIONS of two people. This is not the Mayan calendar, the end-all be-all of lists. If anything, it prompts a dialogue, inviting you to hop on discussion train and talk about cartoons yourself. 

Both Marty Gitlin, a pop culture author, and Joe Wos, a cartoon illustrator, have both the professional and personal insight of the vast history of cartoons. What is very apparent, though, is that these two have come together for more of their personal love of cartoons than anything else. This didn't bother me personally, because no matter how unbiased a ranking list claims to be, there's always a little bit of bias. The two authors try to base their rankings in fact more than personal preference, and for the most part they do stay unbiased, in both obvious and non-obvious ways (for example: there is one Disney character that ranks decently higher on the list than another Disney character, which was backed by reasonings both personal and professional by the authors, since the initial reaction from anyone would probably be "...Wait, really?"). Their choices do a great job in ranging from the dawn of cartoon history with "Crusader Rabbit" and "Astro Boy" to much more recent cartoons like Archer from "Archer", Tina from "Bob's Burgers" and Korra from "The Legend of Korra", all with the same logic applied to each for why they deserved to be recognized in this book, and not necessarily why they deserve spot number whatever (although they do emphasize the rankings DO matter, but it didn't really matter a whole lot outside of the top 20). I genuinely enjoyed learning about cartoons I wasn't too familiar with, getting little blurbs and fun facts out of it, and just generally getting into the heads of Gitlin and Wos. It's clear they did their research and really applied a lot of thought to this list. After all, it's hard with ALL the cartoons characters that have existed since the early 1900s to simply pick 100. Some liberties are taken for duos, like Sylvester and Tweety and Cosmo and Wanda, but it makes sense because some exist as foils of the other to play off of each other, and their partnership is what made them stand out individually in the first place. In that regard, it's more like a top 125-ish list, but again, the authors take care in making the reasonings make sense. Plus there's a foreword from SpongeBob voice and overall voice-acting marvel Tom Kenny, which is a nice treat that whets our appetite for what this book will unveil.

That being said, this book is very much a first draft that should have had some more time to be edited before release. It's enough sometimes to be overlooked; in the beginning of each new ranking, there's a bio for each character (Created by:____ Debuted in: ___ Voiced by: ____), but rather than a new blurb starting on a new line, there are sometimes two blurbs that exist on the same line. Again, not the worst thing ever. But then there are some that are just impossible to let go; there's literally a ranking (within the ranking) of Pinky and the Brain's most ridiculous "Take over the world" schemes, and there's randomly a line about Racer X of "Speed Racer" fame that is clearly not supposed to be in this ranking, let alone in this ranking's ranking. Consistency is also an issue. For a book about cartoons, there's a big lack of them in this book. Every ranked character, I assumed, would have its own picture to visually show the reader who the character is in a "show, don't tell" kind of way, but that was very much not the case for a large amount of characters. The most logical answer to this could've been that there were copyright issues where the authors couldn't obtain permission to use their images, but several Disney characters appear visually in the book, despite Disney being notoriously stingy about sharing their characters in mediums they don't helm themselves. And where we get a cartoon character visually for #1-45, we don't get any pictures at all for a straight 15 rankings afterwards. For a ranked list about a visual medium, I would've loved to have seen who they were talking about, instead of Google image searching who certain characters were (like I had no idea who Beany and Cecil were before this book, and had to provide my own visual representation). It's just an odd choice for a cartoon book to exclude... cartoons. Though what's more odd are some images they did include. There are a couple of weird choices of photos, like the French TV poster for "Pokemon" that says "Le Film" under a screenshot of Pikachu, and the tiniest picture ever of "Crusader Mouse" obscured by the title sequence. Again, Googling these characters myself showed me better results than the book did. 

Finally and most importantly, character information is straight-up wrong. I know I said they do their research-- and they do-- and the authors are obviously not expected to know everything about every character offhand, but where they get tiny details and industry notes spot-on, they get the absolute simplest character information so unusually incorrect. There are two notable examples in my copy of the book. The first one is in Fat Albert's entry, where it states "Cosby Kid Tito is killed by a stray bullet intended for his older brother, who had joined a gang" (Uh... Fat Albert spoilers?). But it's actually Tito's younger brother Fernando who is shot and killed because the older brother who joins a gang is "Cosby Kid Tito". I know the piece is about Fat Albert the character and not Tito, but why bring this up if you don't even use the correct character to mention how progressive the show was to justify Fat Albert's place on the list? The second one is for the Powerpuff Girls regarding Blossom's physical description. It reads: "Blossom boasted light brown hair with a large blow and featured a short cape tied behind her pink dress and black belt." UMMMMMMM. I was so absolutely confused by this one line I had to look up various shots of her character model in case I somehow forgot that she had a cape, and to clarify, she absolutely does not have a cape (unless for specific episodes where's she dressing up outside of her normal attire). Did the authors think her hair was a cape? Did they mistake one episode where she wore a cape for the entirety of the series where she doesn't wear one? NO CAPES (CHECK OUT INCREDIBLES 2 IN THEATRES JUNE 15TH). Also... light brown hair? What adds insult to injury, besides the well-established fact that she has RED hair, is that this character description is written RIGHT NEXT TO A PICTURE OF THE POWERPUFF GIRLS TO PROVE THAT THAT IS NOT TRUE. Honestly, I'll give leniency where it's due for taking on the task of ranking and going in-depth on the origins and noteworthy points of a character, but no one prompted them to make this list. If you're going to talk in-depth about a character, fact-checking is your best friend. This is simple research, or simple picture-looking.

Overall, it's a fun book that helps you brush up on your cartoon history and send you into a state of nostalgia. I do wish there were more than the ten or so characters from Japan, Canada or the UK that appear on this list, but again, it's a book written in America that tends to look at the influence of said cartoons in American history, and asking someone to examine every cartoon character in the WORLD is a daunting, if not impossible task. I do also disagree with the fact that the list starts with #1 and descends from there. I find it more fun to build up to that #1 spot, because who really wants to read who #100 is when you know who #1 is already? I actually read this book backwards because of this, and found it much more satisfying to see the #1 spot by the "end". But I don't think there will be any dispute with who the top 30 or so cartoons are, but even if there are, that's the fun of ranked lists like this: if you disagree, just make your own list! It's all in good cartoon fun.

#book reviews #books #tory reads #a celebration in animation #the 100 greatest cartoon characters in television history #beast boy is number 82 on the list #which is honestly higher than i expected #i'm like a proud weeb mom #marty gitlin #joe wos #non-fiction #pop culture #popular culture #rankings #lists #ranked list #top 100 #cartoons #cartoon character #cartoon history #animation #it sounds like i complained more than praised but it's a really nice list? #i'm not mad about any of the rankings and they were overall very informative #but gosh #they desperately needed an editor #10/10 would recommend if you like cartoons #or lists #judging a book by its cover #ttfn ta ta for now