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mysterylover123 · 3 years

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Mysterylover Watches Bleach Episodes 162-163: What Do You Want with my Girl GJ?

1. So Ichi opens up by going all out and the hollow mask actually surprises Ulqui. First time I’ve seen any real change of expression from him, so I’m guessing Ichi is onto something here.

2. Wow Ichi’s powers actually got Ulqui to express an emotion for a second. This should be good. Nel is also really happy that Ichi’s alive and tells him not to wreck his body. Nel have you never met a shonen hero before?

3. And Ulqui is fine. LOL he wouldn’t be a final boss in a shonen if the hero going all out actually dented him.

4. And Ulqui then shows his powers and they’re pretty OP. He blasts Ichi to hell and back,catches up with him in like 2 seconds and roundhouse kicks him into a wreck of a building. And still catches up with him, hands in pockets as always.

5. WOW Ulqui reveals his “4″ status by opening his shirt. Wow he didn’t have to do that. Shonen dudes just find every opportunity to strip that they possibly can. He then shoves his hand into Ichigo’s bare chest. (Which I assume Ichi will survive. Just got a feeling).

6. Ulqui is disappointed that Ichi wasn’t any more badass. And his shirt is still open, fyi. LOL is he gonna just leave it open for the rest of the episode?

7. HOLY SHIT WHAT?! Hime seems to be somehow sensing that Ichi’s in trouble too and his body energy is going into her. Two new espada are coming into Hime’s room and the girl is talking like she’s gonna do...something to her. Yikes.

8. And we’re cutting to Renji. Renji ILU but Ichi and Hime and Ruki are all in serious trouble right now i think I wanna know what’s up with them (oh and Chad too).

9. Renji’s fight like everyone but Uryu’s so far is mostly him getting his ass kicked by an op villain.

10. And now we cut back to Orihime and her new...guests. Two lady espada. Who trigger Hime into thinking about how everyone got their asses kicked saving her. Please don’t develop a guilt complex over this Hime!

11. GOD THESE GIRLS ARE INSUFFERABLE. They act like high school mean girls bullying Hime. And one kabe-dons her, runs her fingers through her hair and beats her up. HOLY SHIT this is just the episode where the fanservice-y villains sexually beat up the heroes I guess.

12. Also on the topic of Fanservice, Renji decided to open his shirt too, presumably jealous that Ulqui and Ichi decided to strip. Uryu joins him, and I presume ep 163 will also feature him somehow undoing his shirt just to make sure he doesn’t miss out.

13. The Evil Girls open up a hole in Hime’s cell. Wait are they helping her escape now? Are they secretly good? Hime tells them to GTFO and they continue hassling her so I guess not.

14. ARE THESE A-HOLES GONNA TORTURE MY GIRL HIME?! They mad cause she gets to speak to Aizen? Holy crap that’s not something to be jealous of ya dumb jerk. And now that she’s smacked Hime around I am officially declaring these two girls CANCELLED.

15. LOLY is her name. Shut the eff up Loly if you lay another hand on her I swear...Then someone shows up...GRIMMJOW!!!! YES YES YES GJ. If you save Hime from these a-hols I might bump you up another slot on my faves list.

16. He really does. Grimmjow I already loved you for being a pragmatic and badass villain but now that you’re saving Hime I swear my fidelity to you till the end of this anime.

17. OH AND HE’S SAVING HER CAUSE SHE REPAIRED HIS ARM?! YES. But dammit he tells her he’s looking for a favor. Dammit GJ be careful how you threaten her; I’m glad you backed her up but traumatize her more and I will retract my Fave Villain Status like that.

18. And now we’re cutting back to Renji and Uryu vs Pink Hair. Dammit don’t cut away from the Hero-Villain encounters I actually wanted to see.

19. Doesn’t take too long to get back to Hime’s cell with the Other Evil Girl. For some reason they think Hime beat them up. Did you somehow miss the part where Grimmjow beat the crap out of you?

20. We cut back to Grimmjow and Hime. and GJ asks her to heal herself? What? WTF is going on with you GJ? and Hime actually runs over to Evil Girl and HEALS HER?!!? ORIHIME INOUE YOU ARE TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD.

21. And she heals the other one too. And Evil Girl 1 is dutifully impressed by how much of a goddess (or well she says’ ‘monster’) Hime is. Ingrate.

22. And we end on the Uryu/Renji fight continuing. Dammit I wanted to see what happened with Grimmjow and Hime! I guess I’ll have to wait till next ep for that.

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princealigorna · 5 years

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You know, the whole "Anti-Anime" crowd seems to think fans of the medium aren't even annoyed by fanservice but, well, we always have been. Especially when its just shoved into a series outside of outright something ecchi or romcom-y. It's a caveat few are actually advocating for in the Anime community in terms of narrative intrusion.

Oh, there’s definitely fans that enjoy fanservice scenes. They wouldn’t be there if there weren’t. Especially in Japan. If the Japanese super-otaku weren’t as cringey as they can get, very few mangaka and anime studios would put it in as much as they do (outside of the staple beach episode probably). But there’s plenty of fans (especially American fans) that do find it intrusive. Especially if it’s done badly. Usually, if the series is able to blend in some good humor moments, fanservice seems to slide in better because it’s used for jokes. Look at Meliodas being a freaking perv in Seven Deadly Sins, or of course the fanservice in Hiro Mashima’s work. It’s usually played for laughs, often times with the male characters being chastised or even just straight up physically assaulted for being perverted. The fanservice in Cutie Honey is also often served up for comedy. Some of it isn’t. Some of it is for fetish reasons (Go Nagai seemed to like BDSM stuff). Often times it’s the result of intensive fight scenes, and ones that don’t always go her way. But a lot of it is played more lightheartedly.

Of course, it doesn’t need to be played for laughs. The Vega/Chun Li hotel fight in the Street Fighter 2 movies is a good one. The shower scene itself is perhaps gratuitous and unnecessary and might fall into the bad fanservice department, but the post-shower fight works well because it’s a moment of vulnerability for her, and it basically sets up Vega in this case as Norman Bates. And it almost works. He manages to injured her a great deal. But she’s still able to kick him through a brick wall and send him plummeting to his death. It shows that even at her least guarded, Chun Li is still Chun Li and Chun Li will destroy your ass. But that fight is a rare exception that proves the rule.

Sailor Moon also had a lot of fan service that wasn’t played for comedy. But it also wasn’t gratuitous either. A few swimsuits here and there. The transformation sequences (which, we can argue the necessity of magical girl transformations in general, but I tend to give them a pass). The detransformations that happened from time to time (which can be borderline gratuitous, but I think work because they heighten the intensity of the situation. You know things are bad when the translucent red magic ribbons come out), a few scenes in the manga where the girls appear naked for special reasons (the whole lending power to Sailor Moon against Nehelania scene, Chibi’s growth spurt and transformation into Chibi Moon) that are used sparingly, and some lingerie pinups in the interior covers and art books and some suggestive but never explicit stuff of Usagi and Mamoru in bed together. Definitely more than you probably remember, but the reason you probable don’t remember it is because nothing was ever glaringly out of place. It was just a bunch of little shit scattered throughout.

Now, with that said, defining what’s bad fanservice I find a lot harder than defining what’s acceptable fanservice. Everyone’s tolerances are different, and I happen to have a pretty broad tolerance for fanservice. But basically I feel that if it sticks out/doesn’t fit the tone of a scene/doesn’t heighten a sense of vulnerability (which is a fine line to walk on what heightens vulnerability and what feels just straight exploitative, so its probably best not to try to walk it at all unless you’re absolutely confident that its fits the tone of the scene and is being doing in the best taste) or intimacy/isn’t in service to a punchline, it’s safe to all it bad.

The question of if mediocre or even terrible series can do fanservice well is a whole other issue. IE. I think the scene in SAO 1 with Asuna stripping for Kirito because she thinks they’re going all the way I think works. It’s an intimate moment between two lovers and it’s played up as both of them being kinda dorks about it. They don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re trying to figure it all out, and they’re both vulnerable but also closer than ever in that moment.

The fanservice throughout Fairy’s Dance on the other hand is awful. It’s not some much that it’s explicit. It’s really not. But it’s exploitative as hell. It’s supposed to set up Asuna as extremely vulnerable, and slaps us in the face with Oberon as a sex predator that we’re supposed to hate. But it feels off somehow, and I think it largely has to do with Kawahara basically betraying Asuna’s character and forcing her to fit into a standard DiD role. Fairy’s Dance fixes the pacing problems of Aincrad, but it strips Asuna of the strength and battle prowess that’s supposed to make her Kirito’s equal and it’s just so fucking stupid. Thank the gods that Kawahara seems to have realized that and has tried to rehabilitate Asuna’s character in recent arcs, but that never should have been necessary to begin with.

At least with Girl’s Ops, he hasn’t done anything that dumb. There was the beach episode arc, but compared to that bullshit, a beach episode arc looks stately by comparison. And the rest of the story has been pretty solid. Lux is fucking adorable and Gwen is an interesting addition to the SAO lore and their dynamic is really cool to read.

#anime #fanservice #antis #matt0044

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jinjojess · 7 years

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Could you elaborate on what you dislike about Death Note? If you feel like doing it, of course! I always enjoy your unpopular opinions so I would like to hear more about this. I personally liked many aspects of it, but I can also see many flaws, and the second part of the story is way less fun. Also: "Remember how I can't stand characters transparently designed to appeal to a certain kind of fan" PLEASE GO ON. I need a serious critique of the characters!

Oof, I don’t know if I have that in me, but here’s a semi-short version.

Death Note has a lot of objective stumbles, but honestly the thing about it is that it’s very much Not For Me and that’s where I have the most issues.

Spoilers for the entire series, just in case.

Edit: This got really fucking long, I’m so sorry mobile users…

Note: This will be manga-based since I read the entire manga, but have only seen a few of the anime episodes.

So I was very on board with the series in the early chapters of the manga, because I liked how it was exploring the way that Light starts off as this really eager do-gooder who gets corrupted by power. In the early chapters he looks younger and adorable, and you can see a physical change in the way he carries and presents himself as he becomes more Kira than Light. Loved the idea of presenting a protagonist and then turning him into the villain and testing the reader to see if they would still side with him or not. That was cool.

I probably would have enjoyed his rivalry with L more if I didn’t find L so personally obnoxious. A lot of people like him (to the point where I feel like I am the sole dissenter) and I don’t think he’s necessarily the worst character, but just like…I dunno. Something about him and the way he’s treated in the series just feels so…I don’t know how to put this…wish fulfillment-y? Like he’s this dude who really shouldn’t be attractive because he’s gaunt and pale and clearly doesn’t take care of himself at all, plus he’s got all these nervous tics that would probably be at best politely tolerated while everyone talks about how awkward he is behind his back but like…I don’t remember that ever happening really.

Like if the police force were like “Jesus, dude, just sit like a normal human being for once,” I’d have found him more believable as an actual character instead of this guy conspicuously being weird to show off how “different” and “special” he is. Plus he’s also athletic, despite not ever being shown practicing or going to the gym or anything–he’s just super good at martial arts and a tennis champ, guys. Like sorry, but for those of us in the real world, we have to adhere to social codes and actually work for that kind of shit, and while some people find comfort in this sort of idealized escapism, it’s always just pissed me off from a personal standpoint.

Basically L feels like he was created to appeal to socially awkward fangirls who could squee over him and be like “he’s weird and socially awkward just like me! but everyone would be jealous of me if he was my boyfriend because unlike me everyone loves him!” Which in and of itself is not inherently Bad or anything, but it gives me a sense of unbearable second-hand embarrassment so I just cannot deal with that.

Let me be clear here: those kinds of fangirls completely deserve to have media aimed at them, and Death Note fills that niche pretty well. Again, this complaint is from a place of personal preference, and is just to get you to understand why Death Note turned out to not really be my cup of tea.

(Plus also where is the storyline where L gains weight or gets type 2 diabetes from surviving on sweets? Oh, it’s because his brain burns too many calories. Fuck that guy.)

Misa is similar in that she’s basically Yamato Nadeshiko: Goth Edition and that just ain’t my thing. Like don’t get me wrong–I love me some tragically loyal people, but I usually prefer that they also be capable in some other way (Pekoyama can swordfight like a badass, Sakakura is a world-class boxer, Mukuro is…well, Mukuro, etc.). MisaMisa is kind of a fuck up. Plus iirc she’s an idol and sorry, if you are not part of Maizono’s posse I have zero time for you.

Anyway, the fact that the reader is supposed to feel less sympathy for Light because of his treatment of Misa is interesting, but it’s kind of clouded by the fact that Misa is so annoying to me personally that I just wanted her to fucking die already and get out of the narrative. Rem, you are too good for this shit.

I did find the police force itself pretty charming, though. I was rooting for them for most of the story.

Ryuk was great too. A nice provider of very needed levity, and probably the most consistently good point of the series, at least until the very end which I’ll get into in a second.

Anyway, the more technical issues I have with Death Note are with its pointless meandering. There’s that famous tennis scene where it’s supposed to be really exciting because Light and L are trying to figure each other’s psychology out, but the things they’re thinking aren’t at all realistic. Like trying to win a tennis match proves you’re competitive ergo you must be Kira? What? It’s overthinking very mundane things that would have too many variables to ever be conclusive proof of anything, and it turns out to be pointless since they both reach that conclusion at the end of the game anyway.

So yeah, my biggest issue with Death Note was that it wasted so much of my time. It feels a little like the V3 trials, where you’d be purposefully led down this boring, clearly incorrect route so that the reader could be “surprised” when it turned out that something could be Occam’s Razor’d. There are entire volumes where nothing happens. And I don’t mean like, nothing physically happens, but the characters are having intense debates or whatever. I remember reading volumes where only two real conversations were had, and the rest of the time was everyone imagining and mentally preparing for said conversations.

Maybe my memory of the series is too patchy, since I read the manga over a decade ago in 2005, but I remember a LOT of padding.

Something I did think was handled well was how Light defeats L. That was pretty great because at heart I do love super smart villains with stupidly complicated plans, and that one was pretty great, especially since I figured that L wouldn’t be going anywhere.

However, the series should have ended here. It should have ended with Kira winning out over L, but the law being closer to figuring out who Kira is, leaving the reader in a state of uncertainty about the future of this world and Light as a character.

Would that have wrapped up all the loose ends? No. But it would be way better than what we got in the second half of the series, I think most people would agree.

So let’s talk for a second about Near and Mello.

To touch again on the “this was clearly for a certain kind of fan” subject, how hard do you think the publishers shit themselves when they realized that L was going to die but the series wasn’t over? L was and still is by far the most popular character from the series, and the fangirls were probably not going to be pleased that their husbando got ejected from the narrative.

So what do we do?

Replace him with more of the same!

While L was annoyingly teetering on Gary Studom, Near is basically that just with an added dose of “precocious child” which doesn’t really help the situation. I hesitate to call him Shouta L, even if that’s how it feels sometimes, but I just felt like Near was way too similar to L to be his own character. He felt more like L was reborn as a kid for the Death Note Babies spin-off.

Mello was a lot more interesting, with the inferiority complex and his tendency to, you know, actually do things. The only part of the latter half of the series I remember liking was when Mello kidnapped Light’s sister and there was this tiny glimmer of humanity left in him where he didn’t want her to die. However this was always offset for me by the fact that he was running around with an exposed midriff because yeah we need to have fanservice somewhere man. (Again, not inherently Bad and fangirls deserve their fanservice too, but like…not my thing, at all.) It just felt very…calculated, if that makes sense.

What would have been way more interesting to me would be Light finding out about these orphans being groomed to take over for L and there being some kind of commentary on how the side of “good” is using these really dubious and unethical methods to catch Kira, bringing up the question of whether or not they’re actually any better. Like let’s talk about that.

Okay so. The only thing left to talk about is the ending. And holy shit, that fucking ending.

I was still trying to be on board with Death Note even in the second half where I had very little desire to finish it but felt like I’d already invested the time and money so I might as well. I was trying so damn hard, and I was still kind of enjoying the ridiculous lengths Kira was going to get a one-up on his pursuers, with the fake out girlfriends and the cult, and the fucking pieces of Death Note pages inside the secret compartment of his watch and shit…it was so dumb but in like a fun way.

And to be clear, I’m fine with Light losing in the end, and being undone by his own hubris.

But to only have it happen because Ryuk decides to conveniently help the police? Like, that’s dumb. The entire thing hinges on Ryuk deciding at that very moment to fuck Light over–sure, whatever, he’s not on a side, sure. I don’t expect him to actually pull a Rem, but he must have fucking known that the lackey’s book was fake (who, by the way, should have planned to do away with everyone one at a time, using the power to determine how people die to make it look like an accident, and then he would have noticed that his notebook wasn’t a real one). At least hint toward Ryuk getting fed up, or bored, or something so that this doesn’t seem so frustratingly convenient.

Though Ohba apparently once said that L was the smartest character because “the plot needs him to be” so there you go. That’s his approach. Plot contrivances are the order of the day.

So yeah, anyway.

That’s why I’m not that fond of Death Note. Part of it is because of personal biases against certain kinds of characters that are not appealing to me, and part of it is because the entire story feels like it’s taking itself too seriously and is trying to be more clever than it is. As a more compact narrative I think it would probably get a pass, but the fact that it’s so bloated and sprawling really makes it hard for me to consider it objectively good.

…Turns out I did have it in me.

#ask #anon #opinions #long post #criticism #Death Note #no seriously it's long #you've been warned

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